Hormone imbalances affect anyone’s well-being. As women largely go through problems caused by this, here are the ways you can solve them and balance your hormones.
One of the most under-studied fields is women’s health. So it is quite common to misdiagnose or ignore a lot of symptoms about women’s bodies which is why they are still struggling to find the basic information or lead a healthier life in general, which their male counterparts do not. As the conditions of your hormones are one of the major players in your health journey, imbalance or balance of your hormones impacts your overall well-being. At the same time, the state of your hormones reflects your mental wellbeing and even the health of the nervous system. So, if you are going through anything remotely close to hormonal imbalance in your body, here is how you can correct that with some simple lifestyle changes.
- Enough protein in your meals
If you are in the fitness scene right now, you must have heard the importance of protein in people’s meals. This applies to female bodies as well. If we are trying to be specific here, a grown adult female body each day requires 0.8g of protein per kilogram of body weight. So try to eat around 30 Gms of protein during the fast meal of your day, aka your breakfast. This much protein intake helps your body balance its blood sugar levels. That is not all, a balanced blood sugar level means the body’s cortisol level is also balanced which physiologically protects your nervous system from being in a high-stress state. So start with eating a protein-rich breakfast within 90 minutes of waking up as it trains the hunger hormone to work fiercely throughout the entire day.
- Avoid caffeine in the morning
It has now probably become a lifestyle to start your day with a cup of coffee. And you are not wrong, once you drink caffeine, it is quickly absorbed into the body and gets distributed fast enough, everywhere in your body, including the brain. This is where you can see the most impact of coffee as it helps your brain stay awake and alert. However, caffeine first thing in the morning is also linked with rising cortisol levels, the stress hormone responsible for almost everything wrong. If your cortisol is high and caffeine is increasing it further, down the line it can end up hindering your body’s natural ability to regulate inflammation. This again can lead to a bigger negative impact on your thyroid hormone. So even though you wake up with a jolt when you have coffee first thing in the morning, remember it is doing your hormones 0 favor.
- Start your day with the sunlight
Most of us start our day in bed looking at our mobile screens, trying to scroll through Instagram, and comparing our lives to others. This is one of the fundamental bad habits that is so difficult to get rid of but equally necessary, instead, start your day by getting sunlight and open air. Getting morning sunlight has so many scientifically proven benefits for human bodies, our mental health, and our mood. Sunlight in the morning helps you stay awake and promotes Vitamin D production in your body. Additionally, getting sunlight within the first 10-15 minutes of waking up helps reset the circadian rhythm of your body. This helps you fall asleep faster and get a better sleep quality. When you get good sleep, your insulin and blood sugar levels are balanced, supporting overall hormonal balance.
- Make gut health your priority
Gut health in general is essential to maintain a healthy body and mind. As the gut breaks down the food you consume, your body can absorb the nutrients absolutely necessary for proper functioning. So naturally, having a healthy gut is going to impact your hormonal balance too. Metabolism, hormone production, and function highly depend on your gut health. According to studies, how healthy your gut is impacts your body’s estrogen levels, which can also have an increasing impact on lifelong diseases like endometriosis, PCOS, and even something as life-threatening as breast cancer. So look after your gut by eating more probiotics, and enough fiber.
- Incorporate healthy fats in your diet
Eating a balanced diet is extremely important for maintaining your health, but especially for maintaining your hormonal balance. Your regular diet must be balanced, and for that, you need to incorporate healthy fats that help you balance sex hormones and steroids such as testosterone and estrogen. As mentioned above, higher estrogen levels can lead to a number of dangerous lifelong diseases. So the goal is to eat a handful of healthy fats every day which can be walnuts, avocados, oily fishes, flaxseeds, chia seeds, almonds, etc.
- Move more
Working out in general is great for your body, not just hormones. Exercising helps strengthen the cardiorespiratory system, joint health, bone health, etc. Moreover, working out and exercising regularly helps with metabolism, and regulating estrogen in your body. With normal estrogen circulation in your body, you will be able to balance out the hormones and avoid estrogen-related health diseases such as breast cancer, and PCOS. It greatly impacts your long-term metabolic health which is closely related to how you age. How energetic your body affects your brain and how it works, your long-term independent movement, and even prevents your body from getting serious illnesses, which all contribute to leading a healthier life as you age.
- Focus on grounding
Grounding movements in the morning have bigger impacts on your hormones than you know. Techniques such as walking barefoot on the ground or meditating help your body decrease blood sugar levels, reduce inflammation, regulate metabolism, etc. These in turn help your body regulate important hormones such as cortisol. When your body is grounded, cortisol’s diurnal rhythm begins to normalize, which then regulates metabolism, and even assists with memory formulation.
Making little yet highly impactful changes like eating healthy, moving more, getting sunlight, etc. can really improve your hormonal imbalance, which causes so many dreadful and lifelong diseases. While if you are already going through hormonal problems it might be difficult to completely omit those, making these changes certainly improves the condition and it is quite visible if you stay consistent.
