Read the complete article and related information at Teen woes

Zestfulness

K. H. Hoe Pharmacal Sdn Bhd

Middle-age spread seems to be a depressing fact of life for anyone over 40. It’s as if a fat switch flicks on when you reach midlife and suddenly everything you eat lands up on your tummy.

Even the slimmest types end up broader in the beam – and once that fat is there, we all know how tough it is to shift, stubbornly defying even the most rigorous diet and exercise regimens.

The worry is that your tummy flab isn’t just unattractive, it’s also unhealthy, as it’s a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease.

It doesn’t matter how hard we fight it, middle age just seems to bring out the bulge.

But it’s not necessarily your diet – or lack of self discipline – that’s to blame, says American gynaecologist and pharmacist, Dr C W Randolph.

He claims midlife spread in both men and women is the result of hormonal imbalance, specifically too little progesterone and too much oestrogen. And the problem with too much oestrogen is that the hormone acts like a fat magnet, locking it in around your middle.

As Dr Randolph explains, in a healthy person there is a finely-tuned balance between the three sex hormones: oestrogen, progesterone and testosterone. But as we age, that balance changes.

As a woman reaches her mid-30s, her levels of progesterone – which is produced in the ovaries and is essential for fertility – start to decline.

While most women approaching menopause will know their oestrogen levels drop, few realise that progesterone production declines even more rapidly – 120 times faster than oestrogen, says Dr Randolph.

This progesterone drop also occurs much earlier, at a time when a woman’s oestrogen levels are still good. The result: oestrogen ‘dominance’.

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Read the complete article and related information at Midlife Flab

The Huffington Post

On my daughter’s fourth birthday, a swim party in 2002, my youngest sister showed up late in an outfit befitting a weekend rager: ratty black jeans, a threadbare camisole and a long-sleeved voile blouse in dingy white.

“It’s the closest thing I had to a bathing suit,” she told me skittishly, before wandering off to smoke a Camel.

Then, she disappeared for two hours. She reappeared only when everyone had left, running to us across a field, so skinny her bones seemed to rattle.

Looking back, her choice of swimwear should have been another of the warning bells going off that year. There were the false teeth she’d gotten to replace her own because of a rare gum disease. The frequent, sudden naps — in a chair, on my rug. The strange gifts — used teleconferencing software for me, worn beige tap shoes for my daughter. The way she’d fought me — bitterly, unrelentingly — when I’d refused to let her take my bike out late one night for a spin.

Two months after the party, I learned the reason for the get-up and behavior: My sister, then 42, had become addicted to methamphetamine. The shirt and long pants on that hot summer day were to cover the tracks from shooting up. And the lateness? Victim to the compulsive behavior that is one of meth’s hallmarks, she’d been sidetracked diving into dumpsters to collect “treasures” on her way to see us.

What had driven this successful juvenile-defense attorney to turn to drugs? As she tells it, a big part was precisely that: the stress of winning cases–of keeping moms from having their parental rights terminated (one client’s child died while in foster care). My sister, upended by the child’s death, had “burned out.”

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Read the complete article and related information at Stress and Addiction — How to Cope

Wild yam is one of the heart-shaped leaf plants for which I have an affinity. Something about seeing its whorl of perfect green hearts with deep, defining veins, yellowing in the fall, twirling up trees and over logs, warms my own heart. Favorite places for wild yam to grow in Athens are in Oconee Forest Park behind the intramural fields and at Sandy Creek Nature Center.

Over the past few decades, our North American native wild yam vine (Dioscorea villosa) has gained a partially erroneous reputation as a natural progesterone substitute with big-time medical applications. Along with estrogen, progesterone is a necessary steroidal hormone for female reproduction, menstruation and menopause. When estrogen is dominant over progesterone, certain health conditions, such as breast cancer or postmenopausal anxiety and depression, arise in women. This has spurred health care practitioners to sell progesterone cream to balance the ratio.

Wild yam roots and rhizomes contain a steroidal saponin called diosgenin that, in a lab, can be synthesized into progesterone. Our bodies, however, cannot convert wild yam into progesterone. Some companies have sold wild yam cream with claims it is natural progesterone.

The ingredient list will state whether the progesterone originating from wild yam was made in a lab.

By itself, though, without any chemical lab modification, wild yam is a valued medicinal plant with antispasmodic and anti-inflammatory actions.

Traditionally wild yam has been considered one of the top five digestive remedies. People prone to spastic, tight pains in the gut – referred to as “bilious colic” in the 19th century, or chronic gastritis associated with heavy drinking – could receive some relaxing relief from a tincture of the wild yam roots and rhizomes. Sympathetic nausea from anxiety also can be assuaged by roots of wild yam.

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Read the complete article and related information at Richey: Wild yam heals muscle spasms

Behavioral Health Central

By Marvin “Rick” Sponaugle, MD

September 10,2010

Female hormones are potent modulators of brain chemicals, neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine. The utility of bio-identical hormonal replacement therapy commonly practiced by anti-aging physicians not only improves the quality of life in female patients, it also prevents unnecessary depression, anxiety and insomnia disorders all of which cause subsequent addiction.

