What is Hormonal Imbalance and How to Fix it?
Do you know what causes the hormonal imbalance? And how to balance your hormones in a week? As you know, hormones have intense influences on your mental, physical, and emotional health. They are actually the chemical substances that act as chemical messengers in your body. In fact, these messengers control and coordinate activities throughout the body.
HORMONES ARE VERY POWERFUL THINGS. THEY PLAY A KEY ROLE IN CONTROLLING YOUR ENERGY LEVELS.
Hormonal imbalance has become so common in today’s modern lifestyle. In fact, some hormones decrease with age, and some people face a more drastic decrease than others.
When you have a hormonal imbalance, either you’ve too much or you’ve too little of a particular hormone. Sometimes, even tiny changes in hormones affect your whole body.
THE MORE BALANCED YOUR HORMONE LEVELS, THE HIGHER YOU PERFORM PHYSICALLY, MENTALLY, AND EMOTIONALLY.
Similarly, you can think of hormones like a pizza recipe. Adding any ingredient more or less than the required amount will surely affect the final product. So, you need to take an adequate amount of nutritious diet and opt for a healthy lifestyle to improve your hormonal health. Gradually, you’ll feel better and do your best.
Signs of Hormonal Imbalance
TO COPE WITH HORMONAL DISORDER, YOU NEED TO CHANGE YOUR LIFESTYLE.
Do you know your hormones play an integral role in your overall health? Due to their essential role in the body, sometimes even a slight hormonal imbalance can affect a wide range of body functions. Hormonal imbalance depends on which glands or hormones are not properly working.
Do you know what happens to your body if your hormones are out of balance?
Imbalance hormones are never a good thing. The hormones in your body need to remain at a balanced level to keep your body running smoothly. An imbalance in hormones can range from drowsiness and fatigue to severe health disorders.
There’s a wide range of signs or symptoms that can refer to a hormonal imbalance. But remember, these symptoms don’t necessarily mean that you have a hormonal imbalance. These signs or symptoms include:
- Incomprehensible weight gain and weight loss
- appetite
- increased thirst
- headaches
- skin rashes
- dehydrated skin
- insomnia or sleep problems
- digestive issues
- anxiety
- bloating
- tenderness of breast
- irregular, heavy, missed, frequent or stopped menstrual cycles
- chronic acne
- ongoing fatigue
- loss of muscular mass
- depression
- mood swings
- vaginal dryness or itching
- hyperpigmentation of the skin
- pain and swelling in the joints
- constipation
- extreme sensitivity to cold or heat
- visits to the washroom, i.e., more or less than usual
- infertility
- night sweats
- hair loss
- pelvic pain
- cold hand and feet
- trouble concentrating
- palpitations
- purple stretch marks
- problems with blood sugar
- uterine fibroids
- low sex drive
Causes of Hormonal Imbalance
Everybody, at some point in their life, experience hormonal imbalance or fluctuations. There are numerous causes of hormonal imbalance, and these causes differ accordingly depending on which glands or hormones are affected. Besides, hormonal imbalance can also occur when endocrine glands don’t work properly.
Causes of hormonal imbalance include:
- Extreme stress
- Overproduction of glucagon
- hypothyroidism (when the thyroid is underactive)
- hyperthyroidism (when the thyroid is overactive)
- overproduction of the parathyroid hormone
- the underproduction of parathyroid hormone
- poor diet
- being overweight
- overproduction of the parathyroid hormone
- the underproduction of parathyroid hormone
- birth control medicines
- anorexia
- benign cysts or tumours
- injury of endocrine gland
- severe allergic infections
- iodine deficiency
- cancers involving endocrine glands
- low levels of cortisol
- exposure to pollutants and toxins
- exposure to disturbing endocrine chemicals such as pesticides and herbicides
Simple Steps to Fix Your Hormonal Imbalance at Home
Indeed, hormones play a significant role in ensuring the wellness and proper functioning of the body. In this regard, Write to Aspire provides the complete guide to your hormonal imbalance. We’ll discuss here the natural ways to balance your hormones naturally at home in 7 simple steps. Most people don’t know their signs can be related to hormonal imbalance. So, read in detail and understand:
- What can you do when your hormones are out of balance?
- How to fix this issue?
- And how to balance your hormones in a week by following some simple tips?
1. Regular Exercise
Often people turn to supplements to treat their hormonal health issues like stress, anxiety, weight gain, and trouble sleeping. But the best way how to balance your hormones in a week may lie in your physical activity and a healthy lifestyle. Doctors recommend exercise and physical activity to regulate your hormonal issues and enhance your quality of life.
A GOOD DIET AND PHYSICAL ACTIVITY IMPROVE THE PERFORMANCE OF THE WHOLE BODY IN EVERY WAY.
