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PART 1
Hormones and hormone testing is a big topic of conversation not just between my clients and myself but in society in general. Most of my clients are in perimenopause (the time period of up to 10 years before your menses completely stops) or they are already in menopause.
This article is for women who may be experiencing perimenopause or who are already menopausal but suffering from hormone symptoms. This woman is usually going to be between 38 and 55 years old if she is perimenopausal. It is not uncommon to go through perimenopause around the same age as your mother, so if you are getting close to that window, be sure to ask her about her own experience if you can.
Women have been going through the natural transition between childbearing years and menopause since humans first walked the earth. Do you really think that until the invention of synthetic hormones women just suffered? I don't. Besides, hormone supplementation isn't always what it is cracked up to be!
When is the right time to get your hormones tested?
Before we jump into hormone testing and healthy hormone levels and possible hormone balancing strategies, let’s talk about hormones in general. When I say hormones, most women assume I mean sex hormones like estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone but we have many different kinds of hormones that the body needs to produce, use and eliminate from the body for proper function.
So, when I say Hormone Balance, I mean ALL our hormones!
I won’t name ALL the hormones in our body, but I will go over the biggies!
Our hormones are part of our Endocrine system
Endocrine is a system of complex relationships.
Visualize This: Imagine a flowing golden champagne glass fountain. Have you ever seen one of those? So carefully constructed for each glass to hold just enough champagne, and when it's full it just flows deliciously over into another glass below it and on down to the base where the champagne is recycled into the process again. So elegant, so smooth and so perfect. From the tip-top down to the very bottom of a huge pyramid of sparkling glasses the placement of each glass and the amount of champagne and the rate at which it must be poured has to be just right for the process to work.
What would happen if I tripled the amount of champagne in the fountain that poured out at the top? Or maybe even didn't use enough, just trickled some from the top? Imagine a well-flowing champagne fountain and then reaching in and snagging a bunch of glasses out of the middle, would it hold? Would it still work? It needs balance, right?
So does your Endocrine system.
A few guidelines to remember when dealing with the endocrine system:
Always support the whole as well as the parts.
Respect the endocrine individuality of each person.
Always address the Foundations first.
What are the Foundations?
There are many different approaches to achieving wellness, but there are a few foundational principles that regardless if you are Vegan, keto, carnivore or a Paleo eater or anything in between we professionals all agree on.
My Restore® programs put these Foundations in an easy to remember order usefulness.
Just Remember: RESTORE®
1. Rest. Manage stress levels on 3 planes: Emotional, Physical and Environmental.
2. Eat. Consume a diet of whole, nutrient-dense, minimally processed foods that have been grown sustainably and without toxic chemicals and additives. These foods should be local and seasonal if possible.
3. Sleep. We need adequate sleep to repair, detox and reset for the next day.
4. Tribe. We are not meant to be alone. We need a healthy community to be around us and to be active in.
5. Open up. We need to know how we feel and to healthfully deal with our feelings and emotions rather than cover them up with prescriptions, alcohol, over-work or over-play. We need to recognize that we are body, mind, spirit, and soul.
6. Repair. We need to rest our bodies. Too many people are mistaking sitting and scrolling on a device, vacations, hobbies or excess eating and drinking as rest in hopes of allowing their bodies to repair from the effects of a busy life. We especially need to repair our digestive process every day.
7. Exercise. There is no perfect exercise or program for everyone. We just need to move our bodies consistently and responsibly for the individual in each season of our lives.
Step One For Hormone Work:
If you are experiencing hormone problems, or suspect you are, starting with the Foundations is step one. No amount of testing or prescriptions can undo what life is doing. Diet and lifestyle choices are key players in hormone health.
Did you know that the body makes over 100 different hormones? Hormones transfer information from one cell to another. They are little chemical messengers that tell a cell what to do.
We have all heard about estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and cortisol. Some of you may even have heard of Thyroid Stimulating Hormone (TSH) or even ghrelin or leptin, the hormones that tell your body to go eat something or STOP eating. But there are SO many more hormones! over 100 to be exact.
