Nutrition
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Eat organic. Many endocrine disruptors are involved in the production of conventional foods.
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Make every mouthful count. Think about every bite you take as nourishment and don’t fill yourself with junk so you don’t have room for the good stuff.
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Eat whole foods. Particularly stay away from refined sugars and refined grains.
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Eat REAL food. Make sure you can tell what it looked like before it became your meal.
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Eat seasonally, locally, and diversely. You will get more variety and more nutrition. An easy way to accomplish this is to do your shopping at the farmer’s market.
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Try to get your nutrients from whole foods, herbal infusions, and superfoods. If you feel (or know!) that you need more use a food based multivitamin.
- If you have a history of an eating disorder/disordered eating: It’s a good idea to relax around your food choices. Controlling them too much can ironically do the same to your health that eating terrible food all of the time can.
Endocrine Disruptors
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Avoid plastic. I like the site Life Without Plastic for alternatives to things that normally contain plastic. Especially keep plastic away from your food (particularly if it’s warm).
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Buy used. The more demand you put on processes that rely on the endocrine disrupting chemicals the more that are in our environment. This is just how you can be kind to other’s endocrine systems :)
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Watch your cosmetics. Check out my resources page for some of my recommendations.
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Watch your cleaning products. Buy safe ones (a lot of the ones that are environmentally friendly are OK) or make your own!
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Eat organic. You don’t want to take in the pesticides that are sprayed on crops or hormones and antibiotics given to animals.
Lifestyle
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Exercise. Helps decrease stress and affects a whole host of bodily processes. Do something you love and that your body wants to do. Note: if you are having issues and exercise a lot, that could be your problem and you may need to reduce your levels.
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Sleep. Helps produce melatonin and that helps make progesterone. Try to get to sleep earlier and get up earlier. Sleep in complete darkness (you shouldn’t be able to see your hand 15 minutes after you turn off the lights).
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Ideal weight. This will vary from person to person and isn’t about how you look, but how your body works at certain weights. Being overweight or underweight could be a problem.
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Stress. Work at reducing your stress levels in whatever way works for you.
Supplementing
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Herbs. I suggest using nourishing infusions to get extra vitamins and minerals. Examples are nettle, red raspberry, red clover, comfrey, and oatstraw.
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Food supplements. Think “superfoods”, cod liver oil, nutrient dense foods. Try to make sure you are eating enough good stuff so that your nutrition is coming from your food.
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Supplement. If necessary (and diet is already stellar), use a food based supplement. You may need this if your food supply is poor, if you have health issues, if you are rebuilding/have increased need, etc.
Things that you may not think about in relation to your hormones
- Our endocrine systems are intertwined with the health of our whole body. If you are having digestive issues or your liver is overburdened your hormonal health will suffer. If you have any health issues work them out and don’t overlook the small things.
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Hannah,
Hi. I am a 44 year old female experiencing perimenopause. This started a few months ago when my period started changing along with feeling waves of warmth at times and sometimes sweaty. It has been kind of rocky for me. I have been eating healthier and trying to reduce my stress levels. It has been hard. My anxiety level is heightened. I have to do a lot of deep breathing and I have started to incorporate some yoga to help me relax. My OBGYN told me that it is due to my estrogen level, but I have been doing a lot of reading about the anxiety and the literature indicates that there is a low progestrone level. She told me to try Estroven. I have experienced some panic attacks. I have been trying to control them with deep breathing when I feel them. Do you have any advice for the anxiety that you could offer?
Hi Renee,
You may want to take a look at a couple of my favorite menopause books.
Susan Weed’s book
Christian Northrup’s book
And you are right that the anxiety generally is due to decreasing progesterone.
Hi there
I have just turned 35, my fiancé is nearly 40, and we have a daughter who is 3 in August, however we have not used contraception since she was born and I have not become pregnant. I have just had blood test results back from the doctors that show low progesterone levels. I have not been hormonally sound since giving birth, so the fact that my hormones are not balanced doesn’t surprise me, as you know when something is not right with your own body. We will probably go down the fertility route if that’s what the doctor suggests, but I was wondering what I can do now to try to improve my progesterone levels naturally to boost our chances of having another baby. We understand that the fertility route is a long drawn out process and nether of us are getting any younger, so a willing to try any or all things available to us. I have recently lost two stone as I had gained a lot of weight after having my child, and attend regular low intensity exercise classes such as Yoga, Body Balance and Pilates – but I know that I don’t eat the best varied diet, sleep through the night because my toddler doesn’t and I am stressed out most of the time. Please help!
Kindest Regards
Lydia x
Hi Lydia, thanks for the comment! That’s great that you are tuned into your body enough to tell that your hormones are “off”. I would definitely suggest charting your cycles if you don’t already, as that will give you an idea of how your hormones are now and how they are changing as you are doing different things. My program is here: http://herfertility.com
Even just a few dietary changes can make a big difference for a lot of women. Try to eat more whole foods (organic if possible), lower sugar, and less poly-unsaturated fat (oils, especially the yellow oils like corn, canola, soy/vegetable, etc.).
If you have anything specific that you know that helps with the stress try to do it. Meditate? Yoga? Have regular dates with your friends or partner without your daughter? You probably have a good idea of what helps you in this arena.