Join us for hormone boot camp as we explore the 50+ hormones in the human body, focusing on high-impact items that help maintain hormone health. Learn about common signs of hormonal imbalance symptoms, including how stress and cortisol can lead to issues like fatigue and mood swings. Discover practical approaches to achieve better hormone balance through effective stress management.
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Full Transcript
Hormone Bootcamp Overview 0:00
Hello, hello. We are going to go through hormone bootcamp today. And I know that we've done a lot with the Mira about reproductive hormones, but you might not know, that there are over 50 hormones in the human body. So there is a lots going on a, lot of signaling. and I want to give you the high ticket items on what works really well when we do this, how it helps this hormone and how this hormones affects the body on the big ones. Without further ado, share my screen here and we can get started.
So Comprehensive Guide will start with the reproductive hormones and then we'll get into some of the other ones, especially if you've done your hormones testing with Mira, you have got some great information on this already. But we will cover hormone balance, the sex hormones, stress hormones thyroid, nervous system and stress, and some HRT and other options. Now, hormones are quite literally the chemistry of life and they are sending signals all the time that control everything from sleep to mood to metabolism to stress and, of course, reproduction.
Now what they do is in the body, they can help control weight and metabolism and these biological functions. I like to think about the body as a hierarchy of needs, similar to Maslow's hierarchy needs in psychology. The body has a Hierarchy as well, where at the very bottom of the pyramid, it will prioritize life first. So it prioritizes breathing and heart rate. Those are the foundations for life and for living. If the body has extra resources, it will move up the pyramid to the things that are also nice to have, but aren't as dire.
Hormones, Body Priorities, and Balance 1:48
So think about digestion and immune system. Then when we get towards the top, we can think more about the thing that's nice extras, like aesthetics, healthy hair, health nails, reproduction, making babies. Thinking about hormones in this pyramid, the body usually will prioritize where it needs the most help, and then it will put the things that are at the top of the pyramid last. So if things are really healthy and well-balanced, you'll notice that the tip of your pyramid has good support. Your hair is healthy, fertility's healthy.
Skin is feeling healthy as well. And then if that pyramid is at that top, it's not getting the resources it need, that usually means that there's somewhere lower in the pyramids that need support, So when we think about balancing hormones, a lot of hormones act as a seesaw. So, when one rises, another one can fall. In our efforts to keep things well balanced and healthy, we want to make sure that there's a healthy amount of seesaws patterning that's going on with all the hormones so we're not creating an imbalance scale.
Things that can disrupt the hormone are a LOT of the things we've talked about in this reset already. Diet, stress, keeping your body healthy and mobile, decreasing exposure to toxins and the ability to get rid of toxins, and of course, sleep. So let's dive in. Some of the things that can commonly happen when hormones at large are imbalanced. You might feel so tired, even though you're sleeping a lot. That is often a hormone issue. If you are having trouble sleeping, also a hormonal issue, decrease libido or decrease interest in sex.
change in mood, whether it's anxiety or depression, feeling your brain not work as well as it used to, not feeling as cognitively sharp, or not remembering why you walk into a room. That can sometimes be a nutrition piece, but if it still seems chronic after nutrition is on point, it can be hormonal imbalance. Hot flashes and night sweats, classic symptom for especially reproductive hormones being off balance. Unexplained headaches, changes in weight, even when we're coming down to the aesthetic pieces of hair and nails and skin, those can be hormones as well.
Some things that people often don't think of as being hormone related, but digestion and chronic pain. These can come down to hormones, especially in the gut, because we've got the astroblome and the way that the estrogen is metabolized in a microbiome. That's where that astrobiome words comes in. So if there's a digestive issue that's linked to the hormones usually treating the hormone can help with the digestion. Then chronic pay and think about cortisol and a lot of these pain signalers. That comes down to rebalancing hormones too.
So the sex hormones, the reproductive hormones. We have talked a lot about estrogen and progesterone when you're looking at your mirror. But we didn't get to talk about testosterone too much. Now, just so you know, everybody has testosterone. All genders have testosterone. All gender have estrogen. Progesterone is the one that's just for the girls, but estrogen and testosterone are healthy for everybody to have a nice balance. But because we've talked about a lot of them already, I'll just give you the high tickets for estrogen, and progesteron.
