While none of us expect to stay young forever, we don't want to feel tired, creaky and old before our time. Hormones are at the center of our ability to live calm, energetic, healthy and productive lives.
Many women who have lived vibrant, confident and competent lives suddenly begin to feel overwhelmed by the physical and emotional changes that begin to occur before, during and after menopause. In addition to dealing with levels of insecurity not experienced since the disruptive days of puberty, many women begin experiencing hot flashes and night sweats, difficulty sleeping through the night, fatigue, irregular or heavy bleeding, weight gain, decreased sex drive, foggy memory, breast tenderness, headaches, anxiety or depression, vaginal dryness, unwanted facial hair growth, osteoporosis, increased skin wrinklingand other frightening and confusing symptoms.
For centuries, women have just dealt with these symptoms called “The Change.” They had few choices but to live out their lives in quiet desperation following their reproductive years. The life expectancy of a woman 400 years ago was only 35 years. As recently as 1900, our life expectancy was just 47 years. Women who made it into menopause had already outlived their life expectancy and many looked upon this “change” as a death sentence.
Today, women’s life expectancy is in the mid-to-late 80s and as such may live as much as half of their lives after menopause. There are many reasons for this significant increase in life expectancy including decreased disease transmission through improved sanitation and clean water resources, decreased infant and maternal mortality, immunizations, antibiotics and dramatic advancements in medical science among others. As life expectancy increased, larger numbers of women began living long enough to experience the havoc of hormonal decline and many started clamoring for solutions to their life disruptive symptoms.
Although menopause is a natural process that marks the beginning of a process of decline of many organ systems through the aging process, there are safe, healthy, and effective ways to slow the aging process, increase vitality, live longer and age gracefully into your 90s and beyond.
Knowledge is the key to improvement in all phases of our lives. Knowing what to do, why to do it and how to do it gives you the tools to rewrite your script of how you would like your life story to read going forward.
Witnessing the devastating symptoms of hormonal changes upon the lives of many of my patients, I began my quest to better understand the pathophysiology of these changes from a functional medicine perspective that had not been provided by my conventional allopathic medical training.
Health Care is really a misnomer. Today’s Health Care is really all about “Sick Care.” Our entire health care system, including hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and even physicians, is incentivized to treat disease, not to prevent it. Please don’t misunderstand; medical science has made enormous progress in treating cancer, heart disease, and multiple chronic diseases that benefit all of us. I just feel prevention of disease is far better than intervention. Today, fully 80-90 percent of our health care dollars is spent on treating chronic disease that could be averted. If we are to survive as a nation economically, we must teach more people how to prevent chronic disease
I believe modern medical care is a partnership between the physician and the patient. I also believe educated patients make healthier choices when provided with timely, accurate and relevant information.
This website has been developed as an educational tool to convey information that will help you make sense of why you are experiencing the symptoms you feel and a road map to solutions that will restore your sense of health and well-being.
Paul Thaxton, MD
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