How a big disaster starts.
One small change in the way you feel every day may portend your health disaster. Sometimes your symptoms are so small and seem so unimportant that you don't pay attention. But they are really warning symptoms of what could possibly be a disaster.
You are in your 40s or 50s. You have everything you were dreaming of: beautiful kids, a wonderful spouse, big house or apartment and a wonderful job or business. Everything is going smoothly. And you think, that it is time to relax and enjoy life. Suddenly you feel like you are on fire, you turn red and start sweating. And it happens at the worst time, while you are in bed with your beloved or speaking to one of your customers. A few minutes later the hot flush is gone, but it comes back again and again and again. But now, you are waiting for it every minute, and it makes you crazy.
You notice that you forget where you left your keys and credit cards, you started forgetting about your appointments and now you need to make a shopping list, which you never did before. Then you start yelling at your loved ones - your children and your spouse without reason and you do not understand why. You feel like you cannot control yourself any more. When it comes to sex, you are not enjoying it any more. It's become painful now, but avoiding it is now causing more problems with your spouse.
One problem after another comes into your life...one new alarm after another goes off. The final disaster in your life has happened -- you are not yourself anymore.
One tiny emotional failure in your relationship can lead to drama in your life, but the measurement of this failure was inconspicuous and you hardly noticed it in the beginning. You were together with your spouse and kids for many years but suddenly a strong turbulence is shaking your lives. Your relationships have started to go disastrously wrong.
One after another, the autopilots in your lives shut off and what used to always work isn't working anymore. Quickly, you are being sucked into the waves, with no way to save yourself.
You're screaming out and crying for help, but there's nothing ahead but despair. The life you worked so hard to get is now sinking.
It's at about the age of 40 that everything begins. You want to give all your love to your spouse and your children. Instead you have a mood swing and shout at them making them unhappy. You start arguing more with your spouse, start passing up on invitations to go out with your friends because you are tired. But you used to always be the first one there.
Then it was Sunday. Sex time! It's a duty and routine now. Suddenly this day felt like a chore for you. You do not have the fantasy and energy that you had before.
Suddenly, you start feeling Hot... hotter!! And then sweating, you realize you are suffering from hot flushes!
You are not feeling pleasure and emotions like before. Finally, after the chore of sex is over, you try to fall asleep, but now you cannot. Your spouse is angry with you because you are keeping him or her awake. Finally at four o'clock in the morning you fall sleep, only to have to wake up in two hours. You wake up in the morning very sleepy and tired, cannot open your eyes and now you feel like you need your morning coffee. You go to the bathroom to take a shower, look at the mirror and you see wrinkles on your face, wrinkles that you didn't see before. You start putting creams and make up to cover them but every time gets more difficult to cover them and you feel like you are losing control of your life.
You go to your primary care physician, then to a psychiatrist, but do not get any answers. But you need an answer now, because you are not yourself any more. You were at a point in your life, finally, where you were happy with your work, with your status in life, with your family life, with your sex-life. Everything was running smoothly. For the past 40 or 50 years, you have treated your body right, and it, in turn has treated you right.
Until you start noticing little changes creeping in. Wrinkles? A little, for now. Mood swings? Slightly harder to deal with. Loss of energy? Causing a kink in your plans. Loss of libido? Bringing some major tension into the house. Is it the beginning of a disaster? What's going on with your health?
Could it be one simple test that can prevent the disaster? Could your disaster start even before your first symptom?
Going through menopause or andropause is like trying to cross a stormy Atlantic ocean in a tiny boat. But nobody prepared you for this at all!
What Official Medicine can do for you to get your life back.
No one is able to explain to you why you are suffering and what needs to be done. To your anger, your doctor, whom you love very much, says, that everything is OK with you. It is just aging, which is normal. But you know something is disastrously wrong. You have to get the answer now or you may die.
Official Western medicine does not give an answer to this question. "There are no lifestyle changes, surgical procedures, vitamins, antioxidants, hormones, or techniques of genetic engineering available today with the capacity to repeat the gains in life expectancy that were achieved during the 20th century " according to demographer S. Jay Olshansky of University of Illinois in Chicago as well as 51 longevity experts in their position statement in 2002.
That is why I had to launch my own investigation, based on scientific studies and my own experience. I did not have a choice but to do it, because I was going through andropause myself.
My investigation was based on facts and common sense, not controlled studies. This method was used by doctor James Lind in about 1750 when he discovered how to fight scurvy. Six groups of two sailors were used. And one group which was given oranges and lemon - improved. The same method was used by doctor Edward Jenner in 1796, when he invented vaccination.
