Your hormones are secreted by your body’s glands in a system called your endocrine system that controls virtually every process in your body. Your hormones are your body’s chemical messengers and they coordinate all your body’s functions, your metabolism, weight, energy, appetite, sleep, libido, fertility, sexual function, mood, emotions, blood sugar, stress levels, and more. When there is imbalance in the body either from stress, gut microbial imbalance, pharmaceutical medication side effects, fatigue, lack of sleep, toxins, wrong food intake, sugar, or aging hormones become imbalanced by levels of certain hormones either becoming too low or too high.
Your hormones communicate with one another like a symphony. When one is off balance, other hormones go off balance causing more imbalance and dysfunction in the body. when hormones are out of balance you also don’t feel your best and feel the negative symptoms.
Today more than ever more men and women suffer from hormone imbalance due to the level of toxins in our modern world compounded by lifestyle and diet factors. This has resulted in an epidemic of infertility, obesity, insulin resistance, diabetes, heart disease, and other chronic disease.
Examples of hormones that become imbalanced in the body either from too high or too low levels include:
Insulin
Cortisol
Thyroid
Growth Hormone
Estrogen
Progesterone
Testosterone
DHEA
Melatonin
Some of the symptoms of hormone imbalance include irregular periods, heavy periods, breast tenderness, premenstrual syndrome, hot flashes/night sweats, insomnia or interrupted sleep, nocturia or urinating during the night, acne, erectile dysfunction, weight gain, cellulite, low libido, abdominal obesity, change in body composition to more fat less muscle, shakiness between meals, migraines, infertility, fatigue, loss of confidence, depression, anxiety, increase in body fat, erectile dysfunction and general loss of vitality and zest for life.
Hormone imbalance can include problems like a low or high functioning thyroid, higher than normal estrogen levels or estrogen dominance, low estrogen, low progesterone, testosterone deficiency as in andropause the male version of menopause, or elevated testosterone and DHEA as seen in PCOS, abnormalities in cortisol, and elevation of insulin causing insulin resistance.
Hormone Imbalance or deficiency can be caused by a number of different factors that including underlying toxicity from heavy metals or other environmental pollutants that disrupt the normal function of the endocrine system, imbalanced bacteria in the digestive tract, stress and adrenal gland dysfunction, nutritional deficiencies, fatty acid deficiency, as well as aging.
It is important to treat, not only the hormonal imbalance, but also investigate and treat the underlying factors that are driving the hormonal imbalance. Once the underlying factors are teated your body can return to a state of optimal health and hormonal balance is regained.
During my medical training and residency, drowned in conventional medicines paradigm of what medical care is, was taught that women’s health comes down to birth control pills, hysterectomies, IUD’s, tubal ligations, pap smears, laparoscopies and commonly diagnosed problems like a PCOS diagnosis.
Since adequate and balanced hormone levels affect the health of the entire body and every system in the body, deficiency and imbalance states cause serious chronic disease. Some of the Disease that are caused by or result from hormone imbalance states include:
Type 1 Diabetes
type 2 Diabetes
Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis
Grave’s Disease
Adrenal Insufficiency Or Addisons Disease
Obesity
Metabolic Syndrome
High Cholesterol
High Blood Pressure
Cushing’s Disease
Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS)
Osteoporosis (bone loss)
Infertility
Uterine Fibroids
Erectile Dysfunction
Prostate Hypertrophy
In traditional conventional medicine when a woman or man brings up symptoms of hormone imbalance, the root or underlying cause is never considered or addressed. In fact conventional medicine docs seldom even correctly test hormone levels.
Instead drugs like oral contraceptives are used in women to block their own hormone production for example, completely and replace it with synthetic hormones that do not have the same effects in the body and have numerous, some very serious side effects.
The conventional medical treatment women receive for hormones can significantly contribute to illness in many women.
I have spent the last 20 plus years researching how to address hormone imbalance in men and women both to improve symptoms and quality of life and to address the root cause of why the hormones are out of imbalance in cases other than menopause.
Most women are bombarded with pharmaceutical drugs including synthetic hormones such as oral contraceptives, synthetic hormone IUD’s like Norplant, antibiotics, and other drugs such as steroids, pain medications, antidepressants at an early age and have never had informed consent, the verbal or written thorough explanation by a physician about the possible risks and side effects of the recommended treatment. Meaning they were not fully informed about the potential side effects and consequences of the drugs they are being told to take. You can learn more about some of the side effects of synthetic hormones in oral contraceptives here.
