What is Hormone Optimization?

What are hormones?

Hormones are compounds synthesized by the body in multiple organs that act as messengers to control or coordinate various actions throughout the body. They play a critical role in our metabolism, cognition, strength, bone health, sleep, sexual functions, immune functions, and many other aspects of essential bodily systems. Although our model stems around the critical hormone called Testosterone, it certainly isn’t the only consideration, yet it will be the focus of attention in most of the following information and likely the major consideration or talking point of the majority of clients/patients that you interact with — especially men!

What is Hormone Optimization?

The unfortunate reality that one must come to terms with is: WE’RE ALL AGING. As the aging process unfolds, hormone levels typically decline. Certainly, other factors play a role in declining or fluctuating hormone levels but the one that’s most difficult to escape is our age. Aging classically involves higher body-fat percentages, lower lean muscle masses, weaker bone density, lowered sex drive, lowered sexual performance, decreased ability to recover from injury/stress, slower mentation capabilities, slower metabolism, and various other unpleasantness. Likely the term “anti-aging” that you may hear in marketing situations or even medication considerations will in some way relate to manipulating hormones because the vast majority of the above symptoms of aging could be diminished by manipulating hormone levels to mimic the levels typically seen in youth. This is the foundation of Hormone Optimization: to replace hormones in such a way so as to mimic youthful health and vitality traits.

Who needs Hormone Optimization?

As we discussed above, everyone is aging and this affliction is our unfortunate reality. Certainly, there are those of us who “age gracefully” and likely those people are genetically fortunate and combine their gifted gene pool with healthy activity levels and diet choices. It is possible that this “sublime” example of a human seemingly “never ages” nor voices the typical complaints of his or her age group. This person is an outlier to the bell curve. Most people DON’T have perfect genetics, live stress-free, eat perfectly, or exercise enough. Thus it is likely the vast majority of society will at some point perceive their vitality declining and it is those people who will likely seek out the services we offer and may benefit from Hormone Optimization to combat one or more of their complaints.

What is Testosterone?

Testosterone is the major sex hormone found primarily in the testes of men. It acts as the means for the normal development of the male sex organs as well as the development of sexual characteristics. Its role also includes the normal development of a sex drive, lean body mass, sexual function, facial hair, sperm production and fat metabolism.

The male body gradually slows down its production of testosterone with age. This is completely normal and is expected at a rate of 1% loss per year. This statistic does not factor in other potential threats to testosterone levels such as stress, chronic illness, trauma, and various other components. You may be experiencing symptoms of low testosterone for a number of these reasons.