By Candace Burch, MA, MRC Hormone Health Educator
I recently traveled to South Korea to visit my daughter who is over there teaching English to children in the high rises of Seoul. In eight days she showed us all that she had discovered in eight months, so needless to say it was a blur of ancient and uber-modern that I am still processing. But for all the images I crammed into my brain what struck me most were the older women. Almost every one of them was bow-legged and bent medieval-like over ubiquitous canes. They were everywhere you looked, and I found it excruciating to watch them hobbling up steep stairs or across narrow streets clogged with impatient motorists. More than once I had to cover my eyes at the sight of a tiny figure painfully picking her way across a busy intersection. And by the way, not all of these women were as elderly as I at first assumed – some looked to be in their 60s, not that much older than me!
So, as a health educator and true believer in optimal aging, all I could think was, “Whew, what a difference a few nutrients make!” Like calcium, magnesium, Vitamin D, EFAs … without these in adequate amounts, I expect we might all resemble our post-menopausal Asian counterparts who in following their traditional diet of rice, fish and vegetables, though healthy in some respects (and indeed I only saw one moderately obese person while there) are seriously lacking in essential nutrients.
At the same time, one has to consider that this is not just a problem confined to older women in Korea who may also have spent years planting rice and eating their meals on the floor. For one thing, the vitamin D-deficiency that causes rickets and bow-legs is still epidemic in many parts of the world, particularly in northern latitudes, and among those who reside in gray, rainy climates like the Pacific Northwest where I live. But it’s not just about where you live but HOW you live. At a conference on hormone balance this summer, an anti-aging physician from Florida said how stunned she was at the number of patients living in the “sunshine state” who were perilously low in vitamin D. That’s significant because we’re not just talking about rickets when it comes to vitamin D-deficiency but about increased obesity and body fat, heart disease and breast cancer risks, as well.
So achieving balanced health, bones or hormones for that matter (by the way – Vitamin D is not actually a vitamin, but a hormone formed by the action of sunlight upon the skin) takes some doing, and is a work in progress. Speaking of progress, I would be remiss not to mention that younger Koreans are definitely onto this. Food sources of calcium and vitamin D, such as milk, cheese and eggs, are now widely available (though still very expensive) in the shops, and the younger generation is indeed taller and straighter-legged. One woman I was talking to about this mentioned that her mother takes estrogen “for her bones.” And of course that got me going. I couldn’t resist asking if she was also taking natural progesterone, but alas, that question was met with a blank stare. Should I have been surprised? Probably not. The concept of hormone balance vs. imbalance and the growing preference for bioidentical, natural hormones has only shifted in this country in the last five years since the Women’s Health Initiative study revealed the dangers of synthetic hormones in HRT (hormone replacement therapy) users. (I didn’t harp on the subject; though I admit trying to raise a little awareness about the importance of hormone balance!)
Sometimes we have to learn the slow, hard way. From those who went before us, the women with the bent spines and flaking bones of osteoporosis, not to mention all the others with diseases that might have been prevented had we known more. They are the lessons, and we are learning. You can’t push the river, but you can learn to practice balance one day at a time.
So let’s get started! Whether you’re concerned about your bones or your belly fat, ensuring that your hormones are in balance is the first step. Visit one of our MRC locations today to learn more about our Body in Balance weight loss and hormone wellness program. We like to call it “the missing link to weight loss.” A hormone detection kit comes with the program and using this simple home collection kit, you can test for imbalances that may be sabotaging your waistline. Collecting your hormones is simple: just spit into a few tubes over the course of one day and send the samples back to the lab by UPS. The results are returned within a week to your MRC consultant who will call you to set up an appointment to review the report. Then depending on what it tells us, we can take action to personalize your weight loss program with specific nutrients, rebalancing supplements and stress reduction counseling to help you achieve lasting weight loss, symptom relief and optimal health.
