Are Your Hormones Affecting Your Health?

Often we think of hormones as only being related to sexual function, but the truth is that a variety of hormones govern all of our body’s functions in some way or another because of the interplay of messages they receive and send to the body through the glands that produce them.

If you thought that the only hormones we have are estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone, well, you’d be in a majority, but in actuality a number of other chemicals that we talk about all the time, are also hormones and have a lot to say in helping our bodies to experience optimal health.

Commonly there are a few hormones that, depending on their current balance, most readily affect your overall health.

Some common symptoms and their hormones :

Our hormones play together to sync up and harmonize our beings to create optimal health patterns throughout the day and night. Their job is to keep us healthy and they’re made for it! But sometimes, our modern lifestyle tasks us with patterns and workloads that can disrupt our body’s natural ability to control and balance our well-being.

So, when we start to exhibit symptoms that just won’t go away, such as long-term anxiety or stress, brain fog, sleep or weight management issues, mood swings, and longshifts in libido, investigating and caring for the glands that produce our hormones could be the root of the problem.

 

Symptom	Glands	Hormone Relationship
Adult Acne/Cystic Acne	Ovaries Testes	Estrogen, Androgens (Testosterone)
Anxiety/Stress	Adrenals	Epinephrine/Adrenaline, Norepinephrine, Glucocorticoids, Mineralocorticoids, Cortisol, Cortisone
Concentration Issues/Brain Fog	Pineal EC Cells in Gastrointestinal Tract, Hypothalamus, Pituitary Thyroid	Melatonin Serotonin Dopamine Thyroid hormones
Digestive Issues	Thyroid Pancreas	Thyroid hormones, Insulin
Libido	Adrenals, Testes, Ovaries	Estrogen, Progesterone, Testosterone Cortisol
Mood Swings	Pituitary, EC Cells in Gastrointestinal Tract, Pineal	Endorphins, Serotonin, Dopamine
Sleep Issues/Insomnia	Pineal Adrenals	Melatonin Adrenaline, Aldosterone, Cortisol, Cortisone
Weight Maintenance	Adrenals Adipose tissue Pancreas Thyroid	Cortisol, DHEA (as a precursor to Estrogen and Testosterone) Leptin, Insulin Thyroid

 

How you can help your hormones

Your General Practitioner will have many suggestions to help treat the symptoms you’re experiencing, but working with your whole health team including both your GP and your Naturopathic Doctor will yield the greatest benefits, because the unique trainings can complement each other in your health plan.

For example, while your GP might prescribe antidepressants or sleep aids to help mask your symptoms and ‘get you over the hump’ and on your way to recovery; your Naturopathic Doctorwill work on utilizing nutrition, supplements bioidentical hormonesto get at the root cause of the problems you’re experiencing and get your hormones back into balance.

Naturopathic medicine looks extensively at thewhole body to determine what is causing the problem and often uncovers a myriad of issues that all work together to create the health condition. Hormones often play a role but we also must uncover why they are imbalanced.

What is bioidentical hormone replacement therapy (BHRT)?

Bioidentical hormone therapy is a relatively new form of hormone therapy that holds great promise in the treatment of many of the conditions above, and particularly in the treatment of hormonal changes that affect those symptoms above which also often accompany ageing and menopause.

While bioidentical hormones are naturally derived rather than lab created, they often need to be commercially processed to be bioidentical.

You can also receive prescriptions for standard doses of bioidentical or traditional hormone therapy that are FDA approved. However, only with bioidentical hormone therapy is there the option of receiving customized, compound dosages created just for you. These are not FDA approved though, and that doesn’t make it ‘wrong’. It simply means that because the FDA can only approve medications with standardized dosage, no pharmaceutical compounding could fall under their approval process.

Is BHRT necessary for me?

The answer, as in many health treatments, is ‘it depends’. Why isn’t it just cut and dry? Because in many cases there are numerous treatment options to help re-balance your hormones, with BHRT being just one. We would want to find the most effective and safe solution for your particular needs and current health status. When your daily life is affected by your hormonal imbalance we need to get it back on track quickly so you can function.

How can you help my hormonal imbalance?

Once you’ve had a chance to share with your series of symptoms with your Naturopathic Doctor as well as any health concerns you’ve been experiencing, we can then start putting the pieces together to outline the best options for treatment just for you.

The first set of treatment and care options that your healthcare team will look at are nutrient deficiencies and habit patterns. It’s amazing how much better you can feel when we have greater focus and dedication to providing our bodies with right nutrition, nutrients, hydration, stress management, exercise, and adequate sleep.

Supplements may also be a powerful tool in your health care. When you’ve begun to line up a more healthy routine of nutrition, exercise, and sleep, supplementation of key nutrients and minerals could yield even greater results. We have many tools in our toolbox to help get you on the right path to a balanced system, which in turn means a balanced life!

And, the third set of options (unless as mentioned before, you are struggling with your daily life related to hormonal imbalances in which case we would treat this first!) could be BHRT. When you’ve made good strides in building your personal health regime, hormone therapy could prove to be a treatment that offers great relief and balance in symptoms tied to hormonal changes.

One of the best ways to learn more about whether BHRT could be helpful for you is to ask us about the specialized testing we offer at the clinic, and to book an appointment so that we can gain more insight into your current hormone levels, and possible lines of support and relief available to help your get back to feeling your best.

We’re here to help you. If you’re experiencing symptoms that you just can’t beat, it’s a good time to call us to investigate a new pathway to health. Our door is always open and your road to optimal health is just a phone call away.