Feel free to read into that any way you want. I am finally of the age where I am measuring my hormones and I’ve noticed certain ones declining.

Let’s put it this way  you know how difficult it is to get an insurance company to pay for anything yet mine is happily paying out thousands of dollars a month to pay for my growth hormone.  They know that if your body is not repairing itself you’re going to decline rapidly. My testosterone also declined. However the most amazing thing about it is that its not the sex drive that suffered its the mental drive.

I still always wanted sex and was ready and willing but my numbers declined and so did my mood and desire to do anything. PS after i started supplementing I ran for US Congress. There is so much that you need to know about this.

First of all if you don’t have a baseline or youthful numbers you wouldn’t even know where to begin.  For example a mans testosterone can range anywhere from 200 to 800. So as a hairy Armenian, who could part the hair on my back with a comb, before laser hair removal. My numbers were always 900. Not saying this to brag, but if I declined to 400 that would be a disaster, a decline of half and I would be depressed at the very least.  So go get a doctor to write a cpt code so you can get it tested for free.

Yet a normal white Irish guy who’s been four or 500 his whole life would be happily functioning at four or 500. So if we both went to the doctor he would say we are both normal given the 200 800 range.  So if you don’t have a test get one, because you’ll need to refer to it 20 30 or 40 years from now because your endocrinologist is going want to know what your normal was. And we’re not even getting started.

Women also have a small amount of testosterone which is responsible for their sex drive. And if men are too low in estrogen they would have heart issues so we all need a test consisting of a full sex hormone panel  including estradiol progesterone and testosterone free and total for men.  In addition to that you need to know your inhibitory and excitatory hormones meaning the ones that wake you up and the ones that keep you calm and help you fall asleep.

Obviously your thyroid  needs to be measured and you need a comprehensive blood test.  But in addition there are companies like neuroscience that will measure your inhibitory and excitatory hormones.  You may have heard of epinephrine and norepinephrine or dopamine, those are all excitatory hormones which can be measured.  And you want to make sure that chemicals like serotonin, your happy sleepy neurotransmitter is abundant at night, As well as melatonin.  There are companies like neuroscience that actually measure a number of different hormones and neurotransmitters in urine and your saliva at various times of the day and night to get an indication of whether you’re hormones are helping or hurting you.

They then recommend TAAT or Targeted Amino Acids Therapy.  So they would give you various amino acids (high school biology amino acids make up proteins and are more or less abundant in different foods) for example you’ve all heard that turkey is abundant in tryptophan which many claim is the reason for the nap after Thanksgiving Turkey dinner.

Again apologies but impossible to not segue when explaining all of this even superficially.  But the bottom line is you can’t fight against your hormones I’ll even relate my personal experience if that helps you to understand a little better how much it can affect you.  I take testosterone as a shot once a week. Ironically what I’ve noticed is that towards the end of the week when my testosterone is low I am for a lack of a better word bitchy, but when my testosterone is high and I am strong I am much more confident and able to deal with pretty much anything. Men who take testosterone are also given an aromatase inhibitor, in simple terms if a man has too much testosterone he could convert the excess testosterone into estrogen ( voila man boobs)   As we get older we are not as efficient in utilizing testosterone. So some of our testosterone becomes dihdrotestosterone which causes male pattern baldness and some  actually converts into estrogen. So an aromatase inhibitor like anastrozole is taken to reduce the amount of estrogen slightly, Again not too much because we do need estrogen to protect our hearts. That’s why we measure everything. Women are given aromatase inhibitors to reduce the amount of estrogen in the case of estrogen positive cancers or cancerous thought to be fed by estrogen.

So my first suggestion as always is to start with your family doctor. Anytime you’re not feeling well it could be because of a serious illness. They will probably do a CBC short for a complete blood test.  However you probably want a full hormone panel as part of that blood test. Word of caution if your doctor doesn’t right a proper CPT code your insurance will not pay for.  If your insurance doesn’t pay for it you could be looking at a $2000 bill if you’re measuring all the hormones as well.   So always check first.  If your doctor’s knowledge is less than mine you need to find a new doctor.

Now in all fairness my dear friend who’s a heart surgeon doesn’t know the difference between an amino acid and a vitamin because he never studied it. But he’s the guy you want if you need open heart surgery so everyone has their specialty. If you want to approach this problem conventionally you need to see an endocrinologist but at the very least you need to have an idea if your hormones are normal by the numbers.  Something as simple as low serotonin could cause sleep difficulties, anxiousness, weight or mood issues (Pharmassan Labs) Low cortisol in the morning could mean your thyroid is not functioning properly. However once serious issues are ruled out and the conventional doctors, including the endocrinologists have given up on you, you can actually take care of yourself with certain amino acids to assist in “waking yourself” up in the morning and helping you relax at night.  But always test first and check with your doctor for more serious issues, before you go on to your own vitamin or amino acid protocol.

Once you are in range the conventional doctors will send you home and tell you you are normal and that’s where you might want to intervene. In fact another famous New York doctor who wrote the book The Natural Hormone Solution was constantly criticized for not telling patients “exactly what to take”  It’s not a simple matter of treating to the numbers the range is too large.   That  is why I offered my personal information.   If it  helps you to understand and explain why the final exact amounts are determined by how you feel.  Even after administering a lot of tests she offers women progesterone and estrogen cream and tells them to adjust what they take depending on how they feel