How to Balance Your Hormones, Naturally

Everyone experiences imbalanced hormone levels at some point in their lives. Especially women. Big changes in hormones occur naturally at puberty, pregnancy, and menopause.
These shifts can also be enhanced by many factors, and I will discuss today:

1. What are hormones and how they become dysregulated
2. What types of sx a person can experience
3. What we can do about it in office
4. How you can work to balance them on your own naturally 

What are hormones? Chemical messengers that are produced in various glands and organs of the body, including the thyroid, adrenal, and pituitary glands. The main ones that we will focus on are estrogen, progesterone, thyroid hormones, cortisol. They regulate a wide range of bodily functions, including metabolism, growth, reproduction, and mood. They bind to specific receptors on target cells, triggering a response that can either stimulate or inhibit a particular function.
 
Many factors can disrupt hormone balance, including aging, stress, poor nutrition, lack of sleep, and exposure to environmental toxins, use of certain medications or birth control.
 
Estrogen dominance is one of the most common hormone imbalance problems for women and that is a big deal because it has literally hundreds of functions in a woman’s body. Symptoms of hormone imbalance can vary widely and may include fatigue, weight gain, mood swings, painful period cycles, skin issues,  insomnia, and hot flashes, brain fog and insomnia.
 
Functional medicine providers take a unique approach to hormone balance:

• Every individual is unique and that their health needs vary from person to person.
• It is not just treating the symptoms of hormone imbalance, we aim to find the underlying root causes of hormone imbalance.

Steps to this:

• Provide a comprehensive evaluation with a detailed medical history, physical examination, and in some cases laboratory testing.
• I use muscle testing to find the specific areas of weakness, and ask the body for reasons for the weakness in the organs.  The liver and gut are tied closely with the clearing of estrogen from the body, and addressing the causes will overall help the hormone levels.
• Causes can be toxins, parasites, mold exposure, stress, gut dysbiosis (leaky gut), and others.
• Solution: Individualized program to target the cause and allow the body to work better and optimize health and wellness.

 
Tips to Balance Your Hormones Naturally

1. Fill up with protein:
2. Avoid foods that mess with hormones: Sugar and refined carbohydrates can cause blood sugar spikes and mess with your insulin.
3. Get active: Strength training and cardio produces testosterone, and that can build muscle and keep your body more lean and slow the effects of aging.
4. Ditch the plastic. plastic releases chemicals that mimic estrogen in your body. (xenoestrogens).Chronic exposure to these chemicals can lead to hormone imbalance and put you at risk for insulin resistance, breast or prostate cancer, infertility, male impotence, and a whole host of health issues.
5. Choose non-toxic body products. 
6. Get the Sleep You Need.  While you sleep, growth hormones are released that boost your immune system and aid in tissue repair. sleep also helps control your cortisol levels.  We can help with this.  CBD, Detoxing, meditation, and all of the above can help too!
7. Manage your stress. Chronic stress causes spikes and dips in a number of different hormones including cortisol, adrenaline, prolactin, thyroid hormones, and growth hormones. Meditation and building a community of social support are proven ways to manage chronic stress.
8. Consider supplements. So many supplements are designed to support the production of certain hormones, and to detoxify the body.  Also supporting the actual glands and organs are important rebalancing hormonal levels.