Key Ways to Balance Your Hormones Naturally as a Woman

Today I am super excited to dive into hormones, hormones for overall women's health. And so we're going to cover a lot. I want to go through an overview of what are hormones? What even are they? Why are they so important? Why as women do we need to care a lot about supporting our overall hormone balance? And then I'm going to break down the three most effective places that I would start with supporting your overall hormone balance. And can sometimes be blind spots when working with clients of ours as far as common blind spots that we see when it comes to nutrition and lifestyle changes that can really move the needle for supporting hormones. So before we dive in, I want to just talk about how important hormones are for pretty much everything. They are essential for everything happening in your body if you care about feeling your best, especially when you're going through various life transitions. And when we think about life transitions, life transitions are happening for women all the time. So we have the transitions that are happening every single month where your hormones are ebbing and flowing based on where you're at in your cycle. And let's say a woman is having a normal 28 day cycle, which is of course not the, the necessarily norm because a lot of women struggle with having regular cycles. But let's say you have a normal cycle and you're going from the follicular phase into ovulation, into your luteal phase, and your hormone levels are changing throughout that entire period of time every single month, which can also lead to changes in how we feel. So that transition, as you're going through the follicular phase, you have your hormones, this starts on day one of your cycle and your hormones are going to be more regular, they're going to be fluctuating less. So estrogen and progesterone are more stable typically. And then your LH and FSH rises before, before you reach the point of ovulation, your estrogen will rise as well, prior to ovulation. Ovulation, let's say, happens on day 14. If you're having a normal cycle and then going into the second half of your cycle, the luteal phase is when women start to experience more symptoms as estrogen and progesterone levels are rising. So having the right hormone balance throughout, even just the transition that's happening every single month can be so important for improving how we feel overall. And according to the United States Office of Women's health, more than 90% of women say that they get some form of premenstrual symptoms like bloating, headaches and Moodiness. So this is what we are experiencing, you know, on a month to month basis, sometimes happening at a very young age, without getting a lot of answers for why that is the case. Now let's move into the other aspects of the transitions, life transitions that are drastically impacting our hormone health, which would be preconception. Not that preconception changes your hormones that much, but you want to, you know, do the nutrition, lifestyle habits that help to optimize, especially knowing that that three to six month window prior to actually conceiving can be so important, such a critical time for both men and women to optimize their overall health to help to support the healthiest pregnancy outcomes and a healthy baby. This also goes into thinking about the changes that are happening throughout pregnancy. So throughout pregnancy, your hormone levels fluctuate enormously and then you enter the postpartum phase and your hormones are still all over the place. It can take up to two years for women's hormone levels to normalize postpartum. And if you're breastfeeding for more than two years, then you'll continue to experience some of those hormonal fluctuations. And then if you have multiple kids that spans multiple years, you enter then perimenopause, where your hormones are truly all over the place as your body's starting to prepare for menopause and the number of eggs that you have drops significantly. And then women will eventually, after you know, approximately eight years or so, enter menopause. So if we frame this as a normal woman's experience, we could estimate that maybe they're experiencing symptoms related to hormonal imbalances in their cycle every month from the ages of 20 to 30. And then start to prepare for pregnancy, get pregnant, let's say, at 32. For easy numbers, you're pregnant at 32, and then you have a baby at 33. And then you have the two years that you're breastfeeding and then recovering postpartum. That takes you to 35. You may get pregnant again and have a baby at 30, let's say 36. And then you have two years that you're going through again, the breastfeeding and the hormonal roller coaster that comes postpartum. Let's say that takes you to 37. And then oftentimes, let's say you only have two kids. And then you start entering perimenopause around the age of 40, where your hormones are starting to shift a lot. You're experiencing more mood swings, you're experiencing more brain fog fatigue, you're not sure. If it's because you're, you know, had two babies a few years ago, or if it's because you're in perimenopause, or if it's because of other things that are happening and then you're in perimenopause. Let's say for 10 years, you hit menopause at the age of 50, and then as you're hitting menopause, if you're not on hormone replacement therapy, then your risk of chronic disease starts to really go up. This is essentially a normal woman's experience and highlights how much our hormonal