Back to Basics - Hormones Keep you Young & Juicy....
If antioxidants are the 7th Cavalry in the fight against free-radicals and antiaging, then your hormones are the cavalry sabre, the Winchester rifle, the field howitzer, cunningly deployed in the battle to stay young and vital. Preserving youthful levels of the key hormones is essential in any antiaging program. Hormones are what determine if you remain vibrant, happy and healthy, and whether you live to a ripe and enjoyable old age. Unfortunately, like so many things in our body, our hormone levels decline as we age and a lot of us end up chronically sick, pear shaped and not exactly full of the joys of Spring, if not downright grumps.
Hormones are chemical messengers secreted by the endocrine glands which govern how your body works. They act like a team coach, they tell your cells what to do and how to behave. Your hormones work in unison, and in partnership with your nervous system, orchestrate the function of more than 50 billion cells that is you.
Your endocrine glands, the hormone producers, such as the pancreas, thyroid, adrenals and pituitary, may be small in size but they have a huge effect on your bodily functions. Your digestion, sexuality and the workings of your heart, liver and kidneys are all controlled by the endocrine glands. Whether you become fat or thin, tall or short, is regulated by your hormone levels. If your hormones are operating in harmony with each other, then all will be well with your body and you will be fit and healthy. As you grow older the performance of your endocrine glands diminish and the characteristic signs of ageing begin to appear. You start to gain weight, your muscles grow flabby, your skin becomes wrinkled and you often feel tired. From there it is but a short step to the all-too real chronic conditions of ageing; heart disease, cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis, alzheimer’s and a whole host of other grizzly things you don’t want anytime soon, if at all.
Hey! It’s all Part of Growing Old.....
It used to be that your doctor and everybody else would tell you that these changes were all part of growing older and that you just had to accept that’s the way it is.
Well, it’s not true. So don’t you believe it.
There is a lot you can do to stay young and maintaining youthful hormone levels is one of the most important ways of doing it. The thing for you to realise is that these changes for the worse are not inevitable. There are certain key factors that are important for your hormonal wellbeing and - how well you look after your endocrine glands, will have a great impact on how well they serve you as you age.
Think of your endocrine system like a cascade, with the two master glands deep in your brain, more or less controlling everything. Here in brief is how it works.
No.1 is your hypothalamus controls the pituitary as well as hunger, sex drive, thirst and body temperature. Your pituitary controls bone growth and more or less everything else. It regulates the activity of your thyroid gland, adrenals, gonads and all the other reproductive organs and glands in your body. The pineal gland, also embedded deep in the brain is the home of your body’s biological clock. The thyroid at the base of your throat controls the rate at which your body generates energy. The thymus is responsible for producing T-cells and managing your immune system and your adrenals provide the “fight or flight” signals and control blood pressure.
You Are, what you Think.....
The hypothalamus and pituitary are directly affected by your thoughts and feelings via chemical messengers in the brain called neurotransmitters. These are conveyed by your nervous system and that is why your mental and emotional state really do play such an enormous role affecting your entire hormonal system. That is why stress is such a bummer. It really ages you. It is why stress can make you feel so down, so tired and make an active sex life like a dim and distant memory.
If your glands are exhausted by stress your hormone levels will decline and you need to replenish them. Hormones are made from proteins and fats from fish, tofu, eggs, nuts, seeds and avocado. You need a healthy digestive system so your cells get these nutrients and you need healthy liver function for elimination purposes.
Bear in mind that for hormones to operate effectively they need the optimum chemical environment in the blood and cells and an alkaline environment is the most conducive. That is why maintaining the correct pH levels is so important and why the Biological Terrain Assessment (BTA) is such an important measure of wellbeing. Most doctors totally ignore this. You shouldn’t. If your doctor doesn’t know about this or thinks it’s not important, get someone else.
As observed, your endocrine system is an extremely fine-tuned and complicated mechanism. It bears some looking after. The diseases and effects of ageing take years to develop and it makes sense to take steps before disease set in. Antiaging doctors advise their patients to start their programs from the mid 30’s onwards. That’s good advice.
