Hormones exist in a delicate balance in the body – a balance that can be disrupted by many different factors. The good news is that your body can heal itself when it’s given the right conditions. But in today’s world, you need to learn some essential lifestyle changes to prevent hormonal imbalances and support optimal health.
Over the years, we have watched many clients struggle with hormonal imbalances. I myself have struggled with hormonal imbalances due to the use of birth control pills, stress, and years of hypothyroidism. But years of struggle have also given me a lot of resources to help bring the body back into balance.
Any holistic healer will tell you, the root cause of imbalances is often found in your lifestyle – and hormonal imbalances are no exception. The holistic remedies in this comprehensive guide to balancing your hormones naturally are easy to incorporate into your routine and can make a huge difference to your quality of life.
All that’s required is a commitment to better overall health and a willingness to evaluate your current habits so you can release the ones that are causing you harm.
Keep reading for a closer look at how to support healthy hormones with lifestyle changes and bodywork treatments at Infinity Flexibility.
Infinity’s Lifestyle Changes for Hormonal Imbalances
If you want to balance your hormones naturally, you need to take a closer look at your lifestyle and, in particular, the quality of your food, clothing, cleaning supplies, and self-care products. You may also want to consider how you can support healthy detoxification to prevent toxins in your environment from disrupting your overall health.
Here are a few changes that we’ve made in our efforts to balance hormones. We offer these options for any clients experiencing symptoms of hormonal imbalance.
1. Upgrade Your Diet
Our modern food systems are full of harmful toxins, chemicals, and synthetic hormones that can throw our bodies out of balance. Chemicals like roundup are sprayed onto vegetables and grains to prevent weeds or kill insects. Growth hormones are injected directly into chickens, cows, and pigs to make them grow.
The best way to upgrade your food quality is to shift to organic foods. Choose whole foods over processed foods – for example, buy fresh fruits and vegetables over jams and salsas.
The easiest way to do this is to shop mostly on the outside edges of the grocery store (fruits, vegetables, meats, and dairy) and limit the amount you buy from the aisles (processed foods with additives for long-term storage). When it comes to meat, look for organic, free-range, and hormone-free options. Also, buy farm fresh and local where possible.
2. Choose Linen or Wool for Clothing
The clothing you wear can affect your health, depending on how the fabric is processed. Cotton is one of the most highly sprayed crops so when buying 100% cotton it needs to be washed and hung dry before wearing it. Fibers, Polyester, Acrylic, and Nylon may also contain chemicals from processing and are best either avoided or minimized in a blended fabric.
Wool and linen are natural fibers that have a higher vibration than processed fabrics like cotton and polyester. Your best option is to choose clothing that contains a majority of linen and wool with a small percentage of synthetic material for stretch.
3. Switch to Natural Cleaning Supplies
Your cleaning products can contain harmful chemicals. Every time you clean your toilet or wipe the counter, you are exposing your body to these chemicals. Opt for natural and eco-friendly products when possible – you may even be surprised at their effectiveness!
You can easily make a natural cleaning solution with Force of Nature – a product safe enough to clean a baby’s high chair. This product is a federal EPA-registered medical-grade disinfectant and sanitizer.
4. Drink from Glass
Plastics like nonylphenol and bisphenol have a phenol that attaches to and allows estrogen into the cell, which can result in excess estrogen in the body. When you drink out of plastic water bottles, even the heavy-duty reusable ones, you expose your body to excessive amounts of phenols which can disrupt your hormones.
Instead of plastic, opt for glass water bottles and storage containers when possible. We like this water bottle from Nordic Nest.
5. Research Natural Self-Care and Beauty Products
If you make the shift to organic food but still use processed self-care and beauty products filled with synthetic scents and chemicals, you are only fighting half the battle. The products that you put directly on your skin should also be natural and organic.
For hormonal imbalances, we often recommend natural self-care treatments like castor oil packs, Epsom salt baths, and food-based lotions and supplements. (More on these below)
To Summarize:
Here are 6 things you can do RIGHT NOW to support healthy hormones:
- Start the switch to organic food
- Start buying a collection of glass food storage containers and glass water bottles to slowly switch out any plastic containers.
- Cultivate an interest in food prepping. Preparing your food in advance is not only healthier and better testing, it also costs much less so you will be saving money while supporting healthy hormones!
- Slowly replace harsh chemical cleaning products with more natural alternatives.
- Buy linen and wool clothing when possible. Garnet Hill is a great resource for linen bed sheets and clothing. They often run sales for more cost savings but this company is a quality-run outfit often with shipments arriving well before they are scheduled. Ibex Wool Clothing was started in Vermont and has evolved through different ownership over the past 10 years or so. The products are high quality, you will find 100% wool products as well as high wool content with some stretch added. Really worth investing in a piece or two each season. We totally look forward to breaking out this wool clothing when it gets cold and have a really hard time putting it away when spring comes!
- Scented candles are also a source of potential chemical toxicity. Opt for pure BeesWax Candles instead because they purify the air while giving you the ambiance you love!
