How I Got My A-Game Back (and No, It's Not Hype)

I started to learn more about the concept of restorative medicine out of necessity. I was in my mid 30s and my own health seemed to be declining more quickly than ever. I was losing hair, sleeping poorly, and having anxiety, mood swings, and low energy. I also had the worst digestion of my life—always a tummy ache!

I was fortunate, then, to visit a physician who suggested optimizing my hormones and nutritional status before turning to pharmaceutical interventions.

What does this mean? Well, we drew blood to test for basic health parameters and hormone levels: thyroid, DHEA, progesterone, estrogen, melatonin, pregnenolone, and testosterone. We also looked at micronutrients and antioxidants through specialized blood testing.

As a result, I was able to pinpoint hormone and nutrient levels that had dipped to low and mid-ranges, and boost them up to where they needed to be. Within the first four months, my hair stopped falling out, I started sleeping well, I didn’t need the afternoon cup of coffee, my belly fat melted away, anxiety and mood improved, and I felt a boost to my sexual health.

Through my own experience, I’ve come to understand how hormones work in concert with nutrition for full vitality. The more I research the benefits of hormone support and optimization, the more I understand that I am not only improving how I feel today, but I am also investing in my future health: protecting my brain from memory loss, depression, and Alzheimer's; my bones from osteoporosis and hip fracture; my heart from angina and heart disease; and my immune system from the onslaught of cancer and infection. 

For the past six years, I have felt so much better than I did when I started down this path at age 35. Restoring hormones to optimal levels offers a more natural approach to health than a pharmacological panoply of treatments conventionally offered for the aging process—and hormones offer positive side effects (such as increased libido and a leaner body composition) rather than the negative ones commonly seen with more foreign interventions, like anti-depressants, cholesterol-lowering agents, sleeping agents.

I embarked on this course of study, at first, out of sheer fascination, without knowing how it would fit in with my chosen field of dermatology. I have since come to see hormones and nutrition as inseparable to what we see on the skin and hair. When I hear complaints of hair loss, acne, skin wrinkling, and allergies, I understand how these concerns relate to imbalanced or declining hormone levels and nutritional state. 

Restorative medicine is a new approach, which can reverse root causes of decline and disease and which offer a whole body approach to wellness. The process of optimizing health is multi-faceted; it is not often the case that correcting one hormone will make the difference in overall health. Hormonal and restorative medicine requires testing and consultation time that generally falls beyond the scope of usual insurance coverage. (These therapies are preventative medicine; insurers are geared toward the treatment of disease rather than preventing disease.) However, the medical literature and personal experience have convinced me: the benefits of nutrition and hormone optimization are profound and life altering.