Want to send us a message? In recent years, testosterone therapy for women has gained popularity, fueled by self-styled menopause specialists on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, as well as celebrity endorsements. The claims associated with this therapy are numerous, ranging from transforming libido to reducing brain fog, improving energy and mood, staving off dementia, enhancing bone strength, and maintaining muscle mass. However, it is essential to scrutinize these claims and evaluate the available scientific studies before considering testosterone therapy for women. OUTLINE: Media DominanceBenefit Claims: fog, mood, energy, dementia, bones, muscle Medical Studies on Claims Women Exploited? Risks Side Effects Testosterone Over A Woman’s Lifespan Where does Testosterone Come from? - Conversion Ovary Function - Menopause Reasons to Prescribe Clinical Trial Results T Levels Don t Always Correlate With SymptomsReasons To Promote - Profit FOMO All our links: https://SwingLinks.club SOURCES:Full sources are available on our website...Is the Male Sex Hormone Putting Mid-Life Women at Risk?Testosterone for peri- and postmenopausal womenYen Jaffe s Reproductive Endocrinology - Physiology, Pathophysiology, and Clinical ManagementAndrogen levels in adult females: changes with age, menopause, and oophorectomyGlobal Consensus Position Statement on the Use of Testosterone Therapy for WomenInternational Society for the Study of Wom Support the showWant More?👀 Watch on YouTube: YouTube ShowFull video versions and interactive live episodes!Bonus episodes, exclusive content, and 🌶️Extras: https://www.patreon.com/SwingerUniversity 🛳️🎉Looking for lifestyle events in your area? T4P is the go-to directory for clubs, parties, and resort events. Browse now at Ticket4Play.com Custom SU T-shirts and gear: Our Amazon StoreSwingerLinks.com - live schedule, special offers*, and our 🌶️links!Our Website - Leave us a message, articles, and sexy products3 Ways to get your question on our show:RECORD it on our website at: https://swingeruniversity.com/contact/EMAIL a recorded voice note to: [email protected]: (916) 538-0482 and leave a voicemail.* We get a commission if you decide to purchase through our links, at no cost to you.
Transcript
We have to talk about something we've been genuinely excited about for months, and our patrons actually got a preview of this already. Jamaica! Yes, we are going back, and actually, we have a great offer for you guys. Yeah, it's Swingcation. It's October 11th through the 18th at Hedonism 2. And if you don't know what Swingcation is, it's pretty easy. Swinger plus kink plus vacation. It's a hosted group with real structure, workshops, lectures, real conversations with experts who are passionate about bringing and bridging that gap between the swinger world and the kink world.
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And use our code at checkout. And you guys, if you have any questions about the event, the resort, or what to expect, just reach out. I mean, we're here for you. We're happy to help. So once again, TicketForPlay.com forward slash Swinky, the code SwingerU-VIP. We really want to see you there. Ladies, are you curious about all the latest news and social media about testosterone and how it can raise your sex drive? Are you aware of the risks? Do you know how it works in your body? Stay tuned because this episode we're going to cover all you want to know about testosterone and women.
Welcome to Swinger University. I'm Ed. And i'm phoebe in recent years testosterone therapy for women has gained popularity fueled by self-styled menopause specialists on social media platforms like facebook and instagram as well as celebrity endorsements the claims associated with this are numerous, ranging from transforming libido to reducing brain fog, improving energy and mood, staving off dementia, enhancing bone strength, and maintaining muscle mass.
However, it is essential to scrutinize these claims and evaluate the available scientific studies before considering testosterone therapy for women. If you like our show, tell a friend about it. Also, be sure to check out the other related articles to this topic. If you're a super fan of our show, consider supporting us on Patreon. As a member, you'll have access to exclusive content that's even hotter than what we share on the podcast. Well, we're on to our favorite topic, which is social media, media. I know. HRT, all of that. I know.
It's a challenging subject because it's very controversial and a lot of people do see benefits from it, but it can be somewhat risky. I haven't talked with many people that don't see benefits. I might be the outlier. But we're going to dive into all kinds of details for you on hormone testosterone for women. Some of the claimed benefits are it transforms your libido. And I hear this from a lot of women. And I will say, once I got my numbers dialed in right, which took me about two years, it did change things for me.
