Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) has become a widely-debated topic and technique, usually used for treating symptoms of menopause. With ongoing medical research, it’s become clear that HRT can help many women and men with safe, effective hormone imbalance treatment options across all stages of life.
While HRT can reduce or eliminate hormonal imbalance issues, many people don’t take advantage of HRT due to a decades-old study that warned of serious health risks. Although the medical research and opinions on hormones have changed for the better, many men and women are understandably still cautious and hesitant. Let’s take a closer look at what HRT is and the benefits it can provide toward bolstering your or a loved one’s quality of life.
What Is HRT?
Hormone replacement therapy is often used to relieve the common symptoms of menopause, but more generally can treat hormone imbalances for both men and women. HRT treatments provide hormones that replace those your body either doesn’t produce or only does so in more limited quantities.
HRT is often a good treatment option for hot flashes, bone loss, vaginal dryness, and low estrogen levels. Importantly, the kind of hormone therapy a given person needs, the right dosage, and the risks will vary. Be sure to talk to your doctor before choosing hormone therapy to consider if the benefits outweigh any potential risks for you.
For women, HRT is used to provide the estrogen your body no longer makes after menopause. There are two primary types of estrogen therapy:
- Systemic HRT: Systemic estrogen — which arrives in the form of a pill, skin patch, ring, gel, cream, or spray form — usually offers a higher dose of estrogen that gets absorbed throughout the body.
- Low-dose products: Products with low-dose vaginal estrogen benefits usually come in tablet, ring, or cream form. They minimize how much of the hormone gets absorbed by the body. As a result, these low-dose vaginal preparations are usually used only to treat the vaginal and urinary symptoms of menopause.
HRT Benefits & Options
The last few decades have provided hundreds of clinical studies with outcomes that support using HRT to effectively help conditions like hot flashes, vaginal dryness, night sweats, and bone loss. These benefits can lead to improved sleep, and sexual relations, and quality of life.
Authors of Estrogen Matters, Oncologist Avrum Bluming and social psychologist Carol Tavris have helped clarify some of the misunderstandings surrounding hormone therapy and the important advantages it can provide men and women. “Our goal in writing the book and subsequently answering the dozens of emails we receive from around the world is to [educate about] the role of estrogen in ameliorating symptoms and prolonging women’s lives,” Bluming says.
At Renewed Vitality, we strive to give HRT patients the most natural results possible with the least amount of side effects. That’s why every hormone replacement treatment technique we offer uses bioidentical hormones.
Different from lab-produced synthetic hormones, bioidentical hormones are created from plant-based sources that are biologically identical to what our human bodies produce. This makes them easier for your body to use, providing fewer and less severe side effects than the synthetic versions. If you do decide that HRT may be a good treatment for you, be sure to call your doctor first to make sure you’re a good candidate.
We offer a wide range of methods for replacing your body’s previous hormone production with bioidentical hormone options. A hormone replacement therapy center like Renewed Vitality can help you feel better with bioidentical hormone treatments to get your body producing the levels it needs. Don’t hesitate to discover your options by contacting us to get started! To stay up to date with the latest HRT research and treatments, keep reading out blog here at Renewed Vitality!
Almost every person will experience hormonal changes during their lifetimes. It’s also common for both men and women to start experiencing symptoms of hormone changes and deficiencies as they age. But how do you know for certain if you’re experiencing a hormonal imbalance?
First, it’s crucial to evaluate your symptoms. In women especially, hormones are a critical aspect of every phase of life—from the beginning of menarche through childbearing age and into menopause. These hormones change over time to meet our body’s changing needs.
But sometimes hormone levels become unbalanced, creating uncomfortable or painful symptoms. At Renewed Vitality, our symptom checker services help people address hormonal problems and feel their best through each stage of life.
Common symptoms of hormone imbalances often include:
Hair Loss
The health and growth of your hair is also specifically related to your hormones. Thyroid abnormalities, for instance, can cause a person’s dry hair or skin, thinning hair, or fragile nails. Hypothyroidism, hyperthyroidism, and parathyroid disorder are also known to cause hair loss.
Anxiety or Depression
Nearly 20% of Americans suffer from an anxiety-related disorder, and 7% from a major depressive disorder every year. Women may be at a higher risk due to changes in estrogen levels during menstrual cycles, pregnancy, or menopause that are correlated to worsening depression. In terms of hormones specifically, research on the impact of estrogen receptors in the brain concluded that estrogen reduces the fear response and anxiety levels for both humans and rodents. Higher amounts of estrogen were also correlated with less fearful responses when stimulated by fearful situations.
