Balance Your Hormones
Are you tired of feeling hormonal, stressed out and overwhelmed all the time?
Does everyone around you seem a lot more irritating than they used to be?
Are you gaining weight even though you have not changed your diet?
At GW Center for Integrative Medicine, Dr. Marianna Ledenac helps you to reduce your symptoms, rejuvenate your body, and feel healthy and enthusiastic about life again.
Our hormone balance program can help with the following symptoms:
Women
- PMS, headaches and foggy thinking
- Irritability, mood swings and depression
- Loss of sex drive
- Fatigue / low energy
- Trouble sleeping
- Weight gain or unstable blood sugar
- Vaginal dryness and/or pain with intercourse
- Urinary incontinence
- Hot flashes and night sweats
- Irregular or heavy periods
Men
- Fatigue / low energy
- Depression
- Loss of muscle mass or decreased results with workouts
- Increase in body fat and/or breast tissue
- Loss of sex drive
Our treatments can help you enjoy robust health, strong bones, improved heart health, prevention of memory loss, and energy of someone half your age.
Hormone Imbalances
Almost everyone over the age of 35 or 40 (and sometimes even 20) begins to experience symptoms of hormonal imbalances. This can be due to environmental and dietary toxins or from stress and unhealthy lifestyle which further accelerates the natural decline of hormones as you age. Imbalances of hormones (excess or deficiency of different hormones) can cause health problems as well as symptoms.
The key is to determine which hormone(s) are off balance and whether they are high or low. Unfortunately, it may be difficult to determine this by just looking at symptoms or taking a case history.
For example, symptoms such as weight gain, low energy, bloating, water retention, and headaches can be due to low thyroid, excess estrogens, low progesterone or an imbalance of cortisol. This is why most patients come in complaining: “I know my hormones are off balance but I am not sure which one or how to fix it”.
Treatment plans based upon the patient’s symptoms, physiology, and lab results are critical for anyone suffering from hormonal imbalance.
As part of your thorough evaluation of hormone function, Dr. Ledenac uses a variety of comprehensive laboratory testing for hormones – blood/serum, urine, and saliva – depending on what is determined to be most appropriate for each patient, to assess the source of hormone imbalance or deficiency.
In cases when there are low level of hormones, one option for treatment is the use of bioidentical hormones as well as other naturopathic and diet/lifestyle recommendations for a truly integrative approach.
If there are high levels of hormones (eg. estrogen) then options for treatment may include a physician-supervised weight loss program, liver detoxification and support, as well as bioidentical progesterone.
Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy (BHRT)
Bio-identical hormones, aka natural hormones or BHRT, refers to hormones that are identical to the ones that we naturally have in our bodies. Most bio-identical hormones are formulated from natural plant sources, such as yams, and are made to exactly match the molecular structure of hormones present in your body.
These natural hormones are very different to the synthetic hormones normally used in conventional medicine and therefore, they don’t have the same side effects. Conventional hormone replacement therapy (HRT) is composed of synthetic estrogen (estrone) and synthetic progesterone (progestin) and they carry unacceptable risks of breast cancer, heart attacks and strokes.
The use of bioidentical hormones in dosages that restore normal physiological levels are safe and even protective against many diseases. There are many beneficial effects of natural (bioidentical) hormone therapy that are not seen with synthetic hormones.
Our treatments support adrenal function, thyroid function, and sex hormones (menopause, estrogen dominance and PMS, andropause / low T).
Proven Benefits of BHRT
- Reduction in symptoms brought on by menopause
- Better sleep
- Facilitated weight loss
- Increased lean muscle mass / decreased body fat
- Increased bone density
- Improved memory and mental faculty
- Higher energy level and stamina
- Decreased anxiety and depression
- Increased skin elasticity / fewer wrinkles
BHRT should only be considered with a thorough understanding of how all of the body’s hormones interact with each other and by a physician who has knowledge and training in this.
Dr. Marianna Ledenac is a naturopathic physician providing comprehensive health care. She has advanced training and education in Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy (BHRT) and Functional Endocrinology.
