How To Treat Menopause, Low Testosterone, Thyroid and Fatigue with Dr. Philip W. Faler, ND
Video Transcription
Dave: Menopause, low T, thyroid issues, fatigue. What’s missing from conventional treatment and how is your approach different, Dr. Faler?
Dr. Philip Faler: I think my approach is different because I learned early in my career that hormones play a bigger role than they’ve been given credit for in quality of life. When I was maybe three, four years into practice doing family medicine, very broad spectrum, I saw everything, and I had a lot of 35, 45-year-old women coming in. Their hair was falling out, they were constipated, they were cold, they were tired, they were gaining weight. And they said, “Nobody will help me. I’ve been to three different doctors, nobody will help me. I read all this stuff about thyroid and it seems like that’s why. Would You look at the labs? Would you consider it?” Of course.
So I started reading more and looking more and hitting conferences about thyroid. And it turned out their labs were low normal. They had the full symptom picture of a hypothyroidism. And I started to think in terms of subclinical hormone issues, right? Yes, you’re within normal range and you’re at the bottom end of normal range, and you have all the symptoms of a deficiency. Let’s give you a little bit of thyroid hormone or whatever hormone it might be. Let’s see how you do. Let’s give it 60 days. And I started to see very quickly in those women, those 35 to 45-year-old women, a little bit of thyroid hormone boosted them to where they were no longer chilly, their hair wasn’t falling out, they weren’t gaining weight, and they had more energy to go and do the things they wanted to be doing.
Dave: Moving on to maybe low T, or menopause, or fatigue.
Dr. Philip Faler: Same story. Same story. A lot of people who are under… There’s a lot of populations that are under treated. Menopause? Well, hey, you’re getting older. That’s going to happen. But there’s a lot of benefits to having not high hormones, but having your hormones be optimized, having some estrogen protecting your bone health, having some testosterone to give you vigor for life, to give you stress adaptability, having progesterone so that you get a quality night’s sleep. You know how many women I’ve seen who are in their early forties and tell me, “Yeah, I’m sleeping two and three hours at a time. I’m in bed for nine hours, but I’m sleeping two and three hours at a time.”
And just little touches of hormones really puts a high quality solution in place where they say, “Hey, now I’m sleeping eight hours a night.” And again, that ripples out to their lives.
Dave: So sometimes when these symptoms overlap, how do you personalize the treatment? Is it all based on the results you see from the labs?
Dr. Philip Faler: The lab work makes the difference. I’ve always looked at it like this, Dave. You’ve got two train. You remember the transparency thing they used to roll into the classroom-
Dave: Yeah.
Dr. Philip Faler: … and you can overlay one over the other?
Dave: Yeah.
Dr. Philip Faler: Symptom picture, lab work, and now you’re looking at the whole picture. And you put those two things together, and if you have a reasonable understanding of both, you know what to do.
Dave: So how do you blend natural therapies with medical science?
Dr. Philip Faler: Where the art of healing meets the science of medicine. That’s what I’ve always said.
Dave: Okay.
Dr. Philip Faler: It’s easy to blend. It’s really just common sense. It’s be there with your patient, listen, look at the lab work, know your research, know what’s safe, know what works, and apply solutions.
Dave: Is there a case where a patient finally found answers with your approach? I’m sure there’s many. Can you think of one to share?
Dr. Philip Faler: I can. I can think of numerous. I’ve had so many patients who, they end up at naturopathic medicine often when they’ve gone other places and they haven’t gotten a solution. But I remember a young lady in her thirties and she had multiple hormone issues going on and she was in terrible shape and she felt horrible and she wasn’t able to do her job or other things she wanted to be doing. And we spent 10 years working together. She’s still a patient. She needed a pretty thorough hormone program. She needed thyroid and female hormones. I’ll see her out in town, around Spokane, at Pig Out in the Park or something like that. And she’s always comes right up to me and says, “Oh my God, Dr. Faler. That made such a difference in my life.” And you can’t ask for more as a doctor than feeling that.
Dave: If you are dealing with fatigue, hormone shifts, a thyroid issue, Dr. Faler’s team offers personalized solutions. You can start with a free consult at antiagingnorthwest.com. There’s also a direct link below this video.