Lose Weight This Year with the Help of Hormone Replacement Therapy
If you’re determined to lose weight this year, you should know that diet and exercise aren’t always the answer. Sometimes you can diligently exercise and watch calories, yet still fail to drop those pesky pounds.
Your struggle to lose weight may be the result of a hormone imbalance that’s sabotaging your efforts. Here at BioAge Health, we’ve helped many patients in Eagan and the Twin City area of Minnesota successfully lose weight by restoring their natural hormones.
As a board-certified bioidentical hormone specialist and weight loss specialist, Dr. Catherine Kodama works closely with each patient, providing support and exceptional help with hormone deficiencies that contribute to weight gain.
Hormones that affect your weight
Your body is driven to maintain balance. This concept, called homeostasis, holds true for every system and process in your body because it’s the key to survival. Homeostasis ensures vital functions like your body temperature and blood volume stay within the specific limits needed for you to live.
Hormones have a key role in homeostasis, and when their levels are too low or too high they significantly impact your health. Several hormones actively regulate your weight. When their levels drop below normal, you gain weight.
These are some of the key hormones connected to your weight:
Thyroid hormones
Thyroid hormones are intimately involved with your weight because they regulate your body’s metabolism. When thyroid hormones are too low, your metabolic rate drops and your body burns fewer calories. Low levels of thyroid hormones are associated with weight gain and a decline in energy expenditure regardless of your physical activity.
Cortisol
Cortisol is known as the stress hormone because its levels increase in tandem with your stress. Unfortunately, when you’re under chronic stress, cortisol levels also stay persistently high. High cortisol levels trigger fat storage, which leads to weight gain.
Estrogen
Estrogen is directly involved in metabolism and maintaining a healthy weight, including helping to regulate glucose and lipid metabolism. When your estrogen levels drop, your metabolic rate declines and your body begins to store fat. In other words, you gain weight.
An estrogen deficiency also contributes to insulin resistance, which turns your body into a fat-storage machine. In addition to triggering weight gain, low estrogen affects where fat settles in your body. When estrogen levels fall, you begin to accumulate belly fat, even if you don’t gain weight overall.
Testosterone
There’s a clear association between low testosterone and weight gain. Much like low estrogen, lack of testosterone tends to make fat accumulate in your abdomen. It’s also important for men to know that being overweight leads to low testosterone.
DHEA
Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) is a precursor hormone, which means it’s job is to turn into other hormones, such as estrogen and testosterone. DHEA helps to regulate your metabolism and fat storage. Without enough DHEA, your body tends to gain weight.
Reasons you have low hormones
Your hormones can become depleted for any number of reasons. An underlying health condition, chronic stress, lack of sleep, nutritional deficiencies, a toxic overload in your body, and some medications can all disrupt hormone levels.
You can also be generally healthy and end up with low hormones because their production naturally goes down as you get older. The classic example is the decline in estrogen at menopause, but men also lose testosterone at a steady pace after the age of 30 or 40. Aging also leads to a gradual but continuous drop in cortisol, thyroid hormones, and DHEA.
Bioidentical hormone replacement restores hormone balance
A sure way to reverse the effect of a hormone imbalance on your weight is to restore your hormones back to normal levels. The great thing about regaining your hormone balance is that it does more than help you lose weight; it also helps to reverse and prevent the multitude of health problems that arise due to low hormones.
Here at BioAge Health, you receive personal attention and customized hormone replacement. We review your medical history and run advanced lab tests to determine your hormone levels. If you have any imbalances, your hormone therapy is individually developed to replace the precise amount and type of hormones you need.
Dr. Kodama prescribes SottoPelle® bioidentical hormone replacement therapy for several reasons. Bioidentical hormones are identical to those produced by your body, so they exert the same effect. Additionally, the hormones in your SottoPelle therapy are made from natural botanicals.
While you’re on bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, we routinely check your hormone levels to be sure you maintain optimal, healthy levels.
Do you want to learn whether a hormone imbalance factors into your weight gain? Call BioAge Health or use the online booking feature to schedule an appointment.
