Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy for Women in Oregon

Menopause is an important and unavoidable part of a woman’s development. In menopause, an aging woman’s body stops producing hormones like estrogen and progesterone, leading to a major decline in their levels. This subsequently changes the functions that the body performs, leading to the end of menstruation, ovarian function, and egg production.

Hormone Decline In Women: Perimenopause and Menopause

For today’s women, the age-related loss of hormones is occurring earlier and earlier. Women as young as thirty are beginning to note symptoms related to perimenopause and see their hormone levels decline. This can be the result of many lifestyle factors beyond age, which include:

• Low levels of exercise and unhealthy diet. A healthy diet and a life full of exercise are documented to help keep hormone levels strong. Obesity, which is becoming increasingly common, brings with it higher susceptibility to hormone-related issues.
• Chronic stress. The rush of modern life has brought on an epidemic of high stress, and researchers now understand that this chronic stress actually has physiological effects on your hormone levels: it can cause adrenal fatigue, cortisol imbalance, and thyroid hormone deficiency.
• Widespread exposure to xenoestrogens. This problem is insidious but no less common. Xenoestrogens are environmental chemicals that mimic the influence of natural estrogens, and they’re found in many common household products. Thus products that include petroleums, hydrocarbons, and plastics—as well as pesticides and hormones used in food production—can cause a hormone imbalance by giving you an estrogen surplus.

It’s not surprising, therefore, that hormone imbalance is beginning to strike contemporary women years or even decades before it affected their mothers and grandmothers. Fortunately, these hormone imbalances are treatable. Rather than simply living with hormone deficiency the way women in past generations did, you can fix these deficiencies with bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. Hormone replacement can cut down on everyday symptoms like hot flashes and sleep issues, as well as helping long-term by reducing your risk of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.

What Is Female Hormone Imbalance?

Perimenopause and menopause are commonly misunderstood, even among healthcare providers that specialize in women’s health issues. Many women are under the impression that, during perimenopause and menopause, hormone levels slowly fall until the cessation of menstruation, egg production, and ovarian function. This is true, but there’s a lot more to the story. Estrogen and progesterone work in tandem throughout a woman’s reproductive life to produce secondary sex characteristics and guide the natural cycles of ovulation and menstruation. Their levels, in particular, are tied to the menstrual cycle, and each plays a pivotal role in pregnancy. What happens in perimenopause is a disturbance in the normal fluctuation of hormone levels. Estrogen and progesterone levels do not decline on a simple schedule: they rise and fall abruptly, unbeholden to the natural rhythms on which they had acted for most of a woman’s life. This dramatic change in hormone levels causes the common symptoms of hormone imbalance, and specifically those of perimenopause:

Female hormone deficiency is extremely widespread, and it can begin up to twenty years before the onset of menopause. Though menopause generally occurs around age fifty, perimenopause can start even by thirty, and the loss of crucial hormones results in changes that seriously affect women’s quality of life. Though perimenopause and menopause are commonly caused by age, there are many other causes of hormone imbalance in women. These include:

Bioidentical Hormone Therapy for Oregon Women

If you are experiencing hormone imbalance, you can be helped. The answer is bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, which can help the problems caused by hormone deficiency and reduce the risk of long-term disease by bringing your hormones back to normal levels. The first step in bioidentical hormone replacement therapy is measurement of your hormone levels. Among the hormones that could possibly be deficient are:

Your physician will use the results of your hormone tests to create a regimen of hormone replacement therapy that will bring your system into balance. BHRT is comprehensive and has wide-ranging effects on your body. These effects include:

Thousands of women in Oregon have already helped their bodies with programs of bioidentical hormone replacement therapy designed by Genemedics. All Genemedics doctors have had extensive training to design programs of bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, and can confidently assess your symptoms and prescribe the hormones necessary to fix them. If you’re suffering from symptoms of hormone deficiency, call any Genemedics clinic to set up an initial appointment to gauge your hormone levels and see if this program can help you.