Seven Key Insights from the Integrative Practitioner Digital Summit on Aging and Longevity

6. Hormonal Changes Can Impact the Aging Process

Hormones communicate vitality, but with increased age, hormones decrease and pause their communication, according to Deanna Minich, PhD, CNS, IFMCP, a nutrition scientist from Seattle and chief science officer at Symphony Natural Health, who presented a session on “Healthy Aging through the Spectrum of Phytonutrients: Using Plant Medicine for Perimenopause and Beyond”.

Minich said there is a need for updating medical terminology to reflect for the pauses of aging, like perimenopause, where there is a cessation or decrease of certain hormones. “There are other kinds of ‘pauses’ as well that we need to think about because some of them coincide together,” she said.

In addition to perimenopause, with age come adrenopause, which involves: dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) and DHEA sulfate; andropause, which impacts testosterone; somatopause, which pauses growth hormone; and a decrease in melatonin, which Minich refers to as “melatonipause.”

“As we make our way through the lifespan, endogenously produced melatonin levels in the body begin to decrease, so that by the time we're in our later middle age, we start to bottom out on our endogenous melatonin,” said Minich. “And this parallels several other hormonal fluxes in the body.”

For melatonin supplementation, Minich also prefers phyto melatonin, which in addition to free radical scavenging, she said has outperformed synthetic melatonin in anti-inflammatory activity and promoting cellular health.

These hormone fluctuations, particularly perimenopause, incite physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual changes, explained Minich.

“There can be a whole spectrum of different things that can happen physically in the body,” Minich said, referring to perimenopause. “It's almost as though it's more like a syndrome, where we see one's entire being that is involved, rather than just a symptom.”

According to Minich, it’s crucial that this hormone interface in the body is properly functioning as it is the primer for vitality and vigor.