Why Your Hormones Should Be Top Of Your List in 2023

 A lot of us will chalk up feeling annoyed or angry, headachy, crampy, or tired to hormones.

Women will be at a loss to why they feel this way one day, and then a day later, they start their period and say, “ahhhh, that’s why!”

Or maybe things have gotten worse to where you’re feeling those mood swings, anxiety, insomnia and daytime fatigue for 2, 3 or even every week of the month.

But have you ever thought about what is happening in your body to make you feel this way?

Despite what it may feel like, your hormones aren’t out to get you. In fact, they want to help you, and they are doing their best to let you know this.

Warning Signs

When you start to notice that you are feeling sluggish or in some sort of pain – whether that be stomach or joint pain, brain fog or just inflammed – more than just on occasion, this is the body letting you know something deeper is going on.

If you are over age 35, this most likely has something to do with your hormones.

But let me be clear, it’s not *just* your hormones. It’s also digestion issues, your body not processing toxins as well as it used to, stress that is making your adrenals and thyroid all whacky, and emotional stuff coming up to be healed.

“What?” you ask. “I thought it was just my hormones becoming out of control.”

All those things that I just mentioned underlie your hormonal health. Your reproductive hormones – estrogen, progesterone, DHEA, and testosterone – are all “downstream” from hormones like insulin (blood sugar regulation) and cortisol (stress hormone).

Which is why you have to focus on what you eat, how you digest, and the way you are working with stress waaaay before you start targeting those reproductive hormones.

Top-Down Approach

Usually, I’m against the top-down approach in life. But when it comes to hormones, it’s necessary. You gotta start with what’s happening at the top in order for the things to balance back out at the bottom.

So what’s that mean? It’s about starting with the foundations of health, which include diet, movement, hydration, sleep, and calm/detox.

Diet→blood sugar/insulin; provides the building blocks of hormones; gives us the vitamins, minerals, and beneficial bacteria to properly detoxify hormones in the liver and colon

Movement→also helps regular our blood sugar; helps support hormone production and balance, particularly estrogen and testosterone

Hydration→Dehydration leads to adrenal/cortisol issues, which impact progesterone production

Sleep→Revitalization that acts as the key to our circadian rhythm, which plays a huge role in our cortisol (stress hormone production), i.e. lack of sleep is both caused by and stimulates high cortisol

Calm/Detox→Sleep shouldn’t be the only thing we focus on when it comes to calming our hormones. Breaks throughout the day get us into our parasympathetic nervous system, aka rest and repair mode. This mode also helps to support your detox organs like the liver, kidneys, and lymph, which all move hormones through and out your body.

After you get these foundations working well, usually about 90% of hormone issues will be taken care of.

If you fall into that 10%, that’s when we dive deeper into your gut health, liver function, adrenals, thyroid, emotions, and mindset.

Understanding How Your Hormones Work

The problem with most period problems I see in clients is that they simply don’t understand how their hormones work.

That’s because for most of us women, we were never taught how they work.

Even after getting my Masters in Holistic Health Education and Nutrition Educator certification, I still knew very little about my hormones until after I nearly died from a fibroid-surgery-gone-wrong.

If only I knew then what I know now!

We don’t need to live with constant mood swings, cramps, heavy periods, painful joints, insomnia and fatigue. We just need to know what those things are connected to, and make changes to the root causes.

That’s exactly what I do in Hormone Breakthrough Blueprint, my signature get-to-know-your-hormones program. And it begins again in January 2023, providing the keys to a new year where your hormones become your friend, instead of your enemy.