Everything you need to know about hormonal imbalance

When your hormones are balanced you feel good, like you are on your path and you’re here with a purpose.

When you don’t feel good, this is your body screaming at you to take care of yourself. Whether your symptoms are hair loss, cramping, fatigue, anxiety, unexplained weight gain or weight loss, sore breasts, and so on – your body is communicating with you that something is out of balance.

These symptoms are a sign you might be having hormonal changes and need to take action towards balancing your hormones.

 

Reasons to consider a Hormone Imbalance Test

Hormone tests can sometimes be valuable. If you’re the type of person who likes to see data, then this is a good option for you – but ultimately hormone imbalances become clear with symptoms.

Your doctor will try to give you an accurate assessment of your hormone levels, but the test for hormones is much different from others. Your hormone levels change from day to day.

Hormones depend on the day of your menstrual cycle, the last time you ate, the medication you use, the intensity of your stress, and many other factors. So a single test won’t tell you whether you have different hormonal imbalances.

 

When to test your hormone levels

Testing for hormone imbalances is only valuable at certain times of the cycle – the wrong timing will result in a waste of money.

Taking a hormone test on your period, when all your hormones are the lowest, isn’t going to show anything.

Progesterone

If you don’t ovulate, you’re not making progesterone, so there’s no point in wasting your money on a progesterone hormone test.

If you have a cycle that’s less than 21 days, it will show that you’re not making progesterone. You’ve probably been wondering, why are my cycles super short? It’s probably you didn’t ovulate therefore didn’t make progesterone.

Estrogen

Estrogen and progesterone always interact, but the best time to test for estrogen levels in isolation would be around day 10 of your cycle of a 28-day cycle. Ideally, you can test both estrogen and progesterone in the Luteal phase, about a week after ovulation.

Ovulation

You can get a test, like the luteinizing hormone (LH) test at a general pharmacy, to see if you’re ovulating. If you do ovulate, try to time your hormone test around day 21 of your cycle – about one week after you ovulate when you have progesterone peaking.

If you have a 28 day to 32 day cycle then it would be around day 21.

Book a hormone test about a week after you’ve ovulated to be sure you are measuring progesterone in your test.

Testosterone

Testosterone will be highest around ovulation. If you want to get this test, you should time it around ovulation to see if you’re making this hormone sufficiently.

Since your hormone cycle is fluctuating, you need to be mindful about the time of the month you take hormone tests.

Keep in mind, this is all just back up data.

If you don’t feel good and you want to change something – you need to eat with your cycle and and focus on lowering stress. Then you will get into balance and finally feel better.

 

Diving into the reasons for your hormonal imbalance

Hormonal imbalances come from disconnection of the self.

The more synthetic products you use, and the more often you betray your natural self and cause stress, the more imbalanced you’ll feel.

The more self love and the connection to yourself, the more and in balance you are.

Hormonal imbalance can also be associated with health issues or medical conditions – they manifest in painful periods, unwanted hair growth, or issues with your sex hormones.

 

What is the main cause of hormonal imbalance?

Symptoms of hormonal imbalance show up mainly with excessive stress, poor sleeping habits, a poor diet, medical conditions, and menopause. These are our body’s chemical messengers.

But the root causes of hormone imbalance is really the connection between stress and nutrition.

Hormone related stress in your life

Stress, whether that is mental, emotional or physical, will cascade to affect all other hormones. And bring them out of balance.

If you have good stress management techniques, you can handle lifestyle changes more smoothly. This means you’re flowing with the different levels of intensity at different phases of your cycle.

Living in flow and managing stress shows by having good communication with your colleagues, yourself, and your loved ones. Can you, instead of suppressing emotions, work with your emotions and allow them to flow through?

 

Nutrition and hormone issues

If you’re not eating food that contains the nutrients you need, then that’s also going to bring your hormones out of balance.

Women’s health is different from men’s – we need specific foods to stay balanced during each phase of the cycle. You can see a sample of the recommended foods in my course to optimize women’s health:

A blood test can help determine if you’re deficient in any vitamins or minerals. Find out and then try to focus on foods rich in these nutrients. If needed, take nutritional supplements without synthetic additives like colors or fillers, until you feel better.

