Hormones Help Protect Your Heart

By Meg Kabis

New Day Vitality Hormone Center

. https://newdayvitality.com/

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Hormones Help Protect Your Heart

Sex hormones do more than impact your sex life; they affect your heart health, too. Heart disease is the leading cause of death for both men and women. And while most people know that high blood pressure, excess weight, and high cholesterol levels can put them at risk for heart disease, not many know that the sex hormones – estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone – play a critical role in heart health.

Estrogen

• Improves arteries’ flexibility and strengthens their interior walls
• Reduces inflammation in the heart
• Helps maintain healthy cholesterol levels

Progesterone

• Increases “good,” HDL cholesterol
• Improves dilation of blood vessels
• Lowers blood pressure
• Reduces coronary hyperactivity

Testosterone

• Increases blood flow
• Positively impacts cholesterol
• Decreases inflammation
• Affects muscle mass

However, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh, Graduate School of Public Health report the changing hormone levels that accompany the transition to menopause negatively impact a woman’s cholesterol, “leaving her at greater risk for heart disease.” However, “estrogen treatment resulted in a significantly lower rate of atherosclerosis progression among early post-menopausal women,” according to a 2016 article in the New England Journal of Medicine.

“Lower levels of testosterone… are associated with higher cardiovascular risk in both men and women,” according to an article in a 2015 Current Cardiology Reviews. In addition, a 2013 Journal of Sexual Medicine (JSM) reports, “testosterone deficiency have been associated with metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes.” Both of these illnesses greatly increase the risk of heart disease.

Natural, bio-identical hormones are life-changing and may be life-saving. Restoring levels of sex hormones that naturally decrease with age reduces the incidence of life-threatening heart disease. To help protect your heart, exercise, stop smoking and replenish your sex hormones.