Perimenopause Treatment in Orlando | Svelte Medical Weight Loss - East Orlando

We get asked the same question frequently: “I’m not sure if I should be on hormone therapy or if I should be on a weight loss plan.” The answer is, you likely need both.

Perimenopause does more than just cause hot flashes and mood changes. It changes the way your body manages fat stores, burns calories and reacts to exercise. Reduced levels of estrogen can slow your metabolism.

It all comes down to the impact that progesterone fluctuations can have on your sleep quality. If you’re not getting the good, deep sleep that you need, cortisol (the “stress” hormone) goes up and this tells your body to store fat around the midsection, almost as if you are trying to prepare for winter. This is why you might find that you’re struggling to lose weight, even if you aren’t making any changes in the food that you eat or how much exercise you’re doing. Again, it’s not that there’s anything wrong with willpower or discipline here; the hormonal imbalance adds another layer of metabolic difficulty. This is why we don’t practice hormone imbalance treatment and weight management as separate programs.

Bioidentical hormone replacement therapy can be instrumental in bringing estrogen and progesterone back into more youthful balance in your body, helping you sleep better, to have more energy and experience fewer cravings. But there are some times when it may not reverse the weight that’s been gained. This is where physician-directed weight management can help. Depending on your lab results and your medical history, there may be options for the use of a weight-loss medication such as semaglutide or tirzepatide (also called a GLP-1 agent), a prescription for a lipotropic injection, or advice for how to use intermittent fasting. A board-certified medical doctor reviews your complete health picture before recommending any specific approach.

With the warm climate in Orlando, many women choose to exercise outdoors through their 40s and 50s. If you’re out walking in the river trails by the Econlockhatchee River regularly, for example, or you swim early in the morning, it can feel particularly discouraging if the scale starts to show more pounds when you look in the mirror. You’re still putting in the same amount of exercise, but your body is no longer doing the same work it used to. Not every woman who goes through perimenopause and menopause will need medication for the purpose of losing weight. For some, it may be just optimizing your hormones. For others, using both together may make sense, and that determination comes only after we get a good look at your blood work, symptoms and lifestyle choices as one integrated story. This is why your initial visit is so very important in getting the right path in place for your individual journey and goals.

If you’ve been working with an OB-GYN for the purpose of resolving your hormone-related concerns and have worked with a separate program for weight management, it may be helpful to think about a combined program approach. To have one medical team work on all of this at once can make a big difference in how things turn out.

When to Go See an OB-GYN

Not every symptom that a woman encounters in her 40s must be resolved in the office. There are times when you should go to your OB-GYN first. If your menstrual bleeding is heavy enough to soak through a pad or tampon in a hour, you should see a gynecologist first. This is also true for bleeding between periods or after intercourse, and any postmenopausal bleeding when you haven’t had a period for a year. These symptoms can, indeed, occur during perimenopause, but they can also signal things like fibroids or uterine polyps or something else entirely that your OB-GYN needs to rule out with imaging or perhaps with a biopsy. It’s always best to find this out first before you move to hormone therapy with us.

Pelvic pain is another symptom to take note of. It might be a dull ache, sharp cramping outside of your periods, or continuous pressure. East Orlando heat can make it even worse during the hot summer, and it’s easy to dismiss it as just aging. But don’t do that. You should at least get a pelvic exam and perhaps an ultrasound.

Here is a rough rule of thumb: If your main complaint is structural, as in it feels wrong in your reproductive system, then go to your GYN first. However, if your main concern is more systemic, that is, you feel off and you have multiple complaints that your mood and energy and sleep and your weight have all shifted all at once, that’s the type of presentation that we’re seeing all the time in our clinic. This means there is a hormonal imbalance, and this is where we will excel at perimenopause treatment for women.

We often have women come to us who were recently to their OB-GYN, who did everything that was checked, who had a normal pap, a normal ultrasound, and yet they were still not feeling their best. This is the most common type of situation that we are hearing about in our office: everything was structurally normal, but there was still something else going on. And, of course, you can’t get that information without a blood test and looking at your hormones.

We are never going to advise you not to see your gynecologist. Rather, we will ask you whether you are up to date on all of your screenings before we build a treatment plan around your health. Good healthcare is not competitive; it’s collaborative. But once all the structural things have been checked off the list and you still have those brain-foggy days, the hot flashes, the weight-gain and you’re still tired, that’s our department now. We’re ready to help you feel like yourself again in East Orlando.

What to Expect at Your First Hormone Consultation

First and foremost, you will walk into our clinic and sit down with a physician and not a sales rep or a chatbot. You will see a board-certified MD who will take the time to review your symptoms and past medical history, including your treatment goals, before discussing treatment options. The first step of your initial consultation includes some baseline blood work. We will look at your estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, thyroid values, and several other hormones that give us a clear picture of where your hormone balance stands at this time.

Many of the women who come to our East Orlando location have walked into other clinics where they attempted to describe their symptoms but did not feel as though they were heard completely. We hear you. We will listen and test you thoroughly, and look at the bigger picture of your health. During your appointment you can expect:

• A detailed review of your symptoms, how long you’ve been experiencing them, and your past treatment history.
• Blood lab tests are drawn onsite. So we can give you accurate information about your hormone levels and not make any assumptions about your health.
• A full review of your past medical history, current medications, and any risk factors for health risks.
• Customized recommendations of your treatment options, designed for your specific findings, rather than a general protocol for everyone.

More often than not, ladies tell us they wish they would have come in sooner.

East Orlando heat and humidity year-round can make perimenopause seem twice as bad. This is common to hear from patients from Waterford Lakes, Avalon Park, Union Park or other communities who thought the Florida weather just made everything worse. While that may be part of the issue, the reason it happens is hormonal, so you can get the proper treatment. It is important to learn the difference.

Your lab results usually come back in a few days. Afterward, together, we create a treatment plan that could mean you are using bioidentical hormones with our Biote pellet therapy or other treatments based on what your results show. By using both hormone optimization and weight loss treatments together in our practice, we have a unique opportunity to treat the hormone shifts of perimenopause that often cause the unwanted weight and sluggish metabolism that won’t respond well to exercise.

If you held back before because you weren’t sure what to expect, you hopefully now have a better idea. It’s a real doctor’s consultation with a board-certified MD, and our focus is always on YOU.