Maintain A Healthy Weight
Balancing hormones is so much easier if you are at a healthy weight. This is because being overweight may cause disruptions to your insulin, leptin, ghrelin, cortisol, and estrogen levels. And when these hormones are out of balance, its common to experience feelings of fatigue, low energy, and increased appetite all of which contribute to further weight gain.
Breaking this vicious cycle is not easy, however, there are certain lifestyle habits you can make each day that may help. This includes:
- Doing at least 20-30 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity each day.
- Drinking plenty of water.
- Planning healthy meals ahead of time.
- Joining a weight-loss support group.
- Speaking with your doctor, nutritionist, and/or fitness trainer for further assistance.
What Conditions Are Caused By Hormonal Imbalances
Dozens of medical conditions are caused by hormone issues. For most hormones, having too much or too little of them causes symptoms and issues with your health. While many of these imbalances require treatment, some can be temporary and may go away on their own. Some of the most common hormone-related conditions include:
Engage In Regular Exercise
Physical activity strongly influences hormonal health. Aside from improving blood flow to your muscles, exercise increases hormone receptor sensitivity, meaning that it enhances the delivery of nutrients and hormone signals (
7 ).
Insulin is a hormone that allows cells to take up sugar from your bloodstream to use for energy. However, if you have a condition called insulin resistance, your cells may not effectively react to insulin. This condition is a risk factor for diabetes, obesity, and heart disease .
However, while some researchers still debate whether the improvements come from exercise itself or from losing weight or fat, evidence shows that regular exercise may improve insulin resistance independently of body weight or fat mass reduction .
Many types of physical activity have been found to help prevent insulin resistance, including high intensity interval training, strength training, and cardio .
Being physically active may also help boost levels of muscle-maintaining hormones that decline with age, such as testosterone, IGF-1, DHEA, and human growth hormone .
For people who cannot perform vigorous exercise, even regular walking may increase these hormone levels, potentially improving strength and quality of life .
Summary
Strength training, aerobics, walking, and other forms of exercise may modify hormone levels to reduce your risk of disease and prevent muscle mass decline as you age.
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Manage Your Stress Levels
Stress is sometimes unavoidable, but it can be detrimental to our health if we do not find ways to combat or regulate it. Stress affects hormones as well as heart health, mental health, blood sugar levels, and fertility, among other functions. You will want to pay particular attention to minimizing cortisol and adrenaline, otherwise known as the stress hormones. Devote at least 10 to 15 minutes per day to the following stress-reducing activities to promote a healthy hormone balance:
- Exercise that increases the heart rate, including walking, running, weightlifting, cycling, swimming, paddleboarding, hiking, or other cardiovascular boosters
- Yoga and light stretching
- Taking up a soothing hobby, like coloring, sewing, or gardening
- Treating yourself to a massage or spa day
Eat A Balanced Diet To Balance Your Hormones
- Make sure that each meal combines protein, complex carbohydrate, fibre and fat for optimal blood sugar control, increased energy levels, better mood Talbott, S. . The Cortisol Connection. Alameda, CA: Hunter House, p. 153.
- Protein is very important for building and repairing the body, and to make optimal levels of neurotransmitters from amino acids
- Should be eaten three times a day from vegetable and/or organic animal sources
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Managing Your Hormones With Our Obgyn In Lake Success
Its important to regularly visit your obgyn in Lake Success to ensure you have healthy hormone production and good lifestyle habits. Your hormones are involved in almost all aspects of your health. They need to be in good standing for your body to optimally function and feel good. Contact Women for Women today to schedule your appointment and get your hormones balanced and feeling right.
Youre Tired All The Time
Relying on caffeine to get you through your morning? And often during the afternoon, too? Of course, things like stress, and a demanding lifestyle influence energy levels, but fatigue that never lifts can be a big sign of hormonal imbalance. Ongoing fatigue may be a sign that youre not making enough thyroid hormone, or that your thyroid gland isnt responding to signals to produce sufficient amounts. Other symptoms of a low thyroid include weight gain, hair loss, and cold hands & feet.
Nearly 12% of people will develop a thyroid condition in their lifetime, but up to 60% of people are totally unaware they have a problem. An underactive thyroid Women are also 5 to 8 times more likely to develop a thyroid condition than men .
Read more:The Holistic Approach to Hypothyroidism
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Pay Attention To Your Diet
Another vital element of balancing hormones naturally is limiting your sugar and refined carb intake. Sugar and carbs can play a significant role in metabolic disease and insulin resistance. Avoiding foods high in sugar and refined carbs can be helpful in optimizing hormone levels, much like exercise. Taking this step can help decrease insulin levels and increase insulin sensitivity.
While there are many natural ways you can try to balance your hormones, there are instances in which these methods wont work entirely. In those cases, you have other treatment options available that are more likely to solve the imbalance.