Remember that exercise is a journey. Making exercise as a part of your lifestyle gives you a lot of health benefits. Moreover, high-intensity exercises like crunches, squats, pull-ups, push-ups, and lunges are ideal for how to balance your hormones in a week. Yoga experts recommend cardio workouts and strength training to maximize the benefits of health. Furthermore, consistency is the key to balancing your hormones and your fitness goals.
2. How to Deal with Your Stress to Balance Hormones?
Can stress upset my hormones?
It’s absolutely right. Stress disrupts your body’s hormonal balance. Too much stress affects your menstrual cycle and causes infertility in women. People who are suffering from chronic stress, depression, and anxiety are at a higher risk of health problems such as high blood pressure, insomnia, thyroid issues, fatigue, and especially gastrointestinal issues like diarrhea and constipation. By and large, when stress creates a hormonal imbalance, it affects your entire life badly and negatively.
Useful Tips to Manage Your Stress Hormones at Home
Do you know how exercise and yoga help to reduce your stress and anxiety?
Yes! It’s pretty much right that exercise helps to reduce your stress. Here I would like to mention the easiest inhale and exhale practice suggested by yoga experts to lessen anxiety and stress called natural tranquilizer.
- Breathe out through your mouth, making a swoosh sound
- And then breathe in through your nose
- Now catch your breath for a few moments
- Then release your breath from your mouth slowly, making a swoosh sound.
My yoga expert recommends doing this exercise at least 7-10 rounds in the morning and the evening to breathe out stress and to get relaxed.
Here I’ll mention some more great ideas to reduce stress and anxiety at home and eliminate hormonal imbalance.
- Practice daily meditation and mindfulness.
- Minimize the consumption of caffeine and alcohol
- Go for a healthy diet
- Seek out emotional support from your acquaintances.
- You can consult a therapist or a mental health professional to manage your stress better and improve your health.
3. Eat Protein
PROTEIN IS THE VITAL NUTRIENT THAT GIVES YOU A BOOST.
Eating a sufficient amount of protein provides your body with specific hormones, including growth and insulin hormones. According to research, eating protein reduces levels of a hunger hormone and helps you feel full.
But remember that consuming a high amount of protein for an extended period comes with risks. According to research, over consumption of anything may lead to dangerous health issues. If you eat protein more than the sufficient amount, you gain extra weight, and the protein consumed is stored as fat.
4. Get Enough Sleep to Balance your hormones Naturally at home
For maintaining a healthy level of hormones, you need to get enough sleep.
If you don’t get the right amount of sleep, your body releases stress hormones.
And do you know chronic stress causes hormonal imbalance?
Yes!!!
Stress puts your health at risk, and it’s one of the biggest causes of triggering hormonal disorders. In fact, lack of sleep causes anger, irritability, and lessens your ability to cope with stress.
According to research, you can also lessen your stress, depression, or anxiety by engaging yourself in yoga, meditation, massage, and listening to relaxing music. These are also called stress-reducing techniques.
5. Avoid Sugar
Is sugar vandalizing your hormones?
Yes, sugar disrupts the most potent hormone called insulin in the body. And basically, insulin is closely connected to all of the other hormones, including estrogen and testosterone in the body.
Cutting sugar entirely out of life is almost impossible. But sugar and processed carb foods are best known for increasing weight gain, fatigue, higher risk of vision loss, dry mouth, and skin problems.
6. Eat The Right Healthy Fats
Overall, for the best hormonal functioning, you need the right amount of healthy fats. You should maintain the perfect amount of good fat in your body since hormones thrive on fat production. These healthy fats include coconut oil, homemade white butter, egg yolks, nuts, and seeds, i.e., pumpkin, flax, sesame, and sunflower.
Coconut oil contains lauric acid, which is highly advantageous for the production of hormones and helps in weight loss. Furthermore, it’s a great source of energy and boosts metabolism.
Homemade ghee or white butter is rich in vitamins A, D, E, and K2. Nutritionists consider it as a building block for hormonal production.
Eggs are considered one of the most nutritious foods on Earth. According to research, the fat present in egg yolks reduces bad cholesterol in the body. Egg yolks are rich in vitamins, minerals, calcium, iron, and selenium. They naturally help in balancing the hormones.
Nuts help regulate your hormone-producing glands. The anti-inflammatory effects of omega 3 help to balance hormones.
Avocados are rich in healthy fat and full of fiber, potassium, magnesium, vitamin B, E and folic acid, essential for maintaining hormonal balance in the body.
Seed cycling is a remedy that claims to balance hormones. It’s the process of eating four different seeds, including pumpkin, flax, sesame, and sunflower seeds. Divide this process into two periods each of 15 days. In the first period, you consume one tablespoon of pumpkin seeds and flax seeds each. Next, you consume one teaspoon raw and whole sesame and sunflower seeds each. Indeed, these seeds are a great source of zinc selenium and support the thyroid gland.
Rainbow Diet
DON’T CHASE RAINBOWS. JUST EAT THEM SINCE IT’S A KEY TO NUTRITION.
