Who Should Get Hormone Therapy?

A lot of the things that happen both within our bodies and within our brains are caused by hormones. Sometimes, hormones can be out of wack which can make things a little bit more complicated. When that happens, it might be a good idea to look into hormone therapy.

Undergoing this kind of therapy can be a little bit more common than one would think. Hundreds of thousands if not millions of people do this kind of procedure a year.

In fact, there’s a good chance that someone you know has undergone hormone treatment to help with something that they’re dealing with. Whether it’s mental health-related, physically related, or something else entirely. 

If you’re reading this article, there’s a good chance that you’re curious about when and why someone might seek out hormone treatments. It would be pretty hard, to sum up in this introductory section, so let’s take a deeper look into this topic. 

What Does a Hormone Treatment Seek to Do?

If you’ve never heard of hormone treatments, you may be just a little confused as to what they’re intended to do. A lot of people swear by hormone treatment, but the thing about it is that it can treat a number of conditions. 

Here are just a few things that hormone treatment can help you out with. This is not an exhaustive list, just a few of the most common uses:

• Cancer treatment
• Insomnia 
• Weight loss 
• Increasing libido 
• Gender affirming (Specifically hormone replacement therapy)
• Stress relief

There are a lot of other reasons why people seek out hormone treatment, and there are a lot of different parts of one’s life that they would think about seeking it out. Of course, it’s important to discuss with your doctor if this kind of treatment is for you. 

The majority of people that are getting hormone treatment are looking to fight some of the effects of aging. The way that hormone treatment fights aging isn’t the same as the skincare industry goes about it. 

As we age, a lot of our vital hormones become produced less and less in our bodies. That makes it incredibly important for a lot of people to get some sort of hormone therapy so that their bodies are working as well as possible as long as possible. 

Men and women both undergo hormone treatment for a variety of different ailments. Some of those ailments are the same, some of those ailments are different. Regardless of the individual’s reason, there are a lot of ways that this kind of treatment can help you. 

So, why exactly do people seek out this kind of treatment and what kind of people should seek out this kind of treatment? 

When Someone Should Look Into Hormone Treatment

There are a lot of reasons, as you might imagine, that someone might seek out hormone therapy. Everyone is a little different and our genetic makeups change a lot from person to person, sometimes even within families. 

It’s hard to generalize when someone should seek out hormone treatment from any angle, but for the purpose of this article, we’re going to be covering when men and women should seek out this kind of treatment separately. It just makes the most sense. 

There are many different reasons why someone would get hormone treatment, as we already covered, and there are plenty of both men and women that need these treatments at some point in their lives. 

When Men Should Look Into Hormone Treatment

Let’s start off with men because the reasons why they seek out hormone treatment are generally simpler than the reasons why women might seek out hormone treatment. 

Not to say that men don’t need it as much, women’s bodies just go through a lot of complicated changes as they age.

As men age, there are sometimes signs that their testosterone levels are falling. Oftentimes this comes with tiredness, depression, irritability, and a loss of sex drive. Low testosterone in men increases the chance of getting sick while also increasing the chances of death. 

There are a few things that men use testosterone treatments for, here’s an incomplete list just to give you an idea:

• Erectile dysfunction
• Chronic fatigue not caused by another medical condition
• Thinning or balding hair
• Muscle loss 
• Difficulty growing muscle
• Weight gain
• Depression 
• Anxiety

There are a lot of other reasons why people seek out this treatment, but those are the basic ones. Of course, all of those could be caused by other medical conditions, so make sure you’re checking in with your doctor to make sure you’re doing the right thing. 

Why Women Look Into Hormone Treatment

Since we covered why men might look into this kind of treatment, it’s time to look into why women look into this kind of treatment. As we mentioned, women undergo a lot of changes in their bodies as they age and that can be a reason why they seek treatment. 

One of the biggest changes that women have to deal with is menopause. Menopause is the process where women stop having periods, and that changes the way that their entire reproductive system works. 

There are, of course, some things that happen hormonally during that time. Periods, or menstruation, are a lot of hormonal activity, so women might need therapy in more cases. 

Here are a few reasons why women specifically seek out hormone treatment. Keep in mind, this is an incomplete list:

• Hot flashes
• Night sweats
• Mood swings
• Memory loss
• Difficulty losing weight
• Insomnia
• Low sex drive

A lot of these symptoms are caused by menopause but that doesn’t mean that you necessarily need to have menopause to have any of these symptoms or to need hormone treatment. There are a number of reasons why someone might end up with a hormone imbalance. 

Our bodies are all different, and sometimes hormones just get out of wack. Fortunately, there are doctors out there that can help with that.

What Looking Into Hormone Treatment Looks Like

There are a few steps that you have to go through before undergoing hormone treatment. The first one is a very important one, and that’s talking to a doctor or other medical professional that would be able to properly determine if you need this kind of treatment or not. 

So, before you even begin scheduling your therapy, you’d schedule a consultation appointment to see what you should be doing. Someone like a doctor or a nurse would sit down with you and talk to you in detail about why you want to undergo this kind of treatment. 

A lot of people recommend seeing their primary physician first and asking them about it. Your primary physician knows enough about your medical history to be able to say for sure if what you’re experiencing is hormone-related or something else. 

If hormone treatment was recommended by the doctor, odds are the facility will still want you to do a consultation. Doctors are just people and they make mistakes sometimes. Ask any pharmacist, they’ll tell you the same. 

That being said, if your primary physician recommended hormone treatment for you there’s probably a good reason and they’ll talk to you about it more during your orientation. In most cases, they’re just double-checking what the doctor said. 

If you don’t have a primary physician that’s ok, too. They have staff on-site that can help you figure out if you’re a good candidate for treatment or not. 

If you’re not a good candidate they’ll tell you, you’ll go home and that’s the end of that. You might also call your doctor afterward, but other than that, that’s the end of the process. 

Now, if you are found to be a good candidate for hormone treatment, that’s when you get into discussing which option is going to work best for you. There are a lot of ways to go about hormone therapy. A few of the most common methods include:

• Creams
• Gels
• Under the skin pellets
• Tablets
• Pills
• And, lastly, injections. 

Each of these works a little differently and may or may not be the best choice for you. You don’t have to decide which one is going to be the best option right now. Your doctor will sit down with you and let you know what method is going to be the best for you. 

There might be a lot of options available but that doesn’t mean it has to be overwhelming. So long as you’re sitting down with a doctor to discuss everything you can be sure that you’ll get the best choice for you. 

Getting Your Hormones to Where They’re Supposed to Be

It’s unfortunate that as we age we have to deal with all sorts of things in our bodies. A lot of people have back problems, general pains, and a lot more. On top of all of that, we have to deal with the hormones in our bodies changing. 

Fortunately, there are treatments available for you that can help you in the long and short term with dealing with all of this.