In traditional conventional medicine when a woman or man brings up symptoms of hormone imbalance, the root or underlying cause is never considered or addressed. In fact conventional medicine docs seldom even correctly test hormone levels.
Instead drugs like oral contraceptives are used in women to block their own hormone production for example, completely and replace it with synthetic hormones that do not have the same effects in the body and have numerous, some very serious side effects.
The conventional medical treatment women receive for hormones can significantly contribute to illness in many women.
I have spent the last 20 plus years researching how to address hormone imbalance in men and women both to improve symptoms and quality of life and to address the root cause of why the hormones are out of imbalance in cases other than menopause.
Most women are bombarded with pharmaceutical drugs including synthetic hormones such as oral contraceptives, synthetic hormone IUD’s like Norplant, antibiotics, and other drugs such as steroids, pain medications, antidepressants at an early age and have never had informed consent, the verbal or written thorough explanation by a physician about the possible risks and side effects of the recommended treatment. Meaning they were not fully informed about the potential side effects and consequences of the drugs they are being told to take. You can learn more about some of the side effects of synthetic hormones in oral contraceptives here.
Many women may seek medical care for symptoms like irregular periods, heavy or painful periods, or related symptoms like acne, bloating, mood swings, weight gain, ovarian cysts, and unfortunately most often all they get for an answer is being told to take birth control pills. I would not qualify this as medical care. Unfortunately, this can actually harm patients without addressing the actual underlying root causes of their symptoms.
They are never warned about the possible detrimental side effects of synthetic oral (sometimes known as horse urine estrogens because that’s what they are formulated from) and synthetic progestins, both the components in birth control pills. Synthetic hormone contraceptives are the same as far whether the form prescribed is oral, injected, implanted its all synthetic, or whether its a different brand or dose, they are all synthetic and can have devastating effects on health including autoimmunity, systemic inflammation, hormone imbalance, thyroid dysfunction, adrenal dysfunction, candida, leaky gut, wood clots, stroke and heart attack.
A big problem especially for younger women is that synthetic hormones block your own natural estrogen and progesterone production that you absolutely need for many health reasons, including keeping you young and healthy, the difference between a young woman and her grandmother is the young woman has her hormones, and grandma does not!
The synthetic hormones prescribed to help ‘balance’ you do no such thing and their functions are NOT the same as our own natural hormones. Actually what they actually do is cause further hormone imbalance.
You may think they are helping initially, because you may stop getting periods altogether, or periods may become increasingly light or disappear, because actually your hormones have shut down so although you may believe that your periods are at least no longer heavy for example and that this is how the all is helping you, you are now actually suffering from hormone deficiency and all its sequelae and are prone to all the side effects of the synthetic hormones.
The answer conventional medicine has to questions like why do I have acne or an ovarian cyst or irregular periods, or severe PMS is shutting down your body’s natural hormone production. A better approach would be to test your hormones at the correct windows in the cycle and look at which are out of balance. If imbalances are found assess what is causing the imbalance and correct that while if needed helping your symptoms with Bio-identical hormones rather than synthetic hormones.
It is important to first understand the line of thinking or unfortunately many times lack of critical thinking in conventional medicine, so we can appreciate the return to dignity and truth that Functional Medicine offers us by bringing back our focus and attention back to the actual ways your body is supposed to work, back to the basics of physiology and biochemistry and what can cause an imbalance in them.
