Actress and health advocate Suzanne Somers calls the symptoms of female hormone deficiency the “seven dwarves” of perimenopause: “Itchy, bitchy, sleepy, sweaty, bloated, forgetful, and all dried up.”
In an interview with Newsmax TV’s “America’s Forum,” Somers explains that many women — and some men — experience at least a few of these symptoms. But they may fail to recognize that they are tied to hormone deficiencies that promote the aging process and should be addressed early. That’s especially important for those experiencing the first signs of perimenopause — the stage in a woman’s life just before she enters menopause — which can occur as early as the 30s or 40s.
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“We women … lose 90 percent of our hormones over a two-year period, but … men lose them a little later than us …and it takes you about nine years to drain completely so that’s why they do movies called ‘Grumpy Old Men,” Somers says.
She explains that there are two types of hormones — considered major and minor — that regulate key bodily functions. Major hormones include insulin, thyroid, cortisol, and adrenal hormones. Minor hormones include testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, DHE (didehydroepiandrosterone).
It’s important to keep hormones in balance as we age, she notes.
“If it was a teeter-totter and … you’re say 35, or 40, maybe 50 and you start declining in your minor [hormones], what happens is it pushes up, it raises your [majors],” she says. “Your insulin [increases] — that’s why you’re gaining weight even though you’re exercising more and eating less. It raises up your cortisol — that’s why you can’t sleep, because cortisol is your stress hormone. That’s why your thyroid goes off — you can tell if you’re hot or cold or clammy, that’s your thyroid. That’s why you get heart palpitations — because of your adrenals; adrenaline rush they call it. Some people experience it as panic attacks and anxiety and etc.”
The good news, she says, is “it's all fixable” — through hormone therapy, which boosts overall health and wellbeing, keeps weight down, and energy levels and libido up.
“You can get it all back,” she explains. “I'm in my 60s. I sleep eight hours every night without drugs. I have a sex drive, which is one of things [you lose] when you lose your minor hormones, your sex hormones … So when you get everything balanced again you get your sex drive back, your hair gets thick and more lustrous. Older women get stringy hair, I'm not getting stringy hair because my hormones are replaced, your nails get strong.”
Somers recommends testing by a doctor to diagnose deficiencies and the use of bio-identical hormones to address any imbalances.
“There has never been one reported case of cancer with bio-identical hormones and those people who say there's not enough research or studies do not know what they're talking about,” she says.
Somers adds that the research for her latest book was driven by a key question: “What if we could make aging aspirational?”
She notes that advances in medical technology are allowing Americans to live longer, but not necessarily better.
“I realized for the last 20 years that I have been restoring what I have lost in the aging process with natural bio-identical hormones … so technology is great, technology has figured out how to extend life, we’re all going to live 90, 100, the futurists say 110, 120,” she says. “But nobody has thought about quality of life in that second half. And so what I write about is quality of life.
“That’s essentially what all my books are about — how do you age well?”
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