Six Easy, Effective Ways to Naturally Balance Your Hormones

Have you been struggling with skin issues, bloating, fatigue, or sleep problems? You might be surprised to discover that any or all of these issues might be connected with hormone disruption! With so many of these issues being commonplace, is it really "normal" to feel this way? And more importantly is there anything you can do about it? The answer is yes! In this article you'll be educating yourself on Six natural methods to maintain a healthy hormonal balance and enhance your well-being for life. 

Firstly, what are hormones and why should we care? 

Hormones are the chemical messengers that orchestrate the inner workings of our bodies. When these vital compounds fall out of balance, a range of unpleasant symptoms can emerge, affecting various aspects of our health. Balanced hormones are essential for healthy skin, energy levels, immune function, mood, fertility, libido, bone health, cardiovascular health, aging gracefully, and more!

There are several factors that can disrupt hormonal balance, including:

Stress

Inadequate Sleep

Poor Diet

Nutritional Deficiencies

Lack of Exercise

Obesity

Imbalanced Microbiome

Poor Liver Function

Environmental Toxins and Chemical

Here are my six top tips to support healthy hormones:

Manage Stress

Chronic stress can wreak havoc on hormonal balance by elevating cortisol and adrenaline levels. This disrupts the HPA-AXIS, affecting various hormones like estrogen, progesterone, and thyroid production.

Effective stress-reduction methods include self-care, spending time in nature, earthing, regular exercise, avoiding fasting, breathing exercises, meditation, having regular therapy or kinesiology sessions, practising yoga or Tai Chi and more. You really do need to make this a daily priority, especially if your hormones are already dysregulated. You can book a kinesiology session here

Support a Healthy Microbiome and Gut.

The microbiome is not only essential to aid with nutrient absorption, overall energy, immunity and skin health, the microbiome and the estrobolome influences hormonal balance, especially estrogen metabolism. Maintaining a balanced microbiome is key to preventing PMS symptoms!

Support a healthy microbiome by avoiding processed and sugary foods, minimizing alcohol consumption, reducing yeast containing foods and including prebiotic and probiotic-rich foods in your diet such as kimchi, sauerkraut and kefir. Consultation with a naturopath can also help support microbiome through dietary regimes, supplementing collagen, slippery elm aloe glutamine, herbs to control yeast, probiotic supplements and more.

If on medication consult with your doctor also because certain medications including antibiotics and the pill can throw off your microbiome. 

Enhance Liver Detoxification

The liver plays a crucial role in detoxifying hormones! Optimal liver function is essential to prevent the recirculation of hormones like cortisol and estrogen. Excess oestrogen worsens PMS symptoms like mood swings, cramping, clotting and tenderness. Cortisol is our long-term stress chemical, excess leads us to feel excessively focused on negativity and worry, feel more irritated, defensive and to eventually burn out.

To support your liver, wherever possible avoid specific substances including alcohol, paracetamol, smoking, plastics and environmental toxins such as pollution and provide essential nutrients, including selenium, zinc, glutathione, vitamin C, sulfur-rich foods, and foods rich in antioxidants. Several herbs are also shown to support liver health, consult a herbalist. They may suggest milk thistle, bitters, dandelion root or others. In traditional Chinese medicine foods associated with supporting the liver are bitter foods, beet root and leaves, carrots, apples, dark green leafy vegetables, onions, garlic and dandelion leaves. 

Regulate Circadian Rhythm

A well-balanced circadian rhythm is vital for healthy hormones. Disrupted sleep patterns, often caused by blue light exposure, affect hormone production.

Regulate your circadian rhythm by going to bed and waking up at the same time every, avoiding caffeine (particularly after 3pm,) avoiding blue lights after 7pm, reducing artificial light for at least an hour before bed and getting at least 15 minutes of sunlight exposure first thing in the morning.

Reduce Exposure to Chemicals and Plastics

Chemicals such as those found in beauty products, cleaning products and plastics can directly and indirectly impact hormones.

Unfortunately, plastics are everywhere. And you might think that it isn't affecting you at all… but did you know it's estimated that the average person eats a credit card worth of plastic every year? Compounds contained in plastic mimic oestrogen. Excess oestrogen as previously mentioned can be a contributing factor to very unpleasant PMS symptoms like cramping, tender breasts, bloating, clotting, and severe mood swings.

Minimizing exposure to these substances can have significant benefits for your hormonal health.

Reduce exposure by using only natural cleaning and beauty products, avoiding phthalates and BPA, limiting canned foods, and being mindful of plastics in food packaging. You can find my seven essential cleaning recipes here.

You might consider avoiding packaged or processed food, purchasing your produce from a food cooperative or bulk food retailer such as "Scoop" (bonus points for minimising waste here, too!) Purchase glass or stainless food storage containers, especially if the food is heated. Never ever leave a plastic water bottle in your car and drink from it. Heating the plastic increases the leaching of these toxic chemicals into your water manifold. 

Additionally, having indoor plants, using good ventilation or an air purifier, and washing fruits and vegetables thoroughly in apple cider vinegar or bicarb soda can help reduce exposure to harmful substances.

Get the support of a professional

This advice is good education but general in nature. Did you know that acupuncturists are amazing at supporting fertility? 

Did you know that naturopaths nutritionists or herbalists can prescribe herbs such as chaste tree berry to increase progesterone and way more? Did you know that Drs can run blood tests which help, for example you need your iron and vitamin D levels to be high and your thyroid to be functioning well for optimum fertility? 

Did you know that kinesiology has specific balances that can help and provide insight into which direction to turn to regulate stress, sleep, minimise environmental toxins and regulate hormones? Book a Kinesiology session here or get in touch. I may be able to recommend a practitioner.

All the very best of health and happiness.

E xx

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