Common Signs of Hormone Imbalance 5:18
Now, estrogen is our primary female hormone. It helps to regulate the menstrual cycle, helps with ovulation. That's also very good for bone density and heart health. If you have low levels, that's when the bone intensity can start to take a loss. And people get headaches, can get mood swings, anxiety, and having trouble getting pregnant, or their sleep is disrupted. Some of those hot flash symptoms can come then too. Progesterone is the opposite side of the seesaw of estrogen, so it helps to keep estrogen in balance.
It supports good sleep, reduces anxiety, helps keep healthy pregnancies, and protects against cancer. If you have low levels of progesterone, this is when hot flashes and night sweats can happen. So you might remember from our earlier training, low pro testosterone often means high estrogen. So difficulty sleeping, depression, and irregular bleeding can happen if progesterone is not optimal. Then testosterone. Testosterone affects sex drive, muscle mass, mood, energy levels. A lot of times people have good heart health in all genders when they've got good testosterone levels, so if testosterone is low, that's when we see sex drives decrease, not feeling like you're getting as strong or have as much muscle tone, fatigue, or lack of motivation as well.
So the estrogen dominance piece with the main symptoms are having that feeling of too much. Things are boggy. We've got breast pain, fluid retention, bloating, feeling like you're gaining weight. This boggie feeling can often be the estrogen dominance. You might even start to feel it in like your craving things that make you more boggier, like craving sugar. craving sleep, have heavy periods, mood swings are going all over the place. estrogen can also be related to thyroid problems when there's too much estrogen.
And then fibroids and endometriosis are related to this as well. So thinking about the seedling, like the first domino of what could be the downstream issue of these thyroid problems coming on or these fibroid or this weight. Looking at estrogen and then looking one more piece earlier about looking at how the body metabolizes estrogen can be abundantly helpful. So when we're thinking about how can we keep the estrogen levels healthy, we want to make sure that the progesterone is healthy as well to keep it well balanced.
Estrogen, Progesterone, and Testosterone 7:48
So some things that we can do to progesterone balance we'll talk about on the next slide, but in terms of decreasing estrogen, We can decrease exposure to estrogen by making sure we are not exposed to xenoestrogens. The xenoestrogens are the things found in plastics and pesticides. If you've listened to the detoxing module, you'll see a lot of that come up. The decreasing exposure to some of these estrogen-like molecules that the body doesn't know what to do with, they can recognize it as similar to estrogen, but then it holds on to it for longer than regular estrogen.
It's not able to regulate as much. You might know this from some Fat cells and hormone cells love to bind together. So if you have too much hormone, it binds to fat. And that makes those fat cells heavier, and it makes it harder to lose weight, which is just unfair. It's double-edged sword. Because if people are wanting to loose weight they usually are having some hormone imbalances too. So when we help to heal the gut and open up the detoxing pathways, that can help keep things regulated and help weight and hormones more regulated.
Last pieces, excess alcohol can make the liver upset. The liver is our powerhouse for keeping things homogenized and balanced so it gets rid of excess hormones. But if the livers upset, it can't do its job as well as it usually can. And chronic stress, leads to increased cortisol, which we'll talk about in a moment. But as you have figured out by now, stress can be a bear. So we wanna make sure that we're keeping stress levels healthy and balanced to keep the hormones healthy in balance. Thinking about the stress hormones and the adrenals, this is where we talk the three different types of inflammation or the different three types stress.
We've got physical stress, Part of life is when you bump your elbow on the pillar. It's when your stub your toe on a coffee table. Its lack of sleep, it's not exercising. That is physical stress on body. Sometimes that stress is expected and normal. Like if you stub you toe, you want there to be a healthy inflammation response. Is when the physical stressed gets to the chronic more than three months time. that it can cause issues. Chemical stress, like sugar, caffeine, processed foods, any medications that you're taking or drugs, this can be a stress on the body as well and cause chemical inflammation.
Now your body's resilient and adaptable. And so if it's exposed to some of these chemical inflammations or chemical stress, it will have a response, healthy and normal. But when things are exposed for longer periods of time, three months or more, that's when the body has a harder time and it starts to get bogged down. And then there's emotional stress, emotional inflammation. This is any kind of emotional stresses like traffic or emails, relationship strains, feeling overworked, just having the many notifications and deadlines.
