Welcome to my blog post on optimizing your hormones! As someone who has dealt with hormone balance issues for many years, I’m excited to share with you what I’ve learned about how to achieve optimal hormone health. While this information applies to everyone, I think this is particularly pertinent for women in perimenopause. So without further ado, let’s jump into it!
Why should you listen to me? Well, I’m a licensed naturopathic doctor with 20 years of experience in helping women, just like you, on this very topic, which is all about hormone balance. So trust me when I say that these tips will help you get on the right track to optimal health.
Hormones rule women. They determine if you’re going to wake up on the good side of the bed or the bad side of the bed. They dictate whether you’d be happy and flirty today, take things in stride, or are you going to be irritable, snappy, and taking every little thing personally.
Hormone Secrets
The key to optimal hormone health is understanding your body’s natural rhythms. As humans, we are part of nature. And because of this, we must abide by the laws of nature. There are natural rhythms and laws all around us. This brings us to hormone secret number one:
- “Sleep with the birds and wake up with the birds.”
Sleep is essential for keeping your hormones balanced by simply going to bed before midnight, and waking up with the early morning light, we are taking part in the natural rhythm. Women who stay up late and sleep late have more hormone imbalances than women who stick to the natural rhythm and have a consistent routine. Women who stay up late also tend to have higher body mass index and thereby more body fat than women who go to bed early. The rule here is to go to sleep with the birds and wake up with the birds.
Birds follow the natural rhythm. And so should you. It’s because that’s how you are wired as well. So, if you’re having trouble sleeping that you better stick around for a blog post that’s coming out soon.
But perhaps it’s, your hormones are already out of balance and they’re interfering with your sleep. Difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep is a sign of a hormonal issue.
- Stress always wreaks havoc on almost everything, including hormones.
Stress can wreak havoc on your hormones. Our bodies are not designed to manage high stress on a consistent continual basis. Taking a daily bath in stress increases some hormones like cortisol and depletes others like progesterone. Stress spikes, and then crashes blood sugar leading to imbalances in insulin, which leads to prediabetes.
In this day and age, it’s crucial to find ways to manage stress. I recently asked one of my patients how she managed stress and she said: “I go out for cocktails, with friends after work. And although this may work in the short term, it doesn’t work for health in the longterm.” More than two drinks a night increases breast cancer risks, and it pickles our liver.
If you want to win in the longevity long game, getting some healthy coping methods onboard for stress is ideal. Things like 20 minutes of exercise, doing yoga, personal reading, and deep breathing have all been shown to significantly decrease stress levels.
Long-term elevations of stress hormones contribute to weight gain, hair loss, premature aging, and chronic diseases, such as high blood pressure, and cancers.
The secret is to go on the offense with stress. Come to terms with life being stressful and incorporate into your day things to help you manage it better.
- Food: “Let thy food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food.”
Food is an important secret weapon when it comes to maintaining hormone balance. You are what you eat. If you eat chicken pumped up with hormones every day, then that’s what you will become. When you eat meat, eggs, and dairy that have hormones in them, those hormones go into your body. Hormones can make your estrogen levels go up. High estrogen has been linked to weight gain, heavy menstrual cycles, fibroids and hormone-dependent cancers.
High-fat and a high-protein diet slow down liver function. A healthy liver is needed to break down hormones properly without proper hormone breakdown, toxic levels of estrogen become recycled back into your body. A healthy hormone diet consists of lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, lean meats, and gluten-free grains, which are less inflammatory.
How you care for your body on a day-to-day basis has a lot to do with keeping your hormones balanced.
We’ve talked about a natural sleep rhythm, managing stress, and feeding yourself. But what about major life events you don’t have control over?
Sometimes after a major life event, even a happy one, such as having a baby, hormones can shift and a woman can feel very out of balance and not like herself at all. This can happen during menopause, after stressful events, such as a divorce trauma, or even a severe illness. It can sometimes happen if you’ve been caregiving for a loved one, or if you’ve lost a loved one.
A woman can experience symptoms such as:
- Weight gain
- Fatigue
- Weakness of mind
- Disturbed sleep
- Night sweats
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Hair loss
- Low libido
- Vaginal dryness
- Irregular menstrual cycle
- Acne,
- Food cravings
- Mood fluctuations
- Isolation
A woman may even tend to pull back from the things that she enjoys and have a hard time managing day-to-day functions. All of these symptoms mentioned are symptoms of hormonal imbalances.
At this point, if you’re feeling like any of those symptoms, you should step out and ask for help from a trained practitioner who specializes in natural hormone balance, helping you get yours back.
Conventional doctors do not have the knowledge or the training to help in this area. Typically, they may have little to offer. I’ve even had a patient tell me that their doctor said, “ Well, what you’re asking me is out of my scope. You need to look elsewhere to get that type of care.” If this sounds like you, I’m here to help.
If you’re like most women, your hormones play a huge role in your day-to-day life. Whether it’s feeling good or bad about yourself, getting sick often, struggling with weight gain or fertility issues, or just not having the energy to do what you want – hormone imbalance can be a huge issue.
Thankfully, there are ways to help optimize your hormones without expensive and invasive treatments. By following a natural sleep rhythm, managing stress, and feeding yourself a healthy diet, you can start to see changes in how you feel almost immediately. And if that doesn’t work for you, I can help. I want to invite you to schedule a discovery call so that we can chat about your specific situation and see how I might be able to help you feel better than ever before. During our call, we will discuss your symptoms, review your health history, and come up with a plan tailored just for you.
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If you’re looking for a more natural way to manage your health, please contact us for a discovery call to see if our approach would be appropriate for your situation.
DISCLAIMER: The information in this email is not intended nor implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. All content is for general informational purposes only and does not replace a consultation with your own doctor/health professional
