7 Easy Tips to Heal your Hormones (for women)

{Note from Jessica: Today’s post is shared by my good friend, Lauren, author of Lauren Fowler. She is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist (RDN) and yoga teacher who promotes a non-diet approach to nutrition and health. She wants everyone to connect to their bodies intuitive wisdom rather than following diets. She encourages the tools of intuitive eating and health at every size. Stop by LaurenFlower.co to read more about nutrition, intuitive eating, heart-based health, and yoga.}

Ladies, your hormones are the often-forgotten-about KEY to good health.

While your body runs on so many different hormones, your monthly cycle as a woman relies on a few key hormones for regular periods, good moods, and overall health and well-being. Embrace your aunt Flo – it’s not a nuisance! It really is an essential part of being a woman, and without it your fertility and health could be compromised.

If your cycle is out of balance, you have PMS, or any other women’s health concern, tuning into your hormones will be an essential part of healing. If you don’t get regular monthly cycles, have PMS symptoms, feel emotional and out of balance for no particular reason, have PCOS, endometriosis, trouble getting pregnant, or other women’s health conditions, try out these 7 easy tips to manage your hormones.*

1. Design well-balanced meals to manage your blood sugar

When it comes to health, first think of managing your blood sugars! When your blood sugars are out of whack, you’ll find yourself hungry all the time, full of energy highs and lows, and feeling tired, shaky, or fatigued at times.

Create well-balanced meals with adequate proteins, fats, nutrient-dense carbohydrates for your needs (some people may need more or less), and fiber. When you create meals that keep you full and energized for 3-5 hours and stable hunger levels, you’re on the right track. You’ll have great energy throughout the day rather than having highs and lows.

2. Balance out your Fats

Fats are the building blocks of hormones. Having enough and the right types of fats will help you create adequate hormone levels and manage major symptoms of PMS. Focus on a variety of high-quality fats, such as coconut oil, olive oil, grass-fed butter, avocado, omega-3 rich fish, and more.

Remove high polyunsaturated fats, which can easily damage in heat and lead to inflammation within the body, such as vegetable oils (corn oil, soybean oil, canola oil, etc.).

3. Exercise…gently.

Movement is essential, but over-exercise can lead to hormone imbalance. While you’re balancing your hormones, focus on relaxation exercises to decrease your cortisol levels, such as walking, yoga, swimming, or others. You may need to limit high-intensity movement like running or Crossfit while you focus on balancing your hormones.

4. Remove the toxins!

This is a big one, and most people forget about it! Most conventional cleaning and self-care products, like shampoos, soaps, and more contain endocrine-disruptors like BPA. They are known hormone disruptors, so switch to natural care products. If you like DIY projects, make your own! Limit the use of plastic, such as plastic water bottles or Tupperware containers, as well as canned products that contain BPA. Besides removing hormone disruptors, it will help improve your fertility and reduce your body’s exposure to hundreds of other toxins.

If you are on hormonal birth control, consider weaning off it. Among other reasons, it may lead to an increased risk of breast cancer and other cancers. It’s also classified as a known carcinogen – that was enough for me to stop!

5. Boost your veggie intake

Adding more fiber from plant foods can bind old estrogen and remove it from the body. Women with hormone imbalances, such as PCOS or PMS, may suffer from estrogen dominance, so fiber can remove excess estrogen from your body. They also will provide your body with hundreds of phytonutrients, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants to support health. Focus on sneaking vegetables in with most meals.

6. Limit the sugar

I know, I know – chocolate cravings can get intense around that time of the month. However, sugar can increase PMS symptoms and deplete nutrients like magnesium. Excess refined sugar can lead to blood sugar imbalances, and when your blood sugar is off, the rest of your hormonal system is usually out of balance as well.

This doesn’t mean you have to forgo the chocolate completely. You can use cacoa or cocoa powder to create homemade treats, or enjoy a small piece of dark chocolate slowly and mindfully.

7. RELAX

Yup, seriously. Managing your stress will calm down your cortisol (your main stress hormone) levels. Create a list of stress-busting activities, and take time for them daily.

Think about simple things, like getting enough sleep, reading, meditating, light yoga, singing in your car, dancing, cuddling, playing with your dog, drinking a cup of tea in the morning, or getting a massage. Give yourself time away from email and social media on occasion. Anything that relaxes you will help you manage your stress and hormone levels.

