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Frail Proof Safely Yet Reliably Optimize Your Hormones to Live a Longer, Stronger, and Healthier Life 2/7/20 Copyright © 2019-2020 by Scott Raney, PhD and Min Sheng. All Rights Reserved. ISBN-13: 9781092937405 Progesterone and Estradiol graphs by Medgirl131 Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=72046040 This publication contains the opinions and theories of the author and intended only to provide background material that individuals may use for their own benefit. It is not intended as a substitute for the services of a qualified medical professional. The author specifically disclaims all responsibility for any loss incurred as a result of following any of the recommendations contained herein. Use at your own risk. Questions, suggestions, and comments should be directed to [email protected]. Revision history 02/09/19 Initial release 02/22/19 Cleaned up typos and formatting errors, cropped cover image to comply with Amazon’s (Puritanical) guidelines 04/05/19 Changed title from “Biohacking Andropause and Menopause”, added Min as co-author, expanded coverage of Wiley Protocol and aromatase inhibitors, and added FAQ 06/01/19 Moved protocol specifics to appendix that can be published separately and changed dosing ratio from 8:3:1 to 6:3:1. Updated BG. 06/08/19 Released free version. Minor updates to text. 06/20/19 Updates to text and new reviews. 02/07/20 Minor updates to text, FAQ, and new reviews for the BG. 2 Chapter 1: Introduction .......................................................... 5 Chapter 2: The philosophy ...................................................... 9 Optimization vs Replacement ......................................... 9 What is “natural”? ......................................................... 9 It’s about quality of life, not quantity .............................11 Don’t be a burden ........................................................11 The other optimization targets .......................................12 Good for the gander, good for the goose ........................15 It’s never too late ........................................................16 Chapter 3: The hormones ......................................................18 Required hormones (2 for men, 3 for women) .................18 Bioidentical hormones and the “appeal to nature” fallacy ..19 Injection is the only viable route ....................................19 OHPC FTW ..................................................................21 Chapter 4: The dosing ...........................................................23 Dose to the half life ......................................................23 Sequential/cyclic vs continuous protocols ........................23 Self injection is the only viable route ..............................27 Chapter 5: The metrics ..........................................................31 Treat the labs, and the patient ......................................31 DIY labs .....................................................................38 Take lab values and ranges with a grain of salt ................38 Chapter 6: The small stuff (diet and exercise) ..........................40 Weight-bearing exercise ...............................................40 Eat right! But don’t expect miracles even if you do...........41 To lose weight, the best diet is the one you can stick to ...42 Dietary supplements ....................................................44 Chapter 7: The bottom line ....................................................47 Be your own best advocate ...........................................47 3 The costs ....................................................................48 How to find a new doc ..................................................49 The state of the art ......................................................50 Conclusion: Just Do It! .................................................52 Appendix 1 (website links and book mini-reviews) ....................53 Appendix 2 (FAQ) .................................................................74 Appendix 3 (protocol specification) ..........................................85 References ...........................................................................95 4 Chapter 1: Introduction As of 2020 it is projected that up to 4% (1) of US men over the age of 40 are receiving testosterone therapy (most commonly known as Testosterone Replacement Therapy, or TRT), a percentage that has more than tripled just in the last decade and continues to increase. Even so, this represents only a small fraction of the men who could benefit from this type of treatment: Almost 40% of men begin showing symptoms of hypogonadism or “Low T” by age 45 (2). Meanwhile the percentage of women receiving hormone therapy (most commonly known as Hormone Replacement Therapy, or HRT) has dropped by 50% over that interval and continues to decline. Extrapolating from these trends, TRT will become more common than HRT within the next few years if indeed the crossover has not already occurred. This is despite the fact that approximately 100% of women over the age of 45 could benefit from some form of this treatment. This situation seems to me an ideal domain for a biohacking approach. Biohacking, the use of scientific and/or technological interventions to improve the functioning of the human body, is clearly human destiny: Every year new treatments are developed and more science is done that helps us know how and when to apply them. While the term technically includes bionics (things like artificial joints, pacemakers, and cochlear implants) and indeed most drugs used to treat chronic conditions, it really comes into its own when applied to individual efforts to increase one’s quality or length of life, individual effort that is necessary because the medical profession has lagged behind the available science and technology. Biohacking is therefore a client-driven system where we are fully involved in defining and executing our treatment and our doctor’s role is mostly to sanity-check our recommendations, make sure we haven’t overlooked something, and to ensure that we’re implementing the treatment correctly. This book will review the state of the art in the area of hormone supplementation and recommend ways to remove the practical and institutional roadblocks that are preventing much wider use, and more optimal use, of these life-altering therapies, especially for women. While we’ll touch on the usual grist for mill of the health, anti- aging, and menopausal treatment fields (diet, exercise, supplements, stress reduction, etc.), make no mistake: None of those other things can hold a candle to hormones and pharmaceuticals when it comes to actually dealing with disease and age-related decline in physical and 5 mental health. The path proposed here is therefore a sort of middle ground between the wishful thinking we get from proponents of “natural” treatments (which rely primarily on the placebo effect, or even just on convincing people to accept their suffering because it’s “normal”), and the “Big Pharma” approach of using real science to create a patentable drug for every little thing that ails you, their ultimate goal being to have everyone taking a wide variety of expensive and side-effect inducing drugs that are designed to prolong life (thereby meeting insurance organization requirements) without regard to our well-being. The recommendations in this book were developed using a combination of peer-reviewed journal papers (references included), protocols used by specialists in this area (functional medicine, integrative medicine, and anti-aging, commonly running practices classified as “concierge telemedicine”), “broscience” (the vast collection of anecdotal reports that can be found on web sites and forums, including reports on effective dosing from transsexuals, women taking these hormones to improve fertility, in-vitro fertilization (IVF) surrogates, postmenopausal women receiving HRT, andropausal men receiving TRT, and men and women using hormones for bodybuilding), and the personal experience of the authors (my wife and myself). Although we are not medical doctors, one of us does have a PhD (in experimental psychology) and we both have way too much time on our hands: we cashed out and retired from our main careers as software engineers and entrepreneurs in our early 40s, over 15 years ago. These characteristics provide us with the ability to separate the wheat from the chaff in all of these published reports. Not being physicians also frees us from the constraints imposed by medical boards or the legal profession which would be quick to turn any recommendations like these into weapons in a malpractice lawsuit even if there is no scientific basis for doing so: In fundamental conflict with the design of our legal system, the real world is a probabilistic place and sometimes bad things happen without any individual or act being responsible. Although you will need a doctor to prescribe most of the hormones recommended here, you’ll probably sense a high level of skepticism, if not outright disdain, of doctors in this presentation. It’s well earned: The third leading cause of death in the US is “medical errors”. These are events that generally fall short of outright malpractice, but could have been prevented if either the doctor, staff, or patient was paying proper attention. The third leg of that support system is you: You have an obligation to know what your condition is, what the appropriate 6 treatment for it is, and