By Dr. Richard Chern M.D.
Many of my patients have been told by their doctor that hormones are bad. I used to respond by calling to inform them of current treatment recommendations. I once had a cardiologist tell me testosterone caused elevated cholesterol, until I had him read an article from his American Journal of Cardiology that said testosterone lowers cholesterol. And most physicians are still not aware that low testosterone is related to highly aggressive prostate cancers and that optimizing testosterone can reduce their occurrence.
In medical school, it’s drilled into our heads that everything we learned is non-negotiable. ”I don’t know” usually led to an onslaught of verbal abuse ending with,”if you don’t know, your patients will die!” So we spent years inside textbooks and journals learning as much as we could. Unfortunately, even if we learned “everything,” information and treatments are continually changing. As we enter practice it’s not possible to keep up with all the latest medical knowledge, especially in specialties outside our own.
Because of this indoctrination (sorry, had to) there is a fear of not knowing. Often, if a doctor is not current on a particular subject, they show skepticism. This leads to the comment, “That’s not good for you it will cause [insert scary disease here].” Doctors tend to revert to information learned 20 or more years ago rather than admitting they are not read up on a particular subject.
About 20 years ago, I was taught all hormones are bad and cause cancer, strokes, and heart attacks. Guess what? We were wrong. In fact, the studies we referenced to say hormones were bad are now referenced with others to prove hormones are good. How is this possible? Previously, bioidentical and synthetic hormones were grouped together but after looking at them individually, it becomes obvious that synthetic hormones are bad and bio-identical hormones are very good! Nobody likes to admit they made a mistake and the medical community is often the worst.
Doesn’t it make sense that a natural product is good for us and a synthetic is bad? When we are young and feeling great, we have high levels of bio-identical hormones and as we age and deteriorate these levels fall. So doesn’t it make sense that the fall in these hormones are actually the cause of us feeling bad and deteriorating, and that replacing them can reverse this process and make us feel better? It’s not a difficult concept to grasp and you can ask any of the thousands of patients who have received our bio-identical hormone therapy what results they have seen.
The point here is that during our medical training, any outside-the-box thinking is frowned upon and quickly squashed. And, secondly, it is ok for you to be skeptical when your doctor is not up-to-date on studied and proven bio-identical hormones. Contact us for more information.
Dr. Richard Chern and his staff have the latest training and specialize in hormone therapy for men and women. They are currently accepting new patients and encourage you to call for an appointment at 850-837-1271.
