The most valuable players
You might be barely aware of hormones, but they work behind the scenes to make life worth living. They control mood, energy, mental clarity, weight, sleep, and reactions to stress. Many ailments and symptoms, both physical and mental, can be traced to an imbalance of these crucial hormones.
Hormones are made by glands in the body called endocrine glands. The pituitary in the brain is sometimes called the master gland, and it acts like an orchestra conductor and directs the activity of the others. The adrenals, just over the kidneys, help you to deal with stress. The thyroid in your neck regulates your metabolism, the speed at which you burn food for energy. The gonads, ovaries in women and testes in men, help to keep sex drive alive and sustain a pregnancy.
Like instruments in an orchestra, each endocrine gland and hormone has its own function but works with and is affected by the others. If, for example, the adrenals are stressed, the thyroid is next in command and takes over, but only up to a point, at which time it can begin to fail as well. If unchecked, this can cause the other endocrine glands to go down like a stack of dominoes.
What are some of these glands and hormones?
There are many hormones that have profound effects on the body. Here are a few of the more commonly known ones and the effects they can have:
Thyroid hormones are so crucial that, if imbalanced, symptoms can affect your whole body. One in ten women as well as many men have problems with low thyroid, causing weight gain, low energy, and depression. Fluoride, added to many water supplies, interferes with the thyroid’s use of crucial iodine and can cause low thyroid function, as can mercury in metal dental fillings.
Estrogen gives a woman her curves and makes pregnancy possible. It is made by the ovaries, but also by fat cells. Excess weight can increase estrogen levels that can contribute to the growth of breast, uterine, and ovarian cancers. Low estrogen occurs with menopause and can contribute to menopausal symptoms.
Testosterone is considered to be the male hormone, but it’s not just for men. Testosterone is made by the testes, ovaries, and adrenal glands. As testosterone decreases with age, sex drive and professional ambition tend to decline in both sexes. Zinc, either as supplements or in zinc-rich foods like oysters and sesame seeds, can help to bring testosterone levels back up.
Insulin is produced by the pancreas, near the liver. It helps the body use and regulate glucose, a basic sugar that is needed by all of the body’s cells. When the pancreas doesn’t make enough insulin, or the cells lose their sensitivity to it, the result is diabetes.
Adrenal hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol spike to help you deal with sudden stress. However, if you are under chronic stress as so many of us are, cortisol levels remain high, which can suppress the immune system and have been linked to a high level of harmful abdominal fat.
Aldosterone regulates the body’s sodium and water ratio. Too much can cause high blood pressure, muscle cramps, and weakness. Many people force themselves to eat less salt than they would normally eat out of a misguided attempt to head off high blood pressure, and this shortage of sodium can lead to an imbalance of this important hormone.
Melatonin regulates your day/night cycles and helps you sleep. Bodies produce less melatonin as we age, which is why people tend to have a harder time getting to sleep as they get older. If you take melatonin as a supplement, take it shortly before the time you want to get to sleep, not at 3AM after lying awake for hours, or your body will think 3AM is your desired bedtime.
Ghrelin and leptin need to be in balance to control your hunger and weight. Ghrelin increases appetite when your body needs food, and leptin tells your brain that you’ve had enough. When these two are unbalanced, it may be difficult to tell when you are biologically hungry as well as when you’ve had enough. Overeating is the common result. Insufficient sleep can contribute to an imbalance that favors ghrelin, which can lead to unwanted weight gain.
Just take a hormone supplement? Here’s why not
There’s more to balancing hormones than just taking a hormone supplement pill, shot, or cream. For one thing, endocrine glands are guided by a feedback loop, like the one that tells your furnace that it’s too cold and the furnace needs to produce heat. If, for example, your thyroid hormone level is low, a properly functioning thyroid makes more as needed. But if you’re taking thyroid pills, your thyroid won’t be signaled to turn on, and with time it becomes like a rusty unused furnace and slows down even more or stops working altogether. This is true for all the adrenal glands and hormones.
Another factor is that the problem may not just be a lack of the proper hormone. The hormone produced by the thyroid, called T4, needs to be converted to T3 in order to do its work in the body, but if the conversion isn’t happening properly, taking more T4 as a supplement does nothing to address the real problem.
A third factor is that unbalanced hormones may not be the primary problem but rather a symptom of what is really going on. Cholesterol, considered by many to be a villain that needs to be controlled by statin drugs, is necessary for proper hormone production, and beneficial oils and minerals such as zinc need to be in balance as well. Toxic suppressors can interfere with hormone balance. These include pesticides, mercury, and structural problems.
A fourth issue is that hormones fluctuate throughout life, and this isn’t a problem that necessarily needs to be fixed. For example, every woman who lives long enough will go through menopause, yet this normal process is considered by some to be a deficiency that needs to be remedied with supplemental hormones.
With all this said, though, there are times when natural, not synthetic, hormone replacement is part of effective treatment.
When good hormones go bad…and what to do about it
Like everything else in the body, the endocrine system is designed to work properly and keep the hormones in balance. But like everything else in the body, things can go wrong, and a knowledgeable practitioner can both identify the problem as being tied to hormones in the first place, and then know what to do about it.
When it comes to hormones don’t try to figure this out on your own. A professional can help determine hormone function and balance. Testing available at CAM includes blood testing, saliva testing, and other testing.