Your body and your nervous system are resilient. And can we keep in mind how much are we putting in that bucket? So when we think of the body as a bucket, it takes on all of stresses, all the inflammation that we come into contact with on a day-to-day basis, physical, chemical, and emotional. If the bucket gets to be too full, that's when the budget overflows and that when symptoms start to come up. So the strategies are we can either decrease what we put in the Bucket or we Can. Let the buck it have less things in it so decrease the amount that we've put it or.
hit the reset button, open the valve and help the things come out. Now, when we're thinking about increasing resilience, I like to think about increase in the size of the bucket. So you can take on more with or decrease what you put in. To both strategies work really well. But thinking About resilience and long term health, like To think of that analogy. Let's talk about the cortisol cascade. Cortisol being the stress hormone. It is the fight or flight hormone, but it gets a bad rep.
Estrogen Dominance and Hormone Support 12:18
A lot of times people think cortisol is bad. We don't want any of it. In fact, we do want it, it is very helpful for waking us up in the morning, keeping us energized throughout the day, But we don t want to be too high. When it's too high, this is when that fight or flight zone is constantly on. So constantly high cortisol leads to constantly a high stress response, leads high blood sugar, it leads cortisol belly and weight gain, and the cascade continues. With the cortisol, stress triggers that flight or fight.
The adrenal glands, which live on top of the kidneys, they're like little hats that live in the back. They flood the body with cortisol. disrupts digestion and disrupt healing. So people that are tend to be chronically stressed out tend have poor wound healing as well. And they're decreased immune response because of the high cortisol. That happens in the body. It's a non-negotiable. Sex hormones are suppressed. So that tippy top of the pyramid, when we're thinking about the nice bonus extras, we don't have enough resources for all of body to support the sex hormones.
And then eventually the adrenals get tired. They start, they're pumping out all this cortisol. Their using up all of this energy. And eventually they say, boss, I'm tired, and I got to slow things down. That's when people get the feeling of just flat line fatigue. No matter how much you sleep, it's not going to help it. So we have to do some really intentional adrenal healing. Cortisol. can affect so many pieces of the day, almost every system on the body. So metabolism with a blood sugar piece I was just mentioning and weight distribution.
The sex hormones, if there's too much cortisol, it can suppress testosterone and it could worsen estrogen dominance. Thyroids, interesting, we'll talk about that in a moment. It reduces the conversion of T4 to T3. Now T3 is the active thyroid hormone so if you have too much cortisol it reverses how much active Thyroid hormone you Have and it can start to mimic low thyroid symptoms. Because we need cortisol to help wake us up and low cortisol helps us fall asleep. If you've got a dysregulated cortisol rhythm, it disrupts your circadian rhythm too.
So people can feel more anxious and more depressed, but they can also feel that wired and tired feeling where they're just not energized, that they just can't relax at the same time. It's quite a painful place to be in. And this is why looking at hormones and helping to balance can be so abundantly helpful. And like I mentioned with the immune system, when cortisol is high, immune systems is suppressed. So the body is not as resilient to the common cold. Your skin might not be healing as quickly as it used to because the system is working as well as they could.
And then gut health. Increased stress decreases digestion. We also are seeing patterns with higher cortisol levels chronically leads to higher intestinal permeability and we get that leaky gut. So we're not getting all the nutrition from your food and you're getting more inflammation in the bloodstream because things aren't getting digested. Decreased cortisol, this is why stress reduction is a main part of your healing process.
Stress Hormones and the Cortisol Cascade 15:48
Thyroid hormones. So thyroid hormones are so interesting because there's two systems that the thyroid works in. One is in the brain, the pituitary gland, and it talks to the thyroid gland itself. TSH is the hormone that's made in pitutary. I'll highlight it for you here. A lot of you are familiar with TSh because it is oftentimes the only marker that is run on a blood panel when somebody is asking about thyroid. Now, that's great to see, but it's only in your brain. It's not actually measuring your thyroid itself.
The thyroid, itself, has four hormones that we're looking at, But then there's other markers that are additional information as well. So the four are T4, T3, free T 4, Free T 3. So TSH is the one that's in your brain and it talks to your thyroid and says either make more or make less. Tsh stands for thyroid stimulating hormone. So it tells the thyroid pump the brakes or push on the gas. It's T4 is one of the first thyroid hormones it's made. Then the liver and the gut convert T4 into T3. T-3 is the active form of thyroid that does a lot of the work.
It helps with metabolism, it helps the energy, helps bowel movements. And then T 3, as it enters the cells, help to regulate the metabolism energy and body temperature. So if you're feeling too low of thyroid, that's when symptoms like weight gain, fatigue and constipation can come up. You can also experience brain fog or dry skin, brittle hair and feeling chilly all the time. If you have too much thyroid almost the opposite happens. Feeling anxiety, feeling your heart rate really fast. and you might feel very warm having some heat sensitivity.
