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Unbalanced hormones can make you feel like a stranger in your own skin.
Anyone who has been through puberty knows that hormones have a powerful effect on one’s body. Hormones affect many areas of your health, including your mood, your metabolism, and your sexual and reproductive function. If your hormones become unbalanced, whether due to menopause or other factors, you may end up feeling like a stranger in your own skin. However, bio-identical hormone replacement therapy (BHRT) is a way to restore balance and help you feel like yourself again.
BHRT is most often prescribed to ease the symptoms of menopause, but it also can be used to treat a variety of conditions that women of all ages may experience, including:
These conditions affect millions of women. As the number of women seeking hormone-related treatment has grown, so has the mass production of pills, patches and creams by the drug industry. However, each woman’s body is different and has its own unique needs, but commercially manufactured products tend to be “one-size-fits-all,” and do not always account for the differences between individuals.
Perimenopause
Perimenopause starts a few years before “official” menopause, and signals the time when the ovaries gradually start to produce less estrogen. It typically begins in the 40s,
Menopause
Menopause occurs when a woman’s last period occurs, typically at an average age of 51 years.
Postmenopause
Menopause ends one full year after the last period , indicating the postmenopausal stage. Symptoms of this stage normally decline within a few years, but can take 10 years or more.
As you get close to menopause, your ovaries make less estrogen and progesterone, the two hormones that control your monthly cycle. These hormones also affect the health of your bones, your heart, and your vagina.
Replacing these hormones with versions made in a lab (called hormone replacement therapy, or HRT) can ease some symptoms of menopause, but it’s important to understand both the benefits and risks — and discuss them with your doctor — before deciding if HRT is right for you.
Compounded hormone therapy uses bioidentical hormones that are derived from plant sources to identically match the structure of human hormones, making it a much more natural approach to hormone therapy. Bioidentical hormones are estradiol, estriol, and progesterone. Any additions to these words and you have a non-bioidentical product.
Non-compounded hormone therapy does not usually involve bioidentical hormones. Things like Premarin (derived from the pregnant horses), ethinyl estradiol, progestins (norethindrone, medroxyprogesterone, and a host of others) are all not bioidentical and made only to work on specific receptors. Your body has hormone receptors all over, when these non-bioidentical hormones attach to receptors other than where they were studied to work, there is no telling what havoc they will cause. If you get your hormones in a small 21 or 28 day pack, you can almost be sure that you are not receiving all bioidentical hormones.
HRT can’t be described as safe or unsafe. Its effects vary depending on the types of hormone used, the form in which it is given (pills, or patches and gels), and the timing of first use (around menopause, or later). The safety of HRT can also depend on other things, such as body mass index. Factor in a woman’s family and personal medical history, and her individual experience of menopausal symptoms, and it is clear that one size cannot fit all. Whether or not the benefits of this treatment outweigh the risks will continue to be a personal decision.
Most of the time these compounds will not be covered by insurance. However, we do our best to offer fair and competitive pricing.
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