Common Causes of Balance Problems

Taking your sense of balance for granted? You might be surprised how much sensorimotor effort goes into keeping you upright when walking, standing, and sitting. Balance problems can often negatively impact mobility and increase your risk of injury from falling. The ability to control your center of mass and adapt to balance shifts is key to your longevity.

Key players in your mechanical balance and postural control include:

• Vision - balance is actually a result of multiple inputs from your body, including the rods and cones in your eyes (sensory receptors) which convey to your brain visual cues regarding your position in space with those things around you (spatial orientation).

• Inner ear - sensory hair cells and endolymph fluid in your inner ear canal constantly respond to horizontal and vertical motion, helping your brain detect changes in your position relative to the pull of gravity.

• Muscles and joints - the feedback from your muscles and joints helps your brain stimulate limbs to evenly distribute your weight and keep you upright. Your skin also plays an important role in transmitting changes in the pressure or stretch over your tissues as you move.

Balance problems might include any of those which make you dizzy, unsteady, or physically unstable. If you experience a sense of spinning motion (vertigo), if you feel faint when standing or sitting, if you tip over when you stand or walk, or if you simply feel dizzy, you should see your healthcare provider about what might be causing your balance problems.

Oftentimes, balance problems can stem from:

• Vestibular issues - the vestibular, or inner ear, system responsible for your equilibrium is composed of the utricle and saccule, which detect linear movement as well as gravity, and three semicircular canals which identify rotational movement. Issues with any of part of this apparatus can disrupt your sense of balance. Vertigo is one of the most commonly known vestibular conditions and is marked by a spinning sensation of motion in your head, especially when tilting your head up.

• Vestibular neuritis is an inflammatory disorder which affects the nerves in your inner ear. Other vestibular conditions may include Ramsay Hunt syndrome where the shingles virus impairs the facial nerve near one of your ears, and benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV), where calcium crystals become dislodged and move around the inner ear.

• Meniere's disease - this rare condition typically affects adults between the ages of 20 and 60 and can lead to sudden dizziness, hearing loss, moderate to severe vertigo, a buzzing or ringing in the ears, or a feeling of pressure in the ear. An inner ear disease which largely affects online 1 ear, the root cause of Meniere’s is not currently known, and there is not yet a cure for it though treatments to lessen the severity of symptoms exist.

• Medicinal side effects - disequilibrium, lightheadedness, or dizziness can be side effects of certain medications including many used to treat blood pressure problems, depression and anxiety, cancer (i.e. chemotherapy), bacterial infections, and pain.

• Neurologic conditions - some neurological diseases like Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis can negatively affect balance. With Parkinson’s, for example, damaged and dead neurons in the brain which are unable to produce dopamine can cause the motor cortex to malfunction as well as induce a muscle rigidity which challenges a patient’s postural stability.

• Chronic disease - other chronic conditions which affect heart and blood vessel health can cause balance problems associated with reduced blood flow, while diseases like diabetes can damage nerves in the feet and legs (peripheral neuropathy) and make balancing to stand and walk difficult.

• Aging process - even a healthy and normal aging process may be accompanied by joint inflexibility, loss of muscle strength, reduced reaction times, and impaired vision - all factors which contribute to balance and coordination issues. Adults over 65 have a 25% chance of experiencing a fall, often from a loss of balance.

Additional sources of balance problems include head trauma, motion sickness, low blood pressure (hypotension), and some psychiatric disorders. If balance problems, dizziness, faintness, or frequent falls are proving dangerous to your mobility and health, it’s important to talk to a doctor right away.

For older adults with balance problems, simple home upgrades can help keep you safe like a bed rail, fall mat, bath step, grab bars, and stair railings. Discussing medicine side effects, especially dizziness and faintness, can play an important role in maximizing your balance capabilities too.

In the cases where an underlying condition is causing your lack of stability, even if there isn’t a “cure,” there are often treatments available to help you stay active. These might include medicine, physical therapy, or mobility supports. Customized balance retraining (also called vestibular rehabilitation) may be helpful in educating someone with balance problems on how to compensate for lack of stability and maintain physical activity.