What would happen to the mankind if they would require double blind controlled studies to prove that vaccination is working for smallpox and lemon for scurvy? We would be dead. If the treatment is really working you do not need double blind controlled studies to prove it.
It is like your keys for your home door. It is either fits or not. You do not need double blind controlled studies to figure this out. Normally an investigation like this is done by a group of scientists. And it should be financed. Usually it is a big pharmaceutical company that invests money in the scientific study. And they did it before: they created drugs that mimic human hormones.
How they created a fake to poison you.
Because natural substances like hormones cannot be patented, they had to come up with something else. Instead of the most important women's hormone estrogen they offered modified horse estrogens to produce "estrogen" for our women. Instead of the second important women's hormone progesterone they offered drugs, that sound like natural progesterone, but actually are synthetic -- Progestins. Why would they name the synthetic stuff like natural?
In the beginning everybody was happy: patients, because they felt better, doctors, because it was less work for them, pharmaceutical companies, because they were getting money.
Until Women's Health Initiative (WHI) study came out.
Synthetic and semisynthetic hormone mimicking drugs Premarin and Prempro were jewels in the crown of the pharmaceutical company Wyeth. Their sales almost reached 1 billion dollars in 2001 1. But even Big Pharma could not conceal the WHI damaging conclusions. What they found was that synthetic or semisynthetic hormones are linked to many life-threatening conditions like cancer and blood clots.
They are linked to cancer. They can cause blood clots. Low testosterone and decreased libido as well as gallstones are the complications of synthetic hormones, etc.
But the drugs were on the market already. And they were very profitable. So what they had to do was to warn patients about the risks, but continue to sell the drugs. Who wants to stop money coming? But how did it happen that FDA approved drugs with life threatening side effects?
It is 2009. New York Times magazine Reporter Natasha Singer is looking into hormone replacement therapy drugs. But she is not interested in how those drugs were approved. After the scandals with Troglitazone or Trovan nobody is excited about it. She was interested in a much more important thing: how it happened that doctors recommended harmful drugs. What they found was: it was ghostwritten medical papers, signed by doctors, that created medical " consensus".
Can We Trust Such "Scientific" Articles?
I still remember my 27 year old female neighbor, who died because of a clot in her legs that went to her lungs. She was on birth control pills. Since then I decided not to advise traditional synthetic hormones to my patients.
So I arrived to my first solid conclusion: no synthetic or semisynthetic hormones, because:
But do you need hormones at all? May be you can get back your life with diet and supplements? Or may be all you need to do is to bring your cholesterol down? Yoga? Meditation?
I still remember my first patient, suffering from heart attack: gasping, cold sweat, fear in his eyes and death imprinted on his face. Or one of my cancer patients suffering from
excruciating pain. Or Alzhemer's patients, who know about their problem and are ashamed of it. Maybe all we need to do is to get treatment for heart, cancer and dementia?
Why Eskimo do not have heart attacks
During my medical training I was told many times, that heart attacks are due to high cholesterol. What I did not know was about the Danish Eskimo study.
Danish scientists Bang and Dyerberg discovered that Eskimos almost never die of heart attacks, the number one killer, despite the fact that they did not have that low cholesterol.
So it was not actually cholesterol, that kills! And they knew about it since the 1970s! It must be something else. What about cancer? What about Alzheimer's? Swedish scientist from University of Lund Staffan Lindeberg, MD went to Kitava Island in New Guinea to study its 24,000 people population. What he found was that they do not have heart attacks! No cancer! No diabetes! No Alzheimer's! But they die healthy on average at the age of 45 9.
So it is not cholesterol, it is not cancer, it is not dementia, that kills! But what is it then? I was at a dead end. And there was no help in sight. Do you think that Big Pharma will give away money to figure out how to get you better naturally?
Then I made my major breakthrough.
Seeing is believing. Have you ever seen a person who looks twice as young as her real age? I did. She had beautiful skin and shiny eyes. Her dress could not conceal gorgeous curves of her body. Her voice was getting to the bottom of everybody's heart. She looked like she was in her early 30s. In fact she was in her 60s. Her name was Suzanne Somers. Her Fountain of Youth was Bioidentical Hormone Replacement.
After many years in medical field, I had to admit that nothing like that could be achieved with traditional medicine. So maybe what she is doing is right? Maybe what she is saying is correct: "It is not your cholesterol, it is not your blood pressure, it is your hormone decline, that kills you."
