February is the month of love. While the heart shaped chocolate boxes and swoon-worthy acts of love come out in full force, it’s time to talk about why you need to detox and balance your hormones to protect your reproductive health.
This is not your typical Valentine’s Day blog.
The reason why I want to talk about this very topic today though is because we probably do not fully consider how much of an impact our hormones have on our
health in general. Additionally, we often do not understand how the things in our environment impact our hormone health. This topic applies to both female and male reproductive health.
Let’s take the 40,000 foot view of where we’re going…
● What nutrients you need to help your hormones to work properly
● Consider what toxins in your environment impact your hormones
● How to resolve hormone disruptors or endocrine disruptors naturally
● What some birth control methods do to cause hormone imbalance
Put on your seatbelt, and let’s get started
Rather watch a 10 minute video with the same information?
Detox and Balance Your Hormones to Protect Your Reproductive Health
What does detoxification have to do with balancing your hormones?
Everything!
When I work with my clients, I have them take a hormone test. This gives me a whole lot of information about their health. With a dried urine sample, I’m able to see the following:
● Whether or not you have enough estrogen
● If your body is utilizing it appropriately or taking a cancer causing pathway
● Whether you’re getting rid of it like you should or just recycling old estrogen
Knowing the amount of estrogen you have in circulation simply isn’t enough.
If we find that any of the markers mentioned above are moving in the wrong direction, then we can often course correct. Many times, I coach individuals through a little estrogen detox. This helps them balance their hormones.
If you’re ready to take your health to a new level, then click here to join me on the next cleanse challenge. Take this last step to balance your hormones, protect your reproductive health, and equip yourself with the tools you need to reclaim your life.
Hormone Imbalance & Replacement
Who has hormone imbalances?
Everyone that is breathing and can bleed red.
Women who experience PMS and other types of symptoms like cravings, bloating, water retention, mood swings, and severe cramping before their menstrual cycle likely have some hormone imbalance. Although this imbalance is often talked about with women (as previously mentioned), these imbalances can also impact men.
These imbalances also do not stick to any given age group. I’ve seen all ages experience these issues.
Hormone imbalance does not discriminate.
When I was 12 years old, my doctor put me on birth control for severe menstrual cramps. 18 years later, I was still on that birth control experiencing horrible hormone symptoms.
By the time I was 29 years old, I was in perimenopause – my ovaries were gradually releasing less and less eggs. This condition usually impacts women in their 40s and 50s.
After a little hormone detox and a little balancing act, my hormones are healthy as they would be for any woman my age now. I’m glad this was the case for me; however, many people don’t have the same experience.
The truth is, when we start giving the body what it needs, it will often course correct naturally.
Main Problem With Hormone Replacement
The main problem with hormone replacement – whether it be synthetic or bioidentical replacement – is that our own body will stop producing its natural hormones.
This is exactly what happened to me.
There is absolutely a time and place for hormone therapy, but I believe that giving the body herbal support when it’s able to make its own hormones is the best route. If you opt for hormone therapy, make sure you choose a safe alternative like bioidentical hormone therapy instead of using synthetics.
It’s the best way to prevent cancer and other diseases from forming in the body.
Hormone Disruptors In Our Environment
We come into contact with hormone disruptors in our environment on a regular basis. Unfortunately, there’s no way to completely avoid them. You can, however, start today by eating a nutrient-rich diet, controlling your stress, getting plenty of sleep, using resistance training, and supporting your body through detox if you want to naturally balance your hormones.
Let’s go deeper into how to resolve hormone disruptors.
3 Steps to Resolve Hormone Disruptors
When our hormones are disrupted, we experience weight gain, mood swings, insomnia, depression, hair loss, lack of energy, water retention, brain fog, miscarriages, and/or inability to conceive. Unfortunately, this list continues, depending on the hormones that are causing the issue.
Before I realized what was going on with my body, I remember having a similar laundry list of symptoms. It wasn’t until I found someone who could help me that I was able to bring my hormones back into balance.
If you’ve known me for a while, you know I do not address symptoms because symptoms always have a root cause – hormone disruptors. So if you’re experiencing any of the above indicators, take the following 3 steps to resolve hormone disruption.
1. Balance your diet (this will help more than hormone balance)
2. Avoid hormone disruptors found in your environment
3. Detox your body on a regular basis
1. Balance Your Diet
Focus on your diet. Balance your diet. Diet. We hear this on repeat, and sometimes, we simply ignore it. Your nutrition impacts more than just your health.
The animals we consume today are filled with hormones.
In today’s environment, they are stressed and filled with “bad” hormones like cortisol. Those stress hormones are released into the animal’s tissues, which then become a part of us when we consume them.
If you want to detox and balance your hormones to protect your reproductive health, you must look at where your food comes from. How are they treating their animals? Are those animals stressed or happy? These are all things that you need to consider if you want to improve your reproductive health.
2. Avoid Hormone Disruptors From the Environment
Just as animals have stressors in their environment, we too have stressors in our environment. Those stressors, if consistent or elevated, can disrupt our own natural hormone production.
Consider the things in your environment that are toxic to your hormones. Things like…
● Plastics
● Canned foods
● Non-stick pans
● Fire retardant
● Carpet
● Skin products
… can cause hormone imbalance and lead to negative symptoms in the body.
You can find plastic hardeners, like BPA and BPS, in everything from plastics to sales receipts to canned goods.
Many of the toxins we wear on our skin (lotions, potions, and shampoos) may have toxins that are disrupting your hormones and endocrine system.
Additionally, you’ll find more hormone disruptors in you the products you clean your home with. Those chemicals destroy hormones.
So, how do you practically avoid hormone disruptors from the environment? Read the labels. If you don’t know an ingredient, look it up. Chances are that if you’re not familiar with it, it’s probably not good for your hormone health.
You may not be able to avoid all hormone disruptors in your environment, but try to remove as many as you can. You can also look for non-toxic lines. My favorite skincare line is Beauty Counter. I also love Branch Basics for household cleaning and laundry.
3. Learn to Appropriately Detoxify the Body on a Regular Basis
Finally, you need to learn how to appropriately detoxify the body on a regular basis. It’s not a one-and-done situation. You’re continually exposed to toxins that build up in your system. In March, I’m starting another Seasonal Cleanse Challenge. This challenge happens only a couple times of the year to help people understand the importance of detoxification and how it is different from just cleansing the body.
We will never get rid of every single toxin that we’ve ever come into contact with. But we can literally remove years of toxins from the body if we provide the body what it needs and allow it to intelligently do its job.
Dig Deeper: Detox and Balance Your Hormones
In the event that you need to dig a little bit deeper, partner with someone who has an understanding of how to help you improve those hormones naturally without causing further disruption in your body. If you’re interested in digging a little deeper into this topic, schedule a free complimentary consultation with me OR sign up for my next Seasonal Cleanse Challenge here.
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