BHRT

Do you enjoy dancing? Hiking? Gardening? Playing with your children or grandchildren? If you have joint pain, especially knee, shoulder, or back pain, some of your favorite activities have probably become painful and arduous, if not impossible. And because regular physical activity is essential for your physical health—even helping to stabilize your mood and keep your energy levels elevated—joint pain can have health effects that reach far beyond simply making it more difficult to move.

Diabetes is a growing global health crisis. According to the World Health Organization, the number of people with diabetes has nearly quadrupled, from 108 million in 1980 to 422 million in 2014. Part of why this is such a huge problem is because diabetes can lead to sexual dysfunction, heart failure, blindness, kidney failure, amputation, and other serious problems.

If you frequently “borrow” hours from the sleep department in order to get more done, you’re not alone: more than a third of Americans aren’t getting the minimum of seven hours a night recommended by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) and the Sleep Research Society (SRS). And a whopping 65 percent of Americans never get a full eight hours of sleep.

Have you ever experienced the “boomerang effect” from dieting? It’s a common story: you get serious about dieting and gradually succeed in losing weight, but it doesn’t last. Eventually, it comes back―very likely in a greater amount than you lost. In fact, many people who diet gain back more weight than they lose.

Anyone who has ever had a full-blown attack of acid reflux disease (otherwise known as gastroesophageal reflux disease, or GERD) knows that it can be seriously debilitating. Unfortunately, it’s a common problem—more than 15 million people are thought to suffer from acid reflux, and they keep the market for antacids booming.

The traditional medicine view of neurodegeneration (the progressive loss of structure or function of neurons) has been that it is irreversible and that adults cannot grow back lost or damaged neurons. However, more and more research is showing that this is not true, and experts in the field of functional and integrative medicine have been making leaps and bounds in methods to prevent and even reverse cognitive decline.

Fewer hours of sleep are proven to make you hungrier, yet hormonal issues can prevent you from catching enough Z’s no matter how hard you try.

If you’re trying to slim down after indulging over this winter, you may need to focus on something that seems a bit counterintuitive: catching up on your sleep. It’s true—longer and better-quality sleep may help your weight loss efforts in the new year as much as hitting the gym.

Almost everyone has experienced at least one splitting headache in their lifetime. Headaches can take many forms, from tension headaches to migraines. Whether they are short in duration or chronic, mild or severe, headaches can be very disruptive to daily life. Depending on the type of headache, there may be multiple causes, but stress, genetics, and imbalanced hormones levels are some of the most common culprits, aside from sinus and allergy headaches. While the cause of headaches cannot always be controlled, bioidentical hormone replacement therapy offers promising solutions for treating headaches in both men and women.

If you want to lower your risk of heart attack and stroke—two leading causes of mortality in the US—there is research showing that you may have to look no further than your meditation mat. A study published in the American Heart Association journal Circulation found that when African American patients with heart disease practiced transcendental meditation twice a day, they dramatically reduced their risk of heart attack, stroke, and death from all causes when compared to the control group, who simply received education about heart-friendly diet and exercise. In fact, the meditation group was 48 percent less likely to experience these events.

Hormones perform countless essential tasks in your body—they regulate your immune system, help you digest and extract nutrients from food, regulate your mood, and keep your energy levels high and your libido strong. Maintaining adequate hormone levels is critical, not only for your long-term health, but also for your day-to-day functioning. Hormonal imbalances and deficiencies can quickly cascade into a multitude of problematic symptoms and even major health issues. And when it comes to keeping your hormones in balance, what you eat can make all the difference.