Author: Brenda Houdlette

Brenda Houdlette is a nurse coordinator at Coastal Pharmacy & Wellness. In addition to sharing health tips and hormone therapy expertise through her blog, Brenda offers patient consultation for peri- and post-menopausal women. She works to educate patients, and to help them and their practitioners develop individualized bio-identical hormone therapy plans. Call Brenda anytime at 207-899-0663, extension 223, to set up your own patient consult.

Post-Menopausal Women at Highest Risk for Lichen Sclerosus

Posted on September 7, 2012 by Brenda Houdlette
Category: Compounding, Menopause, Women's Health

This month I wanted to talk about a fairly uncommon condition called Lichen sclerosus. It causes patchy, white skin that is thinner than normal and most often involves the skin of the vulva. It can be extremely painful and although anyone can get it, post-menopausal women are at the highest risk. The exact cause... Read more »
More

Checking Hormone Levels

Posted on August 15, 2012 by Brenda Houdlette
Category: Women's Health

I thought we could talk about lab tests for hormones and if you should have saliva or blood testing or is it really necessary. As we have talked about before, our hormones systems work in concert with each other to maintain a state of balance. In a similar manner, the adrenal, thyroid, and sex hormones... Read more »
More

Thyroid Function

Posted on June 20, 2012 by Brenda Houdlette
Category: Women's Health

I thought we could talk a bit about thyroid function and how a properly regulated thyroid is essential to a wide array of biochemical processes in the body. Thyroid hormone activity can be affected by interactions with other hormone systems and by nutritional deficiencies, which is why thyroid disease or dysfunction can explain a wide... Read more »
More

Aging and Skin Care – Beyond Products

Posted on March 23, 2012 by Brenda Houdlette
Category: Natural Beauty, Women's Health

Your skin can be a good indicator of what it happening inside your body. What kinds of changes can we expect after menopause? Skin cells have estrogen receptors and as our estrogen declines there is a decrease in elastin and collagen production in the connective tissues. We begin to notice our skin is not as... Read more »
More

DHEA – An Important Hormone Precursor

Posted on March 11, 2012 by Brenda Houdlette
Category: Compounding, Supplements, Women's Health

DHEA will be our topic for this month as this is a hormone precursor. What this means is that it is transformed by cell-specific local conversion to androgens or estrogens. Although it favors the androgen (testosterone) pathway it can affect either hormone. As with other hormones, DHEA declines with age. This begins in the late 20’s and continues to do so... Read more »
More

Talking About Testosterone

Posted on January 28, 2012 by Brenda Houdlette
Category: Women's Health

Happy new year! I wish you all good health, happiness and harmony in 2012. Now that we all havetime to take a deep breath and relax a bit during the cold winter I hope you will all take some extra well deserved time to pamper yourself. Testosterone will be my topic for the beginning... Read more »
More