FOR THE LADIES

It seems appropriate to discuss the female endocrine system in light of the latest breaking news about the health hazards of hormone replacement therapy (HRT). I am refraining myself from going into how again the marvels of medical science are doing more harm than good. As most of you know I am against the use of drugs except for emergencies and sometimes for very short periods of time. The evidence continues to show that drugs kill. This is the message we tell our youth, and this is the message to tell everyone else.

Drugs make healthy people sick, so how can we expect drugs to make a sick person well? The primary benefit of drugs (or almost all medical intervention for that matter) is to buy you some time while you try to avoid actually going within and healing. Now that the medical authorities have given their official statement that HRT is unhealthy, many people and doctors and saying, “What do we do now?” It is time to rely on natural methods.

The female endocrine system is a complicated network of organs with their numerous hormonal interactions. They work like a domino effect, where if one organ gets overtaxed it passes the burden to another organ. The overlapping stimulation from this hormonal soup causes the person to experience many different and unpredictable symptoms. Throw some powerful and toxic drugs, like Primpro and Premarin, in the mix and you have a complicated clinical picture. Combine this picture with the stresses of everything from poor diet to world affairs, and we have a lot of women with low adrenal and thyroid function.

To get a better understanding of this system we have to establish some known characteristics of the body’s physiology. Lets look at the most common endocrine imbalance and the reasons for it.

By far the most common hormonal imbalance is a high estrogen level with a low progesterone level. I know you are probably saying, “But I thought most women needed more estrogen.” In our February 2001 newsletter we covered the pathways of estrogen in great detail: please call our office and request this back issue and we will gladly send it to you. Estrogen and progesterone have an inverse relation ratio that is like a seesaw. When one is high the other is low. The liver helps regulate this ratio by detoxifying estrogen along with other steroid hormones. If liver function is compromised, estrogen becomes dominant. The main factor that stresses the liver is its mandatory need to detoxify the large intestine. The large intestine becomes toxic from too many processed carbohydrates with low roughage, which slow down transit time and allow the accumulation of toxic build up.

Lets connect the dots and see how a typical woman gets herself into these situations and where HRT fits in. The majority of her life her diet has consisted of a combination of fast food, high-refined carbohydrates, and low-fat meals supported by the current thinking that this diet is healthy. This type of eating, typical of most Americans, has slowed down her colon’s transit time causing toxic build up. Her liver is overworked in its attempt to detoxify the large intestine, which hinders its ability to breakdown excess estrogen. She encounters typical stress stemming from various sources of emotional, mental, physical, and chemical origin, leaving her adrenal glands overworked and exhausted.

Her pituitary gland tries to further stimulate her adrenals by secreting extra amounts of adrenocorticotrophic hormones (ACTH), which spillover and end up causing her ovaries to increase estrogen output, placing more demand on the liver to try to breakdown this hormone. Excess circulating estrogen inhibits her thyroid function, which causes a decrease in progesterone production. Now she has an estrogen dominance situation and begins to experience menstrual cramps along with many other symptoms associated with premenstrual syndrome (PMS). Her depressed thyroid function causes her to experience more PMS symptoms with added emotional disturbance?primarily depression.

Let’s recap: she has various stresses leading to a depleted adrenal state; the pituitary passes stress to the ovaries, which increases estrogen production; the increased estrogen depresses the thyroid; and the depressed thyroid causes the progesterone production to drop. All these stresses are further complicated by poor nutrition, a toxic colon, and an overworked and congested liver.

In an attempt to control her PMS, she takes over-the-counter medication with her menstrual cycle and numerous stimulants in the form of coffee and sugar to help her get through the day. As she reaches her 40s, her hormones (except estrogen) decrease, causing her to feel emotional upheaval that her stimulants can’t quite control, so she has to turn to stronger medication. With some antidepressants she does okay. As she reaches her 50s, estrogen levels decrease with the arrival of menopausal symptoms, and this is where HRT “comes to the rescue.”

All the HRT did was maintain her unhealthy state below the level of distraction, allowing the insidious onset of chronic disease along with the dangerous side effects recently revealed in the media. This cycle of endocrine stress is shifted between the involved organs causing many different symptoms with no predictable pattern. Medical intervention will be in the form of drugs for depression, followed by more drugs for hot flashes, painkillers, and surgeries to take out the misbehaving body parts.

The female endocrine system is global in its effect and is not fully understood by current medical knowledge?even endocrinologists admit that fact. Only the woman’s own body fully understands her own endocrine system. Simply taking a few drugs and cutting out some body parts will not work. The best way to balance the endocrine system is to balance the body as a whole.

So where do you start? A good place to start is to see what your thyroid is doing and how it responds to endocrine stress throughout your monthly cycle. The enclosed insert describes a procedure that you can do that will yield valuable diagnostic information about your hormones. Complete the procedure, get it back to me, and I will evaluate it for you. To begin the balancing process, call our office to schedule a Metabolic Analysis, Network Spinal Analysis and to have your nervous system cleared of interference.