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Hormones Gone Wild: How Hormone Imbalance Can Impact Your Health and How You Can Easily Fix It

Updated on July 13, 2016
pic of man stressed
pic of man stressed | Source

More and more health issues today are caused by hormones gone wild. Unfortunately, traditional medicine does not know how to address these health concerns because they try to treat health issues instead of finding the root cause and then addressing it.

Hormone problems apply to men and women, even though we typically think of women as hormonal creatures. I am not a doctor, but I've learned so much in this area due to problems that I've encountered myself or from helping someone that I care about. In this hub, I'm going to explain some common hormone problems and how one should prevent or fix this problem.

Causes for imbalance

Did you know that the foods that you consume and the products that you put on your skin can have hormones or hormone mimickers in them? Years ago, people started carrying around water bottles to drink water throughout the day. Drinking water is great, but what about the plastic water bottles that are housing this water?

Most people have never considered that the chemicals from the plastic are being leached into the water that they are drinking. When plastics enter the body, the body sees them as a hormone. They're not a real hormone, but that's the effect that they have on the body. They act like an estrogen and are therefore called xenoestrogens (or fake estrogen).

What does all this fake estrogen mean for our bodies? It causes a problem called estrogen dominance where there is too much estrogen in the body. Our bodies are meant to have estrogen but in the right balance. When there is too much estrogen in relation to the other hormones, it can cause a host of problems in the body (see the list below).


Hormone Imbalance Signs (as listed in Dr. John Lee's book series "What Your Dr. May Not Tell You About...")

acne
age spots
allergies
arthritis
bladder infections
breast enlargement/tenderness
Cervical Dysplasia
chronic fatigue syndrome
cold extremities
constipation
crying/weepy
decreased libido
depression
elevated PSA count (prostate)
endometriosis
exhaustion, fatigue
fat gain around tummy/hips/thigs (stubborn fat)
fibrocystic breasts
fibroid tumors (uterine fibroids)
fibromyalgia
gallbladder disease
Grave's disease
hair loss or thinning hair (men or women)
Hashimoto's Tyroiditis
headaches (migraines)
heavy menstrual bleeding
hot flashes
hypoglycemia
inability to focus/concentrate
inability to handle stress
incontinence
increased blood clotting
infertility
insomnia
irregular menstrual periods
irritability or mood swings
joint or muscle pain
joint swelling or stiffness
lack of appetite
leg/muscle pain
lethargy
Lupus
menopause
menstrual cramping
mid-cycle pain
miscarriage
night sweats
osteoperosis
ovarian cysts
painful intercourse
PMS
Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (POS)
prostate enlargement (men)
psoriasis, eczema, seborrhea
rosacea
Sjorgen's Disease
sleep disturbances
sluggish metabolism
softer erections (men)
spontaneous abortion
sugar cravings
thyroid dysfunction mimicking hypothyroidism
ulcers
uterine cancer
vaginal dryness
water retention
yeast infections
 
 

table of hormone imbalance signs

* Note: If you have four or more of these signs, you may have a hormone imbalance.

pic of Dr. John Lee's book called Hormone Balance Made Simple
pic of Dr. John Lee's book called Hormone Balance Made Simple | Source
plastic water bottle pic
plastic water bottle pic
pesticide pic
pesticide pic

Sources of hormones

Food and hormones

Unfortunately, we have to worry about hormones in our food. Meat and milk are two foods that are common culprits for containing hormones. By eating or drinking these foods that contain too much estrogen, our hormone levels are then impacted. It is especially important to buy organic milk and meat to prevent getting hormones from these food sources.

Besides the food itself, we have to watch out for the pesticides that are used on produce. The pesticides can also mimic hormones in our bodies. That's why it is important to choose organic produce when possible (especially for the "dirty dozen").

Other sources of hormones

Besides plastics and food, there are sources of hormones that will likely surprise you. Have you ever considered that your shampoo, conditioner, cosmetics, and lotions may have hormones or ingredients that mimic hormones once they enter your body? It's true.