fluctuations really impact so many years of our overall lives. Now I want to highlight the fact that there is a huge movement happening with a lot of practitioners emphasizing the importance of hormone replacement therapy, which is such an important way to help to mitigate some of the symptoms that women experience. So this can happen, you know, even postpartum. But there's a lot of emphasis around the use of hormone replacement therapy for perimenopause in menopause, which I think is so exciting and something that functional medicine has been teaching for a very long time. I remember even going through my first. I did an advanced practitioner board certification training through the Institute for Functional Medicine, and most of the other people that were in the program with me were physicians. And the first several days of the training was all about hormones. It was the hormone module. And I remember thinking to myself, as a dietitian, this was 10 years ago, this was 2014. As a dietitian, I don't really need to know that much about hormones because I'm not prescribing them. And I could not have been more wrong about that assumption so long ago because our hormones impact so much and our nutrition and lifestyle impact so much of our hormone health. But at the time, they were educating around the importance of hormone replacement therapy, talking about how there are so many myths around the risks of hormones because of the Women's health study from 2002 and the way that hormone replacement therapy can drastically improve a woman's quality of life. And so now we're seeing more and more OB GYNs and other nurse practitioners taking a stand on how important hormone replacement therapy is and how much there is not an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer when it started at an appropriate age, and of course, depending on the person and working with your doctor in order to do that. So this is a huge moment of really bringing to surface the importance of hormones and how much they can improve our overall function and quality of life. But I also don't want to make it seem like that is the solution for everyone because nutrition and lifestyle play such an enormous role also. And so if you are a woman that's going into your doctor's office, you have your hormone testing, you're seeing a hormone specialist, and you're so excited to be able to see the hormone specialist, and they're like, oh, everything looks normal, nothing for us to do here. But you're like, well, I don't feel normal. Like, I don't think it's normal for me to have this level of exhaustion and the anxiety and the insomnia and the out of control cravings and the number of different symptoms that I'm experiencing. Like, even if my labs are normal, something is off. We hear this from a lot of women often that are going into their doctor. So the first thing is that it's important to have a doctor that you can work with that will help make sure that you're on the appropriate level of hormone replacement therapy. That's not the easiest to find. And I wish that I had great resources for being able to understand that. But I would suggest maybe even looking into, of course, an OB GYN could be great if they are well trained in hormone replacement therapy. Unfortunately, a lot don't get proper training in hormone replacement therapy, which is crazy. Which could also be where, you know, a functional medicine doctor or a naturopath or something along those lines could be beneficial. If you're experiencing something like that, though, I also want to highlight how much the women that we work with who are experiencing the same thing that come to us and are able to really dial in on the nutrition and lifestyle factors that move the needle the most and identify their blind spots, some of their root causes, and the nutrition supplements and lifestyle that can drastically help to improve functionality. You don't want to miss out on that step. Okay. Because that is the full picture as far as improving our overall health. And I believe so strongly that we need to stop normalizing hormone imbalances and accepting doctors normalizing them in these different appointments, because it is not normal that 25% of women have difficulty getting pregnant or carrying a child to term. It is not normal to have debilitating pain and bloating and cramping for half of the month every single month. It is not normal to go many years through perimenopause feeling like you are incredibly anxious, that you're exhausted, that you're not able to hold a thought together. And it is not normal to then go through menopause and feel like everything is falling apart with your blood sugar levels rising, your cholesterol levels rising, your osteoporosis, your osteopenia diagnosis happening. None of these things are normal, and we don't want to accept them as normal. And there are many things that can be done in order to offset this. Of course, balancing hormones plays an enormous role. The other thing that I want to just address is that when you think about how the body is one complex, interconnected organism, it is not just about hormones. So there are so many different aspects. If you have underlying chronic inflammation, that will fuel more hormone imbalances that will lead to similar symptoms as hormone imbalance. If you have pre diabetes or imbalanced blood sugar, that also will fuel more of these hormone imbalances. So 50% of the population has imbalanced blood sugar levels. That's either type 2 diabetes, prediabetes, or gestational diabetes. And it also