Incorporate Stress Reduction Techniques
No surprise here. Stress causes your body to go into fight or flight modeits just the way were wired. And when were stressed, cortisol rises. In turn, elevated cortisol affects your hormones, including ovulation. Chronic stress can lead to late periods. From stress-relieving yoga poses to stress-reducing teas, there are a variety of ways to bring more om into your life. Making time to de-stress does wonders for your mind, body, and hormones.
Image by Teal Thomsen
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Effective Ways To Balance Hormones Naturally
In This Article
Your body produces over 50 different hormones. They control many biological processes that are crucial to your health and survival.
Hormones help regulate:
- Immune and stress response
Normally, your body produces enough hormones to facilitate these functions. But if one or more of them are imbalanced, it can affect your well-being.
Given the role of hormones in human health, it’s important that you maintain hormonal balance.
Take Herbs That Help Balance Your Hormones
Good for: Older men and women people with too much androgen
Androgenetic alopecia or male-pattern baldness is caused by elevated dihydrotestosterone levels. It is common in older men, but it also occurs in adolescent boys, young men, and women.
Meanwhile, decreasing estrogen levels causes menopausal symptoms. These include hot flashes and mood swings.
Scientists have discovered herbs that can treat and reverse alopecia. They prevent the body from converting testosterone into DHT and promote hair regrowth. Some herbs also reduce symptoms of menopause.20,21
Herbal Treatments for menopause
Other herbs that promote hormone balance are ashwaganda and marjoram.
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Risk Factors And Causes
Hormonal imbalances are multi-factorial disorders, meaning they are caused by a combination of factors such as your diet, medical history, genetics, stress levels and exposure to toxins from your environment.
Some of the major contributors to hormonal imbalances include:
- Food allergies and gut issues: An expanding field of new research shows that your gut health plays a significant role in hormone regulation. If you have leaky gut syndrome or a lack of beneficial probiotic bacteria lining your intestinal wall, youre more susceptible to hormonal problems, including diabetes and obesity. Thats because inflammation usually stems from your gut and then impacts nearly every aspect of your health.
- Being overweight or obese
- High amounts of stress, and a lack of enough sleep and rest
Adrenal dysfunction is the largest cause of the hormonal imbalance with the sex hormones especially because of something called the cortisol steal.
This occurs when cholesterol, which usually helps to make the sex hormones, combines with too much stress and the enzyme 17/20 lyase blocks the conversion the production of cortisol ensues. Cortisol then causes the imbalance of progesterone, estrogen and testosterone, which then decreases the sex drive.
Youre Waking Up At Night
Not sleeping well at night should be a major heads up to re-examine your overall health as well as lifestyle choices. Consistent, and adequate sleep is literally one of the best tools for health, anti-aging, and balancing hormonesI formulated Sleep Savior with this in mind . So, not only is it a sign that hormones may be imbalanced, but it can also help you balance hormones.
If youre in your 30s or older, one hormone youll want to keep an eye on is cortisol. This hormone is produced by stress, but as long as it stays balancedyoure in the clear. Because it regulates energy levels, it should be highest in the morning and lowest at night.
If cortisol is high all day long or spikes at night, its a sign that your adrenals are taxed and your hormonal imbalance is likely caused by stress.
Dive deeper: Is it Adrenal Fatigue? 7 Signs youre on the road to burnout.
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You Have Anxiety Depression Or Experience Mood Swings
As a woman, you experience a lot of complex emotional thoughts and feelings throughout the month, but if your emotional health is negatively impacting your wellbeing, that of your relationships, or your day-to-activities, its definitely not normal and is a sign that estrogen and progesterone may be out of sync.
PMS is a sign or hormonal imbalance known for causing changes in mood that can start up to 2 weeks prior to your period. Because of this, you might not connect depressed or anxious feelings with a hormonal imbalance. And despite what you may have heard, PMS that interferes with your life is not normal for women.
Focus On Fibre To Balance Your Hormones
Fibre comes from plant food and is a form of carbohydrate, however unlike other carbohydrates, it does not get broken down and absorbed by your digestive system. Instead, as it moves through your body it slows digestion, attracts water to the bowel, provides food for beneficial bacteria and makes your stools softer and easier to pass.
- It helps keep food and waste moving steadily through the intestinal system, and aids with absorption of nutrients
- It helps detoxify hormones and toxins by sweeping them along the intestines
- It helps balance blood sugar by ensuring steady absorption of glucose
- It helps maintain a healthy bacteria balance
- Allows negative bacteria to be removed
- Sustains a healthy estrogen metabolism Amen, D. . Unleash The Power Of The Female Brain. New York: Harmony Books, p. 97.
- Helps maintain healthy testosterone levels by preventing the conversion of testosterone into estrogen Amen, D. . Unleash The Power Of The Female Brain. New York: Harmony Books, p. 97.
