Do you often feel like your hormones are taking over? Do you feel like a different person when ‘that’ time of the month comes round? Do you suffer from pain and discomfort, acne, mood swings, fatigue and just feel generally under the weather and run down? Are you going through the menopause or even struggling to get pregnant? I’m here to tell you it really doesn’t need to be this way and with a few tweaks here and there to your daily routine you truly can live in perfect harmony with your hormones.
To live in harmony with our hormones the idea is to eliminate as many toxins as possible (especially endocrine disrupting ones) and help balance the endocrine system. We do this by removing foods, drinks and situations from our life that help spike our blood sugars and stress levels. Then we add in nourishing and nurturing foods, drinks and practices that help support and heal our endocrine system.
Here are my tops tips for harmonising hormones for you…
- Greatly reduce foods high on the GI Index, like white carbs, high sugars fruits and processed sugars of all kinds. Try eating quinoa, sweet potatoes, brown, red or black rice and amaranth instead)
- Cut out all caffeine. Caffeine spikes our blood sugars levels more than most things. So although it might make you feel better temporarily, long term it’s certainly not helping.
- Make sure you eat something every 4hrs to keep blood sugars balanced
- Eat something, even if it’s only a apple within 1 hour of waking in the morning
- Try to eat only organic dairy and meat products (the hormones and other chemicals found in non-organic filter through to your own system
- Remove or greatly reduce transfats from your diet (these are margarine’s, veg and sun flower oils). Try using nut oils, olive oil and coconut oil instead
- Drink at least 2-3-litres of water or herbal teas (more if exercising each day)
- Try to remove or greatly reduce alcohol as this spikes your blood sugars levels
- Try to eat good carbs and protein as part of every meal, which helps to stablish your blood sugars and increase your energy
- All artificial sweeteners should be avoided as they interfere with the bodies normal functions, putting pressure on things like the endocrine system
- Try to eat as many fresh fruits and veggies as possible to increase your changes of absorbing much needed nutrients from your diet
- Start consuming fermented foods and drinks, these are things like kefir, kimchi, sauerkraut and normal fermented veggies. These are extremely high in probiotics and good bacteria’s, helping your body to detox, heal the gut and absorb better, all of which will benefit your hormones. If you can’t manage this then opt for a really good probiotic supplement
- Take a really good B-Complex supplement, with zinc, magnesium and selenium
- Trying to aim for 8 hours sleep a night is really important and getting to sleep by 11.00pm is strongly advised. Our body does much of its healing and detoxing at night and needs this time to repair and energise for the following day.
- Consider reducing and/or replace toxic body sprays, lotions, potions and cleaners where possible
- Healing with a yeast imbalance in the digestive system will have a huge impact on the whole endocrine system also. You will not only be able to digest more vitamins and minerals from your diet, eliminate toxins from the grow of the yeast and others from outside factors you are holding onto much easier, but you will find your health and vitality will increase and your endocrine system will no longer be hinder from the yeast imbalance. Check out some ideas of how to do this here
- Start adding maca powder daily to your juices and smoothies. This is a delicious natural supplement that heals to support and heal the endocrine system.
- Make sure you are getting enough Omega 3’s. If you don’t eat oily fish very often then you aren’t! So try to add flax and chia seeds to your smoothies, juices and salads to make up for this.
- Increase you consumption of good fats, like coconut oil, olive oil, flax oil and avocados
- Light exercise four or five times a week, for roughly 20 mins at time, as it ha great benefits to overall health, well-being and hormones
- Try to find nurturing ways to address the stress in your life. This might be to meditate, to practice yoga, acceptance and forgiveness or EFT/Tapping. For more on this check out my EFT/Tapping blog here
- Practice self-care. This could be anything from talking about and to yourself in a more nurturing way, to making more ‘you time’ for relaxing baths, walks, stillness, healthy meals or reading.
- Get grounding! Electromagnetic stress can have a very negative impact on out hormones. Check out my blog about this to find out more here
I know this seems like a lot of items to address, but so many things have an impact on the endocrine system and how effectively it works, so even a few small changes will start to help your hormones. Try to change just one thing at a time and see for yourself after a few months what a huge impact this can have.
You might also want to also check out Marcelle Picks books and website here, this is a wonderful hormonal harmonizing resource.
Here’s some other relevant resources for you:
10 Ways to Balance your hormones here
15 Tips to Balance Hormones here
Hormonal Imbalance 101 here