includes type 1 diabetes, which is the autoimmune version, which is a much smaller percentage of the population. But overall, 50% of the population has abnormal blood sugar levels, and a lot of people don't know it. And so even having abnormal blood sugar levels can exacerbate the issue. So taking hormone replacement therapy can, of course, to some degree improve insulin sensitivity, but it's not going to fix the blood sugar problems. And so I just want to highlight the fact that we want to think super comprehensively about identifying the true issue that helps to then improve your overall hormone balance, instead of thinking that hormones are the reason for everything that's happening without digging deeper. Okay, so let's get into the science of hormones. Hormone pyramid is where I want to start. So hormones, these are our chemical messengers, and they are circulated throughout your entire body to help to regulate your key functions. And they allow you to adapt and to respond to change in your environment. But they don't act alone. So they are highly interconnected, and they form what I call the hormone pyramid, which is where each of these hormones connect and impact one another. So at the base of your hormone pyramid, you have two hormones. One is a metabolic hormone, insulin, and the other is a stress hormone, cortisol. And then in the middle layer, you have your thyroid hormones. These are T3 and T4 as your two primary thyroid hormones. And then at the top are your sex hormones, your progesterone, estrogen and testosterone levels. So the base of the pyramid is your cortisol and insulin. And then you have your thyroid hormones, and then you have your sex hormones that are at the Very top. Everyone wants to start with correcting the sex hormones up here without thinking about the base of their pyramid and being able to optimize the foundation of the hormone pyramid. Optimizing the base of the hormone pyramid is definitely where I recommend starting. You can't balance your estrogen and progesterone without first addressing cortisol and insulin. Now, of course, taking hormone replacement therapy can help with improving some of these overall things. But if you have drastically imbalanced cortisol levels and you're not addressing those, then you're doing it in the opposite order. So let's talk through each piece of the pyramid. Let's start with cortisol, the stress hormone. So cortisol is produced by your adrenal glands in response to stress. Perceived stress specifically is what you're producing cortisol to. So this helps to regulate your metabolism, your immunity, inflammation. I think cortisol has gotten a bad rap overall where everyone's trying to just completely flatline their cortisol levels and that is not necessary. So cortisol is very important for our overall functionality. It peaks in the morning and then as the day goes on, it should start to drop throughout the day, which is your overall natural cortisol rhythm. Following a healthy cortisol rhythm is extremely important for our overall hormone health, for our energy levels, for our mood and for so much more. But chronically elevated cortisol, whether that's from mental stress, whether that's from high intensity workouts, whether that's from poor sleep, whether that's from fasting for too long or undereating, all of these things can disrupt your ovulation and your overall progesterone production. It also raises fasting blood glucose levels, contributing to insulin resistance. So cortisol can have a negative impact on your sex hormones. And if you start hormone replacement therapy without addressing the need to balance your cortisol levels, it will only get you so far, as I just said. So symptoms of cortisol imbalances can include insomnia, anxiety, irregular cycles, mood swings, fatigue and mid afternoon crashes are all incredibly common. Another one that I want to highlight is that even for me going through my miscarriage experience, I had my miscarriage, had I missed miscarriage and went to the OB gyn after I actually should highlight, I took my notepad out after the appointment and like literally outlined the entire conversation because I was just bawling because of how absolutely horrendous she treated me, especially after just experiencing a miscarriage. So I asked, can we test my hormones? And she said, no need, you'll just go back to trying once you have your cycle again. And I started to address, like, well, I think that there could be other issues because of some of these symptoms that I have at certain times of the month or these. And she said, no, there's no need to test hormones. I'm the physician, I'm a surgeon. I would not ever test hormone levels for this. I asked like, well, what about endometriosis? And like, there are some symptoms that I have had. I know endometriosis isn't diagnosed very proactively because of it requiring laparoscopic surgery. She said, absolutely not. I would never put you through a surgery like that. And I said, well, a nurse practitioner that I talked to had said, maybe that should be the route that I go through. And she said, well, she's a nurse practitioner, I'm the surgeon. You know, it was very, very ego driven. So anyways, my point in telling you this is that I, of course, didn't listen to her advice. And I tested hormones. We use the Dutch test in my nutrition business. And so I tested my hormones and my progesterone levels were in the postmenopausal range. It's impossible to carry a healthy baby to term when your progesterone levels are completely imbalanced. And my