The Sexy Years with Suzanne Somers

If you ask me, Suzanne Somers will always be…SEXY, no matter what year it is! Not because of her outward beauty but because of her inward beauty and genuine desire to help women and men live their best life! In my review of her book, The Sexy Years, Suzanne shared some startling facts about female and male menopause and how to get your life back when nature begins to take it away.

One of America’s most popular and beloved personalities, Suzanne Somers has achieved extraordinary success in a variety of creative arenas. An actress and comedienne, she shot to overnight stardom in the top-rated television comedy, “Three’s Company.” Since that time, she has gained renown as a New York Times bestselling author, singer, entrepreneur, and lecturer on business, health, fitness, and food, and the effects of addictions on families. Suzanne’s multifaceted career, which spans more than two decades, continues to flourish.

Growing up in San Bruno, California, Suzanne Somers dreamt of escaping her abusive home life and her father’s alcoholism by going into show business. She landed her first big break as the mysterious blonde driving the white Thunderbird in George Lucas’ 1973 cult classic, American Graffiti. This led to a sitcom audition. While waiting in the NBC commissary to learn whether she had gotten the part, she was approached by Johnny Carson. Sending Carson a copy of her poetry book, Touch Me, she was stunned when he immediately booked her on the “Tonight Show,” less than a week after her arrival in L.A. Her reaction was, “He really must like my poetry.” However, when Johnny introduced her, he said, “You’ve all been wondering who the beautiful blonde in the Thunderbird was, and now we’ve found her.” And America instantly found a new talent. Suzanne’s engaging wit and likeable personality charmed the nation, and she appeared on the show regularly during Carson’s reign.

In 1977, Suzanne’s portrayal of the ditzy, yet lovable Chrissy Snow on “Three’s Company” propelled her to nationwide fame. Key to Suzanne’s popularity was her perceptive insight that “Chrissy wasn’t dumb; she just had a circuitous route to logic.” In her five years with the show, Suzanne helped make “Three’s Company” one of the most highly rated television sit-coms of the ‘70s. The show currently runs in 80 countries and fans still approach Suzanne to hug her out of affection for Chrissy.

Departing “Three’s Company” after six seasons, Suzanne won critical acclaim starring opposite Anthony Hopkins in the 1985 hit mini-series “Hollywood Wives.” She hosted Fox TV’s “The Late Show” on a rotating basis in 1987, and starred in three well-received television variety specials. From 1987-89, Suzanne held the title character role in the hit series “She’s the Sheriff,” which can be seen in syndication. Somers also hosted her own daytime talk show, “The Suzanne Somers Show.” She starred with Patrick Duffy in the situation comedy series, “Step by Step,” which ran for seven seasons, and was the weekly co-host of “Candid Camera” from 1998-2000.

Always exploring different avenues of self-expression, Suzanne has authored 11 books, two of which, Suzanne Somers’ Get Skinny on Fabulous Food (Crown, 1999) and Suzanne Somers’ Eat Great, Lose Weight (Crown, 1997), appeared simultaneously on the New York Times bestseller list in the top two positions. These two titles were among the New York Times’ and USA Today’s top 100 sellers in the years they were published. Suzanne’s first book, Touch Me (Workman Publishing), a lauded collection of her poems, was originally published in 1973 and is currently in its third printing. In 1988, Suzanne wrote Keeping Secrets (Warner Books), which immediately hit the New York Times bestseller list. A powerful autobiography, it chronicled her childhood as the daughter of an abusive alcoholic and the effect that had on her life. Wednesday’s Children, which discusses adult survivors of abuse, was published in 1992.

Her twelfth book, The Sexy Years, focuses on the positives of aging and understanding natural bio-identical hormone replacement. In this exclusive interview, Suzanne shared the power of making the hormone connection on the Philippe Matthews Show.

Philippe Matthews
Suzanne, what is the hormone connection?

Suzanne Somers
“No one ever talks about hormonal loss to women or men. Our mothers didn’t talk about it. Our doctors never talked about it and our girlfriends won’t mention it because of the shame that is attached to this natural passage. To say you are in menopause says you are now old and no one wants to say that. Menopause has such a negative connotation because women in menopause behave so badly. The reason we behave badly is that we women lose ninety percent of our hormones over a two year period. Hormones are our vitality, it’s the juice of youth, it’s what feeds us metabolically to keep our organs and heart pumping and our brain working sharp and our skin lubricated. It’s what we are. The reason young people don’t get the diseases of aging is because young people make a full compliment of hormones and older people don’t and as we lose our hormones it’s like draining the nutrients out of the various organs and that’s when things start to go haywire.”

Philippe Matthews
Tell me the story you told Larry King about your 50^th birthday party.

