Recently, the saying “balance your hormones” has been thrown around social media and conversation casually, saying that all someone needs to clear their skin, have healthy periods, and lose weight is to “balance their hormones.” What does it even mean?
Balancing hormones refers to all the hormones that naturally fluctuate during the menstrual cycle. This umbrella term actually means that each hormone is within a healthy range during different parts of the menstrual cycle, because too much or too little of a specific hormone can cause negative symptoms.
Image from Women in Balance Institute, National University of Natural Medicine
The true goal of “hormonal balance” is to have hormonal levels rise and fall according to each cycle phase, including a spike in estrogen prior to ovulation, then a dip immediately after, and a rise in progesterone and fall during the luteal phase, and a rise in the luteinizing hormone just prior to ovulation.
Environmental factors, stress, diet, and underlying health conditions can cause hormonal disruptions, causing too much or too little of a hormone that can upset the delicate balance that your reproductive system requires.
What can be done to support hormonal balance? Small changes such as eating a variety of whole foods, consuming different herbs during different menstrual phases, reducing environmental toxins, and lowering stress can all make a huge impact over time in restoring the proper balance of hormones to have a healthy, regular ovulation with few symptoms all month long.