How Stress Plays a Role in Hormone Balance

Let’s begin by looking at an example of what can go wrong:

Hormone balance starts in your brain. Your hypothalamus + pituitary constantly read the environment around you. If they are picking up stress from your cells (sensing too much adrenaline + cortisol) or ruminating thoughts + negative perceptions, this impacts your ability to ovulate because your body perceives it is not safe enough to conceive. Many women miss this message, because you can still bleed each month without ovulation.

This shows us that a constant release of stress hormones impacts sex hormones.

1. Ideally, in the second half of the cycle, a woman is supposed to make progesterone from the corpus luteum after she ovulates and then the progesterone falls away if she does not conceive that month. When a woman does not ovulate in her menstrual years, she struggles with low progesterone. When this goes undetected throughout her life on earth and she gets to her peri + menopausal years, she suffers with symptoms because everything is heightened due to stress on her adrenals. This is because progesterone production also happens in the adrenal glands and her body has compensated over the years by relying on the adrenal glands to attempt to balance her hormones.

This is a problem when a woman is already adrenally depleted due to chronic stress, lack of minerals, and lack of nutrient dense food. HPA dysfunction occurs, which impacts her entire God designed body, often resulting in PCOS, Thyroid dysfunction, autoimmune disease, leaky gut, + more.

This is often not taken seriously because every generation has had stress and we have been taught it is normal. We even laugh it off.

But here is the thing, never before has it been so constant and endless because now it is primarily psychological. So for a lot of people, it never ends as they view life through the lens of survival on a daily basis. Add a smart phone in with a constant stream of world ending news, and it is not hard to see why so many people are chronically stressed + depleted.Add a nutrient depleted body from toxic food, leaky gut, + imbalanced hormones into the mix and you get chronic disease.

Let’s take a closer look:

When the hypothalmus is reading the world around you and receives the message of unsafety as it picks up on excess adrenaline in your blood + lack of nutrients, it tells the body not to ovulate. Why would it want your body to ovulate if it perceives it is not safe to bring a baby into the world?

Over time this can lead to chronic lack or irregular ovulation which leads to cyclical symptoms of low progesterone such as :

These symptoms include:

Premenstrual migraine

PMS symptoms

Irregular or excessively heavy periods

Prolonged bleeding

Sugar cravings before her period

Excess fluid retention

Spotting

Hair loss

Anxiety + restlessness

Air hunger

Acne

Anger + mood swings

When this is not caught, because the hormones in your body are interconnected, low progesterone influences estrogen. This can lead to estrogen dominance and symptoms like this over time:

Irregular periods

Bloating

Breast swelling + tenderness

PCOS

Cold hands + feet

Headaches before your period

Mood swings: depression + irritability

Hair loss

Anxiety + restlessness

Endometriosis

Fibrocystic breasts

Hormone mediated cancers

You Cannot Out Supplement or Medicate Stress:

If stress is not addressed (both emotionally + cellularly), it eventually results in imbalanced blood sugars, liver and gall bladder congestion (due to high levels of estrogen + low minerals) + if your body stays in this cycle it eventually resulting in disease over time.

This is just one example of many. And this is why hormone balance + reversal of chronic symptoms does not always start with simply replacing hormones or taking supplements + meds. It must involve viewing the body as a whole God designed entity which includes honoring the mind body connection, changing thought patterns, behaviors, + nourishing our bodies.

Everything in the body is interconnected + the body compensates when something is off. Replacing a hormone or taking a pill to turn off the compensation measures the body is making due to the messages it is receiving from it's environment, does not rebalance the system. And it very often result in worsening symptoms overtime.

Want to learn more about viewing the body through a holistic lens? Join my membership here!