Hormone Therapy May Help You Lose Weight
I am always shocked when I read this statistic: 33% of women in America are obese; 62% are overweight. That’s the bad news. The good news is that obesity among women may be stabilizing.
What is obesity exactly? If your doctor tells you that you are obese, it means your body mass index is greater than 30. A normal body mass index should be less than 25. A body mass index of 25-29.9 is overweight.
Being overweight or obese is the number one health problem facing women today. Period. It leads to diabetes. Hypertension. Cardiovascular disease. Strokes. It can even contribute to cancer. Being obese is a disease, and it should be treated as such.
Here’s what I tell patients who are obese: for your health and longevity, we need to help you lose weight. We’ll start by assessing where you are with your body. Eventually, we’ll put you on a weight loss program, but we need to make sure your body is ready to lose weight first.
How would a body not be ready to lose weight?
Well, if you have estrogen dominance, your body may work against you losing weight. Think about women over forty who start to gain weight around their middle section. They’ve stopped ovulating and stopped producing progesterone. But they are still producing estrogen. That means they’re experiencing “estrogen dominance.”
I know, I know. More medical speak. Don’t worry about what “estrogen dominance” means exactly. Just know that estrogen tells everything to grow… including fat cells. So if you’re in an estrogen dominant state, that’s going to do nothing but promote weight gain.
If we don’t address the estrogen problem, you’re not going to be able to lose weight very efficiently. That’s why we often start with hormone therapy.
We Want You To Look Your Best
At Seasons, we love helping people look their best. We want every patient to be beautiful.
Our aestheticians are trained in microdermabrasion, chemical peels, electrolysis, permanent makeup, and Intense Photo Light therapy or IPL. (IPL is a way to use very strong flashes of light in place of lasers—for hair removal, acne, skin rejuvenation, hyper pigmentation, and very small spider veins.)
I have to stop there for a moment.
Most of this stuff wasn’t around when I was a kid suffering from acne. My brother and I just dealt with our zits. I think we had some medicated wipes for our faces or something. Even though we weren’t “greasers,” we were terrified by commercials like this one…
…but we had to wait until after acne before we found our miracle girls. (And we’ve both been married to our original sweethearts now for many years.) But back to medicine and skin care.
Over-the-counter skin care isn’t enough for many people. Seasons uses treatment like microdermabrasion, chemical peels, facials, electrolysis, and IPL to address all aspects of a patient’s skin care.
Take acne. Forget the commercial. At Seasons, we might first do a chemical peel to get down to that healthiest layer of skin. There are three layers to your skin—the epidermis, dermis, and hypodermis. A chemical peel takes off the top layer of skin—the old dead layer. This leaves you with a more youthful layer of skin, so you look more youthful. (Obagi Blue Peel is one of the brands that we use.)
Then we look for a skin product line that best fits the patient’s skin type—like deep cleansing facial products that gets into those pores and clean things out. IPL will actually kill the bacteria in those pores with acne.
We’re just looking at a multi-prong approach to acne—or any skin disorder.
There’s so many different skin types, you have to be careful what kind of product you use on your face. This is why I am cautious about over-the-counter cleansers for acne. You may be getting something that dries your skin out. If that’s not what your skin type needs, you could be making your acne even worse. The professionals at Seasons are able to evaluate each patient’s skin type and work through our protocol of skin care and product lines and treatment options.
Skin treatments are hardly the only thing we do, though. I am a doctor after all! If my patients need medicine, I can prescribe what they need.
On the other hand, if people just need an old fashioned pore extraction, we give them that, too.
Hair Removal: What’s best?
There are so many methods of removing unwanted hair, but some temporary methods—like waxing, tweezing, threading or using depilatories—can irritate the skin and actually cause increased hair growth.
Electrolysis
Thankfully, electrolysis was discovered by an ophthalmologist over 100 years ago. It is the only FDA approved form of “permanent” hair removal. It’s permanent because it is the only method that destroys the hair follicle.
Don’t worry, destruction is a process of weakening the follicle through multiple treatments. Electrolysis works for all hair regardless of color because its target is the follicle. For the same reason, it is tolerated by all skin types.
