You might have gotten the point by now. Your hormones are insanely important for your general health and you might wonder how you can better balance them? Or what is getting them unbalanced in the first place? Hormonal imbalance can happen for many reasons, but some of the most likely reasons in our modern lives are stress, diet, loss of exercise and environmental toxins.

When we feel stress, our bodies go into the so-called fight or flight mode. This activates your nervous system to prepare for danger, to fight or to flight. Your body does this by stopping all body functions which aren’t needed for immediate survival, like your digestive and reproductive system for example, and by pumping large amounts of glucose into your bloodstream. You will also start producing more cortisol. When this stress response becomes chronic, your body will start converting certain types of your sex hormones into more cortisol. When the glucose in your blood isn’t actually used for fighting anyone, because you might just be sitting in your office chair feeling stressed, your body will store it as fat to lower your blood sugar to a safe level again. Chronic stress can therefore cause unwanted weight gain, infertility, digestive problems and low libido, just to mention a few. You can work on your stress levels by introducing mindfulness into your life. This can be meditation, journaling, breathework, soft movements or you can choose to work with a stress coach.

Diet is also important to keep in mind. For our hormones to be balanced, we need to keep our bodies healthy in order to metabolize and excrete them from our bodies, when we no longer need them. This is usually done through our urine and stool. It is therefore important to keep our liver and kidneys healthy to work properly. If our “used” hormones aren’t excreted from our bodies correctly, they can re-circulate and can cause an overpopulation of hormones. It is important to eat a diet rich in natural fats and fiber to balance your hormones. The Mediterranean diet (3) is believed to be the best at the moment. It is also important to eat organic and clean, meaning food as close to its natural source as possible. Vegetables good for liver and kidney health are broccoli, cauliflower and asparagus, just to mention a few. 

The last important factor that I want to mention is environmental toxins. These are toxins that are found everywhere in your everyday life, in the food that you eat, the cosmetics that you apply, the products you touch or the air you breathe in. These so-called endocrine disruptors can mimic natural hormones in your body and therefore send the message to produce more or less of certain hormones. This is believed to be one of the leading factors to hormonal imbalance. Toxins are found everywhere in your environment and it is believed that thousands are added to the list every single year. If you want to start reducing the toxins that your body is exposed to, you can start by only using organic cosmetics and eating organic food. Most package materials like plastic and cans release toxins into your food and water. Scented candles, air fresheners and perfumes make the toxins enter your body through your lungs. Soaps, lotions and other cosmetics enter through your skin, while everything you eat obviously enters through your digestive system. I suggest taking one step at a time when reducing toxins and give yourself time for this transition. If you feel like detoxing your body, this is best done by exercising, sweating in the sauna, getting massages and dry brushing your skin to promote circulation in your many lymph nodes around your body.

Balancing your hormones isn’t a quick fix but a lifestyle change. It is important though because hormones are regulated by each other, a deficiency of one can create an excess of another and vice-versa, creating numerous opportunities for imbalance. You can also find holistic hormone health practitioners like myself, who can guide you through this journey and keep you on track. By balancing your hormones you will gain better health and most likely a better sex life as well. So you tell me, whether it is going to be worth all the hard work in the end.