What Are Hormones?

Hormones are the way different parts of your body communicate: chemicals that send signals from organ to organ. Produced by the different organs in the endocrine system, hormones are extremely important to your overall health and long life because they play a role in almost every major function in your body, including:

The endocrine system is extremely complex. It involves several feedback loops and processes involving multiple organs, which produce and release hormones like testosterone, estrogen, DHEA, progesterone, thyroid hormone, pregnenolone, and others. If something goes wrong in the endocrine system, your levels of crucial hormones are thrown off, which results in hormone imbalance.

What Is A Hormone Imbalance?

It’s quite natural for your levels of different hormones to change throughout your life, depending on many things. Many factors can affect hormone production, including your age, developmental state, overall health, diet, exercise status, and others. Typically, the production of sex hormones in higher quantities begins in the early teenage years and the body continues creating these hormones until full maturity is reached. The male sex hormone is testosterone and the female sex hormone is estrogen, but there are several other hormones your body uses at this time, including progesterone, thyroid hormone, and pregnenolone—the latter two of which are regulatory hormones whose job it is to oversee metabolism and the endocrine system itself.

If the body begins to produce suboptimal levels of a given hormone, the result is hormone imbalance, which will in turn cause negative symptoms. This phenomenon occurs most commonly among aging people, who begin to witness a decline in hormone manufacture. Around the age of forty, then—or even earlier—it’s not uncommon to start seeing unwelcome symptoms with no clear cause. The culprit is often hormone imbalance, and its effects can be miscellaneous and hard to detect, including:

Mainstream medicine, all too often, dismisses these concerns as an inevitable and natural part of aging. But relatively recent advances in anti-aging medicine have revealed that these changes in your body are often caused by the lack of hormones necessary for healthy function, including testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone. The drop in hormone levels is especially hard to predict or detect because it happens on different schedules for different people, and it can happen either quickly or very gradually: nonetheless, eventually it happens to everyone.

What Are Bioidentical Hormones?

If you suffer from hormone imbalance, you can alleviate the symptoms you’re experiencing by restoring your hormones to normal levels with bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. That’s where Genemedics comes in. With a pioneering approach to hormone replacement therapy that has already helped many California residents, Genemedics is at the forefront of anti-aging medicine in America. Though the process also involves a healthy diet and a rigorous exercise program, the linchpin of Genemedics’ approach is the use of bioidentical hormones to restore hormones to ideal levels.

Bioidentical hormone replacement therapy (BHRT) has only been perfected fairly recently and many people aren’t completely informed about what it involves, so it’s important to understand what bioidentical hormones really are: perfect, natural analogs of the hormones your body naturally produces.

This is the key difference between bioidentical hormones and synthetic hormones, which have been commonly used in medicine for a long time. Though synthetic hormones are very similar to those produced by your body, bioidentical hormones are just that: identical, absolutely exact copies of the molecules your body uses to regulate function.

What Are Synthetic Hormones?

Synthetic hormones, which were commonly used before their bioidentical cousins, often had fateful and unpleasant results. Synthetic hormones are derived from animal sources, unlike bioidentical hormones, and their animal origins can lead to some important side effects on your body.

A good example is the use of synthetic hormone therapy on menopausal women, which was common before 2004. Synthetic hormones were believed to lessen the effects of menopause while making women less vulnerable to diseases like stroke, and millions of women underwent therapy involving hormones that originated from the urine of pregnant horses. In 2004, however, a large and comprehensive study conducted by the Women’s Health Initiative revealed that synthetic hormone therapy for menopausal women actually made women more likely to contract breast cancer or stroke, completely contrary to the drugs’ intended effects. These shocking findings resulted in a massive decline in the number of prescriptions for synthetic hormones given to women, and a change in medical philosophy regarding synthetic hormones.

In the subsequent years, medical science has made progress in hormone replacement, and it’s now possible to offer hormone replacement therapy with no risk to the patient. This is due to the replacement of synthetic hormones with their bioidentical counterparts.

How Are Bioidentical Hormones Made?

Bioidentical hormones are created in a lab using an extremely meticulous process that derives the necessary molecules from ingredients like wild yams. These molecules are then synthesized into a perfect analog for the natural hormone. Bioidentical hormones can be taken by pills, patches, gels, creams, pellets, and injections.

Bioidentical versus Synthetic Hormones

Synthetic hormones are biologically active, but there are clear and important advantages that bioidentical hormones maintain over them. They are less likely to produce unforeseen side effects because they are perfect matches for your body’s own hormones, meaning the interactions they produce are natural. Synthetic hormones, conversely, include some invasive compounds your body won’t recognize.

The very actions these molecules take are different. Hormones are designed to bond to your body’s molecules and then break down and be assimilated. The synthetic variant does not bond perfectly and often fails to be completely broken down. This can increase a patient’s risk of blood clots, heart disease, cancer, stroke, and cognitive decline.

Bioidentical hormones just don’t cause these problems. Since they interact with your body in the same manner as the hormones your body itself produces, they avoid any risky effects, binding to receptors and breaking down well. The result is that they are superior to the synthetic variant.

Benefits of Bioidentical Hormone Therapy California

A well-administered and overseen BHRT program can work wonders. Genemedics patients, after undergoing hormone therapy, have reported a huge improvement in their lives and overall health in a very short period of time, without the unpleasant effects of synthetic hormones. By achieving hormonal balance again, patients can enjoy the vitality of their youth.

Benefits of bioidentical hormone therapy in California include:

This is by no means a comprehensive listing of the benefits available to those who choose to utilize bioidentical hormone replacement therapy in Arizona. However, they do represent some of the possibilities BHRT can provide.

Thousands of hormone replacement therapy patients in Arizona have benefitted from personalized recommendations for BHRT. This begins with a careful evaluation of your current hormone levels of functioning. Examples include blood and saliva testing. Our doctor will also take a physical assessment of your symptoms.

Programs like BHRT offer the greatest results when they are individualized. By creating a personalized plan designed to correct your unique hormone imbalances, you can re-create the hormone profile you likely had in your 20s or 30s when your hormone levels were at a higher level. A personalized plan can take into account your personal goals for treatment as well as your individual symptoms to create the best possible plan.

What Is Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy?

Bioidentical hormone replacement therapy involves the prescription of hormones in order to reduce the effects of different symptoms, but it also goes much further: Genemedics offers a holistic, whole-body approach to anti-aging aimed at restoring overall health. The first step is a battery of tests to assess your hormone status, including blood and saliva testing and an appointment with a physician to note your symptoms.

Based on these results, a personalized BHRT program is designed using several different hormones, with the goal of bringing hormone levels back into the balance you experienced in your twenties. Crucial to hormone replacement therapy is its personalized nature: each BHRT program is different, designed with the needs of the patient in mind. To work properly, BHRT has to be tailored to the patient’s unique body and hormone status.

Are There Side Effects to Hormone Replacement Therapy?

The use of perfectly identical hormones in BHRT limits the risk of side effects, especially in comparison to synthetic hormones. But BHRT relies on specification and management by a trained physician, so if a program is not designed well, there is the possibility of side effects.

These can be avoided by working with doctors who have training and experience in designing hormone replacement therapy programs. All Genemedics physicians are certified by the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine and have spent thousands of hours training to administer hormone replacement therapy that doesn’t cause side effects.