This is a guest blog entry.

Kick The Back Pain This Holiday Season And Visit A Chiropractor

The holidays sometimes move at a breakneck pace, requiring you to move from one engagement to another, hauling gifts and pushing around a shopping cart – in brief, it’s no time to let back pain slow you down. Here’s a quick overview of a few things that cause back pain, as well as how you can find help during the holiday season.

Most people will face an issue of back pain in the coming months, and it’s how you deal with the issue that defines how much of a role it will play in your holiday season. Seeing a professional is of the utmost importance, as a good chiropractor will help you develop the right game plan for getting rid of that winter discomfort. 

Structural Correction
A professional chiropractor specializing in structural correction can leave a lasting impact, as they don’t only treat the symptoms, but get to the heart of underlying issues in the spine’s structure. Based on recent discoveries, this advanced method of chiropractic, which Toronto’s own Transformchiropractic.com practices, treats the body holistically, as a synchronized unit, and therefore treats fundamental issues of structure. By correcting the structure of your spinal column, professionals encourage whole body health, allowing you to enjoy the finer things the holiday season has to offer. It's true, back pain can slow you down, but it doesn’t have to – inquire about structural correction and get to the root of the problem before it negatively affects your life.

Experience
Once the holiday season winds down, a good New Year’s resolution would be to visit a chiropractor regularly and take a proactive stance toward your back pain. Your health hangs in the balance, and only a professional chiropractor can offer the experience – and accompanying know-how – to help you get back on your feet (so to speak). Try seeking out a chiropractor that balances experience with openness to new methods and techniques, that way you reap the rewards of both experiential knowledge and progressive ideas.

A Free Consultation
Make use of a chiropractor’s free consultation (provided, of course, that they provide one), as it’s a good opportunity for you to ask questions of them, and for them to get a sense of what your issues are. Don’t be afraid to let them know where and when you normally experience discomfort, as well as what your daily routine looks like, because the more information you give them during this initial consultation, the better care they’ll be able to provide. The value alone, of speaking with an experienced chiropractor, will provide some much needed clarity and direction.

Holidays are a tough time, as the weight of stress can compound with the very real physical demands of working, spending time with family and attending events. It would be a shame to “stiff upper lip” the kind of back pain that can ruin a perfectly good holiday season. It’s far better to book a consultation with a chiropractor, one who specializes in the holistic structural correction of you spine, and start taking steps towards looking and feeling your best this year. 

This is a guest blog entry.

Fall-Related Injuries in Elderlies and How to Prevent Them

Fall-related injuries are the most common cause of morbidity and mortality in the elderly population. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the reported rate of fall-related injuries and death increase rapidly with age. This is attributed to the fact that as you age, your general body functions also decline.

Since aging is true to all people regardless of gender, nationality and socio-economic status, fall-related injuries have become a global concern. Findings of a research study conducted in September 2011 proved that these injuries have great societal impact not only because they reduce the quality of life of the elderlies but also due to their high hospitalization cost.

These consequences lead to the emergence of advocacies aimed at preventing fall-related injuries in the older population. A 2013 study claims that fall-preventive programs have been shown to reduce the incidence of falls, most especially in the high-risk population.

Fall Injuries in Elderlies

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) 2015 report shows that unintentional falls account to a total of 3 million cases, or 63.8% of nonfatal injuries, for ages 65 and older. Reported death secondary to falls totaled to 28,000 in the same year alone.

Those are alarmingly high numbers. What could be the reason why elderlies are prone to falls?

As you age, your body’s central nervous system experiences a progressive decline. This could lead to loss of coordination, hearing and visual impairment, diminished proprioception, and reduced hand-eye coordination. Body tissues also lose mass (a process called atrophy) and may decrease in size and tone. Connective tissues become rigid and stiff.

Aside from these physiologic changes, the majority of older people tend to take maintenance medications, making them at risk of suffering from the side effects of these drugs. Warfarin, for example, increases the risk of bleeding following an injury because it serves to diminish blood clotting.

