You might think you have a strange set of symptoms that don’t quite go together. That adolescent acne may be back, even though you have a few wrinkles beside those pimples. You may have thinning hair, constipation and weight gain or simply just feel exhausted. These are all signs that you may need to reset your hormones because of an imbalance. Of course, always check with your doctor first, but you can start on these steps until you get into see him or her. They’re natural and can help your overall health even if you don’t have a hormonal problem.
It should all start with healthy eating.
Check out what you consume every day. If you’re like a lot of people, there’s a large amount of sugar in your diet. You may not even realize it if you’re eating a lot of processed foods. HFCS—high fructose corn syrup—is hidden in everything from ketchup to boxed mac n’ cheese. Cut out starches, too. They add to the problem. The best way to see if this helps is to cut out all sweets, starches and processed foods for a week or two. You’ll definitely find fruit tastes far sweeter and may even have more energy.
Get gut healthy.
If you want to keep your digestive system running smoothly, while also helping your hormones, fermented food and probiotics can give you a boost, plus improve your immune system. There are trillions of microbes in your digestive system and if they’re an imbalance with too little good bacteria with more harmful ones, it can affect your entire body. It affects the nutritional absorption, digestion, elimination and even can affect mental health. Dysbiosis, the name for too many bad microbes, can make your hormonal balance go out of whack. Eating fermented foods and live bacteria yogurt can help.
Exercise regularly.
There are a lot of different types of hormones, from insulin to serotonin. There are of course the male and female hormones we normally think of when the word hormone is mentioned. When you workout, it affects several different types of hormones. It boosts the release of serotonin that can help you sleep better at night, but also improves your digestion, mood and sexual functioning. It increases dopamine that makes you more relaxed, too. It also boosts testosterone in men and estrogen levels, to keep you younger looking longer and take the edge off menopause.
- While you need to cut out colas and soft drinks for their high sugar content, cutting them out to eliminate the caffeine is also important. You should also cut out coffee, energy drinks, too much tea and chocolate for the same reason.
- Switch to a healthier way to clean. The chemicals in your cleaning products can put toxins into your environment that exacerbate hormonal imbalance. So do personal-care products and cosmetics. Go to a more natural option, like white vinegar for cleaning. It disinfects as it cleans, too.
- When you’re resetting your hormones, carbs, like legumes, grains and sweet fruit like mangoes should be limited. Eating too many of these can cause insulin resistance.
- Make sure you have healthy fats in your diet and balance the Omega-6 to the Omega-3 ratio to an ideal 4 to 1 (with Omega-6 being the 4). America’s diet has a very unhealthy ratio of between 12 to 1 and 25 to 1.