cortisol levels were very high. So working on decreasing my cortisol levels from stress, eating enough carbohydrates, making sure that I was eating enough calories, all these things contributed. That was my focus, decrease stress, increase my carbohydrate consumption. I did end up taking progesterone as well that a naturopath had prescribed for me. But I did many other things, a few supplements as well, in order to try to create more hormone balance. So I'm telling you this because cortisol can impact your progesterone levels. And this is something that I don't think a lot of women realize enough. The other thing that I want to highlight is that chronically high cortisol can also break down your muscles and the gut lining, because cortisol is a catabolic hormone. So this can increase GI symptoms. And also if it's breaking down the lining of the gut, this can increase things like leaky gut, which can lead to an increased risk of autoimmune disease and many, many other symptoms. So when your muscles are breaking down and you're pulling amino acids from them, you have less ability to actually store glucose, which also makes it easier to gain body fat. It increases your risk of insulin Resistance and storing more of that abdominal fat, specifically more of that visceral fat. It also can increase levels of inflammation and of course, insulin resistance. So you want to factor that in, especially if it feels like you're trying so many different things and you're not seeing the results that you're looking for. Okay. The second hormone that's at the base of this hormone pyramid is the blood sugar regulator, which is insulin. So insulin helps to shuttle glucose into your cells after you eat, you eat a food, and then your pancreas secretes insulin. The insulin helps to pick up the glucose from your bloodstream, bring it into the cells. Now, chronically high insulin levels often can stem from high blood sugar levels that over time lead to insulin resistance. This can lead to weight gain, it can increase chronic inflammation, it can increase cortisol levels, and, and eventually it will lead to potentially Pre diabetes, type 2 diabetes. That can also create more issues. So that resistance contributes to fatigue, to brain fog, to cravings, to mood swings. And then it also can exacerbate symptoms of perimenopause and menopause. It can increase your risk of PCOS and many other diseases that are associated with blood sugar, Particularly Alzheimer's disease is also associated with things like type 2 diabetes. So the domino effect is very real. When you have insulin resistance, it causes your ovaries to produce too much testosterone, which can then impair ovulation and it can drive menstrual irregularities. So dysregulated blood sugar can not only drive the ovaries to produce too much testosterone, but it can also cause imbalances in your estrogen and progesterone. We know that PCOS is the leading cause of infertility. Up to 70% of people with PCOS, PCOS have insulin resistance. And so even if you don't have pcos, you could still have insulin resistance that can lead to some of these hormonal fluctuations. Insulin resistance also drives chronic inflammation, which can exacerbate any hormone imbalance. When you have a lot of chronic inflammation, which most Americans do, this can lead to more hormone imbalances and can increase the adverse symptoms. It like, magnifies the adverse symptoms in every single metabolic health condition. So improving glucose control can help to improve the regularity of a monthly cycle. It can help to support fertility, and it can also help to offset those perimenopause and menopause related symptoms, in addition to the increased risk of chronic disease that women are at through that menopause transition. You need stable blood sugar in order to protect both Cortisol and the sex hormone balance. So that's the base of the pyramid, cortisol and insulin. The second middle base, the middle tier of your hormone pyramid is your thyroid hormones. And these are your metabolic regulators. Your thyroid controls many different things. Your metabolic rate, your energy, your temperature regulation, your hair, your skin quality, so much that your thyroid does for us. And TSH is produced from the pituitary gland that signals to the thyroid to produce T4, which is then converted into active T3. But this conversion can be impaired by a number of things. The conversion from T4 into that active T3, which can include stress, chronic inflammation, nutrient deficiencies, are also incredibly common here. Blood sugar imbalances are also a factor. And then when you experience low thyroid function, this can lead to slowing down your metabolism, making your fatigue absolutely horrible, impairing your sex hormone production. Your thyroid is directly involved in this entire equation. And unfortunately, most women go to their doctor and they get a TSH tested, which is produced by the pituitary gland. It is not an active measurement of your thyroid hormones. So most doctors won't look deeper than TSH unless you're presenting with symptoms that make them feel like you could potentially have thyroid issues. Now, thyroid issues can be not just in terms of the production of your T4 and that active T3, but it can also be with your thyroid antibodies. So increases in your thyroid antibodies that are associated with thyroid autoimmune diseases like Hashimoto's. There's other thyroid autoimmune diseases like Graves disease, but Hashimoto's is incredibly common and affects a lot of women and