Simple Steps to

Hormone Health

Hormone balance is a complex topic because imbalances can present themselves in a myriad of (not so fun) ways. Future blogs will tackle specific hormonal challenges, but I encourage you to start here!

Despite the nuances of our hormones, there are 3 strategies that can help all of us. No matter what your specific concerns might be, you can begin to find hormonal balance with these simple steps.

Step One

Reduce your stress level and support your adrenal glands.

It’s easier said than done, but one of the most significant steps we can take to balance our hormones is reducing stress as much as possible. This may mean taking more time for yourself, outsourcing a big task, exercising, getting a massage, or learning to say no.

This helps by allowing our adrenal glands to rest and heal. Our adrenal glands are our stress handling glands – they secrete the hormones that regulate our energy and stress response. In today’s world, most of us have exhausted adrenals. We need to give them support because these tiny little workhorses drive our endocrine system – they produce estrogen, testosterone, progesterone, and DHEA.

If our adrenal glands are exhausted from stress, this leads to hormone imbalances.

Supporting our adrenals means taking specific nutrients to nourish them back to health. These include minerals, vitamin C and the B complex of vitamins. I also like to include an adrenal glandular and an herbal tonic. Herbs that support adrenal health include Ashwagandha, Licorice, Ginseng, Rhodiola, and Withania. The herb I chose depends on how the adrenal fatigue is presenting itself in each individual client, but they can all be beneficial to try.

Getting plenty of sleep is also important when we are trying to restore our adrenal glands and balance our hormones. As a classic overachiever with 4 kids, I completely understand how challenging this sounds! However, I found that when I started going to bed earlier, I got more accomplished by being rested than when I powered through my day on caffeine. Give it a try a few nights a week and see the difference for yourself.

Step Two

Detoxification to restore liver and colon health.

Our liver and digestive system also play important roles in balancing our hormones. While your endocrinologist has probably never assessed these aspects of your health, holistic health professionals understand that these systems are vital to helping you achieve hormonal health.

Our liver acts as a filter to rid the blood stream of harmful substances and excess hormones. When harmful levels of hormones (particularly estrogens) cycle through our liver, it helps bind up the excess and convert the more harmful type of estrogen to a less harmful type to keep our levels of estrogen proportional to progesterone.

If your liver is not functioning properly, it can’t release excess hormones into the gut for elimination, and this results in imbalance.

There are some simple strategies for cleansing the liver and reducing high estrogen levels in the body. These include drinking lemon water and green tea, eating more cruciferous vegetables, and ensuring you have plenty of fiber in your diet to facilitate regular bowel movements.

I also like to put clients with hormone imbalance on a 2-week liver detoxification program.

Step Three

Eat for blood sugar balance.

Our adrenal glands play a big role in supporting blood sugar balance. This is another reason to give them the nourishing support they so desperately need in our modern world.

Our diet is also critical to maintain a healthy blood sugar balance. When we eat meals that are balanced in protein, carbohydrates, fat, and fiber this keeps our blood sugar and insulin levels steady. This is ideal for our adrenal glands, so they don’t have the extra demands of trying to keep our blood sugar in check by secreting hormones such as cortisol.

When our blood sugar spikes, this causes insulin levels to escalate too. When insulin is high, we produce more testosterone, our levels of sex hormone binding globulin decline leading to an increase in estrogen, and to make matters worse, our cortisol increases which depletes progesterone.

Whew! That is a lot of hormonal chaos just from blood sugar issues!

We can do something to prevent this hormonal roller coaster and that is simply limiting our intake of sugar and refined carbohydrates. When you do consume carbohydrates, balance them with some protein, fat, and/or fiber as those all help to buffer against blood sugar spikes.

Adjusting your diet can help you find the hormonal balance you’re looking for. I address diet with my clients right away because it has such a profound effect on our health.

Finding Balance

Our hormones are powerful biological chemicals and when they are not balanced, it can wreak havoc on our health. I work with women with very complex hormonal issues, but we always start with these 3 simple steps. They are the foundation of any program designed to help you find balance so you can thrive!