Dr. Allana Polo, owner of Polo Health + Longevity Centre in New Westminster, British Columbia, is a featured speaker at the upcoming World Congress of Compounding. Dr. Polo’s work focuses on the current trends in anti-aging medicine from a functional medicine perspective, and how lifestyle, genetics, environmental and hormonal factors all affect our skin by accelerating the aging process.
“The role of how our internal health affects our outward appearance is what I am hoping to convey, and the natural lifestyle or supplemental changes that can slow down the aging process by decreasing inflammation.”
In addition to being a certified Naturopathic Physician, she is also a board-certified Anti-Aging Medicine Health Practitioner by the American Board of Anti-Aging Medicine, with a special focus on bioidentical hormones, metabolic endocrinology, and medically supervised weight loss.
“I have always valued the role that diet, nutrition and an overall healthy lifestyle play in longevity. I have naturally gravitated to the natural way to treat an ailment, and getting to the root of a cause before medicating or finding a band-aid solution. In university, I studied and majored in biological sciences with a minor in psychology, because I always felt the mind-body connection was a crucial part of health and wellness, and you couldn’t focus on one aspect of health without giving the other the focus, attention and dedication it required as well.”
Dr. Polo’s specialty areas include her medically supervised weight loss program, digestive health and food allergy testing, and hormone balancing utilizing bioidentical hormone replacement and thyroid replacement therapy for peri- and post-menopausal women suffering from hormone imbalances. She said a key component of her practice involves women’s health, where they do individualized blood, urine or salivary testing to check baseline hormone levels. Once they have a baseline, in conjunction with the patient’s medical history and current medical complaints, she and her team utilize compounded bioidentical hormones to help restore the patient’s less than optimal levels of hormones such as estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, DHEA and cortisol.
“By using compounded hormones, we are able to help offset any symptoms that are otherwise bothering the patient or lessening their quality of life. The beautiful thing about compounding is that we can adjust dosages in a specific way and add other compounds to it that would complement the treatment protocol.”
During her session, Dr. Polo will emphasize the role that diet has in aging, from an inflammatory perspective, and what foods you should and shouldn’t be eating when focusing on anti-aging. She will also discuss the role of nutraceuticals and supplements, and which vitamins and minerals can help combat signs of aging while stimulating collagen production.
“It’s important to understand how genetics can affect our overall aging process, and what we can do to potentially turn genes on or off as an expression of aging, how hormone therapy can prevent premature signs of aging, and the role of estrogen in increasing collagen and skin tone, while lastly touching on how lifestyle changes and stress reduction can also decrease signs of aging.”
Dr. Allana is a sought-after expert in healthy weight loss, nutrition, hormone imbalance and the effects of stress on the body, in particular the connection between stress and weight gain. Her full biography can be found here.