Hormone Harmony

Keeping our hormones in harmony is doable but not always an easy task. Our hormones are like a symphony, working in harmony — or so we hope. When one hormone is out of tune, it throws other hormones off, too. It can be a mess!

When women’s hormones are in harmony

Harmonized hormones can look like:

• Strong immune system
• Regular periods with a moderate flow & minimal or no PMS (for women in pre-menopause)
• Stable, healthy weight
• Ability to burn fat and gain muscle
• Moderate, stable appetite and minimal cravings
• Healthy, active libido
• Able to get adequate restful, restorative sleep
• Waking up feeling refreshed
• Feeling great about skin and hair
• Daily, healthy bowel movements
• Stable energy throughout the day (no crashes or dips)
• Confident, stable, happy mood
• Energy to pursue your dreams and goals
• And more…

Keeping hormones in balance – The top 10

Keeping your symphony of hormones beautifully in tune requires a bit of thought and attention. While many factors are at play, here are my top 10 helpers of hormone harmony, which are also key players in your foundational health.  I also call them the “non-negotiables,” as without them, we’re likely to send our hormones off track.

Which ones do you have dialed in? Which could use some attention?

1. Nutrient-dense, whole foods diet for your body and hormone type

We’re all unique and at different phases of our lives — biologically, mentally, emotionally, genetically, geographically, etc. It’s important that your diet supports you and your hormones (not your colleague’s, your sister’s, your best friend’s, or that guru on Netflix).

Getting adequate nutrients for your body’s needs is essential, and not every moment of our lives requires the same levels of nutrients. Even men and women have different needs at different phases of life.

Nutritional needs change with:

• your age and the phase of life you’re in (reproductive years, perimenopause, menopause)
• your activity, a stressed-out corporate traveler will have different needs than a work-from-home marathoner, or woman trying to get pregnant.
• your stress levels, the bigger your stress load, the more your nutritional needs shift
• illness or health challenges
• your genetics and your environment
• your lifestyle
• your goals.

There are a few guidelines that apply to everyone, such as:

Skip artificial ingredients, processed or refined foods as much as possible (nutrient density is key, and you won’t find that in processed foods!), such as refined sugars, white flours, highly refined seed oils, or fats such as sunflower or canola oil, margarine or shortening, or any foods made from these.

Working with a knowledgeable practitioner can help dial in your current nutritional needs and make necessary tweaks as your needs shift — keeping you and your hormones continually supported.

Blood sugar balance is equally important here, and a nutrition plan supporting your blood sugar levels is essential for hormone harmony.

2. Support your gut & your poo

A healthy gut helps regulate and balance hormones. Some hormones are even produced in the gut. Gut health is important for being able to absorb the nutrients we eat. It’s not just what we eat but also what we can absorb.

Healthy digestion and absorption starts in the olfactory system with our sense of smell. Then it moves to the mouth, the esophagus, the stomach, the liver, gallbladder, pancreas, and small intestine, the colon, and then out of the body. Each play a part and keeping our digestive juices flowing and transitioning at adequate speed, and supporting the microbiota in our gut, helps keep our gut, body and hormones in balance.

Having less than one bowel movement a day can lead to higher than optimal estrogen levels, amongst other things. This is the primary way we excrete estrogen. When you’re constipated, estrogen can be reabsorbed in the gut and re-circulate in the body. Regular solid, healthy bowel movements help move out waste before it gets reabsorbed. This goes for hormone waste as well as other waste.

Moving waste out in a timely fashion helps reduce the burden on our liver, the regulator of our stress, sex, and thyroid hormones, as well as others.

3. Hydrate

Without adequate hydration, our body functions sub-optimally. Period. Taking care to getting enough clean water and hydrating foods, while reducing dehydrating ones such as caffeine, diuretics and alcohol, can help you keep things optimized. Balance is key here.

4. Sleep

Aaah, sleep. You know you need it and you know you need a sufficient amount. It can sometimes escape women with hormone imbalance which can be frustrating. Prioritizing sleep in every way can be helpful here — optimal and consistent timing, restful location, cool temperature, adequate darkness and quiet, winding down and dimming the lights, and reducing stress.

It takes a bit of trial and error and some tweaks. Like nutrition, our needs change often. As stress levels and stress load rise, so does our sleep need and attention to restoration. Your hormones depend on it.

5. Movement in balance

There are so many amazing benefits to movement and exercise. Getting the right amount for your body and your current hormone status is key to finding and keeping your hormones in harmony.

Quality, duration, frequency and intensity are important to consider when it comes to hormone health. Doing much more than your body is ready for, or not including enough time in between sessions (for recovery), can send a women’s hormones into havoc. And what’s too much for one woman may not be for another.

Overtraining or exercising for your body or hormone status can initiate a cortisol response and over time create a situation of chronic stress, leading to burnout, loss of period, infertility, and other hormonal issues.

For someone who already has a heavy stress load, even a small amount of strenuous exercise can be the tipping point, leading to hormone havoc.

I recommend honoring where your body is at now and start there. If you’re tired, struggling with sleep, your weight, or other hormone-related issues, reducing your movement and exercise or reducing the intensity can be beneficial to your hormones and goals.

Whenever you’re increasing your movement and exercise load, do so only when your body is ready to take on more stress and go slowly. Listen to your body and have patience. Building fitness takes time and can be very rewarding when you’re in it for the long haul or detrimental when rushed.

