Balanced Hormones

Tips for Balancing Your Hormones Naturally

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Hormones are produced by the body’s glands and secreted into the body’s circulation as part of the endocrine system. While sedentary lifestyles and poor diets can play a role in developing an imbalance, hormone levels do decline with age. Some individuals may see a more dramatic decline than others. A balanced diet and lifestyle can enhance hormonal health and allow us to perform optimally. 

A hormonal imbalance has a substantial influence on overall health. Sleep troubles, painful breasts, weight gain, bloating, migraines, skin problems, and even impaired cognitive function are all symptoms of imbalance. 

Many of the body’s primary systems perform significantly better when your hormones are balanced! Happy Hormone Cottage’s team specializes in Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy (BHRT). This assists those individuals suffering from hormonal imbalances or deficits in achieving more natural and sustained hormone levels. 

In this article, we’ll discuss what you can do to balance your hormones naturally. 

How to Balance Your Hormones Naturally

Consider the following tips almost anyone can implement to help balance hormone levels. 

1. Get Enough Sleep

Proper sleep allows for the regulation of insulin, cortisol, leptin, and ghrelin human growth hormone levels. A minimum of seven hours of uninterrupted sleep per night is necessary, preferably with a similar bedtime and waking time. 

Poor sleep decreases hormones that indicate when a person feels full and increases stress and hunger hormones, and insulin resistance. The results of sleep disturbance and the negative effects this has on hormones include diabetes, obesity, and adrenal fatigue. Since a healthy bedtime and waking routine is necessary for a good hormonal balance, a bedtime ritual, such as reading a book until a certain time, can help to prepare one for sleep. 

A magnesium supplement can help promote sleep as it reduces stress and assists in regulating the body clock to stabilize hormone release. It is also useful for relieving PMS and menstrual cramps. 

Blue light (from electronic devices) may disrupt the sleep cycle, which can cause the suppression of melatonin. This could affect the circadian rhythm, so it should be avoided before bedtime. 

A drink of water first thing in the morning is a good practice that flushes the stomach to balance the lymphatic system. It is also a good idea to be exposed to some sunlight first thing and throughout the day to increase the brain’s release of serotonin, which prompts calm focus. At night, less light prompts the production of melatonin which aids sleep. 

At Happy Hormone Cottage, we recognize the vital function of sleep. As such, we strive to help all our clients achieve a healthy balance of hormones and the best quality of restful and restorative sleep. Our specialists may assess your current health and find ways to boost your well-being and improve your sleeping patterns.  

2. Take Part in Regular Exercise

Physical exercise influences hormonal health significantly. Almost all hormones are positively affected by adequate amounts of the right kind of exercise. 

Exercise improves blood flow to the muscles and increases hormone receptor sensitivity, which results in enhanced delivery of nutrients and hormone signals. 

The risk of disease and muscle mass decline with aging can be minimized by strength training, walking, aerobics, and other forms of exercise. 

Growth hormone, which keeps a person lean and energetic, is positively influenced by exercise. At the same time, physical activity also lowers the insulin resistance risk as well as the likelihood of developing metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes.

3. Monitor Your Food Intake

Consistent overeating can cause long-term metabolic issues. Even overeating for short periods can affect levels of fats and increase oxidative stress. There is an uptick in insulin resistance when ceramides (fat cells in the skin) increase. 

Sugar elevates insulin and is often a factor in metabolic disease, disrupting the gut microbiome and reducing leptin production and insulin resistance. A diet that limits sugar intake can improve hormonal health and help to keep insulin levels in check.

Sugar-sweetened drinks are the main source of added sugars, and fructose is commonly used in fruit juice, soft drinks, sports, and energy drinks. Lowering the intake of sugary drinks and other added sugar can improve hormone health.

 Other food sensitivities (such as gluten intolerance) contribute to inflammation and hormonal imbalances, including elevated cortisol. A gluten-free diet generally helps avoid insulin resistance and cut down on inflammation. 

