Like any big milestone birthday, hitting 40 can take some getting used to. If you’re around that age, you’re possibly juggling work and family commitments while trying to exercise, eat well, socialise, organise your kids – and whatever else demands your attention – all at the same time. There’s a lot going on.
But this is not the time you’d expect the hormonal wheels to start falling off – surely that’s at least another 10 years away when women head intomenopause and often experience a flurry of emotional highs and lows. Surely?
Not necessarily! Hormonal fluctuations around the 39-42 age bracket are normal, says Felicity Sinden from Tauranga’s Patient Advocates. As a result, she says many women begin to notice they’re not coping quite as well as they used to and, one by one, the balls they so deftly kept balanced are starting to come crashing down around them.
FROM MOUSE TO MONSTER
Normal maybe, but why tolerate hormonal imbalance when it’s easily treatable? Felicity says she regularly treats women around this age who are experiencing a maelstrom of debilitating symptoms, ranging from fatigue, weight gain, irritability, depression, low self-esteem, acne, migraines, bloating, and heavy and painful periods.
“There’s a cocktail of physical changes happening that can affect us mentally and emotionally, and spiral us from mouse to monster in under a minute,” she says.
“But by rebalancing the hormones, we can help women regain their energy and vitality – they don’t have to put up with feeling crappy all the time.”
Felicity explains that around the 40-year mark hormonal fluctuations trigger the start of pre- or peri-menopause – the ten years, or so, leading up to menopause. That’s right, there’s a lot going on before we even get to menopause!
We typically experience a drop in progesterone in our late 30s, because, biologically, progesterone is just not needed anymore as its role in maintaining a pregnancy is complete. But because progesterone is one of the body’s main regulating hormones, a lot of other hormones, such as oestrogen, DHEA and testosterone, are affected when it tapers off. It’s this hormone imbalance with oestrogen dominating that leads to the wild fluctuations of mood and, sometimes, the torrid physical symptoms associated with menopause, such as hot flashes, night sweats and sleeplessness.
“Loss of confidence and anxiety with work are other symptoms we often see around this time,” says Felicity, “triggered by the lack of sleep and low self-esteem women are dealing with, on top of the constant pressure to do more and be that super woman.”
And, as if there’s not already enough of a hormonal party underway, reducing levels of the hormone DHEA – which works alongside cortisol to help us bear the brunt of stress – is also wreaking havoc with our moods and ability to cope with daily life.
Not prepared to put up with the raging chaos, many women seek help from their doctor and will often be prescribed anti-depressants. Yet while these may help to treat some of the feelings associated with anxiety, depression and foggy thinking, they will do nothing to address the underlying cause of hormone imbalance and related symptoms, Felicity says.
BALANCING HORMONES NATURALLY
Patient Advocates helps women to regain their quality of life and get their energy back by looking at the root of the problem – hormones. Treatment requires an individual balancing of hormones in response to each woman’s symptoms, as well as medical history and test results. In most cases, the first hormone to be monitored is progesterone. Felicity and her consultants Pip and Frances determine hormone levels through saliva samples, which are tested by a lab in Melbourne.
Patients Advocates, established by Felicity in 1998, uses only natural creams and supplements to balance hormones. They are known as bio-identical hormones because they are biologically identical to the molecule produced by the body; quite different from what we know as synthetic HRT, or hormone replacement therapy, which uses synthetic formulations (progestins) that have been linked to increased rates of breast and uterine cancer.
“So many women think they’re the only ones going through this but they’re not,” says Felicity. “We’ve helped thousands of women to regain hormonal equilibrium – their mood and sleep improves and they get their confidence and energy back to cope with daily life, regardless of the curve balls thrown at them.”
Patient Advocates also treats men for hormonal imbalance, as DHEA, for example, is just as important for men as it is for women. Men get tested for testosterone levels as well, in order to determine the correct partnering of hormones required for each individual.
For more information on Patient Advocates and natural hormone therapy, please visit naturalhormonetherapy.co.nz