Really? How about heart attacks, cancer and Alzheimer's? When you develop chest pain when you are 20, it is pulled muscle. But if you have chest pain in you 70s -- it's a heart attack.
If you lose your key in your 20s, you'll just get a new one. But if you lose your keys in your 70s -- it's Alzeimer's. And you are right: we usually do not have heart attacks, Alzheimer's or cancer in our 20s, when our sex hormone levels are high. But we do have them when our sex hormones are down.
Why?
Because mother nature does not need us that much after we cannot make babies any more. We need to free the space for young individuals, who can. Remember, that there is almost no menopause in the animal kingdom. Fortunately, there is a loophole for humans: menopause and andropause.
Mother nature's concept was simple: to ensure that humans are superior in survival compared to any other species in the world. Therefore humans needed more than simple estrous cycle in animals. It was menopause in females and andropause in males, that changed everything.
Normally a fertile woman has her ovaries with plenty of eggs that are released in cycles. To get pregnant in the beginning of her menstrual cycle she produces sex hormone Estrogen, which makes the follicles with eggs to grow. When the egg is big enough, it is Follicle Stimulating Hormone and Luteinizing Hormone surge that, along with Estrogen, make the follicle break -- a process called ovulation.
Then ovaries start producing another sex hormone Progesterone. Freed egg is then going to the uterus that is already prepared by Progesterone. If there is a sperm there, then pregnancy commences. If not, then egg is going out and Estrogen and Progesterone production ceases, uterus lining is gone, blood vessels become open and menstrual bleeding starts. Then the Estrogen production starts again, and uterus lining is restored. Bleeding is over, and woman is ready for another cycle. These cycles continue, until there are no more eggs in woman's ovary. When there are no more eggs, periods stop and menopause begins. Sounds simple. But there is a problem here: an average woman has about 1 million eggs, but she uses only about 400.
Why are the rest of her eggs wasted? Instead of using those eggs, women go into menopause and men go into andropause.
Why would mother nature invest in longevity but not in fertility? The reason why still remains the mystery.
Maybe it is because mother nature wants a postmenopausal woman to take care of her daughter's children so that she can make more babies? This is what Grandmother's theory is saying. Or maybe that is because older males can compete with youngsters to
make competition more tough because older males are more experienced and sophisticated? This is what the Patriarch hypothesis is saying.
It does not matter why nature decided to give us menopause and andropause. What matters is: we do have a loophole to live longer. The only thing we have to do is to pretend that we are still young. But how?
How to Pretend to Be Young
1930, Canada, McGill University, Department of Biochemistry.
A young Chairman, Professor Dr. James Collip, who just co-discovered Insulin, was thinking how to get relief of menopausal disaster. After series of experiments and failures he eventually found the solution. What he did was: he extracted estrogen from the urine of pregnant women and gave it as a menopausal remedy. And it did work. Because giving natural hormones of fertile women to postmenopausal individuals was a signal to their bodies that they are still fertile. That is how we can pretend that we are still young. Have you ever run out of gas? Certainly. But you did not think, that it is the end of the world, and your car is not going to run anymore. What you did was: you went to a gas station and filled up the tank, right?
Same here: because you ran out of eggs or sperm, you just need to fill your body with hormones, which are exactly the same as your own. But what hormones exactly we are talking about here? Mainly Estrogen, Progesterone and Testosterone.
Have you ever seen a picture of Marilyn Monroe? Sure. And you admired her, right? What you did not realize was: she is the perfect example of a woman, full of Estrogen: confidence, strong desire to have sex, big breasts and low waist to hip ratio. That is why estrogen is sometimes called "Marilyn Monroe Hormone".
Estrogen plays a critical role in a human's body. It is responsible for breast development, vagina lubrication, burning fat, maintaining your bones, skin and vessels, bringing your good cholesterol up and bad cholesterol down, etc. Because it works as an antioxidant, it protects your brain. No estrogen -- mood problems, memory problems, etc. But estrogen alone is not enough.
Confidence and strong sexual desire should be balanced, otherwise they will go too far. And the hormone, that does the job is Progesterone.
Have you ever seen pregnant women? They are calm because they have plenty of Progesterone. Do you know, that a cup of milk in the evening may help to get better
sleep? What you do not know is: milk contains Progesterone, that may help you to calm down, along with calcium and milk protein Casein. Also what you should know, is that Casein in your stomach is broken to CasoMorphin which is an Opioid ( like a street drug )?
