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Hormones: Why Don’t We Talk About This?!
Last week I wrote about gender and it’s place in global healthcare (Does it hurt? Does it help us? Should it be tossed out completely?), and it reminded me of an article I read awhile back regarding how differently we treat female hormones in later years versus male.
Although I’m paraphrasing rather terribly, male hormones don’t begin to drop until later than your average female, yet the disruption for women has been traced back to earlier onsets of dementia (because our bodies thrive on stable hormone levels). The article suggested that women be their own advocates when it comes to finding replacement therapies and having their levels tested, but that was basically it. It essentially seemed to say: “There is a problem in how we do things from one gender versus another. It can have dire consequences. Make sure you look into that.”
Scary, right? I thought so, anyways. I have a friend with Cystic Fibrosis who is extremely open about his battle to treat hormone levels throughout the years (he had a lung transplant not long ago). As a CF patient, he often felt his hormones were the last topic anyone wanted to discuss, and properly treating them required “swimming upstream” for years, metaphorically, with little to no support.
Why don’t we talk about hormones more in healthcare and/or as CF patients? Why is hormonal testing and treatment not rolled into our overall care, as opposed to something we have to fight for on the side?
And, if you’re willing to share: Have your hormones ever impacted you as a CF patient?
PS. I hope to interview him one day and write a full column in this subject, but for now, just anxious to see how others feel.
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