Infinity’s Treatments for Hormonal Imbalances
In addition to the changes you make to your home life, Infinity offers several powerful treatments that can help balance your hormones – including massage, flexibility and strength training, and lymphatic drainage.
Keep reading to see how these treatments can support your body’s ability to heal itself and balance your hormones naturally.
Massage
Stress is a key cause of hormonal imbalance which is why relaxation massage is such a powerful treatment to help your body heal. Cortisol is your main stress hormone that triggers your body’s fight or flight response. In a balanced body, cortisol spikes temporarily and then is slowly removed from the body when the threat is over.
The stress that many people face nowadays is no longer the fear of being mauled by a tiger, or falling off a cliff – we face stressful situations every single day in our interactions at school, in relationships with family and friends, at work, and whenever we think about the state of the world. Sometimes, the fight or flight response gets turned on and won’t turn off because it feels like the danger is always present.
Massage can help your body remove cortisol by stimulating the lymph and circulatory systems. Overall, a massage will reduce stress and reduce the symptoms of hormonal imbalance.
Relaxation massage is especially supportive when life gets “too big to handle.” For example, when you have a death in the family, change to a new job, move to a new location – basically, anything where it takes you time to adjust.
Relaxing the body through massage returns your body to homeostasis, activating the rest-and-digest part of our nervous system. Massage can help the body remember all the automatic processes while you adjust to the change.
Flexibility and Strength Training
One of the reasons why Infinity loves the meridians is because they transcend the physical symptoms and look at how your emotional, mental, and spiritual wellness connects to the body.
Many meridians play a role in hormonal health, but the brain and sexual meridians govern the balance. In our sessions, we intuitively work through resistance training exercises to find the muscles and areas of your body that are turned off or overworked.
Those exercises help to reconnect those turned-off muscles with your brain and bring awareness back to neglected or underused muscles. They can also help over-excited muscles learn how to calm down and share the work with muscles more well-suited to the work at hand.
Clients with hormonal imbalances often require meridian exercises that target the brain and sexual meridians, meridians that run through the hamstrings and hip flexors. Read more about these meridians here and here.
Lymphatic Drainage
Our lymphatic drainage treatment is a treatment that supports your body’s self-regulatory mechanisms. The mechanical massage with Phyto5’s biorhythmic drainer slowly pulls lymph fluid from your extremities to the lymph nodes. Your lymph fluid contains hormones, and a healthy lymph system is essential for free-flowing hormones in the body.
If your lymphatic system is full of toxins, none of your body’s systems are going to function optimally, including your hormones. Lymphatic drainage is a powerful treatment to support your body’s natural detoxification process. Infinity recommends monthly lymphatic drainage treatments for women who want to actively cleanse their bodies of toxins and rebalance their hormones.
Other Holistic Healing Strategies
Over the years, Infinity has compiled a list of holistic healing techniques that can help you balance your hormones naturally. Those include acupuncture, detox protocols, yam cream, and castor oil packs.
Acupuncture: Acupuncture is an ancient practice that can help stimulate specific points in the body, aiding hormonal balance. For women, a four-week treatment during an entire menstrual cycle may help bring the hormones back into balance. If you’re local, we recommend Kim Griffin at Da’Arcy Wellness.
Yam Cream: Wild yams contain diosgenin, the precursor to progesterone. In some studies, yam cream has been found to support a natural balance of hormones in the body.
Detox: Regular detoxes (we recommend them seasonally four times a year) can support your body’s natural detoxification systems. A high toxin load affects your body’s ability to distribute and remove hormones from the blood and lymph systems. You can try a diet-based detox, or one with natural supplements like the Prime or Pompa Program. And if you find out your hormonal imbalances are due to a parasite, we have a protocol that we love to recommend.
Colonics: Infinity is also a huge proponent of colonics for detox, and if you live in Massachusetts, we recommend Pure Health and Wellness.
Castor Oil Packs: Castor oil packs placed over the liver help the body to detox and lessen the toxic load in the body. They can also help with inflammation. Many experts believe that inflammation is one of the primary causes of hormonal imbalances because it affects hormone production and regulation.
Your Holistic Wellness Journey
Whether you come to our office with an injury, a hormonal imbalance, or something else entirely – Infinity wants to be your healthcare advocate. We want to give you all the tools you need to rebalance your hormones naturally, with treatments like massage and lymphatic drainage, lifestyle changes, and support on your holistic wellness journey.
But first things first, you need to commit to healing your hormone imbalance. You can’t heal the body if you’re attached to your illness.
Check in with your doctor if you think you may have a hormonal imbalance as they can be a supportive advocate and source of knowledge in a natural healing path.
Work with Infinity
Infinity Flexibility offers holistic bodywork treatments in Natick, MA. We are currently accepting NEW clients! For those of you in Massachusetts, contact us if you have any questions about treatments for your hormonal imbalances, or you can schedule a treatment online.
