5 Things You Can Do Everyday That Impact Your Hormones
Overwhelmed and exhausted while dealing with an autoimmune condition? I know how you feel, when I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s/Hyporthyroidism I experienced all of these symptoms (& more) on a daily basis. It may be common to feel exhausted, moody, depressed, and with low energy – but it doesn’t have to be normal. You can do things every day to create a balanced body and mind.
I had the opportunity to sit down and chat with Erin Kerry of the Sparking Wholeness Podcast to share a practical breakdown of things you can do every day to impact your health on a whole body level.
Listen to the full episode here:
Here are 5 things you do every day that affects your hormones (that you might not know you were even doing!):
1. “Morning Minutes” - the first five minutes of your day that dramatically affect your hormones.
Many major studies have shown us that how you begin your day has a significant impact on your productivity, your clarity, and your sense of wellbeing throughout the rest of the day.
Creating a relaxing morning routine that you're practicing over and over creates a cascade.
of signaling the amount of cortisol, thyroid hormone, and other stress hormones including norepinephrine and epinephrine. These hormone balances mean the difference between feeling calm, clear, and confident or depleted, scattered, and overwhelmed.
If a morning routine seems too overwhelming for you just focus on the first five minutes of each day.
2. Morning Makeup (products)
Studies from the Environmental Working Group show us that the average person puts 12 products on their body every day, and those 12 products contain an average of 168 chemical toxins.
Many of the items that we use to simply get ready for the day tend to contain high amounts of chemicals and many of those chemicals act as hormonal disruptors. The lotions, the makeup, and the toothpaste you use can literally change the balance of your hormones, especially if you're using it every day.
Check out the Environmental Working Group’s website here, you can check different products to see if they are on the “clean or dirty list” and find a more natural alternative for your favorite products.
3. Breathing Breaks
In order for us to have the experience of vitality, clarity, focus, and enthusiasm, we quite literally need to be able to have cells that are capable of producing a high amount of ATP (storage unit for the energy our cells produce). And many stages of the citric acid cycle which produce cellular ATP are dependent on oxygen.
You'd be shocked to find out how many people are very unconscious in their breathing and take short shallow breaths. Being intentional about your breathing, or even just setting a timer on your phone for a breathing break five times a day to become aware of your breath will increase your oxygenation, which not only helps to fight cancer (because cancer cells cannot survive in an oxygen-rich environment) it also balances your hormones and increase your energy.
4. Eating Hygiene
When I say eating hygiene, I'm talking about the assistance with our digestive processes by slowing down and thoroughly chewing your food
This sounds kind of silly but if you do a little experiment where you take a couple of almonds and you eat them the way that you normally would and then put them in your mouth and you chew a minimum of 20 times, you’ll notice the difference in the consistency and how radically different that texture is from what most people do when they're eating typically.
Every single hormonal function in the body is nutrient-dependent. Another thing is that water is going to be a diffuser, we want to have really strong, powerful stomach acid at the time that we're consuming meals because the stomach acid is required for proteins. Typically I suggest limiting liquid consumption about 40 minutes prior to mealtime and 40 minutes post-meal time again, of course, you can have a couple of ounces of liquid or water during your meal time to help wash it down.
5. The Stories We Tell Ourselves
Coming back to emotions - the stories that we tell ourselves when we feel emotions like guilt, or when we feel overwhelmed. Perhaps you can relate to experiencing, the internal stories become a form of self-flagellation and blame. , Do you ever ruminate and perpetuate the negativity from a past circumstance?
Instead, when you feel guilt or overwhelm, I invite you to celebrate!! Your emotional guidance system is working!
When you have the emotion of guilt or overwhelm, instead of telling yourself a story that you should have done differently or this is bad or something's wrong with me, let’s celebrate that awareness and just recognize it. Before something can be transmuted and changed for the better it must first be recognized and then accepted. So this emotional guidance navigation is an essential first step to improvement!
These are just 5 of many daily tasks that could be affecting your hormone health and how you feel each day. If you are ready for focus, support, clarity, and understanding of what specifically is going to be beneficial for you - I invite you to have a conversation with me or my team just simply book a balance call here and we'll find out what's going on in your circumstance and how we can support you moving forward.