Hormonal Imbalance
For most women, particularly as they enter their late 30s and early 40s, a normal imbalance of hormones occurs. During this season of life, there’s a decline in progesterone and the production of the same amount of estrogen.
Some hormonal imbalances are part of the aging process. However, not everyone has the same experience in menopause. Some people’s changes in hormones are more dramatic and problematic. Additionally, other hormones play along with our sex hormones.
Is Your Symphony Out of Tune?
Think of your entire hormone system as a symphony and your sex hormones are the wind section; your adrenal hormones that respond to stress are the percussion; and then your insulin, glucose control and body composition controlling hormone are the brass section.
When any one of those is playing out of balance the other ones change to accommodate that. One of the major things we see with hormonal imbalance is there’s often a component of stress and adrenal function that goes along with not sleeping well or not eating well.
Stress-Induced Symptoms
If you’re in the sandwich generation of taking care of kids and your parents you likely will experience significant stress that can affect the entire symphony. Because the percussion system is playing out of whack, all the other instruments or hormones are trying to adjust because of it. When people have that hormonal imbalance they start to experience all of the symptoms that we tend to associate with aging.
You may experience the following:
- Fatigue
- Brain fog
- Weight gain
- Lack of libido
- Moodiness
- Short temper
- Poor exercise recovery
When symptoms such as these show up most of the time people don’t know where to fix these problems. That’s because they’re not looking at the entire symphony at the same time. In those cases doctors start prescribing antidepressants or tell people they need to exercise more and eat less but those actions don’t get to the root cause of what’s going on.
The good news is many things are within our control: what and how we eat, our exercise and sleep habits, and our ability to relax. We have an incredible ability to fix our underlying problems without having to use medication.
Generally, if someone has had problems for a long time it may take a while to unwind what happened and fix the underlying problem.
It’s usually not one thing going on but multiple issues. So if you’re looking to address hormonal imbalance it’s necessary to put in an investment of time, energy and everything else into fixing more than one system. When you fix those symptoms you fix the underlying problem and improve your overall longevity and health. We can get that symphony back in harmony!
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If you are seeking help to balance your hormones, contact our office to schedule with our Dallas Functional Nutritionist today!
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