Hormones are an integral part of our daily health and extremely important to how our bodies function.  Hormones such as estrogen, testosterone, adrenaline, and insulin are chemical messengers that affect many aspects of overall health. Various glands and organs, including your thyroid, adrenals, pituitary, ovaries, testicles, and pancreas, secrete hormones into the bloodstream. The entire endocrine system works together to control the level of hormones circulating throughout your body, and if one or more is even a smidge imbalanced, it can cause widespread major health problems.

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Birth control pills, insulin injections, thyroid medications, and more are some of the conventional treatments for hormonal imbalances. For the majority of people suffering from hormone imbalances, taking these conventional medications creates a dependency on lifelong usage, simply masks the symptoms, and can cause a higher risk for serious side effects such as stroke, breast cancer, anxiety, and more.

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The good news is there are ways to balance your hormones naturally. There is hope! 

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Risk Factors & Causes of Hormonal Imbalances

Hormonal imbalances are caused by several factors such as your diet, medical history, genetics, stress levels, and exposure to toxins from your environment. Some of the major contributors to hormonal imbalances include:

• Food allergies and gut issues: Research shows that your gut health plays a significant role in hormone regulation. If you have leaky gut syndrome, poor digestion, or a lack of beneficial probiotic bacteria lining your intestinal wall, you’re more susceptible to hormonal problems, including diabetes and obesity. That’s because inflammation usually stems from your gut and then impacts nearly every aspect of your health.

• Being overweight or obese

• High levels of inflammation caused by a poor diet and a sedentary lifestyle

• Genetic susceptibility

• Toxicity (exposure to pesticides, toxins, viruses, cigarettes, excessive alcohol, and harmful chemicals)

• High amounts of stress, and a lack of enough sleep and rest

 

7 Ways to Balance Hormones Naturally

Step 1: Swap Carbs for Healthy Fats

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Your body needs various types of fats to create hormones, including saturated fat and cholesterol. Not only are these essential fats fundamental building blocks for hormone production, but they keep inflammation levels low, boost your metabolism and promote weight loss. Healthy fats have the opposite effect of refined carbohydrates, which lead to inflammation and can mess with the balance of your hormones.  This is not suggesting that you remove all carbs from your diet, simply choose those that are natural and not refined as well as watch how often and when you are eating them.  Focus on small serving sizes and eat more carbs as the day goes on to stimulate your melatonin and induce better quality sleep.

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Four of my favorite healthy fats include coconut oil, avocados, ghee, and grass-fed/organic tallow or lard.

Stay away from oils high in omega-6 fats (safflower, sunflower, corn, cottonseed, canola, soybean, and peanut), and load up on rich sources of natural Omega-3s instead (wild fish, walnuts, and grass-fed animal products).   I love to use Thrive Market to make it easy and CHEAPER to obtain good quality pantry and beauty items.

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Step 2: Address Emotional Variations

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Internal emotions have a direct impact on a person’s health and addressing emotional variations, external factors and lifestyle choices can help to prevent health conditions associated with hormonal imbalances.

You can accomplish this by reducing stress levels, taking time for personal reflection, and creating time for yourself. Practicing meditation or yoga can be very useful as well as deep breathing exercises, spending time in nature, and exercising every day.

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It is important to realize that emotions and hormones are connected.  When you work to bring one into line, you are impacting the other. If you are ever feeling stressed, angry, agitated, or even fearful, understand that this is affecting your hormone balance and can lead to even bigger health issues. Keep working on your emotional balance by making it part of your daily routine.

 

Step 3: Use Essential Oils to detoxify your home

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To balance your hormones naturally, it’s important that you eliminate toxins in your body by avoiding conventional body care products that are made with potentially-harmful chemicals including DEA, parabens, propylene glycol, and sodium lauryl sulfate. A better alternative is to use natural products made with ingredients like essential oils, coconut oil, shea butter, and castor oil.

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To replace toxic body care and cleaning products, use these hormone-balancing essential oils:

• On Guard- this blend is an immune-boosting powerhouse that will protect the immune system and clean your home without all the harmful toxins that can cause hormone disruption

• Lavender: Lavender oil promotes emotional balance, as it can help to treat anxiety, depression, moodiness, and stress. It can also be used to promote restful sleep, which will help to balance your hormone levels as well.  It’s a great addition to any cleaner or body care product and will provide benefits for you at the same time.

• Peppermint:  Peppermint oil helps boost your mood and reduce anxiety.  It can also be very calming to the gut and help reduce tension and inflammation.

• Lemon:  Lemon oil is a natural detoxifying oil as well as has very strong cleaning and purifying properties.

