DO WE REALLY NEED TO TAKE HORMONES?

Or… To Hormone or Not To Hormone!

In a previous blog entry, I explained the difference between conventional “HRT” and the relatively new approach to treating Menopause and/or Andropause using “NHRT” or more commonly called “BHRT”. It is quite a simple concept, using either synthetic man-made substances (chemicals), or natural substances without chemicals.

OK, let’s say you made the decision to take hormone therapy since your symptoms are unbearable or the NHRT treatment method had come to you by a friend or relative as a good, healthy, effective and safe treatment.

Not everyone has severe ‘change of life’ symptoms. Some have none. Also, it appears to many that this ‘change’ is happening earlier and earlier in life. Hormones that are crucial to good health are just not produced in sufficient quantity any more. Why? And, do we really need to take them?

The reasons for why we need to replenish them are many. Primarily though, our hormone production has gone haywire due to our toxic environment. Our food from the local supermarket is tainted with hormonal substances to make the animals grow bigger with more meat to improve profits. Antibiotics are heavily given to keep them healthy, in unsanitary living conditions. The same type of alteration is being done to our vegetables and fruits as well. These added substances are absorbed by our bodies and interfere with our intrinsic hormone production, since their structure is quite similar to our own hormones.

In addition to the contaminated food chain, there are many substances one would not think to be harmful. One of the most harmful substances happens to be also one of the most prolific in our environment. In the 1969 breakout movie for Richard Benjamin, Goodbye Columbus, he is advised at his college graduation party to get involved in the production of ‘Plastics’. And what a growing field plastics became! It is everywhere, and everywhere it is, are chemicals that also inhibit and disrupt the production of our intrinsic hormones. Even cosmetic substances like makeup, deodorants, lotions, etc. have substances that cause the same action.

In addition to the polluted environment that we live in, we are living longer. We lose our hormone supply at an earlier age and we live longer. There is an enlarged span of time that we live without sufficient hormones to direct how our body should function in a healthy way. Hormones are essential to health. They are the messengers, the directors. They let the body know what it needs to feel healthy.

So yes, my friends, we do need to replenish natural hormones to the appropriate level, not in overabundance, but to the level that makes our bodies purr with energy, happiness, and life.

Terry R. Leder B.A.

Clinical Manager & Research

Pointe Medical Services/Live Well MD