To Your Health
June, 2009 (Vol. 03, Issue 06) |
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The Hormonal Teeter-Totter
In interviews and a recent, well-received speech to chiropractors at Parker Seminar in Las Vegas, Somers described what she calls the hormonal teeter-totter.
On one side are what she describes as the "minor" sex hormones, i.e., estrogen, progesterone, testosterone
and DHEA. On the other side are the "major" hormones produced by the thyroid gland, the pancreas (insulin) and the adrenal gland (adrenaline, cortisol).
"When you're draining out of minor hormones, cortisol, insulin, and thyroid go high," she says. "So when people say I'm eating less, I'm exercising more but I'm still gaining weight and I'm fatigued all the time, here's your culprit: the minor hormones are out of balance. ... You've got to get that estrogen, progesterone, testosterone back to normal levels."
Premarin, which is typically prescribed to women experiencing menopause, is designed to replace low levels of estrogen. But Somers, who used birth control pills containing Premarin for decades, was unwilling to return to the medication.
"I went from doctor to doctor, and they all wanted to give me drugs until finally I realized that I had to find out more on my own. MDs typically get four hours of instruction on prescribing hormones ... I have spent 1,000s of hours researching this."
According to Somers, she finally heard about an endocrinologist who knew about bioidentical hormones (chemically identical to those made by the human body) and began a course of treatment about eight years ago. Today, she takes no pharmaceuticals.
"If we can all find out how good we can feel on biologically identical hormones, which are non-patentable and an exact replicate of what we make in our bodies, we won't need the [pharmaceutical companies] drugs anymore ... and they make so much money off of us."
The Power of Real Food
Somers' interest in natural health goes well beyond her crusade in favor of biologically identical hormones. She also believes her Baby Boomer generation is going to pay dearly for the changes in diet that began in the early 1960s in American homes.
"When we were kids, we grew up on real food," she says. "But then we were introduced to chemicals in our diets. Processed foods, fruits and vegetables sprayed with pesticides and fertilized with chemicals. But at least we had real food when we were kids.
"But look at young people, eating food out of bags; I worry greatly about them. You have to eat real food, organic if you can afford it, and eat anti-oxidants, turmeric, cayenne, thyme, basil, rosemary ... nature's antioxidants. These are all delicious, but we've become so accustomed to chemicals we prefer [unhealthy foods]."
