Hormesis = Balance

If you’re anything like me, you probably never heard of the word hormesis.  The concept of hormesis is that many environmental things have a beneficial effect at lower doses but are harmful at higher doses. 

The reason I wanted to talk about that today is because I’m seeing that there is a lot of medical misunderstandings if this concept isn’t understood.

There are so many things that follow this pattern. One of them is oxygen. Obviously, if we don’t have enough oxygen, we will die.  On the other hand, too much oxygen can cause damage to our cells. This was discovered decades ago in premature babies, who were receiving high amounts of oxygen in NICUs. High dose oxygen was found to cause retinal damage and blindness.

Water is another item that has to be consumed in the correct amount. Obviously, you will die after a couple of days without water. But drinking a huge amount of water can cause illness and even death by causing swelling in the brain. This has happened in competitions where people drank large amounts of water, or after drinking too much water without enough electrolytes during endurance events.

Vitamin D supplementation has been a recent victim of people who don’t understand the concept of hormesis. Vitamin D is necessary for hundreds of functions in the body and is vitally important for good health.  Unfortunately, many medical studies over the years have implied that vitamin D is ineffective at improving bone density, reducing fractures, or improving other health outcomes. 

The problem with the vast majority of these medical studies is that they use tiny amounts of vitamin D that are unlikely to improve anything. These studies also don’t measure vitamin D levels before or after starting therapy, to see if the levels got into ideal range (which is also much higher than most researchers recommend). Some of these studies have also used high amounts of calcium unbalanced with magnesium. And I have yet to see a study that used vitamin D3 and vitamin K2 together, to ensure that calcium would be utilized safely by the body.  It’s almost as if these studies are designed to fail so that we can sell expensive drugs instead of cheap vitamin D3 with K2.

On the other hand, I have seen bloggers claiming that vitamin D is extremely dangerous because it is used as rat poison.  Well, yeah, if a human was to consume vast amounts of vitamin D every day, they will develop calcifications throughout their body, which could cause kidney stones and hardening of the arteries.  In fact, this actually happened in the distant past before they knew about this effect

But when it comes to hormesis, one of the biggest misunderstood areas is in the use of hormones. A lot of traditionally trained doctors or other practitioners are using very low levels of estrogen (like estrogen patches) without balancing other hormones and then their patients wonder why they don’t feel well.  On the other hand, some other 'hormone experts’ are using massively stupid high amounts of estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone, increasing the risk of breast and uterine cancer, and their patients wonder why they feel like crap.  (This is almost always because they’re using blood testing instead of saliva testing to follow up hormone levels.  And blood testing is filthy when it comes to looking at fat soluble hormones.)

So then women have a bad outcome whether they are using too much or not enough estrogen, progesterone, or testosterone.  This is why you must work with someone who understands these concepts and who uses saliva testing.

Because balance is only possible if you are using the right dosing and the right testing to look at levels.

If you want to become more knowledgeable than most people about your hormones, join me for the next round of my group coaching program and course, Menopause Mastery.