Of course Progesterone is not Morphin, but it calms down, normalizes blood pressure, works as a natural diuretic and antidepressant. Its main job is to balance Estrogen. Did you know, that Progesterone is not only a sex hormone? It is also a Neurosteroid, that is produced in your brain and is necessary for its normal function. But again, Estrogen and Progesterone are not enough. There should be something, that gives us the energy and sense of well-being, as well as ability to maintain our muscles, mental and muscle energy and libido. It is hormone Testosterone that does the job.
1889, Paris, France. Aging former Harvard professor and now Professor of Experimental Medicine of College de France Doctor Charles -- Edouard Brown -- Sequard, is looking for an elixir of youth. He is a shrewd observer and a talented scientist. His name is immortalized in the modern neurology by the spinal cord damage syndrome, bearing his name. But he was aging as anybody else. He was desperately looking for a remedy, and he found one, later called Brown-S矇quard Elixir. What he did was: he self injected an extract from guinea pigs testicles. According to him his vigor was back, his sense of well-being was back. His Elixir was Testosterone. It was the famous medical journal, The Lancet, that first published his observations.
Do you think he was prized for his discovery? Actually his colleagues were laughing at him. It took them 40 years to rediscover the importance of Testosterone. Now we know, that it is not only for sex drive, erections and muscles. It is also to maintain you bones and protect you from Diabetes, Alzheimer's, heart disease etc.
Bottom line: we need all of them: bioidentical Estrogen, Progesterone and Testosteone ( women and men -- both ).
Are Bioidentical Hormones officially recommended?
Not a single other treatment ignited so many debates and controversy, as Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy ( BHRT). The official medicine including FDA, International Menopause Society, American Medical Association, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Mayo clinic, Endocrine Society, etc., is saying, that Bioidentical Hormones carry the same risks as synthetic hormones and there is no evidence of any other benefits of Bioidenticals.
I wonder, why so perfect a consensus is about it. Recently two branches of Government Research were trying to figure out if Chronic fatigue syndrome is associated with with exotic XMRV virus. One group (Harvey Alter, FDA and National Institutes of Health) found that yes, another group (William Switzer, CDC) found that no.
If the scientists, who use the same methods and testing the same virus, cannot come to the same conclusion, then how could they be so unanimous in much more complicated subject as Bioidentical Hormones?
Also, the FDA is saying that risks of Bioidenticals are the same as synthetic. Based on what? Did they test Bioidentical Hormones? Not that I know of. They assumed, that Bioidenticals work the same as synthetic, which we know are harmful.
It is like saying that one dollar bill has the same value as 100 dollar bill, because they are the same size.
On the other hand the proponents of Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy are saying, that Bioidenticals are safe and have no side effects.
Two French studies, published in 2008, suggest, that Bioidenticals are safer, that conventional BHRT. According to Dr. Kent Holtorf's literature review "Physiological data and clinical outcomes demonstrate that bioidentical hormones are associated with lower risks, including the risk of breast cancer and cardiovascular disease, and are more efficacious than their synthetic and animal- derived counterparts. Until evidence is found to the contrary, bioidentical hormones remain the preferred method of HRT. Further randomized controlled trials are needed to delineate these differences more clearly."
Even some prominent clinicians have to admit publicly the advantages of Bioidenticals. According to Dr. Christine Derzko, Chief of Endocrinology at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, "Despite the weak evidence, some promising preliminary data are emerging, suggesting that pharmaceuticals containing BH ( Bioidentical Hormones -- Sergey Kalitenko ), estradiol and progesterone, have equal (and in some cases, lower) risk compared with other CHT ( conventional hormone therapy -- Sergey Kalitenko ).
Normally we need controlled randomized studies of the efficacy and safety of Bioidentical Hormones. But there is no such study in sight. Do you think Big Pharma will invest money in something, that cannot be patented and therefore will unlikely to be profitable?
But what do we do, if we do not have long term studies so far? Let see what experts say: " I always tell clinicians, that until we have definite randomized trial data -- which we may never have -- whatever patient wants to do is the correct decision", -- says Dr. Speroff, who is a Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Oregon Health and Science University and a sub-specialist in reproductive endocrinology - one of the most respected OB -- GYN doctors in the US,
He is the founder and recently stepped down as director for the Women's Health Research Unit at OHSU. Doctor Speroff has gained prominence in the area of women's health throughout his publications, national and international lectures and extensive work on clinical trials.
