There are many benefits of taking hormones, as many of you know, but one of the questions that

comes up a lot is, can I take HRT if I'm over the age of 60? So I want to unpick this because

it causes so much confusion and I don't think it should. So let's think about hormones first.

And when I talk about hormones, I'm only talking about three

of dozens of hormones we have in our body. So we've got progesterone. We've got estradiol and testosterone.

And they're made in our ovaries. They're made in our adrenal glands. They're made in our brains.

And they're made in other organs and tissues. And as you know, they're chemical messengers.

So they go into our bloodstream and they affect every single cell in our body. They have really

important biological actions in our cells to keep us healthy, like our other hormones do.

But when we become menopausal, the levels of these hormones reduce and decline, and then they

stay low forever. Now, because we still produce hormones in other tissues, we are still getting

some hormones, and because our other hormones are biologically active, they can often take

some of the jobs of our other hormones, but not all

of them. So we have receptors on us on our each cell that are specific for each hormone. So we have

a progesterone receptor. We have an esterile receptor. In fact, we have two of them. And we have

testosterone receptors.

And as you know, I'm sure as well, is that our cells are constantly being remade. Like if you

think about just our skin, we're constantly shredding skin cells from our outside of our skin

and our body's making new ones all the time. Our bone is dynamically active.

We're building new bone and breaking down bone all the time and repairing. Our blood vessels

are regenerating. In our brains as well, we are forming new brain cells all the time. And all of

these cells have receptors for these hormones in them

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