5 Hormones That Mess With You Every Month and Natural Ways to Balance Them
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Overall health maintenance can be difficult to assess and navigate, especially when some body systems are invisible to the eye. Hormone health is essential to maintaining your optimum level of functioning, and overall wellness goals. Some conditions may require medical attention, but others may be minor, and can be addressed through a holistic or all-natural approach. These five hormones are essential to everyday health, and when well-balanced, can help you meet and maintain your overall health goals.
Gastrin
What Does It Do?
This hormone tells your body when to release gastric acid into the stomach to aid in digestion. Before a meal, your “G cells” secrete gastric acid into the stomach lining which helps break down the food. Without appropriate levels of gastric acid, your body cannot properly digest and absorb nutrients.
How to Stay Balanced:
Taking a daily probiotic will help keep your gut regulated and aid in proper digestion. Consider incorporating probiotics, or nutrient dense foods such as bone broths to help heal a potentially leaky gut.
Cortisol
What Does It Do?
Also known as the “stress hormone,” this steroid hormone is typically released during periods of high stress and can lead to high anxiety, difficulties with sleep, increased weight gain, depression, and high blood pressure. Over time, increased levels of cortisol in the blood can lead to lowered sex drive in women.
How To Stay Balanced:
Developing a sleep routine may help you work toward reaching 7-8 hours of sleep each night. Also, incorporating 30-60 minutes of light exercise into your daily regimen will release endorphins which can counterbalance anxiety and depression.
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Ghrelin and Leptin
What Do They Do?
This hormone is nicknamed the “hunger hormone” because it transmits signals to the brain from the stomach, letting you know when to feel hungry. As such, this hormone plays a significant role in maintaining body weight. When it’s out of balance, it can lead to increased weight gain.
Leptin acts similarly, and sends signals from your gut to your brain during meal times. It differs from Ghrelin in that it tells the brain when the body is full, and acts as an appetite suppressant. More importantly, studies have shown that these two “hunger hormones” work together, and play a role in how our brains interpret appetite and signals. When out of balance, our bodies risk misinterpreting signals which can lead to increased feelings of hunger, or unusually decreased appetite.
How to Stay Balanced:
Adequate sleep is the first step in reestablishing balance to the body’s various systems. Allowing your body to reset with ample rest is vital. Also, studies showed that meals low in fats and high in protein helped strengthen and correct proper signals between the stomach and the brain. Choosing foods rich in natural probiotics like kefir yogurt can help maintain overall gut health and function.
Adrenaline
What Does It Do?
This hormone isn’t all bad, and can even provide a boost of energy when the body needs it, known as the common “adrenaline rush.” However, there can be too much of a good thing. Typically, this hormone regulates itself, and when the perceived threat or excitement has passed, the adrenaline levels will drop, but if not, it can disrupt almost your entire body’s processes leading to increased risk for anxiety, heart problems, headaches, and depression.
How to Stay Balanced:
Similarly to cortisol, learning to handle daily stressors will help balance adrenaline. By getting proper exercise and nutrition, you can address the hormone spike naturally. If you still feel imbalanced, consider seeking a mental health professional for help with coping mechanisms and stress management techniques.
Unless these complex hormones are operating properly, other systems can be negatively affected. By applying these simple tips and ideas, and consulting a medical professional as needed, you can feel encouraged to meet your wellness goal of staying healthy and balanced.
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