As we touched on the last episode, we have many hormones in our body that are always fluctuating in an effort to maintain our various body processes. Our hormones fluctuate based on how much sleep we get, how stressed out we are, what we eat, what time of day it is, what time of the month it is, how much sun exposure we are getting, how much social interaction we are getting… Almost everything we do in our daily life can affect our hormone levels in one way or another.
I wanted to focus on women’s hormonal health, but the more I looked into it as a topic of discussion, I hit more and more walls as the topic is so incredibly large. Instead of this being an all-encompassing episode, I just wanted to take a moment and talk with you about some of the more common signs and symptoms that might indicate that there are hormonal imbalances in women or Two-X-Chromosome havers.
Of course, I am mostly talking about androgens in this podcast, such as estrogen or progesterone. Again, not comprehensive, but this is a little check in we can do to see if you may benefit from some investigations.
Being a woman or a person in an xx body, you may have to advocate a little harder for yourself, especially if you feel like your hormones might be causing these issues. We don’t have to settle for “This is just the way it is.” If you are uncomfortable or feel unheard by your healthcare professional, you have my support. I got your back.
Here is a quick list of things that may indicate that your hormones are out of whack: We will start off with the most well-known issue… mood swings. Mood swings can happen because our hormones are out of balance. This can be either directly due to the hormones or from the ripple effect from the hormones causing insomnia or poor sleep quality — most people are irritable if they are utterly exhausted. Imbalanced hormones can also cause a desire to eat foods that aren’t necessarily beneficial for us to eat.
I’ll just take a moment here to say that it is about time we stop downplaying the power that hormones have over our mind. Hormones absolutely affect our moods. Estrogen in particular plays a role in the levels of neurotransmitters and number of receptors within our brains. Emotions are in essence neurotransmitters, of which estrogen mostly affects the level of serotonin.
Stay tuned for the next blog post, which will list the signs and symptoms.
