Testosterone Therapy for Women

Many women AND doctors do not understand the important role that testosterone plays in women. Most women don’t realize that they even produce testosterone. 99% of doctors ignore testosterone levels in women and never check them. Let me explain why, if you are a women, that you must request that your doctor checks your testosterone levels.

Testosterone is also a female sex hormone produced in the ovaries and adrenal glands. When women are in their late teens and twenties their testosterone levels are at their highest. This is when they look the best, feel the best and have the highest libido. As women age and lose ovarian function their testosterone levels decline. Like men, their libidos suffer, their skin starts sagging, their energy levels go down and they “feel old”. Just like in men, if you restore a women’s testosterone to the levels they had when they were 20 they feel great again. In addition, testosterone reduces a women’s risk of heart attack, stroke (by improving cholesterol and dilating blood vessels), osteoporosis and dementia. Testosterone is also protective AGAINST breast cancer. Very few physicians understand this but the medical literature supports it time and time again.

Women many times respond to suggesting testosterone therapy with “but I don’t want a beard!” My response is “you didn’t have a beard when you were 20” and you are not going to get a beard now. Again, we are only restoring your levels to the upper end of physiologic ranges. These levels are significantly lower that that of men and the doses we use are typically 5mg/day vs 200mg/day in men.

Testosterone is just one of the many hormones in women that decline as they age and levels should be restored just like estrogen, progesterone, DHEA and thyroid.