Dr. Kathy Maupin and Brett Newcomb discuss their trip to the United Kingdom to promote her book, The Secret Female Hormone, as well as their findings on the similarities and differences in the UK’s health system and the United States.
This week we are taking our new book, The Secret Female Hormone, to London. Actually the book is already there; it is being published by Hay House International in six different countries, including the United Kingdom. We are quite excited about this opportunity. We’ve been learning many interesting things about how the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) is different from the medical system in the United States. One of the things that we have learned is that hormone replacement therapy with pellets containing testosterone used to be fairly common in the UK and was once covered by the NHS. Ten years ago, the NHS decided that it was a “frivolous” expense (a poor decision that effected many post-menopausal women who required testosterone and estradiol pellets to survive,) so the NHS stopped paying for hormone pellet replacement for women, and doctors stopped providing hormone replacement therapy and learning about the treatment and procedure.
One explanation we received about why this change was made is that the powers that be decided it was merely a service for the “worried well,” and not an actual medical treatment. As the population in England began to age and women began to enter the post-menopausal stage in great numbers, the NHS decided that there wasn’t enough room in the budget to provide for the millions of women who needed testosterone and estradiol replacement therapy. So, they decided to no longer cover the treatment.
There are many physicians in England who operate out of private clinics that are not controlled by the managers of the NHS, and they continue to offer testosterone replacement as an option for those women who want it and who need it. We believe that our book will be a positive source of information for the women in the UK, as well as for their physicians. We argue for the creation of a diagnostic label entitled “TDS” (Testosterone Deficiency Syndrome,) which would explain the symptoms and treatments of testosterone loss. In our book, we compare the various treatment options in terms of cost-benefit ratios, as well as discussing their possible side effects. We hope that the women of the United Kingdom will find this information useful as they seek treatment and discuss their concerns with their physicians.
While we are in London, we will be meeting with several physicians who operate private clinics where testosterone replacement is available. We will be discussing our viewpoint as American physicians and sharing with them what we do at BioBalance Health, as well as the practices of other doctors who focus on positive aging in the United States. We will be participating in radio interviews and book signings, and we will be giving a presentation at The Nutri Centre that is open to the public. Feel free to come out if you are in the greater London area. We would love to see you and answer your questions in person.