 

Step 4: Supplement to Fill Nutritional Voids 

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It’s sometimes necessary to supplement in order to fill nutritional voids that can be leading to a hormone imbalance. Here are the top supplements that I recommend for your hormones:

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• Quality Supplement Line: Lifelong Vitality Pack is full of vitamins and minerals to fill those gaps left behind by an unhealthy gut and poor digestion.  It also has wonderful omega oil to help with brain health and cardiovascular health.  In addition, there is an antioxidant that will support the body through cellular regeneration and detoxification.  This set of supplements is highly bio-available to the body as well as is completely natural and recognized as so by your cells.  It will provide you with more energy, less pain, and increased brain function.

•  Vitamin D: Vitamin D works like a hormone inside the body and s key for keeping inflammation levels low. People that live in dark areas often suffer from seasonal depression and other health problems unless they supplement with vitamin D. Sunshine is the best way to optimize vitamin D levels because your body makes vitamin D when exposed to direct sunlight. The recommendation for most people would be between 2,000–5,000 IU daily of vitamin D3 if they live in dark areas, during the winter, and on days when they’re not in the sun.

• Bone broth: Bone broth soothes the digestive system and supplies the body with nutrients that can be easily absorbed. Consuming bone broth or protein powder made from bone broth is especially beneficial to your health because it contains healing compounds like collagen, proline, glycine, and glutamine, which have the power to boost your overall health.

• Probiotics: Probiotics are healthy bacteria that can improve the production and regulation of key hormones like insulin, ghrelin, and leptin. They can also be instrumental in repairing your gut lining, which will then assist with balancing your hormones. When undigested food particles, like gluten, for example, leak through your gut into your bloodstream, it leads to disease which causes inflammation impacting the entire body.  Thyroid glands are very susceptible to heightened inflammation  Most people with leaky gut have a deficiency of probiotics in their guts

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Step 5: Beware of Medications and Birth Control 

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Are you taking medication, over-the-counter or prescription?  Are you aware of the side effects? Some can disrupt your hormone balance, leading to fatigue, appetite changes, altered sleeping patterns, low libido, sadness, and even depression. Beware of your medications, talk to your doctor about the side effects, and research natural alternatives whenever possible.

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Birth control is another dangerous medication that alters hormone levels. It is essentially another type of hormone therapy that raises estrogen levels to such dangerous levels that it can cause many complications. I cannot urge you strongly enough to stop using the pill immediately, especially considering that there are many other (safer) ways to prevent pregnancy. Some of the long-term effects can include.

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• Breakthrough bleeding between cycles

• Increased risk of breast cancer

• Increased risk of uterine bleeding, blood clotting, heart attack, and stroke

• Migraines

• Increased blood pressure

• Weight gain

• Back pains

• Mood changes

• Nausea

• Benign liver tumors

• Breast tenderness

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Step 6: Get More Sleep

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If you are disturbing your natural circadian rhythm, this can be one of the largest contributors to a hormone imbalance.  Your hormones work on a schedule. Cortisol, the “stress hormone,” is regulated at midnight. If you are a night owl and not going to bed until alter, you are never getting out of your sympathetic flight/fight stress response.

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Sleep helps keep stress hormones balanced, builds energy, and allows the body to recover properly. Excessive stress and poor sleep are linked with higher levels of morning cortisol, decreased immunity, trouble with work performance, and a higher susceptibility to anxiety, weight gain, and depression. To maximize hormone function, ideally, try to get to bed by 10 p.m. and stick with a regular sleep-wake-cycle as much as possible and maintain 7-9 hours of sleep per night.

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Step 7: Use Essential Oils to Regulate your Hormones

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Frankincense:  Frankincense is a very key oil in building the body’s cellular health as well as reducing inflammation.  It can also affect depression and anxiety and promote relaxation.

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Lemongrass: Lemongrass oil alleviates muscle pain, reduces fever, and stimulates the uterus and menstrual flow.  In addition, it is a stress reducer, helps with the quality of sleep, and is a great detoxifying oil.

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Myrhh: Myrhh is a potent anti-oxidant.  It also hails as a top oil for de-stressing and can help take some of the stressful load off the thyroid.

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Basil: Basil oil is a key simulator of the adrenal cortex.  It provides stimulating of the nervous system and is an important player in reducing inflammation as well as fighting free radical damage.

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Clove: Clove oil is an antioxidant oil and promotes cleansing of the body.  It helps the body rid itself of toxins and also is great for support of the liver.

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Clary Calm: Clary Calm blend lessens menstrual cycle pain, stomach cramps, and restores hormone balance.

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Things to Remember When Treating Hormonal Imbalances

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In some cases, synthetic hormonal treatments (such as insulin or thyroid medication) will be necessary to treat a hormonal imbalance. However, the majority of people can feel a lot better by making the lifestyle changes described above. Hormone imbalances can vary greatly and it is important to keep track of how you are feeling and what is working for you.

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