What Is A Hormonal Imbalance In Men
Hormonal imbalances occur when there is too much or too little of a hormone present in the body. Hormones, which are chemicals produced by glands in the endocrine system, play an essential role in the body. These chemicals travel through the bloodstream to deliver messages to tissues and organs. They regulate major body processes like metabolism and reproduction.
A hormonal imbalance can affect a number of bodily functions, including:
- Metabolism
- Mood
- Body temperature
Hormone levels may fluctuate over time, but symptoms of a hormone imbalance can also occur due to stress, injury, illness, poor nutrition, or a lack of exercise. This can occur at any time, but its more likely to occur as a person grows older.
Both men and women can experience imbalances in hormones such as growth hormones, insulin, and adrenaline. Men are more likely to experience hormonal imbalances in testosterone levels.
A drop in testosterone is also known as hypogonadism, or male menopause.Low testosterone can result in decreased strength, energy, stamina, and sexual function. Studies have found that low testosterone in men may increase their risk of developing coronary artery disease, metabolic syndrome, and type 2 diabetes.
What Are The Signs Of Hormonal Imbalances
Sadly, we all live busier and more hectic lives than ever before. As a result, I see more and more people suffering the woes of hormonal imbalances. You see, there are many things that can throw our bodies out of synch a poor diet of refined carbs and sugars, too much stress on the body, too little fat and protein, too little sleep, or too many toxins.
Signs of hormone imbalance include:
- Mood swings
- You are snappy, irritable and angry
- Your libido is non-existent
- Your periods are heavy or irregular
- Headaches and migraines
- Your periods are MIA
- You have a muffin top or excess weight around the belly
- Skin breaks out
- Difficulty sleeping or staying asleep
- You feel constantly fatigued or have brain fog
- You have tummy cramps, bloating or digestive woes
- You have excess hair on your face and thinning on your head
- You have cravings for carbs, sugars, alcohol or other foods
Any of this sound familiar? However hopeless it may feel, I promise that things can and will get better I am evidence of this! You dont have to accept hormonal imbalance as your norm, and you can lead a healthy, happy life.
When things are thrown out of balance, it can not only affect your day, but your health too, even if everything else is seemingly perfect. I know the feeling I had a season ticket to the hormonal roller coaster for many years, and I also wear the scars of PCOS, hypothroidsim, low progesterone, Adenomyosis and two miscarriages.
- Improve testosterone levels in males
Your Weight Is Out Of Control And The Number On The Scale Keeps Climbing
If you’re eating salad after salad and spending hours at the gym but you’re still not seeing results, you might be ready to throw in the towel. But the problem isn’t lack of effort or faulty scaleit’s likely your liver, which is responsible for removing toxins by turning fat-soluble toxins into water-soluble toxins so they can be excreted through your large intestine, kidneys, and skin. When you have a hormonal problem, your liver’s function is compromised and can’t work as efficiently at removing these toxins, so your body holds on to fat-soluble toxins.
Try: Adding lemons and oranges to your water. Citrus fruits contain a compound called D-limonene, which is critical for healthy liver function.
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S To Balance Hormones Naturally
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Hormones such as estrogen, testosterone, adrenaline and insulin are extremely important chemical messengers that affect many aspects of your overall health.
Conventional treatments for hormonal imbalances typically include synthetic hormone replacement therapies, birth control pills, insulin injections, thyroid medications and more. Unfortunately, for the majority of people suffering from hormonal disorders, relying on these types of synthetic treatments often does three things:
Is it possible to balance hormones naturally? The good news is: yes, in many cases it is. Below youll learn about some root causes of hormonal problems, as well as about treatment options to help you balance your hormones naturally.
What Causes Hormonal Imbalance
Your hormones have to work together in balance to help your body thrive. However, hormone ups and downs in women are very common, so if you feel that you have a hormonal imbalance, you are not alone.
Doctors from WebMD say that some of the common causes of an imbalance in hormone production in women are pre-menstrual syndrome, pregnancy, and the menopause. However, other lifestyle factors can cause hormones to fluctuate. Being overweight, not getting enough exercise, or a lack of sleep can all throw your hormones off balance.3
Other reasons for hormone fluctuations are an underactive thyroid that doesnt produce enough thyroxine . Doctors from the Mayo Clinic say that hypothyroidism can leave you feeling lethargic, cause changes in your menstrual system, or make it difficult to lose weight.4
Also, diabetes is a common cause of hormonal imbalances and can affect, not just the insulin hormone, but also other blood sugar-related hormones, sex hormones, and growth hormones.5
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Ways To Naturally Balance Your Hormones
Hormonal imbalances are common in todays day and age, because of our fast-paced lifestyles and poor food and exercise habits.
