Natural Estrogen Sources:
Hormones like estrogen, testosterone and progesterone play a very important role in women. If the hormone levels fluctuate, it has effects on the whole body. This could affect your moods, sexual desire as well as fertility and pregnancy. In fact, the imbalance of estrogen hormones causes menopause itself and all its symptoms. These are just some of the reasons why it is so important to keep natural estrogen sources in balance.

Though the pharmaceutical companies would have you believe that for the treatment of natural estrogen sources, drugs are the best solution, that isn't the case. Before you make the choice of taking synthetic hormones, you might want to consider less risky approaches, like alternative medicine or lifestyle changes. The medical establishment is becoming increasingly interested in alternative medicine since breast and ovarian cancer as well as heart diseases, blood clots and other side effects are associated with conventional HRT treatment.

Three approaches as natural estrogen sources:
Three levels of approaches can be considered as natural estrogen sources. These are categorized as: (1) Lifestyle Changes, (2) Alternative Medicine and (3) Drugs and Surgery. You should always start with the least risky approach (lifestyle changes) and go on to riskier approaches (surgery/drugs) only if necessary.

(1) LIFESTYLE CHANGES
The first level involves no risk but may be the hardest way to go. You'll have to restrict yourself from many things. So if you are considering this approach, you will need a strong mind and a positive thinking for managing these changes.

Surprisingly, there has been less research on how lifestyle changes can affect natural estrogen sources. Nonetheless, techniques for stress reduction (e.g. yoga), a diet rich in estrogenic food (soy, apples, alfalfa, cherries, potatoes, rice, wheat and yams) or even becoming more fit by doing regular exercises, will have positive effects on your natural estrogen sources.

It's not easy to follow up this approach, that's why you might want to consider the next level of treatment. Alternative medicine has proven to be excellent for natural estrogen sources in a natural and safe way.

(2) ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE
Alternative approaches involve little or no risk and can be considered as the best and safest natural estrogen sources. In this level of approach, Herbal remedies and Acupuncture established themselves as the best natural estrogen sources. Acupuncture is a Chinese medical treatment involving the insertion of very fine sterile needles into the body at specific points according to a mapping of "energy pathways". It's an excellent treatment, but complicated to follow. A successful acupuncture treatment involves time, money and finding the right practitioner. Therefore, most women are looking for less complicated natural estrogen sources and think herbal remedies are a safe and effective solution.

There are basically two types of herbs for natural estrogen sources: phytoestrogen and non-estrogenic herbs. The phytoestrogen herbs (e.g. Black Cohosh, Dong Quai) contain estrogenic components produced by plants. Though, these herbs are good for treating low hormone levels, because they replace some of the missing estrogen hormones, they aren't the best solution for natural estrogen sources. As a result of adding hormones from outside, your body will become less responsive to produce estrogen on its own. This causes a further decrease of body-own hormone levels.

Unlike phytoestrogen herbs, non-estrogenic herbs, as its name suggests, don't contain any estrogen. These herbs nourish your hormonal glands into producing more efficiently your own natural hormones. This ultimately ends up in balancing not only estrogen, but also progesterone and testosterone. In other words, non-estrogenic herbs stimulate your own hormone production, by inducing the optimal functioning of the pituitary and endocrine glands. Due to this, non-estrogenic herbs, like Macafem, can be considered as the safest way to treat hormonal imbalance naturally.

A combination of approaches is a good route to take. Lifestyle changes combined with alternative medicine will probably take care of the hormonal imbalance in a more efficiently way. Nonetheless, there will always be some women who need or want to go through the third level of approach. Side effects are inevitable, but sometimes these are worth if considered the relief this approach provides.

(3) DRUGS AND SURGERY
Interventions at level 3 involve the highest risk and often the highest costs. The most common estrogen sources for treating hormonal imbalance in the US is hormone replacement therapy (HRT). There's no doubt that this is the quickest and strongest way to combat hormonal imbalance; but, unfortunately, it entails serious side effects and increases the risk of different cancer types among women, as the following study has proven.

If you still want to consider this approach, take a visit to your physician, and be more informed about what this treatment option involves.

These three levels of approaches are not mutually exclusive. You can use different approaches at different times or combine several at the same time. Nowadays more and more women think dealing with hormonal imbalance is best accomplished via a combination of healthy lifestyle and alternative treatments.