Hi! I am a new member here and I wanted to tell you my daughter’s (DD) story. She is 20 years old and felt “ill” 2 years ago when she had what we thought was mono. DD had been put on the pill at age 15 because of her periods–she was having 2 a month.

3 years later, at age 18, she started feeling weaker and more ill and doc suggested she go off BC pills to give her body a rest and heal. As I said, she had tested for mono and we thought that was what she was recovering from.

4 months later, she was worse than ever: losing her hair, acne (which she had never had), anxiety attacks/heart palpitations, hot flashes, weight LOSS as she developed food sensitivities to everything except raw fruits and veggies, insomnia/sleeping for 18 hours a day, muscle fatigue, depression, loss of memory and vision problems. She even developed a staph infection on her face. (If you’ve never heard of such a thing, it’s dangerous. The staph can move into your brain and spinal cord.) We took her to numerous specialists who all tested her for various things and everything came back inconclusive. Her lymph nodes were constantly swollen, she ran a fever most of the time. They even biopsied her for leukemia.

Then late one night, we happened on a website for an immunologist/allergist in Austin, Tx., Dr. Roby of the Roby Institute. www.onlineallergycenter.com Everything on his site was what she had been going through. Conclusion? She had an allergy to her own hormones. I called and spoke to the nurse and she ordered blood work. Now, we are expats here in Toronto so we had to go to my GP and get them to order the tests. My GP argued that this couldn’t possibly be it…but he finally relented and gave us the requisition.

When we got the results back, we were astounded. She had the DHEA levels of a newborn. (That explained the greasy film on her head–it was cradle cap.) Her estrogen and progesterone levels were that of a 70 year old woman.

We flew to Texas and met with Dr. Roby. He spent over an hour with us, explaining what was wrong, how it had happened, and how he could help us to fix it. He reviewed her lab work and placed her on bio-identical hormone replacement therapy.

It has been 4 weeks since she started the bio-identical hormone replacements prescribed by Dr. Roby. She takes estrogen, testosterone cream, 7-KETO DHEA, homeopathic doses of progesterine and testosterone(this is to desensitize her allergy to her own hormones). She also added melatonin for the insomnia.

As of today, her skin has cleared completely, her hair loss has stopped, the cradle cap is gone, she gained 10 much-needed pounds, her insomnia is gone, muscle strength is improving, her vision is getting better, her moods are finally balanced (no depression, no anxiety). Her memory loss is still there but the other gains overweigh that.

Though many will argue that menopause is a natural process, it certainly isn’t for a 20 year old woman. Good luck to everyone suffering from this often debilitating “natural process”.