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Hormone Optimization: What Is It And Why Try It?
Discover the benefits of hormone optimization and why you should consider it. Regain balance and vitality with Next Health. Contact us for more information.
Next Health Staff
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February 13, 2024
Medically reviewed by Next Health Clinical Director, Jessica Brewer
Our body’s hormones dictate much of what we feel, think, and accomplish. When everything is perfectly balanced, we feel great and can tackle our goals with vigor. But sometimes our hormones become unbalanced, leading to a host of potentially uncomfortable side effects.
Hormone optimization is a relatively new type of treatment now accessible to regular folks. By utilizing bio-identical and synthesized hormones, wellness professionals like those at Next Health can offer a plethora of potential benefits and health boosts.
Let’s break down everything you need to know about hormone optimization and why you might consider trying it in the near future.
Hormones – An Overview
Hormones are some of the most basic chemical messengers that allow many bodily operations to take place. These chemical messengers are produced by endocrine glands that are scattered throughout the body and which secrete hormones into your bloodstream, which then carries them to appropriate organs and tissues.
Hormones are used to catalyze or cause different bodily reactions or developments. They are thought to be in large part or even entirely responsible for all kinds of bodily changes like:
- Growth and bodily development
- The metabolism of certain food items
- Cognition and mood
- The maintenance of your body’s temperature and thirst signals, as well as hunger
- Sexual function as well as reproductive growth, health, and development
This makes hormones incredibly important. As children, our bodies produce an appropriate amount of hormones so that we can grow into our adult selves. But after we reach peak reproductive age, our bodies gradually taper off hormone production in many ways. This can cause many negative changes to lifestyle, energy level, mood, and sexual potency.
What Are Hormonal Imbalances?
A hormone imbalance is simply a state when your body has too little or (more rarely) has too much of a particular hormone. This can cause a number of unpleasant side effects or lead to developmental issues.
Hormone changes can be caused due to a number of life events or circumstances.
- Many people experience hormone imbalances as they get older since their endocrine system produces fewer hormones by default
- Furthermore, hormone receptors become less sensitive as we age. Even people whose endocrine systems produce the same level of hormones may still be less sensitive to what their bodies make as a result
- Health conditions can affect hormone production as well. For instance, diabetes can affect your endocrine system since your pancreas may not produce the correct amount of insulin
- Women in particular often experience hormone imbalances as they age. Menstruation, pregnancy/birth, and menopause can all affect hormone levels throughout the body
- While men don’t see hormone shifts quite to the same extent as women, they still generally experience significant testosterone drop-offs as they get older
Hormone imbalance symptoms can vary. However, experiencing a hormone imbalance could lead to symptoms including:
- Hot flashes
- Insomnia or fatigue
- Depression and other mood disorders
- Osteoporosis, especially for women
- Loss of libido and general energy
- Weight gain
- Lower or slowed cognitive function
It’s because of these are symptoms that more and more people are looking into hormone optimization or replacement.
Hormone Optimization – What Is It?
Any hormone optimization treatment plan will either replace or bolster hormone production in the body in order to offset many or all of the above symptoms. In many cases, hormone optimization is carried out by scientifically replacing lost or unproduced hormones with “bio-identical” hormones that can be synthesized in a lab.
Regardless, hormone optimization is used to decrease and minimize the effect of aging and lower hormone production, as well as to offset some of the side effects associated with certain diseases or conditions.
Many health optimization clinics, including Next Health, include hormone optimization services as part of their next-gen laboratory offerings. This makes hormone optimization available to many more people than it was before.
Bio-Identical Hormone Replacement Therapy
Next Health specifically uses bio-identical hormone replacement therapy as our ideal hormone optimization procedure.
What exactly is a bio-identical hormone? Bio-identical refers to molecular structure – by using bio-identical hormones, your body will use these and treat them as though your own endocrine system produced them. This minimizes the risks of side effects or hormone rejection and helps to support your endocrine system. It can even sometimes cause it to produce more natural hormones over time.
