Are Your Hormones Making You Miserable?

Are your hormones out of balance?

Does your life feel like a song played badly out of tune?

If so, the problem may have to do with imbalances in your hormones, which are wreaking havoc on your body and mind.

There is one hormone in particular I am going to focus on today, and it could be at the root of your problems.

I will share with you 12 tips you can start using immediately to begin rebalancing your hormones and bring your life back into tune.

But first, ask yourself these questions:

• Do your mood and energy swing up and down, making your life crazy?

• Do you crave sugar or salt?

• Are you overweight and putting on more and more belly fat?

• If you are a woman, do you have premenstrual syndrome, painful or heavy periods, and a low sex drive?

• Are you depressed? Do you sleep poorly?

• Do you feel tired but wired?

• Do you need coffee to wake up in the morning and a few glasses of wine to calm down at night?

If you answered "yes," your hormones may be out of balance, and you are not alone ...

In fact, this is how most Americans feel because we are living out of harmony with our natural biological rhythms. This is because small molecules in our bodies that we depend on to keep us in balance are running haywire.

These messenger molecules are involved in almost every function of the body, and they are critical to our well-being.

They are our hormones -- messenger molecules of our endocrine system -- and neurotransmitters -- messenger molecules of our brain and nervous system.

Understand how and why these systems get out of balance and you will go a long way toward understanding why Americans are so tired, depressed, and overweight!

Our hormone and neurotransmitter system is another one of the core systems of the body that we must address to achieve vibrant health. That is why Balancing Your Hormones is Key #2 to UltraWellness.

In today's blog -- the second in this 7-part series on the 7 Keys to UltraWellness -- I will explain why your hormones get out of balance, how to get them back in balance, how they work, and why so many of you feel miserable because of them.

The Four Major Hormonal Epidemics in America and Why They Are Making Us Miserable

All of our hormones and neurotransmitters work together as one dynamic system to help us maintain optimal health and keep us happy, focused, and peaceful. They are like a finely orchestrated symphony that must work together to keep everything in balance.

The command and control center for this process is in your brain. It is made up of the hypothalamus and pituitary glands.

This center sends signals to distant parts of the body to control everything from your stress response through the adrenal glands to your blood sugar balance through the pancreas to your thyroid hormone via the thyroid gland, to your sexual behavior and function through the reproductive organs. It also controls growth, sleep, mood, and much more.

In addition to these hormonal messengers you also have important brain chemicals called neurotransmitters, which send messages throughout your body to every cell, organ, and tissue and help you do everything from moving your arm to feeling happy or sad.

When your neurotransmitters or hormones are out of balance, literally everything in your body goes haywire.

There are four big epidemics of hormonal problems in Americans today that are sending millions of people out of balance: too much insulin (from sugar), too much cortisol and adrenaline (from stress), imbalances of sex hormones such as estrogen and testosterone, and not enough thyroid hormones.

Although all 4 of these hormone epidemics are important, today I want to focus on the most common -- and therefore the most problematic -- of these conditions: too much insulin.

Insulin Resistance: Awash in a Sea of Sugar

Let me tell you the story of a man who came to me. His story may be all too familiar to you ...

James was a 46 year-old Wall Street executive who came to me for a cardiac stress test. He was a hard-driving, don't-look-up type of guy who was convinced he was dying of heart disease.

Every afternoon, he would experience the sudden onset of sweating, a racing heart, anxiety, and shortness of breath -- in other words, he thought he was going to die!

He was also thick around the middle. After taking one look at him and listening to his story, I said, "You don't eat breakfast, do you?"

"And you feel tired after eating, so that is why you skip food during the day -- to keep sharp for work," I continued. "And when you feel like that, you go to the vending machine for a soda and get a quick sugar fix, and in a few minutes you feel better."

Shocked, he asked, "How did you know?"

I explained to James that he was fighting with his genes and was insulin resistant, leading to wide swings in blood sugar that were responsible for his symptoms.

He couldn't regulate his blood sugar because he pumped out too much insulin. And this was leading to every one of his symptoms ...

When you eat too much sugar, flour, and white rice, your insulin levels spike.

When this happens, your cells become resistant to its effects. So you pump out more and more insulin, become even MORE resistant to its effects, and end up in the vicious cycle of insulin resistance.

Insulin resistance can cause energy and mood swings -- AND it can take you down the slippery road toward high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, cancer, brain aging, dementia, and more.

But James is not alone in his problem with blood sugar control ...

Between 80 and 100 million Americans suffer from insulin resistance. It is not exactly the same in everyone, but the ultimate consequences can be similar.

Most people with insulin resistance have extra fat around the middle.

(Quick Tip: Check your waist-to-hip ratio -- the measurement around your belly button divided by the measurement around your hips. If it is greater than 0.8, you likely have insulin resistance.)