Some fall-related injuries are mild and promise full recovery. These include minor abrasions and bruises. However, severe cases like fractures, dislocations, and brain injuries could also happen. Ground level falls (GLF), although less traumatic to younger people, has been shown to result in death of elderlies according to a 2010 research.

Fall-Preventive Measures

Now that you know the facts, it’s time for you to apply certain measures to prevent falls:

1.Raising awareness - Talk to your elderly loved ones about their fear of falling. Discuss with them the factors that contribute to that fear. Doing so could give you a clue on certain areas that you might need to change such as routines and equipment.

2. Health conditions - Ask them about how they are feeling. You could start with their senses. Are they having trouble with vision or hearing? Then you can go to their medication and its side effects. Help them manage their well-being by raising these concerns to their doctor.

3. Balance exercises - Poor body coordination related to aging makes it harder for older people to do daily activities. Regular balance exercises like Tai Chi address this problem while promoting a fun and engaging activity for elderlies.

4. Hazard modification - The primary mechanisms of fall injuries in older patients are stumbling, tripping and slipping These 3 causes contribute to 30% of geriatric fall cases. Hazard modification efforts could reduce the risk of fall injuries. Some practices include:

• Providing adequate lighting especially in hallways, stairs, bathroom and bedroom. Some elderlies might have trouble seeing the dark.
• Installing handlebars in the bathtub and grab bars on the walls of the bathroom so that they can hold onto them for support.
• Making sure that the stairs and balconies are secured with rails.
• Removing clutters on the floor to prevent tripping accidents.
• Orienting them when changes have been made in the house like rearranged and added furniture.
• Immediately drying any spilled drink or water on the floor to prevent slipping accidents.
• Placing fall safety mats beside the bed so that you’d be alerted when your elderly loved ones have fallen from their bed. These mats also provide some cushion to reduce the impact of the fall. Click here for more information.
• Opting for non-slip mats all over the house. Wearing non-slip shoes and socks are also great options.
• Choosing clothes that fit well. Clothes that have long hems and are too loose could make movement difficult for them.

Various efforts to raise public awareness regarding falls have also been initiated. In fact, National Falls Prevention Awareness Day is being celebrated every September for this very purpose.

It is unwise to dismiss the risk of falling, especially in older adults. You could work with your family members and family caregiver to provide them with comfortable life. Taking these necessary measures to prevent fall incidence could ensure that your elderly loved ones are safe and as healthy as they could be.

Do you know any other measures to avoid fall injuries? Share your comments in the comment section below.

This is a guest blog posting.

3 Expert Medical Tips for Family Caregivers

Every November, organizations around the country including the American Heart Association recognize family caregivers near and wide for National Family Caregiver Month. Over 40 million caregivers in the U.S. provide some version of care for a family member or other loved one - from managing prescription refills and doctors appointments to dressing wounds, administering medicine, and helping their loved one eat and drink.

As more and more members of the Baby Boomer generation enter their Golden Years (65+) in the next decade, more and more of their children will be called on to help provide care. Skills like being organized and communicating well will help family caregivers wrangle health insurance companies and medical providers. However, knowledge of a handful of medical and skilled nursing duties will go a long way as well. These include:

Monitoring Vitals
Being able to monitor vitals, whether your aging parent is perfectly healthy or suffering from a chronic condition, will come in handy as a family caregiver in helping you detect early signs of illness and take action. Tracking blood pressure can be done manually with a stethoscope, blood pressure cuff, and pressure reading device, or more simply with a digital monitor that goes over the arm or wrist. 

Monitoring temperature to track a fever (which can indicate an infection) is made easy with an array of digital ear, forehead, or oral thermometers. And digital pulse oximeters which read oxygen saturation levels can easily slip onto a finger and give you an accurate picture of your loved one’s oxygen intake. All of these helpful devices can be found online or in most drugstores. Family caregivers should aim to track vitals regularly (daily if possible) and record them to maintain a baseline for their loved one’s condition. That way, if something is off, like a high temperature or low blood pressure, you’ll be quick to seek medical attention.

