Anne’s Question: Since moving to the high desert, I have to use very large doses of Bio HRT or bioidentical hormone cream, and it is still not getting blood levels up to where my doctor would like. I tried switching to the patch and the level dropped to less than half. This is all giving me terrible symptoms and impacting my quality of life. I am worried the high doses are harming me somehow. Can I just rub some DMSO on the skin prior to applying the cream or will that help?

Short Answer: This is somewhat of a complicated question to answer because it is based on the type of BHRT a woman is using. We do have different blood level targets for women using static dosing vs women who are using rhythmic dosing. When prescribing BHRT for a patient, we have some very general blood levels that we are trying to reach, but the woman’s subjective response is a much better indicator for dosing. How she feels is much more important than her blood level of Estradiol. In regards to DMSO, we don’t typically use or recommend this for women, but we do add DMSO to testosterone cream for men because they have more body hair.

PYHP 108 Full Transcript: 

Download PYHP 108 Transcript

Dr. Maki: Hello, everyone. Thanks for joining us for another episode of the Progress Your Health Podcast. I am Dr. Maki.

Dr. Davidson: And I am Dr. Davidson.

Dr. Maki: Of course, this is audio so nobody can see anything but you and I are getting ready and we were having a little problem with our boom mic stand. It was not sitting at the table. You are getting a little impatient with me and then you end up fixing it which was great. As we are just starting, our dog, Bob is at my feet right now and he is upside down, chewing on like a little bone.

Dr. Davidson: It is so cute. It is so cute.

Dr. Maki: I am trying to stay focused on doing the podcast and he is upside down with a little bone in his mouth. It is too cute. We are back into podcasting land. We have a ton of questions to get to. We are just going to do it. I think we kind of for a while we were kind of doing a few questions per episode. I think it is a little bit better, a little more focus by doing just one question per episode. It is also easier to figure out a title for it, that is more specific to what the question is about. This one is from Anne. So why not you go ahead and read the question.

Dr. Davidson: Now he just got up and you shake it around. All right. This question is from Anne. Of course like we always say, we change everybody’s names and any kind of pertinent information just for privacy protection. We kind of renamed her Anne. From Anne. Since moving to the high desert, I have to use very large doses of Bio HRT or bioidentical hormone cream, and it is still not getting blood levels up to where my doctor would like. I tried switching to the patch and the level dropped to less than half. This is all giving me terrible symptoms and impacting my quality of life. I am worried the high doses are harming me somehow. Can I just rub some DMSO on the skin prior to applying the cream or will that help?

Dr. Maki: Yeah. This comes up a lot, people are worried about absorption. DMSO is one of the rhythmic dosing protocols we use for men. We do add… The compounding pharmacy we use doe