You may be tall, thin, short, fat, or any combination of these and still have insulin resistance.

The only way to know for sure is to take an insulin response test, which measures blood sugar AND insulin while you are fasting and 1 and 2 hours after you consume a 75-gram sugar drink.

Just measuring blood sugar alone isn't enough. You HAVE to measure insulin -- this is something that many doctors miss.

Insulin resistance is not a genetic defect, an error in our evolution, or a mistake by God. It is the result of the simple fact that we have strayed from eating in harmony with our genes. In other words, we do not fit into our genes.

Historically, we ate the equivalent of only 20 teaspoons of sugar a year as hunter-gatherers.

But just 200 years ago, we started consuming about 10 pounds of sugar per person per year -- a 5,000% increase over our evolutionary ancestors!

As if that weren't bad enough, we now we eat 150 pounds per person per year, or about 1/2 pound each day -- that's the equivalent of drinking 6 cans of Coke or eating 8 Snickers bars per day.

What's worst, the average child consumes 34 teaspoons of sugar a day!

That means that we are now eating 75,000% more sugar today than our ancestors did.

This is ridiculous -- no wonder so many of us are sick, fat, tired, and depressed!

We evolved in a world without supermarkets, convenience stores, or fast food restaurants. We had to work for our food and had limited access to refined foods or excess calories.

In fact, our genes are pre-agricultural -- we only started farming 10,000 years ago and only started refining flour about 200 years ago with the advent of the steam engine-powered flourmill.

With the advent of 15,000 low-fat foods (which are also high-sugar, high-calorie foods) on the market over the last 15 to 20 years, we have created an epidemic of increasing obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. The scientific foundation for the low-fat movement was shaky from the start, and the consequences of that movement were the exact opposite of its intentions -- we are now the most unhealthy generation.

Madison Avenue got ahead of medical science to the detriment of us all.

How Does All This Sugar Harm Our Health?

Well, our bodies normally produce insulin in response to food in our stomachs, particularly sugar. When we eat too much sugar we produce FAR too much insulin, and this leads to a variety of health problems.

We once thought that insulin's only role was to help the sugar enter cells so it could be metabolized, transforming the stored energy of the sun (in plant foods) with the oxygen we breathe into the energy we use every day to run our bodies.

We were wrong.

Insulin has many other effects on the body. And when there is too much of it, the results can be catastrophic.

Here is what too much insulin really does to your body and health:

• Now we recognize insulin as a major switching station, or control hormone, for many processes. It is a major storage hormone -- fat storage, that is.

• Insulin acts on your brain to increase appetite, specifically an appetite for sugar. Try as you might, as long as your insulin levels are high you will fight a losing battle for weight loss.

• It increases LDL cholesterol, lowers HDL cholesterol, raises triglycerides, and increases your blood pressure. Insulin resistance causes 50% of all reported cases of high blood pressure.

• It makes your blood sticky and more likely to clot, leading to heart attacks and strokes.

• It stimulates the growth of cancer cells.

• It increases inflammation and oxidative stress and ages your brain.

• It even increases homocysteine because sugar consumption decreases vitamin B6 and folic acid.

• Insulin also causes sex hormone problems and can lead to infertility, hair growth where you don't want to grow it, hair loss where you don't want to lose it, acne, low testosterone in men, and more. It also leads to mood disturbances.

Fortunately, balancing blood sugar and correcting insulin resistance are well within our reach.

Scientific advances of the last few decades show us how.

While some medications can help with insulin resistance, such as Glucophage, Avandia, and Actos, they have side effects and are only a Band-aid unless they are used along with a comprehensive nutrition, exercise, and stress management plan like the one described below.

Resetting Your Metabolism for Optimal Blood Sugar

My goal is to make your metabolism more efficient, to make your cells more intelligent and cooperative, not resistant. In other words, you will need much less insulin to accomplish the task of balancing your blood sugar.

You can achieve this by resetting your metabolism of sugar and insulin.

To do this you have to eliminate the things that are knocking you out of balance, and provide your body the things it needs to reestablish optimal balance and thrive.

Here is what to do:

• Stop eating flour and sugar products, especially high-fructose corn syrup.

• Don't drink liquid calories in juice and soda. Your body doesn't feel full from them, so you eat more all day.

• Stop consuming all processed, junk, or packaged foods. If it doesn't look like the food your great grandmother ate, stay away.

• Stop eating trans or hydrogenated fats.

• Slow the rate of sugar uptake from the gut by balancing your meals with healthy protein (nuts, seeds, beans, small wild fish, organic chicken), healthy carbs (vegetables, fruit, beans, whole grains), and healthy fats (olive oil, nuts and seeds, avocadoes, fish oil).

• Eat plenty of soluble fiber (30 to 50 grams a day).

