Hormone Balancing | Cultivate Health

From our weight to our mood, so much of the way we experience life can be credited to our hormones. Find out how we can help you balance your hormones and help you feel your best.

Talk about hormone health has been everywhere lately- but why? If you’ve ever been curious about your hormones and how they play into your overall health and wellness, we’re about to break it down for you.

Hormones: what are they and why are they important?

Hormones control many functions in our bodies. From our weight to our mood, so much of the way we experience life can be credited to our hormones. They’re our bodies’ chemical messaging system, which essentially means that they travel through our bloodstream to manage many of our bodily processes.

Our endocrine glands along with our sex organs (testes in males, ovaries in females) are in charge of producing our hormones. As we age, our hormone production changes, causing some noticeable changes in our bodies. When you step back and look at how much our hormones control, it’s easy to see how so many of our experiences within our bodies come back to them.

How can our hormones get out of balance?

Hormone production is a completely natural process within the body, so our bodies should be able to regulate them naturally and keep them where they should be, right? Well, yes and no. Your body is wired to produce a very precise, specific cocktail of the hormones required to keep you healthy, however, certain factors can cause your body to create more or less of certain hormones, thus throwing everything out of balance. There are many potential causes of hormone imbalances and this isn’t an exhaustive list, but it does contain some of the most common ones:

Certain medical conditions (Graves’ disease, hyperthyroidism, hypothyroidism, type 1 diabetes, Hashimoto’s disease, Addison’s disease, Cushing’s syndrome, and cancers of the endocrine glands are all common causes)
Poor diet
Excessive or chronic stress
Certain medications
Hormone replacement and/or birth control
Misuse of anabolic steroids
Environmental factors such as exposure to toxins, pollutants, and endocrine-disrupting chemicals like pesticides and herbicides.

Symptoms of hormone imbalance

It’s impossible to officially diagnose hormone imbalance without testing for it, but there are a few symptoms you can look out for. Paying close attention to the messages your body is sending can help you uncover any potential issues. Hormonal imbalance can look like this:

Unexplained weight loss or weight gain
Fatigue
Irregular bowel movements (including diarrhea or constipation)
Extreme thirst
Numbness or tingling in hands
Coarse or dry hair
Difficulty tolerating warm or cold temperatures
Hair loss
Heavy periods in females
Infertility
Acne on face, chest, and upper back
Hot flashes
Loss of interest in sex
Skin tags
Depression or anxiety
Erectile dysfunction in males

This is just a small sampling to illustrate how benign hormonal imbalance can appear. It can be difficult to pin down without conclusive testing, as it tends to show up as other unrelated health issues.

Hormone balancing

If our hormones can be unbalanced, we should be able to balance them, right? It’s not always so simple, but there are steps you can take to balance your hormones.

Regular Chiropractic Adjustments

Did you know that getting in for regular chiropractic adjustments can help you balance your hormones? When your spine is out of alignment, it can cause miscommunications between the brain and endocrine system, potentially causing hormonal imbalance. Many of the glands that are responsible for regulating your hormones are at the center of your spine, so regular chiropractic adjustments can help keep everything aligned and functioning correctly.

Diet

Checking in on your diet is an important first step if you want to balance your hormones. Focus on eating plenty of vegetables and protein-rich foods at every meal. Our bodies need protein to make peptide hormones, which are key players in energy, appetite, growth, and reproduction. In addition to getting enough protein, it’s also vital to limit your sugar consumption. Make sure to consume plenty of healthy fats. The healthy fats found in fish, nuts, avocados, and olive and coconut oils help insulin resistance and manage appetite, also.

While we’re talking about diet, we should also mention gut health. It’s important to maintain the healthy bacteria in your gut. Your gut microbiome is in charge of regulating satiety (feelings of fullness) and moderating insulin resistance.

Manage your stress

Stress is more than just a feeling or an emotional response. There’s a physiological response within your body when you begin to feel stressed. When you begin to feel the physical symptoms of stress (jaw clenching, muscle tension, headaches, fatigue, stomach pain or digestive issues, etc.), it’s because your body is releasing stress hormones. Adrenaline and cortisol are the two major hormones at play here. Learning to cope with your stress in a healthy way can help you regulate your body’s stress hormone response. Meditation, yoga, and breathing techniques are good practices to add to your daily wellness routine. We also really like the addition of Vitality Booth and PEMF mat sessions for reducing stress and promoting overall wellness.

Get good sleep

Sleep is one of the key foundations for overall health, and it’s no surprise it plays so heavily into hormone regulation. Sleep deprivation can lead to impaired insulin sensitivity and can increase cortisol levels. Ideally, you’ll want to get at least 7 hours of sleep each night and stick to a routine. Try not to deviate too much from your routine, even on weekends.

How we can help

Chiropractic care is about more than simply adjusting and aligning the spine; it’s a holistic approach to health and wellness. In addition to regular adjustments, Vitality Booth sessions, and the PEMF mat, we can also help you develop and follow a wellness plan. We offer one-on-one health coaching alongside functional nutrition and implementing self care strategies to help you reach your wellness goals.

Hormone testing

If you suspect that your hormones might be behind your health concerns, it’s a good idea to get tested.

We offer DUTCH hormone testing in our office. It’s a comprehensive hormone test that will give us a full

picture of your hormone health, so we have a clear path toward treatment. Knowing your hormone levels unlocks key information that can help us position you on a path toward your health goals.

Don’t take our word for it- give us a call today to set up a consultation! Give us a call at 402-372-0166 or schedule an appointment here.

Visit us at www.cultivatechiroandwellness.com to learn more.

Blessings in health,