Preventing Falls
Did you know that if the loved one you look after is over the age of 65, they have a 1 in 4 chance of falling in or around their home? Falls can lead to debilitating hip fractures, hospitalization, and other life-threatening complications. As a family caregiver, preventing falls should be a primary concern, especially if your loved one has mobility problems, is elderly, or has a chronic condition which impairs their vision, balance, or strength.

Equipment like bed rails, grab bars, and raised toilet seats can be easily installed or assembled and offer extra support for your loved one when they are rising, sitting, or navigating challenging environments like stairways. Check out the 10 best bed rails for adults here. Other actions which can help prevent falls in the home include clearing away excess clutter and trip hazards, making sure consistent lighting is accessible from room to room, and placing guide tape and nonslip fall mats by beds and in bathrooms.

Recognizing Infections and Dehydration
Often what monitoring vital signs helps to do is pick up on early clues that your loved one has developed an infection or is dehydrated. However, other common symptoms can be just as indicative. For example, did you know that when an elderly person or someone with existing cognitive decline has a urinary tract infection, they’ll often appear disoriented and confused? Or that pneumonia might actually cause a dry, unproductive cough and low oxygen saturation levels? Or that dehydration can cause your loved one’s blood pressure to rapidly drop?

Common infections of older adults like pneumonia and UTI’s, as well as chronic dehydration among seniors can have a huge impact on you and your loved one’s life. Having a basic knowledge of well known symptoms and warning signs of potential medical issues that could sneak up on your loved one will help you in multiple ways. You will know when to seek medical attention sooner, you might be able to skip a trip to the hospital by speaking with your doctor or home health agency first, and you could even end up saving your loved one’s life.

This is a guest blog post.

How to Read Blood Pressure Manually

For clinicians, nurses, and caregivers managing care and treatment for patients with chronic illness, skills like taking pulse and heart rate, reading temperature, measuring oxygen saturation levels, and tracking blood pressure readings are basic day to day necessities.

Many of these vitals rely on digital devices for accurate and fast measuring and reading, however, it is helpful that care providers know how to manually record stats in the event that a device malfunctions (i.e. low battery, error, etc).

Reading blood pressure manually requires only a few tools and a handful of basic steps. Equipment needs include:

-    Good quality stethoscope
-    Blood pressure cuff that appropriately fits the patient
-    Blood pressure reading device like an aneroid sphygmomanometer

Keeping equipment in good condition means storing or carrying it around in a case or bag that prevents it from colliding with other instruments or getting damaged. Click here to read more about the best stethoscope cases.

Following these steps for manually reading blood pressure is critical to accurate readings and patient comfortability.

First a patient must be relaxed for as little as five minutes, and if possible, sitting upright in a chair with their feet flat to the ground. For patients with mobility limitations, sitting up in a wheelchair or hospital bed will also suffice. Avoid speaking with the patient while taking a blood pressure reading so that they are not agitated or excited, and so you can properly hear through your stethoscope. Remove any excess clothing that could cut off blood flow to the arm or cause an erroneous reading like jacket sleeves, etc.

Secondly, you’ll want to have your patient raise their left arm so the upper arm is positioned at the height of the heart. You will want to wrap the blood pressure cuff around the patient’s upper arm high enough so the bell of the stethoscope can fit easily in the crease where the arm bends over the brachial artery. Use the range notations on the cuff to make sure the circumference of your patient’s arm falls within the recommended index and you know you don’t need a larger or smaller cuff. A mark on the cuff which points to artery should be positioned above the brachial artery - this artery runs along the inside of the upper arm.

Put your stethoscope on, place the bell accordingly on the antecubital fossa (bend of the arm) on top of the brachial artery and listen for strong pulse sounds. Inflate the cuff by pumping the bulb until pulse sounds are no longer audible through your stethoscope. Inflate until you reach between 160 to 180 mmHg on the dial (or 30 to 40mg over your patient’s normal blood pressure reading). There should be a few seconds between deflating and hearing pulse sounds again, so if you hear them right away, try inflating the cuff to a higher level.

