11/22/2025
I am pondering something lately and I haven’t landed on a truth about this one way or the other. But here’s my pondering:
More and more I talk to people who are using a lot of hormone replacement, both men and women. I was talking with one of my male clients recently, and he was saying how pleased he is with the outcomes he’s gotten from taking supplemental testosterone in his 40s. And the benefits he’s experienced are absolutely awesome — energy, a feeling of youthfulness, a lot of muscle mass improvement, more libido. Those are all amazing things.
But the question that is on my mind is this: **what is the impact of that long-term from a longevity and true vitality standpoint?**
On one hand, in Chinese medicine, we say that a long life is dependent on your *jing* — your essence — that you mostly got from your ancestors. Although there are definitely ways, like in alchemy, where we believe you can enhance that. In classical Chinese medicine, most of the time they say you can’t. But in alchemy, we say you can through practices.
And in the alchemical traditions, we have practices to reverse age, to balance hormones through encouraging movement of qi and blood, bringing our consciousness back into the body, working with the organs themselves. In that version of longevity, you don’t necessarily end up looking like a muscle-bound human, but the longevity is rooted within you and not dependent on anything but your presence and cultivation. And in that regard, you’re able to sustain it because you’ve actually added to the pool of wisdom and vitality in your body. That’s one path.
When we take hormones, my question — the thing I’m pondering — is this:
Let’s say we feel like we have a youthful resurgence from the use of testosterone. **Is that a true resurgence? Or is it possible that there’s depletion happening in the background?**
Because if the body’s capacity was at, let’s say, 60%, and the testosterone brought it up to 90%, where is the extra coming from? Is it just the impact of testosterone? But testosterone sets off a whole host of biological responses. And if the vitality isn’t there to sustain those responses, are we robbing Peter to pay Paul? And is there a consequence when we’re older — in terms of that jing or qi having been taxed — leaving us more depleted?
I’ve wondered the same thing for years about how some women use hormones around menstruation. I have female clients who choose to take HRT to the point where they’re still having cycles in their late 50s because they don’t want to lose that youthful glow. But what I see in the background in some cases is depletion. The hormones are mimicking one state of function, but the body’s essence is not sufficient to support it.
And my premise in life has always been that I want the **real** thing. I’ve always wanted the real thing.
So when I want vitality, I want *real* vitality — not the pumped-up vitality of an energy drink or an energy-boost supplement. When I want balanced hormones, I want to cultivate that shift in my body so the balance comes from within. That doesn’t mean I don’t use support. I use herbs right now for perimenopause. From the Chinese medicine perspective, I use some bioidentical progesterone, I use some pregnenolone, I even take some thyroid now that the sky has turned darker heading into winter.
But my intent is to cultivate so deeply that those things would not be needed — that the vitality would come from the essence of me, fully supported and built into such a robust state. And that is what I am seeing more and more in myself as I journey into alchemy. I’m not finding depletion. I’m finding replenishment. And it’s being evidenced — people keep stopping me to ask, “How are you aging backwards?” And I always tell them: **alchemy.**
So this is something I’m going to pay more attention to going forward: what do I see in the true qi of those I’m interacting with who are and are not on hormones, and who are and are not practicing alchemical cultivation? What appears to be the actual lived experience?
I am totally willing for it to prove that hormones boost vitality at that jing level — just FYI, I am not already biased toward any outcome. I am simply curious.
And part of this curiosity stems from a conversation almost 30 years ago with one of my Chinese medicine teachers. He said that when he came to this country, he thought he’d landed in the most vital place on earth because everyone looked so good — glossy hair, plump shiny skin, lots of muscle. But when he began practicing in the clinic and assessing people’s vitality, he found that those same people who looked so vital were actually deeply depleted. They had practices that were not cultivative but instead created an external appearance — heavy workouts for muscle, shampoos that made hair glossy, face products that made skin glow — but underneath it, there was nothing supporting it.
And that’s what drives this curiosity today.
Is there something truly supporting that kind of youthfulness when we use HRT? Or is it a silent façade — making it appear like we’ve gained ground when we may actually be depleting? Because hormones, in some cases, cause the body to *seem* like it’s functioning better when it’s actually draining resources to keep up with the messages the hormones are providing.
That is my curiosity, staying open for the truths from within the body
