I have long thought that drug commercials on TV are both misleading and immoral.  On the one hand you see a happy, healthy person, couple or group of people engaged in a fun activity in a lovely setting.  Then you hear a litany of side effects of the drug being touted.  The visual setting clearly belies the truth of what is being described.  As a doctor with one of my focuses being on men's health, I find the ads for testosterone boosters particularly misleading.

Yes, in most men, testosterone levels in the body do decrease as we age.  The common assumption is that by replacing the hormone with a testosterone stimulant or straight on testosterone it will remedy experience of lowered libido, diminished energy and other situations that men have as they enter andropause.  If you haven't heard this word before, andropause means male menopause. 

Andropause, like menopause, is caused by a hormonal shift attributed to the aging process. The difference is that in men this hormonal shift can take as long as 15 years, while in women it occurs in a much shorter period of time. The protracted hormone shift gives men a chance to adapt slowly, sometimes hardly noticing the shifts, so we are only aware of the changes when we make a personal historical functional comparison.

So when the TV ads for testosterone enhancers appear, they touch sensitive chords in men, bringing into awareness the decline in quality of life most aging men experience.  The ads keep coming, so men must be responding.  Most men I work with as a doctor acknowledge this decline, and their wish is to just enjoy the highest quality of life possible until the inevitable occurs.

The problem with testosterone enhancement or testosterone supplements is how the body breaks down testosterone. The flow chart below illustrates the hormone cascade.

Now here is the most important part of this column.  The right (blue) side of the chart shows how testosterone is metabolized to estradiol, then estrone and estriol.  Estradiol is one of the main causative factors in prostrate cancer.  So if testosterone is increased, the question is, what will that do to the estradiol levels?  Prostate cancer will impact a man's quality of life to a far greater extent than merely having low testosterone.

The good news is that salivary hormone testing can generate the male hormonal cascade specifically for each individual, allowing the doctor to safely adjust hormones at the appropriate therapeutic level.  Your doctor can order the test kits here.

Hormones play a huge role in our energy levels, mood, and overall health. With imbalances, they can cause symptoms like fatigue, depression and anxiety, PMS, eczema, acne, low libido, weight gain, and even digestive issues. 

Many women often come in to see me first with complaints of fatigue and or difficulty around weight loss. These women frequently will also will have menstrual issues, whether it being irregular cycles or bad PMS. The interplay of the adrenal glands, thyroid gland, and ovaries is significant, and an imbalance in one area can cause the other areas to tip. 

For instance, where we are in the heart of Silicon Valley, the fast-paced demanding jobs and lifestyles don't leave a lot of room and space to rest and restore. This constant drive to keep up, whether it is with work, hobbies, kids, etc. takes a toll on our adrenal glands. Over time, our adrenal glands which put out the long-term stress hormone, cortisol, as well as the short-term hormones, epinephrine and norepinephrine, start to fall and production of these hormones decrease. 

Eventually, as cortisol falls, many symptoms can arise, including fatigue, anxiety, more colds/flus, increased allergies to foods, increased hay fever, skin conditions like hives, eczema, or psoriasis, increased sweating, difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep, and difficulty handling stressors that may not have been a problem before. On top of this, stress can also affect the thyroid by decreasing amounts of active thyroid hormone circulating in the blood. When thyroid hormones begin to drop, this will also impact people's energy levels along with decreasing metabolism, making people feel more lethargic, cold, have a tendency to gain weight or have difficulty losing weight, and can also make people more prone to depression. 

Stress affects the balance of sex hormones as well, which can lead to hormonal imbalances like estrogen dominance, and PMS symptoms can increase, or cycles can become irregular and even stop completely. Because there is a close connection between the adrenals, thyroid, and ovaries, I often look at all of these areas at once through symptoms and lab work and support the areas that need to be balanced out.

If any of the symptoms mentioned above sound familiar, please contact us to get a full workup of your health and hormones and start the path back towards a vibrant, healthy life!

 For more information or to make an appointment 

please contact us at (650) 917-1121.

It is widely understood that one teaches best that which one most needs to know. That would be a logical explanation as to why I found myself teaching natural birth control and working with premenstrual syndrome in my 20's, addressing post partum issues in my 30's, and now focusing primarily (though by no means exclusively) on women in their perimenopausal, menopausal, and post menopausal years. 

Life in the 21st century requires much more of menopausal women than in previous times. Historically, women were married in their early teens, bore children in their late teens, ruled countries in their early 20's, and were then possibly beheaded or sent off to a nunnery for the duration. These days, women of transitional age may be rearing adolescent children, caring for senile parents, running companies.  We expect that we will be up for the challenge... body, mind, and spirit.

When expectations fail to meet the challenge, women come to the office for bio identical hormones.  Sometimes those hormones are just the ticket. Estrogen and progesterone impact mood, energy and all body systems, though attempting to replace missing sex hormones is not necessarily an answer. In perimenopause (that period of hormonal shifting which can occur over as much as ten years), a first choice might be nutritional and botanical support to restore optimal hormonal production. Optimizing thyroid and adrenal function will also often stabilize irregular cycles and cyclic emotional turmoil.

