Overview
Women experiencing menopause are not destined to suffer from hot flashes, impaired mood, muscle loss, poor sleep, memory difficulties, and sexual problems. Menopausal symptoms are signs of imbalances in your sex hormones; they are not the result of mutant genes that destroy our vitality as we age. Instead, they are treatable symptoms of underlying imbalance in one of the core systems in your body. While conventional medicine commonly jumps to prescribe hormone replacement, Functional Medicine seeks to figure out the “why” – what is causing the symptoms and how can you treat the underlying problem. While sometimes this does include hormone replacement,, the important thing is to find the way to replace them that most aligns with your body.
In this mini-episode, Dr. Hyman is joined by Dr. Elizabeth Boham to discuss the Functional Medicine approach to treating symptoms of menopause. They also discuss how they evaluate when to prescribe postmenopausal hormones and share patient case studies.
Elizabeth Boham is a physician and nutritionist who practices functional medicine at The UltraWellness Center in Lenox, MA. Through her practice and lecturing she has helped thousands of people achieve their goals of optimum health and wellness. She witnesses the power of nutrition every day in her practice and is committed to training other physicians to utilize nutrition in healing. Dr. Boham has contributed to many articles and wrote the latest chapter on Obesity for the Rankel Textbook of Family Medicine. She is part of the faculty of the Institute for Functional Medicine and has been featured on the Dr. Oz show and in a variety of publications and media including Huffington Post, The Chalkboard Magazine, and Experience Life. Her DVD Breast Wellness: Tools to Prevent and Heal from Breast Cancer explores the functional medicine approach to keeping your breasts and whole body well.
This episode is sponsored by AquaTru. We need clean water not only to live but to create vibrant health and protect ourselves and loved ones from toxin exposure and disease. Learn more about the AquaTru water filter at a special price at www.www.longevityfilm.com/filter
In this episode, Dr. Hyman and Dr. Boham discuss:
- The Women’s Health Initiative and hormone replacement therapy
- Perimenopause vs menopause
- Common perimenopause and menopause symptoms
- Why it matters how a woman goes into menopause
- Hormones, cancer, and chemotherapy
- How environmental toxins affect hormones
- How nutritional deficiencies affect estrogen metabolism
- Personalizing hormone use
- Pros and cons of giving hormones orally and transdermally
- Giving progesterone and testosterone
For more information visit www.longevityfilm.com/uwc