Functional Medicine | Women's Health
By Dr. Shawna Darou, ND Steps to recognize Post-Birth Control Syndrome. Most women are not adequately educated or warned about what can happen to their hormones after coming off hormonal birth control. This includes birth control pills, implants, IUD's and rings. After coming off synthetic hormones, your ovaries begin to function again, and a …
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By Dr. Shawna Darou, ND Today’s article is a little different, in that I want to show you how lab testing can give us an extremely clear picture of what is going on hormonally, and how to proceed with treatment. I’m going to share with you a two patient cases that I have worked with over the past month and how unique we all are when we dive …
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By Dr. Shawna Darou, ND Today’s article will talk about the link between Epstein Barr Virus and autoimmune thyroid disorders. This can be an essential piece of the autoimmunity puzzle, and one that can allow antibodies to reverse and thyroid function to return to normal if it is addressed thoroughly. As you may already know, when we treat …
By Dr. Shawna Darou, ND The thing most people find puzzling about a Naturopathic and Functional medicine approach to hormone imbalance, is that we rarely treat the hormones directly. Instead we are looking for where the body is out of balance, because this is what influences a change in hormone production, or a change in sensitivity to hormone …
By Dr. Shawna Darou, ND Your thyroid gland is central to your metabolism, and it impacts almost every system in the body. It can cause menstrual cycle changes and infertility, it can increase cardiovascular risk factors, cause depression and cognitive issues, impact gut motility, and lead to swelling in the body. Thyroid issues are extremely …
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By Dr. Shawna Darou, ND Progesterone is a key hormone for women’s health, produced by the corpus luteum, only after ovulation. It has a tremendous influence on your mood (think PMS), sleep, period flow, fertility, and more. It is also important as the hormone that balances out our estrogen levels, keeping us out of an estrogen dominant state. What …
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By Dr. Shawna Darou, ND Your muscle is your largest endocrine organ, and many researchers suggest that we should be measuring muscle mass, rather than fat mass or BMI (body mass index) as a marker of health. The reason for this is that having more muscle mass is associated reduced disease risk, less chance of diabetes, better bone density, and …
By Dr. Shawna Darou, ND Testing for blood sugar imbalance and specifically insulin resistance is a very frequent test I request. The reason is that we are experiencing a growing number of cases of blood sugar imbalance, and diabetes at much younger ages. It is extremely important to detect insulin resistance early, because this is the phase of …
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By Dr. Shawna Darou, ND What is Hashimoto's Thyroiditis? Hashimoto’s is a very common autoimmune condition that causes hypothyroidism or under-active thyroid. Your immune system attacks the thyroid gland causing inflammation called chronic lymphocytic thyroiditis, which then leads to under-production of thyroid hormones and a slower metabolism. …
