Think back to your early teen years where your voice began to change and bodily hair began to grow in uncharted regions.  You began to take interest in the opposite sex and acne became a huge social deterrent.  This is the phase we all came to love called puberty.  The time when your hormonal system was kicked into high gear.

Years have passed now and you begin to enter into a new hormonal phase.  Something I call: The Second Puberty (or commonly known as Menopause and Andropause).  As much as men will not admit they go through this, well…we do (it’s usually put off as a ‘mid-life’ crisis).  Menopause is actually the cessation of menses, meaning there’s no eggs being released!  Andropause, on the other hand, basically means that there’s a moderate decrease in testosterone production.  But males still produce sperm through this time.

So here’s what’s happening:

Essentially your body begins to make less of the primary sex hormones: Estrogen (females) & Testosterone (males).  So physically speaking, women begin to form more male characteristics and men begin to form more female characteristics. You know the saying, “the longer you’re married to a person, the more you begin to look like them.”

Menopause usually dominates the scene, because women are more attune to their bodies and men just shrug it off.  But both usually are afflicted with hot flashes, night sweats and usually a decrease in libido.  Here’s the kicker: you can actually prevent this from happening.

How Doc?

Well we have to step back and give you a brief schooling on your hormonal system.  Your sex hormones are primarily produced in the gonads (ovaries and testes) and also your adrenal gland cortex.

When you go through these phases, the drop off in sex hormones produced by the gonads should be buffered by the production of sex hormones in the adrenal glands.  The majority of the time the culprit tends to be decreased levels of progesterone.

The common treatment for menopausal symptoms has been hormone replacement therapy, specifically synthetic estrogen.  Most women are given Premarin.

What is premarin?

Hold on to your seats when I tell you this, but premarin is actually horse urine.  Yes, they get premarin from pregnant mares (hence the name Pre (gnant) Ma (res) u(Rin)e.  Every time I tell patients this, they look at me in disbelief and shock that their OB/GYN didn’t disclose this information.  We’ll leave this topic for a discussion at another time.

What’s the solution to hormonal balance:

1. You need to have your hormones levels properly tested.  I highly recommend salivary hormone testing which looks at the bioavailable forms of estradiol, progesterone, DHEA, testosterone, and cortisol.  I work with Labrix, which specializes in salivary hormone testing.
2. Once you get your test results your treatment plan may include support for your adrenal glands (glandulars, adaptogens and supportive nutrients), topical bio-identical progesterone, dietary change and exercise.
3. Other tests may be warranted such as a liver detoxification capacity test and thyroid panel.

If you would like to have these tests run, please call my office at 949-559-7999 and request these tests and I can help devise a treatment plan for you.

Many patients come into my office saying “I had blood work done and it all comes out normal, but I still feel miserable.” Or, “I had blood work done and some values were off like my cholesterol and my doctor wants to put me on all these medications.”

If you’ve fallen into this, my heartfelt apologies. You’re a victim of “treating-the-effects-not-the-causes” paradigm.

What do I mean by that?

Well when the average doctor looks at results from a blood test, they look for any values that fall outside of the “normal” range. And if they find a result lying outside the normal range the solution to the problem is a medication.

High cholesterol equals a cholesterol lowering medication.
Low thyroid stimulating hormone equals thyroid hormone replacement therapy.
Low potassium equals a prescription for potassium.

You get the drift.

These are all “effects” of some “cause.” It’s like a ringing fire alarm is the effect of a fire. The solution is not to turn off the alarm, but rather stop what’s causing the fire alarm to go off.

What is Functional Testing?

Move over blood panels and urinalysis, a new kid is in town. The advent of functional tests allows practitioners to see how the body is functioning (what a novel idea). Functional tests consists of two portions:

1. The tests being performed
2. The interpretation of the results

The problem with how most blood panels are interpreted is that your values are compared to a group of people who aren’t you. This means that your results can show up as “normal” according to the group levels, but abnormal for you.

So how did they come up with those values?

Basically, research was done on a handful of caucasian males and females to see what their average levels were for each test item. That became the baselines for “normal” values. Beginning to see the problem with that?

The limitations of evaluating function through blood panels:

Blood is life. The biochemicals within blood must remain at their functional state with very little deviation. To maintain this state (often called homeostasis) your body has all sorts of checks and balances. The more proper term for this is “homeodynamics.” The check and balance systems take from one system to balance another system. For example, when your blood pH begins to decrease, there are “buffer” systems which help to maintain the functional state of blood pH. This buffer system uses up different chemicals. If something is used up it must be replaced.

So basically you can have a dysfunctioning system, but still show normal results upon testing due to these buffer systems.

So…what is functional testing?

Most functional tests do not look at the end results, but rather the intermediates or buffer systems.  Some functional tests include looking at organic acids (the intermediates in biochemical processes).  Other tests include detoxification analysis to see how well your detoxification system functions when challenged.

Here are the tests that I recommend:

• Organix comprehensive profile (Metametrix)
• Comprehensive Hormone Panel (Labrix)
• Gastrointestinal Function Profile (Metametrix)
• Lipid Peroxides (Metametrix)

Metametrix website

Labrix website

If you are having a blood panel done, it would be a good idea to ask them if they can analyze these two compounds:

• Homocysteine – causes micro nicks in your artery walls, leading to arteriosclerosis
• High Sensitive C-Reactive Protein – inflammatory marker

These two are good indicators for prediction of disease.

All in all, you want to go above and beyond your basic blood & urine panels to get a bigger picture of what’s going on functionally in your body.  Remember it’s easier to prevent disease than reverse it.