Can I Use Hormone Replacement Therapy to Repair My Metabolism?

Today we will be answering the question:Can I Use Hormone Replacement Therapy to Repair My Metabolism?

Firstly, let me begin by stating my limitations and lack of expertise in this subject today. I am not an OB-GYN medical practitioner.  I am a Registered Dietitian and Certified Specialist in Obesity and Weight Management. 

I am also a woman.  And I am a practitioner that works every single day with women over 40.  And many women over 40 are using menopausal hormone therapy and successfully repairing their metabolisms at the same time.

To begin, I side with Dr. Jen Gunter, the author of The Menopause Manifesto, an excellent book on the topic of menopause and hormones, that the term hormone replacement therapy is out of date.

After you stop ovulating, you are not supposed to be producing estrogen, so we are not replacing anything.  You are perfect as is and do not need chronic replacement like you would with your thyroid.  

Dr. Gunter encourages us to see hormone supplement therapy as just that: a therapy, a treatment to combat the uncomfortable symptoms of menopause.  It can also be used therapeutically to prevent early osteoporosis and heart disease.

The therapy is estrogen. We also need to take progesterone to protect our uterus from too much estrogen exposure.

But one thing that estrogen therapy alone does not do is help you lose weight.  What it can do is shift the balance of where your body puts the weight to a point.[1]

Estrogen tells the body to accumulate fat around the hips and thighs, or lower on the body.  When we start to have lower estrogen levels compared to our testosterone levels, our body preferentially stores our body fat in our stomach area, more like men.

Also, menopausal hormone therapy can help you sleep so you have more energy and make better food choices.  If you toss and turn all night, you wake up needing a lot of caffeine and sugar throughout the day to keep going.  Lack of sleep has been linked to weight gain no matter what the cause of the insomnia is.

It can help with mood swings and emotional eating. If you are feeling more grounded and less like the whole world was just ripped from beneath your footing, you are less likely to turn towards wine, cookies, snacks and other forms of self-soothing that we know as emotional eating.  Eating to fill our hearts, not our stomachs.  Your body doesn’t know that this emotional eating has roots in the swings of estrogen or progesterone. It just knows that you are constantly stimulating your metabolic hormone insulin and therefore stuck in fat-accumulation mode.

It can help with energy levels so you are more active. Similar to sleep, when you feel less like hot play doh on a stick, you are more likely to take the stairs, lift the weights and not just melt into the couch at the end of the day. This is not about using exercise to burn calories, but mainly using exercise to maintain muscle mass that is depleted naturally over time and lower our metabolic rates.

It’s supplementing this problem over here.

Now, your fat- burning/fat-accumulation system is over here on my other hand.  They are not the same.  Your ability to burn fat is not directed by your estrogen.  It’s directed by a different hormone: Insulin.  It’s directed by your metabolic system and your metabolic hormones.

Your estrogen levels do not control your metabolism.  But they might be controlling your life in different ways.

So, yes, have the conversation about menopausal hormonal therapy with your health-care provider and see if the therapy is a good for you.  We know a lot more about who, when, and for how long we should be taking the MHT.  There are more options than ever.  Explore your options for relief from hot flashes or flushes, insomnia, brain fog, fatigue, mood swings, and genitourinary syndrome of menopause with your healthcare provider if that’s something you feel led to do.

But no, no you cannot use menopausal hormonal therapy to repair your metabolism. That is not what it does.

Interestingly metabolic damage has overlapping symptoms of menopause as well. Brain fog, fatigue, mood swings, belly fat, and overall increase in fat accumulation are symptoms of metabolic damage as well. Not all belly fat is menopausal!  

If you are 60 or over, the benefits of MHT start to dwindle and risks start to rise. Your weight problem is now almost fully due to the effects of metabolic damage.

When it comes to managing your health and your weight as you take trips around the sun, it can feel like it’s too complicated or too messed up to fix.  But it’s not.  It’s not too messy to fix.  It’s not too complicated. You are not too much of a mess. It is possible, and easier than you might think.

Repairing your ability to burn body fat doesn’t even take a trip to the doctors office.  It takes no medication. It takes no supplements, no powders, no minimum orders each month.

Having a strong team of healthcare providers is critical and a Registered Dietitian who specializes in metabolic health of women over 40 is a great member of your team. 

Understanding what to eat, what not to eat, when to eat and how to control your metabolic hormones so that you can burn excess body fat for energy can happen at 40, 50, 60, 70 and beyond. 

You can have a glorious metabolism regardless of your estrogen levels or if you have a uterus or not.  You can control your weight and achieve glowing health right now, no matter where your sex hormone levels may be.

Great job everyone!

Remember, you absolutely have what it takes to lose weight, you just need to repair your metabolism first!