Fiber helps regulate insulin and other hormones, which assist in maintaining a healthy weight. 

Synthesis and the regulation of hormones and neurotransmitters are the results of a healthy gut which a balanced diet, plenty of fruits, vegetables, and whole foods can promote.  

A hormone-balancing diet includes leafy greens (kale, spinach, and rocket). Moderate amounts of slow-release carbohydrates like pumpkin, quinoa, sweet potato, buckwheat, brown rice, and beetroot are also important. 

Beneficial bacteria in the gut (microbiome) are stimulated by fermented foods like kombucha, miso, sauerkraut, kefir, cultured natural yogurt, and kimchi, increasing the gut microbiome and creating necessary hormones. 

Amino acids from protein and fatty acids from fats create hormones, but there should be a balance. Too much of one can throw off the balance of another. 

Eating enough protein (such as grass-fed and organic meats, eggs, beans, lentils, nuts, and seeds) stimulates the production of peptide hormones, which can help suppress appetite and leave you feeling sated. A minimum of 20–30 grams of protein – eggs, chicken breast, lentils, or fish – per meal is ideal.

 A diet high in poor quality, hormone, and antibiotic-fed meat is linked to estrogen dominance. Vegetarians and vegans, with their lower estrogen levels, usually have a better hormone balance and are less likely to experience inflammation. 

Healthy fats maintain a balance of hormones involved in appetite, and metabolism, creating the sensation that tells a person they have eaten enough. Quality fats also aid the absorption of vitamins A, D, E, and K. 

Healthy fats include: 

  • Olive oil balances hormones that regulate the appetite and stimulate fat and protein digestion.
  • Coconut oil, coconut milk, and coconut butter. Medium-chain fatty acids regulate the body’s response to insulin.
  • Grass-fed ghee or butter
  • Animal fats from grass-fed animals
  • Avocados
  • Nuts and seeds
  • Organic cow or goat/sheep dairy (full-fat cheese, full-fat raw milk, kefir)
  • Fatty fish oil or cod liver oil – contribute to heart and digestive health and benefits the brain and central nervous system. The Omega-3s also factor in balancing mood.

4. Maintain a Moderate Weight

Hormonal imbalances are associated with weight gain, insulin sensitivity, and reproductive health complications. Meanwhile, weight loss factors in improvements in insulin resistance and a lower risk of diabetes and heart disease. 

Obesity also sees diminished hormone secretion from the testes or ovaries, known as hypogonadism which indicates lower testosterone levels, the reproductive hormone in men. Women also tend to stop ovulating. Both of these are causes of infertility. Weight loss is often necessary to reverse the condition.

5. Balance Your Hormones With Hormone Replacement Therapy

The most important thing to know about hormone balance is that one can balance one’s hormones through the tips mentioned above up until the aging process begins at around age 35. This is when the aging process in the hormone world begins and then one simply doesn’t have enough hormones available to balance adequately. 

This is where the Happy Hormone Cottage strategy of refilling depleting hormone receptors with customized, compounded bioidentical hormone replacement therapy comes in. Through their cutting edge dried urine testing and the 15 page report that follows, each patient meets with one of the HHC nurse practitioners to review the results and to be prescribed, as needed, her own Bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, so each woman can live a higher quality of life for the long haul and help to not only alleviate the symptoms of a hormonal imbalance, and more importantly, to help prevent disease as one ages. 

Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy Available In Dayton, Ohio

Contact the Happy Hormone Cottage if you feel that an imbalance in hormones is interfering with your life. We’re here to listen, and we appreciate that you’re familiar with your health and can spot concerns. We are here to help in any way we can, so please don’t hesitate to contact us with any inquiries or requests for further details on bio-identical hormone treatment. We want to celebrate your success and will be there for you every step of the way on your hormone-balancing journey!

Call our office to speak with a member of our team, or schedule a consultation online today!

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