Hormone Therapy

When it comes to hormones…find bliss in balance.

Every year, millions of women around the age of 50 experience a slowing in the production of estrogen in their ovaries, which begins a rocky journey of hormonal imbalance. Sound familiar?

To their dismay, they often display changes to their skin and hair texture and experience hot flashes. Their belly fat swells and a good night’s sleep becomes a distant memory.

It’s not just that hormonal levels are lower than they were, it’s that they’re out of balance with each other.

And that can turn vitality, sexuality, and life-as-we-knew-it upside down.

It’s worth noting that this is not some short phase that women pass through and quickly recover from. In fact, the turbulence of hormonal imbalances can often last decades or even a lifetime if not addressed. Many women have no idea when they experience their first hot flash that they’re looking over the edge of a life disruption that could drain their joy and energy for several decades.

Given how disruptive hormonal imbalances are and how long they can last (from peri-menopausal to menopausal to post-menopausal), women deserve a better hormonal rebalancing strategy than grin-and-bear-it. When hormone levels dip and the balance shifts, we want you to know you CAN take safe, healthy steps to balance those hormones and feel like yourself again.

Restoring hormonal balance can put you back in control of your health and reverse many of the symptoms of aging. You deserve to enjoy your own sharp mind, stable moods, beautiful skin, ideal weight, and solid mental health during your midlife decades.

Symptoms that may indicate hormonal imbalance

• Anxiety
• Brain fog (reduced mental clarity/focus)
• Sadness/depression, fast mood swings
• Dry, wrinkled skin
• Fatigue
• Hair loss, hair texture, wiry hair
• Hot flashes
• Loss of libido (sex drive)Mood swings
• Difficulty falling asleep
• Restless sleep
• Spotting between cycles, heavy bleeding, irregular cycles, painful cycles
• Tender breasts
• Vaginal dryness
• Weight gain, especially around the belly

Our approach to rebalancing hormonal levels

Our three-step approach to rebalancing your hormone levels takes your entire system into consideration. Here’s what you need to know:

Treating the whole you

Modern medicine often operates in silos, treating symptoms without diagnosing the root cause. You might see one specialist for GI issues, another for blood sugar imbalances, and yet another for hormonal imbalances. Each specialist primarily diagnoses what’s wrong within their area of expertise, makes recommendations, and, more often than not, prescribes medications for that isolated issue.

When you come to BioDesign Wellness Center, you’re treated like the unique individual you are. We listen to make sure we understand your health history, your current symptoms, and how these symptoms are impacting you. We also conduct thorough testing and use your lab results to develop a personalized approach for restoring both your hormonal and overall health. We often find that root causes completely independent of your hormone levels are also impacting your hormonal balance. We will address those core causes AND rebalance your hormones.

Starting Hormone Therapy

If lab tests indicate you would benefit from Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT), you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the bio-identical treatment options available here at BioDesign Wellness.

Your treatment will be guided by a wide range of factors, including but not limited to:

• Age
• Family history
• Genetics
• Hormone levels
• Additional health complications

While bioidentical hormone pellets work best for some women, others prefer to use topical and oral treatments. For some, a combination of approaches works best. All BioDesign hormonal treatment programs are bio-identical and designed to treat the entire person, not just increase hormone levels.

Progressing and Monitoring Hormone Replacement Therapy

We will be here for you during your entire midlife journey and beyond. Hormones are constantly in flux throughout life and your levels and rebalancing needs will also fluctuate. It’s important to be on the right bio-identical hormones for the right amount of time and to shift levels and ratios as needed to optimize your wellbeing. Our goal is nothing other than helping you look and feel your absolute best, and we achieve that by monitoring and adjusting your treatment as you age.

Resources for understanding more about HRT and the medical field’s current recommendations

We spent years studying, training, and writing about hormone replacement therapy. Whether you seek treatment from our Tampa functional medicine clinic or another healthcare provider, it’s important that you go into the HRT process fully informed. Below is a selection of recent post we’ve authored for the BioDesign Wellness Blog on the subject of hormones and hormone therapy.

Stop Losing Sleep Over Hot Flashes and Night Sweats: The Cortisol Connection

Because so many factors can cause or contribute to hot flashes and night sweats, effective diagnosis and treatment involve more than merely destressing and avoiding certain triggers. Read this post on our blog for insights into cortisol’s connection to hot flashes and night sweats.

Separating Fact from Fiction About Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT)

This blog post explains the history of Hormone Replacement Therapy from a medical doctor’s perspective. It looks at the studies that have received media attention and provide an up-to-date look at study results.

Hormone Replacement Therapy is Safe — When Done Right

This post examines HRT concerns and provides additional information and context to deal constructively with those concerns.

What You Can Expect with Hormone Replacement Therapy

Read this post for a simple primer of the process involved in diagnosing and treating our female patients suffering from a hormone deficiency.

Addressing Hormone Issues with Proper Nutrition and Diet

Most foods purchased in a package have a variety of unhealthy (oxidized) fats. Eating healthy fats over a 12-month period will start to restore your cell membranes to a healthy state, allowing for better hormone reception. Read this post with all the details.