Hey guys, Dr. Berg here. I want to answer the question. Why does menopause trigger high

androgen levels? A lot of women going into menopause or postmenopause

end up having these high levels of androgen. So I want to talk about that.

Here are the symptoms of high androgen levels. Mal pattern baldness, okay, up here.

Alopecia, which is patches of hair that come out at different places. Polycystic ovarian syndrome.

It's acne, facial hair and hair loss. Deep voice too. Infertility, deep voice, oily skin,

skin inflammation, increased sex drive. Okay, so these are some of the symptoms in a female body.

So what causes? Well, it's not that menopause will trigger high androgen, but really what happens

is this. Your insulin levels go up. That's really what causes polycystic ovarian syndrome.

The insulin levels go up and then you start converting all this male hand hormone,

which is androgen. And this can come from a couple of reasons. One, maybe you're eating

live sugar, but maybe you're not. Maybe it's during menopause, the ovaries stop working and then

the adrenal gland backs up the ovaries. So the adrenal gland is the backup to the ovary. And what

happens when you get this sudden spike of cortisol, which is a stress hormone at menopause,

because the adrenals are overacting to try to make up the hormone loss, it can then convert into

insulin. Okay, so that's really the mechanism with that. So then high cortisol directly,

because high cortisol coming from stress will cause high levels of androgen. Okay.

Now, also this thing here, I want to talk about decreased sex hormone binding,

globulina, what the heck does that mean? It's this SHBG. Okay. This basically is a protein

in the liver that helps buffer and regulate androgens. It keeps androgen in check. It keeps

androgen low. Okay. So this protein is supposed to keep androgen low. But when you have a problem

with the liver, you decrease SHBG. And now, androgen goes up because it can't regulate it anymore.

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