If you haven’t noticed by now, my posts are focused on creating health, rather than putting a band-aid on symptoms. When it comes to hormones – stress hormones and sex hormones – this is an area that I’ve seen many people – both men and women – but mainly women, get the brush off from their healthcare provider, with that old chestnut, “Everything looks normal.”
Maybe you’ve come to accept that what you’re experiencing is normal. However, it stands to reason that if you’re experiencing symptoms, then things aren’t normal. For a start, you weren’t designed to live in pain – headaches, backache, stomach ache etc…. Neither were you meant to have dramatic shifts and dips in mood or energy.
These are signs that you need to pay attention to. Particularly if they’re negatively impacting your life, your work, and your relationships.
Rather than mask with medication, I’m going to outline how you can begin the process of bringing your hormones back into balance.
- Focus on optimising digestion. Absorption and elimination are major factors in how well our hormones are balanced. So it’s vital that your digestion is working well so that you can absorb nutrients from food, and also eliminate efficiently and regularly. Including Probiotics is a good rule of thumb for most people.
Note: If you’re going to the bathroom LESS than once a day, this is a sign that you’re not eliminating regularly, and it’s usually something I notice in my clients with skin conditions like acne. - Consume more organic, whole foods. Non-organic foods can contain pesticides and toxins which add extra load to our gut and liver, and the adrenal and thyroid glands, making it difficult to metabolise certain hormones like oestrogen. Excess estrogen is linked to female cancers.
- Consume more fibre, provided you don’t have issues with high fibre foods. If you do, that’s a sign that you need to work on optimising your digestion
- Begin your day with a combination of Protein, Good Fat, and Fibre, as opposed to the traditional Cereals or Toast that are part of the Western Diet. This will keep your insulin and your cortisol stable. Good fat in particular is vital because cholesterol is a building block of your sex hormones, contrary to some of the dated nutrition advice that demonised fat! If you’re going to avoid anything, you’re better off avoiding sugary, starchy, salty processed foods!
Note: If you’re craving salty foods, this is also a sign that your adrenals aren’t functioning well. - Live in balance. That means:
- Exercise regularly, focusing on more restorative exercises as opposed to hard workouts
- Rest. It’s part of the DRESS for Health Success protocol for a reason! It’s proven to re-balance the body including your hormones, and facilitate healing. So make good quality sleep a priority, and schedule your day so that you’ve built in periods of recovery. Believe it or not, you can actually achieve more by doing less!
These 5 steps are a safe place to begin so that you can start feeling better without the need for harmful, synthetic hormones, or prescription medications. If you already live like this, and are still experiencing issues, then it is worth looking deeper.
If you are feeling burnt-out, I help high-achieving professionals become the CEOs of their health, by leveraging the data from functional lab work to discover why your hormones are out of whack.
That way we’ll know how to re-balance them through creating a personalised Diet, Rest, Exercise, Stress Management and Smart Supplement (D.R.E.S.S.) plan and coach you to success within 90 days!
You can to set up a video call and see if we are a good fit. If we are, we can get your labs ordered right then and there, and get you on the road to optimal health from that very moment!
