Hormones have a profound effect on your mental, physical and emotional health. They play key roles in regulating your appetite, weight, mood, immune function, menstrual cycle, and everything in between.
Unfortunately, hormonal imbalances have become increasingly common with today’s lifestyle. Common signs of hormonal imbalance include exhaustion, anxiety, irregular menses, acne, bloating, severe PMS, low libido, and anovulatory menstrual cycles.
4 Ways to Naturally Balance Your Hormones
1. Eat Healthy Fats – To optimize hormone health, it is best to consume a healthy fat at each meal. Including healthy fats in your diet can help you feel fuller longer, balance blood sugar, and regulate hormones. Healthy fats include olives, pasture-raised eggs, wild salmon, avocado, ground flaxseeds, chia seeds, nuts, extra-virgin olive oil, and coconut oil.
2. Manage Stress – Stress can cause havoc on your hormones. Chronic stress causes cortisol levels (the stress hormone) to be constantly elevated. This in turn can lead to obesity, anxiety, sleeping issues, chronic inflammation, and many other health conditions. Studies show that engaging in stress-reduction behaviors like yoga, meditation, walking, and listening to relaxing music can help normalize your levels of cortisol and hormones overall.
3. Eat Fiber – Fiber can help balance hormones by stabilizing blood sugar levels, reducing cortisol levels, and getting rid of excess hormones. There are two types of fiber – insoluble, which adds bulk to stools, moving it out of the digestive tract (i.e. dark leafy greens, broccoli, cabbage) and soluble, which helps to slow the passage of food through the digestive tract (i.e. oatmeal, apples, lentils). A diet with an adequate amount of fiber will help keep you full longer and assist in weight management. Fiber can also help to eliminate excess estrogen in the body. Excess estrogen can cause hormonal imbalance by reducing progesterone levels which may lead to fertility issues.
4. Avoid Refined Sugar – Refined sugar has been shown to put stress on your adrenal glands and thyroid, causing a hormonal imbalance and inflammation. The consumption of too much sugar can lead to insulin resistance (increased blood sugar), and can further result to diabetes and heart disease. Insulin imbalance may also cause polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), a female reproductive disorder. Refined sugar is added into many processed “foods” such as bread, baked goods, soft drinks, sports drinks, ketchup, pasta sauces, and frozen meals. Look out for names such high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), cane sugar, sucrose, malt syrup, dextrose, maltodextrin (and so many more – but that’s for another blog post!).
What do balanced hormones feel like?
Balanced mood, increased/stable energy, clear skin, regular menstrual cycles, balanced libido, healthy metabolism