The Real Deal Definition of Hormones and what they do:
- Help Regulate:
‐Chemical composition & volume of extracellular fluid
‐Metabolism and energy balance
‐Biological clock (circadian rhythms)
‐Contractions of smooth and cardiac muscle fibers
‐Glandular secretion
‐Some immune system activities
Control growth and development
Govern operation of the reproduction
In regular people speak: Here are just a few examples of hormone function in the body: We need hormones to go to sleep, tell us when to wake up, control our blood sugar, grow new tissue, manage stress, let us know we need to eat, or tell us to stop eating, we also need hormones for feeling happy, sad or relaxed (emotional hormones), let’s not forget temperature control and of course we need them for reproduction and to make our muscles work!
Endocrine glands produce hormones that deliver messages from the organ/tissue of origin to other parts of the body.
Endocrine glands
Pineal
Pituitary
Thyroid
Parathyroid
Thymus
Adrenals
Pancreas
Ovaries/Testes
Adipose Tissue
There are some heavy hitters on that list! But did ONE of them surprise you?
Adipose tissue, by the way, is FAT tissue! Your Fat tissue plays a major role in your hormone function. Especially the fat on your belly! But we will get into that another time when we also discuss blood sugar and glucose storage.
(To learn more about how to get rid of that stubborn belly fat and start balancing your blood sugar and hormones, take my Restart® course! I have an online version starting in February!)
We also have non-endocrine organs and tissues that produce hormones or send messages:
These are your heart, lungs, small intestines, kidneys, stomach, liver, lungs, skin, and hypothalamus.
So, when you have hormone problems or suspect you are, doesn’t it make sense to address the WHOLE situation rather than just target ONE Hormone or part of the system?
Our bodies are complex and nothing works alone.
Western Medicine has decided that “We are the sum of all our parts.”
This is why we have specialty doctors. Why when you are trying to get an answer to the health challenges you go from doctor to doctor to doctor...If you have a rash on your skin you go to the dermatologist. (But what if you have a rash because you have a gut problem? Too bad.) Take your cream and go. Your cream will temporarily solve your rash issue, but it will come back because it wasn't a fix, it was a bandaid.
Hormone health requires a WHOLE-istic approach. We must honor the WHOLE body, mind, spirit, and soul if we want healthy hormone action!
Here is a common example of focusing on a PART instead of the WHOLE for many women.
When a woman of a certain age heads to the doctor complaining of extra fat around her hips and waist, fatigue, hair loss, anxiety, sleep issues, dry skin, hoarse voice…it is not uncommon for a doctor to suggest a thyroid panel. Hopefully, the doctor is current enough in the latest research and will run a FULL thyroid panel. It is also not uncommon for a woman to be told that she is just getting older and maybe handed some anxiety medications and told to “eat healthily and exercise.” If that woman is REALLY lucky her doctor will run some general labs to try and look at the overall lab picture. But even these labs aren't that great. Chances are your cholesterol number or something will be off and out you go with a prescription for something you didn't even come in for...
So all you need to do ladies is to accept that you are getting old, fat and ugly with your thin hair and dry skin but you need to work out more and diet...
To be honest, most of my female clients have done about a zillion diets and workout programs… some saw success when they were younger but now they worry they have Hashi’s like all their friends do. They worry the answer simply lies in low thyroid action or low sex hormones.
Let's use the thyroid as an example.
The Thyroid Panel.
The quick and dirty test, which is rather incomplete is TSH. That isn’t comprehensive enough to evaluate thyroid function. It’s a blood test. That test just shows that the thyroid gland has been stimulated and released a hormone. But there is more process to the thyroid story! How the body is receiving the hormones the thyroid makes and is the body is properly converting those hormones T4/T3, Free T4 and Reverse T3 for use and then finally getting rid of the waste from the whole process? This is why a FULL thyroid panel is recommended.
I am not going into a full-blown thyroid dysfunction discussion in this article so for more information on thyroid issues be sure to look up this great article by Chris Kresser at the California Center for Functional Medicine.
The point I want to make is, the thyroid might be not working right, but what could be contributing to it? What is causing the thyroid to lose its function?
There are so many questions to ask! How is your liver? Is it able to detox out the metabolites of your hormones? Metabolites are the byproducts or waste that your cells will generate once they have used a hormone, nutrient or chemical.
Is your Hypothalamus working right? How is your adrenal health? Are you experiencing perimenopause? Could it be that your ovaries are pushing off their duties to the adrenals who are in turn overworked so they are passing the buck to the little ol thyroid and the thyroid can’t handle it?
