Natural Hormones – Can they extend your quality of life and help you live longer?
By Dr. Michael Wald
Living longer sounds like a great idea, but do you really want to live longer with impaired memory, loss of sex drive and suffering from heart disease, diabetes and other chronic degenerative diseases? The answer is few people want length of life in exchange for quality of life.
Optimizing one’s hormone levels has been shown to improve sex drive, overall sense of wellbeing, burn fat, strengthen bones, help maintain muscle throughout the body, lower cholesterol levels, improve memory and help ward off almost every major killer of modern living. Guaranteed? No way, but the science is accumulating that we can life longer and live better! Here are some things to think about…
We human beings age in die largely because our hormone levels diminish or fade away completely resulting in loss of quality of life and shorter life span. Women are outliving men in part because of estrogen levels. Estrogens signal longevity genes in the body that reduce the formation of molecules I like to call “cell-killers”, otherwise known as free radicals. Free radicals cause genetic damage resulting in shorter lifespans from disease. Studies in men demonstrate similar health promoting effects of testosterone, but in both men and women, it is the combined effects of many dozens of hormones that get the job done! My research has demonstrated that every single thing you eat has an effect, either positively or negatively, upon hormonal levels providing the opportunity to “turn the hormonal tide” in your favor – living better!. How do you get the hormone balance right?
Endocrinologists, or hormone doctors, are seemingly not interested in longevity approaches. Their education is focused on correcting obvious hormone deficiencies in children that fail to thrive (giving them growth hormone), providing people with low thyroid hormones synthetic hormone replacement and similar approaches in other deficiency conditions. Hormone-blockers are used if hormone levels are too excessive; these above approaches very necessary and needed. Beyond just these “obvious deficiency” problems are those of us who can potentially benefit from “optimal hormone levels” and not merely “average hormone levels”. In longevity health care, we utilize different laboratory measurements to determine where “optimal” hormone levels should be. (see – www.intmedny.com).
As you age and experience disability and disease your hormone levels are declining; doctors say that the decline in hormone levels are natural, but longevity docs say that they are contributing to your loss of quality and quality of life. Lifestyle factors such as exercise, stress reduction, sleep and diet can help keep hormones at “optimal” levels for far longer than what normally occurs in our fast-paced, stressed society. It cannot be claimed that the loss of quality of life and disease experienced today by so many of us is “normal” and to be expected. Why? Simply because we are aging unnaturally and inappropriately due to too much stress, bad food; air pollution; radiation and other adverse environmental factors. In short, we are aging prematurely!
Laboratory testing by a longevity practitioner, careful consultation and questionnaires are used to discover how to best balance hormone levels. After all, do you want to have the average heath of a person your age? Look around – it’s not so fantastic! Obesity, overweight, poor memory, loss of aerobic capacity, high cholesterol, arthritis and bone loss are just a few of the problems resulting in part from a decline in our hormone levels throughout our lives. The good news is that with the use of what are known as bioidentical hormones (a.k.a, hormones that are exactly identical to those made in the human body naturally), scientific studies suggest that we can stay biologically younger for far longer than was ever expected.
Health issues including anxiety, weight gain, depression, pain, memory loss, loss of libido, sleep disturbances, acne, muscle strength and tone, and pre-and postmenopausal are often helped by those who supplement with natural hormones, make improvements to their diets and take the right nutritional supplements. Visit with Integrated Medicine of Mount Kisco to schedule your Longevity consultation: 914-242-8844.
Dear Dr. Wald~I have hypothyroidism, 59 y/o Caucasian female, and have been expereincing hair loss, dry skin, lack of muscle strength and tone. I take synthroid and cytomel daily and have the concern that I may have bone loss due to taking these medications for a long period of time. I have two friends who have been taking “pig thyroid,” medication instead of synthroid, they believe this supplement is superior considering it contains estrogen (?). Is their medication considered a bioidentical? Do you prescribe this medication?Thank you,
Fritzi Winter
Regarding your question concerning thyroid medications both natural and synthetic and whether anyone of these can cause bone loss and other serious side effects. The quick answer is that sorry medications have shown to increase bone loss. Also, when you take thyroid medications your thyroid gland itself will shrink and produce less and less thyroid hormone by itself. Cytomel is a special form of thyroid medication and is the most active form. Animal sources of thyroid medication from pigs and cows are thought to be better buy some practitioners but there are some downsides to it. Animal sources of sorry medications are not standardized which means that they can contain inconsistent amounts of medication and throw off your entire hormonal system. Having said this, there are times when natural forms of thyroid medication are best, but these times deserve particular attention to the individual. Sorry medication has also been shown to possibly increase risk of breast cancer. As one takes the medication they may also cause thyroid hormone resistance overtime. I prefer to change the diet and to prescribe there is nutritional supplements based on very detailed laboratory work to individually supports them someone’s thyroid gland. It is a fallacy to think that the supplement on the counter that has the word thyroid and it can somehow work better than a practitioner, who does detailed laboratory and assessment tests, could. In other words, the nutritional supplement or supplements that you might never think it might be required to help your thyroid gland thought as the "" typical thyroid support of nutrients. They’re also very important considerations that both help and hurt low thyroid or hypothyroidism anti-thyroid or hyperthyroidism.
I do my best to provide natural options. For a complex thyroid issue like yours look for causes of the low thyroid instead of using band aids like hormones Check for gluten intolerance, malabsorption, other hormonal imbalances and focus on other issues with the chemistry that will undoubtedly be there.