Many people are suffering from hormonal imbalances and some may benefit from bioidentical hormone replacement therapy.

Your hormones have very powerful effects on all of your metabolic processes. If you have a hormone imbalance or a hormone deficiency, these problems could lead to a vast array of symptoms. Hormonal imbalance symptoms in women may include depression, anxiety, weight gain, premature aging, hair loss or abnormal hair growth, chronic fatigue, insomnia, menstrual problems and many more.

Hormone Imbalance Symptoms
Hormonal imbalance symptoms in men can include weight gain, premature aging, loss of libido, elevated blood pressure, heart disease, anxiety, depression, chronic fatigue and many more. In fact any symptom that you may experience could possibly have a hormonal connection.

Natural Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy
Natural bioidentical hormone replacement therapy has become a “hot” topic as so many men and women realize that proper hormone balance is vital to their well being. In fact, you cannot watch a sporting event on television without seeing an advertisement for low testosterone remedies.

However, before you begin hormone treatment, you may want to ask, “What causes hormonal imbalances in the first place?”

The answer to this question is variable and complex, but here are a few of the major causes:

• Exposure to hormone altering, estrogenic toxins in your food supply (soy products, plastics, pesticides, and insecticides.
• Biotoxins like toxic mold and tick related diseases (like Lyme’s) will affect your immune system and this will ultimately lead to low levels of melanocyte stimulating hormone (MSH). When MSH drops your sex hormones will drop while cortisol rises.
• Low fat diets, which deprive you of vitally, needed “building blocks” for your hormones.
• Nutrient depleted “junk food” which contributes to vitamin and mineral depletion and may interfere with normal thyroid function. All of these factors are critical for the biotransformation of cholesterol (ingested in your diet and made in your liver) into sex hormones.
• Excessive stressors in your life that can cause your body to produce large amounts of the anti-inflammatory hormone cortisol at the expense of health promoting sex hormones like testosterone and progesterone.
• Elevated insulin levels (caused perhaps by excess sugar and carbohydrate intake) will increase your levels of an enzyme called “aromatase”. This enzyme will convert testosterone to estrogen and estrogen to testosterone. So if you are a man and have high insulin levels, you will undergo “feminization”. Conversely if you are a woman and have high insulin levels you will suffer from “masculinization”.
• Improper sleep-wake cycles will disturb your brain (hypothalamus) function, which will then affect your pituitary gland (the “master gland” in your body). Pituitary dysfunction then creates imbalances in sex organs, thyroid, and adrenals.

There are some bioidentical hormone replacement doctors that will simply measure your hormones and replace those that are low. You can clearly see that this approach may not be optimal treatment for hormone imbalance.

At MD Wellness, we take a metabolically directed, holistic approach to the treatment for hormone imbalances. We always attempt to find the cause and treat the cause of your problem and employ natural hormone replacement therapy when appropriate to improve your overall health.