What Hormones Mean to You

The Hormone Solution: Stay Younger Longer with Natural Hormone and Nutrition Therapies
by Thierry Hertoghe, M.D.

America's perceptions about the inevitable effects of aging are about to be completely rethought, thanks to groundbreaking new information from an internationally known expert on hormones and antiaging medicine. Thierry Hertoghe, M.D., has an important message to share: people are aging unnecessarily.

Based on thirty-five years of scientific studies, The Hormone Solution: Stay Younger Longer with Natural Hormone and Nutrition Therapies is the first book that offers a prescriptive program to counter memory loss, weight gain, wrinkles, shrinking muscle mass, impotence, hair loss, and a host of other signs and symptoms of aging. Dr. Hertoghe offers an effective program of hormone replacement therapy using safe, low doses of natural hormones - in conjunction with a healthy diet and vitamin and mineral supplements - to help people maintain physical, mental, and emotional health and literally restore their bodies to a state that's three to twelve years younger than their actual age. He identifies the fifteen main, crucial hormones found in the body and explains the process that restores each one to its correct level.

With a foreword by renowned doctor Barry Sears, The Hormone Solution is filled with self-scoring checklists, eating plans, nutritional prescription plans, and hormone shopping lists that help every reader calculate his or her personal hormone profile. Dr. Hertoghe is revolutionizing the medical field with his work, showing us how to treat chronic illnesses and the large and small aspects of aging by using preventive measures to drastically slow the aging process and its effects without costly procedures and surgeries. The Hormone Solution is a landmark publication that will revolutionize how people age, enabling us to live longer, healthier, and happier lives

Chapter 1

Your body contains more than one hundred different types of hormones, and they pour into your bloodstream at the rate of thousands of billions of units per day. Hormones regulate your heartbeat and your breathing. Hormones make men men and women. Hormones put you to sleep at night and wake you up in the morning. They control your blood pressure. They build bone, maintain muscle tone, and lubricate joints. Hormones govern growth. They make the body produce energy and heat. Hormones burn fat. Hormones govern the menstrual cycle and allow pregnancy (and birth) to occur. They fight stress, prevent fatigue, calm anxiety, and relieve depression. Hormones make and keep memories. Hormones maintain the correct level of sugar in the blood and tissues. They resist allergic reactions and infections. They soothe pain. Hormones control your sex drive, virility, and fertility. They stimulate your brain and your immune system.

It is by no means an exaggeration to say that hormones are crucial to every single function of the human body. You can't live without them.

But in the environment we live in at the opening of this new millennium - and particularly as we ourselves age - rarely do our bodies have the optimum levels of hormones. So we don't enjoy optimum health, whether that means arthritis or heart disease or flagging sex drive or gray hair and wrinkles or out-of-control weight gain. The program in this book, a combination of nutrition and hormone balance, can bring anyone into optimal health. The Hormone Solution is not a miracle cure or an empty promise. It is a reality. It is for anyone who feels tired all the time. Or forgets things. Or isn't sleeping well. Or feels more depressed and anxious than he used to. Or who is at risk for osteoporosis or cancer - among many, many other things. We've accepted these things as inevitable, especially as we age. We didn't like it, but we thought we had to live with it. But we've been wrong.

You probably know that some hormone levels decline with age. What's less well known is that almost all hormone levels drop, across the board, in men as well as women. Your endocrine glands cannot maintain the same production of hormones they did in your younger days. And that loss is the most crucial - and eminently correctable - underlying process that causes the signs and symptoms of aging as well as a host of other health concerns. With the proper physiological doses of natural hormones in combination with a hormonally supportive diet and vitamin and mineral supplements, you can retain your health - and your youth - more fully and for a longer time. I am not recommending the massive pharmaceutical quantities of the standard hormone prescriptions, like menopausal hormone replacement therapy (HRT), but rather the finely tuned individualized substances doses that are identical in structure and quantity to what young, healthy bodies produce.

When all our hormones are at optimal levels, our bodies are healthy, efficient, resilient, flexible, and strong. Through our twenties, that's what most of us experience. But even a small drop-off or slight imbalance, as happens to most of us by our thirties and forties, can create havoc. And not just for women! I was hit with the effects in my mid-thirties. I was gaining weight and overeating, and I often felt sleepy during the day. I had trouble concentrating, little energy, and stiffness in my joints. I was often cranky and supersensitive to stress. It got to the point where it was interfering with my work and my relationships and family life. And even though I was experienced in nutrition, hormones, and longevity, I felt indignant: I was much too young to be old!

Fortunately for me, with my medical training - and the wisdom passed down to me through three previous generations of hormone specialists in my family - I knew what to do. I understood that my hormones were shifting, and while growing older might be unavoidable, the negative consequences were strictly optional. With this book I intend to share with you the holistic health program I developed for myself and my patients of natural hormone therapy combined with specific diet and supplement regimens.

What to Expect

This chapter gives an overview of how hormones work in the body and when and why they don't do their jobs. I'll tell you a little about how I came to practice in this field and how my philosophy of practice developed. We'll look at a few examples of how my patients have benefited from a program like the one in this book - and how I myself have responded to it. We'll talk about how hormone levels inevitably decrease with age, how that affects us, and what can be done about it. Finally, I'll discuss (and debunk) the fears a lot of people have about using hormones, before going on to give you a road map to the rest of the book.

Tuning up Your Hormones

Each of the many hormones in the human body has its own job to do, but they all work together in an elaborately interwoven system. You can liken this exquisite synergy to an orchestra: Each instrument has its own melody or rhythm, but all are necessary to play a symphony.

Similarly, without balanced nutrition the body cannot make all the hormones it needs in the proportions it needs them in. The first thing you need to do is to provide your body with the nutrients it needs to take care of itself. Much of our food is so refined and processed, we can run into problems even when we think we're eating healthfully. My eating plan and suggested supplements offer a delicious and nutrient-dense program, with surprising modifications for particular problems.

But no matter how healthfully we eat, our bodies produce less and less of all hormones as we age. Our hormonal balance becomes mistimed, disproportionate, or slightly off-key. In isolated cases, we recognize this and try to compensate - with HRT at menopause, for example. But we're missing the forest for the trees. Rarely are the problem and solution found in one hormone alone. In fact, taking just one hormone can make the problem worse or cause new problems. Furthermore, most hormone prescriptions written today are for doses that are far too large, and they overwhelm rather than rebalance the system. Most are also synthetic versions that differ by a molecule or two from the chemicals the body makes and uses on its own. This might not sound so bad until you consider that the difference between testosterone and estrogen - some would say, the difference between a man and a woman - is also a matter of just a couple of molecules.

But with natural hormones in amounts as close as possible to what your younger body made for itself, you can re-create the same state of health and well-being you once enjoyed. I'll teach you the methods that have worked for me and for my thousands of patients. You'll find that when your hormones are balanced, perfectly in tune, and backed with strong nutritional support, you can look and feel vibrantly healthy at any age.

Copyright © 2002 by Thierry Hertoghe, M.D.

About the Author

Thierry Hertoghe, M.D., is a member of the International Advisory Board of the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine. He lectures regularly to medical professionals and laypeople in the United States and abroad on the subject of hormone deficiencies.