- Always feeling cold
- Hair loss / thinning
- Irregular menstrual cycles
- Heavy and/or painful periods
- PMS
- Low libido / sex drive
- Weight gain
- Low energy
- Stress
- Acne
- Facial hair growth
- Difficulty trying to conceive
If you experience any or all of the above, you may be experiencing a hormone imbalance. It could be related to cortisol, estrogen, testosterone, progesterone, or thyroid hormones.
Learn More of the Basics:
The Process to Restoring Hormone Balance
We start by scheduling an initial assessment. During this, we discuss your health concern in great detail and also conduct a head-to-toe review of systems to see what else is going on in the body because naturopathic medicine is grounded in seeing the entire body as connected – mental, emotional, and physical health is all interconnected.
Throughout each appointment, I will conduct relevant physical exams as necessary.
If you have any test results pertaining to your health concern, you can bring them with you to your initial assessment or during the first appointment, I will have you sign a request form to obtain a copy from your medical doctor’s office.
I can provide a blood test requisition and/or functional hormone testing options at an extra cost. Based on our initial history-taking, I will let you know if I feel that further testing may be highly beneficial or if we can go ahead with treatment and see how you do before investing in testing options.
The Treatment Plan
The first appointment: Simple dietary, lifestyle, and supplement recommendations are provided.
The Second Appointment: The bulk of the treatment plan occurs in the second appointment. This gives me time to review your specific case and individualize a treatment plan SPECIFIC for you. It also provides me with a chance to review your test results and see if further testing is needed.
The goal of naturopathic medicine is to address and treat the root cause of your symptoms. So while you may be feeling better right away, I am always doing research and digging deeper to figure out WHY those symptoms are there.
It’s all about figuring out the WHY. Addressing and treating that root cause. That brings the body in balance and removes the symptoms.
Follow-up visits: Are usually check-ins to see how you are doing and if we need to modify the treatment plan.
Functional Hormone Testing
This is a dried urine comprehensive hormone test. The sample is collected at home and mailed out to the laboratory for testing.
This test measures your adrenal (cortisol and DHEA-s) and sex (testosterone, progesterone, and estrogen) hormones AND also measures their metabolites which helps to give a complete picture of what is happening with your HPA (hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal) axis. Showing metabolites of estrogen also helps to show how your body is detoxifying and metabolizing estrogen by showing how much 2-OH (healthy), 16-OH (protects bone), and 4-OH (toxic) estrogens you are producing.
It measures your cortisol at 4 points over the course of a day rather than just in the morning which is often the blood test your MD will run (AM Cortisol). Together with this 4-point pattern and cortisol metabolites, it gives a better assessment if your adrenal glands are producing too much cortisol or too little cortisol. This helps with more appropriate adrenal supplement recommendations that can help increase or decrease adrenal gland output.
Another key feature of this test is that it measures key enzyme activity including 5-alpha-reductase. This enzyme is involved in the formation of testosterone to DHT. Elevated levels of DHT can promote BPH (Benign Prostatic Hypertrophy). DHT can increase hirsutism in females, acne, male-pattern hair loss as often seen in PCOS.
Month-Long Hormone Assessment
Dried urine cycle mapping tests for females are also available to see the pattern of your estrogen and progesterone throughout a cycle.
This is great for any female looking to get pregnant, has cycle-specific symptoms (mood swings, bloating, water retention, breast tenderness), and, PMS symptoms.
Saliva Cortisol Assessment
Saliva tests are offered to obtain your cortisol awakening response which can be very beneficial if you suffer from morning fatigue and it takes you about 3 hours to get going in the morning and have tons of flu-like symptoms, pain and stiffness in the mornings. This evaluates your cortisol level in the morning which should be the highest but can often be found low in cases of chronic fatigue.