But do Bioidentical Hormones really work? Do they really prolong life? Or may be they are another myth? I was desperately looking for the answer, but could not find the right one.
How they found longevity secrets.
My next breakthrough came unexpectedly -- from Blue Zones study.
Because official medicine does not give us the longevity prescription, not doctors, but National Geographc reporter Dan Buettner decided to look for the areas on Earth, where people live longer, than in the other areas. And he and his group found such areas.
To get the truth about longevity secrets he and other members of his expedition went to identified Blue Zones: Sardinia, Italy: Okinawa, Japan; Loma Linda, California, US; Nicoya, Costa Rica. They decided to learn from real people, not from theory, how to live longer. But what did they find?
Longevity lessons from real long living people for Blue Zones:
1. Get enough sun exposure.
2. Eat nuts and tomatoes
3. Be social.
4. Restrict your calorie consumption.
5. Move naturally.
6. Drink enough water.
Sounds like nothing unusual. But somehow together they worked much better than any other protocol suggested. What was the secret behind Blue Zones lessons?
The solution came unexpectedly. While investigating about tomato benefits, I learned that the most valuable their component antioxidant lycopene is going to the testes, adrenal glads and liver. Looked like tomato are protecting endocrine glands from oxidaive stress, but for what? To make sure that they make enough hormones! And I said to myself: "Gee! Maybe it is all about hormones!"
Being social means less stress and hence less harmful cortisol, and therefore more another steroids like estrogen, progesteone and testosterone. Calorie restriction is proven to raise Human Growth Hormone (HGH) levels. Sun exposure is about vitamin D, which is considered more as a hormone now.
Forget for a second about Blue Zones. The longest living person on Earth Jeanne Calment, who lived for 122 years and 165 days, was riding a bicycle at age 100 and broke her hip at age 114. This means, that she had enough Estrogen to maintain her bones!
Another centenarian, from Nicoya, named Rafael Angel Leon Leon, had multiple girlfriends until age 94, then he married a woman, who was 40 years younger then he was! Nobody marries an older person who cannot have sex! Therefore Mr. Rafael Leon had enough testosterone to have sex!
Looks like longevity is all about hormones. But what about safety?
It is like trying to answer the question if drinking water is safe. Yes, but in moderation. If you drink it too much your brain will swell to the extent that you may die.
Obviously estrogen itself is not a problem, because your body cannot produce poisonous hormone. The problem comes when it is too much estrogen, that leads to increased cancer risk or it is converted into poison, that causes cancer.
Normally the main body estrogen - estradiol or E2, is removed from your body very fast by 2 ways:
1. It is converted into 2 OH estrone, which is benign.
2. Estradiol binds to bile in the gut, becomes water soluble and then is eliminated via
kidneys. So estradiol is removed. No poison made. Danger is over.
But on 3 conditions:
1. Your body knows what to do with hormone.
2. There are enough enzymes to do the job.
3. Your gut functions properly and does not have wrong bacteria in it.
If even a single condition is not met -- you might be in danger.
Your body does not know that to do with synthetic and semisynthetic estrogens. Therefore instead of 2 OH estrone they are transformed into 4 OH estrone, which leads to free radical formation and therefore cancer.
Bioidenticals mostly do not have this problem, but what if your body does not have enough enzymes? Or your gut is not functioning properly?
Fortunately we can monitor what your body is doing with estrogen and most of the time make it right.
Bottom line is simple:
Get more energy, better sleep, mood, productivity and sex life with Hormone Balancing. You can get better with Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy ( BHRT ), but be aware of the risk involved. Doing nothing does not bring you anywhere. What can help you is finding the root cause of your problem and solving it.
Bioidentical Hormone replacement is very effective and reasonably safe.
To me it is more than using Bioidenticals, it is about using a holistic, individualized approach instead of standard protocols. To me it is about using natural remedies instead of potentially toxic drugs. To me it is about finding the root cause of your problem, instead of just treating your symptoms. Now it is your turn to decide what is right for you.
Blue Zones check list -- how to live longer:
1. Get enough sun light to get plenty of vitamin D, but not too much. Monkey on the beach sunbathing?
2. Restrict your calorie intake, your but still get enough calories to fight infection or stress.
3. Eat plenty of tomatoes.
4. Move naturally. Remember monkey in the gym?
5. Eat handful of nuts regularly.
6. Drink enough water.
7. Be social.
My suggestions:
1. Have enough sleep (at least 8 hours a day).
2. Follow Paleolithic diet -- avoid processed food!
3. Balance your hormones!
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