Importance of Hormones

If you're a woman over the age of 50, your risk of heart disease, osteoporosis, and dementia goes up significantly. Fortunately, the reason is easy to explain. And, more importantly, it's easy to fix.

What's more, this is strictly a female issue. Unless it is his wife who has it, and then it can become a distinct issue, men don't have to worry about this cause. That's because the obvious reason for this increased risk is menopause. When menopause hits, a woman's body slows way down in its production of hormones, particularly estrogen.

Fortunately, of all the hormones, estrogen deficiency is the easiest to diagnose. This is because it happens to women so suddenly - when they hit menopause and stop menstruating. At that point, you know you're deficient. You also may notice other problems. You may start to lose your hair, your breasts might sag, you might see more facial hair, and you may have more bladder problems (including infections and incontinence).

What's more, you can encounter a number of common symptoms of estrogen deficiency. These can include:

Hot flashes
Fatigue
Headaches/migraines
Night sweats
Stiff, achy joints, particularly the fingers and hands
Vaginal and/or bladder irritation
Forgetfulness - "brain fog"
Insomnia
Decreased libido
Painful intercourse
Depression, moodiness, anxiety
Feelings of despair
Crying easily

As I've said before with other hormones, lab tests aren't the best way to determine if you're deficient. The symptoms are all you need. If you have a significant number of these symptoms, ask your doctor to give you a trial of bio-identical hormone replacement therapy. I always start with a cream that contains estradiol (0.5 mg), estriol (2 mg), progesterone (40 mg), testosterone (0.5 mg), and DHEA (2 mg) in every gram of cream. Your doctor can order this cream through a compounding pharmacy.

Yes, it's easy enough to prescribe the estrogen as a separate cream. But the reality is that any woman who needs estrogen therapy is likely deficient in the other hormones as well. So I put them altogether.

Start off with one-half gram per day. Increase the dose by one-quarter gram every one to two weeks. Continue to increase the dose until either the symptoms are gone, or signs of estrogen excess show up. This is easy to spot. You will feel very similar to the way you felt in the days leading up to your menstrual period. You may experience irritability, swollen breasts, water retention, vaginal bleeding, and a swollen feeling in the lower abdomen. In most women the correct dose is the lowest amount that keeps the hot flashes and night sweats down to one to two per week.

For more information, see below. This may be a solution for you. You won't know until you try. This post is from Dr Frank Shallenberger who does a weekly newsletter about Real Cures.

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Have you been struggling with trying to lose weight?

Statistics show that by the year 2030, 90% of the people in the world will be overweight.

My husband who is a Chiropractor, practiced outside of Washington, DC for over 30 years has found some great information. As a matter of fact, he has gone back into practice in Littleton, Colorado to share his passion about weight loss and health.

He, himself lost 70 pounds and kept it off which seems to be the hardest part. But also, I want to share this with you. Did you know that all of the following keeps you from losing weight?

1- If you aren't sleeping, you can't lose weight
2- Letting yourself get hungry and not eating
3- Eating refined sugars and refined grains
4- Overeating stresses the adrenals = weight gain
5- Consuming alcohol = triggers insulin causing weight gain
6- Consuming caffeine - coffee, cola (cola has phosphoric acid which causes osteoporosis)
7- No exercise or wrong exercise
8- Too much stress
9- Poor sleeping habits - a body that doesn't sleep well, triggers
fat-storing hormones
10- If you are in pain, your body will be in fat-storing mode

This is interesting information and I think it could help a lot of people. If you want to ask questions about this, please go to www.drgoddard.com and ask him. He will be happy to assist you.

Estrogen is a natural hormone that is produced by the body.  Females begin producing what is called estrogen in the ovaries as their bodies mature from childhood to adulthood.  As the ovaries produce estrogen, a female begins her childbearing years.  She produces an egg each month and if not fertilized, the egg will be flushed from the body along with the lining of the uterus that the body prepared for nurturing a baby.  This is the menstrual cycle that occurs every 28 days (like clockwork for most women).

Once the menstrual cycles begin, they continue uninterrupted,  except for pregnancies,  until the woman's body starts to wind down the cycle of the childbearing years.

As the body ends its decades-long production of estrogen, the ovaries will stop releasing the egg each month, and the body will stop preparing for a pregnancy that is no longer able to happen.  The lack of estrogen is a change that the body will try to adjust to and will in most cases cause symptoms.  As the body makes its adjustments, the symptoms of menopause abate naturally.  The problem is with the symptoms associated with this change, not with menopause itself.

Dr Susan Love's Hormone Book says:  "Only a minority of women have menopausal symptoms that are severe enough to require medical therapy.  Only one of six women experience really bothersome hot flashes, one of eight women rates her night sweats as really bothersome, and fewer than one in thirty rates vaginal dryness as really bothersome.   Half of the women going through menopause have no hot flashes at all. 

So, if you can make changes in your lifestyle, as eating and drinking healthier foods and beverages, and exercising on a consistant basis, that would be a great place to start.

Did you know that Premarin is made from horse urine? 

This originated in the 1950's, estrogen derived from pregnant horse urine. And since then, it has been the main source of estrogen made by pharmaceutical companies recommended for the symptoms of menopause.

Did you know that Premarin contains fifty different forms of estrogen, only three of which being known to occur naturally in humans.
Since drug companies can not patent a natural structure, they invent hormones that are patentable.  A few of these are Premarin, Provera and Prempro.

As Dr. Hargrove, a former medical director of the Menopause Center at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Tennessee has said, “Premarin is a natural hormone if your native food is hay.”

In her book, The Hormone Solution: Naturally Alleviate Symptoms of Hormone Imbalance from Adolescence Through Menopause , Dr Erika Schwartz says, “You must understand it has been proven that once broken down in our bodies, conjugated equine (Premarin) becomes toxic to the DNA that keeps us healthy or makes us sick.”  Okay it is not good for our bodies and if you are an animal lover, it is a sad existence for the horses involved and their babies that have been sacrificed for sixty years.

Natural really isn’t a good term for describing the hormones used to make hormone replacement therapy. This is a subject you are going to have to do research on for yourself in order to make your own decisions for your body.

Male menopause refers to any noticeable physiological, chemical or hormonal changes experienced by men as they begin to age (usually between the ages of 40 and 55 years.)

Because of the symptoms men have reported, researchers think in fact, male menopause does exist. Maybe not at the same level women experience menopause, but more men are speaking about certain changes  they are noticing between those ages mentioned above.

By the testosterone levels decreasing, this can leave a man depressed, scared, anxious, moody, lose sexual interest and have problems getting and keeping erections which is very distressing for men.

Male menopause is known as a physical condition and manifests in psychological, personal, social and spiritual areas of their lives.

Some doctors use nutrition and exercise to treat it.  At least that is a good place to start.