BIO-IDENTICAL HORMONE THERAPY

by Nyna Nelson RN-CS, RFP, GNP

Do these statements sound familiar to you? I don’t feel good. I’m fatigued. I’m not doing well. I know something’s amiss. I’m very tired. My skin is dry. My hair is falling out. My throat is getting thick. I have severe hot flashes. I’m depressed. I can’t sleep. I have to get up several times a night to urinate. I’m gaining weight unreasonably. I can’t seem to remember things. I don’t have a sex drive any more. I feel like my brain is in a fog. I have night sweats. I have major PMS. I suffer from migraines. I have a dry mouth or dry sticky eyes all the time.

If one or more of the above statements is true for you, then you are a prime candidate for bio-identical hormone replacement therapy. When looking for a practitioner for your bio-identical hormone replacement therapy, it is imperative to find someone who listens to you and helps you to create a total recipe for health, and not someone who says “take this pill and call me in a year.”

At Alternative Wellness Solutions, we choose to use hormones that are biologically identical to your own so that it’s an exact match-up of what your hormones were to do if they were operating correctly. In this way, the bio-identical hormones are a replacement or supplementation to your own hormones that are not functioning correctly.

There are many different ways to put bio-identical hormone compounds together, and if you don’t have the right base that the hormone sits in, the person applying the cream may have an untoward reaction. As such, each person is individually monitored in Alternative Wellness Solutions. There is no short cut to health, and there is no short cut to the right formula for bio-identical hormones. Through testing and monitoring, Alternative Wellness Solutions assure that your particular “recipe” has all the right ingredients for your perfect health.

One of the ways Alternative Wellness Solutions likes to monitor your hormone levels is using saliva, because hormones are carried on binding globulins. When the hormones come into the saliva, they’re available to be monitored and measured. The four areas we focus on with our testing are ovarian or testicular failure, thyroid function, adrenal function, and insulin resistance.

There is some controversy about whether bio-identical hormones are safe versus natural supplements purchased at a health food store. A lot of people think “natural” is going to the health food store and buying black cohosh or buying things that will support the system, but you’re not actually buying hormones at the health food store. You cannot compare the purchase of bio-identical hormones to supplements because the hormones cannot be summarized with simplistic terminology and are technically a medication. The supposition is that because there is no testing by the FDA, that the bio-identical hormones are “just a supplement.” Our Western prescription model is all about “In the Box,“ but because each bio-identical hormone formula is designed for each individual patient, they’re not patentable therefore will not be formally studied due to thecost versus the monetary return for the drug companies, and so will not ever be something you can go to the store and pick up off the shelf.

Getting healthy is a matter of balance and control. This means eating right, exercise, fluid intake, and having balance in your endocrine system. If you’ve ever heard the phrase, “You are what you eat,” it’s true! Our guts are part of our regulator system that moves our hormones and all the chemistry that goes with them. As part of the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine, we see that 90% of what we are eating is causing disease. If you are not eating organic meat and dairy, you are ingesting hormones that may be skewing your hormone perspective. The water we drink is full of environmental toxins. All these nice bottled waters we’re getting are actually full of toxins that our locking up our guts.

We at Alternative Wellness Solutions believe in looking at the total picture of our patients’ health, so we have a nutritionist on staff, Lisa Behrmann. In our practice, every one of our patients meets with Lisa as part of their overall treatment. Balanced, healthy nutrition along with supplements are needed in today’s society because we’re not getting the nutrients out of our soils and thus out of our foods. Our nutritionist at Alternative Wellness Solutions is constantly checking the market for the best supplements to recommend to our patients, since all supplements are not created equal because they can have variable effects on people. Herbs also can affect individuals differently.

Some people are looking for a quick-fix supplement to cure all their symptoms. You need to be cognizant that it will take more of a lifestyle change than a simple supplemental “quick-fix” to get well. The bio-identical hormones are not a panacea. The bio-identical hormones are a component to your overall health, but you need to make other changes in your lifestyle to make your body chemically synchronous. Your mind, body, and spirit is not divorced by any means and your lifestyle has to change. You can’t just fix the hormones, you have to work with all the pieces of the endocrine puzzle to really have a good hormone replacement program. Bio-identical hormones are just one piece of the total puzzle that is perfect health.