Whatever you put onto your skin is absorbed directly into your bloodstream. That's why the nicotine and birth control patches work. if there are ingredients that mimic your hormones in the products that you're using, then they enter directly into your bloodstream. Once in your bloodstream, the body detects its presence and puts a tag on it that says "estrogen."

In fact, there have been times that women struggled to get pregnant for years and switched their personal care products only to finally get pregnant. Hormone exposure matters for everyone and not just those people trying to get pregnant. If these ingredients can prevent pregnancy by altering your hormones, what other things can they cause?


Hormone Testing

If you think that you may have estrogen dominance, you can have your hormone levels tested. However, you have to make sure that you get the correct test done. If you go to your doctor and ask them to test your hormones, most likely they will do a blood test and that test will have inaccurate results. You don't want to just see how much hormones are in your blood but what your body is actually using, or the bio-availability of the hormone levels in your body.

To find out this information, you need to have a saliva hormone test or a blood spot test done (very few doctors are even aware of these tests or that they are the standard for hormone testing). In fact, doing these tests is very easy because you can order them online, have them delivered to your house, collect the saliva or blood yourself, and mail it directly to the lab. The lab will mail you the results and then you can have a doctor interpret them.


Treatment

Amazingly, the fix for estrogen dominance is not expensive or complicated. In fact, the fix can involve helping your body to balance the hormone levels itself. Since progesterone is the pre-cursor to all hormones (estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, cortisol, etc.), you can use progesterone cream to balance your hormone levels naturally. Once the progesterone gets into your body, your body will then convert it into whichever hormone is needed. Your body will then be able to achieve balance naturally.

It's important to understand that there are different types of progesterone. People typically think that taking a pill is more effective. However, in this case, a pill is not the most effective and has terrible side effects. When given a hormone pill, you are given very high levels of the hormone because it is known that the body can't process it efficiently and thus needs higher levels of the hormone. Since you are getting high levels of the hormone, you can get lots of side effects like nausea, extreme fatigue, dizziness, headaches, and the list goes on.

The best way to increase your progesterone levels and in turn balance your hormone levels is to use a progesterone cream. Remember that whatever you put on your skin is immediately absorbed into your bloodstream. Therefore, the progesterone cream will immediately enter the body and the body will then turn the progesterone into whichever hormone is needed to balance the levels naturally.

When choosing a progesterone cream, you want to select one that is from a trustworthy source. Knowing that other ingredients in lotions can mimic hormones, it is definitely important to screen these creams carefully. You also want to choose one that is in a pump dispenser so that it does not lose it's potency (it can lose it's potency if exposed to air). Of course, you also want the pump to be metered so that it pumps out the same amount each time.


My Experience

Years ago, I started using a progesterone cream because I was displaying signs of hypothyroidism. My hormone levels were unbalanced and my doctor didn't think I'd be able to get pregnant. After using the cream, my thyroid improved and I was able to get pregnant and had a healthy baby. After having my first baby and breastfeeding, my hormone levels were again unbalanced and we hadn't been able to get pregnant (I mistakenly thought it'd be easy the second time around). I started using progesterone cream again and was pregnant within a couple months.

Besides the progesterone cream enabling me to get pregnant, I just felt better overall. I slept sound, I had no pms symptoms (I'd always had incredibly painful cramps and ached for days before-hand), it regulated my cycle to exactly 28 days (which it never had been before), and my mood was improved.

Conclusion

Not only has the progesterone cream helped me, but it also helped friends of mine and others that I know that have tried it. In fact, I would postulate that there are so many people that have unbalanced hormones and have no idea.

Besides using a progesterone cream, you also need to be careful about the other products you're using, the foods you're eating, and staying away from plastics and chemicals that can mimic estrogen in the body. It takes some searching to find products that are safe and quality, but it is possible.

If you're interested in learning more about this topic, I highly recommend going to Dr. John Lee's website (see the link below) or even reading some of his books that can be found on Amazon (such as Hormone Balance Made Simple and What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Breast Cancer).

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