At Florida Detox & Wellness Institute, we investigate all hormonal and brain chemical imbalance that can cause drug and alcohol craving. Our clinical studies have proven that many female patients develop addiction issues because of midlife changes in estrogen and progesterone production. These findings have historically gone undetected because most addiction treatment centers do not routinely examine the hormones involved in the pituitary-adrenal-ovarian axis.

We successfully treat addicted patients by integrating spiritual counseling with modern brain science. We evaluate and normalize brain chemistry with medication, bio-identical hormone replacement and natural supplementation. This scientific approach to addiction treatment balances electrical activity in the brain and thus eliminates the need for patient self-medication with drugs and alcohol.

A research-based practice

Our clinical studies indicate that addicted patients utilize drugs and alcohol either to stimulate under-active brain regions or to relax over-active brain systems. The aberrant electrical activity in the addicted patient’s brain is typically caused by inherited or acquired biochemical and hormonal deficiencies.

Accurate diagnosis, based on evaluation of neurotransmitter, hormonal and brain scan research facilitates the successful treatment of the addicted patient’s brain. Normalizing the underlying biochemical and electrical imbalance stops drug and alcohol craving. Identification of specific brain chemical and hormonal deficiencies allows more effective diagnosis of the “true cause” of the patient’s craving, thus eliminating alcohol and drug addictions.

Correcting hormonal deficiencies can eliminate various addictions that are prevalent in the middle age female population. The average age of menopause in American women is 51 years; however, the decline of female hormones is usually a gradual process with progesterone levels starting to decline approximately eight years prior to that of estrogen. Northrup, C. (2006) When progesterone production declines in middle age females, they begin to experience new found anxiety and insomnia. Retrospective clinical studies at Florida Detox & Wellness Institute have demonstrated that the “progesterone drop out” phenomenon is a common etiology of alcohol and drug abuse, with causation in over 40 percent of our addicted middle age females. Amazingly, the majority of these progesterone deficient females have never had hormonal evaluation by their doctors.

The biochemical explanation for the increased anxiety experienced by midlife females is that suboptimal progesterone levels occurring in the presence of normal estradiol levels cause an increase in brain electrical activity. Progesterone essentially is a brain relaxing hormone because it converts to another hormone, allopregnanolone. This metabolite of progesterone, allopregnanolone, activates the same “relaxing” nerve receptor, the GABA-A receptor, as does Valium, Xanax and alcohol. Torres and Ortega (2003)

When females experience a loss in GABA activity from diminishing progesterone levels while maintaining normal estradiol production, they can develop excess electrical activity in both, their central and peripheral nervous system. This phenomenon occurs because estradiol enhances the excitatory brain chemicals, dopamine and histamine. Their excitatory effect on brain electricity should be counter balanced with the GABA effect of progesterone. The new onset progesterone deficient middle aged female experiences newfound anxiety and insomnia that frequently precipitates the need for relaxing medication which ultimately causes subsequent addiction issues.

The progesterone deficient female will often begin to utilize alcohol to “relax her brain.” Alcohol is legal, does not require a prescription and is socially acceptable. Alcohol activates the GABA-A receptor like Valium. The woman who historically drank only one glass of wine with dinner will insidiously progress, normally over a few years, to two bottles of wine per night. The wine, once a social drink, has now become “medication.”
She may be courageous enough to visit her physician, however, if the physician has limited knowledge regarding the importance of hormonal replacement therapy, he/she will have even less biochemical knowledge regarding the powerful effect of estradiol and progesterone on brain function, specifically the hormonal effect on brain neurotransmitters like dopamine, histamine and serotonin. Her doctor may not appreciate the gravity of the patient’s situation, however, will frequently practice “symptom medicine” and readily prescribe her addicting medication such as Xanax or Klonopin, a quick and easy medical maneuver verses investigating her hormonal imbalance.

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Read the complete article and related information at Hormone Imbalance in Female Patients Causes Alcoholism and Drug Addiction

Jamaica Observer

Here’s to your Health

With Dr Jacqueline E. Campbell

HORMONE levels may begin to change in your 30s, as you enter perimenopause, the interval in which your body begins its transition into menopause. In the years leading up to menopause, small hormonal imbalances can exist, so by the time menopause begins, you may have already experienced close to 20 years of hormonal imbalance.

Perimenopause and menopause hormone imbalance can be marked by a variety of symptoms — weight gain, hot flashes, night sweats, insomnia, mood swings, anxiety, depression, foggy thinking, memory changes, headaches, menstrual irregularities, vaginal dryness, decreased libido, dry skin, and fatigue.

These symptoms of hormone imbalance are caused primarily by an incorrect relationship between the two main female hormones — progesterone and oestrogen — in the body. They, along with other hormones, DHEA and testosterone, exist in a delicate balance, each performing a unique biological function. Variations in that balance can have a dramatic effect on your health, resulting in symptoms of hormone imbalance. The amounts of these hormones produced by your body can vary depending on factors such as stress, nutrition, exercise and ovulation.

