Anti-aging is a vast and interesting part of the medical and pharmaceutical world. Most people picture a young face when they hear “Anti-aging” but the fact is that pharmacy has answers to help the whole body age more appropriately. It’s not just due to the passage of time that our bodies age, it’s also how and where we live and what we eat that positively or negatively affect how we age.

The amount of stress we endure is one of the biggest contributors to our aging disproportionately. Prolonged and repeated stress is exhausting and lowers the immune response. It also decreases hormone levels which is the real reason why stress causes premature aging. To quote Dr. Thierry Hertoghe, an authority on Anti-Aging, “You don’t have to get older to get old, you can stress yourself into it.”

Two kinds of hormones are produced in the body. Anabolic hormones are responsible for building new tissue in the body. They are produced more slowly and act more slowly as well. Catabolic hormones quickly provide the energy needed at times of stress. However, they consume body tissue in order to provide the necessary energy. That is why prolonged stress and a surge in catabolic hormones are followed by tissue loss. Stress that persists more than a few hours will also result in a decrease in the body’s insulin and thyroid hormone levels. Even more prolonged stress, lasting days or weeks, will result in a general feeling of fatigue and anxiety which will both dissipate with the correction of hormone deficiencies.

This is where individualized, bio-identical hormone replacement therapy comes in. People under a significant amount of stress need to look for hormonal deficiencies some of which are listed below:

Aldosterone, cortisol, DHEA, Melatonin, Estrogen, Growth Hormone, Progesterone, Testosterone, and Thyroid. And one place where a significant difference in effect between a synthetic drug and a naturally- derived drug can be seen is with cortisol. Natural cortisol is much more psychologically active than synthetic cortisol or “prednisone.”

Your physician can look at your hormone levels with a simple blood test and prescribe an appropriate replacement amount unique to you at a compounding pharmacy. It is an established fact that the human body responds better to naturally-driven and molecularly identical medications than to synthetic drugs. Another advantage of having a medication compounded is that the medication dose will be specifically tailored to your needs.

So, if you are under a lot of stress, feeling depressed and inadequate, feeling like you can’t concentrate or follow through, feeling weak or dizzy all the time, have low blood pressure, are putting on weight, and your hair is going prematurely gray, your hormones might be lacking. Please visit a holistic physician right away and follow up on your lab tests. A very small dose of cortisol for example, can have a tremendous effect on the level of irritability and anxiety in you. It will also help you lose some weight, especially around the abdomen, and who doesn’t want to lose weight in that area?

In addition to hormone replacement therapy, you can help your body better cope with stress by being selective with what you feed it. Avoid overconsumption of caffeine and alcohol, same goes for sugar. Avoid over-processed foods and meats, and instead choose fresh fruits and vegetables. It’s important to supplement with magnesium. Women in particular have low magnesium levels most of the time. You will need to get 360 mg of elemental magnesium from whatever supplement you will be using, so pay attention to that. You will also need Vitamin B6 at 50 mg dose and Calcium at a minimum of 500 mg.

And if all that stress is making you not like what you’re seeing in the mirror, there are several compounded formulas that can help with that. They will exfoliate, nourish, and hydrate, and even fight and block free radical and other environmental damage. Never hesitate to speak to your doctor or a compounding pharmacy regarding your concerns.