However, there are ways to naturally keep your hormones balanced. Here are some tips that will help you get started:
A nutritious diet and healthy lifestyle choices may help keep your hormonal health in check. However, consult your doctor and discuss a way forward for your diet.
Supplements + Herbs For Estrogen Dominance
While its important to focus on foods and lifestyle first to balance hormones, the right supplements can help some people during the healing process. For more info, check with your integrative practitioner to find out which supplement for estrogen dominance is best for you.
- Calcium d-glucarate
- Green tea
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You’re Both Tired And Wired
Exhaustioncoupled with anxiety and insomniacan be an indication of hormonal weirdness. “That has to do with cortisol levels being off,” Vitti says. “That causes the symptoms, but cortisol levels being out of balance will also affect a lot of other things: your fertility, your menstrual cycle, and your sex drive. So you may see these things all coming up at once.”
How To Treat Estrogen Dominance
To fix estrogen dominance, youll want to focus on: balancing your overall hormones, making sure excess estrogen can leave your body, and supporting healthy progesterone production.
You can do this by
Fixing your gut This allows your body to absorb nutrients needed for hormone production, and helps get rid of excess estrogen through bowel movements.
Supporting detox Your liver is your most important detox organ, and is responsible for making sure your body metabolizes estrogen you no longer need.
Stressing less and sleeping more Stress reduces progesterone production, which you need to balance estrogen.
Testing your hormones Work with a functional womens health doctor to determine your hormone levels and how you can get back into balance. This is especially important if youre trying to get pregnant, or if you have PCOS or endometriosis.
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Ways To Balance Your Hormones Naturally
If you think you might have a hormonal imbalance, start by talking to a healthcare professional about your symptoms and potential underlying causes. At Parsley Health, we work with our members who have hormone imbalances to naturally bring their hormones back into balance. Typically, this starts with advanced hormone testing to help you and your doctor determine where your hormone levels are at. Working closely with your practitioner and health coach, you can resolve the underlying cause of hormonal imbalance with a personalized plan, including changes to your nutrition, lifestyle, and stress management practices.
If you are experiencing any symptoms of hormonal imbalance, there are some general steps we recommend to start feeling some relief. Here are some of our tried and true strategies.
Treatments For Hormonal Imbalance
Hormone replacement therapy is used commonly to balance hormones in women after menopause. It is used for a certain period of time before being discontinued.
Bioidentical hormones are another way to balance out hormones. They are man made hormones similar to those in our bodies like estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone. They are advertised as being safer and more natural than conventional HRT.
At this time, medical societies and researchers state that the risks and benefits of conventional and bioidentical hormones should be considered equal. Talk with Mid-City OB-GYN about their use if you are having symptoms.
Contact Mid-City OB-GYN at for treatment and other options if you think you are suffering from a hormonal imbalance.
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What Are The Symptoms Of A Hormone Imbalance
Hormone levels are carefully balanced to support the smooth functioning of your body and mind, but menopause can cause some serious disruption to this equilibrium. Low levels of crucial hormones can cause several significant side effects that can affect your day-to-day life, such as:
- Vaginal dryness and itching
- Osteoporosis
- Pain during intercourse
A lot of these symptoms can be caused by other health issues, so how do you know that hormonal imbalance is to blame?
High Estrogen Levels Lower Thyroid
It also causes trouble with your thyroid, the hormone that regulates your metabolism the actual burning of energy . So if you have low levels of thyroid being produced then your body will have a lower ability to utilize energy including the burning of fat and the utilization of carbs so they dont become fat.
And it does this in a couple of ways.
First, there are receptor sites on cells that hormones use to communicate with them. This is how hormones pass on their instructions to individual cells. Well, excess estrogen blocks the receptor sites on cells that the thyroid uses to communicate with them. So even if you have proper levels of thyroid this makes it harder for the cells to see it and for the thyroid to tell the cells to burn energy for use.
But excess estrogen also causes something else. It makes the liver produce high levels of something called Thyroid-binding Globulin, a chemical which the amount of thyroid available to be used by binding to it.
This results in fatigue, brain fog, hair loss, low libido, and weight gain. But, because we now have less thyroid, because of excess estrogen we get even more estrogen.
This is because excess estrogen must be broken down by the liver. But the liver needs thyroid in order to do this and so the less thyroid we have, the less estrogen is broken down and it further builds up in the body.
You get the point. It really turns into a vicious circle. And this is what we call Estrogen Dominance.
Enter progesterone.