Even when hormones are clearly deficient as a result of physiologic, chemical, or surgical menopause, hormones are not always the answer. Just as some women sail through their reproductive years, other women sail through menopause. In that case, we offer simple hormonal and non hormonal solutions to simple problems.  When the sole issue is vaginal atrophy, for example, we offer estriol vaginal suppositories.  When there are multiple hormonally related issues, we do opt for bio-identical hormonal replacement therapy, aka  bHRT.  The use of bHRT entails individualizing a course of estrogen and/or progesterone and/or testosterone, in forms and dosages safe and suitable for the patient.

Why would we simply not go immediately to bHRT?  That would be because we humans are not quite smart enough to understand the myriad consequences of all that we do. Hormones impact everything about us. Years of experimentation on human subjects (women) with Premarin and Provera, and inadequate studies of their effects definitively proved that. Though bio identical hormones make a whole lot more sense, we don't yet have the benefit of the lessons from long term use. Considering that the healing force of nature is more apt to get it right than we are, attempting to stimulate and unblock that vital force first would be a good move.

In addition, we might remember that menopause is not called  "the change" for nothing. In this change, we re evaluate who we are, how we are living our lives, what our inner callings might be.  As emerging elders, it would not be wise to assume that hormone replacement alone, whether bio identical or not, would be the answer to the discomfort we feel. 

Though transitions can be terrifying, they can also be transformational. As naturopathic doctors practicing functional endocrinology, we attempt to facilitate a transformational menopausal experience by working on multiple levels of reality.

Elijah Free's approach to helping his patients deal with physical pain has been described as bordering on miraculous.  Elijah is also a Master Herbalist who designs and produces all of his own herbal products for his healing practice. He is an herbal product designer for Ridgecrest Herb Company. 

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Elijah Free is a healer, specializing in pain elimination of all types, both mechanical and metabolic. He is a master medical herbalist with numerous specialties, a researcher and product designer for his own label; Earth Friend Herb Co. 

Elijah is the author of "Apprentice to Angels," and a U.S. patent holder for a formula to eradicate fibromyaligia. He was recently granted a 501-C3 from the IRS as a medical study, something almost exclusively for institutions such as Stanford, hospitals or pharmaceutical companies.

Bringourvetsallthewayhome.org is all about Elijah's work with an herbal formula for PTSD that restores the lives to veterans and anyone else with this condition. A documentary video will be available later this fall about this project. A video on fibromyaligia can be seen at rapidpainelimination.com

 The truth is that the botanical and nutritional therapies we offer (including intravenous vitamin C), although 'adjunctive' in nature, have powerful documented actions in decreasing inflammation, reducing tumor load and attacking cancer stem cells.  

Our mind/body approaches are focused on transformation of experience.  And our bodywork approaches help reduce muscular pain, resolve lymph drainage problems and relieve stress.  

 The hope we offer is not that of a miraculous cure, although we are definitely open to miracles, but the hope of a life lived to the fullest in dignity and understanding, for however long that may be.

While most people are familiar with the use of low dose melatonin to promote sleep, our cancer patients are sometimes surprised when we recommend melatonin in endocrine cancers. 

In fact, melatonin has many actions beneficial to the treatment of certain cancers. Among other things, melatonin can block estrogen receptors, activate the selfdestruction of tumor cells, protect bone marrow cells in chemotherapy, and protect the lining of the stomach during chemotherapy or radiation therapy.

We will typically use 20 mg of melatonin daily in the treatment of colon, breast, endometrial and prostate cancers, as well as in melanoma. It is in the literature that this dose of melatonin can disrupt sleep, but it is not usual, in our clinical experience, that it does so. Before using melatonin in this dosage, check with your health care team, as the use of melatonin may be contraindicated in autoimmunity and in certain treatment regimes, and melatonin may interact with other medications.

Please phone us for an appointment at: 

650-917-1121

Many people have already heard about intravenous vitamin C as a complementary cancer therapy to help stimulate the immune system as well as being directly cytotoxic to cancer cells. We are often using this therapy at the Hernandez Center for our cancer patients. What people may not know is that we also have many other IV therapies that are also very helpful in supporting our cancer patients depending on their symptoms and what they need. 

We often give a nutrient IV in between IV vitamin C sessions, which helps to provide more energy and rebuild our patients that may be feeling fatigued or have low blood counts. 

We also have other anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer therapies like IV curcumin (turmeric) or IV silibinin (from milk thistle). 

Another IV treatment that can help cancer patients from losing more weight or to help them gain weight is an infusion that includes a variety of amino acids. 

These are just a few of the protocols we have for our cancer patients. For more information or to set up an appointment, please contact us at the Hernandez Center at (650) 917-1121.

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