Why do I work with hormones? Essentially, I like powerful medicine. I try to help patients with interventions that are going to have a big impact on overall mental, emotional, and physical health. It’s easy to come up with a big list of supplements and pills that are supposed to do great things. But I am interested in approaches that help people FEEL better. Right away.
There are few topics in medicine that create as much controversy as hormone replacement therapy. And for good reason- hormones are an enticingly powerful way to affect nearly every bodily function, and the manner in which they have been medically used (and abused) has created some real risks.
But, if you work with a doctor who is an expert in bioidentical hormones and who is committed to using the “lowest effective dose, for the shortest amount of time,” hormone replacement is very safe. Scientific research over the past ten years has repeatedly confirmed that bioidentical hormones are not associated with the adverse effects of estrogen made from horse urine (Premarin) and artificial progesterone.
So…why ARE hormones so powerful? They are powerful because they control how your body produces energy, how it utilizes the food you eat, and how you store energy. To help illustrate what I am talking about, let’s consider food and fat.
Common sense dictates that if you eat something that is high in fat, it will make you fat. Common sense also dictates that if you eat something that is high in cholesterol (eggs, for example), your cholesterol levels will rise.
However, in both of these instances, science has repeatedly demonstrated that common sense is wrong. This fact even comes as a surprise to many doctors. The conventional medical wisdom around dietary fat, heart disease, and obesity was established before we had effective means of measuring, and therefore understanding, hormones.
When we take into account how your body’s hormones react to the food you eat, AND couple that with the results that people get (and don’t get) with different kinds of diets, one thing becomes very clear:
-It’s not what you eat that matters, it’s what your body does with what you eat that matters. And it’s your hormones that determine what your body does with what you eat.
Here are some examples of the effects of hormones (especially insulin):
-In general, if you eat more calories, your metabolism speeds up and your weight stays the same. Conversely, if you starve yourself and eat fewer calories, your metabolism will slow down, making it difficult to lose weight.
-Eating sugar and refined carbs increases insulin which causes your body to make and store more fat.
-If you avoid carbs by eating lots of fat and protein, insulin levels will go down and you will burn more fat between meals, thereby losing weight, even if you eat as many or more calories as before.
-Balancing sex hormones (estrogen, progesterone, testosterone) will help lower insulin so that you don’t make as much fat.
-Optimizing your thyroid and adrenal hormones will keep your metabolism humming so that you are able to burn fat.
Shockingly, an obese person is, on a cellular level, starving. Understanding this cellular starvation and knowing what to do about it is all about harnessing the power of hormones- both with diet and emotional advice and bioidentical hormone replacement.
If you are interested in learning more, please look for an announcement later this month regarding an upcoming 3-part series on bioidentical hormones. The focus of the three classes:
