Managing Menopause/Stress

A woman’s life expectancy is now 83 years of age, on average, which means that women are likely to live nearly half of their lives after menopause. While menopause is a natural process, the rapid aging side effects that accompany changes in hormone levels can be avoided. There are healthful and safe ways to maintain or reclaim the vitality of youth our hormone therapy in San Ramon. You can live longer, be attractive, and age gracefully into your 90’s and beyond.

Effect on Your Body

When a woman has not had a period for 12 consecutive months is considered to be post-menopausal. Hormone levels do not suddenly drop at menopause, gradual changes occur for as long as 12 years prior.

This time is known as peri-menopause and during this time progesterone levels drop significantly. Estrogen levels also change, but rarely in balance with progesterone. Progesterone and estrogens are like a teeter totter, needing to be in balance for the body to function optimally.

Estrogen dominance is common during peri-menopause and leads to mood changes, hot flashes, irritability, and memory loss. Estrogen dominance is a risk factor for certain types of cancer. In addition to the expected hormone decline with age, the stress of daily life can affect adrenal function, further compounding menopausal symptoms.

Stress and Your Body

Our endocrine system is designed to handle an acute stressful event and allows us to protect ourselves from danger or flee from it. While we rarely find ourselves fighting off a predator in this modern era, the constant barrage of micro-stressful events such as traffic, social stresses, infectious agents, chemical exposures etc. often result in a chronically stimulated adrenal response. While most other animals rest and allow their systems to calm after a stressful encounter, we rarely give our bodies the actual break we need. Over time, with continued stimulation, the stress response becomes less sensitive and the signal to produce cortisol lessens, often to the point of very little cortisol output at all.

This results in a state known as adrenal dysfunction and is accompanied by the following symptoms:

• Sleep disruptions
• Weight changes
• Salt and/or sugar cravings
• Allergies
• Anxiousness
• Nervousness
• Low blood pressure

Test and Address

Salivary testing and follow up monitoring are crucial in determining the most effective path of treatment. Salivary testing allows you to see your unbound, or bioavailable hormone levels, which is not possible with blood tests. Because of the complexity of changes to the endocrine system, hormone testing is imperative to identify proper treatment options.

Contact us at (925) 831-3112 to request more information about our services!