Begin deflating the cuff at around 2 to 3mmHg per second, listening out for two distinct sounds. The first will be your systolic pressure reading. A tapping or rhythmic sound as you deflate the cuff and blood begins flowing back through the brachial artery will begin. Note the reading at this point, and listen on for the moment when the pulsing sound stops (that will be your diastolic pressure reading).

Write down or digital record the reading in a log that track blood pressure over time. For patients and caregivers, make sure you are checking blood pressure at roughly the same time each day to formulate a clearer baseline.

The Mayo Clinic recommends taking two readings at a time to measure for accuracy, about five minutes apart. Patients who have recently smoked, drank coffee, are stressed, are cold, or are on certain medicines may have slightly higher than normal readings for them. In these cases, two readings can help to record a successful measurement. White coat syndrome, or the phenomena where patients exhibit higher than normal blood pressure readings but only at a doctor’s office or other clinical setting, can also lead to inaccurate readings that require a second measurement.

With rates of hypertension at an all time high, 1 out of 3 adults over 20 living with hypertension, understanding how to precisely and successfully read a blood pressure reading manually is a helpful skill for clinicians, caregivers, and patients.

This is a guest blog entry.

Tips for Naturally Lowering Your Cholesterol Levels

Worried about high cholesterol? If a recent blood test has you fretting over high blood cholesterol levels, don’t miss these helpful tips for lowering them:

What is cholesterol?
Turns out, all the cholesterol your body needs it actually produces itself. All the cholesterol you consume through food is only surplus. Cholesterol as a critical component of your biology is a fatty and soft, wax-like substance that resides in your cells. Cholesterol plays a handful of important roles in helping your body make vitamin D, hormones, and substances like bile which help you digest food.

When cholesterol is transported through your body, it travels in molecular packages called lipoproteins. These lipid (fat) protein vehicles move through your bloodstream in two ways. Low-density lipoproteins (LDL) carry cholesterol from your liver and deliver it to cells and high-density lipoproteins (HDL) carry cholesterol from your cells back to your liver. LDL is sometimes referred to as “bad cholesterol” because it can cause dangerous buildup in your artery walls, while HDL is sometimes refers to as “good cholesterol” because it helps your body to eliminate excess cholesterol.

Why is high cholesterol bad?
The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute shares that high cholesterol levels increase your risk for developing coronary artery disease which is a condition that results from atherosclerosis, or the buildup of cholesterol, fat, and other substances on the walls of your arteries - these are called plaques. When blood vessels and arteries have less and less room for blood to pass through, your heart has to work harder and harder to pump blood through your circulatory system. This places stress on the heart, artery walls, and organs.

How can you lower cholesterol levels?
The good news is that with basic lifestyle changes, reversing high cholesterol is completely possible. Check out these quick expert tips for lowering high cholesterol and decreasing your risk for heart disease:

Be Smart About the Fats You Eat
Big fan of animal-based foods like red meat, butter, ice cream, and cheese? The saturated fats in these foods are a big no-no when it comes to lowering bad cholesterol levels especially. The Mayo Clinic  shares that in fact only 7% of the calories you consume in a day should come from saturated fats. Instead, you want to consume more foods with unsaturated fats, specifically mono-saturated fats which are derived from plant sources. Cooking with olive oil instead of butter is a good example of replacing a saturated fat with a mono-saturated fat. Avocados, almonds, cashews, and pecans are other good sources of mono-saturated fats.

Eat More Soluble Fiber
Fiber has a unique way of lowering bad cholesterol by reducing how much cholesterol is actually absorbed in your bloodstream. Soluble fiber, also referred to as viscous fiber, both slows down the motility of food through the small intestine as well as disrupts bile absorption. The body compensates for this by triggering the liver to make more bile silts which requires cholesterol. The liver starts pulling more bad cholesterol out of the bloodstream to aid the process, thus lowering overall levels. Getting 10 to 25g of soluble fiber a day can be effective in lowering cholesterol levels - look for foods like whole oats, barley, apples, kidney beans, pears, lentils, and vegetables.

