Hormone Imbalances
Our hormones affect every aspect of health. Think of our hormones like an orchestra that when in balance makes the beautiful music of health. When the flute section of the orchestra is playing to loud and the French horns are playing too softly the resulting music does not sound right. The same is true for our hormones. Sometimes the hormone levels are technically normal but not in relationship to each other and that affects our symptoms and life quality.
Improve Hormone Balance
Adrenal Hormones
Our adrenal glands are hormone producing glands that sit on top of our kidneys surveying the status quo and producing stress hormones in response to what is going on in our body. When we experience a physical or psychological stressor, stress hormones are produced. These stress hormones are important and vital for our survival. They allow us to have the “flight or fight” response that has been essential in our evolution. The “fight or flight” response is transient and is supposed to shut off when the “danger” or trigger has resolved. Unfortunately, when this response is triggered frequently, this system can become dysregulated and there is an effect on the other hormones including thyroid and sex steroid hormones. What are triggers for our stress response? It can be a thought such as the never ending “to do” list in our head, the newsfeed on our phone, the negative email from our coworker, the fight with our spouse or when our child gets in trouble at school. There are a myriad of triggers in today’s world. Ideally, once the situation is resolved the stress response shuts off. But of course, we ruminate and perpetuate that response. In addition, the relaxation response which is the antidote to the stress response is not prioritized in our society. This magnifies the problem and creates other hormone imbalances- for example, a woman may stop having periods because of the effect of stress hormone on sex hormones such as progesterone affecting ovulation.
We can test for the stress hormones throughout the day and see if it is a factor for your symptoms and your health. They should peak in the morning and fall as the day goes on reaching the lowest point at night. Often the pattern looks far different than that. If we know your orchestra is overplaying your stress hormones, we can address this and see improvements in other areas of health. Everything from gut health, to the immune system to the other hormones including insulin and thyroid can be affected by balance of the adrenal hormones.
Thyroid Hormone Balance
Our thyroid is a gland in our neck that produces thyroid hormones that affects our energy metabolism. The thyroid is felt to be particularly delicate and the function of the thyroid gland is influenced by a host of factors including our diet, environmental exposures, the immune system and our nutrition status. The other complexity is the influence of the adrenal and sex hormones on the thyroid hormone production. Often imbalances in thyroid hormones can be traced to adrenal dysfunctions. Sometimes the thyroid function can be affected by autoimmune disease and nutrient deficiencies that affect production of hormones. Again, when there is a thyroid issue the treatment often needs to be personalized as causes can vary. Sometimes direct hormone replacement is needed and sometimes supporting the other parts of the hormone orchestra first can resolve the issue.
Sex Hormone Balance
Of course, this brings up different issues for men and women and it can vary with age and stage of life. We most commonly seeimbalances during the hormone “transition” periods especially in women. When our hormones are consistent we tend to not have symptoms that we attribute to them. It is during those times of life when our hormones are changing such as menarche (onset of the first period), pregnancy, peri-menopause and menopause that problems can manifest. To complicate things further in the case of women, hormones are shifting also through the monthly cycle and one hormone in relationship to the other may be the problem or the imbalance. We routinely test in blood estrogens, testosterone, progesterone to measure these numbers and often we test in saliva or urinedepending on what we are evaluating. Often we try to address the adrenal dysfunctions and thyroid dysfunctions prior to sex hormones. When imbalances persist in this area or the symptoms are affecting quality of life particularly in the peri-menopause / menopause time of life, there are treatment options including botanical medicines to bio-identical hormone replacement when indicated.
At Sparkle Health, we also look at hormones for our male patients as often they too can experience hormonal shifts which affect the quality of everyday life and vitality. Again, we can’t just pay attention to the sex steroid Testosterone, we also want to pay attention to the other hormones that influence health including the adrenal hormones, thyroid and other sex steroids including estrogen.
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Related Information
How Does Estrogen Affect Your Thyroid?
Hypothyroidism or an under-producing thyroid gland is a disease of women. A woman is 5-8 times more likely to develop hypothyroidism in her lifetime than a man.