During my nationwide tour earlier this year, ‘What’s Your Health Story?’, we asked all attendees to complete a general health survey. Of the nearly 3,500 females who responded, 86% had moderate to severe hormone health concerns. Which is a big problem!
I believe that every woman really should understand the crucial role hormone health plays in her health and wellbeing. Off the back of this I’ve launched a nationwide tour, ‘The Hormone Secret’ and I highly recommend you come along and bring any other important ladies in your life with you.
This week I'm looking into menopause, a very important hormonal stage of a woman's life and shared what everyone woman needs to know about menopause.
The research shows that premenopausal behaviours and lifestyle can help improve the transition into menopause. To help you with this transition, I've shared ten things you can do to make it as smooth as possible. The better the preparation; the smoother the sailing.
First up is balancing your oestrogen levels
Oestrogen dominance is a term used to describe a condition where a person can have deficient, normal or excessive oestrogen, but has little or no counterbalancing hormone to mitigate its effect in the body.
"Many factors such as stress, food choices, exposure to toxins, the state of our organ function will affect our hormone health."
It’s a very prevalent condition amongst our patients at the Auckland and Havelock North BePure Clinics. Many factors such as stress, food choices, exposure to toxins, the state of our organ function will affect our hormone health.
1. Minimising our exposure to xenoestrogens
Xenoestrogens are toxins found in our environment that mimic oestrogens in the body, disrupting our hormone balance. To do this avoid plastic where possible, choose natural skin care, and avoiding pesticides by choosing organic fruit and vegetables.
2. Reduce caffiene and alcohol consumption
We need to look after our liver in order to keep our hormones balanced. Caffeine and alcohol are our two biggest liver loaders, and so minimising these will help our liver, and in turn, our hormone balance.
3. Provide your liver with the nutrients
Our liver needs many nutrients for optimal detoxification. BePure One is a high quality multi-vitamin which will provide you with all the vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants your liver needs to process toxins.
4. Eat plenty of cruciferous vegetables
This means filling your diet with lots of cauliflower, broccoli, brussel sprouts and cabbage, which all contain important phytochemicals. When chopped, chewed, fermented, cooked and digested the phytochemicals are released and break down into sulphorophanes, indole-3-carbinol and D-glucarate. These substances all have a specific effect on phase 1 and phase 2 of liver detoxification.
Second is nurturing your adrenal glands
When a women’s ovaries go offline, her body relies exclusively on her adrenal glands to produce hormones. Even though these are no longer required for reproduction, they are required for mental acuity, mood and energy. If your adrenals are in a good condition, they should be able to keep up with the reduced production of oestrogen and progesterone her body needs.
5. Eat for your macronutrient profile type
Eating right for your body type will help you to help stabilise blood sugar levels over the day. It will also mean you are giving your body the fuel it requires according to your genetics and metabolism. If you don’t know what this is you can take the BePure Macronutrient Profile Questionnaire. For most people to be able to stabilise their blood sugar levels, they will need a good quality protein source with breakfast. My favourite start to the day is Eggs Florentine or a protein rich smoothie.
6. Exercise right for you
We all know we should be exercising daily, but how we exercise is just as important. The purpose of exercise is to help balance out your stress levels. So if you are well slept with low stress in your day-to-day life, putting your body under some positive physiological stress will reap huge benefits. But, if you are already under a lot of stress or suffering from adrenal fatigue choosing the lower intensity options such as, walking or yoga will be hugely beneficial.
7. Eliminate your intake of processed grains and sugar
When looking to reduce sugar in your diet you also want to be mindful of your consumption of natural sweeteners. While natural sweeteners such as honey, dates, maple syrup and many more, are a much better alternative to processed sugars, they will still cause your blood sugar levels to spike. Our body responds to processed grains in the same way as table sugar, so anything with white flour will also spike our blood sugar levels.
8. Include quality carbohydrates
Quality, complex carbohydrates are good to include with dinner. Latest research suggests gentle carbs are calming on our nervous systems and promote sleep.
Some examples of complex carbohydrates are pumpkin, potato, kumara and rice. For some people - especially women - utilising ketones (fats) as a source of fuel is more stressful than utilising gentle carbohydrates. Complex carbohydrates are nourishing if consumed in the right quantities for you. Assess your hunger and energy after eating these. You will know you have eaten the right ratio of carbs to fats and proteins if you are full for 4-5 hours after eating.
9. Include adrenal superfoods such as organ meat
The BePure Adrenal Regenerator is a highly effective adrenal support supplement. It provides the unique bioavailable building blocks to support and rebuild the adrenals. Organ meats are some of the most nutrient dense food on the planet and their benefits are readily absorbed by our body. While many do not find these particularly palatable on their own, they’re easily added to other recipes. Try our Chicken Liver Pâté or the BePure Meatloaf.
10. Aim to get 8 - 10 hours of good quality sleep every night
While this much sleep isn’t always possible, every night, sleep is cumulative and you can catch up a couple of extra hours on the weekend.
To learn more, join Ben on his nationwide tour
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