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Signs Of Hormone Imbalance
Men and women may experience similar symptoms when hormones are out of balance. You may have trouble sleeping or struggle to get up in the morning, even if youve had a full night of sleep. You rely on caffeine to get you through the morning and afternoon.
Your emotions are erratic. You get cranky and irritable often, and you have energy crashes. Stress seems overwhelming sometimes, and youre prone to depression or anxiety.
Hormones are also important to your sexual function. Men with hormone imbalances may experience a and erectile dysfunction. Women may also feel less than amorous in the bedroom and experience vaginal dryness that makes intercourse uncomfortable and even painful.
Weight gain is common with hormone imbalances. Women may start to see pounds pile around their middle, and men find it harder to build muscle while fat accrues. Hunger is uncontrollable at times.
Physical symptoms include hot flashes, night sweats, headaches, and increased sensitivity to temperature.
How Can I Find Out If I Have A Hormone Imbalance
The only way to confirm a hormone imbalance is to test your hormone levels. Both blood tests and saliva tests are proven techniques in assessing a hormone imbalance. i-screen uses blood tests to accurately determine sex hormone and thyroid hormone levels, but prefers saliva testing to assess cortisol levels. This is because cortisol levels follow a diurnal pattern which means tests must be conducted throughout the course of the day this makes blood testing inconvenient.
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A Hormone Imbalance Can Cause Chronic Health Issues
When your hormones are in proper balance they help the body thrive, but small problems with hormones can cause serious and life-altering symptoms. Specifically, imbalances of sex hormones, thyroid hormones and adrenal hormones are common problems that can contribute to a host of chronic health issues. Unfortunately, conventional medicine often doesnt understand the significant role hormone imbalances play in many health complaints.
How To Keep Hormones Balanced Before Things Go Awry
What’s easier than figuring out how to balance hormones? Keeping them at healthy levels to begin with. To keep your hormones from getting out of whack, eat right, exercise regularly, and get plenty of sleep. And take time to relax and unwind. Women with a lot of job stress are 38 percent more likely to suffer from heart disease, in part because of chronically high cortisol levels, a study in the journal PLOS One found. Luckily, healthy lifestyle habits can offset the effect that stress has on your ticker, other new research revealed.
What’s more, your gut microbiome does way more than aid digestion. It affects your brain, stress, sex, metabolism, immune system, and hormones, according to a report in the journal FEMS Microbiology Reviews. The bacteria in our guts release chemicals and hormones that influence our health and how we think and feel, says Marc Tetel, Ph.D., a neuroscience professor at Wellesley College. The key is to keep your bugs healthy and balanced so they perform at their optimum level. Get started with this three-point plan.
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You’re Super Hungryand Crashing A Lot
“If your blood sugars off because youre skipping meals, waiting too long for meals, not eating enough, or eating things that dont work for your body, it will throw off your blood sugar levels and destabilize your levels of a critical hormoneinsulin,” Vitti explains. “And it can go the other way as well other hormones being off can throw off your insulin levels. So its a twofer.”
Hormone Imbalance: What Are The Symptoms And Treatments
When youre browsing social media or watching TV, you may have come across ads telling you to ask your doctor to check your hormones as the first step toward diagnosing and relieving a troublesome set of symptoms. Its true that hormone imbalances can be associated with many problems, such as period problems, unwanted hair growth, fertility struggles, weight gain, and even difficulty sleeping. You should absolutely talk to your doctor about these things. But you may be surprised when your doctor tells you that they cant just give you a hormone check.
A hormone check sounds simpleafter all, we check cholesterol to get a handle on our heart health. However, your doctor cant just give you a hormone test because a single test to check all your hormones doesnt exist.
So if there isnt a simple hormone test, how does your doctor discover hormone imbalances? And how can you learn what could be causing your symptoms?
Lets look at problems caused by hormone imbalances and how your doctor could potentially determine which hormones may be responsible for your symptoms.
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Problems With High Estrogen
High levels of estrogen, or when estrogen circulates unchallenged by progesterone, contributes significantly to the risk of breast and ovarian cancers, in addition to whats called endometrial hyperplasia, which is an abnormal buildup of the lining in the uterus .
Endometrial hyperplasia can put you at greater risk for developing endometrial cancer . So, balancing hormones isnt just about having a more comfortable period, a stable mood, and better skinits also a major component of reducing risk for preventable diseases.
Heres how to naturally heal womens hormone imbalance and get estrogen and progesterone into a healthy rhythm.
Bruising And Dry Skin
Estrogen plays an important role in the maintenance of your skin, as it stimulates the production of collagen and oils that keep it moist and tight. When levels of estrogen decline, this stimulation is reduced and your skin becomes drier and prone to bruising, and you may even break out into spots more often.
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