People tend to lose weight quite quickly when they have too much thyroid. There's something that happens, a phenomenon in the eyes where the the eye will start to protrude or the eyeballs look bigger in sockets and this can be a sign of too many thyroid as well. And then if low thyroid means you're having fatigue, high thyroid, means, you having insomnia. So this can be a balance that for helping look at the thyroid. Of course, we want to look, at, the, thyroid itself. We also want, to, look a signaling from the brain and we, want a look.
At the liver and the gut to make sure that it's converting well. And, then thinking about, well, what's at that first domino. It's like a cortisol as well because cortisol can affect these thyroid hormones and their conversion. There's an autoimmune factor with thyroid. There are two, but the one that I see most often in the clinic is Hashimoto's. This is auto-immune thyroiditis where the body will start to attack the thyroid as if it's a foreign body, even though it knows that it is its own thyroid, it starts to attach it as it it not.
So usually the conventional treatment for Hashimoto's is to give thyroid medication, got a thyroid regulating medication. And this acts as putting thyroid hormone in the body. It is abundantly helpful. and it usually helps people feel so much better. I like to think of this as a piece of the puzzle and also looking at the whole picture of how can we support this person's immune system? How can I support the bodies so that it's not attacking its own cells, help the stress response and then of course the liver and the gut with that conversion as well.
So here's just a comprehensive thyroid testing chart about the different types of hormone tests that are really important. You can see the free T3 and free t4. This just means that they're free throughout the system. They're not bound to anything. The additional ones that we haven't talked about yet are reverse T three. And this is a conversion that when you're stressed out that conversion can get blocked. We're also seeing that this a really helpful marker post COVID to keep in mind. Then the TPO antibodies.
This is the way to see if somebody has Hashimoto's. Tpo is looking for autoimmune in the thyroid. And antithyroglobulin is another additional marker that can be quite helpful. I like to do TpO antitheroglobulins, TSI, if we're doing the whole enchilada. We also want to look for Graves' disease, which is hyperthyroid.
Thyroid Function and Testing 20:30
Cortisol and sex hormones can also be closely related, so looking at the picture could be helpful there too. Now, this cortisol in the nervous system, talking about the stressed state versus the non-stressed state, and all the experts in that now, but we know that when you're in a fight or flight, there's more adrenaline, more cortisol, your heart rate increases, blood pressure increases and usually fat and sugar are released from storage to get used. So this is why when we're talking looking at your whole picture, Of course, I want to look at stress.
Because if you're constantly in a stressed out state, it's not just me as a yoga teacher telling you, you need to be calm. No, no, Though I do want that for you. I know that when people are stressed out, that's when sugars mobilize. And that can cause what this chronic weight gain, this can caused this kind of cortisol, it's going to cause chronic immune depletion. So thinking about this as a whole picture, I want to take good care of your nervous system and make sure that things are well-balanced.
As you're going throughout your life, you can hear me in your head, be sure to good take care you because I that it is so important for your long-term health. Muscle tension also increases so thinking about tension headaches student shoulders. Those are the kinds of things that can happen under that fight or flight state. And then, in the opposite, the rest and digest. This is what heart rate normalizes the digestion and motility work. The body can only digest and absorb when we're in this parasympathetic rest and digest state.
A lot of schools of thought call this rest, digest, and reproduce, because this is the only state that the body have healthy ovulation and healthy fertility as well as when were in that rest-and-digest-reproduce state, the hormone production resumes and sexual arousal increases, muscles relax and recover, then healing and immune system is restored. Some things to keep in mind, watch your body and your nervous system to see if stress is starting to build. If you're having a loss of muscle tone or you are noticing some of that weight gain around the abdomen despite exercising a lot, I want to know about cortisol.
You're have aches and pains and difficulty concentrating or just a bit more irritable, you feel like your wick is short. that can be a sign that your cortisol is high. Getting those chronic headaches, having a chronic dry mouth as well. So think about rest and digest is when things get to be lubricated. Think about the mouth being lubricating, the digestion being motivated, purgated, that genitals being liberated. In the opposite, if you're stressed out, things start to dry up. Dry mouth, not as efficient digestion, dry genital.