It did did change things but it was really really difficult to get me at that right number and a lot of the work was done by me getting the telling my doctor I want the tests doing the research looking at my numbers and Telling them exactly what I wanted them to prescribe me and then paying them. Right. Beyond just telling them how you were feeling, it was also suggesting changes to the dosage, lowering it, raising it, etc. Actually, it's just been lowering it. Yeah, it's mostly been lowering it.
The other claim benefits, which I don't have any experience in, is reduced brain fog, improving energy, which other people do. My friends say that that does improve their energy. I think I did notice that as well, and I'll go into that in a second. Improvement in mood, staves off dementia, improves bone health, maintains muscle mass, which makes sense. Testosterone does help. It helps you grow muscle faster. And I don't know if it helps you maintain it. I know it helps you grow it quicker.
And then some of the trials have actually said that it does improve sex drive and there are some case studies that refute the benefit to cognition bone health muscle waste and mood so so your mileage will vary studies on the claims of fog mood energy dementia bones and muscle there's 2005, 2014, 2018. These are meta-analysis of 54 studies they did in 2005. They did another meta-analysis of 35 studies in 2014. And then the International Menopause Society did another study in 2019.
And they all said there's no benefits to fog mood energy dementia bones or muscle so interesting it's controversial yeah and i mean with most things it could be chalked up to placebo if you've got peer-reviewed studies showing no results from it or statistically not significant results, then the results that people are feeling about some of this stuff, I think the only one that they would know would be maybe the muscle waste or mood.
Because it's hard for an individual to judge whether their cognition is improving or not or whether their bone health is improving or not or yeah it's it's challenging now back to the improved energy my friends say they do see improved energy and they notice dramatically when it drops off after their three month or four month if they're doing a pellet when they go in they'll know immediately they say when it like drops off like a cliff for them for me i don't notice that in fact I've noticed that my levels were so high that I now and I've actually let it mostly run out of my body because I want to get back to ground zero again and I'm going to start with some other something different I'm still experimenting because I haven't found the right method for me and the right result and I'm'm not sure where I really want to go at this point.
But I will say that the levels have dropped way down. I feel more calm and relaxed. And I think it's because I'm getting better sleep. Because I'm not amped up and high energy, so to speak, all the time. And that's one of the side effects that we're going to talk about later is your sleep. It's interesting because like most trends or things that catch on, there's always a risk or an opportunity for people to exploit the trend. and you know you've got all kinds of people who are pushing hormone gels as the answer to everything, right? Like it's this panacea. It just solves all of your problems.
You've got hormone specialists that have driven this testosterone, you know, stories and evidence through the roof in terms of social media as this like one the testosterone solves all of these problems right it's this one size fits all solution and it it's not really the case no and you also want to be aware of people who are in it for the money for example there was a textile engineer who bought a hrt clinic he was being interviewed on another podcast he's a textile engineer okay so not a doctor not an endocrinologist not an internal medicine not any kind of doctor right or nurse and he's spouting off claims like well the female body converts fat to testosterone and when our testosterone is up we feel younger and the body doesn't need estrogen but it needs testosterone well you know i don't know what all that means i don't Thank you.
And the body doesn't need estrogen, but it needs testosterone. Well, you know, I don't know what all that means. I don't. It sounds a little. I'm skeptical.
If you consider that if female bodies could convert fat to testosterone, anybody who was slightly overweight would start growing muscle faster if you believe all of the claims about testosterone which would then burn the fat off and you'd be one very horny woman right so yeah that doesn't doesn't seem to match up the only one that kind of sounds legitimate is you you feel younger maybe meaning you have more energy more energy potentially yeah but this but i've never found anything in any research that claims that fat is converted to testosterone or that our body doesn't need estrogen so here are some of the risks when you're taking testosterone sometimes the risks are higher based on the level that you're taking or your physiology or your correct body chemistry right you'll have excess hair growth on your body this could be around your your breasts the inner thighs the pubic region your chin your upper lip even your face back your neck i've i have not heard that but i have heard some of my friends say it's worth it and they literally shave their face they will shave they don't they don't care right when my levels were really high and very uncomfortably high for me it was embarrassing to have hair in places I've never seen it before.
