I have been on the Wiley Protocol for a full year now and am very pleased with it. While I never had hot flashes or lost my figure or sexual desire (when I was ever rested), I was concerned about having lost my centered feeling and the screaming anxiety I was experiencing for the first time, especially in the year preceding learning about the WP (and while working full time at home for clients as an ad designer, plus taking care of my mother 24/7 as she recovered from strokes and my father's death that year). I also wanted to prevent the heart disease and strokes I saw in my mother and other older female family members.

Besides regaining my center back in three weeks, other wonderful things happened that I didn't even know were menopausal related: the aching in the heels of my feet that had appeared over the past two years disappeared in two months and I no longer needed gel pads in my shoes, for instance. My dry and intensely itching skin stopped itching and became less dry. My endless insertion of eye drops decreased dramatically. A knee injured in a fall a year previously that would never completely heal, healed in the first few months and has never hurt again. I again experienced deeper sleep. And so on. But the most wonderful feeling was that "center" I had lost. I had always thought I handled crises well because of my happy center that was there no matter what. When I lost it, I could not understand why that was happening to me. In the past, I had always been optimistic and overall led a happy life no matter what disasters lay in my path. I had always thought of that centered feeling as my "God" place, my "spirit" place; how disappointing to find that it was only hormones :-)

The only adverse symptoms have been sudden urinary incontinence, which I had never in my life before experienced, during high dosage days of either estrogen or progesterone, but over the past year that has been happening less and less often. The other unexpected symptom has been heretofore never experienced belly fat. I have never had a stomach problem or significant weight gain/fluctuation, and this is yet to be resolved. It is the one thing that annoys me intensely. I've always been a size four, even after ten years of menopause, so I have not been pleased to not be able to zip jeans nor skirts--and I do go to the gym. This is not a diet problem nor an inactive problem. It is in some way directly related to using the WP.

However, my own research tells me the missing link for this might be testosterone, and my doctor has finally consented to let me try the WP testosterone for women. I am looking forward to seeing if it works. I began it today.

I very much admire Ms. Wiley and associates for finally finding viable answers for women and doing something about it. I take vitamins and other supplements (but discontinued all those my doctor said might interfere with the WP. I do not take any medical drugs, have never even taken an antibiotic since 1978 when a doctor almost killed me with them. Doctors are good for a diagnosis, but if I require "treatment," I make up my own mind about how I'll be treated, and it is never with drugs or to treat "one body part." The body is a unit that requires overall balance to stay healthy and in harmony (in my opinion). Bioidentical hormones make sense to me as being another way to help supply the tools for that overall harmony.