Folks! Forget about an insipid, colorless diet. This is the time to welcome the rainbow diet into your monotonous life. You would think what a rainbow diet is and how you can get benefit from it to balance your hormones. In fact, a rainbow diet is a colorful, healthy, and nutritious diet. It demands you to add colorful foods and natural supplements to your diet to maximize the intake of nutrients. This diet advocates the benefits of eating brightly colored fruits and vegetables. Indeed, this diet improves your health and immunity in different ways. Add one food of each color to your diet to get maximum benefits and nutrients.
Green: cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, spinach, cucumber, etc.
Purple: black currant, purple cabbage, raisins, brinjal, etc.
Yellow: lemon, yellow bell pepper, melon, pineapple, etc.
Red: apple, plum, watermelon, beetroot, strawberry, tomato, red grapes, raspberries, etc.
White banana, ginger, mushroom
Blue: blueberries
7. Stay Away from Overeating and Starving
How do overeating and undereating imbalance your hormones?
Remember, eating too much or too little may lead to hormonal imbalance. Overeating increases insulin levels and reduces insulin sensitivity, whereas consuming too little calories than your body requires may cause feelings of fatigue. Most importantly, calorie-restricted diets may develop an insufficiency of iron, folate, and vitamin B12. This can lead to anemia as well. A balanced and healthy diet helps you with how to balance your hormones in a week.
YOU DON’T HAVE TO EAT LESS OR DO BINGE EATING. YOU JUST HAVE TO EAT RIGHT.
Eating too much or too little leads you to an Eating Disorder. An eating disorder badly affects the body and results in hormonal disorders. It’s a mental health condition related to irregular eating habits. The person suffering from an eating disorder either consumes insufficient calories to maintain his/her weight or do binge eating, which finally leads to severe health issues like heart disease, stroke, diabetes, or cancer.
Furthermore, an eating disorder badly affects thyroid hormone levels. As a result, people feel the cold more, become constipated and suffer from dermatological conditions, including dehydrated skin.
It’s important for you to find the right balance among different nutrients to maintain a healthy lifestyle and avoid hormonal disorders.
Avoid Foods That Are Bad for Your Hormones
Ultimately, it’s true that a wrong lifestyle causes havoc to the hormonal imbalance in the body. Millions of people who follow an unhealthy lifestyle finally encounter numerous diseases, disabilities, and even death. It’s badly needed to avoid the below- mentioned foods that are bad for your hormones.
Dairy Products: Some people can’t digest dairy products easily. People who are lactose intolerant start suffering from stomach problems when they eat dairy products. Sometimes, drinking too much milk raises the levels of triglycerides and even causes diabetes.
Caffeine: Having many cups of coffee or energy drinks (high in caffeine) can mess up your hormones, since caffeine increases cortisol production in the body. It should be noted that cortisol, which is a stress hormone, works with some particular parts of your brain to control your mood. So, an extra intake of caffeine may cause an increase in anxiety, heart rate, blood pressure, and fatigue. Therefore, it’s crucial to decrease caffeine consumption gradually to avoid hormonal imbalance.
Soy Products: Tofu, soy milk and other products made of soy can be harmless if taken in small quantities. However, if you consume soy products over a long period in a large amount, they can mess with your hormones.
Alcohol: It’s alcohol that increases the level of stress hormones if taken regularly. It hurts the sex hormone in the body and reduces fertility in both men and women. However, a person can bring back to the normal levels of hormones if he stays without consuming alcohol for even a month.
Certain Vegetables: Eating nightshade vegetables including brinjal, peppers, potatoes, and tomatoes can cause inflammation in some people. The same is the case with cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, kale, and cauliflower. Besides, these veggies can lead to hypothyroidism if taken regularly.
Bottom Line| Solutions
In short, eating everything in moderation is right for your body, as you know anything in excess is bad. Excess of everything in your diet will surely lead you to hormonal imbalance.
Remember:
- Excess of salt causes high blood pressure.
- Overconsumption of carbohydrates causes poor metabolic health and heart disease.
- Too much protein causes fat.
- Excess of fat causes high cholesterol.
- Consumption of sugar in large amounts causes diabetes.
Here I sum up the solutions to hormonal imbalance or how to balance your hormones in a week.
- Maintain a healthy weight
- Avoid food with harmful chemicals
- Say “NO” to processed/packaged foods
- Practice Yoga
- Meditate
- Avoid sugary foods
- Follow a nutritious diet
- Get your vitamins regularly
- Avoid overeating and undereating
- Practice how to deal with your stress
- Drink green tea
- Avoid too much light at night
- Eat fatty fish often
- Consume a high-fiber diet
- Get high-quality sleep
Hence, moderation is the key to a balanced and healthy life. So, for a happy and healthy life, follow the above-mentioned tips and learn how to balance your hormones in a week and that too naturally at home.