Bioidentical Doctor’s List
We have added a new bioidentical doctor to our bioidentical doctors’ list.
The doctor’s name is Dr. John Haest, M.D., located in Austin, Texas at the Austin Wellness Clinic. His contact information to book at appointment is on our US bioidentical doctors page.
Dr. Haest of the Austin Wellness Clinic in Austin, Texas treats the symptoms of menopause in a holistic manner, using an integrated approach including lifestyle, health nutrient supplementation, saliva hormone testing and and only natural bioidentical hormone replacement therapy for the treatment of hormone deficiency.
“Hormone replacement therapy is one of the many tools the doctors at Austin Wellness Clinic use when optimizing a person’s well being. Hormones regulate nearly every metabolic process in your body. When your hormones are not properly balanced, your metabolic functions are affected resulting in symptoms, reduction in quality of life, and if not treated, ultimately disease. It also becomes much more difficult for your body to benefit from optimized nutrition and fitness. With a healthy lifestyle comprised of regular exercise and a well balanced diet, bioidentical hormone therapy or hormone replacement therapy (HRT) can be a great adjunct to a preventive health strategy.”
”Millions of women today are suffering from hormonal imbalance and experiencing the signs of menopause and perimenopause. The frequency and severity of symptoms can vary greatly among individual women. The most common symptoms are weight gain, hot flashes, night sweats, difficulty sleeping, mood swings, vaginal dryness and loss of libido. Often times, bioidentical hormone therapy is part of the solution.”
The doctors at the Austin Wellness Clinic use saliva testing and treat menopause, premenopause and andropause with natural bioidentical hormone therapy. If you would like to read more about their program and in depth treatments and weightloss services, please visit their website to read further.
If you are seeking a bioidentical doctor in your city or state, you can also check out our doctors page.
Filed Under Bioidentical Doctors, Menopause, Perimenopause | Leave a Comment
Menopause and Bioidentical Hormones
“Menopause is not for sissies, so said bioidentical hormone pioneer Suzanne Somers in one of her many books on bioidentical hormones and menopause. For most women, menopause is a very difficult change of life both physically and mentally. Some women, the lucky few, experience very few, if any symptoms. But for most women, it is a change in life that needs some lifestyle adjustments and getting used to.
Not only is menopause a passage to a new stage in life, but it comes with a variety of health issues and bodily changes. Menopause hormones change, affecting everything from mood, diet, weight gain, libido, sleep, hot flashes, night sweats, energy levels and outlook on life. Some women can control the symptoms of menopause with just a few lifestyle changes such as diet, sleep habits, exercise and quitting smoking and lowering alcohol intake. Other women will do all of this and have to supplement with menopause supplements to ameliorate what is missing in the diet. Most women though will have to supplement their diminishing hormone levels with natural bioidentical hormones. To do this, a woman has to find one of the many bioidentical hormone doctors to measure the hormones levels in the body.
A bioidentical hormone doctor will do a hormone panel on a patient to discover what hormones, such as progesterone, estrogen, testosterone need to be replaced with bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. Only the hormones that are missing will be replaced in an individualized natural bioidentical therapy. Once your doctor has determined which hormones you may be missing, he will write a prescription for you and you will take this to a compounding pharmacy which will make up your prescription for your hormone replacement.
Bioidentical hormones are available in creams, pellets, and gels. These are used most often, in a biomimetic manner which means cyclically so that it mimics the natural rise and fall of hormone levels in the body. The creams are applied to the skin, rotating the areas of application and the hormones are absorbed through the skin. Usually, the estrogen is taken every day of the month and the progesterone is taken starting on day 12 and continued for two weeks. After a period, the patient usually takes a week off from the bioidentical hormones and then begins again. Your bioidentical doctor will tell you the exact schedule you should be taken your natural hormones.
After the Women’s Health Initiative study in 2002 which revealed that synthetic hormone replacement therapy was a bad deal for women, millions of women stopped taking these synthetic hormones such as Premarin. This women’s’ health study showed that synthetic hormones increased the risk of breast cancer, strokes, cardiovascular disease and pulmonary embolism. Women decided that they would rather suffer the symptoms of menopause than deal with these health risks. However, women began to search for more natural solutions to the symptoms of menopause. They began to change their diets, exercise more and look at natural health supplements for menopause. Also, they became aware slowly, thanks to Suzanne Somers and Dr. John R. Lee – another pioneer in North America for bioidentical hormones of natural hormone replacement therapy. Dr. John Lee wrote many books about the use of natural hormones and healthy lifestyle. Women became aware that women in Europe had been using bioidentical hormones for the treatment of menopause symptoms for over 55 years. Women in North America slowly began demanding more natural alternatives to combat the symptoms of menopause. Doctors began to answer this need for hormone replacement therapy. Slowly, they trained and more and more bioidentical doctors become available for women to obtain natural hormone replacement therapy.
In menopause, estrogen levels can either become high or low. Estrogen dominance is actually a dangerous condition for women and this can be countered by using natural bioidentical progesterone and eliminating xenoestrogens from their lives. Xenoestrogens are contained in foods, chemicals that you use in the house and environmental pollutants. Eliminating these and using bioidentical progesterone for treating the symptoms of menopause will lead you to a higher quality of life as well as aid in treating sleep problems, boost your libido, help solve the problems of night sweats, hot flashes, menopause weight gain and improve your mood or symptoms of depression that accompany menopause.
