How to Beat Hot Flashes and PMS Naturally!
By Dr. Michael L. Johnson, Board Certified Chiropractic Neurologist
Do you ever feel like you are falling apart? Do you suffer from severe hot flashes, mood swings, and intense brain fog? When you mentioned your symptoms to your doctor, is their first recommendation, hormone replacement therapy?
Hormone replacement therapy is big business!
There are all kinds of synthetic and “bio-identical” creams, pills, potions and lotions, along with birth control pills, hormone replacement therapy (estrogen in females and testosterone in males and including thyroid hormone replacement), that can cause total chaos in body.
As the ovaries start to decrease the production of sex hormones, the adrenal glands are supposed to increase activity and take over that job. Unfortunately, by the time most women reach the age of menopause their adrenal glands are burned-out and are not able to take over the production of sex hormones.
The adrenal glands are our “stress glands” and when we are stressed, our adrenal glands secrete adrenal hormones to help our bodies adapt to stressors. The problem is that we are built to only call our adrenal glands into action occasionally and not have them on bombarded with stress daily.
In addition to emotional stress, adrenal stress can be caused by increased caffeine consumption, decreased sleep, over scheduling, poor diet including too much sugar and chronic inflammation.
When using exogenous hormones (meaning outside of the body, such as creams), you are flooding your body with an unnatural amount of hormones. This can cause several upsets in the body.
The brain has a feedback loop on hormonal activity in the body. If the brain senses that there is not enough of a particular hormone, it tells the glands to make more and if it senses there is too much of a particular hormone, it sends a message to slow down the production of this hormone. If a person uses a hormone cream or pills, the brain gets the message that no hormones are needed and the communication between the brain and the gland slows down or even becomes dormant. Finally, it shuts down completely and the gland atrophies and is useless. When this happens, the hormone cream and pills become necessary for the rest of your life.
Hormone creams can cause excessive amounts of hormone to accumulate in body fat, particularly if you are overweight or obese.
The liver is then under tremendous stress to break down these hormones so they can be eliminated. This causes the liver to slow down and become unhealthy. This is a big health risk, especially in the case of estrogen. If the liver can’t break down these hormones, instead of being eliminated, they go back into the bloodstream and become toxic to the body, especially estrogen. Poor liver function causes high cholesterol, problems with anemia and iron, B-Vitamin absorption problems, inflammation, and poor immunity.
Too much estrogen can lead to breast cancer, endometriosis, premenstrual syndrome, fibrocystic breasts, ovarian cysts, cervical dysplasia, endometrial cancer, prostate carcinoma, and hyperplasia.
In addition, if a healthcare provider orders hormone tests for a person taking exogenous hormones, the results can show a hormone deficiency.
This is because these tests only measure the natural hormones the body is making. They do not measure synthetic hormones. Also, the use of hormonal creams and pills does inhibit the production of natural hormones, causing them to be low.
So, the excessive use of hormonal creams and pills has created symptoms of hormone deficiency AND the laboratory test has confirmed that deficiency. Now, your doctor is going to prescribe even higher doses of hormones.
This works with thyroid hormones, too so it’s a crazy, viscous, downward cycle.
You CAN beat hot flashes and PMS naturally by detoxifying your body of excess and synthetic hormones. The first thing that I like to do is address the patient’s diet. I highly recommend a paleo-type diet of meat, fish, vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds. Next, I address the liver, adrenal, and gut function. I want to make sure that their liver enzymes (ALT and AST) are within the normal functional range (10-26) and if not, I recommend nutritional support in the form of Max B-ND, Liver-ND and/or HepatoVen from Premier Research Labs (PRL). Next, I address the adrenal function with either Adaptogen R3 or AdrenaVen. Vitamin C is also very beneficial in restoring adrenal function. Usually, once the liver, adrenal and gut is successfully addressed, the hormone issue resolves itself (again, getting to the cause) but if it doesn’t, that is when I will start to address the specific hormonal needs of the patient by using specific lab tests and supplement accordingly. If needed, I also recommend UltraPollen and Fem Balance from PRL to help balance the hormones naturally.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Dr. Michael L. Johnson is a Board-Certified Chiropractic Neurologist and he has been in private practice in Appleton, WI since 1983. Dr. Johnson spends many hours each week answering questions from patients all over the world at no charge. He is the author of seven books which can be found at www.askdrjohnson.com. Dr. Johnson’s thyroid book, “You Can Beat Thyroid Disorders Naturally” is available at www.drjthyroidbook.com and his thyroid website is www.youcanbeatthyroiddisorders.com. Dr. Johnson’s YouTube channel is “Dr. Michael Johnson” and his Facebook page is “Dr. Michael L. Johnson’s Natural Thyroid Solutions.” Dr. Johnson spends many hours each week answering questions from patients all over the world at no charge.
