Hormonal Balance Is Crucial For Good Health

Hormones play a large part in your body.  They help with your metabolism,  appetite, heart rate, sleep cycle, reproductive cycle, sexual function, general growth and development, mood, stress levels, and even helping maintain your body temperature.  That is a lot of things that your hormones do in your body, so if they become unbalanced a lot of things can go wrong within your body.  Almost everyone in their lifetime will experience imbalanced hormones at least once.  Hormonal imbalances are thought to only affect women, but men can have hormonal imbalances as well. 

Hormone Imbalance Causes

There are lots of things that can cause hormonal imbalances, from medical causes to even lifestyle causes.  Even through the stages of life hormonal imbalances can become more common, such as during puberty, or during menopause.  Medical causes can include PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome), being on some form of birth control, diabetes, primary ovarian insufficiency, or ovarian cancer.  These can all play a role if your hormones are unbalanced.  If you don’t suffer from one of these conditions you could be harming your hormones through your lifestyle.  Having constant or chronic stress can lead to hormonal imbalances as well as hyperglycemia (high blood sugar), hypoglycemia (low blood sugar), if you have an over or under active thyroid, having a poor diet, being overweight, being anorexic, or using steroids. 

Women may see changes in their hormones during puberty, menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, while breastfeeding, perimenopause, menopause and post menopause.  After that long list women don’t look to have much time of their lives when their hormones are ever stable.  So it is a good thing to look at ways to make sure you can stay hormonally balanced no matter what stage of life you are in.  

Hormone Imbalance Symptoms

There is a long list of symptoms of imbalanced hormones since they play such a big role in your body.  If you see that you are experiencing any of the symptoms you will want to talk to your health care provider.  Your doctor may need to run some blood tests to see what hormones in your body are imbalanced before they help you with how to treat it.  Symptoms to look for are heavy, irregular or painful periods.  Other symptoms can include osteoporosis, hot flashes, night sweats, vaginal dryness, breast tenderness, indigestion, constipation, diarrhea, acne, or increased hair growth on the face, neck, chest, back.  More symptoms can be infertility, weight gain, sudden weight loss, skin tags, deepening voice or clitoral enlargement.  

Hormone Imbalance Treatments

If you have imbalance hormones and you aren’t on a type of birth control your doctor may suggest this as a treatment.  By adding hormones to your body may help you if you are lacking certain ones.  You can also look into other hormone replacement drugs.  If you are trying to become pregnant you can look into doing IVF. 

There are some natural ways to help balance your hormones if you want to try first, before you go to medication.  The main thing to try and do is to live a healthy lifestyle.  It can do wonders for your hormones.  Making sure you get good sleep at night, eat healthy, and exercise regularly can help manage lots of the hormones that are in your body. 

Make sure you eat protein at every meal.  This does not mean you need to eat a steak every meal, but a good source of protein at each meal can help release the hormones that control appetite.  This will decrease the levels of hunger hormones your body produces making you feel fuller longer.  This will also help you from overeating or wanting to snack constantly. Overeating as well as undereating can affect your hormone balance so you want to make sure you are getting enough to eat, but not over doing it.

Sugary foods or refined carbohydrates should be something you try and decrease in your diet to balance your hormones.  Eliminating or decreasing these will lower your insulin levels, which in the end help balance those hormones.  So decrease those sugary drinks, and snacks.

Some things to focus on eating to help with your hormones are green tea which has huge health benefits to it, healthy fats such as avocados, coconut oil, and omega-three fatty acids.

A good amount of daily fiber helps with your digestion and gut health too so make sure to add in a good portion of fiber.

If you struggle with managing your stress learn what best works for you.  Whether that is meditation, yoga, taking a walk, or even just lying in a dark room for a bit by yourself.  Learn what you can do to help decrease your stress.

Doing these things at home may help you be able to balance your hormones so you don’t experience the long list of symptoms that hormonal imbalance can cause you.  If you feel like you have any of these symptoms and feel like it is your hormones, make an appointment with your doctor.  A quick blood test will tell you if your hormones are out of whack.  With a few modifications you may be able to be hormonally balanced and no matter what stage of life you are in be able to keep your hormones balanced.