When the balance between oestrogen and progesterone is thrown off in favour of oestrogen, a woman may become “oestrogen dominant”. This condition is associated with a number of conditions, including endometriosis, uterine fibroids, polycystic ovaries, and breast cancer. Oestrogen dominance can occur in any woman, but perimenopausal women, who typically experience a more rapid decline in progesterone than in oestrogen, are especially at risk.

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Read the complete article and related information at Low sex drive? It could be a hormone thing

Read the complete article and related information at Sugar Shock: The Path to Disease and More

Truth in Aging.com

August 30, 2010
Posted by marta

I just got reacquainted with Skin Nutrition’s Cell CPR after buying a replacement bottle and was reminded that amongst its 70-odd ingredients is wild yam. This jumped out at me because a friend had just emailed me a couple of links about wild yam and controversial claims that it can harness hormones to relieve symptoms of menopause, cure arthritis and even enlarge breasts. Sounds like a little Truth In Aging perspective is in order.

The roots of wild yam (dioscorea villosa) and claims for its medicinal prowess date back to the 1960s. Wild yam contains something called diosgenin and it was discovered that this is the precursor for the semisynthesis of progesterone. By converting diosgenin in the lab to progesterone, scientists produced the first combined oral contraceptive pills.

It was a small step for snake oil salesmen to say that wild yam contains progesterone ergo if you rub this wild yam cream on your breasts they will get bigger. They won’t. Wild yam doesn’t actually contain progesterone and the body cannot change diosgenin into progesterone; it has to be done in a lab.

Still if you are willing to stick with your Wonderbra, wild yam and its diosgenin, a steroid saponin, have plenty of other things to offer.  Some of wild yam’s benefits may, or may not, be due to estrogen. Some sources say that there is no estrogen in wild yam diosgenin. Whilst others, admit that it is present but not necessarily readily converted by the human body – although the effects of estrogen and progesterone have been shown on mice.

Despite the debate, there does seem to be credible research showing that wild yam is beneficial for post menopausal women. For example, a study on 22 women who ate yam for 30 days, replacing two thirds of staple food, showed improved status of sex hormones, lipids, and antioxidants. The researchers speculated that these effects might reduce the risk of breast cancer and cardiovascular diseases in postmenopausal women, although they admitted that “the exact mechanism is not clear”.

Aging women might also be interested to learn that wild yam may prevent the decline of bone density:  one study concluded possible therapeutic use of diosgenin for the treatment of certain bone-related diseases and another study that found diosgenin to be a treatment for osteoporosis. Diosgenin is also found in other plants, such as fenugreek, and research has found that the fenugreek constituent diosgenin seems to have potential as a novel colon cancer preventive agent.

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Read the complete article and related information at Will wild yam make you younger

Women’s experience of sexual activity during menopause differs greatly between individuals, says a new study.

Times Of India

Menopause may increase sexual desire (Getty Images

New research from the University of Sheffield says that external factors such as providing care for a relative, partner’s low sexual desire and the quality of the relationship were more important than hormonal changes in determining sexual satisfaction during menopause.

“Biological research tends to report the negative impact of declining hormone levels on women’s ability to engage in and enjoy sexual activities, whereas our study found that some women actually saw an increase in sexual desire during this time,” said Dr Sharron Hinchcliff, from the University’s School of Nursing and Midwifery.

The findings therefore concluded that women go through many lifestyle changes during mid-life which are also contributing factors.

The study was published in the Journal of Health Psychology.

Read the complete article and related information at Menopause increases sexual desire

Hormone imbalance symptoms in teenagers are becoming very common today due to improper diet and stressful environmental conditions. The following article will cover some information on hormone imbalance symptoms in kids that will help work towards treatment of raging hormones…

Buzzle.com

When a teenager throws a fit around for not being allowed to do something they want or a young girl sits sulking for no rhyme or reason, the culprit invariably according the parents is hormone imbalance. The adolescence period is a very delicate transition period, where a child steps into the world of adulthood. Mother nature is busy with her work, that causes many physical, emotional and mental changes in a young child on the threshold of adulthood. These changes take place due to the hormonal secretions that helps a child to enter the age of puberty. These changes may lead to hormone imbalance symptoms in teenagers that has a major impact on their mood and behavior. A sad and depressed teen in the morning may suddenly turn bubbly and happy in the evening. This is where the old saying, ‘blame it on the hormones’ may have originated. Lets see some more information related to hormone imbalance symptoms in teenagers in the following paragraphs.

Causes of Hormonal Imbalance Symptoms in Teenagers
In today’s world, hormonal imbalance symptoms in teenagers is becoming very common. This is due to a number of reasons that causes these hormonal ups and downs. Teenagers today are exposed to hundreds of chemicals as compared to teenagers before them. These chemicals are not only those present in the polluted environment, but also as preservatives, food coloring agents and flavoring agents in foods and drinks. Chemicals are also present in the form of pesticides on fruits and vegetables, plastics, beauty products, etc., that enter their system causing a lot of hormonal problems. Teens tend to live on a junk food diet rather than having balanced food that includes fresh food products.

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Read the complete article and related information at Hormone Imbalance Symptoms in Teenagers