What is Hormones & Health?
Our Truth for Health Foundation initiative focuses on the unique foundation of MALE and FEMALE biology and uses a gender-based model to provide integrated, individualized medical, surgical, wellness and psychosocial educational and treatment options for women and men from puberty to late life to (1) reduce disease risk factors and (2) treat underlying disorders to help prevent progression of illness and enhance the quality of life.
Our initiative includes ethnicity in assessing risk factors, unlike most protocol-driven evaluation-treatment models.
Hormones in Men & Women
Hormones, especially those that make us biologically male or female, affect every single body system –including the brain – and regulate hundreds of functions for our daily lives way beyond just sex, fertility, and pregnancy in women.
Men and women each have a unique biology that defines our gender. Traditional medical models ignore this very basic biological foundation of the hormones that make us male or female.
Men and women are NOT the same. Each man and each woman is unique unto themselves. Yet, standard prescriptions of medications are the same, regardless of weight or sex.
This one-size-fits-all method of medicine is the widespread norm, but inefficient, costly, and even dangerous. This has been the flawed basis of our traditional medical model that focuses on medicines for symptoms before a proper diagnostic evaluation has been done.
- Adolescents (boys and girls), young adults, post-reproductive adults all need individualized programs to evaluate these interconnected hormone factors that affect our overall health and increase susceptibility to disease risks when they are ignored.
- One example of overlooked endocrine connections occurs in young women with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) who are not seeking fertility care, but need evaluation for and treatment options for ALL of the OTHER health risks of this disease that affect everything from mood and sleep to weight, hair and skin changes, as well as risk of diabetes and later early onset heart disease.
- Mid-life women and men have many with overlooked endocrine changes that are major risk factors for abnormal weight gain, insulin resistance (pre-diabetes), diabetes, heart disease, bone loss, fibromyalgia, anxiety and depression, and even later dementia.
- Hispanics, Blacks, and Native Americans have even higher risks of these health problems due to ethnic factors not usually considered in medical evaluations that actually increase their vulnerabilities to these endocrine changes. But hormone levels – including the hormones vitamin D and insulin – are rarely checked.
Both men and women need optimal Testosterone to maintain the brain, bones, muscles, energy, stamina, zest and sexuality. Yet Testosterone is not routinely assessed or offered as therapy in our medical models.
Educational programs sponsored by Truth For Health Foundation teach consumers and healthcare professionals how to take an integrated approach to evaluations and strategies for improving health that serve to restore balance to our “health pyramid.”
Our Educational Services
- Truth For Health patient education services teach patients healthy lifestyle changes to add to the other treatment options identified for each person: exercise, nutrition, stress management, improving relationships, and spiritual health.
- Individual and small group “coaching” webinars on various topics in nutrition, exercise, stress management, and personal growth
- Education for health professionals via seminars, webinars, social media outreach and publication in medical journals.
Obesity is Strongly Linked to Low Testosterone Levels in Men
by Dr. E. Lee Vliet, MD
Prevalence of hypogonadism in males aged at least 45 years: the HIM study (Mulligan, 2006)
Effects of androgen administration in men with the AIDS wasting syndrome. A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial – PubMed (nih.gov) (Grinspoon, 1998)
Dr. Vliet on Bioidentical Hormones; Get the Straight Truth with
Dr. Vliet (Dr. E. Lee Vliet, MD, 2009)
Dr. Vliet on Loss of Sex Drive; Get the Straight Truth with Dr. Vliet.
Hormones and sex drive, 2009. (~ 7 min, YouTube)
Dr. Vliet speaks on the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) Study
Dr. E. Lee Vliet, MD, 2009. (~ 3 min, YouTube)