unfortunately, unfortunately takes a long time to be diagnosed because of the fact that most doctors are only testing for TSH unless they feel that it's warranted to test an entire thyroid panel. So an entire thyroid panel is absolutely something that I would recommend in advocating for with your doctor or the practitioner that you're working with. We test a full thyroid panel in the women that go through our programs because of how much we really need that additional information. And our thyroid health not only impacts our weight and the other things that I talked about, but it also can take a huge hit during pregnancy. So thyroid health is incredibly important for overall pregnancy outcomes. And also the thyroid is under more stress during pregnancy. So we can see large fluctuations in thyroid health in the years after a woman has given birth to their baby. Which may also warrant a discussion around what does your thyroid look like if you're not feeling like yourself and you're having a lot of issues postpartum okay, let's get into your sex hormones. So we have your three sex hormones, estrogen, progesterone and testosterone. Estrogen regulates so many things in your body. It is so incredibly important. We have the estrogen regulating your cycle, supporting your bone health, your heart health, your brain health, your mood, your skin, and so much more. And low estrogen levels can increase the risk of night sweats, brain fog, vaginal dryness, mood swings. It can impact a lot of things in addition to increasing your risk of many chronic diseases. And then high estrogen levels or estrogen dominance, which can sometimes just be the overdrive of particularly harmful types of estrogen that are circulating, can lead to things like bloating, heavy periods, breast tenderness are some of the common symptoms that we see there. Now most women will experience low levels of estrogen as they're going into menopause, which can really impair overall health. So Dr. Marnie Makary highlighted the fact that when a woman starts estrogen or estrogen plus progesterone, that doing that within 10 years of the onset of menopause, that there's a 25 to 50% reduction in, in fatal heart disease and heart disease, which is comparable or greater than the effect of a statin. So it also reduces risk of Alzheimer's disease and so much more. So as more of these practitioners are really advocating for the importance of hormone replacement therapy, it's highlighting how important estrogen is for our body and then of course, the importance of that even prior to perimenopause. Then we have progesterone, which you could think of as a calming hormone that also helps to promote sleep. It drops first in perimenopause, which can increase anxiety and pms. Women also, even prior to going through perimenopause, will often experience drops in progesterone. As I said, I experienced low levels of progesterone even going into trying to, to have a healthy pregnancy. And so I know that it is controversial to to test hormones. Some ob gyns will not recommend testing hormones. We have found it to be incredibly help, especially in running Dutch tests that are run at a specific time of a woman's cycle in order to support their overall health and better understand what's going on underneath the surface. So progesterone changes can lead to sleep issues, brain fog, mood swings, fluid retention, anxiety, heavy menstrual bleeding, low libido, difficulty with conception and maintaining a healthy pregnancy, and many more. I'm just highlighting a few of the key ones. And then we have testosterone, which is the third sex hormone, and that helps to support libido, bone density, and muscle mass. Your testosterone is an androgen hormone, which is usually associated with males, but it's actually critical, completely critical for both women and men. Testosterone is produced in smaller quantities for women, but testosterone can be incredibly beneficial. Even women who go on testosterone therapies can experience drastic improvements in their brain health and many other factors of their overall health. So high testosterone levels can be associated with irregular periods, acne, especially on the jawline and the chin and the back, facial hair, and increased muscle mass. And then low testosterone levels will be associated with kind of the opposite. So things like fatigue, low libido, mood swings, a decrease in bone density, memory loss, and muscle weakness. Overall, when it comes to hormones, you cannot skip the basics. So it is so important for women, in order to function at our best and decrease our risk of chronic disease, to have great hormone balance, which, of course, will ebb and flow always throughout these different life transitions. But we have to focus on nailing the basics instead of jumping to the sexy interventions that are touted by Instagram influencers or fitness professionals or whoever it is that you follow. So I just can't emphasize enough in working with thousands of women how important it is to focus on these basics that support overall hormone health in such a significant way. And so when we talk about those basics, the key basics to start with are your nutrition, stress, sleep reduction, and movement. Those are the key four to start with. Nutrition, stress reduction, sleep, and movement. The other thing that I would say is that when we talk about nailing the basics and we say, like, focus on these four things, it sounds so much easier than it actually is. But it can take years of consistency and building these habits that support your overall