Vancouver naturopath Brian Martin stresses the importance of hormones, which can affect sleep, the immune system, digestion, and even thinking.

Roberte Hinks just wasn’t herself last summer. The normally energetic single mother of two teens felt perpetually weak. She started having trouble swallowing. Then the Vancouver Island resident noticed that one side of her throat was swollen.

Doctors eventually told Hinks that the way to deal with her debilitating fatigue was to remove her thyroid gland. Located in the lower part of the neck, it produces hormones that regulate metabolism. Too many of those hormones can result in nervousness, among other symptoms; too few, as in Hinks’s case, can lead to listlessness.

A former nurse, Hinks wanted to explore her options before going under the knife. She learned about something called bioidentical hormone treatment and a naturopathic office in Vancouver that offered it. She made an appointment at Enerchanges health clinic, hopped on a ferry, and has been having the therapy regularly ever since. She says she’s been astonished to see how balancing her hormones has improved not only the symptoms that brought her to the mainland in the first place but also her overall physical and mental well-being.

“I am feeling fantastic; I’m just raring to go,” Hinks says in a phone interview. “My body is feeling healthy and I feel strong. I liked the holistic approach instead of the way the conventional system is always Band-Aid–ing problems, masking things.

“I want my hormones to be at optimum levels,” adds the 49-year-old. “I don’t want to deny aging, but I want to age with quality.”

Hormones are chemical messengers that travel through the blood to tissues and organs. They affect everything from growth and development to sexual function and mood. Produced by the endocrine glands, hormones are extremely potent. It only takes a small amount to cause drastic changes in cells, which is why an excess or lack of any given hormone can result in health problems, including migraines, depression, and weight gain.

Keeping hormones in check is a delicate balancing act.

Low testosterone, for example, can contribute to heart disease in men, loss of muscle tone, and difficulty making decisions, while an excess can lead to shrinking breasts in women, prostate enlargement in men, and acne.

Hormones might not exactly be sexy stuff, but there’s no denying the increasing attention being paid to them in medical circles and popular media. Suzanne Somers is a proponent of bioidentical hormonal treatment, as she outlines in her best-selling Breakthrough: Eight Steps to Wellness (Crown, 2008). Toronto naturopath Natasha Turner’s 2009 book The Hormone Diet: Lose Fat. Gain Strength. Live Younger Longer (Random House Canada) is also a bestseller. Even John Gray, the Californian relationship expert who declared that men are from Mars and women are from Venus, wrote the just-released Venus on Fire, Mars on Ice: Hormonal Balance—The Key to Life, Love, and Energy (Mind Publishing).

The role hormones play in overall well-being is tremendous—and often overlooked, according to Vancouver naturopath Brian Martin. The clinical director of Enerchanges, which specializes in anti-aging medicine as well as in fitness training, says that people tend to focus on eradicating their symptoms instead of addressing the underlying problem of imbalanced hormone levels. The consequences can be dire: an increased risk of such illnesses as cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis, and heart disease.