Many women may seek medical care for symptoms like irregular periods, heavy or painful periods, or related symptoms like acne, bloating, mood swings, weight gain, ovarian cysts, and unfortunately most often all they get for an answer is being told to take birth control pills. I would not qualify this as medical care. Unfortunately, this can actually harm patients without addressing the actual underlying root causes of their symptoms.
They are never warned about the possible detrimental side effects of synthetic oral (sometimes known as horse urine estrogens because that’s what they are formulated from) and synthetic progestins, both the components in birth control pills. Synthetic hormone contraceptives are the same as far whether the form prescribed is oral, injected, implanted its all synthetic, or whether its a different brand or dose, they are all synthetic and can have devastating effects on health including autoimmunity, systemic inflammation, hormone imbalance, thyroid dysfunction, adrenal dysfunction, candida, leaky gut, wood clots, stroke and heart attack.
A big problem especially for younger women is that synthetic hormones block your own natural estrogen and progesterone production that you absolutely need for many health reasons, including keeping you young and healthy, the difference between a young woman and her grandmother is the young woman has her hormones, and grandma does not!
The synthetic hormones prescribed to help ‘balance’ you do no such thing and their functions are NOT the same as our own natural hormones. Actually what they actually do is cause further hormone imbalance.
You may think they are helping initially, because you may stop getting periods altogether, or periods may become increasingly light or disappear, because actually your hormones have shut down so although you may believe that your periods are at least no longer heavy for example and that this is how the all is helping you, you are now actually suffering from hormone deficiency and all its sequelae and are prone to all the side effects of the synthetic hormones.
The answer conventional medicine has to questions like why do I have acne or an ovarian cyst or irregular periods, or severe PMS is shutting down your body’s natural hormone production. A better approach would be to test your hormones at the correct windows in the cycle and look at which are out of balance. If imbalances are found assess what is causing the imbalance and correct that while if needed helping your symptoms with Bio-identical hormones rather than synthetic hormones.
It is important to first understand the line of thinking or unfortunately many times lack of critical thinking in conventional medicine, so we can appreciate the return to dignity and truth that Functional Medicine offers us by bringing back our focus and attention back to the actual ways your body is supposed to work, back to the basics of physiology and biochemistry and what can cause an imbalance in them.
We will actually work together to investigate what is causing the imbalance in your body, reinstate balance in your hormones more naturally and if and when we use hormones they will NEVER be synthetic rather they will be bio-identical with the same molecular structure as our own hormones and will be used in a way that does not increase inflammation in the body as synthetic oral contraceptives do.
You can learn more about Bio-identical Hormone replacement therapy here.
When it comes to menopause we will work together to strengthen your body in eery way so you can better be equipped for menopause and as needed use effective and safe botanicals and or bio-identical hormones to help your symptoms as well as for anti-aging if that’s something you desire but we do this safely and effectively with natural hormones rather that synthetic hormones like Premarin, Provera or oral synthetic estrogens that some conventional doctors still use (when they don’t dismiss your symptoms as depression offering you psychiatric medication) despite documented published side effects of cancer, and death in the women’s health initiative. You can read more about synthetic vs natural hormones here.
The point is that as women we deserve better. This archaic system used in conventional medicine is not valuable when it comes to a woman’s long-term health and well-being. We will ask the questions together and find the answers looking at your hormone values, nutrient values, inflammatory markers, toxin burden and gut function and no matter what stage of life you are in as a woman whether you are in your 20’s, 30’s, 40’s 50’s or beyond our goal will be to optimize your health, balance your hormones, and give you your best by nourishing your health and vitality rather than using synthetic drugs and surgical organ resection as offered by conventional medicine.
Very often I see symptoms including irregular periods, PMS, menopausal symptoms, and low libido resolve. Our patients are able to maintain optimal body weight and loose unwanted pounds as well as improve their body composition and eliminate cellulite formation while following our protocols for hormone balance.
Restore balance to your hormones and optimize your health today! To Begin You Can Fill Out Our New Patient Inquiry Form, and we will contact you to get started.
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Dr. Rashel J Tahzib AOBFP IFMCP
Integrative & Functional Medicine