Dr. Maupin discusses her new book, The Secret Female Hormone: How Testosterone Replacement Can Change Your Life
We are very excited today to talk about something that we’ve been working on for the last two years. Dr. Brett Newcomb and I have been writing a book titled, The Secret Female Hormone: How Testosterone Replacement Can Change Your Life. It is a book about my practice and my work, and it is coming out on March 3rd in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, India, South Africa, and Australia.
I’m a gynecologist. My focus has always been taking care of women; there are already plenty of different areas of medicine that take care of men. I looked at all of the literature out there and found that there was not one single book on testosterone in women, a topic that I think is very important.
I believe that there ought to be a standardized diagnosis that doctors are taught called “Testosterone Deficiency Syndrome (TDS).” Part of what we do in this book is argue the case that when all of the disparate and scattered information out there is pulled it together, it jumps off the page, saying, “Wait a minute; this is a diagnosable condition.” There are parameters just like there are if you get the ICD-9 or 10.
In all of my experience as a physician treating women, I have heard from thousands of patients that they have often been told that once women are no longer capable of childbearing, then they no longer need these hormones nor a sex drive. But in my work, and with my book, I am here to challenge this script for women and their doctors.
Another focus of the book is to argue against the regulation of what doctors can do by the Federal Drug Administration, which is male-dominated and male-focused. The only FDA-sanctioned uses of testosterone as a prescription drug for defined issues refer to men; issues such as erectile dysfunction, loss of sex drive, fatigue, and loss of muscle mass (many of which we women suffer from, as well.) However, the FDA won’t authorize certain medicines/treatments for women that are authorized for men, such as testosterone replacement. Because of the fact that women naturally produce and require these hormones, and as they age these hormones begin to decline, women need the opportunity to have them replaced in the same way that men can.
We wrote this book in order to develop a rationale for TDS; to look at the reality of the lack of female patients’ being attended to as vigorously or as readily as they should be, and to assess the cultural biases of male-dominated businesses and of the FDA. We also wrote the book to discuss and, I think this is significant, to develop a risk-benefit comparison for a variety of illnesses and complications. I believe that if a patient doesn’t undergo hormone replacement therapy, issues such as anxiety, depression, osteoporosis, Alzheimer’s, Scarcopenia, etc., can soon develop.
Every woman should read this book, even if they don’t intend on taking hormones, so that they know what’s happening in their bodies and what within the “bigger picture” (i.e. controlling government agencies.) We as women are paying half of the nation’s taxes. Shouldn’t we be getting half of the FDA’s consideration? Several drug companies have spent millions of dollars to develop different testosterone-based medications for women, only to give up after fighting with the FDA over issues like facial hair growth. In this book, I attempt to shed light on the necessity of a re-thinking of how we regard testosterone deficiency in women.
