What Everyone Should Know About Hormones and Anxiety

Comments: 7 | December 22nd, 2017

Are you finding yourself anxious and worried about even the little things? You didn’t used to feel this way, but now anxiety is affecting your quality of life. Dr. Hotze reveals what everyone should know about hormones and anxiety, and what you can do to get relief.

Video Highlights:

2:01:  Anxiety is simply a feeling of uneasiness, irritability and apprehension.

2:50: It wasn’t until I adopted natural approaches to health that I began to realize that anxiety was just a symptom.

3:00: Remember, most doctors label your symptoms as your diagnosis. I say, most doctors have a disorder themselves called labelitis. That means they take your symptom and they convert that and just say it’s a diagnosis. You have anxiety. That’s the diagnosis. Anxiety is a symptom of an underlying problem. I want to talk about five specific things that can cause anxiety.

5:02:  For chronic stress your body produces cortisol from the adrenal glands, which are the size of walnuts, sit on top of the kidneys in your back. You have one on each kidney. You’ve got two adrenal glands. If you have adrenal fatigue, this can cause anxiety. We can treat for that by simply using natural cortisol in sub-physiological doses to support the adrenal glands to make sure that you have adequate amount of cortisol.

6:44: Your thyroid gland governs your body’s metabolism, the production and use of energy. When a person is low thyroid, their brain makes lower levels of a neurotransmitter called GABA, Gamma-aminobutyric acid, GABA, G-A-B-A. That can cause anxiety.

7:56:  If a person has the symptoms of low thyroid, associated with the anxiety, I do believe that anybody with these symptoms needs a therapeutic trial of natural desiccated thyroid. That’s the second cause.

8:55: As women march through their menstrual life, by the time they reach 35, they make lower and lower levels of progesterone and estrogen becomes the dominant hormone, progesterone deficient.

10:09: When estrogen is a dominating hormone and the hormones are not balanced, this affects the neurotransmitters in the brain and can lead to anxiety, panic attacks, a sense of overwhelming doom. It can cause a host of problems, apprehension, uneasiness, and women feel this way. Irritability, mood swings. This is very common.

10:54:  In men, a decline in testosterone can cause very similar symptoms. Testosterone affects your initiative, assertiveness, well being, self confidence, mood, goal orientation, drive, directiveness, decisiveness, analytical abilities. These are all brain functions.

12:33: The fifth cause of anxiety can be in women, the decline in estrogen as they go through the change of life. As they enter menopause, which routinely occurs around 50 years of age.

13:08:  That also occurs with estrogen dominance by the way, but their estrogen levels begin to decline as their ovaries shut down, at approximately the age of 50 when they enter menopause, and that can cause anxiety and panic attacks as well.

13:47: If you have the symptoms of anxiety, and you end up going to see a conventional doctor, they are inevitably going to place you on some form of anxiolytic  drug. Any anxiety drug. Antidepressants.

14:38: Nobody feels anxious because they have low levels of anti-anxiety drugs or antidepressants or sleep medication.

16:01:  It may be supporting your adrenal gland with cortisol. It may be supplementing you with natural desiccated thyroid hormone. It may be replenishing your progesterone if you have estrogen dominance. It may be, in males, giving them testosterone. In females, as you go through the change of life, you would take some natural, bioidentical estrogen hormones. These have a profound effect and a natural effect in restoring you to your youthful self.

Video Transcript:

Stacey Bandfield: Welcome to Dr. Hotze’s wellness revolution. This is Stacey Bandfield here with Dr. Steven Hotze, founder of the Hotze Health & Wellness Center. If you haven’t done so yet, then please visit our website to download all of the podcasts that we have available for you. It is absolutely free and we know that you will find them very helpful and informative. All you have to do is go to Hotzepodcast.com. That’s h-o-t-z-e podcast.com.

This is a topic that’s very near and dear to my heart because I know of so many people who suffer from this, and it is one of the top symptoms we get here at the wellness center when people call and they are suffering from various issues, and that is, anxiety. A lot of people suffer from it. If you haven’t had issues with it, then maybe it’s easy to just think, oh, how bad can that be? However, it’s very debilitating for a lot of people isn’t it Dr. Hotze?