It was crazy, and I did not like it. If your levels are really high, you can actually lose hair on your head. Also had another swinger friend say that her levels were so high, she lost all her hair. And she actually works in the clinic that sells hormone therapy to women. Interesting. So she was quite the guinea pig, apparently, for this. And they thankfully dialed it all in, but...
That it's very shocking i'm not willing to go to those lengths for testosterone and we're gonna tell you why some of the women are going to those lengths for testosterone yes you will have increased acne not everyone i did horribly some women don't. I know friends whose voice have changed. The texture of your skin will change. Like my skin, my arms felt like rough and kind of mealy, not soft. My skin on my face felt kind of hard or thick or rough. um can get, oh gosh, you pronounced this one. Clitoromegaly. Yes. Where your clit is permanently enlarged. Yes.
And some women want this and I'm totally okay with it. It of looks neat if you ever want to see what some very large clits look like you need to join the reddit group I can't remember which one that is but there is a reddit group for large clits and some of my friends are obsessed with the photos on there obsessed if you don't want that, you know, that's something to consider. You can also experience rage. So if your dosage is not correct, it acts like an anabolic steroid where you have roid rage. My doctors had no idea about this.
Of course course i had to go do the research because why that happened to me as they practiced on me yes my levels of testosterone so literally i did not drive for about a month because the rage would spontaneously kick in while i was driving. And it felt very weird. It felt very scary. And I had to pull off to the side of the road a few times and take a deep breath because I didn't know what the heck was happening to me. That's scary.
And do you remember when I had to apologize for you every single day for about 40 days i know i'm not acting correctly i but i can't help it i love you anyway and yes i do remember so it was a very very scary time for me and this is when my testosterone was not balanced correctly crazy high you will experience an increase in muscle mass if you're Testosterone was not balanced correctly. Crazy high. You will experience an increase in muscle mass if you're working out, right? So, it boosts, it helps you grow muscle faster, just like it does for men.
A lot of people in the gym will take testosterone to help grow muscle faster. Women will do that as well. if you take too much, there is a risk of having heart disease or stroke because your muscle, your heart is also a muscle, so you have to be cautious. And then we get to the sleep. Are we almost done to the end of the risk? Yes, almost. Almost. Two more. Two more.
Reduces your sleep because you're so high energy and amped up all the time you can't get that deep sleep that you need to get a fully rested um relaxing respite you know every night so you're actually losing sleep which isn't great and causes other problems correct and then lastly there are the addiction stories yes there are i know and and they're mildly they're mildly amusing i mean it's yeah they are it's hard to laugh at addiction but it when you hear these women describe their feelings about it, it really does sound like an addiction. Yeah. It's kind of crazy. Yeah.
I probably know five women that just have to have it because they want to orgasm three times a day. Always.
Right they have to they love that feeling they love the the euphoria of the orgasm which i totally get those are those natural euphoric hormones that release when you have an orgasm right and they everybody loves orgasms right and they want that every single day sometimes more mostly more than once a day and when they don't have it they're very upset about it like very upset and that was kind of the trigger for me i was like why why are you so angry about it like you missed a day oh no oh no no and i'm like okay to the point that one of the stories that we'd heard was a woman who was taking so much testosterone that her doctor actually told her to lay off because she was taking far too much trying to chase that sensation that feeling yes so into some history of testosterone in the body and what's normal and what's not right do we have it and we're talking about replacing it so theoretically we had it and it went away and so we're replacing it so we've got to put it back in because it's missing.
Yeah, or did it go away? Right before menopause, women's testosterone peaks at like three times higher than it was before menopause, before the start of menopause, so before perimenopause. And it kind of makes sense because you hear about women being in their sexual prime in like their 30s and 40s so their testosterone levels are up from where they were before right i would even say closer to your 40s because there's that range in between your childbearing years where it's actually lower.
