Hormone Care,
Built Around You
Feeling tired, low, foggy or simply not yourself is miserable, and being told it is just your age is worse. Hormones may be part of the picture. Our job is to find out whether they are, and to be honest with you either way.
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Signs your hormones
may be involved
Hormones regulate a great deal, and when they fall out of step the effects show up across daily life. The symptoms below are the ones we see most often.
Before the list, one thing worth saying plainly. These symptoms are common, and hormones are only one of several possible explanations. Thyroid disease, anaemia, diabetes, sleep disorders and depression can produce exactly the same picture, and some of them matter a great deal to catch early. That is why we start with an assessment by a doctor rather than a hormone panel. If your symptoms point somewhere else, we will tell you, and we will help you get to the right investigation, including back to your NHS GP where that is the right route.
Fatigue
Mood Swings
Brain Fog
Sleep Disturbances
Weight Gain
Anxiety and Depression
Hormone changes can affect mood, and for some people treating them helps a great deal. They are not the only cause of low mood or anxiety, and we will look at the whole picture with you. Fluctuations in oestrogen, progesterone, and thyroid hormones can lead to feelings of overwhelming stress, sadness, or hopelessness. For men, declining testosterone levels in particular can also contribute to low mood, irritability, and even symptoms of depression. When hormone levels are restored to a healthy balance, many individuals report significant improvements in their emotional wellbeing.
Low Libido
Skin and Hair Changes
We treat the person
in front of us
Most clinical guidance is built from population studies. That is the right way to work out what helps on average, and we take it seriously. But an average is not a patient. Two people of the same age, with the same diagnosis, can need quite different doses, routes and combinations before they feel like themselves again.
Finding that is the work. It is why we measure, review and adjust rather than hand you a standard prescription and wish you luck.
Where standard
products stop
Licensed hormone preparations are made under regulatory oversight and backed by trial evidence. Where a licensed product suits you, that is what we prescribe, and most of the time it is.
They are made in a fixed range of strengths, though, chosen for the commercial mainstream, and that leaves real gaps. Some we meet every week:
There is no licensed testosterone preparation for women in the United Kingdom.
Standard strengths jump in large steps. If one strength is too much and the next one down is too little, there is nowhere to go.
Some people react to a preservative or carrier in a particular product and need the same hormone in a different base.
Some people cannot use the available route, whether that is a tablet, a patch that will not stay on, or a gel that transfers to a partner or child.
Where individually prepared
medicines come in
Where a licensed product cannot meet a particular need, United Kingdom law allows a prescriber to order a medicine prepared for that one patient. This is a long-established route used across medicine, and it exists for exactly this situation.
It lets us work in smaller increments, in the base you can tolerate, and in combinations that fit you rather than the category. That is the case for it, and it is a case about you, not a claim that individually prepared medicines are better in general.
Where we take a different
view, and why
We would rather you heard this from us than found it out afterwards.
The British Menopause Society, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the Society for Endocrinology advise against compounded bioidentical hormone therapy. Their reasoning is that individually prepared medicines do not go through the licensing process, so their strength and consistency are not checked in the same way, and that most of the benefit people are looking for can be had from licensed products.
We agree with the second half, which is why licensed products are our starting point. On the first, our view is that the concern is a fair one and deserves a proper answer rather than a shrug, so we work only with United Kingdom pharmacies registered to prepare medicines to a prescriber's specification.
Reasonable doctors disagree about this, and the professional bodies take a more cautious line than we do. If you would prefer to be treated only with licensed products, say so and that is exactly what we will do. Knowing the choice is yours is part of what you are coming to us for.
You will not find
a product list here
That is deliberate, and it is rather the point. There is nothing here to add to a basket, because nothing can be chosen for you before we have met you and looked properly. What we offer is the assessment, the judgement and the follow-through. The medicine is the last step, not the first, and it is written for one person.
If anyone has offered you a hormone preparation before a consultation, blood tests and a conversation about risk, you were sold a product rather than given care.
Straight answers
about what this can do
Hormone therapy works well for the symptoms of hormonal deficiency, and most people who respond notice a difference within a few weeks. That is a real result and it is what we are treating you for.
It is not a way of preventing future illness. National guidance is clear that hormone therapy should not be used to prevent heart disease or dementia, and we agree, so you will not hear us suggest otherwise. Oestrogen does have a licensed role in protecting bone density in certain situations, and if that applies to you we will raise it specifically rather than leave it as a vague promise.
We will also tell you when we do not know. Where the evidence is thin, we would rather say so and let you decide.
What to expect
from us
Every prescription follows a full consultation, the right blood tests, and a recorded conversation about what the benefits and risks mean for you. Where we prescribe something prepared individually, we will tell you plainly that it is unlicensed, why we are recommending it and what that means. We review you regularly, and we will adjust or stop treatment as things change, including stopping it if it is not doing what we hoped.
Not sure whether
this is hormonal?
That is the question worth answering first, and it is where we start. Book a consultation and we will work out what is actually going on before anyone talks about treatment.
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