Many people don’t realize that their hormones impact many facets of their life. From physical wellbeing to emotional stability, your hormones play an important role in them all. When your body’s natural hormone production starts to wane, hormone replacement therapy (or HRT) is one of the best ways to help the body maintain balance and manage the symptoms of a hormonal imbalance. At Balanced Bodies Anti-Aging Clinic in Lawrenceville, GA, we are proud to offer bio-identical HRT treatments to restore your body back to a place of mental and physical well-being.
How Long Does Hormone Replacement Therapy Take?
There are many ways to receive HRT and the form you choose to receive your treatment in will influence how long your treatment will take. For example, injections require weekly or bi-weekly appointments. Though you’ll need to receive injections more frequently, your appointments will be quick and can be easily fitted into your busy schedule. However, there are other treatment options, including bio-identical hormone pellets.
This treatment option involves making a small surgical incision in the body and inserting a pellet beneath the skin that slowly releases hormones into the body over the course of three to four months. Both treatment options are safe and highly effective, but one may be more suited to your specific needs than the other. During your initial consultation, we’ll be able to determine which treatment option is best suited to your symptoms, concerns, and lifestyle.
What Are Hormones and Why Are They Important?
There are many different types of hormones in the body and each plays an important role in many of your body’s functions. As they move through your bloodstream, your hormones communicate between your many body parts, such as your organs and tissue. Your ability to reproduce, your sex drive, your metabolism, your emotional well-being, and more are all impacted by the balance of hormones in your body.
When the body produces too many or too few of any particular type of hormone, an imbalance is created. A hormonal imbalance can affect the body in several ways and cause quite severe disruptions to your daily life. These imbalances can be caused by the aging process or due to a malfunction in the glands responsible for creating hormones (the endocrine glands).
What Are the Benefits of HRT?
Weight Management
One of the many roles that hormones play in the body is managing metabolism. When your metabolic hormones are imbalanced, you may experience huge fluctuations in weight, including unexplained weight gain. You may also experience a loss in muscle mass or struggle to build or keep on muscle. Loss of stamina can also occur when your metabolic hormones are out of balance. By restoring balance to your hormones, you may be able to lose weight, keep muscle mass, and better manage your shape overall.
Emotional Stability and Mental Wellness
As we age, our ability to focus and retain information can begin to decrease. Many people mistakenly accept this as an inevitable symptom of aging when, in actuality, memory loss and mental decline are more often a symptom of a hormonal imbalance. When your hormones aren’t balanced, you may experience “brain fog”. HRT can help sharpen your memory, increase your mental acuity, and help you to focus better.
Massive declines in your hormone levels can have an incredibly alarming effect on your emotional well-being. When going through menopause or andropause, for example, it can be common to begin experiencing mood swings. The highs and lows of a hormonal imbalance can be difficult to live with on a daily basis, and, if left unchecked, can even develop into depression. Luckily, replenishing your hormones with bioidentical HRT can restore you to a more balanced state of mind.
Increased Sex Drive and Stamina
The loss of sex hormones in both men and women can make sexual intimacy more challenging; interest in sexual activity may wane and, when there is interest, the energy needed to engage in sexual activity may not be available. In the past, sexual dysfunction was an expected side-effect of the aging process that people believed they just needed to accept. However, a loss of libido can have a serious impact on your intimate relationships. With hormone replacement therapy, you can continue enjoying a healthy, vivacious sex life, even as you age.
Types of Hormone Replacement Therapy
When you’re experiencing an imbalance hormonally, HRT is the best option for returning your body to a state of balance and alleviating the challenging symptoms of a hormonal imbalance. Depending on your sex and your specific symptoms, you may require treatment with testosterone, progesterone, estrogen, or a combination of hormones.
Estrogen Pellet Therapy
For women looking to rebalance their estrogen levels, we recommend estrogen pellet therapy. This treatment involves the insertion of pellets beneath the skin that will slowly release a regular dosage of estrogen to the body over time. This treatment is safe and comfortable. Recipients of this treatment option will require reinsertion every three to four months.
Progesterone Injections
If you’ve been inexplicably gaining weight as a woman, it may be due to lowered progesterone levels in the body. If you’re experiencing lowered progesterone during pregnancy, this can cause serious complications. Routine progesterone shots are recommended for bringing the body’s progesterone levels back to a place of balance. The treatment is simple, quick, and effective and requires no downtime after administration.
Testosterone Pellet Therapy
Lowered levels of testosterone in men can lead to dysfunction in the areas of mood, libido, and overall physical well-being. Like estrogen pellet therapy, this treatment uses pellets inserted beneath the skin’s surface to deliver testosterone to the body in low doses for an extended period of time. Reinsertion is required every three to four months to continue sustaining hormonal balance.
Testosterone (Low-T) Injections
For those struggling with low testosterone (Low-T), taking injections of testosterone on a weekly or bi-weekly basis may be required to maintain optimal hormonal balance. Like progesterone shots, these injections are able to deliver testosterone quickly, safely, and effectively with no required downtime.
Who Is a Good Candidate for HRT?
Most people who seek out HRT are forty-five years of age or older, as that is typically when the effects of aging begin to show up in the body. Of course, young people can be affected by hormonal issues as well for a variety of reasons. If you’re under forty-five and showing symptoms of hormonal imbalance, don’t let your age prevent you from booking a consultation to assess your symptoms and eligibility for HRT.
Women
Menopause typically begins for women around the age of fifty; however, many women begin to feel its effects years before they hit full menopause. It’s typical to begin experiencing the slowing down of your hormones years before menopause. If you’re going through menopause or in your perimenopausal period, you can alleviate the symptoms of slowing hormonal production by beginning HRT. This can help you to continue feeling young and like yourself.
Men
Many men begin to feel the effects of aging take hold around forty-five. One hormone imbalance left untreated can begin to create greater imbalances in a man’s body. For example, a decreased sex drive caused by a testosterone imbalance may begin to drive up a man’s stress levels, thereby increasing his cortisol and creating a second imbalance. Treating a hormonal imbalance as soon as you notice it can prevent you from getting trapped in vicious cycles of imbalance. With HRT, treating your imbalances is easy, effective, and life-altering.
How to Prepare for Treatment
Prior to starting HRT, you’ll need to come in for a consultation with our team. We’ll discuss your symptoms, concerns, and goals surrounding your hormonal imbalance. At your consultation, we’ll take your lifestyle, symptoms, and medical history into consideration to determine which of your hormones are likely causing an imbalance. We’ll also discuss your current medications and supplements so we can ensure they’re not affecting your body adversely and that they won’t interfere with your treatments. Additionally, we’ll run some diagnostics in order to create an appropriate treatment plan to address your specific needs.
Book Your Initial Consultation Today
If you haven’t been feeling yourself lately and you’d like to restore your body back to a place of balance, hormone replacement therapy may be the right choice for you. In as little as a week, you’ll begin to see your symptoms subside and start feeling more like yourself. Contact Balanced Bodies Anti-Aging Clinic in Lawrenceville, GA, to begin your treatments with bio-identical hormones today.
