The Evolution of Hormone Replacement Therapy
Research from around the world during the last five years has led the NIA to realize the tremendous benefits of hormone replacement therapy. The emphasis of allopathic medicine has always been to diagnose and treat a disease process. Unfortunately, many of the disease processes, including cardiovascular disease, stroke, cancer, and Alzheimer’s disease have been blamed on the aging process.
Until recently conventional medicine has never treated the aging as a disease, nor tried to prevent it. Now we can look at aging as a significant factor in disease and attempt to prevent the symptoms of aging by treating aging as a disease itself. We have begun to change our thinking that it is normal to deteriorate with age and therefore acceptable. Fortunately, we know that much of the deterioration of aging is preventable.
A New Perspective on Aging
This new gestalt of treating age as a disease process first started in 1991 by Dr. Daniel Rudman, a famous endocrinologist at the Medical College of Wisconsin. Dr. Rudman studied hormone replacement in older men, the results of which were published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine. Dr. Rudman stated in an interview: “We reversed 10 to 20 years of the aging process in older men. Fat diminished, muscle tissue and strength increase”. There was also increased lean body mass, decreased body fat, increased vertebral bone density, increased skin thickness, increased exercise tolerance and exercise endurance, improved healing and immunity, and tremendous increase in overall well-being. This was all accomplished by the simple administration of human growth hormone. Thus Dr. Rudman’s study revealed solid research supporting the fact that hormonal decline itself is a major cause of aging. Providing the body with additional human growth hormone can reverse symptoms of the aging process.
Other scientists have realized the importance of supplementation on other hormones. Scientists at the Gerontology Research Center of the National Institute of Health in Baltimore, Maryland, are working with other researches to examine the role that reduced plasma sex hormones play in age-related disturbances, including musculoskeletal function, body composition and metabolic function. Combined hormone replacement therapy, by returning growth hormone and sex hormone levels to levels typical for younger people, has shown additive or synergistic effects. Physical and psychological function is improved, including improvement in cardiovascular function, improved cholesterol levels, increased lean body mass, and improved muscle strength and fitness. Let’s take a look at the various hormones and their roles.
Hormones Stimulate Life-Giving Processes
Hormones are tiny, chemical messengers continuously secreted into the bloodstream by endocrine glands to regulate activities of vital organs. Hormones stimulate a multitude of life-giving processes throughout the body which maintains health, harmony, growth, healing, and repair. Probably the best known hormone is insulin, which is secreted by the pancreas. Before the development of the production and administration of insulin, many people died as a result of diabetes or had sever debilitating illnesses. Once scientists were able to synthesize insulin, the severe changes associated with diabetes were reversed.
Genetic engineering has now enabled endocrinologists to synthesize all the natural hormones found in our bodies. This significant advancement in the ability to synthesize our hormones has led to endocrinology research into the correction of the deficiency of hormones that contributes to our aging decline. It is the operation of the endocrine system that is responsible for the regulation of the bodies temperature, sexual desires, growth, healing, aging and immune system. It is the endocrine system that allows the central nervous system to communicate with every cell in the body. Hormone deficiencies affect every cell in the body and result in degenerative changes and the aging process as well as symptoms of aging. However, bringing hormone levels back to a level we had when we were younger reverses many of the unfavorable effects that begin to appear as we age.