Hormones are powerful, regulating substances produced by our bodies. They’re communicators.
Oriental Medicine excels at correcting hormonal imbalances. Why, then, would a doctor practicing Oriental Medicine choose to offer modern bio-identical hormones when Chinese herbal medicine is so effective?
Here are three important reasons for such a choice, the third being the least recognized.
- Many clients are in such a deficient state that a short course of bio-identical hormones may be required to jumpstart the system back to a state of harmony which may then be managed by herbal medicine.
- Some individuals have had glands removed or destroyed by conventional medicine, e.g. thyroid removal due to cancer or uncontrolled thyrotoxicosis. Their bodies are incapable of producing hormones essential to life.
- Few Doctors of Oriental Medicine are aware that the early practice of this medicine included the use of human hormones. According to Dr. Joseph Needham, hormones were used as early as the 2nd century AD. Needham was a Cambridge scholar who devoted his life to the study of science in ancient China. Dr. Suzanne Smart has written a concise article on Needham's fascinating research, which you may read here.
And why, you may ask, use bio-identical hormones rather than pharmaceutical products? I would ask in return, why would anyone even make a hormone purposely different than what our body produces? There is only one reason: money.
Big pharma controls money and medicine by creating and selling substances they can patent. Such pharmaceutical hormones (Synthroid, Premarin, Provera, Prempro, and many others) are not identical to what the body produces. Aside from making millions for the patent holder, they have no advantage over bio-identical hormones. To the contrary, their use frequently has consequences, many of them serious — including death.
Clients often tell me their conventional doctor has said that natural hormones are inconsistent in their dosages and cause unreliable results. Such statements reveal the depths to which the pharmaceutical industry will stoop to obtain your hard earned dollars.
Such misinformation is most often cited against natural thyroid. I have numerous clients who were on synthetic thyroid replacement when they became clients. And they had no thyroid gland at all, making them totally dependent on hormone replacement. Each of them were transitioned straight to natural thyroid with no problem whatsoever. They report a higher level of health, no inconsistency in the natural hormone, and are happy to have made the switch.
The subject of hormone replacement is vast, of course, but at its core in today's health care lies the question, “Why would I chose a chemical different from what the human body has produced for eons of time?” One reason only — to line the pockets of one of the most powerful industries on the planet.
As a Doctor of Oriental Medicine, practicing the expanded scope of practice as provided by New Mexico's practice act, and providing the most advanced options available, Dr. Horton prescribes all bio-identical hormones.
One caveat deserves mention here, however. Clients have been conditioned by both conventional and alternative doctors to believe that simply adding a hormone is all that is required to manage endocrine imbalances. The human body is far more complex than this simplistic notion suggests. Please understand that the task requires a much higher perspective, as well as a more comprehensive effort.
2202 Menaul NE
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