By: Dr. Michael Morsillo, H.B.Sc., N.D.
This past weekend, I had the chance to attend a great conference in Ottawa. This conference was a collection of seminars that were all geared towards hormones. I’m always looking to learn more about this topic, since hormone imbalance is something that affects the majority of my patients.
Hormones are simply ‘messengers’. They are one of the ways that the brain uses to communicate to the rest of the body. If the brain wants a certain job done, it will communicate this to a gland (i.e. thyroid, adrenals, ovaries), and that gland will then send out certain hormones that will communicate this message to our cells.
Since hormones are one of the main sources of communication within the body, this means that hormones play a role in almost all of the tasks that the body needs to accomplish. It’s amazing how much we rely on our hormones for our body temperature, digestion, weight, mood, sleep, appetite, focus, energy levels, libido, and much more.
Unfortunately, when one or more of these hormones are out of balance, it can have a negative impact on all of these areas as well. For example, if your thyroid hormones are not functioning properly, this can result in symptoms of fatigue, poor focus, cold intolerance, insomnia, depression, irritability, weight gain, etc.
I have some good news and some bad news – maybe I’ll break the bad news to you first. The bad news is, many people have hormone imbalances and they don’t even realize it. In my opinion, there are two main reasons for this. First, many of the symptoms that result from a hormone imbalance can masquerade as another medical condition. Second, your doctor will either never check a patient’s hormones, or they will do testing that is not very thorough.
I did say that I have some good news, so let’s get to that as well. The good news is that we have excellent means of recognizing and testing for possible hormone imbalances. We will often test patients for hormones such as estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, DHEA, cortisol, melatonin, thyroid hormones, and more. What’s better, is that for hormone imbalances that are detected, we can solve this problem using natural medicines.