back to list
Adults
Women's Issues
Menstrual and Reproductive Health - Candlelight, soft music, chemistry set…
It's ironic that one of the most significant parts of romance isn't all that romantic. Most of reproductive health and function comes down to chemistry and timing. And stress.
Behind the mating dance is a biochemical choreography that has developed over thousands upon thousands of years. We all have three basic groups of reproductive hormones: estrogens, progesterone, and testosterone which change over the course of a month. At the beginning of the month estrogens are high and progesterone is low. During the month, this reverses. As progesterone rises to balance estrogen at mid-month, you ovulate and as progesterone rises further and estrogen drops toward the end of your reproductive month, you purge the unfertilized egg and the extra blood that filled the walls of your uterus. Over the several days of your period, progesterone drops back down, estrogen climbs back up, and the dance begins again.
The two most fundamental biological activities which we pursue as a species are survival and reproduction. Interestingly, these two are linked together by their dependence on the same chemical pathways in the adrenal glands.
When women are placed under severe stress or eat a diet that lacks enough essential fatty acids or cholesterol, they often notice that their periods run late or skip or become more difficult. Here is why:
We turn essential fatty acids into cholesterol and we turn cholesterol into something called Pregnenolone. This is the stuff we make sex hormones out of and it's also the stuff we make the stress response hormone Cortisol out of. If we have too much stress, we'll take pregnenolone that would have made sex hormones and make cortisol, instead. Then you have an imbalance in sex hormones and your cycle goes awry.
There are several ways of correcting this imbalance. One is to simply cover it up and pretend it's not there using drugs including the estrogens in birth control pills. The problem with this approach is that the problem continues under the surface and may show up later as infertility, breast or uterine cancer, fibrocystic breasts or ovarian cysts, emotional imbalances, and early or otherwise problematic menopause. A more rational approach is to identify the imbalance, look for its cause, and then correct it. Using lab work to identify your levels of sex hormones by collecting eleven saliva samples spaced over the course of a month, we can identify what your hormonal pattern is and can then make reasonable choices to help you regain your natural balance and rhythm.
By working together naturally, we help you regain your health from the inside out, reducing your chances of cancers and cysts, improving your fertility and your monthly experience, reducing cramps, cravings, emotional reactiveness, bloating, tenderness, and the other symptoms of reproductive hormonal imbalances, and allowing your body to ease into menopause when the time is right.
Menopause - In many traditions, women are honored as they proceed through the three stages of Maiden, Mother, and Crone. Menopause, the Crone phase, is revered as a time of great wisdom when a woman's nurturing often extends beyond the nuclear family to the bigger family of society-at-large. As we of the 'baby boom generation' mature, more and more of the stereotypes of our elders are being replaced with a more youthful image which embraces greater longevity and opportunities. And more and more of us are replacing our reproductive cycles of the past 30-40 years with peri- and post-menopausal issues.
Most of these challenges, from hot flashes to emotional and libido changes, to altered breast and uterine tension and health, to changes in bone density and body shape are directly related to the shift in the way your body produces and uses sex hormones now that it is no longer trying to reproduce the species.
Our civilization has created an environment that is rife with xeno- (foreign to the body) estrogens in everything from meat and poultry to our drinking water. The fascination with soy products over the past decade has played a role here, as have the allopathic medical community's tendency to give estrogens culled from pregnant mares' urine. As top physicians from Susan Love to Hyla Cass to Cynthia Watson to John Lee have all noted, most women are not estrogen deficient and are far more likely to need bio-identical progesterones. But the need could just as easily be specific minerals, vitamins, amino acids, essential fatty acids, or herbs.
We identify what is actually going on in your body with the use of laboratory assessments prior to recommending a course of treatment. We have been very successful over many years with a wide range of menopausal challenges because of our look first / act second process which respects you as an individual.
Osteoporosis and Osteoarthritis sound enough alike that they often get confused. Osteoporosis is thinning of the bone which results from loss of bone minerals. It can ultimately cause bones to become so fragile that they break with relatively little force. Osteoarthritis (OA) is basically a fancy name for the wear and tear that occurs in our joints over years of use. If we were to carefully examine and x-ray or MRI a normal healthy 20 year old, we would find some beginning signs of OA because at a certain level it is a normal and expected result of living in the Earth's gravity.
Let's look at what causes them and what we can do to reduce or even reverse them.
Osteoporosis results from the body taking more minerals out of its reservoir (the bones) than it is putting back in. If you kept taking money out of your savings account without replacing it, eventually you would run into trouble and it's the same for your body. Bones are made of dozens of different minerals. Most of us think of Calcium first and it is definitely an important mineral for bones, but not the one most important in preventing or reversing osteoporosis.
There is an endocrine gland in your throat called the parathyroid which monitors your blood levels of several minerals. Perhaps the most important mineral to the parathyroid is called Boron. If it falls too low, the parathyroid tells your body to release some boron from the spongy inner part of the bone. When it releases boron, it also releases several other minerals including calcium, selenium, germanium, and zinc. If our foods are depleted in boron (which most are) and we are pulling it out of bones along with the other minerals which come with it faster than we are replacing it, eventually we will weaken the bone and become more susceptible to a fracture. This could be a hip fracture (mortality ~ 50%), a vertebral fracture leading to dowager's hump, or any of several other bone breaks.
Fortunately, you don't need to develop osteoporosis and if you already have, it can be reversed or at least reduced naturally, effectively, and without using drugs like Fosamax that tear up the digestive system, produce heartburn, and reproduce weak, chalky bone. By maintaining a healthy mineral balance throughout life, complete with the necessary trace minerals, eating and exercising well, avoiding soft drinks and coffee which steal minerals from your bones and keep you from replacing them, you can avoid developing this thief which steals the joy of older age from us after years of earning it.
Some compounds, including ipriflavone, can greatly increase the amount of trace minerals and calcium which you can absorb from your foods and supplements and restore to your bones. Lifestyle factors and heredity are important to work with, especially if you have a family history or personal risk factors for osteoporosis. There is something called Wolff's Law, which many of us know as "use it or lose it" which states that minerals are laid down in areas of stress and picked up where they are not needed. This explains why astronauts in reduced gravity and people confined to bed for months experience so much bone loss. It also gives us hope because it means that you can strengthen your bones by getting up off the sofa and walking around on them.
Osteoarthritis is wear and tear which may show up as lipping and spurring around joints, calcification in tendons, and degeneration of cartilage and discs. Throughout life, we are tearing our body down and building it back up. As kids, we are building a lot faster than we are tearing down. In middle age, the ratio is about equal. In our Golden Years, we tend to tear things up faster than we repair them. But it doesn't have to be that way. The biggest cause of osteoporosis is unresolved stresses, especially in the musculoskeletal system. One of the effects of Wolff's Law is that you can develop calcified bone spurs in heel and elbow tendons and in the tendons of the very small muscles attached to your spine. These change the muscle dynamics and change the way you use your joints which results in more wear and tear.
The best prevention for osteoarthritis is to get good chiropractic care on a regular basis. We recommend that most of our patients come in monthly. Serious competitive athletes usually want to see us a little more often than that to keep them operating at their best.
back to list