Hormone Imbalance Unveiled: Empowering Health with Functional Medicine Doctors
Many patients are often surprised at how hormonal imbalance can cause so many seemingly unrelated issues. But these chemical messengers are responsible for just about everything our body does. Whether there’s too much or too little of a hormone, the consequences can affect your physical and mental health in surprising ways.
In this post, we’ll explore hormonal health through the lens of functional medicine to cast light on a perspective you may have never considered.
What Is Hormonal Imbalance, Exactly?
Your hormones are produced by different organs in the body to perform specific functions. They affect everything from appetite to emotions, your sleep cycle, and your metabolism.
When your hormones are not properly balanced, internal chaos ensues. This can range from changes to skin and hair quality to difficulties falling asleep. On the psychological front, hormonal imbalances can worsen or cause symptoms of depression and anxiety, as well as fuel any symptoms you have from underlying psychological disorders.
Then there’s the physical side of hormonal imbalance; headaches, chills, fatigue, and mysterious aches and pains are just a few of the symptoms people with hormonal fluctuations can experience.
Any hormonal imbalance needs addressed, but pinpointing the specific hormone in question can be tricky. Even more challenging is discerning exactly why this hormone has fallen off balance and what can be done to restore its natural harmony within your body.
A functional medicine doctor is the perfect expert to answer these questions. By looking at the whole individual, functional medicine physicians see beyond your symptoms and embrace your entire health journey up until this moment.
They look into your past, including your family’s medical history, and your present lifestyle to develop personalized treatment plans. They recognize that one issue can lead to many problems, and vice versa.
The goal of functional medicine is to treat a patient beyond their diagnosis and bring about lasting change. Instead of merely alleviating symptoms, functional medicine taps into the root cause of your issues, so it can help you heal on a deeper level.
Understanding Hormonal Imbalance
Hormones are responsible for maintaining peace and harmony throughout the body. They impact your ability to feel joy just as much as they influence your kidney performance.
Good hormonal health is a pillar of long-term wellness, but imbalances are rarely addressed through conventional medicine the way they ought to be.
Particularly among women (and especially in those 40+), a “hormonal imbalance” is a catch-all phrase that doesn’t get you any closer to understanding the cause of your symptoms or how to alleviate them.
Hormonal imbalances can be temporary or long-term (chronic). Some may be resolved through lifestyle changes while others require ongoing treatment to keep your body balanced.
Signs of hormonal imbalance include:
Persistent acne
Changes in appetite
Difficulty losing or gaining weight
Diarrhea
Depression or anxiety symptoms
Darkened skin on your armpits, the back, or sides of your neck
Difficulty tolerating hot or cold temperatures
Thinner skin that is moist and warmer than usual
Small skin growths (skin tags)
Constantly feeling thirsty
Frequent urination
These are just some of the indicators you may have a hormonal problem. Visiting a functional medicine doctor could be the first step toward identifying the underlying cause of your symptoms and finding treatment that works beyond the surface level.
How Functional Medicine Can Help Hormonal Imbalance
When you’re sick, the first thing that comes to mind is treating the symptoms. But what if medical care went deeper than that? It does in functional medicine. This specialty focuses on treating the whole individual from the inside out.
Your functional medicine doctor gets to the root cause of your hormonal imbalance symptoms, delving beyond a standard diagnosis to personalize your treatment.
Functional medicine doctors use a range of diagnostics to build a complete picture of your health. This supports their holistic approach toward wellness and healing. During your first meeting with a practitioner, they will ask you a variety of questions about your current symptoms and medical history.
A large part of functional medicine diagnostics is understanding a person’s lifestyle and how it affects their body. Hormones are sensitive, and everything from sleeping patterns to diet can influence their production. However, we also know that hormonal changes can impact these aspects of your life as well.
A functional medicine practitioner has to create a timeline, connect the dots, and help make sense of your experience.
Making Sense of Hormones Through the Functional Medicine Matrix
Practitioners create a matrix of each patient’s health that addresses factors such as their social life, family and medical history, personal experiences, and lifestyle. Combined, these factors help illustrate the cause-and-effect relationship between a person and their hormonal imbalance.
