Hormones - The Sexy Years

Excerpted from
The Sexy Years; Discover the Hormone Connection: The Secret to Fabulous Sex, Great Health, and Vitality, for Women and Men
By Suzanne Somers

Getting cancer reinforced the importance of being proactive about my health. I knew I needed to work extra hard to keep my body in balance as I aged by continuing my regimen of natural bioidentical hormones. I became very involved in learning about hormones when I started to experience the symptoms of menopause a few years ago. If you're in or approaching middle age, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Our skin begins to change (enter Itchy); we lose vaginal lubrication (here comes All-Dried-Up); we start getting aches and pains that don't go away; we are hot, then cold (Sweaty is really fun); and we can't sleep, which puts us in an unbearable mood over rime because we are exhausted. In addition, as we lose our hormones in the aging process, we leave ourselves open to a variety of diseases of aging, and then the Big Unmentionable-many of us lose our sex drive.

Menopause (or, as I call it, men-on-pause) is traumatic. I always wondered why men leave their wives of long standing at middle age. It's not because their wives are getting older or that they don't look good anymore; they leave because women become impossible to live with during this passage. Plus, a lot of women have no interest in sex. I experienced this phenomenon. Honestly, it was like losing an old friend. I felt a sadness and a sense of betrayal, because women of prior generations never prepared me for this loss. Why hasn't this been discussed? I wondered. Am I the only woman to ever have this experience? I think this subject has been in the closet so long that women have chosen to endure it silently. It's like admitting that the reason Bitchy is here today is that you have PMS. No one likes to admit that because it connotes weakness, that we are out of control. And pity the poor man who suggests that you might be unreasonable today because of your period. This could be construed as grounds for war.

For over thirty years, the sexual part of the relationship between my husband and me has always been thrilling. It has been where we connect intimately, where we have experienced an indescribable closeness, trust, passion, and sexual adventure. It has been where we solve our problems; where we allow each other to be exactly what we are feeling at that particular moment. Suddenly, in our thirty-first year together, with no warning, I felt dead inside. I didn't understand it. Where I once was always in the mood, now I felt nothing. I did it, but I felt nothing. My friskiness was gone, my sense of adventure left me. I had no energy. I felt like crying all the time. I didn't want to get out of bed in the morning. I couldn't remember anything. I was afraid I had early-onset Alzheimer's disease because I couldn't hold a thought. Itchy appeared and my skin itched horribly and I found it impossible to sleep for more than fifteen minutes at a time; and then Sweaty appeared and I would awaken soaking wet from hot Hashes. What a life, huh? What had happened?

I didn't completely understand at the time, but what was happening to me is common to most women as we get older. I had zeroed our hormonally. I was no longer making my full complement of hormones. Because of that, I had no life-restoring nutrients feeding me metabolically. My organs were shutting down from lack of nutrients. These are strictly lay terms; but for you and me, it's easier to understand with this terminology. We are our hormones. Without them we die. In fact, aging is the loss of hormones. From the middle to late thirties (and it differs by a few years from person to person), we make a full complement of hormones. Then we hit perimenopause, and our hormones begin to fluctuate as they start to diminish, until they get close to zeroing out in menopause. Women lose 90 percent of their hormones over a two-year period, once we begin to go into menopause. No wonder we feel crazy!

This is a difficult passage of life. All the balance of your life gets jumbled. Suddenly your husband doesn't understand you anymore. He says things like "What's wrong with you?" Your insides are screaming, I don't know, I don't know. On top of it, here comes the weight gain; every day your favorite pants are getting tighter and tighter. You feel dumpy and you start to notice what great shape all the other women are in. You remember when you looked like that. What has changed? You are eating the same as before, maybe even less. You've stopped with the desserts; you're trying to exercise, but you're so tired from not sleeping; and the hot flashes-those embarrassing hot flashes-wake you up continuously all through the night. You feel ugly and fat, and now you have no desire for sex. Is it because you are so tired? That's what you keep telling him, because he's starting to get irritated that "you're never in the mood anymore." Secretly you're wondering also, Why don't I want to have sex? You do it because you don't want him to be angry with you all the time, but you can't feel anything. Nothing! All there is it a sensation that something is inside you, but it might as well be the probe the gynecologist inserts, because the sensation is about the same; and it isn't a sexual feeling.

I felt this. I was dead inside. It was sad and lonely, humiliating, confusing, and isolating. I didn't want to talk to my husband about it because I was afraid he would find the whole riling such a turnoff.