Increase Daily Exercise
The Centers for Disease Control recommend 30 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise daily for lowering risk of developing all types of diseases including diabetes, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s. When it comes to battling high cholesterol, exercise is just as important as diet changes! Low impact activities like swimming, cycling, yoga practice, hiking, dancing, and rowing help keep the heart muscle strong, help you lose weight, and can increase good cholesterol levels in your bloodstream. Additional strength training activities like light weight lifting and resistance training are also important. The best resistance bands will facilitate fun and safe strength training, especially for older adults.

Additional lifestyle modifications which support not only reducing cholesterol but lowering risk for high blood pressure and heart disease include quitting smoking and being vigilant about little to moderate alcohol consumption. Anything you can do to help power a strong heart, clear arteries, and manage a healthy weight is guaranteed to add years to your life.

This is a guest blog post.

Hormone Replacement Therapy for Weight Loss

Part of losing weight is the ability to “train your brain” to accomplish that goal. This takes more than mental focus, at times, as the brain is the primary organ that controls functions such as metabolism, health, and aging, all in the process of hormonal regulation. It only seems right that a change in any or some of these very same hormones could be the cause of weight gain, necessitating the need for hormone therapy to lose weight.

This is a simple concept to understand:

• Hormones regulate everything in the body from energy to sleep to hunger to stress to mood to libido to stimulating the secretion of other hormones.

• When certain hormones decline in production, others tend to increase production to counteract their actions.

• In some cases, the increase in certain of these chemical messengers can cause bodily functions to change, such as a lack of energy stimulating the need to consume larger quantities of foods – especially those high in sugar, fat, and carbohydrates for instant energy.

• As a person ages, the brain tends to lose some of its effectiveness at providing the various hormonal signals from places such as the pituitary gland, hypothalamus, and thyroid. This signal reduction affects many of the body’s organs, weakening their abilities to function. Health begins to decline, weight begins to increase, and these factors, in turn, cause further problems for hormonal production.

The goal of using hormone replacement therapy for weight loss is to do more than help a person get rid of excess fat, as that is not going to be a valid reason for a doctor to prescribe some form of bioidentical treatment. The real goal is to put the body back into a state of homeostasis – balance – so that it can function properly.

When the body is in a state of balance, everything will be working as it should, including the metabolism. Food consumed will be properly converted into usable fuel, or energy, rather than stored away as fat. Although a person will lose weight with hormone therapy, that is only a small part of the benefits that will be achieved. The purpose and goal of this treatment are going to be to reverse all of the symptoms associated with the particular hormonal decline that has occurred.

Hormones that Contribute to Weight Gain

There are approximately sixty different hormones in the body, and some of them can have a direct influence on hormonal weight gain. When a person has tried diet after diet to no avail, it may be time to examine how one of these three types of chemical messengers are influencing weight gain:

1. Stress hormones
2. Thyroid hormones
3. Sex hormones

We are going to begin with a look at how stress affects the body and causes weight gain. Many people will automatically associate stress with eating. Think about how comforting it is to grab that donut, pint of ice cream, or bag of chips when stress levels are skyrocketing. The real reason why people grab food at times like this are:

• Cortisol

Cortisol is the stress hormone. When the body has too much cortisol in the bloodstream, hunger levels will increase. Hunger causes a person to eat and overeating packs on the pounds. Cortisol is the antithesis to growth hormone, which will be covered in further detail in the next section. When growth hormone levels are low, cortisol levels are high. This also interferes with the ability to fall asleep at night, and decreased sleep, as we will also discover, increases the odds of weight gain.

• Ghrelin

Ghrelin is being included here because it has a direct response to an increase in cortisol. Ghrelin is the hunger hormone. In study findings, individuals who were overweight showed increased cortisol, ghrelin, stress, and hunger following a laboratory stressor. (http://www.nature.com/ijo/journal/v37/n8/full/ijo2012166a.html )

Continuing the examination of hormone replacement therapy and weight loss, we move to the role of thyroid hormones in fat accumulation.

• Thyroxine and Triiodothyronine

These thyroid hormones work to increase metabolism. If the thyroid is not putting out enough of its hormones, metabolism will slow down, and weight gain will ensue. A sluggish, tired feeling will also be present, again leading to the need to increase caloric intake. An individual may also feel a greater sensitivity to cold, have dry skin, and be subject to bouts of constipation.

