Healthy habits can keep you looking and feeling your best as you age. You should exercise regularly, eat a wholesome diet, cultivate good sleep hygiene practices, and manage your daily stressors. But your healthy lifestyle can’t completely control the aging process.
Some of the most disruptive effects of aging occur at the cellular level, driven by declining levels of reproductive hormones, the chemical messengers that regulate many major body processes.
At RVA Regenerative Wellness in Midlothian, Virginia, anti-aging specialist Jennylle Zanzi, FNP-C, and our skilled team offer BioTE® hormone replacement therapy (BHRT) to help you counteract the effects of age-related hormonal changes. Here’s how BHRT supports your vitality and well-being as you get older.
Hormones are tiny chemical messengers made and released by your endocrine system, a vast network of tissues, glands, and organs that work in concert to regulate and coordinate complex body processes. Your hormones play a central role in many processes within your body, including:
At any given moment, your hormone levels are affected by many factors, ranging from your gender, age, and health status to the quality of your diet, overall activity level, and natural circadian rhythms. Changes in any of these factors can result in hormonal changes that give rise to alterations in your body processes.
When you reach middle age, your endocrine system begins slowing the production and release of reproductive hormones, including the primary female sex hormone, estrogen, and the primary male sex hormone, testosterone. These age-related hormonal declines can trigger a host of disruptive changes.
Some of the most notorious effects of shifting hormones are purely physical. Both women and men become more prone to developing a sluggish metabolism that leads to easier weight gain. Persistent fatigue and low energy are also common.
The declining estrogen levels of menopause cause many women to experience hot and cold flashes, night sweats, thinning hair, drier skin, and migraines. Declining testosterone levels can cause aging men to experience decreased muscle mass and tone, loss of body hair, and less beard growth.
Many women and men find that declining reproductive hormone levels impair their mental well-being, too. Aging men and women are more likely to start experiencing mood swings, irritability, reduced motivation, persistent symptoms of anxiety or depression, and chronic sleep problems, including insomnia.
Age-related hormonal changes can also undermine sexual wellness, and many older adults experience diminished libido. For men, a reduced sex drive may be accompanied by erectile dysfunction (ED). Aging women frequently experience chronic vaginal dryness and discomfort during sexual intercourse.
If the hormone-driven effects of aging sound all too familiar, BHRT can be an ideal solution. Bioidentical hormones are structurally identical to your natural hormones, meaning your body can’t distinguish them from the hormones it produces.
To counteract the effects of aging, our team measures your hormone levels and prescribes a custom-compounded estrogen or testosterone pellet. This contains the precise amount of supplemental hormones your body needs to correct its imbalance.
In a quick and painless procedure, we implant the slow-release bioidentical hormone pellet just beneath the surface of your skin, usually in the upper buttock area. The rice-sized pellet begins releasing its hormones in a controlled manner and lasts for several months before it needs to be replaced with a new pellet.
Every year or so, we reassess your hormone prescription needs to keep your levels optimized and your age-related symptoms at bay.
To find out if BHRT would be a safe and beneficial treatment solution for you, we conduct a thorough evaluation that includes:
Even if your symptoms and lab tests confirm that you’d stand to benefit from a supplement of bioidentical hormones, your health and medical history determine if BHRT is safe for you. We may not recommend hormone therapy if you have a history of blood clots, heart disease, or prostate, breast, or ovarian cancers.
To find out how bioidentical hormone therapy can help you, call or click online to schedule a consultation at RVA Regenerative Wellness in Midlothian, Virginia, today.
