Ladies – being a woman is a gift! All too often I hear our fellow sisters blaming their health problems on being a woman: Not being able to loose the weight, heavy periods with cramps from hell, painful fibroids or cysts in ovaries or breasts. These things are tough…and they all have the same cause – Increased Estrogen. What are we going to do about it?
Estrogen dominance is a very real problem and is a contributing factor to breast, uterine, and ovarian cancer.
Our environment is swimming with human made chemicals that trick our bodies and affect our hormones. Such chemicals are food in our food, air, beauty products, home goods, and so on…they’re everywhere. As these “estrogen mimicker’s” are absorbed, they act like estrogen in our bodies, throwing off our own hormone regulatory processes, boosting our estrogen to abnormal levels and causing a plethora of health issues including causing cancers!
I work to regulate my hormones and I have for years. I have dealt with my own thyroid issues that can knock my hormone balance off. As a mother of two daughters, women’s hormone issues have long been a concern of mine, seeing girls as young as ten starting their period – it’s shocking!
I’ve found, yet again, that clean eating, commitment to a fitness practice, drinking lots of water and taking the best organic supplement are the trick to balancing my hormones – and you’ll see three huge steps to balance yours below.
As women, we too frequently associate our gender as the cause of our health challenges. But, these issues aren’t normal female problems. Let’s stop accepting them as normal and take action to normalize our hormones. Being female does not need to mean feeling defeated, exhausted, in pain, and always at the mercy of health issues!
Now for the important stuff – How can you naturally combat the estrogen dominance that is rampant in our culture and bring hormonal balance to your life?
Here are my 3 essential tips to combat estrogen dominance. These are practical (yes, practical!) ways that leave you with no excuse not to implement:
1. CLEANSE your liver: Your liver is the one organ responsible for cleaning out excess estrogen. Your liver is also the organ that converts the estrogen hormone one of two ways; you will either convert estrogen in a healthy form, or convert it into cancer causing forms. It may seem mundane, but liver support only requires healthy living! Regular alcohol consumption is a huge reason the liver cannot properly balance hormone levels. A diet high in bad fats slows down your liver; eliminate the refined oils, margarines, artificial sweeteners, and fried foods. Marijuana increases estrogen levels, and even taking a regimen of over the counter drugs, like aspirin and ibuprofen, can overload our liver and make it difficult to maximize our liver productivity. If you’re feeling your liver needs an extra boost, try my liver detox recipe.
2. EAT ORGANIC: Stay away from chemical causes of estrogen mimickers! I say it all the time, I am saying it again, eat organic. Avoid at all costs, eating commercially raised livestock, these are pumped full of hormones that throw off our own hormone balance. Pesticides used in commercially grown fruits and vegetables contain similar structures to estrogen. When we eat commercially grown produce we are ingesting those exact estrogen mimickers that are do dangerous! In your home, stop using fabric softeners and dryer sheets, both contain an absorb anent amount of chemicals, that can easily be replaced by using a little white vinegar in your wash cycle. Eliminate all paraben containing products, parabens are in almost all of our care products (lotions, soaps, shampoos, face wash, makeup). Get rid of your BPA containing plastics. Small life changes add up!
2. SLEEP to Support Your Adrenals: I wrote about sleep last week in my blog, and it is important for so many reasons! When it comes to adrenal support, sleep is your best drug! All it takes is the usual suggested amount of 8 hours per night to repair and rebuild your adrenals. If you find that you want to boost sleep, I also suggest using one of my favorite sleep remedies, Rest Easy Turbo-Charged Tumeric.
Those three steps have an abundance of healing properties. And they’re all a fraction of the cost of the pills, doctors visits and medical tests. Later this week, I’ll also post a hormone balancing recipe.
LADIES! Show up on this week’s blog right here in the comments below. I want to hear what challenges you are facing with hormone imbalance…and always feel free to share tips that have worked for you! As always – I’ll be checking in to see how I can help!