The Top 4 reasons People Explore Hormone Replacement Therapy

Do you wake up everyday feeling great – like you did in your 20s? Or, do you wake up feeling tired, maybe even sad on more than one occasion? This is your opportunity to listen to your body – it’s trying to tell you something.

If you are like many people who are in their 30’s, 40’s or even older, you feel more tired than normal, feel more anxious, experience symptoms of depression and wonder where your sexual desire has gone.

There is a solution for how you feel: Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy. Bioidentical hormones are non-synthetic, plant based hormones that are identical biologically and structurally to human hormones.

Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy, BHRT, restores your hormones to optimum levels, helping you feel better and allowing you to feel young again. It helps with many symptoms of aging, but there are four that are important to most people.

You Are Always Out Of Energy

So many doctor’s hear from their patients, “I don’t have any energy,” or, “I’m so tired and feel worn out.” Fatigue is a huge issue and is a tell-tale sign of a hormonal imbalance. Fatigue is a medical term used to describe a state of lethargy; feeling tired and worn out for an extended period of time. Aging doesn’t have to mean feeling exhausted all the time.

Low estrogen levels and diminished progesterone often result in insomnia in women. Lower testosterone levels contribute to fatigue in men and women. Once your hormone levels are balanced through bioidentical hormone replacement therapy you will feel energized, and fatigue will be a thing of the past.

You Can’t Get Any Sleep

One of the reasons you feel so tired is because you aren’t sleeping well or not sleeping much at all. Hormone imbalances in men and women can lead to insomnia. It can be both a cause and effect. Basically, hormone imbalance may cause sleeplessness which in turn worsens the hormone imbalance. Sleep is absolutely essential for repair and rejuvenation.

Hormones have no chance to do their healing work without sleep. Sleep is essential to maintain proper hormone balance and health. Insomnia hormones include estrogen and testosterone. Progesterone is a natural tranquilizer and can help with sleep. Balanced hormones, achieved through bioidentical hormone therapy, provide relief from sleeplessness over time.

Moodiness and Depression Start Kicking In

The symptoms of menopause can start 15 years before it happens. Very commonly women in their late 30’s and early 40’s complain of symptoms of depression. They start taking antidepressant medication, but it doesn’t lead to the results they want. The reason women don’t receive benefit from antidepressant medication is because they are not, in medical terms, experiencing depression – their hormones are not balanced. When hormones are balanced, depression symptoms clear up. As patients feel better, they are taken off their antidepressant medication.

Hormonal imbalance produces moodiness because there are estrogen receptors in a variety of organs throughout the body and brain. If the receptors aren’t getting estrogen, you get depressed. When your estrogen levels rise, it increases the amount of serotonin available in the spaces between the brain’s nerve cells. That improves mood. Within the brain, estrogen may act as a natural antidepressant and mood stabilizer.

The brain needs normal amounts of testosterone in balance with estrogen to produce serotonin, which supports emotional balance. When lacking in these hormones, you may experience anxiety, sadness and depression.

Bioidentical hormone replacement therapy starts with a test to gauge your current hormone levels so you are then able to receive the right amount of hormones to restore optimum levels. As your levels are restored, symptoms of moodiness and depression, which were a result of imbalanced hormones, go away and you begin to feel happy again.

Lacking Sexual Desire

The number one reason men and women explore BHRT is to find out if or how it can increase their sexual desire and libido.

Testosterone is often referred to as the “libido hormone,” because it plays a significant role in the sex drive for men and women. Optimum levels of testosterone have many benefits for your libido, including sexual desire, energy and mood.

Although testosterone is the key hormone when addressing a decreased libido, estrogen and progesterone are equally important, since they can affect testosterone levels. Inadequate estrogen levels in women can reduce the effectiveness and efficiency of testosterone, and too much estrogen in men can have the same effect. Estrogen and progesterone also have an effect on libido, especially in women; physical changes like vaginal dryness and painful uterine contractions are all related to abnormal levels of these two hormones.

In men, low testosterone can reduce your ability to have satisfying sex, lack of a sex drive and erectile dysfunction. Testosterone therapy improves sex drive and sexual satisfaction in many men. Testosterone has a strong effect on the sex drive in men. In a man’s brain, there are testosterone stimulating nerves. The sex drive starts with the release of testosterone which stimulates the receptors in the brain to release nitric oxide. Nitric oxide in turn allows blood flow for an erection to occur. Low testosterone levels result in reduced levels of the hormone available to stimulate the nerves in the brain and induce sexual desire and erectile function. Essentially, without adequate testosterone, low sex drive in men is common.

Testosterone is not just for men, women need their testosterone levels optimized to feel good, too. Women produce testosterone in their ovaries and their adrenal glands. Female testosterone levels are approximately 10% of a male. Bioidentical hormone replacement therapy in women contributes to an increased sex drive.
Estradiol and testosterone implants have consistently been shown to improve fatigue, insomnia, sex drive, libido and depression. If these symptoms sound familiar, you are probably a good candidate for subcutaneous hormone pellet implants.

Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy Doesn’t Utilize Injections or Creams

Traditionally, patients who are receiving hormone therapy depend on injections or creams to raise their hormone levels.

A newer, more accurate and successful method of hormone treatment is pellet therapy; it’s what we use at Live Well Center in Chandler, Arizona. Unlike the synthetic treatments, pellets are fully bioidentical. As mentioned above, bioidentical means they are biologically and structurally no different than the hormones in the human body.

Bioidentical hormone replacement therapy using pellet implants has been used with great success in the U.S., Europe and Australia since 1938. In fact, pellet implants were a very popular way to administer hormones in the U.S. until the 1970s, when many oral and topical commercial products were developed. While the demand for pellets diminished in the U.S., pellet implants continued to be a very popular in Europe and Australia.

If you are interested in learning more about Hormone Optimization Therapy and if it’s a fit for you, please call our Live Well Center at 480-752-7600. The Live Well Center is located in suite #25 at Warner Family Practice and patients can enter that suite from the south side of the building.