How-to: Helping Your Hormones

Are you menopausal or peri-menopausal? Knowing how to support yourself during this period in your life may make the difference between a life of comfort and a life of discomfort.

Ingredients:

• a woman 30 - 65 years of age
• one or more of the following most common peri-menopausal/menopausal symptoms:  crying at the drop of a hat, irritability, anxiety, depression, insomnia, loss of libido, vaginal dryness

Check out AWARE for a more comprehensive list of symptoms.

Steps:

1. Become informed about menopause and peri-menopause.  Check out these highly informative websites: AWARE as well as Dr. Tory Hudson.
2. Develop a relationship with a healthcare professional experienced in hormonal therapy, especially bio-identical hormone therapy (naturopathic doctor or holistic medical doctor).
3. Get a salivary hormone test for 5 hormones:  estradiol, progesterone, DHEA, testosterone and cortisol.  In the US ZRT does this test.  In Canada Rocky Mountain Lab does it.
4. At times, excellent hormonal support during this time in your life will need to be prescribed by a licensed healthcare practitioner and created by a compounding pharmacy. 
5. At other times, you can self-prescribe natural hormones by Bezwecken.  (Opinion:  These low dose bio-identical hormones are among the best I have ever seen in clinical practice).  Then again you may want guidance from a healthcare practitioner.
6. Read my testimony Hormone Heaven/ Hormone Hell.
7. If you have osteopenia or osteoporosis, check out Dr. Tory Hudson's site.  At a conference that she was lecturing at, I recall her saying that testing for hormones (through blood or saliva) was not useful for this condition.  This is because this type of testing did not accurately assess the need for hormones as treatment therapy.