Let’s evaluate natural ways to balance your hormones. Normally your endocrine glands produce the precise amount of each hormone needed for various processes in your body. However, hormonal imbalances have become increasingly common with today’s fast-paced modern lifestyle. In addition, certain hormones decline with age and some people experience a more dramatic decrease than others.
Fortunately, a nutritious diet and other healthy lifestyle behaviors may help improve your hormonal health and allow you to feel and perform at your best.
This post will review 8 natural ways to balance your hormones
1. Eat Enough Protein at Every Meal
Consuming an adequate amount of protein.
Protein provides essential amino acids that your body can’t make on its own and must be consumed every day to maintain muscle, bone, and skin health. Also, protein controls the release of hormones that control appetite.
2. Engage in Regular Exercise
Physical activity can strongly influence hormonal health. A major benefit of exercise is its ability to reduce insulin levels and improve insulin sensitivity.
Insulin is a hormone that has several functions. One is allowing cells to take up sugar and amino acids from the bloodstream, which are then used for energy and maintaining muscle. Performing strength training, aerobics, walking or other forms of physical activity can modify hormone levels in a way that reduces the risk of disease and protects muscle mass during the aging process.
3. Avoid Sugar and Refined Carbs
Sugar and refined carbs have been linked to several health problems.
Indeed, avoiding or minimizing these foods may be instrumental in optimizing hormone function and avoiding obesity, diabetes, and other diseases.
Diets high in sugar and refined carbs have been shown to drive insulin resistance. Avoiding these foods and reducing overall carb intake may decrease insulin levels and improve insulin sensitivity.
4. Learn to Manage Stress
Stress can wreak havoc on your hormones. Two major hormones affected by stress are cortisol and adrenaline, which are also called epinephrine.
Cortisol is a “fight-or-flight” hormone that provides your body with a surge of energy to respond to immediate danger.
Adrenaline is also a “fight-or-flight” hormone released as a response to stressful, exciting, dangerous, or threatening situations.
However, unlike hundreds of years ago when these hormones were mainly triggered by threats from predators, today they’re usually triggered by people’s busy, often overwhelming lifestyles.
Engaging in stress-reduction behaviors like meditation, yoga, massage and listening to soothing music can help normalize your levels of the stress hormone cortisol.
5. Avoid Overeating and Undereating
Eating too much or too little may result in hormonal shifts that lead to weight problems. Consuming too many or too few calories can lead to hormonal imbalances.
6. Get Consistent, High-Quality Sleep
No matter how nutritious your diet is and how much exercise you get, your health will suffer if you don’t get enough restorative sleep.
Poor sleep has been linked to imbalances of many hormones, including insulin, cortisol, leptin, and growth hormone
Let’s face it this is the area where most of us need to get more consistent to stay healthy. Inadequate or poor-quality sleep has been shown to decrease fullness hormones, increase hunger and stress hormones, reduce growth hormone.
7. Stay Away from Sugary Beverages
Sugar in any form is unhealthy. However, liquid sugars appear to be the worst by far.
We all love to have that Starbucks latte and sugary sodas but avoiding sugar-sweetened beverages may be one of the best things you can do to improve your hormone balance. In addition, research has shown that drinking sugary beverages leads to excessive calorie intake because it doesn’t trigger the same fullness signals that eating solid foods does
8. Consume a High-Fiber Diet
Fiber, especially the soluble type, is an important component of a healthy diet. Although soluble fiber tends to produce the strongest effects on appetite and eating, insoluble fiber may also play a role.
High fiber intake has been linked to improvements in insulin sensitivity and the hormones that control hunger, fullness, and food intake.
The Bottom Line
Your hormones are involved in every aspect of your health. You need them in very specific amounts for your body to function optimally.
Consuming nutritious foods, exercising on a regular basis, and engaging in other healthy behaviors can go a long way toward improving your hormonal health.
Thank you, Connie
Stay tuned for next week’s pro tips. Series 3 hormonal imbalance