How to Know If You Are a Good Candidate for Hormone Replacement Therapy

It’s no secret that leading a healthy lifestyle can help you look and feel your best as you age. That’s why you strive to stay active, eat wholesome foods, get enough sleep, manage your daily stressors, and take good care of your skin. 

But for all you do to keep looking and feeling your best as you get older, you can’t control the aging process completely. In fact, some of the most bothersome effects of aging are a product of the tiny chemical messengers that regulate most major body processes — your hormones. 

As an advanced registered nurse practitioner who specializes in anti-aging medicine at Fiamo Aesthetics, Nawo K. Fiamo, ARNP, knows just how much shifting hormone levels can affect your vitality, appearance, and sense of well-being as you age. 

Luckily, hormone replacement therapy (HRT) can help you do something about it. 

Tiny chemical messengers with a very big job

Your endocrine system is a complex network of tissues, glands, and organs that produce and secrete hormones — tiny chemical messengers that carry information from one cell to another as they work to regulate and coordinate complex body processes.

Your hormones play a pivotal role in tissue maintenance and organ function, metabolism and energy, memory and focus, mood and appetite, sleep and sexual function, and much more. 

Common signs of hormonal imbalances

Everything from circadian rhythms and health to gender and age influence hormone levels. 

As you head into middle age, your endocrine system begins producing certain hormones at a slower rate or lower levels. While normal and natural, these production declines can lead to bothersome hormonal imbalances that affect your daily life. 

Estrogen imbalance

Signs of a hormone imbalance vary depending on the main hormone that’s in decline. Common indicators of female hormone imbalance — or diminishing estrogen levels — include:

• Hot and cold flashes and night sweats 
• Weight gain and slowed metabolism
• Chronic vaginal dryness and low libido
• Discomfort during sexual intercourse
• Persistent fatigue and low energy 
• Sleep problems and mood changes
• Thinning hair
• Drier, thinner skin tissues

Female hormonal imbalances are typically prompted by perimenopause, the multi-year span of dwindling reproductive hormone levels that precipitates menopause — or the official end of menstruation and fertility for cisgender females, nonbinary people who were assigned female at birth (AFAB), and transgender men who aren’t undergoing masculinizing hormone therapy.

Testosterone imbalance

Common indicators of male hormone imbalance — or lower testosterone levels — include:

• Decreased muscle mass and tone
• Loss of body hair and less beard growth
• Weight gain and slowed metabolism 
• Low libido and erectile dysfunction
• Ongoing fatigue and sleep disturbances 
• Mood changes and swift irritability 
• Reduced motivation and depression

The decline of male hormones also emerges with advancing age, affecting, to some degree, most cisgender men, nonbinary people who were assigned male at birth (AMAB), and transgender women who aren’t undergoing feminizing hormone therapy.

Is hormone replacement therapy right for you?

If these symptoms sound all too familiar, HRT may be an ideal solution. At Fiamo Aesthetics, we offer HRT treatment using bioidentical BioTE® hormones. 

As its name implies, bioidentical hormones are identical in molecular structure to your own natural hormones, so your body can’t distinguish them from the hormones it produces. 

Your hormone prescription is custom-compounded to meet your exact needs and delivered to your system through a pellet that we implant just beneath the surface of your skin. The pellet releases its hormones in a steady, controlled manner for about three months, at which time we replace it with a new pellet. 

To determine if you’re a good candidate for BioTE HRT, we conduct a thorough evaluation that includes:

• A complete symptom checklist
• Exhaustive hormone level testing
• A comprehensive physical exam
• An extensive medical history

Even if your symptoms and lab tests confirm you’re a suitable candidate for HRT, your current health and medical history help us determine if HRT is safe for you. We may not recommend HRT if you:

• Have a history of blood clots
• Have diagnosed heart disease
• Are at high risk of prostate cancer
• Have a history of breast or ovarian cancer
• Reached menopause more than 10 years ago

To find out if BioTE hormone therapy may be right for you, call or click online to schedule a comprehensive evaluation at Fiamo Aesthetics in Yakima, Washington, today.