Stress & Hormones

Guess what? Continuing to say yes to sh*t you hate is stressing you out, and stress is beating up on your hormones. Optimized hormones require decreased stress both physiologically and psychologically. You have to address the underlying causes of the stress. Stress can come from a crappy diet, overeating, undereating, lack of sleep, too much exercise, too little exercise, poor immunity, exhaustion, or emotional/psychological factors, such as worrying, toxic people, and yes, saying yes to sh*t you hate!

Here's a quick rundown on how stress affects hormones:

Stress and blood sugar and insulin

A primary stress-buster is stabilizing blood sugar. For all your hormones to be more balanced and happy, your blood sugar and insulin must be in a good place. Most people eat too infrequently or not enough, or they overeat and eat too many simple carbs. Both are stressful on the body. All forms of stress can potentially raise your blood sugar levels (or make them go up and down wildly), leading to insulin resistance. The short and not-so-sweet story of insulin resistance is your pancreas has to keep pumping out insulin to keep up with the high blood sugar (from diet or stress). Eventually, your cells will stop responding to it hence becoming resistant. Both stress and blood sugar that is either too low (hypoglycemia) or too high (insulin resistance) are the most common culprits of PMS symptoms and a miserable menopause transition.

How does Insulin Resistance affect other hormones?

Insulin resistance can lead to elevated cortisol levels, and high cortisol levels can lead to insulin resistance—a vicious cycle. Insulin resistance can also increase testosterone and estrogen production, leading to PCOS (estrogen dominance) and inflammation. What a cluster F.

If you have insulin resistance, you want to become the opposite—more insulin sensitive (cells are more effective at absorbing blood sugar, so less insulin is needed). Some steps to improve blood sugar dysregulation include avoiding added sugars and industrial seed oils, adjusting your carbohydrate intake based on your blood sugar response, doing high-intensity strength training, not sitting as much, and making sure you're getting enough sleep and managing stress.

Adrenals

Our adrenals (via the hypothalamus and pituitary gland) pump out our stress hormones. One of the more common reasons for hormonal imbalance is low progesterone caused by chronic stress. When it comes to stress, the brain does not know whether you are angry at traffic, soaring and crashing after consuming a glazed donut and triple-shot caramel latte, or being chased by a bear. All the brain knows is to prepare for fight or flight and that reproduction hormones can wait until things have settled down. But for many sleep-deprived, over-stressed women fueled on caffeine and sugar, settling down rarely happens. This leads to chronic overproduction of cortisol and decreased pregnenolone and progesterone. Pregnenolone is the mother of all hormones. When we're stressed, most of the pregnenolone that we produce daily is channeled into cortisol because cortisol is one of the hormones involved in the stress response. So if you're not sleeping well, you're not managing your stress or eating a poor diet that will create a stress response in the body, which will divert pregnenolone into that cortisol pathway. This mechanism is called "pregnenolone steal," when chronic stress robs the compounds needed to make progesterone to make stress hormones instead. This "steal" leads to PMS symptoms and sets the stage for a miserable menopause transition. The fix isn't necessarily jumping in a tub of progesterone cream; first, address the sources of stress.

Thyroid

The impact of stress on the thyroid occurs by slowing down metabolism, another way that stress and weight gain are linked. When thyroid function slows during stress, triiodothyronine (T3) and thyroxine (T4) hormone levels fall. Also, the conversion of T4 hormone to T3 may not occur, leading to a higher level of reverse T3.

Conclusion

Before you even start to go down the rabbit hole of googling hormones (so much wrong information out there), or fiddle around with taking supplements, here are a few key things to address. Our hormones all work together synergetically, like a large choreographed dance. Managing your stress will go a long way towards keeping your insulin, adrenal, and thyroid hormone levels where you want them to be. Stress isn't going away anytime soon, but we can all work on figuring out how to deal with it better. Adress inflammation and gut health. Inflammation suppresses the hypothalamus' function and the pituitary in the brain, which produces stimulating hormones. Dysbiosis in the gut has been shown to increase beta-glucuronidase activity, which reverses hormone conjugation in the liver, which means that you get a recirculation of hormones like estrogen back into the circulation, and that can cause estrogen dominance.

Functional nutrition basics:

• Wrangle stress response.

• Concentrate on a nutrient-dense, anti-inflammatory diet.

• Eat sufficient protein and good fats and the right amount of low glycemic carbohydrates that fit your biochemistry and lifestyle.

• Stabilize blood sugar

• Restore gut health.

• Quell inflammation.

• Manage autoimmunity.

And stop saying yes to sh*t you hate!