When your hormones are off you feel like a drowning person. Replacing your hormones are like giving you a life preserver. If you are low on certain hormones, replacing your hormones with the exact same hormones that your body makes is the premise behind bioidentical hormones.
Hormones work in your body by having specific chemical structures. Cells in your body have receptors which recognize the hormone and then based on the connection between the hormone and the receptor, the cell reacts in a specific way. .Bioidentical hormones are made to be chemically the exact same as what your body naturally makes. They can originally come from a plant source and a lab does make them, but in the end your body sees them as if it made the hormone itself. Chemically they are identical.
Synthetic hormones are created to mimic your body’s hormonesbut in order to patent the hormones they are chemically altered just enough to set them apart. The synthetic hormones do certain things the same way as the hormones that your body makes, but often the synthetic hormones will be different enough chemically that they cause problems (some quite serious).
Hormone balance is like having a large symphony work beautifully together. There is a lot of debate that goes on about synthetic versus bioidentical hormones. I suggest that you use good old fashioned common sense. If your body is lacking a hormone the first rule is to try and figure out why and fix the cause. The second rule is to replace the hormone with exactly the same hormone that is missing, not some slightly altered version.