By Bill Murphy, MD, Medical Director, Turquoise Springs Medical Spa
If you have not been to a Gaylord Hotel property for the Christmas season, it is a must-see. My staff and I just returned from a medical/spa meeting in Fort Worth at the Gaylord Texan Grapevine. Beautifully decorated and impeccably landscaped, the lights, sounds, and smells of the holiday season overwhelm one’s senses. We had a wonderful time learning about ways to make the lives of our patients better. Two days were spent learning the latest information for normalizing and improving hormone and thyroid management, the safe use of new peptides and supplements, and improvements of my long-time advice to my patients to “live the rectangle” and not the triangle.
The human species is meant to thrive, one generation after another. Why is this true? Our bodies, both men and women, are designed to encourage procreation, mating, and intimate relations, and the vital result is more human beings. There was a fascinating article in Discover magazine several years ago, on the subtle yet innate factors that encourage mating between males and females. Not the least of the factors is the level of hormones in our bodies after puberty. These peak from about 18 years to the late 20’s and then begin to decrease after those optimal years for producing offspring. A slow decrease in women occurs in the 30’s, but the dramatic decrease in “sex hormones” for women happens on average around 50 and is called menopause. For men, andropause begins in the early 30’s and continues as a slow decrease over time. There is no dramatic or sudden decrease like with women, but a decreasing testosterone level continues for the remainder of a man’s life.
If you can imagine the shape of this decrease in hormone levels, over time, in both men and women, as a shape, it would be a right-angled triangle. The high peak would be in the late teens and early 20’s. The angled downslope progresses to the years beyond 60, 70, and into the 80’s, where it forms a sharp angle near zero. We naturally live “the triangle”, with some people experiencing a steeper decline than others. What hormones are we focusing on? Estrogen, testosterone, progesterone, thyroid, and growth hormone all change as we age. These abnormal levels affect energy levels, strength, libido, and the effectiveness of our immune system to fight off disease and degeneration. Unfortunately, the cruelty of aging seems to be that once you are no longer able to help with “survival of the species,” your body begins to degenerate, age, and start the process of dying over time. This is grim and a bit depressing, but a fact of life. But….whether you are female or male, and with the help of modern medicine, you have a chance to change geometric shapes for your life’s trajectory or timeline! For the first time in the history of the world, we have a chance to alter this progression.
We can live the rectangle. It is possible to measure and adjust the various hormones and peptides in your body. You are able to safely optimize those levels in the range where they were when you were in your late 20’s and early 30’s. With your hormones maintained at the level of the peak of the triangle, and running parallel with the lower timeline, your triangle becomes a rectangle. At those levels of sex hormones, thyroid, cortisol, and others like DHEA, you were at your most vigorous. You were healthy, vital, almost bulletproof. You also had the strongest immune system of your life. Your skin was supple, smooth, elastic, and not thin like paper. Rather than allowing your hormones to slowly or abruptly go away to 20 or 30% of normal levels, let’s consider living the rectangle instead. You will not necessarily live longer, but you will live better, feel better, feel stronger, and be able to resist disease to a greater extent, for as long as you live. Your bones will be stronger, your skin will have more collagen and elasticity, and there are good studies now to show there is a positive effect of the rectangle on decreasing heart disease and dementia.
The FDA is finally catching up and has taken the “black box warnings” off of bio-identical hormone therapy. These were wrongly placed after a flawed study in 2002 called the Women’s Health Initiative. No matter your age now, you can benefit from “normalizing” your hormones. If you are “tired of being sick and tired”, call 210-253-3313 for a consultation to see what we can do together to change the shape of your life trajectory. Let’s move you from a slow downhill triangle to a more healthy rectangle!
