This is Why Hormone Balance is So Important

Unknown: Dr. Dale, first of all can you just talk a little about hormones and what are their role. We hear so much about them and what kind of function do they play in our body?

Dr. Dale: They really are a huge part of how a person feels emotionally. If your hormones are disregulated or out of balance it affects your mood. It affects your mind. It affects even, you know, joint pain. So many... And your immune system. There are so many different things that are tied in with healthy, a healthy endocrine system or healthy hormonal balance. So they are responsible for so many things in the human body then when there is a disconnect, when the feedback loop that makes all of your hormones be produced by the body, when that feedback loop that produces hormones is disconnected, then you the woman or the man, either, suffers. Because they have symptoms. In a woman it could be PMS, it could be mood swings, it could be menopausal symptoms. It could be just severe emotional, you know, problems or feeling very weepy for a woman. For a man it could be low T, low testosterone. It could be low energy, low fatigue. 

So there are several organs and glands that are involved with this feedback loop. And so we're looking at our glands, you know, like our hypothalamus, our pituitary, our thyroid. We're looking at also our pineal gland to some extent which is right here and it's, we call the sleep center. Like if your pineal gland is not functioning correctly you'll have a hard time sleeping at night. Okay? And so there's a hormone related to that which is called melatonin and this is for men or women. Okay? So, and then the organs would be the liver. Major organ that works with hormones, major organ. So we have to look at that and we have to look at as well as the pancreas which produces insulin. 

So we have to look at, there's a feedback loop called the hypothalamus pituitary adrenal axis, A-X-I-S. When that is disconnected there's a hormonal issue that can also affect the neurological system. So and in that HPA, that stands for Hypothalamus Pituitary Adrenal. Adrenals are very important because they produce cortisol levels. When cortisol levels get really out of balance and become elevated too high, the body is under tremendous stress and this causes neurological health issues, with memory, with so many different things and so we need to know the endocrine system is very, very important.