How hormonal imbalance can impact your life
Paying attention to hormone health is just as important for men as it is for women. Everything from your appetite and metabolism to sleep patterns, heart rate and mood is determined by your hormones. They’re pretty much responsible for keeping your body functioning. When one hormone is out of sync, it can have a knock-on effect on the others and leave you feeling off, with life-disrupting symptoms. Even if you have a tiny imbalance, it can affect how you feel in a big way. Maintaining balance in our endocrine system is therefore essential to your health and wellbeing and keeping your body running smoothly.
What is a hormonal imbalance?
Hormones are important chemical messengers that essentially tell your body what to do and when. They’re produced in the endocrine glands throughout the body and circulated to different organs, communicating, influencing and performing all sorts of essential processes from growth to reproduction. When your hormones aren’t communicating properly, and too much or too little of a hormone is produced, this is considered a hormone imbalance.
Hormones are constantly fluctuating throughout the day, night and our entire life cycles, with our hormone levels differing across adolescence and adulthood. There are many different types of hormone imbalances because there are several different hormones. If you suffer from a thyroid imbalance, for example, it can cause various symptoms such as weight gain, depression, constipation, sensitivity to the cold and brittle hair and nails. Problems with the adrenal glands and stress hormones (such as cortisol and DHEA) can result in fatigue, lethargy, water retention, sleeplessness and belly fat. While an imbalance in the sex hormones (estrogen and progesterone) can affect men and women differently. Women can suffer from irregular periods, breast tenderness and mood swings, whereas men may notice changes in libido, hair loss, reduced muscle mass and erectile dysfunction. Since hormones do so much in the body, an imbalance in one can affect so much of our body at once.
“The human body is not a collection of separate parts. It is a whole organism. What happens in one organ or ‘part’ impacts the whole. Being healthy is multifactorial, as is the development of imbalance that leads to dysfunction, syndromes, and eventually disease”.
— Aviva Romm M.D.
What triggers hormone imbalance?
There are many different causes that can impact our hormone health and the symptoms show up differently in each of us. Some of the most common causes are chronic stress, poor diet, high inflammation, compromised gut health, birth control, under or overactive thyroid, diabetes and environmental factors. In Hormone Intelligence, Aviva Romm M.D. has identified six core pillars that the causes of a hormonal imbalance can fall into, from nutrition and stress to gut health and environmental exposures. Now you know the signs to look out for, there may be some natural remedies that can address how to regulate hormones.
Balancing hormones
Hormone stability can be a delicate balancing act. There are medicines, adaptogenic herbs and supplements to help. Considering lifestyle and environmental factors can play a part in the cause, the good news is you may be able to implement natural methods in healing your imbalance by changing how you live, including addressing exposure to toxins, introducing probiotics, eating a nutritious, low-inflammatory diet and promoting better sleep health. It is also worth looking into Vitamin D supplements and exploring the use of adaptogenic herbs such as ashwagandha, ginseng and reishi to help reduce stress levels. Always consult a doctor if you notice any of the symptoms of a hormone imbalance and get your levels checked before trying natural remedies.