Potential Benefits of Hormone Balancing

Interviewer: In your experience, in terms of hormone balancing, what do you find your patients get from that in terms of benefits? Is it just the quality of life? Can people actually live longer if they do that? What do you find?

Dr. Joel Baumgartner: Yes. There's going to be a lot of obvious physical changes. For example, a woman coming in that is low on progesterone, she's going to have saggy skin, saggier breasts, she's going to have decreased libido, she's going to have loss of zest, she's going to be the typical 55-year-old female who is like, "Uh, I'm not 30 anymore." The cool thing is with balancing these hormones, one it's done very scientifically. It's not just like I think I need of that, let's just check and see what happens. We actually check that level, optimize it, re-check it again. We're doing everything to make sure we're not putting her at higher risk of chronic disease. 

So she's going to look better, she's going to feel better, her skin is going to tighten up a little bit, she's going to have increased energy, maybe increased libido, it's going to help with her bone density, so it's going to decrease her risk of chronic osteoporothic fractures. If you balance out the progesterone, it's going to decrease the risk of breast cancer. So there's a lot of things that are seen with it which are great. They're going to feel better, have more energy, look great, but there's a lot of probably more important subtle benefits that are unseen. 

Interviewer: Are there risks at all with that?

Dr. Joel Baumgartner: With anything, there's always the risk. You have to risk 'OK, is it riskier for me to not take something or is it riskier for me to take it?'. With bioidentical type hormones, again, we're optimizing the body's physiology to what the body needs to function. As with anything, if I take too much vitamin D it's going to get toxic. If I took too much certain other substances, too much fish oil, my blood is going to get too thin and I can bleed out. So everything has to be optimized based on science, physiology and research and so with that you have to balance is it safer for me to do something or is it safer for me not to do something and have the risk of the cancer and being overweight and having the problems as well.