health. A second layer beyond the nutrition, sleep, stress reduction, and movement for me would be relationships. Environmental toxin exposure and nutrient deficiencies. So I'm going to dive deeper into each of these, But I particularly, I'm going to actually pull them into the top three things that I would recommend in order to start. But these are enormous themes that we see in impaired hormone balance, relationships, because relationships impacts our overall quality of life, our oxytocin levels, decreasing cortisol, all these things. Environmental toxin exposure impacts all of our hormones, which I'm going to talk about in a second. And then nutrient deficiencies impact our hormones to a great extent. And so a lot of times people are walking around with nutrient deficiencies. You ask your doctor, should I get a nutrient deficiency test? They say, no. Nutrient deficiency tests are so important. This is where we start for most of our clients is looking at a organic acids test to be able to accurately assess nutrient levels underneath the surface in order to know where to first intervene. Okay, number one place that I would recommend starting to support your hormone balance is of course, nutrition. And I wanna dive into a few key areas of thinking about your nutrition in order to support your hormone health. Number one, you want to find the balance of eating enough calories that support your hormone health without eating a surplus of calories that lead to a lot of weight gain and fat accumulation, which will actually negatively impact your hormone balance. So these 1200 calorie diets or these 800 calorie quick fix diets have had an enormously negative impact on overall women's hormone health and thyroid function. So you want to be able to eat in a way that supports your metabolism and finding that middle ground is such an important place to start. Number two, eating blood sugar balanced meals. So we talked about the fact that insulin is one of those key hormones at the base of your pyramid and it impacts so much of the downstream effect on your thyroid, on your sex hormones, and even on your cortisol levels. So eating blood sugar balanced meals where you're getting enough protein and fats in healthy forms of fiber is so critical for supporting your overall hormone balance. Number three, limiting ultra processed foods that play an enormously negative role in our overall hormone health. Sticking to mostly whole foods that come from nature, in addition to, of course, incorporating some processed foods. You know, a processed food by definition could be things like a can of organic cannellini beans, or a thing of organic yogurt, or a container or carton of bone broth. All of these foods are processed to some extent. So I'm talking about ultra processed foods that have a lot of ingredients that don't feel like they are natural forms of whole foods. When it comes to your hormone health, I also want you to be thinking about nutrient repletion. For the last 10 years, I have had an initial intake form that women fill out prior to working with myself or my team of registered dietitians. And the most common answer that we see when we ask women, when was the last time that you felt good? The most common answer that we see is before having my kids. And there's many reasons for this, but a lot of it stems from the need to really take serious the role of nutrient repletion in order to support our overall hormone balance. Nutrients are prioritized for the developing the fetus and then to fuel the baby. When you're breastfeeding, which leads to lower nutrient levels and nutrient reserves for moms. I have tested thousands and thousands of women's nutrient levels and it is very rare to have a test that shows zero nutrient deficiencies. So I want to highlight the importance of nutrient repletion. This of course involves taking a high quality prenatal supplement. I always recommend Wenatal, which I'm a medical advisor for. I helped with the formulation for both the the prenatal for women and the prenatal for men. I'm also an investor in the company, but I believe so strongly that having a high quality prenatal throughout the postpartum experience is such an important way to help with nutrient repletion and help to mitigate some of those symptoms that can happen going into perimenopause. The more that you're taking seriously that time in between your postpartum and perimenopause, the better setup you're going to be for the upcoming decades of your life. So this includes nutrient repletion from a high quality supplement. And of course a prenatal alone is not going to do everything for you. You, you'll need probably other supplements that are going to be. But I also think we cannot negate the importance of eating a diverse diet that gives us these micronutrients, our B vitamins, our magnesium, our choline, so many of these nutrients that we can get from foods, the foods that we're eating, high quality organic pasture raised eggs, thinking about lentils, thinking about even dark chocolate, chicken and other animal proteins that have high bioavailability of B vitamins that are easier to absorb. And so being able to balance your diet as far as getting a lot of these nutrient dense foods to replete our nutrients to support our overall hormone health is so essential. Number two is stress. Stress is so incredibly common and you could feel like you are hitting everything. From a nutrition standpoint, you're getting your activity in. But from a stress standpoint, this is where a lot of women struggle and