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What Are Bioidentical Hormones?

Unlike common synthetic hormones, bioidentical hormones are exact replicas of your body's own hormones that it creates naturally. Bioidentical hormone replacement therapy is used to bring hormone levels up when they are too low, which causes a wide range of hormone imbalance related health issues.

Transcript:

Dr. Mark Stengler: I see a lot of men and women for bioidentical hormone replacement. That’s the use of specific natural hormones that a person is deficient in. So, for example, we see a lot of women in menopause. They’re having problems with hot flashes, night sweats, insomnia, fatigue, maybe even joint pain or poor memory as a result of hormone deficiency. And whenever possible, we try and use diet, nutritional supplements to help these patients, but there’s a fair amount of people out there with such severe symptoms, they need bioidentical or natural hormones. So in medicine today, you have two types of hormones: you have synthetic hormones, which are not the same as what your body produces; and you have bioidentical hormones, hormones that are exact same in structure and in function as you find in the human body. We see men with low testosterone levels. That leads to sexual problems, poor memory, poor energy. Women can have low testosterone as well. We see a lot of patients with low levels of stress hormones. With all the stress in the world today, people’s stress hormones like cortisol and DHEA can burn out, leading to symptoms like fatigue, autoimmune conditions, inflammatory conditions. So, we can test these hormone levels and replace them at physiological levels so a patient can heal and feel a lot better. Hormones we test for and then help treat would be:

  • Estrogen
  • Progesterone
  • Testosterone
  • DHEA
  • Cortisol

…And we certainly spend a lot of time testing and treating thyroid. Low thyroid is a very common problem in America. So we help our patients identify where their thyroid imbalance is, and then treat them using diet, supplements, and bioidentical thyroid hormones. So if you’re a woman with any hormone-related conditions such as menopause, PMS, hair loss related to your menstrual cycle or since you’ve been in menopause, uterine fibroids, ovarian cists, I certainly can help you with that type of condition because it’s, again, related to hormone balance. If you’re a man who’s maybe in your early 50’s or later and you’re having fatigue for no reason, poor memory, you’re losing muscle mass, certainly we need to test your testosterone and other hormones in your body. So, I’ve received additional training in bioidentical hormone testing and replacement. Your average doctor out there receives very few hours of training just in hormones in general. But bioidentical hormones is a special category in and of itself, and I have special training in this area. If you're interested in Hormone Testing to see if bioidentical hormone replacement therapy is right for you, contact the Stengler Center for Integrative Medicine in San Diego today!

760-274-2377