Dr. Hotze: It really is. Are you ready to do a 180 and take charge of your health? I believe that you need a health coach. You need a doctor and a team of professionals who will help coach you onto a path of health and wellness naturally, so you enjoy a better quality of life without using pharmaceutical drugs.

Today we’re going to talk about anxiety:

• Do you ever feel anxious?
• Do you ever feel nervous or irritable?
• Are you scared sometimes for no apparent reason?
• Do you get panic attacks?
• A feeling of impending doom?

If you do, you would be diagnosed by your conventional doctor as having anxiety.  Anxiety is simply a feeling of uneasiness, irritability and apprehension.

Stacey Bandfield: Maybe even dread.

Dr. Hotze: A dread for no apparent reason. I used to do emergency medicine years back, from 1976 until 1981, and it was not uncommon on a shift to see at least one woman who came in complaining that she couldn’t get her breath, she was anxious, she was nervous, and we would give them a prescription of an anxiety medication, Xanax, or whatever the anti-anxiety…I never used Valium, but we would give them some sort of anti-anxiety medication and calm them down and send them home. It wasn’t until I adopted natural approaches to health that I began to realize that anxiety was just a symptom.

Remember, most doctors label your symptoms as your diagnosis. I say, most doctors have a disorder themselves called labelitis. That means they take your symptom and they convert that and just say it’s a diagnosis. You have anxiety. That’s the diagnosis. Anxiety is a symptom of an underlying problem. I want to talk about five specific things that can cause anxiety.

5 Causes of Anxiety

1. Adrenal Fatigue

First, is adrenal fatigue. Adrenal fatigue is caused when the adrenal gland doesn’t make adequate amounts of cortisol. Cortisol is your stress hormone, your long acting stress hormone that your body produces when you’re under chronic stress. Stress of raising a family, maybe driving the freeways an hour back and forth from work in heavy traffic. Maybe it’s financial. Maybe you’ve lost a loved one, or a mate, or a child or a parent. Maybe it’s raising a husband, raising your kids. All these things can cause a great deal of anxiety and stress on an individual, at which point a person produces large amounts of cortisol.

By the way, if you have chronic pain or chronic allergies, this puts stress on the adrenal glands. The adrenal glands are producing cortisol for the chronic stress and they becomes fatigued, just like your muscles would if your muscles produced, as your muscles are exercised, they get fatigued. Lactic acid is produced and your muscles become sore and you can’t lift anymore or run any further.

Your body produces cortisol to take care of the chronic stress. In acute stress you make adrenaline: big football game, you get in a wreck, your heart races, a fire in the house. It’s that quick rush of adrenaline that is for acute stress. For chronic stress your body produces cortisol from the adrenal glands, which are the size of walnuts, sit on top of the kidneys in your back. You have one on each kidney. You’ve got two adrenal glands. If you have adrenal fatigue, this can cause anxiety. We can treat for that by simply using natural cortisol in sub-physiological doses to support the adrenal glands to make sure that you have adequate amount of cortisol.

2. Hypothyroidism

The second thing that can cause anxiety is hypothyroidism. When a person doesn’t get adequate amount of thyroid hormone from the gland, into the cells, it’s got to go through the blood. You may have plenty of thyroid in your blood. In fact, 95% of the people always are going to fall in the range of thyroid levels in their blood because that’s the way the lab defines what the normal range is. It’s as wide as the Grand Canyon, tall as the Empire State Building. Only 5% of the people are going to fall out of range. You may have clinical symptoms of low thyroid, if your thyroid level was optimally here when you were younger, now it’s here when you’re older, 50% the value, you’re not getting enough thyroid into your cells.

The thyroid hormone that is made by the thyroid gland is predominantly T4, the inactive, or very minimally active thyroid hormone, it has four iodine atoms. That has to enter the cell. In the cell it’s converted by an enzymatic reaction to T3. Three iodine atoms with the thyroid hormone. That’s the thyroid hormone which activates the power plants within your cells to produce energy.