You will also find your testosterone is higher right before your menstrual cycle, which might explain why I was always super horny right before my period. And I always knew when it was coming because I was really, really horny. Interesting. So that correlated for me. That that actually makes sense too because that's right around the time that you're ovulating which means that you're right before getting pregnant so if you increase your your sexual desire that means that you're gonna have sex and probably get pregnant as a result.
Technically, I'm not sure when the egg has dropped and the lining is ready to shed, but it always seemed like a few days before. I don't know if it's that close, but if it is, that would make sense. Your testosterone also changes during the day through your circadian natural cycle. And it increases the dopamine for your brain health and for pleasure. But it also declines a little bit around menopause. But that is also up for debate. It doesn't drop sharply, as many are led to believe. But it does gradually decline over our ovulatory years. It can remain stable right before and after menopause.
And there's a tiny little increase right around your 70s, which gave me a chuckle because I thought, wow, that might explain those kinky people in their retirement homes where everyone's like running around. Right. Making whoopee with everybody. Retirement home orgies that we hear about yes bingo there was a study of about 1400 women from ages 18 to 75 where there is a it showed the deepest drop and not a cliff, but a deeper drop-off of testosterone in those early productive years. Interesting. The age-related decline. It's greater before age 25 and levels off before menopause. Interesting.
so you will have some stability for several years before and after menopause which is which is great so the the narrative that you don't have any it's lost and it's dropped no i mean it's not accurate but so i'm not sure why people are being prescribed testosterone for other reasons other than the libido because science has backed that up in a few studies about it increasing libido i have noticed that as well so if there aren't any other factors in your life and you want to kick that up a little bit, you know, why not? It's just a bit risky and it's a lot of work to get the right dose.
Right, right. Let's get into some anatomy. So where does testosterone come from? Well, it's a conversion from a group of hormones called or androgens. Your ovaries produce about 25% of the testosterone. And then after, once you hit menopause, then about 50% of your testosterone is actually produced in your ovaries. And if you have your ovaries removed, you'll see a very rapid drop in your testosterone levels, which makes sense. Because if it's somewhere between 25% and 50% of your testosterone, you're going to eliminate that one production source. Right.
and what what is interesting is that your adrenals will compensate if you lose your ovaries so your adrenal glands account for the for another 25 of production okay can we talk about october for a second oh my god yeah i've been waiting for this we were invited to be guest speakers for two engagements on a six-star crystal cruise ship with 310 lifestyle couples and it sails from montreal to boston during the peak foliage season i'm super excited and honestly i'm really nervous yeah it's kind of a version of like a swinger ted talk that we're gonna have to do oh my god i know and more importantly if you know the brand it's llv luxury lifestyle vacations you may have seen them and they're sexy playmakers with their fun red hats.
This ship, the Crystal Symphony, is classy. Butler service for every single room, Michelin rated restaurants, full spa, clothing optional, sensual playrooms, like everything, theme nights and international dj so it's luxury and nudity. Oh, man, this is going to be great. The bottom line is we want you there with us. It's 310 couples. And like all their vacations, they book up fast. They really do. Their vacations are extremely popular. So please come with us.
and in order to find it all you have to do is go to our swingerlinks.com and look for the llv sensual voyage we hope you'll join us there's a further breakdown process more of an active form where testosterone is in the blood. It gets converted again into other forms, and then that gets converted into estradiol. So it's this very complex process in your body with hormones coming from tissues, organs, other glands, the brain.
and so it's no wonder that getting the right combination of hormones is very very complicated and it's gonna highly depend on the type of person that you are in your genetic background and whether you have two ovaries or you don't or you're overweight or you're not or you're whatever right yes now you have conversion factors right which i talked a little bit about the type of tissue you have the level of receptors that you have in your body the activity of the enzymes also play a factor which to me. So, aromatase is the most active enzyme for testosterone.
And the female body, for your ovaries, is where that enzyme type tends to process the testosterone. And in the male body, it is the fat the fat not the female body so that textile engineer got his gender wrong well you know figuring out male versus female and all that i mean that's important for a textile engineer i know and you guys suck because that means any little fat that you have just converts to testosterone, which gives you more muscle. I'm not convinced to that either because if you look at gentlemen who are a little bit heavier weight, they tend to have lower testosterone.
