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(813) 867-0608 • Contact • Schedule an Appointment

Hormone Replacement Therapy – Part I: The Icing on the Cake

Hormone replacement therapy has gotten a lot of press over the years — both good and bad. It all started in the 1960s, when women in their 40s and 50s were prescribed estrogen to alleviate the symptoms of menopause — hot flashes, night sweats, irritability, and mood swings. Then, studies appeared, showing estrogen promotes growth of the uterine lining, which increases the risk of cancer, so doctors began recommending the addition of progesterone to protect the uterus.

However, instead of providing patients with bioidentical estrogen and progesterone, pharmaceutical companies created a synthetic form of progesterone called progestin (which they could patent) and started combining it with various forms of estrogen — synthetic or derived from animals.

Hormone Replacement Therapy Doctor Matt Lewis

At about this same time (the late 1990s), theories emerged suggesting hormone replacement therapy (HRT) would be helpful for preventing certain age-related diseases in older women, and doctors began prescribing it for women in their 60s and 70s. However, in 2002, a large federal study by the U.S. National Institutes of Health called the Women’s Health Initiative linked the leading HRT medication, Wyeth’s Prempro, with an increased risk of cancer, stroke, and blood clotting. As a result of that study and others, many doctors and women abandoned hormone replacement therapy or now use it only to help alleviate symptoms during menopause.

The truth is that hormone replacement therapy is safe and effective for both men and women, as long as it is done right. Doing it right involves addressing other underlying health issues first and then using bioidentical hormones instead of Continue reading…

The Diabetes Cure: Is Diabetes Really Reversible?

The conventional approaches to the treatment and management of diabetes is the single worst case of mismanagement in medicine today!

Full disclosure: My family history is riddled with diabetes — uncles, aunts, grandparents, and parents all with diabetes. These were not overweight people. Not by today’s standards. They had a genetic predisposition for sure. However, each had a chance to control the disease and failed miserably.

Besides genetics, what did they have in common? They all used the conventional approach to diabetes care: Lowering blood sugar by any means necessary, including using prescription drugs and insulin injections, which increase the risk of long-term complications including heart disease and cancer. Diabetics using the pharmaceutical heavy model are destined to remain reliant on the medical system.

Diabetes treatment in the current conventional health care environment will not reverse diabetes and in many cases will actually aggravate the underlying causes of the illness, leading to more chronic conditions and long-term complications.

How can we expect to reverse something with medicine if we never address the root cause?

Asking Better Questions

Conventional medicine approaches diabetes treatment with the wrong question: “How can we lower the patient’s blood sugar?”

A better question is this: “What are some root causes of blood sugar problems and what can we do to resolve them?”

The underlying causes of blood sugar problems include the following: Continue reading…

Baking the Cake to Treat Low T (Testosterone)

In functional medicine, we strive to address the underlying cause(s) of illness, not merely to provide symptomatic relief. So when someone visits my office with symptoms of low T — low libido, erectile dysfunction, fatigue or hot flashes, muscle weakness, weight-loss resistance, and so on — I don’t just treat the low T. Instead, I ask what’s causing it, and the answer to that question is often metabolic syndrome.

I then ask what’s causing the metabolic syndrome, and I work with my patient to identify and address the root causes of that condition. After successfully addressing the metabolic syndrome, we can then reassess hormone levels and seek other ways to restore healthy levels, if necessary.

I refer to this approach as “baking the cake.”

What Is Metabolic Syndrome?

Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of biochemical and physiological abnormalities that place a person at a higher risk of developing cardiovascular disease (CVD) and type 2 diabetes. While there are several definitions and different sets of criteria for diagnosing metabolic syndrome, the easiest set of criteria used to diagnose metabolic syndrome is Continue reading…