Natural hormone replacement therapy is an idea whose time has come. It’s the latest, most up-to-date approach to fighting the aging process that science can offer. Also known as bioidentical hormone therapy, it offers the chance for aging men and women to live longer, healthier, and more enjoyable lives.
What is it? How does it work? Can anti-aging through natural hormone balancing actually work? These are some of the questions this article will answer, and give you a good overview of just what natural hormone therapy is about and how it can help you.
Declining Hormones and Aging
Our hormonal system like the rest of the body doesn’t work as well when we get older. This causes a drop in many of the hormones our bodies need to run properly and be healthy.
Hormones are kind of like chemical messengers that attach to our cells and provide instructions that tell the cells what to do. This is kind of like software for our bodies. Without this programming provided by our hormones, our bodies don’t function properly and we lose our health.
Natural hormone replacement therapy can supplement the hormones that have declined as we age and help prevent the negative effects of having low levels of important hormones. This is well established in medical science, but there is some controversy over just HOW this should be done.
Problems with synthetic hormones
Prior to the introduction of natural hormone replacement therapy, doctors used synthetic hormones to supplement those that were declining in the body. These hormones were not identical at the molecular level to what our bodies actually produce, and so they caused some dangerous side effects, such as breast cancer, and heart disease.
These synthetic hormones were made in a way that they could be patented by drug companies and sold for more money. Because a natural molecule cannot pe patented, the drug companies would alter the molecule just enough to be able to get a patent on it.
These alterations are what caused the side effects, and once it became know that synthetic hormones (especially synthetic estrogens) caused these problems, doctors stopped using them.
Enter Bioidentical Hormone Therapy
Bioidentical hormone therapy is done by doctors using hormones that while they are synthetically prepared, are identical to what your own body makes. For this reason, they do not produce the side effects that patented hormones do.
Unfortunately, the drug companies have created a disinformation campaign to discredit natural hormone replacement therapy because it competes with their products. They know that many people have gravitated to natural hormone therapy, and thus they are losing market share to these natural products.
Natural hormone balance using bio-identical hormone replacement is in fact safer. It has been used in Europe for many years and has a good safety record there. In addition, the therapy protocol for these natural hormones is done differently as you will see.
Natural hormone balancing
This treatment is done by specially trained doctors who are knowledgeable about natural hormone replacement. They use blood and saliva testing to determine the levels of a person’s hormones, and which ones are out of balance.
Then the doctor creates a customized prescription that is sent to a special pharmacy called a “compounding pharmacy.” These pharmacies create a custom blend of hormones according to the doctor’s prescription. This customized hormone preparation is unique to each patient and contains only the hormones that are needed in the precise amounts to achieve the right balance for that patient’s body.
The patient returns to the doctor for follow-up tests to see how they are responding to the therapy and the doctor adjusts the customized hormone preparation according to the results of the tests that are done.
This process is a way of precisely balancing a person’s hormones so they are brought back into the normal range for optimal health.
What form do these natural hormones come in?
Natural hormone replacement therapy can come in several forms, such as:
- transdermal creams
- pellets implanted under the skin
- capsules or pills that are taken internally
What benefits can I expect from natural hormone replacement therapy?
Natural or bio-identical hormone replacement therapy can alleviate age-related hormonal problems of both men and women. Here is a description of what bioidentical hormone therapy can do:
For Women
- increased energy
- uplifting mood
- preventing hot flashes
- improved sleep
- memory improvement
- eliminating vaginal dryness
- less body fat / better muscle tone
- diminishing winkles
- improved sex drive
- preventing loss of bone density
- lowering breast cancer risks
- lowering the risk of heart disease
For Men
- improved overall energy
- increased memory & concentration
- better sleep
- fat loss / improved muscle tone and strength
- increase in sex drive
- prevents osteoporosis
- relieves joint and muscle pain
- reduces heart attack risk
- reduces the risk of prostate cancers
Where can you get natural hormone replacement therapy?
This therapy is provided by doctors that are specially trained in anti-aging medicine. They study antiaging therapies in addition to their base training as doctors. Thus M.D.s and D.O.s (osteopaths) are usually the doctors that provide this.
More and more organizations now have programs for certifying doctors in this therapy, so that you can find one that is qualified in your local area. Two organizations that have these programs are BodylogicMD, and the A4M (American Academy of Anti-aging Medicine.
When you deal with these organizations, you can be assured that the doctors they list as having training in antiaging medicine are actually competent and skilled in the use of natural hormone replacement therapy.
Antiaging medicine now offers the real promise of longer life and much better health and enjoyment of life. Natural hormone balancing is just one of the ways to improve health but has perhaps the most dramatic effect on an aging person’s quality of life.
Natural hormone replacement therapy can dramatically improve the quality of life for aging men and women. It can reduce the risk of many chronic disease, and allow people to feel and function like they did years younger than their real age. You no longer have to suffer from hormonal problems, check put natural hormone therapy, and live better.