Through using bio-identical hormones, many negative symptoms sometimes associated with decreased hormone production, like weight gain, decreased libido, irritability, and more might all be minimized or alleviated.
The best news is that many people can be appropriate candidates for this type of hormone replacement therapy. Women who experience many of the symptoms of aging or menopause would do well to investigate this hormone optimization therapy.
At the same time, men who are aging and seeing gray in their hair may benefit greatly from hormone optimization therapy that emphasizes testosterone replacement and production.
Our bio-identical hormone replacement therapy includes:
- A standard blood panel test. With this test, our well-trained, professional wellness experts can check out your testosterone and estrogen levels
- Then we’ll perform a comprehensive review of the results. This will allow you to know exactly what we recommend and help you determine whether hormone replacement therapy is a good choice for your needs
- If all seems well, you can go through the therapy and start seeing some of the potential benefits of hormone optimization for yourself
Benefits of Optimizing Your Hormones with Hormone Replacement Therapy
Speaking of benefits: there are a lot to consider. Bio-identical hormone replacement therapy can be an excellent way to offset many of the disadvantages associated with aging, although hormone imbalances can occur at any time due to stress, poor nutrition, lack of sleep, and other factors.
Let’s break down some of the potential benefits you might see with hormone optimization now.
Increased Energy/Motivation
Testosterone and other key hormones are crucial for maintaining proper bodily vitality and energy levels. If you constantly seem drowsy or unmotivated, you may be suffering from a hormone imbalance. Therefore, undergoing hormone replacement therapy could result in a boost to your daily energy levels and may make you feel and act a lot younger.
Improved Cognition
Lower cognition or slower little response rates are often associated with hormone imbalances and the aging process. But by replacing many diminished hormones with bio-identical ones, you could escape some of these symptoms and return your cognition levels to their previous fast states.
Better Sleep
Many people report experiencing lower sleep quality when they are in the midst of a hormone imbalance. This is because hormones are largely responsible for regulating your sleep cycle and for telling your body when it’s time to start shutting down for the night.
If your hormones are imbalanced, your body may not become tired when it gets dark at night or may fail to rise and gain energy with the sun. By balancing your hormones or replacing ones that your body no longer produces, you could experience a more natural sleep cycle and more restful sleep as well.
Greater Muscle Gain
It’s no secret that testosterone production is closely linked with muscle gain, both in terms of size and rate of progress. Thus, boosting your body’s testosterone supply is likely to result in greater muscle gain for both men and women.
Indeed, many men find that hormone optimization is sometimes helpful when they try to work out in middle age or older, as their bodies no longer produce the same level of testosterone as they did when they were younger men.
Easier Dieting
Hormones are responsible for regulating your appetite and for sending hunger or thirst signals to the brain. This is why many people who experience hormone imbalances have difficulty sticking with diets or controlling cravings.
Replacing some hormones with bio-identical ones from Next Health could help you retain a diet over the long-term or find relief from constant cravings you can’t seem to escape.
Are There Risks or Side Effects?
So long as you undergo hormone optimization with a clinic like Next Health, the potential for negative side effects is very low. That’s because we only provide the right amount of hormones based on the test results from your bloodwork and resulting examination.
Furthermore, we’ll work with you every step of the way and monitor your progress to make sure that your body properly absorbs and utilizes the bio-identical hormones crafted for this purpose. While putting hormones in the body does necessarily come with some medical side risks, these can almost always be minimized with the right preparation and careful consideration.
Summary
In the end, hormone optimization is a growing trend, and one that many regular people are discovering may hold the key to a more active lifestyle and greater energy levels, even in older age.
Hormone optimization potentially represents real resistance to many of the side effects of getting older.
Even better, it can be a very effective treatment for abnormal hormone imbalances, like those experienced due to environmental stressors or lifestyle factors.
Sources
https://www.news-medical.net/health/What-are-Hormones.aspx
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