If you're exhausted despite sleep, you are having those digestive upsets, libido and sex drive diminished. And if you start to see some of your lab values, especially if your continuing to use a CGM, a continuous glucose monitor, if start see your blood sugar starting to get high, despite really healthy diet, this could be something related to cortisol as well. Something that we've been talking about with the hormones, especially in reproductive sphere is how can we support the body's ability to make their own hormones?
I'm a fan of bioidentical hormone therapy or HRT, hormone replacement therapy. And I've seen it work wonders for women and some people who are just so thrilled and thankful that they have this resource and they, Sometimes people say they wish they started it sooner. So I know that it can be abundantly beneficial for people. And if you're thinking about using it or you using, please know I do back it as a wonderful option.
Nervous System, Rest and Digest, and HRT Options 24:30
Some people choose to not go that route or they feel some resistance to it. I think that with whatever path you are choosing, it's important to look at that whole picture because the foundation is what makes hormones work even better. or the foundation is what makes supplements work even better for doing a more natural route for our hormone therapy. So addressing nutrition, getting good quality sleep, making sure that your stress response is well balanced, and all starts in the gut. Making sure the guts are healthy so you can absorb those nutrients and convert those hormones.
Now, these kind of things in terms of hormone helpers can be really wonderful assets. Now the bio HRT can, bees very helpful for keeping bones healthy, keeping energy and mental clarity, can help with hot flashes, night sweats, vaginal dryness and sleep quality. I even like to think about there's layers that we can do here. If we're starting at the base layer, you use the hormones at those areas that the warm ones are needed. So vaginal estrogen can be so helpful for helping with vaginals symptoms.
if you're needing help with sleep alone. using progesterone can be very helpful with that. Testosterone therapy is usually the extra spice at the end. I would usually if we're thinking about this as a hormone soup and start with estrogen maybe add some pro gesterones for it and then maybe a little sprinkling of testosterone. Oh, we're thinking about the more natural route. I like to use hormone precursors. So at the very tippy top of the hormone cascade for reproduction is a grandmother hormone called pregnant alone.
It's the grandmother hormones because all hormones are made from that. it splits off in two directions. One direction is progesterone. The other direction DHEA. DHEA then makes testosterone, and all estrogen is made from testosterone. So this side of the pyramid, we've got estrogen and testosterone this, side we got progesterone. I like to think about, well, let's support as close to the root as we can. Pregnant alone can be a great supporter for helping that whole cascade. If you know that you only need help in that testosterone and estrogen way, then I do DHEA.
That is the most succinct way to help with the precursor so that the body will make its own. And then in terms of herbs that help specifically increase and decrease these, there are many. I would love to have you navigate and decode what would be best for you. Proper testing is everything. So looking deeply at the estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, DHEA, even the signalers like the FSH and LH, this can be so abundantly helpful, whether we're doing the mirror testing or we are doing more thorough Dutch testing to look at, the way that the hormones are cascading together.
thyroid, we've got to do them all. When you're getting your thyroid tested, be sure to get all five markers at least. And then if you are doing the extras, like the reverse T3 and the antibodies, that is helpful too. The adrenals, we can look at cortisol. Now there is availability to get cortisol tested in the blood, but it's not as accurate. I always recommend saliva for the cortisol testing and measure it throughout the day because cortisol is supposed to be high in morning. It will go up after you have been awake for about one or two hours and then it will fluctuate and will down in afternoon and is ideally very low at nighttime.
So it was helpful to see what the body's doing throughout that whole rhythm to if the rhythm is healthy or if the rhythm is askew. Oh, the toolkit. When it comes to hormone balancing, it is not all about supplements. I promise you that. And I love supplements and I help support and adaptogenic things that we can do with pharmaceuticals and drugs and supplements. But the toolkit really is a wider lens. It's looking at nutrition, it's look at stress, is looking a regular exercise and optimizing your sleep, keeping your gut and liver healthy, and reducing those endocrine disruptors.
The thinking big picture Hormone imbalance is not an inevitable part of aging. It's a signal. But if your body's giving you those signals, it's designed to regulate and adapt and heal. Can we listen and can we look to see where the body is needing extra support? So we can use these targeted lifestyle changes and targeted supplementation, targeted nutrition therapy, or targeted pharmaceuticals to help you reclaim your energy and your mood and vitality. So if you need extra support in this realm, please don't hesitate to reach out.
We're here for you if your wanting to do additional testing and you want more targeted support. Thank you for being a part of what makes QC Natural Health exist and I'm excited for your to have this continued vitality with your hormones. See you soon.
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