• Eat smaller, more frequent meals.

• Make your cells smarter by giving them an oil change with omega-3 fats, which help fix cell membranes so that they can more readily receive the messages from insulin.

• Move your body: Exercise improves your cells' ability to work better, respond to insulin better, and burn sugar faster.

• Relax! Stress reduction also helps improve blood sugar control.

• Make your cells more efficient by increasing specific nutrients, such as chromium, vanadium, magnesium, vitamin E, biotin, the B vitamins, zinc, bioflavonoids, and some newer compounds including alpha lipoic acid, arginine, and carnitine.

• Herbs may also be of benefit. These include Panax ginseng, ginkgo biloba, green tea, fenugreek, gymnema sylvestre, bitter melon, and garlic.

Just balancing this one hormone -- insulin -- can have wide-ranging effects on all your other hormones and brain chemicals and is a great place to start on your path to vibrant health.

Just try these suggestions for 1 week and see how you feel -- you may be shocked at how quickly your body can recover.

Now I'd like to hear from you ...

What do you think can be done to cleanse our food supply of so much sugar?

Do you believe the corn industry's ads on the safety of high-fructose corn syrup?

How can we protect our children from consuming massive amounts of sugar?

Please let me know your thoughts by posting a comment below.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, MD

Mark Hyman, M.D. practicing physician and founder of The UltraWellness Center is a pioneer in functional medicine. Dr. Hyman is now sharing the 7 ways to tap into your body's natural ability to heal itself. You can follow him on Twitter, connect with him on LinkedIn, watch his videos on Youtube and become a fan on Facebook.

Follow Mark Hyman, MD on Twitter: www.twitter.com/markhymanmd

Comments

[yellowdoggie]

If you are eating sugar, you are eating too much sugar. If you are eating or drinking anything with added sweetner, natural or artificial, stop it now.

[CBSRD]

While Dr. Hyman provides some excellent nutrition tips, he does a disservice and adds to consumer confusion by demonizing high fructose corn syrup. In regard to insulin response, all caloric sweeteners trigger an insulin response in the body. Table sugar, honey and high fructose corn syrup trigger about the same insulin release, because they contain nearly equal amounts of fructose and glucose. If one wants to lose weight, the focus should be on limiting all sources of these sweeteners, which limits calories. A sugar is a sugar, whether it’s honey, high fructose corn syrup, table sugar, or fruit juices. As a registered dietitian who counsels patients who want to lose weight, I share with them that replacing high fructose corn syrup with sugar will not reduce obesity or improve health. It is limiting calories, making wise food choices and getting daily physical activity that will put them on the road to better health.

[katmeyster]

I am not a scientist so I can not say that high fructose corn syrup is better or worse than other sugars or replacements. But I do know that the corn growers are highly supplemented by our tax dollars and they place high fructose corn syrup in almost all processed food -- lots of it for no particular reason other than it is cheap (due to our tax dollars and agribusiness lobbyists). Those are good enough reasons to avoid it.

[NevaforLeadership]

I haven't re-read Dr. Hyman's article, but I don't recall his advising anywhere that one should replace high fructose corn syrup with sugar.

He's against sugar and high fructose corn syrup!

One of the objections to corn syrup is that people see it on ingredient lists without realizing what it is and the harm it does. What is more, there is absolutely no reason to eat it.

[alexjackwilson]

Kelly Keough wrote a nice little book "Sugar-Free, Gluten-Free Baking and Desserts" available on Amazon.com. I went sugar-free after hearing Kelly speak at a local Celiac Disease Foundation meeting, and feel great. As with going gluten-free, going sugar-free takes a few months of trial and commitment , but after that, it's easy. Kelly's wesite is kellykeough.com has some recipies and videos, too. Enjoy!

[lw1899]

Thank you, Dr. Hyman, for all the valuable information. I knew sugar is bad for you but not to the extent you noted in this article.

[ConfuciusSay-]

http://www.medbio.info/
Free resource.

For anybody interested in knowing more about sugars, diabetes, weight control , exercise, supplements, etc. It's written by an authority with good bona fides, and the articles are in plain English with diagrams.

[LolaP]

Thanks! What a great article.
I stopped eating wheat years ago and feel SO much better for it. Sugar and dairy are the next things to go. It's amazing how they put sugar and wheat in what seems like EVERYTHING these days. I read every single ingredient label now and I'm constantly shocked with what I find. It seems people just assume things are what they say on the front of the packet and rarely actually stop to read the small print. The front is often so misleading you'd think it would be illegal. Unfortunately it's not and I think the way companies are allowed to market stuff is causing most of the problem.

[cosmicmom]

Why isn't my crockpot yogurt recipe being accepted? It was directly contributing to one of the threads on this article.