- Increases the excretion of testosterone and estrogen in the stool
Womens HealthWomens Hormones 0
Supplements are an easy, safe, and fast way to experience major health wins
Your hormones rely on key nutrients to work at their best, and it is virtually impossible to get everything you need through food alone .
If you neglect your dietary and nutritional needs, stress management, sleep, and toxic load, then the supplements will not be able to support your body in the way that they should.
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A Healthy Diet Is Key
When it comes to getting all the essential macronutrients and micronutrients necessary to balance hormones, we should always turn to food first. Supplements are great, but theres no substitute for good, whole foods the ones that come directly from the Earth, just as nature intended. Your endocrine system needs certain foods, which contain specific nutrients, to do its job. Lets see which ones those are!
Signs Of Hormonal Imbalance
Because hormones are involved in so many bodily processes, theres a broad range of problems that can indicate a possible hormonal imbalance, including:
- Unexplained weight gain or loss
- Excessive sweating
- Being overweight
If you want to take care of your hormonal health, here are 4 different lifestyle actions you can start following today.
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Undergo A Testosterone Replacement Therapy
Testosterone is one the most important hormones that help to increase libido, improve muscle mass, boost fertility, and bump up energy. As you age, you may experience a decrease in testosterone levels. This decrease in testosterone levels may result in several health issues, such as hair loss, weakness, depression, and more. Thus, to balance testosterone levels, it is wise to undergo testosterone replacement therapy. But how does it work?
During your therapy, you will undergo doctor-directed testosterone treatments depending on your condition. Generally, the treatment includes gels, injectables, sprays, creams, patches, etc. The doctor will diagnose your symptoms and suggest the best treatment possible.
Hormone Balancing Tip #: Manage Stress
Stress wreaks havoc on our hormones, particularly our production of progesterone. Progesterone is produced from the same building blocks as our stress hormone cortisol . When we are stressed, our body ramps up its cortisol production and slows down on progesterone, contributing to a number of hormonal imbalances.
For many of us, we have little control over the stressors that are thrown on us on a day to day basis. The key then to managing stress is learning how to change your relationship with stress. Shifting your mindset around stress is the cornerstone to changing the way that it affects your body.
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Best Supplements For Hormonal Imbalance In Women
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At times, it feels like the slightest things tend to get you triggered. You feel highly irritable with cramps, anxiety, allergies, fatigue, etc. These symptoms can be very unsettling, to say the least. You are then made to wonder if there is any stop to the fluctuations that often manifest as a result of your unstable hormones.
The truth is that it isnt uncommon for women to experience bouts of hormonal imbalance. It either occurs at some point during your menstrual circle or as early signs of menopause. This is often a result of either internal influences like pregnancy, puberty, menstruation, etc., or external influences like stress, feeding habits, environment, medications, and the likes.
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Natural Ways To Balance Hormones After 40
If youre in your 40s or 50s and feeling sluggish, depressed, or not like yourself, it might be because of a hormone imbalance. I will share 15 natural ways to balance your hormones in this post.
As women, we may experience changes in estrogen and progesterone that lead to symptoms such as weight gain, insomnia, fatigue, anxiety, depression, hot flashes, or night sweats.
Its important to be aware of these changes and take steps to balance your hormones naturally!
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Skin And Hair Changes
Acne. A sudden increase in acne is one easy way to identify a possible hormonal imbalance. One of the few hormones involved is androgens. Androgens, typically referred to as male hormones, but found in both males and females, regulate your skins sebum production. If your body produces androgens in excess, sebum can build up in your pores and cause a pimple to surface.
Hair loss. The quality and vitality of your hair is also directly related to your hormones. Thyroid abnormalities, for example, may cause dry hair or skin, thinning hair, or brittle nails. Hypothyroidism, hyperthyroidism, and parathyroid disorder can also cause hair loss.
Why Supplements And Herbs Are Important For Female Hormone Balance
While Im a FIRM believer in focusing on getting as many nutrients as possible from a variety of real, whole foods, I also believe that supplements and herbs are an effective way to fill in any nutritional gaps, helping hormones stay balanced in order for women to feel their best.
This is because nutrition is a KEY aspect of hormone balance. Our hormones would simply not be able to produce, function or do their jobs without nutrients derived from the food we eat, as well as the supplements and herbs we consume.
A lack of nutrients, whether due to dieting, skipping meals or not eating enough, eating a limited variety of foods, nutrient-poor processed foods, pesticides or environmental contamination, soil depletion, foods sitting on the shelve too long, etc. negatively impacts our hormones, leading to the uncomfortable symptoms and hormonal imbalances we experience as a result.
Because it can be more challenging today to access a variety of nutrient-rich foods I often recommend supplements and herbs as a helpful and natural way to increase vitamin and mineral intake in order for optimal hormone balance.
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