Natural bioidentical estrogen comes in several forms. The bioidentical doctor may give you’re a prescription for estriol or bi-est or tri-est. Estriol is the weakest type of estrogen. Bi-est is a combination of estradiol and estriol estrogen hormones. Tri-est is a mixture of the three estrogens – estradiol, estriol and estrone. Your bioidentical doctor will decide which is the right combination for you and your hormone levels and what needs to be replaced.
Any natural estrogen therapy must always be combined with natural bioidentical progesterone. Natural progesterone will counteract any problems with estrogen. Using natural estrogen by itself can also be dangerous. What we are looking for here is hormone balance and that is the goal with natural bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. Being out of balance is not a good thing. Your hormones – all of them – need to be balanced.
As well as using natural bioidentical hormones, you must also make sure that you make changes to your lifestyle to maximize your health and well being. It is vital that you eat healthy foods for menopause, include exercise in your daily routine, quit smoking and reduce your alcohol intake. Red wine is okay but in moderation, which is good to know. There are many anti aging supplements that you can take along with bioidentical hormones and your diet. These will help supplement your diet because we all should know that before your food reaches your table and after cooking, many of the natural supplement and vitamins we need have been depleted.
Women who start with natural bioidentical hormone replacement therapy will find that their hot flashes will disappear, along with those nasty nightsweats, their weight will be easier to manage, their mood and depression will disappear, their quality of sleep will improve and their interest in their partners will return. In fact, most women will find that they are feeling terrific and that menopause, the change in life, is not such a bad thing after all. Menopause is not meant to be a curse; it is a new passageway to a new life and new beginnings. It’s not meant for sissies because it is a difficult time in life to enter into, but if you are suffering the severe symptoms of menopause, it can all be dealt with by using natural bioidentical hormones. Who needs hot flashes anyway? Life is out there for all of us.
Filed Under Bioidentical Doctors, Bioidenticals, Biomimetics, Estrogen, Hormones, Menopause, Progesterone, Testosterone | 1 Comment
European Research on Bioidentical Hormones
Study in France on Bioidentical Hormones
For those naysayers who say that no research has been done on bioidentical hormones, one would have to say that they are incorrect. A French study has been done whereby researchers looked at combined hormone replacement therapy and the risk of breast cancer in 3,175 women. Other European medical studies also support the idea that bioidentical hormones are safer for long term use than synthetic hormones. A problem that still remains is that natural bioidentical hormone replacement therapy has not been studied for long term use.
The French study is entitled: “Could transdermal estradiol plus progesterone be a safer postmenopausal HRT?” This review is written by Marc L’Hermitea, Tommaso Simoncinib, Sarah Fullera, Andrea Riccardo Genazzanib and published online August 22, 2008. Visit this European website on Midlife Health and Beyond at www.maturitas.org.
The review states:
“Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) in young postmenopausal women is a safe and effective tool to counteract climacteric symptoms and to prevent long-term degenerative diseases, such as osteoporotic fractures, cardiovascular disease, diabetes mellitus and possibly cognitive impairment. The different types of HRT offer to many extent comparable efficacies on symptoms control; however, the expert selection of specific compounds, doses or routes of administration can provide significant clinical advantages.”
In another article collectively written by de Lignières B, de Vathaire F, Fournier S, Urbinelli R, Allaert F, Le MG, and Kuttenn F., from the Service d’Endocrinologie et Médecine de la Reproduction, Hôpital Necker, Paris, France reports:
“The largest-to-date randomized trial (Women’s Health Initiative) comparing the effects of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and a placebo concluded that the continuous use of an oral combination of conjugated equine estrogens (CEE) and medroxy-progesterone acetate (MPA) increases the risk of breast cancer. This conclusion may not apply to women taking other estrogen and progestin formulations, as suggested by discrepancies in the findings of in vitro studies, epidemiological surveys and, mostly, in vivo studies of human breast epithelial cell proliferation showing opposite effects of HRT combining CEE plus MPA or estradiol plus progesterone. To evaluate the risk of breast cancer associated with the use of the latter combination, commonly prescribed in France, a cohort including 3175 postmenopausal women was followed for a mean of 8.9 years (28 367 woman-years). In total, 1739 (55%) of these women were users of one type of estrogen replacement with systemic effect during at least 12 months, any time after the menopause, and were classified as HRT users. Among them, 83% were receiving exclusively or mostly a combination of a transdermal estradiol gel and a progestin other than MPA. Some 105 cases of breast cancer occurred during the follow-up period, corresponding to a mean of 37 new cases per 10 000 women/year. Using multivariate analysis adjusted for the calendar period of treatment, date of birth and age at menopause, we were unable to detect an increase in the relative risk (RR) of breast cancer (RR 0.98, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.65-1.5) in the HRT users. The RR of breast cancer per year of use of HRT was 1.005 (95% CI 0.97-1.05). These results do not justify early interruption of such a type of HRT, which is beneficial for quality of life, prevention of bone loss and cardiovascular risk profile, without the activation of coagulation and inflammatory protein synthesis measured in users of oral estrogens.”
Source: PMID: 12626212 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Millions of women have turned against synthetic hormone replacement therapy since the Womens Health Initiative Study in 2002. Women are seeking natural ways to resolve the symptoms experienced with menopause, such as hot flashes, sleepless nights, depression, weight gain, etc., and have turned to bioidentical hormone replacement therapy and are experience a relief of symptoms and a better quality of life. It would be good to hear of a new study done in North America on bioidentical hormones. Many bioidentical hormone doctors and professionals are demanding that such a study be done.
Filed Under Bioidentical Doctors, Bioidenticals, Biomimetics, Estrogen, Hormones, Menopause, Perimenopause, Progesterone | Leave a Comment
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