I believe that it is a huge contributor to overall hormone imbalances. So there's two layers that I want to break down as far as stress is related. One is avoiding overstressing your body and the second is decreasing the stress that you're exposed to in your day to day life. So you want to avoid overstressing your body from things like not eating enough calories, not eating enough carbohydrates, not too much, that you're gaining weight, or that you are having large blood sugar fluctuations. But finding the Right balance. And I want to also disclose that I am not a dietitian that overly recommends calorie counting. I am not a big fan of it. I'm a big fan of calorie awareness and mindfulness, but I don't count calories. And it is not very common for me to recommend that to clients. So it sounds a little confusing. And this is something that we break down deeper in a lot of our programs is finding the right balance for you that helps to support your metabolism without taking a hit on your hormones, and where you're eating enough carbohydrates without taking a huge hit on your blood sugar levels. And then limiting stimulants would be the next recommendation as far as avoiding that overstress on your body. And when I say limit stimulants, I'm talking about the three key ones, alcohol, caffeine, and sugar. Does that mean never drink caffeine? No, I'm not recommending that. I mean, for some people that may be very helpful, but I think that it's more important to find the proper balance for you to feel like you're able to live your life and enjoy it without it negatively impacting your overall health. And this will look different for every single person. So avoid drinking too much alcohol. This is a hugely important part of overall hormone balance. We're quick to want to do the the magnesium drinks at night and the fancy supplements, but limiting alcohol consumption will take you much farther than doing most of those interventions. Not that I'm not a fan of those interventions, but decreasing alcohol intake should definite come first when it comes to improving overall hormone health and not stressing out your body so much, decreasing caffeine and not over relying on it, and decreasing your overall sugar consumption, because that is a stimulus on the body and will impact that hormone pyramid, specifically the base of it, when it comes to your insulin levels. And the last key area for supporting overall hormone health is limiting endocrine disruptors. Endocrine disruptors are an enormous disruptor of our overall hormone function that I think is very commonly overlooked. So just in the last 30 to 40 years alone, approximately 350,000 chemicals have been reported and registered for production throughout the world. Our environmental toxic burden, the things that we're exposed to on a day to day basis, is very high in comparison to what people were exposed to 50 years ago. A friend of mine, that's a physician, had pointed out to me that there were four major medical journals that have been published just in the last two years linking environmental toxins with an Increased risk of Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. A 2025 paper published Connected environmental toxins to increase levels of oxidative stress, systemic inflammation, atherosclerosis risk, and cardiovascular disease. So I want to Highlight this because Dr. Nate Bergman, my friend, who had highlighted this to me with the medical journals, he said for so long, physicians really thought of toxin exposure as this woo woo thing. And it is scientifically backed. And there will be more and more medical journals that come out showing this. And so these endocrine disruptors, they trigger oxidative stress, which sets off a cascade of inflammation. It can lead to endothelial dysfunction and lipid peroxidation, which is not good for our overall risk of cardiovascular issues, hypertension, atherosclerosis. And we're talking about these chemicals not even just in the sense of heart disease and Alzheimer's disease, but also in thinking about the way that they completely hijack our hormones. So these endocrine disrupting chemicals, these are substances that can mimic, they can block or interfere with your overall hormone production, like estrogen, testosterone, and thyroid hormones, which can then create a level of overstimulation. They can also bind cell receptors and then block the natural hormone from actually doing its typical job, or they can interfere with the way that these hormones and receptors are made in the body. So increased risk of cardiovascular disease has been shown, increased risk of cancer, Alzheimer's disease, autoimmune diseases. And that's not to mention the impact that this has on babies and young kids, given that in the research that they see that these compounds are transferred through the umbilical cords and through breast milk. So our kids are being exposed to these endocrine disrupting chemicals at a much higher rate than ever before. So we want to think about it for our own health, but then also for the health of our children. So the most common sources, there's many. But the most common sources of these endocrine disrupting chemicals that may be showing up in your house or in your environment will be things like BPA and plastic and can linings. And now that a lot of cans are BPA free, they'll use chemicals similar to BPA that they can still put the BPA free symbol on their can, but have, you know, something similar. PHS in cosmetics, in lotions, in shampoos, parabens and personal care