Your Energy: In Crisis - Page 5

Since your hormones do more than keep your muscles pumped and your sexual engine revved (they're prime regulators of how you feel from day to day and hour to hour), if you feel a lack of optimal energy, talk with you doc about these:

Thyroid. Your hypothalamus is responsible for making the hormone that causes your pituitary to produce thyroid-stimulating hormone — a marker for thyroid disease. The problem is that most docs treating the symptoms of thyroid problems (such as weight gain and fatigue) treat based on a number that really doesn't really make perfect sense (like 6 to 11 shoe size). We docs should be looking at both forms of thyroid hormone (free T4 and T3 levels) as well as TSH levels. Your TSH levels are from your pituitary; they're your internal dimmer trying to make the lights bright enough to read by. So, your TSH levels go up when your thyroid isn't pumping out enough T4 and T3, in and effort to increase your thyroid gland's production of T3 and T4. But sometimes your pituitary fails to succeed or the wires in your thyroid are frayed, so you cannot produce all the T3 and T4 you need. We docs try to help by giving you more — but many times we are guided by that 95 percent target rather than that target and your symptoms. To boot, we often treat it with a drug that doesn't always work in everyone's body: There's a complex and delayed reaction to many drugs that can vary among people. (It takes four to eight weeks to arrive at stable levels of these drugs after you make a change in doses.) Many times, you need to help your doc know how you feel and maybe push to get treated (if other treatments fail) with a bioidentical thyroid hormone that doesn't just adjust the numbers in your blood test but helps the way you actually feel.

Adrenal. This symptom sound familiar? When you're hungry, do you quickly switch to feeling so ravenous and irritable that if you don't get something to eat immediately, you'll commit a felony? That a sign that your adrenal glands — you're fight-or-flight glands — may not be working properly. A blood test picks up very dangerous levels (not just abnormal ones), so you need to address the signs that malfunctioning adrenals are making you feel bad. If all else fails (and we mean all else), talk to your doc about taking 5-20 mg every other day of a cortisol type of medication called Cortef or its cousin DHEA (not DHA) (your doc will need to measure levels before and frequently).

Sex hormones. Perimenopausal women who experience worsening of their pain and fatigue around their periods are probably also experiencing a drop in estrogen. Cause and effect? Maybe. Remember, pain diverts your energy, too. A bioidentical estrogen such as estradiol combined with a micronized bioidentical progesterone and preceded by two baby aspirin has benefits we think exceed risks for most women and can help your fatigue, pain, and brain fog. Women and men who have decreased shaving frequency (legs and face, respectively) should also consider testosterone if they need it for the associated elevation of LDL cholesterol, triglycerides, decreased HDL cholesterol, or loss of libido.