These are the Good Guys
The major antiaging hormones I cover here that are known to promote vitality and wellbeing include are: DHEA, melatonin, HGH, and thyroid hormone.
Together with HGH and melatonin, DHEA is considered to be the anti-aging hormone with the most potential to restore youthful levels of health and vitality. It is also, along with melatonin, far and away the simplest, safest and cheapest means available of doing so. DHEA increases energy and libido, improves ability to cope with stress. converts to testosterone and promotes overall physical and psychological well being. Conversely, a decline in DHEA is associated with age-related problems like osteoporosis, heart disease, obesity, loss of muscle mass, loss of energy and libido and cancer. DHEA reaches peak production at age 25, from then on it is all downhill. The greatest decline is by age 50 and by age 70 concentrations are 20% for men and 30% of what they were age 20. Caution: anyone with prostate cancer or prostate problems should not take DHEA without consulting an endocrinologist.
Melatonin: quite apart from its ability to promote sleep, for which it is most popularly known, melatonin is a hugely powerful antioxidant, more so than glutathione, Vits C & E, and is particularly effective against the most destructive free-radical of all, the vicious hydroxyl radical. Melatonin is a potent non-toxic anti-cancer agent, particularly in the case of hormonal fed cancers of the breast and prostate. It is also very effective in enhancing the immune system, preventing infection and disease systemically by promoting HGH and regenerating the thymus gland.
Human Growth Hormone (HGH) does everything that DHEA does and more. The only trouble is, it’s hard to supplement, largely because HGH is destroyed in the liver. The most natural and easily the cheapest way to increase HGH is to exercise. Sounds good, except that means really strenuous exercise. Staying in the comfort zone won’t do it for you I’m afraid. You can increase HGH quite economically by taking various amino acids, but it is a complicated process and most people haven’t got the follow-through to make it work. Steer clear of all those HGH offers and promises from MLM companies and on the web. In most cases they are scams. At best they are simply tiny amounts of amino acids, obscenely overpriced for what they are. That leaves HGH injections. This works, and is the only easy way of getting HGH, but it is very expensive and medical opinion is still divided whether or not it is a safe thing to do long term, so check it out first with an independent source.
Thyroid hormone is probably the most underrated and under-valued hormone in the anti-aging firmament. It just isn’t as sexy as DHEA and HGH, or as well-known as melatonin, but its contribution to health and vitality is just as important. Huge numbers of people suffer thyroid deficiencies, feeling lethargic, depressed, unable to lose weight, losing hair and always feeling the cold. Your thyroid controls all metabolic activity and when your thyroid ceases to function optimally everything starts to slow down; heart disease, diabetes, osteoporosis, digestive tract problems and loss of sexual function often result. Thyroid therapy is now achieved by the supplementation of dessicated thyroid and most recently by T3 (thyroxine 3) Time Release. Modern drug therapy is not effective because it uses only T4 and you must have T3 to do any good.
Easiest & Cheapest Way.....
The simplest, cheapest and most effective way to boost your hormonal levels and achieve many of all the good things mentioned is to supplement with 25 to 50mg daily of DHEA and 1 to 3mg of melatonin before bed. Supplementation with dessicated thyroid is also cheap and easy (T3 supplements can be quite pricey). We’re talking just a few dollars a month here.
If you can afford it and want to get spectacular results quickly you can consider HGH shots, but do some research first into the pros and cons of it. The very best book on the whole subject, which is easy to read and gets right to the point, is a book called “Hormonal Health” by Dr Michael Colgan. San Diego-based Colgan is one of the very best specialists in the fields of anti-aging and optimum health at work today. Anti-ageing Drs. Klatz and Goldman are the biggest proponents of HGH shots, and they are worth reading on the subject, but for me their crusading zeal is a little too over-the-top when it comes to something as potent as mainlining HGH. You decide.
Putting the basics together:
Premature ageing and its associated illnesses are caused by the decline in anti-aging hormones and the accumulation of free-radicals (see last issue).
The key to a long and vital life is to neutralise the devastating effects of free-radicals and to restore youthful levels of the anti-aging hormones.
And there you have it..... I just wish it were as simple as it sounds.