This is what is SUPPOSED to happen by the way.
Before you got your first menses, your adrenals were running the show! Then the ovaries took over during all those childbearing years. When that season is over the adrenals are supposed to kick back in to help regulate your sex hormone function!
(I literally never knew that until I went back to school to become a Functional Nutritional Therapy Practitioner!)
These days with all the stressed-out people in the world we are seeing what is called HPA AXIS, or adrenal fatigue in a lot of women. I suffered from this!
People with overworked adrenals can’t handle this natural change in the body between the ovaries and adrenals. The job is then placed on the shoulders of the thyroid gland. The thyroid can DO the job, but it doesn’t work well. The thyroid becomes overburdened and falls down on the job which leaves our sex hormones all out of whack.
I am 48 at the time of this writing and when I was 38 I was already feeling the hot flashes coming on! But after I got my RESTORE Foundations squared away, my period normalized and all hot flashes went away! In fact, I am PMS and perimenopause symptom-free as of today. My period just doesn't seem to go the full 28 days anymore.. but no discomfort whatsoever! I aim to keep it that way and to sail smoothly into menopause the way our ancestors did.
So what does it look like when a perimenopausal woman has her hormones all out of whack?
This looks like night sweats, hot flashes, weight gain, anxiety, headaches, acne, unwanted facial hair, and in my case my hair falling out!…pretty much what your doctor will say is “normal for your age.”
Just because something is common does NOT make it normal ladies!
Back to those OTHER reasons why your hormones might not be balanced: We will talk more about testing for excess metabolites later in Part 2 of this article but what about your small intestine health? Do you have gut issues that can be contributing to your thyroid problems? How is your pancreas? Any blood sugar swings, spikes, dips?
See what I mean? There are many factors at play here.
Simply taking a thyroid test, even if it is a full panel is NOT going to be enough to have you filling amazingly again!
I know I talk about the gut a lot. Your gut is mostly your small intestine but also includes your large intestine or what you would call your bowels or colon. But we can’t deny it, our gut health is the root cause of both our wellness and our chronic sickness. This includes your hormone wellness. Much research and many books have been written on this subject. I highly recommend you check them out if you are having chronic health issues.
Your endocrine system and its hormones are like an orchestra. Individual hormones are like instruments. Just like an orchestra, there are many different instruments. Remember, you have over 100 different hormones in the body. That’s a big orchestra!
In a real orchestra, you have a flute, trumpet, french horn, clarinet, bass drum, oboe and so on… that need to play a certain note at a certain time with the other instruments or the music isn't music, its just noise. The instruments work together for a coming goal, a song.
The same goes for hormones.
If need be, a clarinet can play the flute part but it doesn’t sound right when you put all the instruments together. The song is different.
Kinda like your thyroid gland running your sex hormone life! Wrong gland!
It’s not just about fixing or altering ONE hormone, it’s about keeping the orchestra in tune beginning with each instrument. Only then will the orchestra play beautiful music.
We need to take care of our bodies from the cellular level then move on to tissues, organs, and systems like the endocrine system. We have to start with the basics and we have to start at the Foundation.
So many women come to me who are taking hormone replacements or thyroid medication and even then they are struggling with the same issues they had before the meds. Even though the individual test markers are improved. They now show good thyroid or estrogen/progesterone levels but they still have unwanted symptoms! What the heck?!
You need to make sure the whole orchestra and ALL the instruments are good to go!
It’s like the clarinet and flute. We need to have the right instruments tuned up and ready to play their own music! I always go back to the Foundations so we can determine who is present in the orchestra and who is or isn’t able to play the right notes at the right time before I send my clients off to do a lot of expensive testing, we start with the foundations of the Restore program.
Sometimes the body just needs a TUNE-UP!
Here is an example:
The body can be tuned up by reducing stress and lowering the stress hormone production of cortisol, which gives the adrenals a break. To do this the body needs better nutrients to make sufficient hormones that help every cell, tissue, organ, and system in the body function at it’s best. The body also needs better sleep to detox and repair the brain and gut specifically so it can breakdown and USE those precious nutrients. The body also needs positive influence from good friends to help produce happy hormones which promote good emotional health, it also needs time in prayer or journaling to reduce and organize stress to again lower cortisol levels and over-all body inflammation that comes with mental and spiritual stress. The body needs to avoid foods that are destroying the gut lining and creating an environment for an overworked immune system that is the gateway to disease. And finally, the body needs to move! It needs to lift heavy things and get the heart beating and stretch muscles!
