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    Are Your Hormones Making You Age?

    Hormones are responsible for pretty much every process that occurs in our body. From approximately 40 years old, a number of our hormones decline. This is because we’re programmed to die after we’ve increased our offspring to be old enough to have offspring themselves. Well guess what, we’re currently living twice as long as that. So what can we do about our declining hormones? Because if we do nothing, we will get old.

    Can we stop it?

    Yes we could to some degree and that is worth doing surely. I’m all for it. The first step is to understand how they operate and what they do for all of us. Then find yourself a excellent Anti-ageing Medicine practitioner that will test your own hormones and correct any imbalances to help slow down your aging. Thyroid hormone is a huge one. It controls the metabolic rate of your cells, maintains blood pressure, regulates blood circulation and modulates heat. If you’re always cold, get your thyroid hormone assessed.

    Declining thyroid hormone contributes to fuzzy brain, weight gain, fatigue, high cholesterol and poor blood pressure regulation. It’s quite easy to treat so get your thyroid function checked so that it does not accelerate your aging. Correcting hypothyroidism will make you feel so energetic and alive, you will wonder how you put up with it for so long. It’s worth looking into.

    Estrogen

    Another hormone that affects aging is Estrogen. Estrogen is called the youth hormone because it keeps the skin looking young. It enhances collagen production and other elements of the dermis in addition to maintaining epidermal thickness. The decrease of progesterone and estrogen is why girls appear to age rapidly after menopause. Replacement of these hormones is straightforward (heard of HRT?). However, some individuals may have risk factors that will need to be discussed with a physician. If you’ve ever had cancer of your feminine pieces, or if this cancer is in your loved ones, you might not be acceptable for HRT.

    Good to know

    After menopause, we lose bone density. This is because Parathyroid Hormone and Calcitonin decrease and these are the hormones that keep the calcium in your bones. These effects can be avoided by taking calcium, vitamin D and calcitriol but discuss with your physician. You may also have your bone density checked occasionally. Weight bearing exercise also helps to keep the calcium in your bones. Bone density decrease does not just happen to old men and women. I’ve seen many horrible fractures on women in their 50s from mechanisms of injury that wouldn’t have caused a fracture in a younger girl.

    And the last thing you need is to be set up with any kind of fracture. You might not be able to work, not able to exercise, not able to get around, not able to drive. Maybe for months. That inertia can lead to other health issues and so forth. Seriously, look after your bones. Two hormones that wreak havoc on the body over time are Adrenaline and Noradrenaline. These guys are mortal but paradoxically they’re supposed to save us from a life threatening scenario. They assist us in “fight or flight” situations but we do not really have those quite often in our contemporary lives.

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    Let’s understand it

    They increase our heart rate and blood pressure and divert blood flow away from non-vital organs (bowel, stomach, liver etc) towards the critical organs (brain, lungs and heart ) and to our skeletal muscles. They also increase blood sugar levels. This guarantees that when it is time to stand and fight or run for your life, we’ve got energy and oxygen in all the proper places (our legs, arms, heart, lungs and brain). This is referred to as a Stress Response and it’s terrific for a life threatening conditions but how many of those have you had recently? So you know how everyone is always going on about how pressure is bad for you? This is why. We have numerous stressors in our everyday lives that our mind perceives that we are being threatened and turns on the Stress Response.

    The result is continually circulating adrenaline and noradrenaline resulting in elevated blood pressure, high blood glucose and an overworked heart – a recipe for failure. Diabetes. Heart attacks. Strokes. The absolute pits. What to do about that. Well that’s about de-stressing, an whole other subject and again there’s more than enough info out there without me adding to it. I only hope that if you truly understand how pressure kills you, it won’t just be some random idea but a good piece of information that will motivate you to control your stress. Had enough of hormones? Me too. But there’s one more that should be noted because lack of it can be a killer and will take 20/30/40 years off your life and it’ll be a miserable drop.

    Another Hormon

    Did you guess? Yes its Insulin. Poor old insulin gets a bad rap but the truth is it is not insulin fault. Its only purpose in life it to usher glucose to cells. All cells need sugar. It’s the fuel for our bodies and all metabolic processes depend on it. But if we do not have enough insulin, our cells are resistant to insulin, glucose can not get into our cells and it only kicks around in our blood stream where is does lots of damage. Glucose is a huge molecule and our blood vessels do not like too many large molecules. It’s bad for the interior layer or endothelium. We want our blood vessels to be in good shape so that they can provide energy and oxygen to all the cells of our body.

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    If our little blood vessels become damaged they simply pack up and die (bad. If these plaques rupture, they can block the blood vessel. Our own platelets may rush to the scene to repair the damage from the plaque and do much more harm by forming a clot that makes the congestion much worse. Heart attack. Stroke. So among the consequences of too much sugar in the blood is damaged blood vessels throughout our entire body. This happens slowly so we do not even notice until the harm is done. And something bad occurs. The other outcome of too much sugar is glycation.

    Glycation is when the sugar reacts with the amino acids in our proteins (we’re made from proteins) which hurts them. This is extremely evident from the skin of a poorly controlled diabetic, The glycation breaks down the proteins in the dermis which makes the skin sag and wrinkle. To much glucose can damage every tissue in our body. So why does this occur? Either no insulin (Type I diabetes) or not enough insulin and the insulin we do have loses its ability to allow the glucose to the cells (Type II diabetes). It’s Type II diabetes that usually begins in middle age and contributes to untold decay and disorder. Why can’t the insulin access to the cells to allow the glucose in? This is called insulin resistance and is due to two things. Excess weight and insufficient physical activity (Doh!) .

    I know. I know.

    You hate this part. But if you’ve got excess adipose tissue (fat) especially around the stomach, complicated interactions in fat tissue draw immune cells to the area and trigger low-level chronic inflammation. It’s believed that this inflammation can result in the development of insulin resistance. But the great news is, when you exercise, your muscles need a great deal of sugar so insulin and sugar happily work together to provide the demand. This makes your cells more receptive to insulin.

    And that receptiveness becomes a normal thing. If you never exercise, your cells forget how to interact with insulin to allow the sugar in and you get insulin resistance. And Type II diabetes. There are quite a few different hormones that will decline as you get older. Of note are melatonin, the sleep hormone. Cortisol, which raises your energy levels and enhances stress resistance. Then there is DHEA. This hormone is the fountain of youth. Some hormones can be substituted and some can not. Some are very costly, like DHEA. Whereas Thyroxine and Melatonin are quite affordable.

    Do some research

    Discover more about your hormones. Visit your physician with at least some base of knowledge and observe them struggling to not roll their eyes! Hormones are vital for life. They make absolutely everything happen in our own bodies. So it’s not surprising that when they start their decline in our fifties, our lives can unravel. Most of us are still working and looking after a household. The children may have gone but the parents seem to be replacing them. We have much to do. A mortgage to repay. People who need us. Possibly a career in full swing. We want our body to execute. There’s no time for illness. Poor sleep. Poor concentration. Lethargy. Broken bones. It’s worth finding out about your hormones. Your GP or an anti-ageing medicine practitioner can look into the essential ones and recommend ways you can encourage your endocrine system. Look into it. Squeeze every drop you can from the body of yours. Out of the life of yours. You still have a long road ahead. It’ll be more enjoyable if the vehicle is purring.

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