Finally, we have the sex hormones. Testosterone and estrogen have their own significant roles in changing body shapes, as will be discussed below:

• Estrogen

As estrogen levels decline during menopause, the numbers on the scale tend to go up. Doctors have now realized that this may, in fact, also be due to decreasing testosterone levels, especially since some of the excess testosterone in the body is converted into estrogen.

• Testosterone

The primary male sex hormone is directly involved with weight gain in men and women as they age. This is due to the natural decrease in production of this chemical messenger from the testes and the ovaries, along with the adrenal glands.

The use of hormone replacement for weight loss relies on blood analysis to determine which, if any, of these hormones are at levels that are not optimum for the maintaining an ideal weight.

How Human Growth Hormone Helps Weight Loss

Human growth hormone plays a critical role in metabolism. It aids in the conversion process of turning body fat into muscle mass. HGH reduces both subcutaneous and visceral fat while inhibiting the formation of body fat. A person who is experiencing growth hormone deficiency will find that falling asleep is difficult to achieve at night. He or she will be tired in the daytime, and this fatigue will increase the production of both cortisol and ghrelin. In order to increase energy, food consumption will be required. Higher cortisol = lower GH = weight gain. Since sleep is where more than half of the day’s supply of growth hormone is secreted, this creates a vicious cycle.

Keeping all of this in mind, how can hormone therapy help lose weight for a person dealing with low GH levels?

It is quite simple – give the body back what it needs in order to thrive and let it do its own thing. Now, that does not mean HGH injections provide the impetus to go out and consume an entire pizza. Lifestyle choices do still hold a place in any weight loss program. Please note that HGH is not a diet or weight loss plan. As with any other type of hormone replacement therapy, it will only be prescribed when a deficiency has been diagnosed, and there are symptoms of the deficiency (besides weight gain) present in the individual.

In addition to the many benefits achieved with HGH therapy for people diagnosed with growth hormone deficiency, the average person can expect to increase lean body mass by about 10% and decrease fat mass by about the same amount during a six-month course of therapy.

How Testosterone Helps Weight Loss

Low testosterone levels in the body typically cause a number of unwanted symptoms, including weight gain. In the past, declining estrogen production was blamed for menopausal weight gain, but science has now found a correlation between Low T and higher estrogen levels, so it may actually be that this is the cause of weight gain in women dealing with menopause. That makes testosterone treatment the better option for helping with weight loss.

Once again, it is essential to point out that testosterone replacement therapy for weight loss will not be prescribed, per se. This is not a diet program. If weight gain is the only symptom that a person is experiencing, the doctor will look elsewhere for another form of treatment. Low T therapy with bioidentical testosterone should only be prescribed when there are other symptoms present, and blood analysis shows a valid decline in testosterone levels.

Testosterone weight loss is also attributed to the reversal of the sugar cravings that are present during Low T. These sugar cravings can lead to insulin resistance and weight gain.

How to Choose the Right Hormone Therapy to Help with Weight Loss

Choosing the right weight loss, hormone replacement therapy is not a decision that a person can make on his or her own. Treatment with bioidentical HRT medications is not often prescribed for the sole purpose of ridding the body of excess pounds. There has to be a viable deficiency before it is approved and even makes sense, to prescribe these treatments.

Each hormone has a natural range of where it should be in the body - its normal level. If blood test results show a deficiency, then that is when it is possible to provide treatment. Remember, there will also be other symptoms present that can be attributed to that particular hormonal decline, and these will also reap tremendous benefits from the prescribed therapy.

Receiving hormone therapy to lose weight means that there has been a decline in the production of a particular hormone in the body. Raising its level will bring a higher level of functioning to the body. Many people experience changes in mood, energy, libido, memory, cognitive functions, and appearance, along with a decrease in excess fat.

At National HRT, our medical staff and doctors are here to provide free consultations, answers to questions, guidance, diagnostic testing, support, and treatment medications to adults with hormonal deficiencies or imbalances. Call today and discover the ways that we can help you.

This is a guest blog posting.