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Menopause & Women's Health
Women are no strangers to hormones. They are with us constantly during our child-bearing years regulating our monthly cycle. For many women, this becomes a normal and expected routine. But for a few, pre-menstrual syndrome is a monthly trial with negative effects on family, friends, and career. Later in life, shifting hormone levels signal the end of our reproductive years and can bring irritating or disruptive symptoms such as insomnia, night sweats, fatigue, and hot flashes.
These days it’s common women to reach 50 years of age while working full-time and taking care of children and perhaps aging parents and so have become accustomed to taking little time for themselves. They may have exhausted their hormones and have few reserves for dealing with this time when the body resets hormone levels for the second half of life. Ideally women would have more time to relax and go with the flow, but few have that opportunity.
What’s often missing is a realization that we’re not giving our bodies enough support, especially given the incredible demands made on women today. Your body needs support in proportion to those demands. If you have symptoms of hormonal imbalance, then the demands have overwhelmed the support: you need to dramatically increase the support and try to dial down the demands.
At the Center for Preventive Medicine, we’ve found that PMS and menopausal symptoms are often the result of imbalances in the nervous and endocrine system, particularly imbalances in hormones as well as brain chemicals called neurotransmitters.
Like hormones, neurotransmitters act as messengers in the body including interacting with the endocrine system to facilitate hormone release. The ovaries are an important site for the production of estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone. As the ovaries age, they can become less responsive to the signals from the brain that guide their function. A proper balance of neurotransmitters is important in helping the body adapt to the changing levels of hormones. Adrenal gland health is also pivotal for good hormone balance.
We can assess the balance of hormones and neurotransmitters that your body is naturally producing and recommend a course of treatment to help support and balance these vital substances. We may recommend a combination of dietary changes and natural supplements or even the use of bio-identical hormones—not the synthetic type which were pushed by the pharmaceutical industry for years but eventually discredited. Your provider at CPM will work with you to develop an individualized plan whether you want to better handle your natural monthly ups and downs or age more gracefully and vibrantly.
Women’s Health Case Study (link to case study)
Center for Preventive Medicine
603-673-7910
3 Overlook Drive, Suite 1
Amherst, NH 03031
