Susan Merenstein, Pharmacist/Owner
Susan Merenstein, Pharmacist/Owner
Hormones are wondrous chemical messengers that course through our bodies and affect our brain, heart, bones, liver, muscles, microbiome, and ovaries/testes. Hormones take part in the intricate symphony of the human body. All of the players of the endocrine system are a part of this remarkable orchestra- thyroid and adrenal glands, brain and pituitary, pancreas and the reproductive organs. As I continue to study the biochemistry of human hormones, I am amazed by their miraculous interplay.
The music is sweet when the musicians play together. But stress, poor food choices, synthetic hormones, sedentary lifestyles, immune dysfunction, and environmental pollutants are the sour notes in Mother Nature’s music.
Through awareness, education, and a proactive role in our health, we can restore the harmony of health that will give us freedom from degenerative disease and even help us to prevent cancer.
I have been practicing Pharmacy for over 41 years, and in the last 21 years I have awakened to find my hormonal niche and passion to educate and help women and men achieve balance. My goal is to simplify the complex world of hormones into clear, rational, and digestible information, find the root cause, and through a Functional Medicine approach, restore health and vigor.
Bioidentical hormones are created to be an exact match in molecular structure to the hormones produced by the human body. In contrast, non-bioidentical estrogen, such as the estrogen in Premarin, is bioidentical only if your native food is hay. That’s because it is made from the urine of pregnant horses. Hence the name Pre (pregnant) Mar (mares) in (urine). Progestin is a synthetic Frankenstein form of progesterone that is derived from bioidentical progesterone.The reason for this is that you can’t patent a bioidentical hormone that naturally occurs in nature.
Women are more confused and scared than ever and are desperate for guidance and information. Often, they are not even aware that the estrogen and progestin used in the Women’s Health Initiative study since 2002 are not bioidentical, nor do their bodies recognize it.
We must trust our intuition and tune in to our body’s wisdom. Symptoms and side effects are a signal of underlying metabolic imbalances and should not be ignored.
There are three easy ways to safely treat symptoms and improve quality of life, besides the obvious “eat well, drink well, sleep well, move well, think well, destress well, and detox well”, purpose, and community. Discover which hormones are deficient through the right testing, supplement with bioidentical hormones that are indistinguishable from our own in physiologic doses, and monitor progress along the way. We need to take back our hormones and embrace a paradigm which focuses on individualized treatments!
Each of us needs to educate ourselves and to decide our own path –let’s choose the path of balance and health. Remember that Gentle Hormone Restoration Therapy evolves over time-it’s a work in progress — just like you are!
Pharmacist/Owner
