Hormones are key for women in how we feel overall each day.
They regularly change for varied reasons. Stress level, sleep, diet, and the point we’re at in our menstrual cycles are just a few of the lifestyle aspects we can control to positively impact our hormones.
The master hormones as I call them are adrenaline, cortisol, and insulin. Our primary focus is on these three because when they are balanced, the rest of our hormones will likely be as well.
There are many signs that indicate a hormonal imbalance. I suggest checking out one of my sister posts on this topic Signs of Hormonal Imbalance.
The conventional treatment of female hormonal imbalance is to take birth control, hormone replacement therapy, blood sugar regulating drugs, mood-regulating drugs or thyroid medications. These supplements are not necessarily addressing the root causes.
Note: If you need life-saving medication, of course, do that!
This type of treatment is putting a bandaid on the symptom and is creating other undesirable long term side-effects. Some of those side effects can be the increased risk of cancer, stroke, reproductive issues, osteoporosis and more.
We might also be dependent on these medications for the future without addressing what is really causing these hormonal imbalances.
In Heal Your Hormones Masterclass, I go over five key pillars to balance your hormones that I will outline here.
How To Naturally Balance Hormones
1. Look at the level of stress in your life.
I’m going to preface this section with something I’ve found extremely helpful in my life. You don’t need to feel forced to change your entire life and all it’s stressful entities today. You also don’t need to feel scared of the stress in your life.
Here’s what I mean for this section – we do need to balance out the overwhelm, chaos, busyness, anxiety, and stress-producing aspects of our lives. We should incorporate things that make us feel relaxed, happy grateful, energized, and calm.
I highly suggest doing an inventory of your life. List out aspects of your life that are adding to your plate, occupying your to-do list, making you feel unfulfilled and burnt out. Next, find places to say no to free up more time to do activities that refuel you instead of drain you.
Perfectionism is one of the most common examples of stress. It can stem from feelings of inadequacy, people-pleasing characteristics. Women who are incredible type A tend to get bogged down by stress. They can encounter hormonal imbalances caused by being in “fight or flight” and producing tons of adrenaline and cortisol.
To counter this effect on hormonal imbalance, we can slow down and stop putting so much pressure on ourselves reducing the stress in our lives.
2. Prioritize Sleep.
Sleep is absolutely imperative for a fully functioning healthy body. We detox, repair, rejuvenate and rest our system at night while we’re sleeping.
There are a lot of functions in your body that happen in the sleeping hours while you’re supposed to be resting because your body is busy with “daylight” activities during the day, so the nighttime is the only time to do them.
Adults need between 7-9 hours of sleep per night. When we’re feeling depleted or trying to heal, we need the higher end of that. In order to get that much sleep, we must sacrifice other things, so make a priority list and don’t waiver from the top 5 things.
3. Nutritionally Support Healthy Hormones.
There is a new diet out there every week, but after having studied hormones and women’s health for the past decade, I do know how to eat for healthy hormones. Nutrition is important!
We need to first be eating adequate amounts of calories. Too many women under-eat and that is a stressor on the body. Learn to listen to your hunger cues and they won’t keep you astray. Eat when you’re hungry and stop when you’re 80% full.
The types of foods to eat 80-90% of the time are simple – they are either grow from the ground or they have a mother. It’s literally as simple as that. We want to be eating lots of colors of fresh produce – so eat your fruits and veggies every single day.
We also want to make sure we’re getting in enough healthy sources of fats such as avocados, coconut oil, olive oil, fatty fish, organic grass-fed meat, nuts and seeds.
I am also an advocate for eating meat, but make sure it is organic and humanely-raised because that type of meat has the right omega 3:omega 6 ratio, and most importantly, doesn’t contain extra hormones, steroids, antibiotics, growth hormone or anything else that is used to make our animals produce more meat.
Protein is the building block of everything in our body, so eating adequate amounts of protein is important.
4. Exercise the Right Amount for You.
This is where we have to look at our unique biochemistry just a little bit. In general, strength training is the most optimal form of exercise for healthy hormones because when we lift big muscle groups (think: butt, legs and back), we produce human growth hormone, which is anti-aging, fat burning, and so much more for us and we also are able to boost testosterone, which a lot of women are actually deficit in.
Cardio exercise has it’s placed and isn’t necessarily bad, but we do want to watch how much we’re doing it because it causes a release of our stress hormone, cortisol and does NOT produce human growth hormone.
We want to make sure we aren’t feeling burnt out from over-exercise. Once we feel like we are fatigued, not making strength gains or the workout is taking everything we’ve got energy-wise for the day, it’s time to back off a bit and find a happy-medium.
5. Supplements and Herbs.
There are amazing formulas for just about all hormone imbalances and they work amazingly if they are being used correctly.
If you are struggling with unbalanced hormones and have no idea where to turn, let’s chat!
I offer free 15 minute discovery calls where we talk about what you’re experiencing and then determine how I can help you.
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