Female Hormonal Balance

BY: DR. MELINA ROBERTS

You suddenly have a feeling of heat and a flush starts from your face then moves to your neck and continues to your chest. You go red and your heart races, while your upper body is perspiring profusely. Moments later, everything is back to normal.  Yes, it is the infamous hot flash.

In Canada and the rest of the Western world, we have come to see hot flashes, night sweats, insomnia, low libido, vaginal dryness, all the menopausal symptoms as a normal part of the female aging process.  I hear many women say, doesnT everyone go through this at some point and my answer is simply no.  If you head to the Eastern part of the world, most women have never heard of or experienced hot flashes, but here in the West, you will see the pendulum shift in the opposite direction.  Why the drastic difference between cultures?

The conventional school of thought is that as women age and transition through their reproductive years to the menopausal years, their ovaries naturally decrease the amount of female hormones produced and this is why they experience menopausal symptoms.  Contrary to popular belief, the reason women are experiencing menopausal symptoms is not because there are a lack of hormones, it is actually because the delicate balance of hormones is off.

The North American population is taking in more synthetic hormones now than ever before.  We are taking them in through our animal products that have been injected with hormones to make them grow bigger and stronger faster, through our vegetables that are laden with pesticides that have estrogen-like properties and through our hormone replacements such as the birth control pills and hormone replacement therapy (HRT).

These synthetic estrogens are very strong hormones that throw off our natural hormonal balance.  These chemical hormones compete with our natural hormones for hormone receptor sites on cells and once they have attached themselves to these receptor sites it is difficult to get rid of them.

Then we have a society of chronically stressed people, whose adrenal glands that handle stress are depleted.  If the adrenals are depleted, our body will convert progesterone into adrenal hormones which depletes progesterone in the body and pushes our natural hormone balance further out of balance.

The key to eliminating hot flashes during menopause and making menopause a truly smooth, natural transition is to get your hormones into balance. Therefore we need to decrease the amount of synthetic hormones that we are taking into our bodies and aid our bodies in eliminating the excess synthetic hormones that we have in our bodies, as well as support our adrenal glands.