Our 3rd Annual Women’s Health Symposium – A Great Success!

Doctors took an October morning break from their busy practices and families to learn more about how to help their patients with bioidentical hormones and other supplementation. Then later in the day women of all ages and even a few men, gathered to find out more about how to not only balance their hormones but how those hormones are connected to the cause of many diseases of the body.

Our smiling, Healthy Choice team was ready and waiting at the door at the beautiful Brynwood Country Club in Armonk NY, to give attendees a canvas tote bag of samples from our sponsors as well as a guide book for the amazing lecture on women’s health issues and bio-identical hormones ahead. Sponsors also had their representatives at tables ready to answer questions and share information about their cutting edge functional medicine products. Many also took the time to chat over morning coffee and tea at the continental breakfast table while exchanging business cards.

Arriving early was Dr. Roxanne Carfora, our very special guest speaker whose bio information shows the wealth of information she is capable of sharing and did. Dr. Carfora has been practicing medicine over 20 years, is board certified in Anti-Aging and Functional Medicine and is a specialist in family medicine. Her expertise in all three fields of medicine offers a way to completely evaluate health and wellness and during her lecture she spoke about the importance of scoping out all underlying nutritional and hormonal deficiencies, as well as genetics to treat patients. Dr. Carfora believes that hormone imbalance affects the health and well-being of the whole family.

Weaving in and out of ways to approach health and hormones, Dr. Carfora masterfully explained that it all really starts with understanding the Krebs cycle and how living cells convert food into energy. She then went on to explain that if certain nutrients are depleted in the body like Vitamin D, Vitamin Bs and Magnesium, there is no energy production and therefore hormones cannot be metabolized which creates imbalance.

Next she touched upon how estrogen alone has over 400 functions in the body, how natural progesterone is calming and helps ward off sleep deprivation, how everyone should be taking probiotics and how stress effects cortisol levels.

When asked how one would start finding balance, especially when overwhelmed by so much information and the stress of every day life, she said balance simply starts with implementing three things –

• Getting adequate sleep and making sure there are no sleep disorders.
• Eating lean, green and colorful, as in lean chicken, fish, turkey, green leafy vegetables and general earthy eating, as much whole food as possible to “let food be thy medicine.”
• Have vitamin levels tested in blood work and know how to supplement.
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Carfora added “don’t just go out and take a bunch of pills. Know what you need. Often 95 percent of the solution is taking Vitamin D, B12 and Magnesium.” She also spoke about doing saliva hormone testing and getting help from a compounding pharmacist to find the right bioidenticals.

Other major topics covered in the symposium – insulin resistance, the importance of liver detoxification and how it affects estrogen metabolism, and weight loss.

Attendees like endocrinologist Dr. Carolina Sierra came to get more information and inspiration from the like-minded Carfora and shared her passion for helping the Hispanic community in NYC to become more educated on the health issues that affect them most including diabetes. Edyta Lukasiak, head nurse for Dr. Joel Evans of Stamford, CT said she also believes in a one-on-one approach to helping patients change their lifestyles and testing for hormone imbalances.

Some women came to find out more on how to be their healthiest through hormonal changes and one woman, who was with her husband, said she was there because she had seen the great effects bioidentical hormones have had on him and wanted to know more about what they could do for her.

We are very pleased to have been able to serve both the medical and patient communities with this special day of invaluable information for all. If you missed it, please feel free to call or stop by for more information on any of the topics covered in our symposium and how we can help you achieve optimal hormonal balance through BHRT. We hope to have you with us next year!