Posted: 10:30 pm, Tue Mar 22, 2016.
Being a mom of three daughters, there were a lot of hormonal fluctuations going on in our house when all the girls were home. Truly, I do not like to blame hormones for bad moods, irritability and other physical challenges, but I will.
And, I am in good company with health care professionals who agree that hormone imbalance is a real problem. Increasing evidence points to hormonal imbalances as the cause of many physical ailments.
Woman to woman we both know that hormones rule our world at times. Ladies, it is not in your head, its hormones surging through your body (and in your brain too).
When I was going through menopause I never knew which Linda was getting up out of bed in the morning. Thankfully, it didn’t last long and exercise, along with good nutrition, helped me to stabilize and decrease my hot flashes. As women age and our estrogen decreases, we experience all kinds of physical and mental changes.
Let’s look at some current research on hormonal imbalances.
The primary female sex hormones are estrogen and progesterone. They work synergistically with each other and balance out each other’s effect. “Estrogen’s role is to give women hips and breasts, buffer moods and keep you on task by regulating serotonin,” explains Sara Gottfried, M.D., New York Times bestselling author of The Hormone Reset Diet (2015) and The Hormone Cure (2014). “Estrogen is responsible for the first half of your menstrual cycle.”
“Progesterone is important for your overall sense of equilibrium or wellbeing,” said Gottfried. “It’s the hormone that allows you to soothe yourself. It raises body temperature and helps your thyroid perform efficiently. It’s also a natural diuretic.”
When hormones get out of whack, they can play havoc with your physical and mental well-being. Estrogen dominance can cause irregular periods, heavy periods, bloating and fluid retention, headaches, mood swings, weight gain in the abdomen and hips, hair loss, thyroid abnormalities, foggy thinking, insomnia, depression, fat-loss resistance and more.
It is certainly outside of my scope of practice to diagnosis hormonal imbalances or even make any suggestions concerning them. Often times it takes a team of medical professionals to treat hormonal problems.
Give yourself some grace (and yes, ask for some grace from others) when you are going through hormonal shifts. Seek out professionals that can help you whether you choose treatment with functional medicine or conventional medicine.
Functional medicine is an alternative form of medicine. It is patient-centered medical healing. Instead of looking at and treating health problems as isolated diseases, it treats individuals who may have bodily symptoms, imbalances and dysfunctions.
Conventional medicine, on the other hand, deals with medical doctors and other healthcare professionals who may treat symptoms and diseases using drugs, radiation or surgery. Conventional medicine is also called allopathic medicine, biomedicine, mainstream medicine, orthodox medicine and Western medicine.
Just know that there is help available if you need it. Or, maybe just knowing that you are not alone is helpful. Making just a few healthy lifestyle changes may be enough to bring some balance to your life.
See you in the gym!
Linda Stollings is the owner of fitPrescriptions, a corporate wellness health coaching company. Email her at lstollings@fitprescriptions.com
