Honey, your hormones don’t have to suck…
The reality is most of us, and that includes men, have never had our hormones checked. What are our basic physiologic levels? Many of us might worry if we discover that our hormones are all over the place, meaning too high or too low, but what is right? Right varies from individual to individual because we come at life from different genetics and with varied digestive capabilities and inflammatory loads. To top that, we also have our own life story and different lifestyle habits such as sleep, exercise, hydration, stress load, and bowel movements to social connectivity. These factors are all important in our overall health terrain. How can our hormone levels be normal if our lifestyle biometrics are not optimal? The two go hand-in-hand.
Every day is a new beginning, and a personal Functional Nutritionist and Lifestyle Practitioner can help sort out one’s terrain so that you can give your hormones the best chance. And, the best chance does not mean a protocol approach either. The best chance is rooted in assessing one’s terrain so we can weed out what’s right and what’s not optimal for us. A conventional protocol approach to hormones does not work well because it does not factor in our story or lifestyle metrics. If we attempt to add a little hormone here or there to what may be viewed as low, it might not normalize because our body has to metabolize the hormone properly first. To make matters worse, what if our blood sugars are so high that it makes metabolizing hormones even harder? This scenario can and does happen, showing there are many factors affecting hormone balance.
A hormone is not optimally functioning without proper input by us and investment in our physiologic landscape. Spending hundreds to thousands upfront in testing costs to get a level that will only fluctuate with better lifestyle habits can be an expensive first step. First, find out what you can do now for your health terrain that might be missing and let your body do what it does best - optimize with what it’s given: food, proper rest, exercise and hydration, to name a few. Your body systems have been dancing with you since birth, and they won’t stop now, but you have to help them on their way.
On the other hand, if you have been struggling with poor hormone levels for a while and know from a practitioner what your baseline is and want to help change it for the better, it’s worth it to find out how different lifestyle choices can indirectly affect your levels. We have all become ingrained in the classic symptom-based approach or protocol where one or two adjustments to our hormones might fix all, but what if we can’t metabolize the hormones we slather on ourselves? And what if the levels show normal, but our body’s receptors aren’t working properly? This situation can occur, just like insulin resistance in diabetes. And what about hormone flipping under stress, where one can start out with one hormone, but it converts into another that is not optimal, and our energy decreases, or we start losing hair? Hello, our terrain needs some attention.
I’m not an endocrinologist, and I don’t need to be one to help someone with their terrain. Conversely, an Endocrinologist does not have time to dissect someone’s terrain. These are two separate fields, yet the two benefit from each other like a lock and key, so nothing is missed in the health profile. I love helping an individual understand their terrain better through education and assessment, such as looking at someone’s diet or having them track sleep or bowel movements. This is my scope, and I do a great job at assessing and connecting the dots in one’s unique terrain. The secret to success is having the time to assess and connect the dots together 1:1, which helps form an empathetic bridge and partnership so one is not alone in having to figure out one's pathway to better health.
Our physiological systems have a role to play in how good or bad of a job our hormones do. If we optimize each system by examining the root causes that led to dysfunction, we have a better chance at healing. So, if you are feeling like your hormones suck, know that you can likely do some groundwork to help them on the path to unique enlightenment. Contact me, and we can discuss your body systems in all their glory and get to the root issue of wonky hormones.