Heightened Moodiness or Irritability
The hormone estrogen induces an important effect on neurotransmitters in the brain, including serotonin (a chemical that improves mood). For women, fluctuating estrogen levels can cause premenstrual syndrome (PMS) or depressed mood during the perimenopause (the phase before periods stop completely) and the menopause. Men with low levels of testosterone have a higher chance of developing anxiety or major depressive disorder when compared to those with normal levels.
Weight Gain or Loss of Muscle Mass
A wide range of hormone-related conditions can result in weight gain, including an underactive thyroid (when it does not produce enough thyroid hormones that help regulate your metabolism). Hormone-related weight gain or loss of muscle may also result from polycystic ovary syndrome, a problem causing small cysts on the ovaries, and menopause, which creates hormonal changes that can make you more likely to gain fat near your abdomen.
Low Energy, Stamina, or Motivation
While experiencing perimenopause and menopause, a woman’s ovaries gradually produce less estrogen and progesterone, which promotes sleep. Decreasing estrogen levels could also make night sweats worse, which disturb your sleep, contributing to greater fatigue and low energy levels.
Low Sex Drive
Low libido is a common symptom for women going through perimenopause or menopause because of falling levels of estrogen and testosterone. Additional menopausal symptoms include night sweats, fatigue, low mood, and greater anxiety, all of which can also negatively impact your sex life.
Still uncertain whether you’re suffering from hormone imbalances? Take our quick quiz that helps you evaluate hormonal imbalance symptoms. To get started, click here for women and here for men. Truly, the more information you have about your specific hormonal imbalances (triggers, causes, etc.) the better you can heal them moving forward.
If you and your healthcare provider think you may be experiencing hormone imbalances, contact Renewed Vitality today! We are the Reading area’s hormone therapy resource and can help you start feeling healthy and more like yourself again.
Being diagnosed with and experiencing breast cancer is extraordinarily difficult for both patients and loved ones. For breast cancer survivors, there are thankfully a few reliable options that can improve and restore quality of life to similar levels, pre-diagnosis. Hormone therapy is one such option for breast cancers that are sensitive to hormones.
Hormone therapy to treat breast cancer can be a great option after undergoing surgery to decrease the chance that the cancer will return. Such hormone therapy may also be used to reduce the size of a tumor before surgery, increasing the probability that the cancer will be removed in its entirety. Even if a patient’s cancer has spread to other parts of the body, hormone therapy for breast cancer may help control it.
Let’s take a closer look at how proper hormonal therapy works and can benefit breast cancer survivors.
Hormones and Hormone Therapy
Starting with the basics, hormones are essentially chemical messengers that regulate specific functions in the body, including reproduction. Hormones are created and released by many glands in the body and eventually enter the bloodstream, where they circulate to other tissues across the body.
In terms of hormone therapy, the most common forms of breast cancer are either designed to block hormones from binding to receptors on cancer cells or to decrease the body’s creation of hormones. More specifically, hormone therapy is typically used for breast cancers that are found to have receptors for the naturally-occurring hormones estrogen or progesterone. Hormone therapy can prevent these hormones from attaching to cancer cells, which stops the cells from growing, and as a result, prevents or delays breast cancer recurrence. Hormone therapy can also reduce or prevent the occurrence of a second, independent breast cancer.
Hormone Therapy Myths
While still a controversial issue, bioidentical hormones are increasingly believed to not cause cancer. The belief that they did began with a false impression back in 1991 when the very controversial Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) was stopped because of the increased occurrence of chronic disease among subjects. This study incorporated the synthetic hormone, Prempro, and study subjects were 63 years old on average.
Meta-analyses following this study have shown both that most of the subjects came with pre-existing conditions that led to the development of disease during the study, and that hormones have the potential to reduce the risk of cancer and other chronic diseases in women.
Importantly, over 15 major medical organizations now encourage hormone therapy as part of a safe and effective treatment plan for many adverse health conditions (2013). And, according to a 2015 survey conducted by the North American Menopause Society, over 60 percent of clinicians prescribe or support the application of bioidentical hormones.
When is Hormone Therapy Used for Breast Cancer?
As mentioned above, hormone therapy is typically prescribed after surgery (as adjuvant therapy) to reduce the probability of the cancer returning. It is also, sometimes, started before surgery as neoadjuvant therapy.
Hormone therapy for breast cancer is usually taken for approximately 5 years. Treatment that goes beyond 5 years is usually made available to women who have cancers that carry a more substantial risk of coming back. In essence, hormone therapy can still be an effective solution to treat cancer that has come back after treatment or that has spread to other parts of the body.
Hormone therapy for breast cancer can be an incredible treatment solution for women who have survived breast cancer and want to improve their health and quality of life while reducing their risk for future cancers. If you and your healthcare provider think hormone therapy for breast cancer could be a good option for you, contact Renewed Vitality today! We are the Reading area’s hormone therapy resource and can help you start feeling healthy and like yourself again.
