When your hormones become imbalanced, whether due to age, lifestyle, or underlying health conditions, it can have a powerful negative impact on how you feel.
While hormone replacement therapy is a common treatment, there are plenty of natural methods that can make your treatment more effective and help you feel better more quickly.
In this post, you’ll learn about evidence-based, natural methods of improving your hormonal health. You’ll also learn about the critical role of diet, exercise, and sleep in optimizing your hormonal health along with a list of supplements that can help improve your hormonal balance.
The Power of Your Plate: Your Diet's Impact on Your Hormones
What you eat provides the building blocks for all the hormones your body produces. Your endocrine glands, the hormone-producing factories in your body, require specific nutrients to efficiently create hormones.
To optimize your hormonal health, eat a diet rich in whole, unprocessed foods, prioritizing vegetables, fruits, lean proteins, and healthy fats while avoiding sugar and refined carbs.
Eating too much of these two foods can cause insulin resistance, a condition where your cells become less responsive to insulin (eventually, this can lead to diabetes). Focus on complex carbohydrates, fiber-rich foods, healthy fats, and lean proteins to maintain stable blood sugar levels.
Those healthy fats don’t just help with blood sugar issues—they help your body produce steroid hormones like testosterone and estrogen. Make sure to include foods like avocados, fatty fish, nuts, and seeds in your diet to ensure optimal hormone production.
You should also try to eat some lean protein at each meal—protein provides your body with the amino acids necessary for the production of peptide hormones. These hormones play vital roles in regulating growth, energy metabolism, appetite, stress, and reproduction.
Protein also helps you feel full by decreasing the hunger hormone ghrelin, helping you manage your weight, which in turn supports hormonal balance.
Moving Your Body: Exercise Improves Hormonal Health
Regular exercise is another pillar of hormonal health. It improves insulin sensitivity, can increase the level of certain hormones in your body temporarily, and is a powerful stress reliever.
Chronic stress elevates cortisol levels, causing adrenal fatigue and disrupting the balance of your other hormones, while exercise helps your body manage stress by boosting endorphins, natural mood elevators that counteract the effects of cortisol.
Furthermore, exercise increases hormone receptor sensitivity. This means that your cells become more responsive to hormonal signals, which enhances nutrient delivery, optimizes the functioning of your mitochondria, and improves overall hormonal communication within your body.
Try to do some aerobic exercise (such as walking, running, or swimming) and resistance training (like weightlifting) every week. Both types offer unique benefits for hormonal health.
While most people should try to get about 150 minutes (2 and a half hours) of moderate-intensity exercise per week, you should customize your exercise routine to your individual fitness level.
How Sleep Restores Your Hormones
While getting enough sleep can be hard in the best of times, it's absolutely critical for hormonal balance.
Try to get at least 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep each night for optimal hormonal health. During sleep, your body regulates a variety of hormones, including growth hormone, cortisol, leptin, ghrelin, and insulin.
Sleep deprivation from sleep disturbances (or simply staying up too late) can disrupt your body’s ability to produce many different types of hormones, leading to levels that are too low or too high.
Some hormones require specific stages of sleep to be produced. For instance, growth hormone is primarily released during deep sleep. Disruptions to your sleep cycle can interfere with this natural process.
Your cortisol cycle is also heavily influenced by your sleep patterns. Cortisol levels naturally fluctuate throughout the day, with the lowest levels typically occurring in the early part of the night and the highest levels in the early morning.
Maintaining a consistent sleep schedule, particularly waking up at the same time each day, helps stabilize this cycle and keeps your cortisol at a healthy level.
While diet, exercise, and high-quality sleep are all important, there are also numerous supplements you can take that can improve your hormone levels.
Supplements That Can Help Improve Your Hormone Levels
One of the most well-known supplements for supporting hormone balance is Tribulus terrestris. This herb has been used for centuries in traditional medicine to help improve libido and support healthy testosterone levels in men. Tribulus works by stimulating the production of luteinizing hormone (LH), which in turn stimulates the production of testosterone.
Another herb that has been shown to support hormone balance is Ashwagandha. This adaptogenic herb has been used in Ayurvedic medicine for centuries to help reduce stress and support overall health and well-being.
Ashwagandha has been shown to help reduce cortisol levels, which can be elevated in response to stress and can contribute to hormonal imbalances.
Maca root is another plant that has been shown to support hormone balance. This Peruvian root vegetable has been used for centuries to help improve energy, libido, and overall well-being.
Maca works by helping to balance the hypothalamus and pituitary gland, which are responsible for regulating hormone production.
In addition to these plants, there are several vitamin and mineral supplements that can help support hormone balance. For example, vitamin D plays a crucial role in regulating testosterone levels and has been shown to help improve the symptoms of low testosterone in men.
Another important supplement for hormonal health is zinc, which plays a crucial role in the production of testosterone and has been shown to help improve sperm quality and fertility in men.
Zinc can be found in foods such as oysters, beef, and pumpkin seeds, but many men may benefit from taking a zinc supplement to ensure they are getting enough of this important nutrient.
Finally, omega-3 fatty acids are another important supplement for hormone health. These healthy fats help reduce inflammation in the body, which can contribute to hormonal imbalances.
Omega-3s can be found in fatty fish, such as salmon and sardines, but a high-quality omega-3 supplement is often enough for most people.
A Natural Approach May Not Be Enough
While natural approaches can be extremely helpful, they’re not always a substitute for medical treatment. If you think that your hormones might be unbalanced, talk to a healthcare provider who specializes in hormone replacement therapy.
They can properly diagnose your condition and recommend the most appropriate course of action, whether it involves lifestyle modifications, natural remedies, or conventional hormone replacement therapy.
If you suspect that you may have a hormone imbalance, your next step is to get your hormone levels tested.
Learn more about HRT for women or TRT for men here. You can also schedule an appointment with a specialist today to discuss getting your levels tested.