That's true. So, and if you consider exercise and fitness and muscle producing more testosterone, because they always tell you if you're low, if you've got low T, you should be exercising. That's true. So sitting around eating pizza is not generating testosterone. Right. These are different types of conversions that can happen in the body. And there is an enzyme that will help with that. Either you have it or you don't, I think. But the point is, it gets complicated. Yes, and it differs from body to body. Yes, let's go with that.
Because you may have higher levels and the higher amounts are going to give you more testosterone and yes right so there you go so what are the reasons to prescribe testosterone let's kind of break these down a little bit your hormone levels don't necessarily tell you whether it's important or not in other words just because it's at a number doesn't mean that that's the number that you're supposed to have or isn't the number that you're supposed to have. Like, is it low? Is it high? That's very dependent on an individual person.
So as an example, my testosterone levels are fairly high, and they've always been fairly high. But when mine dropped, I didn't notice that I was feeling any different. So, hormone levels, not necessarily an indication that you're missing something. It's just different. Yeah, right. It's fascinating to me. And once again, that effect of the hormone really depends on the type of receptors that you have. Only the unbound testosterone is free to act on your tissues and unbound is much lower than estradiol.
So, you know, how, again's it's a bit complicated and there's no clear indicators just by looking at numbers as to whether it's high or low that's true so you know why is it really being prescribed when you're look talking about women and menopause is it is it pharma or herba? Are they trying to make a buck? I mean, yes, partially, I think, mostly. um if if your low libido other factors that contribute to that haven't been addressed then you know maybe testosterone testosterone, but mental health factors into that, physical health factors into that, your nutrition factors into that.
What are you eating? Right.
We've talked about exercise as being a producer of testosterone, but exercise also produces endorphins and other happy hormones and things that make you feel better right which we know helps with sex like everybody who's ever read cosmopolitan knows that exercise is good with producing higher sex drive right so you know back to the money driven part it it it is a factor obviously you can you can go to a private practice who's offering hrt and get your testosterone there you can also find it at your local gym from your you know gym rats you're scary your your guys that are getting it i don't know where they get it from i'm always fascinated by that i have friends that get it from their trainer two friends that get it from their trainer i didn't ask how exactly that happens because i am fascinated by the whole behind the scenes how does that work yeah does it does it fall off of a truck like how how does that work and the The bigger question that I have in my head is we get tested because of to check our levels to make sure that they're not too high or too low and that the other things which i won't get into because it's in the men's episode aren't happening like you need to test your results to make sure that you're not exceeding what your body should have right it's very profitable you know it they can charge luxury prices and they can charge for the labs right you can get it cheaper from your gym rat trainer guy and you can actually get it cheaper through your own doctor, regular primary care provider, or OBGYN.
Right. Because typically insurance does cover testosterone shots if you want to do injectables. Yes, it does. They might, they do creams, I believe they'll cover the creams as well. So, something to consider. When you're evaluating the success, you've moved on and you tried it, they say that if, you know, your libido should kick in in about four weeks and peaks at about three months. And if you don't see any improvement in six months, just stop. It's not going to happen. It's not going to happen. Your T levels, as we talked about, aren't always going to correlate with your symptoms.
You could have 10 women with 10 different results. that's why getting some labs to follow some numbers as key indicator points to kind of guide you in your decision-making process. Along with your mental, your own analysis. How am I feeling? Right, right. Well, in conclusion, the fear of missing out is real. A lot of people are jumping on this bandwagon for getting testosterone. Make sure that you do your research, talk to your primary care physician, and if you can, consult an endocrinologist so that they can deal with you and your specific hormone needs.
Thanks for tuning in to Swinger University. Until next time, stay curious and keep learning. You won't want to miss out our next episode where we will discuss hormone replacement therapy for men. We love getting questions from our audience and you can leave us a voicemail at 916-538-0482 or contact us at swingeruniversity.com. Tell us your name, age, and where you live, or you can be anonymous. Oh, one last thing before you go. If this episode helped you in any way, the single best thing you can do to support the show is leaving a rating and review.
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