Be aware that it is a slow, tedious procedure, and will require a commitment of time and money from the client. That said, electrolysis is the treatment of choice for small areas like the brow bone, lip, ears, chin, fingers and toes and other areas where the hair is too light for laser or IPL devices.
IPL and Laser
IPL (intense pulse light) and laser treatments are effective on melanin found in the hair shaft. (Red, blonde, white and grey hair cannot be removed with laser or IPL.) Both devices are FDA approved for permanent hair reduction because they do not completely destroy the follicle. This means your hair could grow back, but it will be much smaller in size, thickness and growth pattern.
IPL and laser treatment would be the treatment choice for large areas—like your back, legs, bikini, abdomen, etc.
Both electrolysis, which is electric based, and laser/IPL, light based devices, are very effective for their specific areas of application. Together, they can accomplish much greater results than either can do independently.
Trypsin
In 2004, the FDA approved trypsin for use in eliminating unwanted hair. First, trypsin is applied to the skin after hair removal. (The fancy word for hair removal is epilation.) Then, we use galvanic current to diminish regrowth.
See a Professional
For any hair removal treatment to be effective you’ll first need a clinical evaluation by a qualified professional. You could have hirsutism or hypertrichosis, for instance. (Don’t worry, I’ll cover those ideas in a future post.)
A successful treatment plan will be as individual as you are. A professional electrologist is proficient in the most advanced treatment methods and techniques and will provide you with a customized plan that will address your specific concerns.
Terri Grayson, LE, is a licensed electrologist at It’s Permanent Aesthetic Clinic in Monroe, Louisiana.
Seasons Offers Massage Therapy
That’s right. We do massage therapy for relaxation and internal healing. It’s one of the many ways we seek to help our patients’ through total wellness.
So how does massage therapy contribute to internal healing and total wellness?
It relieves stress. And stress kills, you know?
But more than that, we believe there’s healing in touch. That’s a lot of why massage therapy is so powerful. I believe human touch helps to heal us.
That’s why Seasons offers different types of massages. Traditional Swedish massages for relaxation. Hot stone massages. Essential oil massages. Athletic or deep tissue massages to help repair damaged tissues and muscles from athletic injuries and other kinds of injuries.
We cover the gamut—from helping people who come to us with strained muscles to relaxing people who are just stressed out and need a relaxing Swedish massage.
Spa Treatments Can Restore Confidence
A lot of my patients want to look better. So naturally, I want to help them with that. At our spas, Seasons Medical Aesthetics and It’s Permanent, we help restore a woman’s youthful appearance and so restore her confidence.
We are a full service medical spa with a wide range of offerings: facials, microdermabrasion, chemical peels, acne treatment, hair treatment, hair removal, treatments for hyper-pigmented areas of the face, even a natural lift of the face without any kind of surgery. We address wrinkles with botox and dermal fillers.
We’re a visual society. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to change elements of your physical appearance. For many women, looking better means having more self-confidence.
A visit to a spa can also be a kind of a spiritual renewal for many women. They walk away with confidence. They’re able to say, “I feel good about who I am.”
Get Your Smile Back with Radiesse!
Hello, my name is Anna Stephens. I am a Certified Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner. I am so excited to have joined Dr. Goodyear and the aesthetic “team” in Ruston and Monroe.
The services we are offering are truly amazing, and you will be taken back by what a dramatic difference we can make to your appearance and your life.
We are now offering Radiesse. What is Radiesse you ask? It is a safe FDA-approved dermal filler that restores a natural, long lasting youthful look. Radiesse is made of unique calcium-based microspheres suspended in a natural gel that is injected into the skin through a simple, safe and minimally invasive procedure. Radiesse works with your body and forms a support that stimulates the growth of collagen. The results are immediate! Radiesse can last a year or more and is very safe.
Most clients are extremely happy with the results after the first treatment, but we usually schedule a follow-up visit within 2 weeks to allow for touch-ups if needed. Prices for Radiesse are individualized for each client but are very comparable to other procedures. So… what are you waiting for? Let Radiesse and the staff at Seasons Medical Aesthetics give you your smile back!
Contact us or call (318) 255-3223 to schedule an appointment or consultation today. Also ask about specials we may be offering.
Please visit the site regularly to see what new topics I have to discuss with you. I look forward to working with you and hope I can enhance your outer as well as you inner beauty!
