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She’s got the secrets to a timeless home — and maybe the fountain of youth, too.
Lifestyle guru Martha Stewart is known for her impeccable taste, domestic know-how and viral thirst traps that have sent social media into a frenzy.
Now, the 85-year-old is pulling back the curtain on her health, revealing the medication she’s been taking for more than four decades that she believes has helped keep her body strong.
“I’ve been on estrogen since I was like 42 years old, I think,” Stewart said at a September event hosted by her skincare brand, Elm Biosciences, per The Daily Beast.
“I think that’s very helpful.”
A form of hormone replacement therapy (HRT), supplemental estrogen is used by many women in midlife as their bodies’ natural production declines during the menopause transition.
The treatment is commonly prescribed to ease symptoms of the so-called “change of life,” including hot flashes, night sweats and vaginal discomfort.
It can also help protect against bone loss and fractures by reducing the risk of osteoporosis, which becomes more common after menopause.
But HRT has had a rocky reputation — and for years, fears about its potential risks kept many women away.
In 2002, a major study raised alarms by suggesting HRT could increase the risk of serious health problems, including breast cancer, in postmenopausal women — spooking patients and making doctors more reluctant to prescribe it.
A year later, the FDA slapped a “black box warning” on many estrogen pills, patches, injections and creams, warning of increased risks of cardiovascular disease, dementia and certain cancers. Afterward, HRT use took a nosedive.
Stewart, however, stayed the course — and credits the hormone with helping her maintain her strength.
“Other doctors were saying, ‘Oh no, it causes cancer’ and all that other stuff,” she said. “I’ve been on it, and I think that has helped me keep my strong bones and a strong body.”
She may have been onto something. In recent years, the conversation around menopause hormone therapy has done a 180.
“In the decades since, we’ve reexamined the data and found that, yes, a high risk of developing breast cancer does exist for some people who use menopause hormone therapy (MHT), but not for all,” Dr. Nora Lansen, a board- and Menopause Society-certified family physician and Elektra’s chief medical officer, previously told The Post.
In fact, she noted, the associated risk of developing breast cancer is actually low.
“With a better understanding of the research, we’ve begun to realize that MHT is a safe and effective treatment for a broader range of patients than we had previously thought,” Lansen said.
Other research has found that women who started HRT during perimenopause had 60% lower rates of breast cancer, along with fewer heart attacks and strokes.
The shifting medical consensus has also prompted a regulatory rethink. Last year, the FDA announced that it would remove “misleading FDA warnings on hormone replacement therapy.”
“For more than two decades, bad science and bureaucratic inertia have resulted in women and physicians having an incomplete view of HRT. We are returning to evidence-based medicine and giving women control over their health again,” said HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
But just as interest in the treatment is picking up, women are running into a new obstacle: finding it. Even Stewart has struggled to get her hands on her medication amid widespread shortages.
“You can’t get your Dotti now,” she lamented.
Dotti is a brand of transdermal estrogen patch applied twice weekly. Shortages of the product and similar treatments have been reported by pharmacies across the country since earlier this year.
“You can’t get estrogen, you can’t get progesterone, you can’t get any of those things now,” Stewart said at the Elm event. “My drugstore doesn’t have any. I had to go to another place for it.”
The shortage has left other women scrambling, too, with estrogen patch users taking to social media to share their experiences — and their sometimes unconventional workarounds.
“Facebook saved me when someone offered their prescription-strength that didn’t work out for them for free! Three month supply,” one raved on TikTok, per The Post’s Karen Fischer.
Others have resorted to rationing their supply, with one Redditor writing that she’d built up a stockpile by switching her patches a bit less often.
Like Stewart, other women are traveling greater lengths to get their hands on the medication — with some even considering trips south of the border.
“I’ve decided that if my medications become completely unavailable to me and online pharmacies don’t work, I’m going to start taking annual trips to Mexico,” wrote one Redditor.