Physicians Wishing to Offer This Therapy
I would be honored to share my knowledge with you concerning the scientific and practical aspects of testosterone pellet implantation for men and women through a course I offer every couple months at my office in Bethesda, Maryland.
Why do you need to learn this science? There is a tremendous lack of “evidence-based” medical education concerning testosterone. The current “accepted standards of care” in multiple specialties is diametrically opposed to the findings of hundreds of well-performed scientific studies. This situation would be farcical except for the excess morbidity and mortality it causes our population. Therefore, it is the responsibility of each of us to empty our pre-conceived beliefs and learn the Factual Science concerning health and testosterone with a critical eye on the literature.
Why does this unfortunate state of medical ignorance exist? In brief… Money. There is no “Great Conspiracy” nor is there a secret collusion to create or prolong chronic diseases as some paranoid conspiracy theorists would like you to believe. What does exist is: no financial incentive for the commercial funders of post-graduate medical education (i.e. pharmaceutical industry) to promote the use of any treatment that is neither patentable nor profitable for them. The use of time-released bio-identical testosterone to treat, reduce, or prevent diseases such as diabetes, CAD, depression, osteoporosis, breast cancer, menopause, and prostate cancer would significantly cut into corporate profits. Therefore, there is absolutely no incentive for the commercial funders of medical education to bring this treatment to your attention! (See the link to “History and Politics of Bio-identical Hormones” in the Science section of this website for more information.)
Our medical ignorance is killing us, literally. Many of us were taught that the treatment of hypogonadal men with testosterone should be avoided due to concerns of cancer and liver damage… all completely disproven throughout the scientific literature! We fail to test diabetics for low T despite recent endocrinology literature that proves hypogonadal diabetics have over a 200% increase in mortality IF they are not augmented with testosterone. Testosterone deprivation agents are still being used widely for prostate cancer despite the NIH study that shows the 200% increase in overall mortality and morbidity in patients that are on that treatment. We were taught that high testosterone causes prostate cancer when the last 6 years of literature has unquestionably proved the opposite. We still widely prescribe synthetic estrogens and even methylated testosterone (certainly not a human hormone molecule) to treat menopausal women, both of which are known to have very significant health risks. At the same time, the landmark article of the gynecologic medical science literature in 1985 proved in a double-blind study that bio-identical testosterone alone is more effective and safer in the treatment of menopause than estrogens! We now know that testosterone is also associated with a lower risk of cancer, heart disease and overall mortality than is estrogen, even bioidentical estrogen!
On the other extreme, some “anti-aging specialists” are using highly suspect conclusions based upon questionable test tube and animal studies to champion the use of products such as Human Growth Hormone and other compounds despite the lack of sufficient safety and outcome data that would support their use.
To compound the problem: Most physicians that currently prescribe testosterone invariably prescribe a testosterone delivery system (creams/gels/injections/sublingual troches/etc.) that spikes the bioavailable testosterone levels up and down during the course of a few hours to days, resulting in a very suboptimal situation – physiologically speaking. This results in the androgen receptors being inadequately stimulated. Furthermore, as you probably already know from reading the articles in this website, practically all of the intracellular estrogen needed for proper functioning and health in both sexes is created intracellularly from testosterone conversion to intracellular estrogen via aromatase. Logically, it follows that cells faced with rapidly spiking levels of bioavailable testosterone can never function optimally at either their androgen receptors or their intracellular estradiol receptors.
What can you do?
As part of my efforts to bring the science of testosterone treatment to the attention of as many healthcare colleagues as possible, I lecture nationally and internationally on the science of this subject and also teach a course bi-monthly to those interested in incorporating testosterone treatment into their practice. I have charged nothing but my expenses for the “testosterone science only” lectures. However, I currently charge for my instructional 8 plus hour teaching which includes not only the science, but also the practicalities, mechanics, patient management, office forms, and business aspects of testosterone pellet treatment.
In conclusion: At a minimum, you should familiarize yourself with the literature concerning testosterone and the health crisis almost every industrialized country is now facing due to their population’s precipitous drop in T levels over the last 20 or 30 years. The U.S. needs thousands of doctors in every populous region in order to treat this health epidemic.
What you do from here is up to you…Please call my office at (301) 468-3458 if you are a physician interested in attending the next course!
Sincerely,
Mark E. Richards, M.D.