Having trouble losing weight? Unexpected hair loss freaking you out? Loss of sex drive or worse, your partner has a seemingly insatiable appetite for love? Are you curious if you have any predispositions for certain types of cancer?
Hormones are extremely important. They play an integral part of human growth, development, healing, and metabolism to name a few major functions. General stress will increase some hormones while depleting others. Sluggish liver function will cause deficiencies in hormone conversion resulting in a similar circumstance. The same goes for malnutrition or malabsorption issues. As important as they are, an excess or deficit in hormones is usually related to one of those underlying issues as mentioned before.
In our office we don’t just address a hormonal imbalance. In fact, it’s 90% of the time one of the last things we will check for. Suppose we tested you and the results indicated that your sex hormones were elevated? What does that mean? Well, if we did not address the GERD, infection, underlying inflammation, or fact that you were training for a triathalon then we would miss the fact that hormones may have been temporarily elevated to help increase your body’s rate of healing. If this condition becomes chronic then hormone levels would eventually drop too low.
As humans if we see something is lower than what we expect, what do we instinctively do? We add to it to build it up. Why supplement hormones your whole life when it is just as likely another underlying trigger? (Note: this statement does not apply if you have had a hormone-producing organ entirely removed such as the thyroid. You will be on thyroid hormones for the rest of your life until someone invents a functioning implantable thyroid gland.). In the case of an autoimmune condition, which is a common trigger for hypo/hyperthyroidism, if we can address the cause of the inflammation before the damage is irreversible we can save your thyroid, life, uterus, etc.
Ok, we got a little off-topic. Hormones are extremely important, and we test them and work on them when the time is right. Because they help your body heal, any underlying cause for inflammation needs to be addressed before we will see any consistent improvement in hormone levels. Get your food allergies tested. Get a stool test to check for infections and microbial balance. Detoxify your liver. Then you can get a good sense of where your hormones levels will be.