The sudden weight gain and low energy levels may not be because you haven’t been able to get enough sleep at night. Nor might it be due to the fact that you’ve added a few extra carbs to your diet. These changes in your body may be all due to a hormone imbalance impacting your metabolism and other areas of your physiology. A hormone imbalance can make you feel and operate as though you are far older than you actually are. A way to correct that and get your life back on track is with bio-identical hormone treatment. This article will discuss bio-identical hormone treatment and how it can help your body function with greater ease.
Hormone Imbalances
To understand how a hormone imbalance can change your life, you first need to understand hormones. These are tiny chemicals that act as messengers. They’re produced by the endocrine system and transported through the blood to tissues and organs. They deliver messages to the cells in those areas to perform or to stop performing certain functions. They often serve as regulators. That means if your body is producing too much of something that isn’t needed, a hormone tells the body to stop producing it. As a result, energy and resources are put towards other bodily functions.
Because of this integral role, if your hormones are under, overproduced, or functioning poorly, it can make a significant change to your health. Even the slightest shift in hormonal activity can have lasting effects on your health and well-being.
Two of the key functions hormones help to regulate are metabolism and appetite. When you’re hungry, you eat. Without a hormone there to tell your body when it’s full, you might consume more calories than necessary. This could lead to weight gain. Hormones may also be less efficient at helping your metabolism break down the food that is digested. This results in a lot of waste of energy. You’ll need to eat more in order to acquire that energy. Yet you’re also including more calories.
Hormones also help regulate your heart rate. In individuals who already have an irregular heart rate, this could be a severe change that might have serious consequences for them.
Your sleep cycles are also regulated by hormones. They help to release melatonin which is a key part of the sleep process. Without proper sleep, you can become stressed more easily. Since stress can also affect the production of hormones, you can find yourself trapped in an endless cycle of sleeplessness and other problems.
Perhaps most popularly known is the role that hormones with reproduction. At birth, hormones help direct the body into a sexual gender. If something gets in the way of the hormone completing this job, sexual gender can be altered or delayed or not even properly formed. They also play a role in fertility. A man’s sperm count may be reduced if he doesn’t receive the correct amount of hormones to spur production.
Hormones help regulate your body’s natural growth and development. Both in the fetus and once born, hormones determine how healthy the body can grow and develop. Without them in supply, growth and development might be stunted.
Something as seemingly harmless as mood and stress levels are influenced by hormones. If one receives a certain hormone more so than others, it might make them more aggressive than they would be otherwise. This shifting in emotions and moods is a direct result of a hormone imbalance. Stress levels can also rise with an imbalance. Because stress also impacts hormone production, it can create problems elsewhere in the body, too.
Finally, hormones can also affect body temperature. This is critical in cases when the body is ill and has a high fever.
Causes of Hormone Imbalances
Hormone imbalances can impact the body severely. What causes a hormone imbalance to begin in the first place? It’s natural for hormone imbalances to occur during certain phases of your life. The first time you likely are exposed to this imbalance is during puberty. During this time, there is an influx of certain hormones. They’re designed to develop the body further for reproductive purposes. The second time this occurs is in menopause and andropause, when the hormone production is slowed.
Hormone imbalances can also occur due to issues with the endocrine glands. These are the areas in which hormones are created and distributed through the blood. Should the glands not function correctly, then the production of the hormones won’t be balanced either. There are a few different endocrine glands. They are the adrenal glands, the pineal gland, the gonads, the hypothalamus gland, the pituitary gland, the pancreatic islets, and the thyroid glands.
Each one controls hormones for a certain organ or set of tissues. Should that gland become faulty, then those organs and tissues will suffer for it. Certain medications can affect the ability of these glands to perform their jobs. It’s why you should always speak with your doctor before starting a new medication to determine whether or not they affect with one of your endocrine glands.
However, there are certain lifestyles and conditions that can cause hormone imbalances, too. If you suffer from chronic or extreme stress, for example, then you’ll likely find that your hormone count is affected. Being stressed slows down the production of hormones because the emphasis is placed on other processes in the body.
Type 1 and 2 diabetes can also cause a hormone imbalance. Without insulin behaving properly, it can make the transfer of hormones impossible. Also, insulin refuses to listen to the message that hormones bring. With that message chain broken, other processes in the body do not receive the message from the body as clearly as it would otherwise.