[katmeyster]

I've pretty much eliminated all my perimenopausal symptoms by cutting out sugar, processed food, and incorporating topical natural progesterone cream. You really do not have to feel out of balance. I'm now working on incorporating more exercise -- and you feel like it when you are more in balance. Thanks for the article. BTW, after awhile you really don't miss the sugar.

[DrJulienArbor]

The ones in the water sure aren't helping anyone either...

http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/chi-water-testing-14-jul14,0,4303601.story

[marlainWA]

I know I eat too much sugar and about a year ago I cut way back, it took two weeks to even out, i felt great and lost weight, then went through a stressful time at work and gained it all back and same habits.

I have spent the last 6 months trying my hardest to do it again but this time i can only go 3-4 days of eating right and something always pulls me back into some type of sugar, whether sweets, wine, or pasta.

I try to eat healthy organic food but i crave chocolate, wine and pasta and french bread. Its hard when tired, stressed, etc not to want my favorite foods.

I am 53, post menopausal and have an extra 30 pounds and its mostly on my waist.

I have read so many books on emotional eating but nothing seems to work, you can try all the tricks they say like baths, walking, exercise at the gym but nothing seems to make you stop that craving!

[jimmyjimmy07]

try whole grain pasta, there are many different brands now, keep trying until you find one you like. ANd switch the french bread for a whole grain bread. They really taste great now. Used to be whole grain bread meant it tasted like cardboard, but not any more.

Those two things right there will make a huge difference. And they are very easy to do, and really very tastee . So if you don't do them, you are probably a lost cause.

Good luck.

[NevaforLeadership]

Don't eat pasta, ever. Period. Pasta is nothing but sugar -- "wholegrain" or white. Pasta is so processed that it has no food value except sugar. Breakfast cereals are close behind. Don't eat processed breakfast cereals ever.

If you are trying to lose weight, cut out all bread until you have lost your desired weight, then, to sustain it, only eat whole grain/multiple grain bread once in a very little while.

[NevaforLeadership]

It is so difficult for menopausal women to lose weight, especially round their waists.

Don't forget that carbs break down into plain sugar in your body.

Foods to avoid when trying to lose weight: sugar, sugared drinks, candies, pasta, potatoes, potato crisps, rice, bread, bagels, muffins and all baked goods, most packaged foods. That leaves lean proteins (meat, fish, seafood, eggs, skim milk, cheese) seeds and grains in moderation, vegetables and fruit (leaving out fruit with high sugar content until you reach your desired weight).

As Dr. Hyman mentioned, hormones play havoc with our bodies. In my view, for menopausal women, that means hormone replacement. Oprah did a show on bio-identical hormone replacement. She repeated it by popular demand. Check it out.

Sounds as if you are trying to lose weight by sheer will power. Too difficult. You have to change your lifestyle. Could there be something wrong in your life? Pin point it and change it. Your job mabe?

Changing your lifestyle includes taking up an activity as a hobby (walking, dancing, tennis, aerobics, jogging, etc.) and mixing with like-minded people who enjoy the same healthy activities.

Sugar and carbs contribute hugely to food cravings. As you get used to not eating them, the cravings go away. Food cravings are in the mind. Our minds concentrate on one thing at a time. I find the best way to beat the cravings is to change focus, preferably doing something active.

[jennyjen]

My favorite tip is this - stay out of the center of the grocery store. That is where all the processed foods are. Try it.

[gemzenith]

Our government subsidizes farmers to grow corn.And meat. Not so much for fresh fruits and vegetables.Its all about money and who gets it.

[cosmicmom]

That should be one half gallon of milk and one half cup active culture yogurt.

[helenwheels]

I still had aII the symptoms and hardIy ever eat sugar. I mean I couId go days w/out ever eating something w/sugar in it (I aIso use Stevia).

So, I cut out white flour for the most part. I"m a vegetarian but I don't eat much soy. I bought Vega protein, pIant-based powder & put it in fruit smoothies. I cut out MOST cheese as well, but love my parmesan.

The biggest thing I did that is continuing to get me back on baIanace was go to a good acupuncturist. She put me on herbs and I get acupuncture once a week.

OH and cut out coffee!! I'm on my last week of weaning off slowly.

[jimmyjimmy07]

why is coffee bad for you, here is s study that says is protects you from Alzheimer's disease. Now, I can hardly think of a benefit that could be greater . Is the benefit you get from not drinking coffee equal to not getting Alzheimer's?

http://www.thelocal.se/16944/20090115/

[NevaforLeadership]

Coffee is one thing I will not cut out.

[ZellaBee]

Stevia! Liquid and powder for me.
I will not touch other artificial sweeteners.

[helenwheels]

AS weII you shouIdn't, they are definiteIy aII nasty for you (esp. nutraSweet).