We age – it’s a normal part of life. However don’t confuse aging with getting sick, feeling bad, and having less energy. It can happen, but I am looking at it not as “signs of aging” but rather “signs of imbalance/disease.” And addressing these symptoms according to age, life situation, hormone history, menopause/andropause, nutrition, medical history, etc.
Your Hormones
So what is the minimum information you need to know about your hormones as you are entering menopause/andropause?
That stage of life usually happens after fifty, and now more than ever, people have started celebrating this stage of life.
Think about it, women don’t think and don’t worry about getting pregnant anymore. If you have children, they are most likely out of the house, your views on life and relationships are changing, and you even might have more financial stability and wisdom than in your twenties.
It is a reason to celebrate, isn’t it?
Except that at that age, many of us start experiencing a decline in energy, weight gain, high blood pressure, etc. And it’s happening more in the developed industrialized countries than in rural tribal communities. There has to be a reason for that!
- One reason is that you worked really hard for 20-30 years, didn’t take care of your body, and didn’t know much about proper nutrition.
- Another reason is your genetics could have started working against you, given the influence of the environment you have been living in. Some of us are lucky with better genes, but it’s rather an exception.
- Yet another reason that you perhaps got really sick at some point in your life: you had to take lots of medication that disturbed your gastrointestinal health (as digestion and gut microbiome), and it depleted levels of nutrients in your body. And because testing for these nutrients didn’t exist, you didn’t know why you were not feeling well and never replaced them.
- It also can be hidden allergies and food sensitivities that create silent inflammation you don’t feel for years. Now we have powerful tools to detect all of them and resolve the inflammation. These tests didn’t exist before.
- And of course – your hormone levels are declining and there are many symptoms associated with it. Estrogen, for example, is responsible for four hundred functions in the body!
A Closer Look at Hormones
Many people experience weight gain and sluggishness as a result of hormonal imbalance. It generally happens in the second part of life, however, some people start experiencing it in their twenties. These symptoms can be a result of many events. Examples of it include menopause, physical stress, emotional stress, old age, incorrect nutrition, chronic illness, congenital factors, or contraceptives. When these events happen, your body gets confused and normal chemical signaling gets disrupted.
Why not just start with taking bio-identical hormone replacement therapy?
It is an option in many cases, and I am not against it; however, there is more to it due to the complex nature of your body. There are underlying reasons why hormones are low, and if these are not addressed first, you can experience health issues related to these reasons and hormone replacement therapy itself.
- By not addressing these issues and covering the symptoms, you will put yourself in further trouble. Symptoms are there to tell you that something in your body is out of sorts. So if you are not addressing it, your body will find another way to warn you, and it might not be pretty. It might seem unrelated, but it usually is. Actually almost 100% of it is related.
- Hormone replacement therapy might be dangerous for people with genetic deficiencies in detoxification pathways and methylation.
- Hormone replacement therapy might be dangerous for people with a genetic mutation or various kinds of cancer.
- Hormone replacement therapy might be dangerous for people with underlying physical conditions such as cysts, fibroids, calcifications, and any kind of infection in the reproductive organs. Doctors often don’t prescribe thorough examination like a complete ultrasound of the abdominal cavity and breast tissue prior to prescribing hormones. I have seen patient’s cysts grow while on hormone replacement therapy.
- Hormone replacement therapy requires some tweaking. I see many patients complaining that it either doesn’t do anything or they feel worse. You cannot just stop it once you started. Your body gets adjusted to receiving something from within so it doesn’t do what it did before. If you just stop something else can go wrong.
Your Body is Super Smart
It’s like a factory producing all the drugs that you see in the pharmacy, including drugs not invented yet. You are creating everything you need all by yourself when you give your body an opportunity to do that. Sometimes we are our worst enemies – when we neglect ourselves. Then our bodies start adjusting to that neglect.
Your body is a magical vessel, and it requires lots of care. It needs sleep, air, relaxation, nutritious food, proper elimination, and lots of love. It needs many other things, but here we will concentrate on the basics, mainly because basics are free and most important. Once you create a habit of self-care you will feel so much better.
Dr. Maya Sarkisyan is an expert in creating comprehensive approach correcting physical and psychological health conditions and incorporating components of emotional healing. She specializing in the most effective mind and body healing modalities such as acupuncture, NLP, NET, functional medicine, nutritional and cellular detoxification, cosmetic non-invasive procedures, food sensitivities testing, nutritional planning, and many others.