When we are most disconnected with ourselves, we bring about hormone related conditions. When you come back to your connection with yourself, you bring yourself back into balance and how nature intended for you to be.

 

Hormonal imbalance: Symptoms, causes and treatment

Hormones have incredibly important roles in our lives, so even minor hormonal imbalances can be uncomfortable. Let’s lay out a bit of background information.

Hormones are chemicals produced by glands in the reproductive and endocrine systems. Hormones travel through the bloodstream through tissues and organs, supplying messages to your organs. Hormones handle a large portion of the major bodily processes – so an imbalance in hormones could impact many physiological functions. Your hormones regulate:

• Insulin (blood sugar hormones)
• Steroid hormones
• Growth hormones
• Adrenaline

 

Common medical conditions in women related to hormonal imbalance

Menopause

Women often turn to hormone replacement medications when experiencing strong menopausal symptoms. It’s uncomfortable to experience vaginal dryness, gain weight, or get the common night sweats. Hormone replacement therapy can bring menopausal women more comfort – but living in alignment with your cycle will be the ticket long-term relief from menopausal symptoms.

PCOS

People with polycystic ovary syndrome also usually turn to medication because they are led to believe they have cysts on their ovaries. Often, this isn’t the case. PCOS is caused by an imbalance of the hormones, usually due to too many androgen hormones. PCOS cannot be ruled out with ultrasound. You’ll need to test for androgens in a hormone panel test.

Thyroid

Under- or over-active thyroid or thyroid disease can be a cause for concerns in women as well. When your thyroid gland doesn’t produce enough hormones, it can deregulate your metabolism. Stress is the biggest culprit of imbalanced thyroid hormones (and all other hormones).

A lot of these common medical conditions can be regulated by targeting the root: your daily nutrition and levels of stress. Read on for more symptoms related to hormonal imbalance.

 

Common symptoms often caused by hormonal imbalances

Mood swings during your menstrual cycle

This is coming from a lack of awareness of the woman’s cycle. And women tend to self diagnose a lot.

The reality is that most don’t realize, for example, that ovulation is followed by an estrogen drop. This leads to the self-diagnosis of “I have mood swings”. Having the awareness of which emotions come up because of certain hormonal fluctuations in your cycle is a huge stress & anxiety reliever because you understand the emotional & thought patterns. This is what I call Hormone Cycle Awareness.

Feeling too much or too little?

The question comes up: Why am I feeling this way? The mood swings affect us so much because we attach ourselves to these emotions. It’s not necessarily a science-based phenomenon.

When you don’t feed yourself nutritious food and stress out, it’s going to affect your emotions. The medical system then labels you with a “hormone disorder” that they remedy with estrogen tablets or hormonal birth control.

That’s why it’s crucial to be aware of where you are in your cycle.

Especially after the estrogen drop post-ovulation when we enter the Luteal phase, women are naturally more sensitive and have higher levels of stress. These naturally higher levels of stress help us protect ourselves and our potential baby because our estrogen levels are lowering and our body produces more progesterone to nurture the potentially fertilized egg in utero.

 

Post-Birth Control Symptoms

Other common symptoms of hormonal imbalance are acne or changes in body hair.

Many women can go through depression, weight gain, hot flashes, and other confusing symptoms when quitting hormonal birth control because the body tries to regulate hormones after being dependent on synthetic daily hormones from the pill or IUD.

Hormonal birth control depletes your gut microbiome, gets rid of your stress response system, lowers your libido, and disconnects your brain from your ovaries. It even changes your sense of smell so you can’t find your ideal partner.

It suppresses every vital system in your body so that you’re too unhealthy to give birth.

Hormonal birth control is not going to fix anything

If you’ve taken hormonal birth control at a young age, you are more at risk of depression, acne, hair loss and other symptoms during and after coming off hormonal birth control.

It is a band-aid to cover up some symptoms, but it causes so many other symptoms, increased risk of cancer and chronic or auto-immune disease due to weakening your immune system.