Your thyroid gland governs your body’s metabolism, the production and use of energy. When a person is low thyroid, their brain makes lower levels of a neurotransmitter called GABA, Gamma-aminobutyric acid, GABA, G-A-B-A. That can cause anxiety.

The treatment, I believe for anybody who has the symptoms of low thyroid, which could be one or all of the following:

Symptoms of Hypothyroidism

• fatigue
• difficulty with weight
• usually weight gain
• cold body temperature
• cold sensitivities
• inability to focus and think clearly
• poor sleep
• depressed moods or mood swings
• irregular menstrual cycles
• joint and muscle aches and pains
• dysfunctional gastrointestinal tract
• constipated
• irritable bowel syndrome
• recurring and chronic infections

Women, often times, with low thyroid, can have miscarriages or inability to become pregnant, they’re infertile. They may get chronic and recurring infections. If you have the signs and symptoms, and anxiety and panic attacks and headaches, all these things that can go along with low thyroid. If a person has the symptoms of low thyroid, associated with the anxiety, I do believe that anybody with these symptoms needs a therapeutic trial of natural desiccated thyroid. That’s the second cause.

3. Estrogen Dominance/Progesterone Deficiency

The third cause can be estrogen dominance, or the other side of the coin is progesterone deficiency. In a normal 28 day cycle, a woman on day one, the first day of her period, once again begins to start making low levels of estrogen, which build up. Mid-cycle, she will make progesterone. Estrogens are the proliferative hormone, progesterone is the hormone that matures, it balances out the estrogenic effect, it matures the inner lining of the womb as the estrogen causes the uterus for the inner lining of the womb to beef up and become bulky. The progesterone matures that, preparing the womb for pregnancy.

As women march through their menstrual life, by the time they reach 35, they make lower and lower levels of progesterone and estrogen becomes the dominant hormone, progesterone deficient. When women hit their early 40s, they oftentimes have anovulatory cycles. They literally don’t ovulate. They don’t make an egg. When they don’t make an egg, the ovary, which produces both the estrogenic hormones and the progesterone, doesn’t make any progesterone at all. All they have is estrogen hormone. What does that lead to?

That leads to longer periods. Periods go from three to five days to five to seven days, and seven to none days and they get break through bleeding, they get fibroids, they get cramping premenstrually, you may have mood swings, fluid retention, you may have weight gain, you may have headaches, you may have migraine headaches that are debilitating. You may have symptoms, which follow the category of premenstrual symptoms, for which, the pharmaceutical companies give antidepressants and say that’s the treatment of PMS. The treatment of PMS is to give low doses, physiological doses of progesterone to balance out the estrogen. When estrogen is a dominating hormone and the hormones are not balanced, this affects the neurotransmitters in the brain and can lead to anxiety, panic attacks, a sense of overwhelming doom. It can cause a host of problems, apprehension, uneasiness, and women feel this way. Irritability, mood swings. This is very common.

You may have noticed this is yourself or you may have noticed this in your spouse. The last thing you ever want to ask your wife when she’s irritable and blows up at you for no apparent reason, you don’t want to say, “Could it be your hormones?” You’ll ask that question one time. After that you’ll learn. You’ll never ask that question again. An imbalance in the female hormone can cause that.\

4. Low Testosterone Causes Anxiety in Men

In men, a decline in testosterone can cause very similar symptoms. Testosterone affects your initiative, assertiveness, well being, self confidence, mood, goal orientation, drive, directiveness, decisiveness, analytical abilities. These are all brain functions.

As men’s testosterone goes down. They go through what we call the andropause. Testosterone levels peak in the early 20s. They fall over a lifetime consistently, so by the time a man is 40, his testosterone level is two thirds to a half of what it was when he was in his early 20s. By the time he hits 50 it’s about half to a third. By the time he’s 60 it’s a quarter of what it was. It continues to decline.

Stacey Bandfield: That’s a good point, Dr. Hotze. It’s a slow decline, so men may not recognize that as soon as maybe women who have their monthly cycles.

Dr. Hotze: Right.

Stacey Bandfield: But for men, if it’s just through the years, it’s harder to recognize it until it gets more acute.

