Dr. Alicia Stanton, BodyLogicMD’s Chief Medical Officer was interviewed on CBS and discussed how to best balance hormones and how to create balance in your life.

Hormones are our body’s messengers and are necessary for our brain to communicate with our cells. As a person ages, some of the key hormones like estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and thyroid decrease; and hormones like insulin and cortisol start to increase. This combination often leads to a myriad of symptoms commonly associated with aging.

By focusing on what we are eating and maintaining blood sugar and insulin levels stable, we can create balance in our lives. Managing stress is a key component to optimal health. When one’s body is stressed, it produces cortisol (the stress hormone). Cortisol has the same building blocks as testosterone and estrogen, and the more we’re diverting these ‘materials’ to making cortisol, the less building blocks we have to make the important hormones.

Transcript:

Woman Host - You may hear that hormones are the ones to blame when you feel a little bit out of whack. But what exactly do and don’t your hormones control?

Man Host – Dr. Alicia Stanton tackles that question in her new book Hormone Harmony that just came out this, last month. She joins us this morning to explain more and doctor welcome. Nice to see you.

Dr. Alicia Stanton- Good morning, how are you?

Man Host - Doctor tell us what exactly is a hormone? We all have them.

Dr. Alicia Stanton – Exactly, Hormones are our bodies messengers, it is what allows us to get a message maybe from our brain to our heart, to our muscles, allows us to have our metabolism work. So it’s the way our body communicates between cells.

Woman Host - And a lot of times when we hear hormones, we think women but this is an issue that men have to be concerned with as well.

Dr. Alicia Stanton – That’s very true, it is interesting because one of the things that are happening between lifestyles and are stress levels is that we are changing our hormone make up so that women are going through menopause a much different way than they used to. It’s not your mother’s menopause but the really important thing is that men are also having issues with hormone decrease or hormone drops that they don’t realize and the symptoms are very subtle so they may think they are depressed or suddenly they lose their libido and their gaining weight and it’s their hormones not necessarily their depression.

Man Host – Tell us about the changing of the hormone levels as a person ages.

Dr. Alicia Stanton – Sure as a person ages some of the key hormones like estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and thyroid tend to decrease. A lot of those peak in the twenties and the thirties and then start decreasing. Hormones like insulin and cortisol which in the long run can break the body down and start to increase so when you’re in your forties; I call that your heck in a hand basket kind of years. All of a sudden all the good stuff is decreasing and all the bad stuff are really increasing so it creates a lot of imbalance.

Woman Host - How can we create balance in our life then when it comes to hormones?

Dr. Alicia Stanton - One of the key ways to create balance in your life is really what you are eating. You want to focus on keeping your blood sugar and your insulin levels stable. So you want to have a little something every two to three hours and I tell my patients to do a lean protein which is chicken, fish nuts. Those kinds of things and a complex carbohydrate, usually a vegetable or a high fiber fruit. Do a little of that every two to three hours, apples and peanut butter, nuts those kinds of things. The other real key is keeping your stress levels down. Cortisol or stress hormone has the same building blocks as testosterone and estrogen. So the more we’re diverting our stress hormone making cortisol the less building blocks that we have to make other hormones that are really important.

Man Host – Doctor, are there preventative measure that we can take or is there something that is reactive when it comes to hormones.

Dr. Alicia Stanton - Both , there’s there are preventative measures like I said really monitoring your stress levels, eating consistently well and if you’re doing that in your twenties and thirties it makes your forties and fifties better. If you’re already in the situation where your having imbalance there are ways to fix it. We can rebalance some things with bioidentical hormone therapy and those hormones you may not need to stay on all along, it may just need to rebalance then we evaluate your lifestyle, we look at how your eating and try and change things there and then if the hormones are working well we can remove you from the hormones.

Woman Host – The book is called Hormone Harmony and I hope we can all find that harmony doctor, Dr. Stanton, thank you so much for joining us today. Dr. Alicia Stanton – Thank you very much, Man Host - Congratulations with the book. Dr. Alicia Stanton - Thank you

About Dr. Alicia Stanton