Hildreth: Why are we seeing so many symptoms of imbalance?

Last week, we discussed the importance of hormonal balance. This included not only the estrogens, progesterone and testosterone, but also thyroid and insulin hormones.

This is just as true in the male as well as the female even though the symptoms may be far more responsive in the female. So, if nature is there to see that balance is maintained, why are we seeing so many symptoms of imbalance, some being very serious?

Many of these health challenges are beginning before puberty in the female and a similar age in the male. The results of these hormonal imbalances can be felt by the male and female clear into old age.

The hormonal imbalances can be traced by testing all along the way. Why is this? What is going on? Because of my personal observations of patients’ responses by specific symptoms followed by altered test results, I felt it was time to pursue these imbalances further. Is what we are seeing and hearing really true and, if so, why?

First research has shown me that what is beginning is very real. Increasing hormone imbalance beginning before puberty has been rising only the past 20 years at an alarming rate and female reproductive cancers and other serious disease have increased in a paralleling way.

Interesting enough, essentially this is noted only in the more highly industrialized countries. Debra Lee Davis, Ph.D, MPH, director of the Center on Environment Oncology, University of Pittsburgh Cancer Center, has arrived at some very interesting observations.

She feels that the environmental toxins that mimic estrogen and other hormones are widespread in the environment and they are key drivers of both precocious puberty in young girls and reproductive system cancers later in life.

Statistics have shown that earlier onset of puberty could in part account for the higher incidents and mortality of breast cancer as has been shown among pre-menopausal African Americans in contrast to white women.

Lifetime estrogen exposure and dominance is a major risk factor for breast cancers in general when not balanced by the other hormones, particularly progesterone. The estrogens, particularly estradiol, are intended to be an activator. They prepare ladies to develop into beautiful ladies as they prepare you for pregnancy and motherhood. Progesterone is a stabilizer, maintaining pregnancy, and prepares you mentally and physically to care for offspring.

It is beautifully programmed with lots of checks and balances.

Sad but true, we all have physically the same functioning body that the human race was prepared for during the Stone Age.

We were not prepared for all of the endocrine disruptors that Dr. Davis and others have referred to. It is the mixture of multiple exogenous estrogenic substances and their interactions with endogenous hormones or our naturally produced internal hormones that are most concerning.

As grandparents, it is this type of information that we can pass on to our kids and our grandchildren that may save a lot of heartaches in the future.

We think of all of this as being mainly related to reproductive organs and their activities; however, it has been found that lung cancer cells have lots of estrogen receptors and they are highly sensitive to estrogen.

So, without the estrogen-progesterone balance within the body to maintain checks and balances, the estrogen, if dominant, in other words without the controlling factors of progesterone, can and will go wild in stimulating all or any of these estrogen receptors whether they are within the reproductive organs or lung tissue.

We cannot live without the intended checks and balances of all of the hormones that are produced in the body. The hormone disruptors consist of a whole host of hormonally active toxins arising from pesticide residues, processors, rubberizing agents, and many other petroleum-based products such as lipstick, lotions, shampoos and other makeup products.

One big one is automotive exhaust.

There have been some interesting studies done through the years centering around the farmers, literally around the globe. While the farmers tend to have overall better health than the non-farming population, they consistently have been shown to have increasingly higher rates of cancer, especially of the breast, reproductive system, and the hemopoietic system such as multiple myeloma.

Farmers are typically exposed to much higher levels of pesticides, herbicides and other toxins. Dr. Davis also brought this out in her talk at the last annual American Holistic Medical meeting.

These changes that people have noticed, particularly the female population, can be balanced. Not only can they feel better, but as it appears on many studies that have been done through the years they can reduce their chances of acquiring cancer secondary to hormonal imbalances.

Contact Dr. LeWall J. Hildreth at 625-1101 or cahcgv@yahoo.com. Dr. Hildreth specializes in hormone balancing and musculoskeletal degeneration.