Dr. Hotze: Men will tell me, “I just don’t feel as sharp as I used to. I’m not on top of my game anymore. I can’t think as clearly as I used to. I feel down. I don’t have the drive I used to have.”

Stacey Bandfield: More indecisive. 

Dr. Hotze: “I’m less confident about what I do.” They have all the experience of life behind them that they’ve gained through their life, but now they just don’t have the testosterone or the drive to make things happen. They become down and moody, like old curmudgeons. They just become grumpy old men. Testosterone can be profound and have a profound effect on your ability to feel well again, and to be able to hit ‘em a lick.

5. Estrogen Deficiency

The fifth cause of anxiety can be in women, the decline in estrogen as they go through the change of life. As they enter menopause, which routinely occurs around 50 years of age. It can happen at an early age or a later age on some women. As estrogen falls, they get estrogenic symptoms. They get hot flashes, they get night sweats, they get mood swings, they may feel depressed, they have vaginal dryness, they have lost romantic moods and inclinations. That also occurs with estrogen dominance by the way, but their estrogen levels begin to decline as their ovaries shut down, at approximately the age of 50 when they enter menopause, and that can cause anxiety and panic attacks as well.

Stacey Bandfield: You know what Dr. Hotze, that’s a great point. Just recently I was talking to a couple of women who called our center and they said, “I didn’t used to be like this. I didn’t used to feel anxious or have panic attacks, and now I do.” That speaks to what you were talking about. As a woman changes and goes through menopause, she starts to experience these symptoms that she didn’t have before.

Dr. Hotze: Exactly.

Stacey Bandfield: That’s very disturbing.

Anti-Anxiety Drugs Are Not the Answer

Dr. Hotze: If you have the symptoms of anxiety, and you end up going to see a conventional doctor, they are inevitably going to place you on some form of anxiolytic drug. Any anxiety drug. Antidepressants. They’ll give you sleep medication. All these are very addictive medications that can cause a host of side effects that can even make your symptoms worse because the antidepressants and the anti-anxiety medications, all those, antidepressants can cause you to have outbursts of anger. A significant and dramatic increase in suicidal thoughts. It causes you to gain weight. If you weren’t depressed or anxious before, now you’ve got all this weight on you, plus your lost romantic moods and inclinations. It doesn’t help the problem. It really harms the problem. It doesn’t address the underlying cause.

Dr. Hotze’s Natural Solution

Nobody feels anxious because they have low levels of anti-anxiety drugs or antidepressants or sleep medication. What’s the appropriate and proper treatment? It’s simply to replenish the hormones. What’s the solution to anxiety attacks and maybe depressed moods or mood swings? It’s not pharmaceutical drugs. They’re attended by a host of serious deleterious side effects. They never address the underlying problem, which is hormonal decline and imbalance.

As you mature, as your hormone levels get low, kind of like a glass of water that’s low, there at the restaurant, you’ve got a little glass of water. What does the waiter come by and do? He comes by and brings you more water. He comes by and fills up your glass, so you have a full glass of water. This is what you need to do as your hormones decline and become imbalanced. You need to replenish them and balance them out. That’s what we specialize in doing here at the Hotze Health & Wellness Center, using natural, bioidentical hormones, which means the hormones are biologically identically the same as the hormones that God pout in your body and you made when you were younger to begin with when you felt well. We simply replenish the hormones, and that has a dramatic effect.  It may be supporting your adrenal gland with cortisol. It may be supplementing you with natural desiccated thyroid hormone. It may be replenishing your progesterone if you have estrogen dominance. It may be, in males, giving them testosterone. In females, as you go through the change of life, you would take some natural, bioidentical estrogen hormones. These have a profound effect and a natural effect in restoring you to your youthful self.

Stacey Bandfield: Thank you Dr. Hotze. I just want to appeal to all those people out there who do suffer from anxiety. You don’t have to suffer. You can address the symptoms naturally. It’s just so easy to pick up the phone and give us a call. It would be a privilege to serve you. We have served over 31,000 people. We would love to do the same for you. Our number here is 281-698-8698. That’s 281-698-8698. It is a pleasure to have you join us today here at Dr. Hotze’s Wellness Revolution.

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