If you have never thought about your hormones before, now may be a good time to do so. Your hormones may be small, but they are mighty and powerful. They are tiny chemicals that travel through your body to create changes in nearly every organ and every other part of your body. They most often flow through your blood, but they can also be found in other bodily fluids. A hormonal imbalance can cause drastic consequences.

To work well, your hormones must be in perfect balance. Even one tiny change, and your whole body may be able to feel the difference. In addition, when one hormone falls out of balance, it often takes many other hormones with it. If you are not feeling as good as you once did, your hormones may be one area that you should seriously consider.

Many women seem to be preconditioned to tell themselves that their bodily changes are due to outside factors. They may decide that their fatigue is caused by a poor mattress or by a baby that wakes them during the night even though this may not be the complete picture. They may chalk up their dry skin or metabolic changes to simple aging. Although aging can naturally change many parts of the body, it can also be an inducer of a hormonal imbalance. If you have been discounting your symptoms, now is the time to start taking them seriously so that you can find real help for your hormonal imbalance.

There are several steps that you should take if you believe that you may have a hormonal imbalance. By following these steps in order, you will become more tuned in to your body and will know when to get professional help.

First, you should look at how you feel now compared to how you once felt. Be sure to look at how you feel physically as well as how you feel mentally because both of these areas are vital for a good quality of life. In the busyness of living your daily life, you may not have even stopped to think about how you feel this year versus how you felt a year or even five years ago. Some symptoms creep up slowly, leading you to forget how youthful and vibrant you once felt.

Second, look closely at the signs and symptoms that you are currently experiencing. Consider writing them down or keeping a daily journal that describes how you felt and what you ate and did that day. You may be able to pinpoint your problem, or you may find no logical answer for your issues. Some of your symptoms may seem to be centered in a single area, such as in your mind with memory problems and nervousness becoming a part of the norm while others may affect your skin, your digestive tract or your metabolism.

Your symptoms may be caused by a problem with a single hormone, or they may be caused by problems with several hormones simultaneously. This is because all hormones work together in a cyclical pattern. In other words, they tend to feed off each other. Therefore, if one becomes too low, another hormone may try to take over, thus depleting its supply as well. This can lead to an extensive and long-lasting hormonal imbalance problem that begins to affect your entire body every day.

The two most common types of hormonal imbalance seen in women are problems with estrogen and progesterone. These are the female-only hormones that control fertility and other female concerns, such as periods. When they are out of balance, they may cause painful or heavy periods, inconsistent periods, infertility and moodiness. Plus, you may have hot flashes, painful sexual intercourse and even such far-flung problems as indigestion, diarrhea and acne.

Surprisingly to many, a testosterone hormonal imbalance is also possible for women. Most think of testosterone as being a male-only hormone. However, women must also have small quantities of it to feel their best. If testosterone takes over to too great of an extent, it can cause male-hormone dominance, which can also significantly mess up your monthly periods. In addition, you may have increased facial and bodily hair. Your voice may get deeper, you may look more muscular than you wish to and your breast size may decrease.

Another common hormonal imbalance found in women who feel overworked and completely stressed out is a cortisol imbalance. Cortisol is an important hormone that improves your energy, helping you to get up feeling rested in the morning and keeping you awake and energetic throughout the day until it is time to wind down at bedtime. This hormone is produced by the adrenal glands. If it is too high, you may feel very nervous, stressed and anxious. If it is too low, you may feel depressed, fatigued and unable to do your work.

Of course, there are many other hormones that can become imbalanced in the female body, and each comes with its unique array of problems. For example, melatonin and insulin are hormones about which most women have heard. They work in tandem with many of the hormones and help to regulate sleep and blood sugar respectively. The hypothalamus, pineal gland and thyroid also create many important hormones that regulate everything from body temperature to metabolism. Understanding your specific symptoms can help you see from where the problem could be coming. Sometimes, however, the picture may still be quite cloudy. Therefore professional advice is recommended for nearly all of these problems and especially for symptoms that are moderate to severe and that cause a disturbance in your everyday quality of life.

Third, work closely with an experienced provider who can test your hormone levels for you and get you the best treatment for your unique hormonal imbalance needs. Only a professional will be able to provide you with the right lab work to change your educated guesses about your hormonal health into an actual diagnosis. Plus, a professional will be able to see the small differences in your lab numbers that make a real difference in how you feel.

This is the service that we offer at Quench Wellness with our hormone optimization treatments. We will start with a complete consultation that will most likely include lab work along with a lengthy discussion that will allow us to pinpoint your exact hormonal needs. If we determine that a problem is indeed present, we will discuss lifestyle changes that may be able to help you as well as the possibility of hormone replacement therapy if needed.

We always choose to use bioidentical hormones in our hormone replacement therapy for hormone optimization. While there are many types and brands of hormones that can be used today, we generally choose pellet therapy from BioTE, which is a well-respected brand known for safety and extremely effective therapy. When you add hormones to your body, you want to choose the kind that will be best taken up by your body’s cells and the kind that is most similar to your own hormones. This way, your body will recognize and fully integrate these new hormones as if they were natural to the body.

Pellet therapy is highly preferable to more traditional therapies that may not provide hormones in well-regulated amounts. The tiny pellets allow for a slower release of the hormones throughout the day to decrease the amount of hormone spikes you might otherwise experience and to keep your body’s hormones consistent. This will help you feel the most like yourself. These tiny pellets are placed under your skin through a tiny injection and last up to five months.

We know that your hormonal health is important to you because it affects most aspects of your life. It helps you with your mental health by regulating many of your emotions, calming you down in stressful situations and giving you clarity of thought and quick mental recall. However, hormones can also affect nearly every part of your physical body as well because almost all your organs use hormones every day. When your hormone levels are high or low, you may notice the changes in your blood pressure, on your skin and in your gut. You may feel bloated, have a racing heart or feel fatigued every day no matter how much sleep you get. The key to having great quality of life even as you grown older is to choose lifestyles and occasional hormone replacement therapy that keep your hormones in a great balance.

At Quench Wellness in Chicago, IL, we work with patients just like you every day. We have helped hundreds of patients feel better despite large or small hormonal changes that were affecting them. There is no reason why you should be dealing with hormone issues yourself. Contact us today to schedule a consultation with one of our practitioners. We will take the time to chat with you about the changes that you have seen in your body and about how you would like to feel. Then, we can get you set up with the right hormone optimization plan for you.