For women
Hormonal imbalance and menopause
Menopause symptoms can begin as much as fifteen years in advance. As many as 3,500 women enter menopause every day, and most do not fully recover from it on their own, even once the outward picture looks normal again.
What HRT is used to treat
- Brain fog
- Vaginal dryness
- Low libido
- Headaches
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Dry skin
- Low energy
Why they arrive together
Hormones are the building blocks of the body. They control mood, energy, body fat, sleep quality, mental clarity and sex drive. An imbalance does not produce one symptom, it produces a scatter across all of those systems at once, which is precisely why the underlying cause gets missed and each symptom gets handled separately.
There are five causes behind it: the natural aging process, genetic tendencies, stress, diet and exercise. Only two of those are within anyone’s direct control, which is worth saying to anybody who has arrived here assuming they did something wrong.
The only way to solve it is by correcting the imbalance itself. That is what bio-identical hormone replacement is for.
The signs that rarely get connected to hormones
Physical, non-reproductive
- Acne
- Thinning hair
- Excessive hair on face and arms
- Thin or dry skin
- Brown spots on the face
- Unstable blood sugar
- Low blood pressure
Physical, reproductive
- Tender breasts
- Breast enlargement
- Painful or severe menstruation
- Debilitating PMS
- Painful intercourse
- Miscarriages or infertility
- Mid-cycle pain
- Ovarian cysts
- Low sex drive
Emotional
- Fatigue severe enough to cause lethargic or anxious depression
- Foggy thinking
- Excessive intolerance to exercise
Two ways to deliver it
BHRT pellet therapy
Pellets are placed just under the skin in an outpatient procedure that takes a few minutes. They release natural bio-identical estrogen and testosterone steadily, and the body metabolises them as it needs them.
Most women need less than a week before returning to normal life and exercise. On average, women are re-pelleted every four months, which brings the whole year down to two or three visits.
The pellets contain nothing other than the hormone your body already produces, so they dissolve completely and are absorbed, leaving nothing behind.
Troches
A troche is a medicated lozenge, an alternative delivery method for the same bio-identical hormones. It sits between cheek and gum and dissolves over fifteen to thirty minutes through the oral mucosa, with blood levels peaking within an hour.
The reason that matters is the liver. Anything swallowed passes through the liver before it reaches the rest of the body, and most of the dose is broken down on the way. A troche never enters that pathway.
Absorption is faster, more predictable, and unaffected by meals, so there is no window to time it around.
It starts with a blood panel, and someone going through it with you
Sun Valley requires, at minimum, its comprehensive blood panel before anything is placed. Treatment is delivered by Patricia Polson, FNP-C, a board-certified family nurse practitioner who has worked in the Phoenix metropolitan area since 1989.