What is a Usual Dose of Bioidentical Hormones? | PYHP 081
Episode description
Heidi’s Question:
Hi, I’m a 48 year old female who has struggled with PCOS my whole life. I’ve taken 200 milligrams of oral progesterone for several years now. I also take 45 milligrams of Armour Thyroid, and my TSH is 3.87, and my free T3 is 3.22. I’ve had symptoms of: hair loss, dry eyes, vaginal dryness, very low sex drive, and irritability. I just had a saliva test done which revealed very low estradiol levels, and low DHEA along with borderline low testosterone. The practitioner I have, put me on sublingual drops with a dosage of 80/20 ratio of biased being– which is interesting, .8 milligrams of an 80/20 bias, .8 milligrams of testosterone, 25 milligrams of oral DHEA and kept me on my 200 milligrams of oral progesterone. My question is, is this a safe way to administer my Biest and testosterone? Do you agree with the dosing amounts? Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you for your time, Heidi.
Short Answer:
We do not like the idea of taking Biest and testosterone orally. Taking BHRT in a sublingual form is ok because the intention is to avoid the digestive tract and liver. However, for Estrogen and Testosterone, we prefer to use a transdermal cream instead. Also, in this case, the dosing is too low. Her Biest needs to be gradually increased, but with caution in order to prevent any bleeding or spotting.
PYHP 081 Full Transcript:
Dr. Maki: Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us for another episode of the Progress your Health Podcast, I’m Dr. Maki.
Dr. Davidson: I’m Dr. Davidson.
Dr. Maki: So, we’re going to dive right back in. We have another listener question. Actually, this is a reader question from a post on our website. What is bias? This is from Heidi. Dr. Davidson, why don’t you go ahead and give it a read.
Dr. Davidson: Oh, sure. Sure. So, this is from Heidi. “Hi, I’m a 48 year old female who has struggled with PCOS my whole life. I’ve taken 200 milligrams of oral progesterone for several years now. I also take 45 milligrams of Armour Thyroid, and my TSH is 3.87, and my free T3 is 3.22. I’ve had symptoms of: hair loss, dry eyes, vaginal dryness, very low sex drive and irritability. I just had a saliva test done which revealed very low estradiol levels, and low DHEA along with borderline low testosterone. The practitioner I have, put me on sublingual drops with a dosage of 80/20 ratio of biased being– which is interesting, .8 milligrams of an 80/20 bias, .8 milligrams of testosterone, 25 milligrams of oral DHEA and kept me on my 200 milligrams of oral progesterone. My question is, is this a safe way to administer my Biest and testosterone? Do you agree with the dosing amounts? Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you for your time, Heidi.”
Dr. Maki: So, yes, there’s a lot to dissect there. This is– and I actually responded to her on the website. I asked her a question, is her progesterone, is it Prometrium or is it bioidentical progesterone? She came back to say that it was actually 200 milligrams of Prometrium. She had asked why we don’t– because in my response to her, I said, we don’t typically prescribe or don’t really recommend Prometrium and she was wondering why. So, Dr. Davidson, why don’t you say why you don’t prefer Prometrium?