Hormonal imbalances

Bhagwati Ayurveda & Panchkarma Research Centre/Hormonal imbalances

What is a hormonal imbalance?

Hormones are your body’s chemical messengers. Produced in the endocrine glands, these powerful chemicals travel around your bloodstream telling tissues and organs what to do. They help control many of your body’s major processes, including metabolism and reproduction.
Hormonal imbalances occur when there is too much or too little of a hormone in the bloodstream. Because of their essential role in the body, even small hormonal imbalances can cause side effects throughout the body.

When you have a hormonal imbalance, you have too much or too little of a certain hormone. Even tiny changes can have serious effects throughout your whole body.

Think of hormones like a cake recipe. Too much or too little of any one ingredient affects the final product. While some hormone levels fluctuate throughout your lifetime and may just be the result of natural aging, other changes occur when your endocrine glands get the recipe wrong.

Symptoms

The symptoms of a hormonal imbalance depend on which glands and hormones are affected. Your hormones play an integral role in your overall health. Because of that, there’s a broad range of symptoms that could signal a hormonal imbalance. Your symptoms will depend on which hormones or glands aren’t working properly.

Symptoms associated with the more common causes of hormonal imbalances include:

The symptoms that I struggled with the most were hot flashes and night sweats, weight gain, mood swings, and brain fog.

Consult with the Specialist

    What Causes Hormone Imbalances?

    According to the several studies, we can blame it on the ovaries, those walnut-sized organs that release eggs and produce female hormones. As we get older, perhaps in our late 30s, our ovaries start to produce less estrogen and progesterone, the female hormones that regulate menstruation.

    The production of female hormones ebbs and flows over the next 10 years. A woman usually experiences menopause, or her final period, shortly after the age of 50.

    Other factors can cause hormone imbalance and lead to the onset of menopause. For example, I started menopause after going through a total hysterectomy. The doctor removed my uterus, both of my ovaries and my cervix. This procedure threw my body into a condition called surgical menopause, and I experienced most of the symptoms were going to talk about in the next section.

    Endocrine glands are specialized cells that produce, store, and release hormones into the blood. There are several endocrine glands located throughout the body that control different organs, including the:
    • adrenal glands
    • gonads (testis and ovaries)
    • pineal gland
    • pituitary gland
    • hypothalamus gland
    • thyroid and parathyroid glands
    • pancreatic islets

    The five natural ways to bring proper balance to your hormones:

    If we had to relate Hormonal imbalance with one word, then that is ‘Stress’. Stress could be in any form – it could be emotional, dietary or conditions arousing from physical pain. Therefore it is important to identify the correct reason for the stress and take necessary measures to control it. Doing so is not difficult, there are some natural ways that can help you control the Hormonal imbalance.
    • Eat broccoli as the presence of the substance in it help modulate estrogens and have been shown to have some anti-cancer effects, particularly for breast cancer.
    • Maintain a healthy weight so that your body wouldn’t stimulate to overproduce certain hormones.
    • Include phytoestrogens in your diet will help balance your hormones naturally.
    • Consider the use of herbal remedies.
    • Take a deep breathe and do it for fifteen minutes twice daily will decrease hot flashes and night sweats as well as improve your sense of well-being.
    The following suggestions for healthy foods and supplements can be helpful for balancing hormones, regardless of what age you begin having symptoms of imbalance.
    Add Healthy Fats
    Coconut oil, avocado, butter from grass-fed cows, and wild caught salmon are good sources of healthy fats. Various kinds of fats are used by your body to produce hormones. They also lower your inflammation risk, increase metabolism, and can lead to weight loss.
    Limit Alcohol & Caffeine Intake

    Too much caffeine acts just like too little sleep. It ramps up the system, increases heart rate, improves alertness, and changes the way the brain uses hormones.

    Too much alcohol adds to estrogen dominance, limits the functioning of the pancreas, and lowers testosterone levels.

    Lifestyle Changes

    One effective way, especially for women, can deal with imbalanced hormones is to reduce the amount of stress in their lives. Another is to increase exercise to an appropriate level.

    Beneficial exercises include 45-minute workout sessions, circuit training (improves insulin response, increases testosterone and stimulating growth hormones), yoga (decreases adrenalin and boosts GABA, the calming neurotransmitter) and weight training (stimulates growth hormones).

    Add Vitamins and Minerals

    Some of the vitamins women need in their diets to support healthy hormone levels include vitamin B6, vitamin D, zinc, and magnesium. These vitamins and minerals can be consumed as supplements or in foods like whole grains, nuts, legumes, vegetables, seafood, and poultry.

    Natural Remedies to Balance Hormones:

    Herbs also can be valuable in helping to balance hormones. There are basically two broad categories of herbs to be considered: phytoestrogenic and non-phytoestrogenic.

    The phytoestrogenic herbs contain plant-based estrogen compounds. When these are eaten, they add plant-based estrogens to the body. This may lead the body to not produce estrogen of its own. While herbs can be beneficial in re-balancing hormones at any age, you must be careful in using phytoestrogenic herbs since they contain estrogen compounds.

    Ashwagandha is a root herb that is said to help with sleep, cognitive functions, and sexual arousal. Improving sleep can be a general help in dealing with symptoms of hormone imbalance. This herb draws blood to the women’s reproductive organs and increases sexual drive and sensitivity. Ashwagandha can also help with hot flashes, depression, and anxiety.

    Chasteberry creates a balance between progesterone and estrogen. It helps reduce tenderness and soreness of the breasts by regulating how much prolactin is secreted by the pituitary gland.

    Black cohosh (Cimicifuga racemosa) is one of the oldest phytoestrogenic herbs used to help balance hormones and battle the symptoms of menopause. This herb acts like estrogen in the body and relieves hot flashes. It is said to decrease inflammation often seen in hormone imbalance.

    Black cohosh also helps regulate menstrual periods and relaxes the uterine muscles to help with menstrual cramps.