Dig Deeper

These 7 tips are easy and manageable for most women, but if you want to dig deeper, I’d encourage you to seek out an integrative practitioner well-versed in women’s health and hormones (myself included). The book The Hormone Cure by Dr. Sara Gottfried is also a wonderful resource if you’re looking for advice on certain conditions, such as thyroid health, PMS, PCOS, fertility, menopause or peri-menopause, or more.

*Getting your hormone levels tested may be necessary. Based on your health concern or hormone levels, there will be more individualized, specific recommendations. Please work with an integrative or functional medicine practitioner for further guidance.

I’d love to hear from you! Share below, and I’ll be responding to comments.

• Do you have healthy monthly cycles, or are your hormones out of balance?
• What is 1-2 things you want to focus on NOW to heal your hormones?

Supporting Your Hormones Through Herbs

When it comes to healing your hormones, you must take your adrenals, thyroid, and blood sugar balance into account. You simply can’t balance your hormones without starting there first. When it comes to hormones and your endocrine system, caffeine may not be your best friend. While those with sluggish adrenal glands and underactive thyroids tend to feel run down and in need of a regular pick-me-up (like coffee and other caffeinated beverages), in the long run, caffeine can do more harm than good while you are healing. I go into the “whys” around caffeine and your adrenals in this detailed post here. In addition to the caffeine, there are other constituents, molds, and mycotoxins that can show up in coffee that some people find they react to.

When I was diagnosed with autoimmune disease and adrenal fatigue, one of the first things that had to go was coffee. To be honest, I never drank coffee because of the caffeine. I drank coffee for the taste and aroma, as well as the emotional experience I felt to my morning cup of joe. For me, it was a ritual that I looked forward to every day (and sometimes multiple times a day). Whether I was brewing it at home or going to my local coffee shops, the experience was one that I clung to tightly.

But, when I was faced with new health struggles, I knew I had to do whatever I could to support my body and give it the tools it needed to heal. Giving up coffee and caffeine was one step in this direction.

And it sucked.

I turned to the coffee substitutes on the market in a desperate attempt to recreate the ritual I had grown so fond of, but nothing ever tasted the way I wanted it to. Nothing ever gave me that same experience that my cup of “real” coffee did. I knew there had to be something better, but I simply could not find it on my health food store’s shelves.

Necessity is the mother of invention so that is why I created my own coffee substitutes. They were made with organic, sustainably harvested herbs with zero grains, zero gluten, and zero caffeine. Just herbs. Herbs that not only tasted delicious but supported my body’s function, like liver detox, bile production, digestion, etc. In my mind, if I can get something to not only taste amazing but do amazing things for my body, then it’s a no brainer!

I sold these pre-made blends on Etsy for awhile and the demand was more than I could keep up with. People literally LOVED these blends and were stunned at how much like coffee they actually tasted. Customers who had been dealing with a variety of chronic illnesses had given up coffee to heal their bodies, but like me were deeply missing their morning cup of joe ritual.

After careful consideration and work with some highly experienced advisors, I decided to stop selling the pre-made blends and instead share my proprietary recipes in the form of an eBook. That way I could arm people with the knowledge and recipes they needed to make their own caffeine-free, gluten-free, grain-free blends in the comfort of their own home. 

That is why I created the best-selling DIY Herbal Coffees eBook: A Complete Guide To Making Delicious Herbal Coffees to Support Healing & Stress Relief. Now in its second edition, this ebook features all of my proprietary herbal blend recipes to you can craft a homemade herbal cup of “coffee” at home.

In addition, you get a ton of researched information about coffee’s impact on the health of those dealing with issues like adrenal fatigue, blood sugar dysregulation, autoimmune disease, thyroid disease, and any other chronic illness.

Lastly, you get access to your own personal coffee shop. I show you how to recreate your favorite coffee shop drinks and pastries with wholesome, nourishing real food ingredients. No junk here.

This book truly is a comprehensive guide to supporting your health, reducing your stress, and bringing a little something special back into your healing journey. You can learn more and download your own copy of this revolutionary wellness guide here, or simply click on the image below.