The Blood Detective: Natural Hormones – Can They Extend Your Quality of Life & Help You Live Longer?

Who wants to live longer, as we do today, but with impaired memory, loss of sex drive and suffering from heart disease and diabetes? The answer is few people do – 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…and that’s not all!

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 – 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 and unnaturally!

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.