Are hormones wreaking havoc in your body? Are you tired all of the time? Do you feel lousy or just out of balance? Do you get sick too much? Are you having problems with your heart, cholesterol, or your bones? Is your skin sagging or looking too old for your age? Are you forgetting things? Do you have weight issues that you can’t control? Hormones have been related to all of the above.
It seems that when hormones are not balanced, they aren’t able to do their job and keep the body operating like it should and feeling happy. In fact, they can make us miserable and feeling desperate to get back in sync with ourselves.
How are hormones related to the human aging process? I read an article today about minor hormones causing major consequences in our bodies. That led to digging in a little deeper to explore these substances that can make so much trouble for us, and learning more about how aging is related to the effects they have on the body.
First, what are some of these hormones and what causes them to get out of whack? Melatonin is one such hormone that can affect our daily life because it affects our sleep and our body rhythm. Both seem important enough to me. I like to feel balanced and happy. The normal aging process can reduce melatonin levels in our bodies, starting as early as our thirties. And diseases of aging are escalated in people with hormones that are not synchronized and functioning properly.
The anti-aging hormone, HGH, gets a bad rap when it is abused by athletes; however, it is the hormone that helps us look younger and feel younger. It helps children grow, and levels significantly drop in our bodies when we are only in our twenties. It provides many benefits to our bodies such as brain health, cardiovascular health, immune system health, aerobic health, and bone health. When we are deficient in HGH, it shows up through thinning hair, skin and bones, decreased muscle strength, increased body fat, and heart and immune function are compromised.
Pregnenolone is a steroid hormone, and classified as a prohormone because it is a pre-cursor to a hormone and has minimal hormonal effects by itself. However, it can have quite an effect with regard to fatigue and memory problems if not functioning properly in the body. This is another substance affected by aging, and sooner than you think. The supply starts to decline in our thirties, and when it does, the amount available to make other hormones also decreases.
The mother hormone, DHEA, is one of the most abundant in the body and yet still declines with age leaving 70 year olds with only 10% of what they had as 20 year olds. Diseases of aging, especially heart disease, Alzheimer’s, and cancer, impact levels of DHEA in our bodies. Many body processes are affected by DHEA, with unbalanced levels resulting in problems with weight, muscle mass, bones, memory, cholesterol, immune system, and more.
Hormones are chemicals in the bodies that are released by cells and affect other cells in the body. Because the body processes are so inter-related, when a hormone is not balanced, or not functioning properly, it can be like a ripple effect to each other. The functions of hormones are very complex and it is not in the scope of this article to be technical, only to discuss how they can make our bodies scream for help.
Learning more about hormones made me realize the importance of doing what we can to keep our hormones balanced so we avoid as much of the hormone craziness as we can. The aging connection where hormones can accelerate aging is one that we can impact because we have anti-aging choices that help us keep our bodies younger and fight the diseases of aging.
It is up to us as individuals to take charge of our own good health. We can ‘feel’ if there is something not right happening inside of us. We deserve to feel good every day. When that’s not happening, we need to be asking: why? We need to find answers. My personal choice is to look for natural solutions to balance hormones if something is not life threatening and needing meds to survive. Natural nutrition can work on the underlying cause of the problem, not just help with symptoms. Plus there are side ‘benefits’ with natural products, not side effects.
Feel free to contact me and we can talk further.
Thanks much for posting this info. I’ve run the before-and-after hormonal gamut and can honestly say that it changed my life to get everything balanced…just do it!