Get back on track by putting the focus on hormonal balancing
By: Kerry Foreman, Owner and Founder of Muskoka Mornings®
If you feel like you’ve skipped your routine this summer, you’re not alone! With all of the running around, busy nights, and weekend getaways, it is hard to stick to your goals. Now that school will soon be starting up again, it’s the perfect time to get back on track! A great way to start is to put the focus on your hormones. Hormones play a vital role in our body’s ecosystem and affect so many things: immunity, metabolism, reproduction, and more. By paying attention to hormonal imbalance, you’ll get better sleep, decrease mood swings, and generally feel more energized through the day.
What do we need?
Hormonal imbalance in women is such a common issue. Women need much more progesterone than estrogen but because of the current environment we live in, this can be hard to achieve. Nowadays, everything is saturated with xenoestrogens; chemicals that mimic estrogen in the body. These chemicals can be found in many plastics, skincare, cosmetic products, and processed foods. Ensuring your meals are nutritious, and contain whole foods is a great way to start balancing your hormones. Check out our recipe library for some delicious meal, snack, and drink ideas that give your body exactly what it needs, including satiating protein thanks to No Yolking™ 100% Egg White Protein Powder.
Our Top 5 Tips for Balancing Your Hormones Naturally:
1. Ensure your gut is healthy.
Gut health is extremely important to our immune systems, heart, weight and so much more. Our gut is also responsible for estrogen detoxification. This happens when our liver sends excess estrogen to the colon to be removed from the body. If you have poor gut health, you might find yourself constipated which slows this process down. This is not what you want! Also, poor gut health increases your chance at producing bad bacteria such as beta-glucuronidase which is an enzyme that uncouples estrogen from its bond on the gut and allows it to be free, which is not what you want when trying to balance your hormones.
2. Eliminate any personal care products that contain parabens and/or phthalates.
Unfortunately, many commonly used shampoos, moisturizers, skincare, and makeup contain parabens and/or phthalates. There are a lot of great natural products on the market that are free from these chemicals. Be sure to read the labels closely to choose the best product for yourself. If you’d like to try making your own all-natural body scrub, check out the recipe for our Organic Sugar Body Scrub using No Yolking™ 100% Egg White Protein Powder. No fillers, no chemicals; just real ingredients to nourish your body from the outside in.
3. Avoid factory-farmed meat.
For hormone balance, it is best to purchase grass-fed beef or go plant-based to avoid synthetic hormones given to animals raised in large scale operations. Many large scale operations feed their animals synthetic hormones to increase growth so they can produce more meat in less time. However, many of these synthetic hormones are linked to disease. Trenbolone Acetate is a synthetic hormone that has been linked to pancreatic and liver tumors as well as hyperplasia. Similarly, Zeranol is a synthetic hormone linked to testicular abnormalities and pituitary gland tumors. To avoid these synthetic hormones and balance your hormones, ensure you read the package of your meat products and only purchase grass-fed meats.
4. Engage in regular exercise
Physical activity plays a large role in influencing our hormonal health. Aside from the many other benefits exercise offers, it also increases hormone receptor sensitivity. This means that it improves the delivery of nutrients and hormone signals. The major benefit relating to hormone health is our ability to reduce insulin levels and increase insulin sensitivity through exercise. Insulin is a hormone that allows our cells to take up sugar from our bloodstream to use for energy. Thus, balancing this hormone will leave you feeling more energized. The best activities to help balance this hormone include strength training, high intensity workouts, aerobics, and walking. By adding No Yolking™ 100% Egg White Protein Powder to your pre- or post-workout beverage or meal, you’ll also help your body build and repair muscles while restoring energy, so you can recover faster.
5. Partake in stress reduction techniques
Stress is one of the biggest factors of hormone imbalance. Our bodies contain cortisol, AKA “the stress hormone”, which helps your body cope with long-term stress. When we face stress, our body responds by increasing our cortisol production. This is fine in small doses, however, chronic stress impairs the feedback mechanisms that return your hormonal systems back to normal. Engaging in meditation, yoga, or any other soothing activity you enjoy may help normalize your cortisol levels.
If you are looking to get started but don’t quite know where to start when it comes to cooking, we have a long list of great healthy, whole food recipes on our website, which also use No Yolking™ 100% Egg White Protein Powder. We have a wide variety of breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack ideas to help you on your hormone balancing journey!
References
https://nutritiouslife.com/live-consciously/balanced-hormones-health-benefits/
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/balance-hormones#TOC_TITLE_HDR_3
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/22673-hormonal-imbalance
http://www.beyondfactoryfarming.org/get-informed/health/hormones
