u/Prize_Sorbet3366

I recently came across an IG video by Dr. Jen Gunter, having a discussion with Dr. Sue Davis. They're saying that the idea that women have far more testosterone than estrogen in their bodies during their pre-menopausal years, has 'officially' been debunked as of 2025's meeting of the American Menopause Society, solely due to some research Dr. Davis did. They say that past testing has always lumped testosterone and DHEA together which gave artificially-elevated T results, but that's really confusing to me because DHEA-S testing has been around since like the 1970s, so being able to test them individually is nothing new and ground-breaking. I myself have had DHEA-S testing just in the past year (I'm in menopause so I get regular testing done of all my hormones), as well as free T and total T.

I've always read that women have something in the range of 3-4x more testosterone than estradiol during their younger years, and now they're saying that's a myth that has been taken advantage of by 'meno-influencers' (and I'm sure I know exactly which doctors they mean). They're saying that women actually have FAR more estrogen in their bodies than testosterone, because people confuse the units of measurement and if you covert T units to E units, it 'proves' that E is higher by many times. There was even a comment in the IG video that questioned that assertion, because yeah, that's kinda backwards.

Has anyone else heard this? Does it make any sense? I'd never even heard of Dr. Gunter before this, so I have no idea what her stance on this was before now or whether she's anti-T.

EDIT: here's the link to the IG video.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DYirLG7TX3H/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Second edit: Here's the AMS recap.

https://www.ajmc.com/view/jury-still-out-on-testosterone-benefit-to-menopause

I'm just curious if anyone else has had a similar situation to mine. And anyone with medical knowledge of tumors and how they act, I'd love for you to chime in.

I've been in meno for about 5 or 6 years now, and started HRT a couple years ago. A month ago, I had to have an urgent complete hysterectomy/oophorectomy due to a fast growing ovarian Brenner tumor (thankfully benign) that had produced an almost 7lb mucinous mass. The mass had many adhesions to the other organs, which is why they had to take everything.

Since I went into meno, I've had a horrible time with my weight. I'm 5'3" and weighed between 110-115lbs my entire adult life - I was always very athletic, so very lean, lanky muscle. Once the weight hit, I got up to 165 at my heaviest. It wasn't meno-belly, either - it was a layer of subcutaneous fat all over my body. Nothing could shake it...exercise, diet, etc. At one point I did shed about 20lbs for no obvious reason, but it was still a struggle to keep from drifting back above 145. Now, during this whole time (and possibly even a short time before I went into meno), I had an ovarian cyst. It was deemed via TVUs to be stable and of little concern...we'd just keep an eye on it. My post-meno hormone labs all showed consistent values, very low. In fact, nothing on my labs showed anything odd that might indicate interference from the cyst.

Then this tumor thing started. What didn't dawn on me til recently is that during the month before my surgery, when the tumor and mass were literally getting larger by the day, my weight stayed the same, at around 142. Even as my belly rapidly expanded to the equivalent of 5 months pregnant, it stayed the same. When I had my last oncology appt about a week before the surgery, it was 143. When I checked into the hospital, I was down to 140. That meant that my actual 'body' weight was down to 133, if you minus the weight of the tumor. Now, I get that the tumor was clearly 'feeding' itself on my body mass to grow, but at my first two-week checkup with my oncologist, my weight had dropped down to 128. And two weeks later (almost completely healed), I'm down to 127. The weight loss is still going and it's, well, weird. I can now put clothing on that I haven't fit into in years. And the composition of my body has changed - all that extra layer of fat I had, is gone. It's inane to say this, but it's almost like the tumor siphoned my extra fat out and converted it to the mucinous mass. lol

Now, I'm not complaining about the weight loss- I'm actually feeling more like my old self again, if that makes sense. I'm more just curious as to what the possible effect a Brenner tumor might have had on my metabolism. Could that have been what caused the weight gain to begin with, despite nothing on my labs indicating any abnormalities?