Have you been experiencing nagging symptoms affecting your daily life that you just can’t shake? Maybe you wonder whether a hormone imbalance is the culprit. Could bioidentical hormone replacement therapy be what you need?
Often we think of hormones as only being related to sexual function, but the truth is that a variety of hormones govern all of our body’s functions in some way or another because of the interplay of messages they receive and send to the body through the glands that produce them.
If you thought that the only hormones we have are estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone, well, you’d be in a majority, but in actuality a number of other chemicals are also hormones and have a lot to say in helping our bodies to experience optimal health.
Commonly there are a few hormones that, depending on their current balance, most readily affect your overall health:
Some common symptoms and their hormones:
Our hormones play together to sync up and harmonize our beings to create optimal health patterns throughout the day and night. Their job is to keep us healthy and they’re made for it! But sometimes, our modern lifestyle tasks us with patterns and workloads that can disrupt our body’s natural ability to control and balance our well-being.
So, when we start to exhibit symptoms that just won’t go away, such as long-term anxiety or stress, brain fog, sleep or weight management issues, mood swings, and long shifts in libido, investigating and caring for the glands that produce our hormones could be the root of the problem.
Symptoms |
Glands |
Hormone Relationship |
| Adult Acne/Cystic Acne |
Ovaries Testes |
Estrogen, Androgens (Testosterone) |
| Anxiety/Stress | Adrenals |
Epinephrine/Adrenaline, Norepinephrine, Glucocorticoids, Mineralocorticoids, Cortisol, Cortisone |
| Concentration Issues/Brain Fog |
Pineal EC Cells in Gastrointestinal Tract, Hypothalamus, Pituitary |
Melatonin Serotonin Dopamine |
| Digestive Issues |
Thyroid Pancreas |
Thyroxin, Insulin |
| Libido |
Adrenals, Testes, Ovaries |
Estrogen, Progesterone, Testosterone |
| Mood Swings |
Pituitary, EC Cells in Gastrointestinal Tract, Pineal |
Endorphins, Serotonin, Dopamine |
| Sleep Issues/Insomnia |
Pineal Adrenals |
Melatonin Adrenaline, Aldosterone, Cortisol, Cortisone |
| Weight Maintenance |
Adrenals Adipose tissue Pancreas |
Cortisol, DHEA (as a precursor to Estrogen and Testosterone) Leptin, Insulin |
How you can help your hormones
Your General Practitioner will have many suggestions to help treat the symptoms you’re experiencing, but working with your whole health team including both your GP and your Integrative Health Practitioner will yield the greatest benefits, because the unique trainings can complement each other in your health plan.
For example, while your GP might prescribe antidepressants or sleep aids to help mask your symptoms and ‘get you over the hump’ and on your way to recovery; your Naturopathic or Integrative Health Practitioners will work on utilizing nutrition, supplements and possibly prescribe bioidentical hormones to get at the root cause of the problems you’re experiencing and get your hormones back into balance.
Naturopathic medicine looks extensively at the whole body to determine what is causing the problem and often uncovers a myriad of issues that all work together to create the health condition. Hormones often play a role but we also must uncover why they are imbalanced.
What is bioidentical hormone replacement therapy (BHRT)?
Bioidentical hormone therapy is a relatively new form of hormone therapy that holds great promise in the treatment of many of the conditions above, and particularly in the treatment of hormonal changes that affect those symptoms above which also often accompany ageing and menopause.
While bioidentical hormones are naturally derived rather than lab created, they often need to be commercially processed to be bioidentical.
You can also receive prescriptions for standard doses of bioidentical or traditional hormone therapy that are FDA approved. However, only with bioidentical hormone therapy is there the option of receiving customized, compound dosages created just for you. These are not FDA approved though, and that doesn’t make it ‘wrong’. It simply means that because the FDA can only approve medications with standardized dosage, no pharmaceutical compounding could fall under their approval process.
Is BHRT necessary for me?
The answer, as in many health treatments, is ‘it depends’. Why isn’t it just cut and dry? Because in many cases there are numerous treatment options to help re-balance your hormones, with BHRT being just one. We custom compound Bioidentical hormones for many patients and have been for over 15 years. We see tremendous results and happy hormone patients year after year!
How can you help my hormone imbalance?
Once you’ve had a chance to share with your integrative health practitioner the series of symptoms, situations, and concerns you’ve been experiencing, we can then start putting the pieces together to outline the best options for treatment just for you.
The first set of treatment and care options that your healthcare team will look at are nutrient deficiencies and habit patterns. It’s amazing how many maladies can be remedied when we have greater focus and dedication to providing our bodies with right nutrition, nutrients, hydration, stress management, exercise, and adequate sleep.
The next set of options could be supplements. When you’ve begun to line up a more healthy routine of nutrition, exercise, and sleep, supplementation of key nutrients and minerals could yield even greater results. We have many tools in our toolbox to help get you on the right path to a balanced system, which in turn means a balanced life!
And, the third set of options (unless as mentioned before, you are struggling with your daily life related to hormonal imbalances in which case we would treat this first!) could be BHRT. When you’ve made good strides in building your personal health regime, hormone therapy could prove to be a treatment that aides great relief and balance in symptoms tied to hormonal changes in both women and men.
One of the best ways to learn more about whether BHRT could be helpful for you is to see a practitioner that specializes in this. We can help with recommendations if you need someone. They will do testing and gain more insight into your current hormone levels, and possible lines of support and relief available to help your get back to feeling your best.
About People’s Choice Compounding Pharmacy
Serving Richmond Hill, Toronto, Markham & Vaughan
Free Ontario-Wide Shipping on all Bioidentical HRT
Located on Yonge Street in Toronto, People’s Choice Pharmacy is a state-of-the art, innovative, full service compounding pharmacy serving Toronto, Richmond Hill, Markham and Vaughan, and shipping across Ontario. Our certified technicians with 45 years of experience will custom compound your medications using top quality, lab tested ingredients. Call to speak to a friendly, knowledgeable Pharmacist today!
