Read Suzanne Somers' The Sexy Years and you may be converted. In fact, if you're like me, the minute you put the book down, you'll fight the urge to leap to the phone, call your doc, order up the blood tests, find a syringe and mainline those newfangled bioidentical hormones STAT.

Because this is what Somers, now in her early 60s, writes:

"When you get your hormones balanced and actually replace the hormones you have lost in the aging process, you will experience bliss, vitality, sexual vigor and excitement. Honest to God! This period of my life, menopause and all, is the best I have ever felt. It has been four years now, and I am feeling like a 32-year-old. My hormones are perfectly balanced. I now realize that this is the secret elixir we have all been looking for. Balanced hormones are the true 'fountain of youth.' "

And there's that photo of her on the cover. Hot enough to fry bacon.

Then you read that Oprah is a new devotee of bioidentical hormone replacement therapy and, well, frankly, resistance is futile.

Still, something tells you it all sounds a little too good to be true. Suddenly, you remember those unusual Thigh Master ads on TV and think "not so fast." You Google "Critics of The Sexy Years" and, sure enough, up pops a big article in Newsweek that trashes the book as pseudoscientific, irresponsible and dangerous.

But let's back up. Here, in a nutshell, is my best understanding of Somers' argument in favor of bioidentical hormones, the main ones being estradiol, estrone and estriol. They're synthesized in a lab from plant extracts such as soybeans and yams.

"Though they are created in a lab, they are designed molecularly to be the same as the hormones in our bodies," Somers writes. (Newsweek calls this distinction bunk.) The important distinction, she says, is that they're identical to what our own bodies make.

This is a true breakthrough, says Somers, who includes several question-and-answer interviews with doctors in her book, which I found especially informative.

For decades, middle-age women were prescribed synthetic hormone replacement therapies (HRT), such as the nightly pill Premarin. For many women, it relieved the hot flashes, fuzzy thinking and general malaise that often come with menopause. It was also thought to protect them from heart disease, stroke and osteoporosis.

Then in 2002, a huge bombshell of a study came out showing that HRT actually increased the risk of heart disease and breast cancer.

Game over. Millions of women went off Premarin and Prempro. Many have suffered from headaches, poor memory and night sweats ever since.

But Somers says good riddance to those old synthetic hormones. They're a one-size-fits-all solution and a very crude remedy for most women.

Women deserve better, she writes, and they can have it if they're willing to work at it. They need to live a healthy lifestyle, for starters, but they also need to find a doctor or an endocrinologist who keeps current with the latest studies, who will work with them and prescribe bioidentical hormones. (They cost about $65 a month, she says, and she lists where to get them in the book. You generally need to find what's called a compounding pharmacy.)

As you hit your late 40s and 50s, Somers says, when your own estrogen starts falling off drastically, you need to replace it with the same amount, and the same kind, you had when you were in your 30s, your peak years. (I'm leaving out the role of progesterone here for simplicity's sake. And, by the way, I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV, and this is complicated stuff, so cut me some slack, but more important, do your own reading and talk to your own doctors.)

Last weekend, I consulted Denver's Dr. Judy Paley, as I often do about hormonal matters. (Read her blog at vintage femail.blogspot.com and sign up for her newsletter.) She lent me her copy of The Sexy Years, and over coffee she gave me her take on the book. "I am grateful for Somers' book. It came out right at the time of the Women's Health Initiative study, when many of us were thinking, 'There's got to be another side to this.' "

The book launched a national debate about hormones that Paley says was sorely needed. But Paley also points out that Somers' regimen is "boutique medicine" - i.e., if you go down that path, be prepared to devote much of your life, and considerable money, in the form of frequent blood and hormone-level tests and doctor's visits.

Paley also finds the book, and the doctors quoted in it, a bit glib when they play down the link between HRT and breast-cancer risk. "I can't look at the data and say there's nothing to it," says Paley. Breast-cancer risk is very real for many women, and they can't rule out the studies showing that estrogen increases that risk.

Bottom line? I loved the book. Menopause and hormones are very dark and mysterious to me, always have been, and Somers explains how they work, in language I can understand.

mwinte@aol.com