What to do when your bioidentical hormones stop working?

So you’ve been on bioidentical hormone replacement therapy for a few years. Everything was peachy. You felt good. Hot flashes stopped. You could sleep through the night. Your moods were stable. No more brain fog.

But now you’re having hot flashes again. And night sweats. And you can’t sleep. And you’re peeing yourself every time you laugh. Which is no laughing matter! And your emotions are all over the place. Feels like puberty all over again. But worse, because you have no sex drive and your vagina is dry as a desert.

Oh, my goodness! Can your bioidentical hormones and replacement therapy (BHRT) stop working? YES!

But don’t worry there’s something you can do about it…

First, let’s discuss why your bioidentical hormones might stop working.

Your hormones work by getting into your cells via little doorways called receptor sites. Here’s a sex steroid receptor site.

When your receptor sites are no longer sensitive, your hormones can’t get in. We call that receptor site resistance. You may be familiar with insulin resistance. Your cells can become resistant to your sex hormones too.

Why?

Well, your cells never were exposed to the same amount of hormones all the time. When you’re still in your reproductive years having regular periods, your hormones fluctuated throughout your cycle. And at least three days a month starting on the first day of your period, you got a break from estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone. That’s nature’s way of preventing resistance.

Here’s an example of how cell receptor site resistance works.

Let’s say you’re sautéing onions. Your partner walks into the kitchen and says, “Hey, you’re burning the onions!”

You check and sure enough the onions are burning. Why did your partner notice and you didn’t? Because your olfactory receptor sites were saturated by the odor of cooking onions. And your partner’s olfactory receptor sites were completely open, so they smelled what you couldn’t. The same goes for hormone receptors.

It’s just like opiates. You keep using pain meds all the time and you quickly develop tolerance, so you need more and more to get an effect. Eventually they don’t work.

Take a Break

So the moral of the story is… to prevent receptor site resistance, you need to take a break. Specifically three days off every month. That will clear your receptors and allow your hormones to keep working for you. Otherwise, you have to keep using more and more to get an effect, and eventually your hormones will stop working.

So what if it’s too late? Your BHRT doesn’t work anymore. If you’re under 60, then taking a three-week break from your hormones will help clear your receptor sites. Then restarting them should give you similar relief as when you first began your hormones.

Support cell receptivity

You can also increase your dose of Genesis Gold® by 4gm (about a teaspoon) over your body weight (4gm per every fifty pounds) to enhance cellular receptivity and help you metabolize your sex hormones more safely. Whenever I take a break, I add a teaspoon of Sacred Seven® amino acids to my Genesis Gold® to help mitigate the hot flashes and moodiness associated with hormone withdrawal.

Why suffer? I know it’s hard to be off your hormones for a few days, but developing resistance is even harder. So best to prevent it by taking a three-day break from your BHRT every month.

What if you’re over 60 and all of a sudden your BHRT isn’t working?

Well, that’s a little different. Older women still need a three-day break. But now they’re in adrenopause. I like to refer to it as the second menopause. During the ten to fifteen years of menopause, your adrenal glands usually produce enough DHEA that converts into testosterone and then into estrogen, effectively supplementing your BHRT.

Over 60, stressed out

Once your adrenals slow down with age or poop out from stress, it feels like you don’t have enough sex hormones on board. You begin having hot flashes, night sweats, and insomnia all over again. So not only do you need to clear your sex hormone receptors, you need to add adrenal support.

Taking Genesis Gold is an excellent way to support your adrenals. If stress is high, you may need to take a little extra-adrenal glandular for a few weeks. Just don’t take glandular longer than a few months. Glandulars stop working and your liver will treat them as a toxin.