What Are Hormones and How Do They Impact Your Health?

Your blood pressure, blood sugar, and mood are all directed by your hormones. Made in your endocrine glands, hormones are tiny chemical messengers that travel through your bloodstream, telling various body systems what to do, what not to do, and when to do it.

Your endocrine glands only need to release a small amount of hormones to get the work done. Any slight change in hormone levels causes big changes in how your body functions and how you feel. 

At Weston Medical Health & Wellness, our medical director, Dr. Andrea Bretal, is a hormone therapy specialist. She understands how hormonal changes affect health and well-being.

Here, we want to talk about hormones and how they impact your health.

What are hormones?

Hormones are chemicals made by specialized cells in your endocrine glands. When released into the bloodstream, hormones deliver messages that coordinate various body functions such as:

• Metabolism
• Reproduction
• Sleep cycle
• Mood
• Stress

Your hormones work slowly and methodically to keep things running as smoothly as possible. Any change in hormone production, whether your glands are making too much or too little, impacts your health. 

Hormones and health

Hormonal imbalances cause many diseases, including diabetes, thyroid disease, and even obesity. Though the hormone imbalances for these conditions differ, many hormone-related diseases affect weight. 

For example, hypothyroidism is a condition in which you don’t produce enough thyroid hormones. Thyroid hormones are responsible for controlling your metabolic rate, which is how your body turns food into energy. If your thyroid hormones are low, you may unexpectedly gain weight or have a hard time losing weight.

Production of male and female sex hormones decline with age. In addition to reproduction, these hormones also affect bone health and mood, and lower hormone levels may cause changes in body composition, such as losing muscle and gaining fat. 

If you’re experiencing changes in mood or having a hard time managing your weight, you may have a hormonal imbalance. 

What you can do

We understand how hormones affect physical and emotional health. When you come in with concerns about weight, mood, sleep, or even hair loss, we run hormone tests to check your levels. 

For certain hormone-related conditions, like hypothyroidism and low sex hormones, we provide hormone replacement therapy to restore balance. We customize hormone therapy treatments to fit individual hormonal needs, providing treatments as an oral medication, skin patch, injection, or other method that best suits your needs.

Once your hormones are back in balance, you should notice improvements in energy, mood, and weight. We schedule regular appointments to monitor hormone levels so we can adjust your treatment plan as needed. 

Hormones are essential to life. When your hormones are out of balance, so is your life. 

If you have concerns that hormones are affecting your health, we can help. Call our office in Weston, Florida, or click the online booking button to request an appointment today.