Hyper and hypoglycemia can also cause a hormone imbalance. Again, this is all related to glucose and insulin and their inability to behave with hormones.
If you have an over- or underactive thyroid, you might also be at risk for a hormone imbalance. The thyroid is an endocrine gland. If it isn’t functioning properly, either too much or too little, the hormones aren’t being sent throughout the area efficiently either.
Poor diet and nutrition can also affect your hormones. Your metabolism relies not just on proper sleep and a good amount of hormones, but it also needs proper nutrition. This is good that the metabolism can burn quickly. Processed foods take longer for the metabolism to break down and can actually slow it and make it less efficient. This places a strain on hormones, too.
Being overweight can also cause a hormone imbalance. Since being overweight is unhealthy, it takes its strain on the body. Hormones are less produced because the body is trying to direct energy and resources to protect themselves with being overweight.
Hormone Imbalance Symptoms
There are quite a few symptoms that come with a hormone imbalance. Some are both men and women share while others are primarily influenced by the individual’s sex. For men, a hormone imbalance typically means they start losing muscle and gaining weight. It’s a lot harder for them to maintain the muscle they’ve acquired over the years. Part of this is because of the slowdown in their metabolism. The body always eats muscle first. Weight gain is also attributed to metabolism and lack of energy.
Men might also notice that their hair is starting to thin out and recede. It’s likely also going grey if it hasn’t been greying already. A receding hairline can cause a lot of anxiety in men. This is because they frequently correlate hair health with their own virility.
Speaking of virility, men will likely find they are less interested in sex than they used to be. Or, even if they are interested, it may be more difficult to obtain and sustain an erection. For men who lived healthy sex lives, this change can cause a deal of low self-esteem. They may even find that their relationship with their wife or partner becomes strained.
For women, they experience much of that as well. One of the first things that they might notice is an end to their menstruation cycles. While this may be a cause of celebration for some women, it also brings with it a few other unpleasant side effects. Menopause is typically associated with hot flashes, mood swings, and weight gain.
This is all because of the hormone imbalance in their body. Hot flashes and mood swings can be attributed to the increase of testosterone in the body. Estrogen, which was running through their body previously, has been reduced while testosterone has increased. For many women, the increase in testosterone can make them feel aggressive. They may feel fine one moment, but then suddenly short-tempered the next.
Testosterone also increases body temperatures. For women, a sudden increase can happen seemingly out of nowhere. They receive a hot flash that gets so hot, they might even start sweating. This can follow them into their sleep, too. When they’re trying to sleep, the sudden rise in body temperature can cause night sweating to occur. That can make staying asleep extremely difficult. Women may also experience weight gain due to a hormone imbalance. With low energy levels, they may not be as motivated as they once were to exercise and keep the weight off.
Women may also have their own hormone-related problems in terms of sex. Vaginal drying can be quite common with a hormone imbalance. This alone can make sex unsatisfying and even uncomfortable. Women may also just not feel the drive for it as they used to. A decrease in sensitivity and lubrication are also common.
Bio-Identical Hormone Treatment
These are all the unwelcome symptoms of a hormone imbalance that many people must face unless they seek a solution. Bio-identical hormone treatment can be that solution. Often called hormone replacement therapy, bio-identical hormone treatment is different in that it uses hormones that are found in the human body. Other hormone treatments can use hormones that are derived from other species. Bio-identical ensures that the hormones being placed in the body match those that are already there. This makes integration flawless. The body recognizes it immediately and utilizes it.
Your dosage will be determined by the professional. It largely depends on the normal levels of hormones that should be produced by your body based on your size and health. Once that number is determined, you’re given a dosage. How often you take the dosage will be up to the professional and how your body takes to the increase in hormones.
Reclaiming Life
Bio-identical hormone treatment is the solution to reclaiming your life. All the symptoms experienced with an imbalance can be reversed. You can reclaim the thriving life you led before aging started to pose its problems. For those who want an effective solution for curing their hormone imbalance, feel free to reach out and make an appointment with Absolute Health Medical Center. At our convenient location in Eugene, our caring and dedicated team of professionals will be pleased to offer you hormones identical to those in your body and help you reverse hormone imbalance’s unpleasant symptoms. Contact us today to set up you consultation – we look forward to speaking with you!