Suzanne Somers
“I went into menopause in a night on my 50th birthday at my 50th birthday party. I went to the doctor and another doctor and another doctor and they all were trying to put these synthetic hormones in me and I was looking at women around me on synthetic hormones and the first thing you notice about women on synthetic hormones is that women are getting fat. I call it the seven dwarfs of menopause: itchy, bitchy, sleepy, sweaty, bloated, forgetful and all dried up; so you deal with all of those things. The synthetic hormones will take away itchy, sweaty, sleepy and a little bit of the forgetful but it does nothing to replace what we have lost in the aging process because synthetic hormones are a pharmaceuticalized drug patented into a one-pill fits all and that has become the standard care for women. Women are no different than a diabetic, every diabetic needs a different amount of insulin to keep them going throughout the day and every woman’s hormonal needs are different. We’re affected by our stress – our hormones change daily so we need something individualized just for us.”

Philippe Matthews
Our medical doctors are not really disciplined in the science of natural hormone replacement, no?

Suzanne Somers
“Our western doctors get approximately four hours of instruction in the hormonal system and that’s why women have been getting such inferior care. This is a tough passage and four hours is not enough for anybody to understand it. I finally found an endocrinologist who specializes in bio-identical hormone replacement therapy. She took my blood work; she saw where my levels were and said, ‘you must feel awful because you are at zero?’ I said, ‘I feel like crawling up in the fetal position and hibernating.’ I am a happy person and have a good life; I’m in love with my husband so why do I want to be in the corner? It’s physical not emotional.”

Philippe Matthews
Can you imagine all of the women who don’t have the ability or time to do the research you’ve done and are suffering needlessly?

Suzanne Somers
“They start behaving so badly on these synthetics and go to the doctor and say ‘I don’t feel well; I’m depressed and gaining weight’ and the doctors put them on anti-psychotics, anti-depressants and we become a pharmaceutical product. When I found this endocrinologist, she prescribed a bio-identical prescription just for me and put back into me an exact replica of what my body makes and I got my life back. That is why I’m shouting about this.”

Philippe Matthews
It sounds like an epidemic that nobody is talking about.

Suzanne Somers
“Fifty years ago they were giving women bio-identical hormones because that’s all they had but they didn’t understand them. But they found that by giving them bio-identical hormones it could help women through the nasty effects and then they would take them off and when they took them off women were dying early. Women used to die in their sixties and my generation is the first generation that is going to live through to the other side to be ninety and a hundred years old because of the technology.”

Philippe Matthews
So these hormones you have to take for the rest of your life, you can’t stop?

Suzanne Somers
“Because we no longer make them and what a young person does is making a full compliment of hormones and there is a steady stream running through you. We are finely tuned machines and when the machinery is off with losing hormones the only way to get the machine finely tuned again is to bring you to balance. Not too much, not too little – just right and only an endocrinologist or gynecologist who has chosen to specialize in this can do it. But it is the fountain of youth. It’s not that you want to look thirty, but who doesn’t want to feel thirty and have that kind of energy?”

Philippe Matthews
Can you use bio-identical hormones before you reach menopause?

Suzanne Somers
“Yes. What I would do if I were younger, I would go to this endocrinologist and have a hormone panel done so I can see where my baseline is. As you get older and start feeling a little wonky, you have your hormonal panel done again and compare it to where it was at your prime. These hormones are biologically identical to what we make, they are not a drug which is what’s so exciting – it’s not drug! I’m not anti-pharmaceutical because I have to take some drugs because of my cancer. But if you don’t have to take a drug, why would you take pharmaceuticalized drug hormone when you could take an exact replica?”

Philippe Matthews
How did this affect you because of the cancer?

Suzanne Somers
“When I went through cancer treatment, all of my doctors said you have to come of the hormones and at that time I was already doing research for this book and I said to all of them, ‘I can’t.’ They said I was going to die and have to get off of them because I had an estrogen rich tumor and I knew that I had more knowledge on hormone therapy than they did. Not that I am being arrogant but I had immersed myself in this and from the studies that I have done and what I have read, I believe with all my heart that it is an environment of balanced hormones that prevents disease so, I have cancer. My tumor is ten years old, these hormones I’m taking didn’t give it to me and I am using my balanced hormones as a preventative so that this cancer can’t reoccur because hormonal imbalance is when disease can set in. A doctor told me that at the base of every human ailment is hormonal imbalance.”

Philippe Matthews
It’s a known fact that the pharmaceutical companies are in the business of treating the symptom and not curing the problem. What is your take on this?

Suzanne Somers
“Bio-identical hormones are not patentable and here is where we are all the loser. Because drug companies can’t patent it they have no interest in making it and what I’m doing is trying to create a demand for bio-identical hormones that every woman goes into their gynecologist and says, ‘no, this is not working for me, I want bio-identical,’ and force their gynecologists to go back and restudy the hormone system and maybe then the pharmaceutical companies will make it anyway. Right now you have to get bio-identical in a compound pharmacy and your pharmacists make them up exactly for you like they did in the old days.”

BIOIDENTICALS

SUZANNE SOMERS ON ELLEN