What Are Hormones?

Hormones carry chemical signals through your body. Produced by the organs in the endocrine system, Bioidentical  hormone is extremely important to your overall health and aging. Almost every process, cell, or organ in your body is somehow affected or regulated by hormones;these processes include:

The endocrine system relies on balance to be effective. There are feedback loops that take place throughout your body that regulate the creation and release of hormones, like testosterone, estrogen, DHEA, progesterone, thyroid hormone, pregnenolone, and others. Problems with the processes in your endocrine system will throw this balance off, resulting in hormone imbalance.

What Is A Hormone Imbalance?

Your levels of various hormones change throughout your life. Factors like your age, developmental state, overall health, diet, exercise status, and others determine your overall hormone profile. Normally, your body begins producing sex hormones in puberty, then continues to produce these hormones as you progress through young adulthood into maturity. These crucial sex hormones include estrogen, testosterone, progesterone, and others. You also need regulatory hormones that you will always produce, like thyroid hormone and pregnenalone. It is these hormones’ job to regulate metabolism and other body processes.

When the body doesn’t produce enough of any given hormone, the result is hormone imbalance. This is most common among aging people because as the body ages, hormone manufacture declines. If you’re over the age of forty, you could start to experience odd symptoms without warning or explanation; the answer, therefore, could be suboptimal levels of crucial hormones.

Symptoms caused by hormone imbalance include:

Doctors in the past often chalked up these negative effects to “normal aging.” Now, however, we understand that these problems can simply be the result of lowered hormone levels, including testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, and others. This process happens on a different timetable for everyone—in some cases, it even occurs before the age of forty—and there is no regular schedule for hormone loss, but in the long term it happens to everyone.

What Are Bioidentical Hormone?

If you’re suffering from hormone imbalance, there are steps you can take to restore your body to optimal hormone levels and bring yourself back to balance. An improved diet and a regular exercise program will help, and many people also benefit from hormone replacement therapy. That’s where Genemedics comes in. Staffed by expert, trained physicians, Genemedics is prominent in hormone replacement therapy in Illinois. We use bioidentical hormones to restore hormone levels to optimum levels, reversing the negative symptoms caused by imbalance.

Since bioidentical hormone replacement therapy (BHRT) is fairly new, you should understand how it works and what bioidentical hormones actually are. They’re completely natural, safe analogs of the hormones your body already produces. The use of synthetic hormones is not new, but their replacement by bioidentical hormones has been a huge change in anti-aging medicine. Bioidentical hormones are, as their name would imply, completely identical copies of the molecules produced by your body—unlike the synthetic hormones of the past.

Synthetic Hormone Considerations

Synthetic hormones are close matches, but not identical to your body’s natural hormones. Therefore, synthetic hormones may stimulate your body to perform some functions, but your body does not ultimately recognize them as being the same as natural hormones. As a result, synthetic hormones may affect your body in both intended and unintended ways.

Pharmaceutical companies create synthetic hormones from different chemical formulas, the basis for which is often urine from pregnant mares. These are known as conjugated equine estrogens.

Synthetic hormones have been associated with severe side effects, including risks for blood clots, heart attacks, strokes, breast cancer and gallbladder disease. Women who do have a uterus may also be at increased risk for endometrial cancers. The National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, and National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute conducted studies for greater than a decade on women’s health, including the usage of synthetic hormone replacements. Known as the Women’s Health Initiative, the study found the health risks of estrogen plus progestin therapy often outweighed the benefits associated with taking synthetic hormones.

While synthetic hormones remain on the market, they can have significant healthcare consequences, unlike the uses of bioidentical hormones.

What Are Synthetic Hormone?

Hormone replacement therapy in the past involved the use of synthetic hormones. However, programs involving them often had quite unpleasant side effects on the patients on which they were used. Synthetic hormones, unlike bioidentical hormones, are derived from animals and are not perfect matches of your body’s natural hormones. They are very similar, enough so to be biologically active and produce some results, but they also differ in extremely important ways and can create unwanted chances in your body.

For instance, medical orthodoxy once held that synthetic estrogen therapy was a good solution for women suffering from the symptoms of menopause. Up to 2004, millions of women were subjected to programs of hormone therapy involving strong estrogens taken from the urine of pregnant horses. But scientific evidence from the Women’s Health Initiative revealed, alarmingly, that synthetic estrogen replacement therapy made women more susceptible to stroke and breast cancer. Since then, prescriptions for synthetic estrogen replacement have become rare.

Synthetic hormones are simply inferior to their modern counterpart, bioidentical hormones. The medical community has made great steps in recent years, and using bioidentical hormones, Genemedics is now pleased to offer completely safe and effective hormone replacement once again.

How Are Bioidentical Hormones Made?

Bioidentical hormones are created in a lab in an extremely precise process that extracts the necessary molecules from raw substances like soybeans. These molecules are then used to create a perfect analog to the naturally created hormone. Bioidentical hormones are available in pills, patches, gels, creams, pellets, and by injection.

Bioidentical versus Synthetic Hormones

Despite the results synthetic hormones can produce, bioidentical hormones have several obvious and strong benefits over their synthetic counterparts. Most importantly, they are safer. They also have a more natural effect on your body, making them more effective. Synthetic hormones contain foreign substances, unrecognizable to your body, which will change you in unforeseen ways.

The very processes by which bioidentical and synthetic hormones act are different. Synthetic hormones bind to molecules in a different way, and often aren’t completely broken down by your body. This can create many problems, some of which are very dangerous, including increased risk of blood clots, heart disease, cancer, stroke, and cognitive decline.

Bioidentical hormones avoid these issues. In BHRT, the natural hormones interact with your body in precisely the same way that internally produced hormones would. They break down much more effectively and bind to cell receptors like endogenous hormones. The result is fewer unwanted side effects and stronger anti-aging benefits.

Benefits of Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy in Illinois

Correctly administered bioidentical hormone replacement therapy can produce massive changes in your body. Patients have been known to almost immediately report a reversal of the negative effects of aging and improved quality of life, with no unpleasant side effects characteristic to synthetic hormones. Bioidentical hormone replacement therapy has already produced tangible benefits for thousands of people.

These benefits include:

What is Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy?

BHRT is a holistic, comprehensive program designed to improve your overall health: it goes much farther than simply prescribing specific hormones to fight symptoms. It begins with an evaluation of your hormone status. Simple, non-invasive tests like blood and saliva testing and assessment by one of Genemedics’ trained physicians allow us to accurately read your hormone levels: this is the first step.

Then, a completely personalized program of hormone replacement therapy involving several bioidentical hormones will be designed for you, with the ultimate goal of restoring your hormone profile to the balance you enjoyed in your younger days. Bioidentical hormone replacement therapy relies on personalization: each program is different for each patient. BHRT programs are specified based on your hormone levels, lifestyle, and unique body profile.

Are There Side Effects to Hormone Replacement Therapy?

There is little risk of side effects from bioidentical hormone therapy since the hormones used are precise copies of those produced by your body. Nonetheless, the program must be carefully managed and specified to be effective, and if the program isn’t designed or managed well there is the risk of some side effects.

To avoid these side effects, work with physicians who are expert at designing personalized BHRT programs for older patients. Genemedics employs many of the nation’s experts at BHRT, experienced and confident doctors who can assess hormone levels correctly and prescribe the correct doses. All Genemedics doctors have been through thousands of hours of training and are certified by the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine; they know how to help patients reach their health goals without risky side effects. If you’d like an evaluation to see if you’re a candidate for BHRT, call our clinic in Illinois to set up an initial consultation.