Feeling off, but not sure why?
Hormonal imbalances are one of the most common and most overlooked reasons people feel tired, anxious, moody, or just not like themselves.
The good news? In many cases, you can bring your hormones back into balance naturally. In this guide, I’ll walk you through what throws hormones out of sync, and more importantly, how simple changes in your food, sleep, and lifestyle can help you feel like yourself again.
Recommended Product: The Daily Reset Shake is the same Reset Shake used in the groundbreaking studies that inspired the Adrenal Reset Diet and the Metabolism Reset Diet. It delivers a full day’s dose of RS2 high amylopectin pea starch, a powerful resistant starch designed to enhance your health. Click Here
While not a formal diagnosis or a disease in the conventional world, our hormones are the interplay between our lifestyle and our health. They regulate our bodies.
And they can be in states that are reflective of good health, or if our habits are not conducive to our health, then our hormones will follow suit. They can cause more symptoms.
This can affect our:
By hormones, I’m talking about the full spectrum. This includes things like estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, thyroid hormones, cortisol, insulin, and more.
Hormones are regulating molecules. They are made by one part of the body to control the actions of other parts of the body.
Key Insight: Our habits, lifestyle, and diet can change our hormones. And they can change them for the better! All it takes is some pretty simple steps to help you out.
In terms of our diet, the main causes of hormone imbalances tend to come from:
These things disrupt our blood sugar. In turn, we have to make different amounts of hormones, like insulin or cortisol, to manage the blood sugar afterward.
The changes in those hormones can have an effect on many symptoms. But that’s not the only thing, because some other negative dietary factors include:
These are all things that change how the gut flora works and how well the body can produce the regulatory hormones.
Other lifestyle factors include chronic stressors. This is a tricky part because you can’t just wave a magic wand and make stress go away.
But the big stressors are the biggest things. Where you are, who you’re with, what you do, if these things cause disharmony, the effect on your health can be powerful.
A lot of this comes down to something we know as cortisol and cortisol rhythm. We need to make the hormone cortisol to wake us up, start our day, and we slowly shut it off as the day goes along, leading to a restful evening and sleep.
But for so many, this timing gets disrupted. When this happens, all of our other hormones aren’t absorbed into the cells at the right times and in the right amounts. That is why stress management strategies that help regulate cortisol help so much.
One of the main ways that cortisol is regulated is through melatonin. And while we can ingest and supplement melatonin, it is far more important that we make our own, too.
This means we need to focus on not simply getting more sleep, but focusing on things like sleep hygiene, being regular with sleep, and allowing time for it. These are big factors.
Key Insight: There are also foods that help. A big reason that I wrote the Hormone Healing Cookbook is to focus exactly on the foods that can help you with sleep.
We are exposed to a lot of things, like plastics and chemicals, and these things make our bodies less able to regulate the hormones in circulation.
That happens because they fundamentally change how our liver works. There are certain liver pathways that go about breaking down hormones and conjugating them. But in the presence of environmental toxins, these things don’t work properly.
Some easy solutions here include getting a good range of healthy phytonutrients. Cruciferous vegetables are some of the best, because they do a really good job helping most of the liver pathways that we use to regulate our own hormones.
The big thing is balancing our diet. I just mentioned things like phytonutrient-rich foods, but there are also many categories of plant foods.
A good example is oats. They go a long way in helping the body convert hormones properly, make the right byproducts, and they can be used in a lot of different ways.
Regular exercise is another big one. Strength training, cardio training, yoga, flexibility work, balance work, are all important.
I’ve seen many people ranking or criticizing various types of exercise as either good or bad, but they are all good. You need a good diversity of exercise, ideally daily, for good health.
Along with exercise, we also need to think about sleep optimization. That means we need to allow time for sleep, have predictable evening routines, and other things.
Here’s a quick rundown of how to get a good night’s rest:
There are also easy tricks to aid your sleep with food. Cherries and pistachios are big ones. They contain naturally occurring melatonin, but they sort of act like a springboard for your body to naturally produce melatonin.
Another big thing that we can do is involve more stress management techniques in our daily lives. This might include things like:
Let’s talk about some of the big misconceptions that exist. The first is that some of the plant foods that I’ve talked about are dangerous.
You may hear that they have toxins in them and that we need to avoid lectins, oxalates, or alkaloids, and it’s partially true. Plants do have toxins in them.
And all of the good things that we talk about when we discuss plants, most of them are toxins. They are things that these plants make to kill other plants or fungi.
But the amounts of them that are present, and the proportions therein, are not harmful to us. That’s because we’ve evolved in harmony with them, so our bodies expect them.
And a lot of our chemical pathways only work when these naturally occurring pesticides are present. In isolation, these toxins could be poisonous, but not in the diet.
Key Insight: All of this comes down to the fact, and it’s been shown time and again, that those who consume more fruits and vegetables are healthier than those who consume less.
The other big thing is to try and avoid fad diets and restrictive eating. This plays against the notion that diets need to be inherently hard or difficult to maintain.
This is an interesting one. It’s like there is this preconceived notion that a diet should be hard to be effective, when that’s simply not the case.
Over the decades, I’ve seen many people who try really hard to get healthy, and by trying hard, they restrict themselves extremely, and they don’t get healthy.
What happens is that your body gets lower in essential nutrients, your gut flora is compromised, and there are negative psychological repercussions, too.
Key Insight: The fewer foods you eat, the fewer foods you can ultimately tolerate. That’s why it’s better to have a wide range of healthy foods and only avoid things in specific cases.
Starting today, let’s talk about the tangible things you can do to bring your hormones back into a state of balance:
It’s not about cutting things out, it’s about adding things into your life – whether through diet, lifestyle, or exercise – that can have a positive impact on your hormones.
Balancing your hormones naturally is definitely well worth the effort, and it can completely change the game for your health and lifestyle going forward.
If you want to take things a step further, I’d recommend starting here. It can help cover a whole host of topics that might move the needle for your health.
P.S. Whenever you are ready, here is how I can help you now:
Dr. Alan Glen Christianson (Dr. C) is a Naturopathic Endocrinologist and the author of The NY Times bestselling Hormone Healing Cookbook, The Metabolism Reset Diet, and The Thyroid Reset Diet.
Dr. C’s gift for figuring out what works has helped hundreds of thousands reverse thyroid disease, heal their adrenals, and lose weight naturally. Learn more about the surprising story that started his quest.
