“Hormone chain”- why is it important to keep all of your hormones in balance
Our bodies run on complex systems, and everything can function smoothly and efficiently because of our hormones. These hormones are like a chain; each link connects to the next one. If there is ever a weak link, it will throw the entire system off, and you will feel it.
The Importance of Balanced Hormones
When Hormones Are Balanced
Energy
Balanced hormones, including the adrenal, thyroid, testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone, are responsible for maintaining high energy levels. You will see how the male and female sex hormones relate to energy later.
Focus
Brain fog is when your thinking is not as sharp. It is generally out of focus and has several symptoms, including the following:
• Lack of mental clarity
• Inability to learn new concepts as you did in the past
• Difficulties concentrating
• Difficulties with organization or time management
• Difficulties multitasking
• The temporary inability to recall people’s names or words
• Disorganization
• Poor memory or forgetfulness
Estrogen and testosterone are two hormones involved in cognitive function. As estrogen and testosterone levels drop, it affects your cognitive abilities. When estrogen and testosterone are at their optimal levels, you experience mental clarity, improved abilities to reason and focus, and an improvement in your memory.
Sleep Patterns
When your sleep patterns are optimal, they give your body time to create more hormones that produce good sleep. Fortunately, balanced hormones allow you to sleep during the night.
Appetite
The body has hunger hormones, and they are “ghrelin” and “leptin.” Ghrelin is the hormone that increases your appetite, and leptin is the hormone that decreases your appetite. When these hormones are balanced, you do not eat too much or too little.
When Hormones Are Imbalanced
Fatigue
One of the most common signs of a hormone imbalance is energy loss. If your progesterone levels are too high, you may experience sleepiness.
An underactive thyroid is when the thyroid gland does not produce enough thyroid hormones. Thyroid hormones regulate energy, and a lack of thyroid hormones causes fatigue.
Weight Gain
When leptin levels are low, people rarely feel satiated after eating and may feel hungry all the time. Feeling hungry all the time leads to cravings.
Mood Swings
Hormonal imbalances cause mood swings at very specific times. One is two weeks before a woman’s menstrual cycle begins. This is when her reproductive hormones increase and cause low mood, irritability, anxiety, and anger. This stage is more commonly known as “premenstrual syndrome” or PMS.
During the first trimester of pregnancy, a woman’s estrogen and progesterone levels go up and down. This causes mood swings as well. After the baby is born, many women experience moodiness, but it may or may not develop into postpartum depression.
Mood swings may also be a part of a woman’s life during perimenopause and menopause. This is very common.
Lack of Sleep
Several hormones, including melatonin, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and cortisol, impact your sleep. Melatonin is even called the “sleep hormone” for its ability to promote sleep. It also regulates the body’s circadian rhythm.
A woman’s body produces much more estrogen and progesterone than a male’s, so these hormones influence a woman’s sleep more often than a man’s. This occurs during the menstrual cycle when estrogen levels increase and during pregnancy when progesterone levels increase. These levels also affect a woman’s sleep during menopause. Because of these times, more women experience insomnia than men throughout their lives.
A man has more testosterone in his bloodstream than a woman does, so low testosterone levels do not affect a woman’s sleep as much as they affect a man’s.
People believe that cortisol’s most important job is to regulate stress, but this is untrue. Cortisol’s most important job is to assist melatonin in maintaining your sleep pattern. When you wake up in the morning, melatonin levels decline, and cortisol levels increase so that they can wake you up. When it is time to go to bed, cortisol production goes down, and melatonin production goes up so your body can get ready for a good night’s sleep.
Tropic hormones are one of the key types of hormones, and they regulate the others. The pituitary and other glands secrete these hormones to help control the release of the other hormones into the body.
The domino effect is in play with hormones. When one hormone begins to decline, the others follow.
Thyroid and Metabolism
The thyroid hormone controls the speed of the body’s metabolism. The metabolism is a set of functions that controls how the body takes the food you eat and changes it into energy. All the cells in the body receive this energy to function. The thyroid gland produces thyroid hormones as part of the endocrine system.
Insulin and Cortisol
The adrenal gland secretes cortisol, a steroid hormone. Its purpose is to make muscle and fat cells resistant to insulin and to increase the liver’s production of glucose.
Estrogen and progesterone
Estrogen and progesterone work together to prepare a woman’s body for pregnancy and ensure that it is maintained. Estrogen is important throughout the menstrual cycle, and progesterone levels increase in the second portion of the cycle. This is when the body prepares the uterus to accept a fertilized egg. The body continues to produce progesterone to support the pregnancy throughout the nine months.
When your hormones are balanced, you have high energy levels, can focus, have good sleep patterns, and have neither too big nor too small an appetite. With imbalanced hormones, you experience fatigue, gain weight, have mood swings, and lack sleep. If you want to return to the days when your hormones were balanced, contact us at Medzone Clinic today.