Other reasons for skin issues

If you didn’t take hormonal birth control and you’re having these issues, we can go back to our main culprits: stress and nutrition. If you’re too stressed, you’re likely not absorbing the right amount of nutrients, even if you’re eating a healthy diet.

When you put yourself in a fight or flight mode, or survival mode, your body cannot be in rest and digest mode.

Keep in mind: your skin changes throughout your cycle. Your hair and skin will be more dry in your Menstrual & Luteal phases, but more hydrated in your Follicular & Ovuation phases.

It’s important to look at what kind of products you’re using. For example, what kind of toxic products, cleaning products, or makeup do you use that could be impacting your acne?

As women, we naturally have different moods and we naturally have different types of skin throughout the menstrual cycle. But if your hormone levels are out of balance, you might notice extreme fluctuations or drastic changes.

Period problems and symptoms caused by hormone imbalances (Mainly cramps and PMDD)

Women often experience irregular periods or unintentional periods. They’re considered irregular when they occur outside of the ‘normal’ range, about 26 to 35 days. Some important questions to ask yourself:

• Are periods suddenly more painful or more intense than before?
• Are there any problems with your menstrual cycle?
• Are you logging your menstruation, and how long you have bled?

It always comes down to stress levels-mental, emotional, physical-and nutrition.

When you have a craving for chocolate, are you going for a Twix or cacao? Cacao has the full benefits of magnesium to relax your muscles.

Are you going for a piece of organic fruit or a piece of pie that came out of a package?

Your body’s metabolism changes throughout your cycle and your ovaries release hormones to carry you through the phases towards reproduction. Living, eating, and exercising in alignment with those hormones will affect your PMS & PMDD.

PMDD is a severe form of PMS where attachment to emotions & symptoms take over your life.

Living in tune with your cycle by eating well & having stress management tools will alleviate and even get rid of PMS & PMDD.

A tip is to take it easy during Menstruation – adding intensive exercise on top of irregular periods or heavy bleeding will only add more stress to your body. You’ll notice a boost in energy if you do light exercise or stretching during this time, rather than trying to hit your personal best at the gym.

 

Fertility is affected by hormone imbalances

Fertility has gone down by 50% in the last 50 years. This synthetic, male-dominated world we live in leaves no surprise why women have so many hormonal imbalances.

When you balance your hormones, you optimize your fertility. We’re on Earth to continue the cycle of life – that’s what this vessel is doing.

Fertility problems are a product of the system that we’ve been raised in. So the question arises: how can we detach from the system and be more connected with ourselves?

Unlearn the food pyramid. Stop supporting fast food business that uses agriculture filled with pesticides and as well as mass-production animal abuse.

Start living in flow with your cycle, it’s what nature intended. You are nature and your mind & body thrive on natural, nutrient-dense foods as well as spending time in nature.

Be more at peace, follow your passions, and follow your heart.

 

Living in balance/alignment will improve your life and hormonal imbalances

Since the beginning of the industrial era, we’ve lived in a masculine world made for men. The 9-5 working hours are based on the male 24hr hormone cycle.

Hormonal birth control is synthetic testosterone that brings us into the ‘nine to five’. Essentially they’re saying: Grab the women and make them more like men.

A great example of that system is McDonalds: make food fast so that people can go to work quicker. They make the food full of seed oils and other synthetic ingredients, like subsidized corn, soy, and wheat filled with pesticides that have destroyed the once-fertile soils. It brings your health down, and your mind into the system: the rat race.

This male system is not aligned with women’s hormones and fertility. So it’s your personal work to break out of the system and discover what feels natural.

Balance your estrogen and progesterone by living more in alignment with your true nature

You need stress management and good nutrition to fix these. Understand the hormone cycle by realizing: I have more fear in the Follicular phase and I have more shame and guilt in the Luteal phase. How can I use these as catalysts to improve my life?

It always comes down to self love, stress management, and nutrition: I deserve the best quality food because I want to be able to help people and be of service to people. I want to be at my best so I can give my best.

Check out the Hormone Cycle Awareness eBook or join my online 3-month Group Program for more tips, a deeper understanding of your menstrual cycle, and how to finally get rid of your hormonal imbalances.