products, pesticides and conventionally grown produce, and then flame retardants in household cleaners. So that's just a short list, but I want to not overwhelm you and talk about how they can disrupt your hormone health and what symptoms can manifest as a result, and then what you can actually do about it. The biggest priority areas when thinking about decreasing your overall exposure. So these endocrine disrupting chemicals, they can mimic estrogen and overstimulate estrogen receptors. They can block your hormone receptor sites, so your own hormones can't actually do their job. They can disrupt your thyroid function, particularly through some of the chemicals like PBDEs. And they can also interfere with your detoxification pathways in your liver, which you know is a larger process overall. And some of this there is a genetic component to, from a detox standpoint, but overall the large picture is that it can interfere with detoxification pathways in your liver. What symptoms can manifest as a result of this? There's a whole host of them. Fatigue and poor sleep period problems and heavier bleeding than usual. Thyroid issues and sluggish metabolism, weight gain, especially around your midsection, fertility struggles, low libido, skin issues like acne, hives and rashes, mood swings and anxiety, and early symptoms of perimenopause. Early or even more intense symptoms of perimenopause. So this is another example of the fact that hormone replacement therapy can be absolutely incredible. But we can't skip these other layers. We can't just ignore the role of endocrine disrupting chemicals and what they're doing to our overall health and specifically our hormone health. So what you can do about it? The first thing that I would recommend is swapping out all plastic containers for glass or stainless steel, your water bottles, carrying a water bottle with you everywhere so that you don't need to drink out of plastic water bottles in every possible instance. The second thing that I would recommend is using reverse osmosis water filters. This will help to reduce your exposure to pfas, to lead and to chlorine byproducts. In addition to a number of other things that our tap water is filled with. When you think about how much water you drink on a daily basis, this is an enormous exposure that leads to imbalances in our hormones. The third thing is choosing fragrance free or naturally scented personal care products. So thinking about all of these different places that we get fragrance exposure, candles, detergents, body products, thinking about even like pads or tampons, you want fragrance free always. And thinking about the fact that women are disproportionately exposed to these toxins through daily care products like body sprays, cosmetics, perfumes, face cream, scented lotions, the list goes on and on. And so one thing that I will say is that when you start to pay attention to this, there's like little aha moments where you're like, oh, we also need to change out our detergent that we're using to wash our clothes. Oh, we also need to wash out our dishwashing detergent. And now that we've swapped out our dishwashing detergent, when I go to other people's houses and I'm just even drinking out of a glass of water, I can taste the traditional dishwashing detergent. It's crazy. So switching to one that's fragrance free, you literally like, it changes the taste of your food. Even in like the Tupperwares and things like that, you can taste the detergent in the Tupperware. So we're getting like micro exposures on an ongoing basis. And I'm not trying to induce a lot of fear because I do feel that it's important to highlight the fact that your body is designed to handle toxins. It just wasn't designed to adequately process the toxin load that we're exposed to in our modern day living. And so a little support can go a really long way. And you want to focus on making those small swaps and having those small wins that are leading you to decreasing your overall exposure on a long term basis. The last place that I would recommend is buying organic produce whenever possible to help to decrease your pesticide exposure. I use a rule of thumb of anything that has a larger outside cover can probably be less important to buy organic when you think of like bananas and watermelon and things that have an outside peel. But overall, if your budget allows for it and you have access to it, I would recommend trying to eat as organic as possible. Okay, we covered a lot today. I hope that this was an incredibly valuable episode of going through why hormones are so important, the hormone pyramid, and how you can think about these specific hormones. Some of the ways that you can think about advocating for yourself in doctor's appointments, thinking about the ways that you can expand your healthcare team outside of your doctor, and then thinking about these three interventions that can lead to improved outcomes when it comes to your hormone health imbalance. As a new show, I would so appreciate you sharing this episode with a friend or a family member that you think could benefit. And if you're loving the Being Bridget show, if you could leave a rating and review, that also is enormously beneficial and I would truly appreciate it. It absolutely helps me to support more women with this mission that my team of dietitians and I are on. To support women's health using the power and the science of food as medicine and these incredibly important and effective lifestyle interventions. Thank you for being here, and I'll see you next week.