The body needs an all-over tune-up for it to work like the amazing machine that it is!
I am not suggesting that someone with thyroid dysfunction, especially someone with thyroid disease should not be taking something to help support the thyroid. I am merely saying, we need to look at the whole picture and attempt to support the WHOLE body, mind, spirit, and soul if we are going to get you well!
We need to do the tune-up before we alter the body with outside influence in most cases.
9/10 clients come to me with poor digestion and poor liver health. Those are my two top things we work on that deliver the most powerful results across the board.
What we want is a domino effect. We want to focus on the Foundations and let our bodies, our properly functioning bodies do the repair work they are designed to do!
Only then will the rest of our systems and functions fall into place.
In some cases, like with Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, the thyroid gland has been destroyed enough by auto-antibodies that even recalibrating the Foundations won’t be enough and thyroid meds must be taken. That’s ok.
But for many people, the Foundations are enough to right the ship!
If you have truly worked out the Foundations and are still not well, this is when and where testing comes in. It takes long, consistent and diligent work to exhaust the Foundations.
Simply doing the Whole 30 on and off again Paleo or AIP on and off again or a few years isn’t enough. It takes a lot of focus and discipline. It takes making sacrifices and changing habits and learning new things about food.
There are 3 phases to restoring your Foundations of health.
Cleaning it out and Nourish
Discovery and Repair
Finding your Personalized Life Plan and Maintenance
If you stick to your plan and you don’t take any vacations from the protocol, it takes on average, about 6-12 months. Don’t get me wrong, usually, my clients start dropping weight, gaining energy, and getting better sleep within the first 2-4 weeks.
It took a long time to make your body unwell, repairing it doesn't happen overnight.
Let’s talk about a client of mine, we will call her:
Perimenopause Peggy:
Peggy, female aged 51, came to me with extra weight, hot flashes, mood swings, dry skin, and thinning hair. she was on a few medications as well and desired to get off of them. One of these meds was her Hormone Replacement protocol.
Most of my clients are on birth control or hormone replacement therapy, anxiety meds, sleep aids, allergy medications, cholesterol medication, and heartburn medications.
She also liberally used pain relievers on a daily basis. Most of my clients, like Peggy would like to get OFF those meds. Every medication comes with a side effect and they can no longer distinguish between body or health issues and side effects.
So what did I do with Peggy?
We worked through the 3 phases and focused on the Foundations of the Restore® Program. We did this for one year. She had a lot of traumatic things that happened in the course of the 12 months in her personal and professional life but for the most part, she was able to stay CLOSE to being on track.
Peggy was also Pre-Diabetic when she came to me.
A year later: She lost over 40 pounds, she is no longer pre-diabetic, and she only takes one daily medication now. It has been a real struggle but she is looking and feeling fantastic!
Because she had such ups and downs and couldn’t be super consistent with her Foundations we only did the most basic lab workups and she worked with her doctors to monitor her need for meds throughout the process and they backed her off when appropriate.
Peggy is happy where she is, she is continuing to honor her Restore® lessons in life and she has settled into Maintenance since we have discovered the best-personalized nutrition and exercise for her lifestyle.
But what if she still wasn't happy?
What if she were…me?
I have done all the work. It has been about 7 years of Clean it out and Nourish Discovery and Repair.
I OWN the Foundations of the Restore® program!
With the discovery of an autoimmune disease, I have had to work extra hard in certain areas. But I still feel that I could be better.
Check out Part 2 in my Blog for the next leg of the journey, testing.
In Part 2, I will go over some specific hormone testing options, what they are, who should use them, when and how to get them!
Until then, hit the foundations!
~Brandi
I am currently accepting new clients in both nutrition and wellness as well as personal training. You can find out more about how I work with clients online at www.thepathforhealth.com
Be sure to follow me on Instagram, Tik Tok, and Facebook under Brandi Loyd.
Send me an email if you have any questions and I would love to hear your comments below.
Thank you!
See you in 2020 next week for Part 2 of my Hormone Solution!