If you’re like me, you do your best to take care of yourself and listen to what your body is trying to tell you. But as we go through life, we age and go through changes that are out of our control.
And one of the big changes us women go through is the change – menopause.
Menopause is caused by natural shifts in hormones, and it leads to many unpleasant symptoms like hot flashes and mood swings.
Many women going through menopause also notice big changes with their weight and find it harder than ever to manage. So in an effort to take care of their health and wellness, women go to their doctors for help.
And more often than not, this turns into:
- Seeing multiple specialists
- Paying hundreds of dollars in copays
- Taking expensive medications
- Not seeing results
- Not feeling better
Why is this?
The unpleasant symptoms and weight issues caused by menopause are often treated as two different problems – not one. Because more often than not, it’s not realized that these two issues are related. And when this happens, it leads to delays in treatment and sometimes misdiagnoses.
And this is exactly what Noble Functional Medicine recognizes and aims to prevent. By starting with a comprehensive health assessment and lab testing on each patient, I’m able to look at all of the symptoms you have to get to the root of the problem.
And most importantly, I’m able to work with you to fix it.
The Functional Medicine Approach
If you’ve never heard of or been to a functional medicine practitioner, you probably have a lot of questions…
Like, what even is functional medicine?
And how is it different from conventional medicine?
To start, functional medicine views the whole person as, well, a person – not just a symptom or an illness. Instead of treating each issue separately, functional medicine uses a holistic approach to look at everything about a patient at once.
At Noble Functional Medicine, this includes comprehensive blood work as well as looking at your:
- Current symptoms
- Current medical conditions
- Health history
- Surgical history
- Social history and lifestyle
- Family history
- Supplements, medications, and hormones you take
- Goals and obstacles
- Motivation and commitment
By using a holistic, patient-centered approach, I’m able to get to know you and create personalized treatment plans focused on your specific goals.
Two of the most common health concerns I see patients suffer from are hormonal imbalances and trouble losing weight, especially after menopause. And by taking a functional medicine approach, they’re both treatable.
Menopause and Hormonal Imbalance
One of the biggest changes women go through in life is menopause. Women most often begin menopause between the ages of 44 and 55.¹ During this time, the hormones progesterone and estrogen drop drastically, and this produces many unpleasant symptoms.
Vasomotor symptoms, also known as hot flashes, are experienced by 60-80% of females going through menopause, and they can last anywhere from six months to four years after menopause.²
In addition to vasomotor symptoms, menopausal women may also experience:¹
- Irregular periods
- Loss of bladder control (incontinence)
- Difficulty sleeping
- Vaginal dryness
- Painful intercourse
- Mood swings
- Anxiety
- Changes in weight
- Headaches
- Changes in energy levels
- Palpitations
- Joint pain
The symptoms and duration of menopause varies for every woman. So when it comes time for treatment, which is most often with hormone replacement, it needs to be personalized.
Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy
Hormones are complicated, and when it comes to treatment, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. The symptoms of menopause are caused by a drop of reproductive hormones. The way that these symptoms are treated is by replacing them through hormone replacement therapy (HRT).
By working with a functional medicine practitioner to start HRT, you’re also helping to prevent post-menopausal conditions like osteoporosis, which is thinning of the bones.
There are many options for HRT, but I only use bioidentical hormones because they have the same structure as the hormones our bodies naturally produce. Bioidentical hormones come in many forms including:
- Pills
- Skin patches
- Skin gels
- Vaginal creams, rings, and inserts
- Injections
- Even nasal sprays!!
But what works for one person may not work for the other, and this all depends on things like:
- Age
- Diet
- Exercise
- Sleep
- Lifestyle
- Other medical conditions
Depending on these factors, we’ll work together to pick the type and amount of HRT that’s best for you. And after this, your dose can be adjusted based on how you respond and how your symptoms improve.
Or if you’re finding that one form of HRT isn’t working for you, we can easily switch to something different.
How Hormones Affect Weight
We know that there are major hormonal shifts that happen with menopause. And these hormonal changes can cause unwanted symptoms. One of the main things I see perimenopausal and menopausal women struggle with is their weight.
It’s common for women that could eat anything and not gain an ounce to all of the sudden feel like they just look at food and go up a dress size.
Because of the drop in estrogen and an increase in something called follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) during menopause, your metabolism slows down making weight gain easier.³
These hormonal changes also cause women to lose muscle mass, which is a condition called sarcopenia.⁴ This makes it harder to lose weight and stay active as we age. And when we weigh more and are less active, we’re at higher risk of conditions like:
- High blood pressure
- High cholesterol
- Type 2 diabetes
- Metabolic syndrome
Fortunately, if you start taking small steps to improve your health today, conditions like this can be prevented long before they happen.
Weight Loss During Menopause
Along with the unpleasant symptoms that come with perimenopause and menopause, unwanted weight gain happens too. In fact, they often go hand-in-hand.
The first thing that many people are turning to for weight loss these days is Ozempic. This is an injectable form of a hormone called GLP-1 that decreases appetite and leads to weight loss.
But I’m here to tell you that this isn’t an option which should be used as your ONLY course of treatment.
The issue with a weight loss medication like Ozempic is that, more often than not, using it isn’t getting to the root cause of disease. Because if your weight gain is caused by hormonal imbalances, Ozempic is only going to be a band-aid – not a solution.
Instead, correcting your hormones and making small changes to your diet and exercise regimen can have a big effect on weight. Plus, supplements like Amarasate can also be added to help your body create more of GLP-1, which naturally reduces appetite.⁵
Just like hormone therapy, weight loss doesn’t have a one-size-fits-all solution.
And the best way to address the root cause of each is to treat each symptom and condition together – not separately.
Take the First Step Today and Get to the Root Cause of Your Symptoms
Each and every symptom you experience is your body’s way of communicating with you, and this shouldn’t be ignored. Even if there’s only one part of your body that feels “off,” it could be a sign that something larger is going on underneath the surface.
While many conventional medicine doctors only aim to fix things at surface-level, I work as sort of a medical detective to put the puzzle pieces together, find the root cause of your symptoms, and restore your health.
Each patient starts by getting comprehensive blood work that goes beyond standard labs and looks for a range of health problems like:
- Hormone imbalances
- High cholesterol
- Anemia (low blood counts)
- Increased inflammation in the body
- Thyroid disease
- Diabetes
- Vitamin deficiencies
Following this, you’ll meet with me, Jenn, so I can get to know you and learn about your medical history, your lifestyle, and your goals. This allows us to work together to create a personalized treatment plan to meet your health goals and help you prevent illness before it starts.
And I’m there every step of the way.
References
- What Is Menopause? – (nih.gov)
- Vasomotor symptoms of menopause, autonomic dysfunction, and cardiovascular disease – (nih.gov)
- Body composition and cardiometabolic health across the menopause transition – (nih.gov)
- Menopause and the Loss of Skeletal Muscle Mass in Women – (nih.gov)
- Gastrointestinal delivery of bitter hop extract reduces appetite and food cravings in healthy adult women undergoing acute fasting – (nih.gov)