When working with a trainer or fitness professional, I recommend working with someone well-educated on women’s hormones. I’m also happy to help.

Dearest Reader,

This information is for educational purposes only and not intended to diagnose or highlight imperfections. You've likely landed here following my quiz at YourHormoneQuiz.com.

No matter what you discover in these results, you're beautiful and perfect as you are. You're good enough and trying hard enough.

We're all unique and will experience hormonal shifts differently. This information is here to highlight that, despite what we've been told, we're not just little men — our bodies work differently — and if our hormones have us feeling less than our best, we absolutely can do something about it.

My aim is to support and empower you on your journey, where you need and want it. Take what you need, leave what you don't.

No judgement here, just good honest support.

XO, Laurie

6. Reduce exposure to environmental toxins

Environmental toxins — many of which are endocrine disruptors — are hard to avoid. However, by “living a detox lifestyle,” as one of my mentors calls it, you’re supporting your body to handle what you can’t escape.

You’ll find environmental toxins in pesticides of non-organic foods, additives, and artificial ingredients, plastic food containers, commonly used beauty products, household detergents and cleaners, medications, the off-gassing of paints, glues, solvents, and most commercially made furniture, the air outdoors as well as indoors, and more.

Thankfully, there’s much we can do to reduce our exposure and simultaneously reduce the burden on our body’s detoxification pathways and known endocrine disruptors. By choosing your products wisely, you choose to reduce your exposure.

7. Watch your alcohol intake & give cigarettes and secondhand smoke the boot.

I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news here, but I’ve got to include this one. As little as one glass of wine or cocktail a week can negatively impact your hormones, especially during certain times of the month. Ugh. Like it or not, it’s proven.

Those who are moderate drinkers, with a 3 small glasses a week, might notice increased estrogen (leading to estrogen dominance) or an impact on their overall insulin response. More than 3 glasses a week for women constitutes heavy drinking, which comes with even more health and hormone challenges. As we age and our hormones shift, you might find your body, health, or hormones are more greatly impacted. This is when limiting, or even eliminating, our intake becomes even more important to our hormonal health.

Heavy, moderate, and even light drinking can burden our liver, the powerhouse for hormone regulation. Keeping our liver healthy helps keep our hormones in harmony.

One of my favorite at-home ways to test your body’s reaction to alcohol is with a continuous glucose monitor.

8. Easy on over-the-counter meds, and consider risks of prescription meds that could be reduced or avoided.

Check with your physician first. Pharmaceutical meds can be hard on your liver and increase your body’s toxic load. Take stock of your medication use and explore ways, if any, that you can reduce your regular use of medication. Some medications are important and necessary, but I’m not talking about them.

Are you using medication to push through pain, to numb feelings, out of fear, to avoid resting when you need it (such as when you’re ill)?  If so, consider reducing what you can bit by bit. Check-in with a trusted health professional who can help you develop a plan and find other solutions.

9. Mindset

Our thoughts and words speak to our brain, which reacts based on the signals it receives. Our hypothalamus, the conductor-in-chief and master gland of our hormonal symphony, picks up the subtle and not-so-subtle signals of safety or danger that we interpret. Then, it decides how best to conduct our hormonal situation. Safety means we repair, renew, grow, reproduce, and digest. Danger means alertness; we store energy (often as fat) while consuming quick energy.

10. Balance stress.

Dial down stress-inducing and dial-up stress-reducing activities. If your stress response is chronically activated (which can happen for several reasons), your neuroendocrine system will be at work managing it. In this state, your body prioritizes survival and not optimum hormone balance.

Balancing stress is like the movement of the ocean and the daily balancing of the high tide with the low. As our daily stress load rises, we match it with daily stress-lowering practices, day in and day out, helping to keep a consistent flow of harmony.

When hormone therapy can help bring your hormones back into harmony

Our nutrition and lifestyle (that’s a big one!) play an important role here. At times, though, women could require hormone restoration with hormone therapy to help bring hormones back in balance — either with bio-identical or synthetic hormones. This could be temporary or long-term, depending on the woman and situation.

The choice is up to you and your trusted physician, and it’s always a good idea to thoroughly educate yourself on the options and risks first. Most physicians will not be up to date on the latest or full-scope of options available, the most recent research, nor the risks of either using hormone therapy or not.

Take the time to seek out a knowledgeable practitioner for support here, whether a Functional MD or ND specialized in women’s hormones or a specialized functional health coach who’ll support you in working with your physician.

Thyroid, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and even cortisol can be part of a hormone replacement protocol. But for hormone replacement therapy to be successful in the long haul, dialing in hormone-supporting nutrition and lifestyle is essential. That’s your hormone-harmonizing foundation. Without it, the structure will eventually come crashing down.

Many practitioners believe that it’s important to start with the foundations before bringing in exogenous hormones for most hormone-balancing needs. When our foundational health and environment are hormone-supportive, hormones often restore balance.  At other times, simultaneously bringing in exogenous hormones while optimizing nutrition and lifestyle can be equally supportive and necessary.

Opting for hormone replacement therapy without optimizing nutrition and lifestyle to support it is not recommended as it can lead to further imbalance and is more likely to fail at offering preferred results.

References:

https://academic.oup.com/alcalc/article/35/5/417/206575

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0149763498000189

This information is for educational purposes only and is not intended to diagnose, manage, or treat disease or serious conditions. Always check with your doctor before making any changes. It's important to consult a well-informed health practitioner for personal advice about your situation before relying on general information — we're all wonderfully unique.