The Hormonal Roller coaster

AKA Menopause

It may seem like a very obvious statement, but women are different than men. It all stems from the way that our bodies develop, primarily under the influence of testosterone (in the case of men) or estrogen (in the case of females). Our bodies are ruled by our sexual hormones for most of our lives, until (in the case of women) it is suddenly taken away.

It hardly seems fair.

Many of the protective roles that estrogen plays are also lost. Estrogen helps to keep a woman's blood pressure down and protects from strokes and heart attacks. If you look at the statistics, women are in the minority for cardiovascular events until the age of 45-50 when suddenly they are overwhelmingly in the majority.

A woman's basal metabolic rate drops and she is more likely to put on weight.

And then there are the fun symptoms..

Sweating, memory loss, anxiety...you are going through estrogen withdrawal as though it were a drug; A drug that you've been addicted to since puberty.

Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) was popular for a while to help control the side effects of menopause, but it rapidly fell from grace when the massively increased risk for strokes was realized.

There is, however, a natural approach to help lessen the effects of menopause. It is very much analogous to giving methadone to heroine addicts. In this case, we're giving exogenous estrogen look-a likes to an aging female.

Your body will recognize certain substances as estrogen even though they are not. Basically, the chemical fingerprint is close enough that your body can't tell the difference. The chemical looks like estrogen, but doesn't have any of the negative effects of adding real estrogen back to the body (as in the case of HRT). Below is a list of herbs that can be purchased in any health food store and often in the form of a "women's formula."

Supplementing one's diet with the above mentioned herbs will help to lessen the body's withdrawal symptoms from estrogen. As with all herbs, make sure to purchase them from a reputable supplier. Also, realize that it can take several weeks to months for the substances to build up in your system enough to mask your symptoms. Do not take more than the recommended dosage.

 

Morgan Smith DC

May 8, 2007