In This Episode:
[0:11] – The intricate balance of hormone functioning
[0:57] – Hormone tip #1: Water
[1:49] – Hormone tip #2: Being mindful of cookware & food storage
[2:30] – Hormone tip #3: avoid hormone disruptors in your diet
[4:30] – Hormone tip #4: SLEEP
[5:51] – Hormone tip #5: SUNSHINE
[7:02] – When simple balancing isn’t enough
Relevant Links:
- Blog: The Effects of Soy on Fertility, Fetal Development, & Infancy: Questions Answered
- Episode #005: The Importance of Clean Water
- Favorite Water Filter: Berkey
- Favorite Shower Filter: Berkey
- Trusted Functional Nutritionist: Jason Prall
- Hormone Saliva Test: DUTCH Test
- Glass Storage Containers
- Stainless Steel Cookware
- Favorite Toaster Oven: Breville
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[0:03] Hello and welcome to Mama in the Making, I’m Rochelle Serna, and today I want to talk about hormones!
[0:11] So like most everything else in our body, all the other systems that are functioning, hormones aren’t dictated by just one thing. We’ve got all sorts of factors that go into hormones. You know you’ve got your hypothalamus, your pituitary, and your thyroid—those are really the controllers of the endocrine system. So you might have something going on in one of those pieces and it changes all the cogs, it turns everything and then it kind of goes into this waterfall effect.
[0:38] But for today I want to talk about little simple tricks that you can do to help keep yourself in balance, help, you know, make sure that you’re going to take as good of care of your hormones on a day-to-day basis as possible.
[0:57] So one of my favorite and first things I’m going to talk about here is water, making sure that you’re getting in a really good source of water.
Back in my fifth episode of Mama in the Making I talked about my favorite filter and why it’s so important, but a lot of our water supply has run off from all sorts of different pharmaceutical drugs, and birth control, and chemicals, and plastics, and all sorts of things. And though we filter it, a lot of those chemicals aren’t part of what gets filtered out, and so what we find is lots of endocrine disruptors—lots of hormone disrupting chemicals inside of our water.
So think about how much water we’re drinking every day, and how much water we’re showering in, or bathing in, and how those chemicals can get into our system and affect our hormone balance.
[1:49] Foods cooked in plastic containers and certain nonstick surfaces they can all have chemicals that can mess with our hormone system. You want to make sure that you’re cooking food…my favorite ways are either in stainless steel pans or in a toaster oven we like to use, you can also use a regular oven, we just cook small amounts and so we’ve got a large toaster oven we use.
[2:10] Make sure you’re minimizing your use of plastics, um, use glass water bottles, use glass storage containers for food. So these simple little tricks that you can do to keep those chemicals out of your body and out of your home.
[2:30] The next thing is to choose foods that are not going to interrupt your hormones. So even though foods can be natural and from the earth it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re great for us and for our hormones.
So some examples of things you want to stay away from are sugar can mess with your hormones quite a bit. I have lots of personal experience with this. I know that when I include more sugar into my diet it can cause some mood swings and breakouts and things like that.
You want to try to keep estrogen-based foods out of your diet. So, um, soy tends to have high levels of estrogen, and I have some articles on this as well that I can link to. It’s important that you look into it. I love when people have an understanding of why they’re, you know, excluding things from their diet.
But soy is generally just not processed in the right way, it’s not, you know, sourced in the right way, a lot of…high GMOs, which is a whole nother issue. So, soy is a food that I like to stay away from.
But there are some other things, even flax seeds have, you know, hormones in them, an estrogen type of phytoestrogen, but it reacts in our bodies generally in a different way than a process soy would.
[3:43] So it’s important to look into the foods but then also to realize how they make you feel so after you have something. What do you notice? Does it bother you? Do you feel more moody? What part of your cycle are you in when you consume these foods?
You know, in seed cycling flax seeds are consumed at a certain time in the cycle so that it can help work with your body rather than against it.
So having an understanding of the foods you’re consuming is really important.
[4:13] My last two quick tips here are something that I really, really encourage you to do every day; and I think that—I know, for myself, and as humans we often overlook these things and we think, “ehhh”, we can do without em’ and we don’t need them, but they are sleep and sunshine.
[4:30] Please try to get some sleep and sunshine! I know as a mom of a toddler who did not love sleeping for the first 18 to 20 months of his life that sleep can be really difficult when you’ve got a child at home, or even before then when nighttime was the time that I was so used to doing things. I was used to getting stuff done at night, a night person I guess you’d say.
But if you can get in bed, if you can keep your—get your eyes closed and get that rest by ten o’clock at night then you’re going to feel so different. If you get in by nine o’clock at night I would love that, but I said ten because I didn’t think anybody would go for nine.
But I will tell you, since I started going to sleep at nine o’clock I definitely feel a huge difference in my overall health and it’s not just hormones, it really is everything.
And we hear it all the time, I guarantee this isn’t the first time you’ve heard this and I know that it’s something that really takes a commitment and a lifestyle change often—to try to get in bed by this time, but if you can get in bed at that nine o’clock, ten o’clock time—asleep by ten o’clock, then I think you’ll notice a big difference in all of your systems functionality. Everything from weight loss, to the way you feel, you know, to your adrenals being able to recuperate and everything is really good if you can get that sleep in.
[5:51] That last one, sunshine, is also so important. Sunshine is life-giving; light is really truly life-giving and and if you can get in the Sun the unprotected (I know that sounds weird) but without any sort of SPF at all for about 10 minutes—10 to 15 minutes depending on where you live and how your skin processes the Sun.
You don’t want to get red, you don’t want to burn, but if you can just get in and get some sunshine on your arms and, if you can, on your midsection. If you have a backyard and you can just get some on your midsection or on places that maybe don’t get sun it’s really good for your skin it’s good for the balancing of everything. That vitamin D is very helpful to the functioning of everything, including all of our hormone system.
So if you can make sure that water is good, that you’re getting good sleep, that your food doesn’t have hormones in it, and you’re getting nice, and you know, balanced freshly cooked meals, you can get that sunshine and you’ll be in a great place. You’ll be happy and healthier than you were—than you are already, and I think you’ll be feeling pretty good.
[7:02] If you feel like you’re having a really, you know, crucial hormone problem. If your cycles are really out of whack, if your body is doing things that you’re not used to, your skin is breaking out at certain times and you feel like there’s a hormonal issue it’s important that you go see a functional nutritionist, an endocrinologist, someone that is going to help you get to the bottom of these issues.
And, you know, there’s this great lab work that you can look into, and I’ll be linking to some people that I trust and some labs that you can look at in this blog post.
[7:34] Alright, so those are my quick tips on hormones. Please let me know if you have any other favorite things in the comments below, and I will be talking soon. Bye!
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To caring for your hormones,