Conventional medicine uses standard diagnostics to evaluate every patient. Unfortunately, this can cause even the most well-intentioned doctors to overlook crucial nuances of a patient’s case.
The functional medicine matrix sees a person’s hormonal imbalance as a reflection of their unique biochemical makeup. Your practitioner will delve beyond superficial lab results to understand how you experience life through your body.
Examples of this may include evaluating your nutrition, which plays a large role in your hormonal stability. Patients who eat too much sodium, for example, often display higher levels of glucocorticoids, which impact your body’s stress response. This, in turn, could lead to higher levels of cortisol, the inflammatory “stress hormone” that can cause weight gain, muscle weakness, chronic, intense fatigue, high blood pressure, and irritability, among other things.
What we constantly write off as “stress” or “burnout” could really be an underlying hormonal problem that warrants medical care. Functional medicine can help you tap into what’s really going on under your skin and behind the scenes of your body, beginning with a detailed portrait of your health.
In-depth Diagnostics
While they may pay particularly close attention to their patients’ lived experiences, functional medicine doctors still rely on modern medicine to make accurate diagnoses. However, the way they approach and interpret the results of these tests sets them apart.
Conventional medicine works by ruling out symptoms of different conditions until a diagnosis fits. Functional medicine works in the opposite manner. It looks at all of your symptoms cohesively, then begins to connect them to potential underlying causes.
Hormonal imbalance can be measured through bloodwork, and the results of your panel will offer valuable scientific insight for your functional medicine doctor.
Lab work plays a critical role in the “GOTIT” framework, which stands for “gather, organize, tell, initiate, and track.” Functional medicine doctors use the GOTIT diagnostic process to establish patterns and make meaningful connections within their patients’ lives.
Restoring Balance: The Practices of Functional Medicine
When it comes to the best treatment for hormonal imbalance, a doctor will develop personalized care plan. Some doctors recommend dietary changes, others encourage you to manage other conditions to restore equilibrium throughout your body.
Lifestyle modifications are the most common recommendation for restoring hormonal harmony. You may need to alter what you eat, either by reducing your intake of certain items or increasing consumption of healthy foods.
Exercise may also come into play since it’s been proven to regulate hormonal activity. Your functional medicine doctor can recommend which types of exercises would be best given your current needs and abilities.
Stress management is another important consideration in functional medicine. Stress is inflammatory, which can cause a host of physical problems including cardiovascular complications, respiratory problems, gastrointestinal disturbance and, you guessed it, hormonal imbalance.
Targeted Supplementation for Hormone Health
Many function medicine doctors prescribe personalized supplement formulas to their patients. These customized care plans are designed to target your unique symptoms while restoring balance where you need it the most.
Example supplements for hormone balance include:
Magnesium to support healthy levels of thyroid hormones
B vitamins for stable adrenal hormones
Probiotics to stimulate and regulate the production of female hormones
Omega-3 fatty acids to support eicosanoids, which can play an important role in disease prevention
A combination of functional analysis and blood work will help your doctor determine which types of supplements would work best for your hormonal health.
Healing Through Hormone Optimization Therapies in Functional Medicine
Your hormones are like a symphony, each one playing a special role to support a harmonious balance in your body.
If one is off-key, then the rest can follow suit.
Hormone optimization therapy works like a conductor; guiding your lifestyle to ensure your hormones work like they’re supposed to. As part of your therapy, the doctor will evaluate your individual hormone levels to see how they’re performing independently. Then, they’ll assess how varying levels would influence one another to develop personalized treatments.
Hormone therapy may be administered through oral medications, topical creams or gels, or even injections. It will all depend on your hormonal makeup, as well as your treatment preferences.
The beauty of functional medicine treatment for hormonal imbalances is that everything is designed to support you. This includes considering your patient experience and making sure you feel comfortable at every stage of the process.
Conclusion
Patients dealing with hormonal imbalances may feel as though they’ve been cast off by traditional medicine. While many doctors care about resolving hormonal balance, the reality is that so many overworked physicians simply do not have the time or appropriate framework to address their patient’s underlying needs.
Functional practitioners structure their entire practice around getting to know each patient on a deep level. They want to know about your entire experience, not just your symptoms, so they can develop personalized plans that support your healthiest, happiest self.