What Does a Naturopath Do for Hormones?

If you're struggling with symptoms like PMS, irregular periods, or even perimenopausal and menopausal discomfort, you might be wondering how a naturopath can help. In this post, we'll explore what a naturopath does for hormones and how natural treatments can support your hormonal health.

What is hormonal balance?

Hormones are chemical messengers that relay vital information to our organs and cells. They influence various bodily functions, providing us with energy, regulating mood, supporting sleep, controlling hunger, regulating menstrual cycles, ensuring ovulation, and contributing to conception and pregnancy.

When hormonal balance is optimal, meaning we have ideal levels and ratios of individual hormones, they can then work together in harmony, creating the ideal blueprint for our health to be at its best, with minimal negative symptoms. However, hormone levels can sometimes become too high, too low, or fall out of balance with one another. Hormonal fluctuations are common and can happen at any age. When this balance is disrupted, uncomfortable symptoms often follow.

The human body produces numerous hormones, which affect almost every organ in the human body, but for this discussion, the focus will be on the main reproductive hormones in women: estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone.

What are the signs and symptoms of hormonal imbalance?

The most common signs and symptoms of hormonal imbalances in relation to the menstrual cycle can include:

• Excessive bleeding

• Easy weight gain

• Depression

• Nervous irritability

• Premenstrual headaches

• Breast tenderness/swelling

• Bloating

• Food cravings

• PMS

• Irregular cycles

• Sleep disturbances/Insomnia

• Hot flushes

• Night sweats

• Low libido

• Fatigue

• Heavy bleeding

• Hair loss

• Oily skin

• Acne

• Delayed ovulation

• Period pain

As you can see from the list above, hormonal imbalances affect multiple areas, from mood and energy levels to skin health and weight management.

That's why it's essential to ensure not only optimal hormone production but also proper balance, or appropriate ratios for optimal health, well-being and happiness.

What Causes Hormonal Imbalance?

Several factors can disrupt the delicate balance of hormones, including:

• Stress

• Liver dysfunction

• Inflammation

• Dysregulated blood glucose levels

• Excess weight

• Thyroid dysfunction

• Nutrient deficiencies

• Diet and lifestyle factors (such as exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals)

How Naturopathy Supports Hormonal Health

Naturopathic medicine focuses on treating the root cause of hormonal imbalances, rather than simply suppressing symptoms.

While symptom relief may be part of initial treatment to improve quality of life, the long-term goal is to uncover and address the underlying causes of the imbalance.

Naturopathic treatments are gentle, non-invasive and work with the body’s natural ability to heal. This approach gently guides the body back to homeostasis, restoring balance, while utilising the body's innate ability to heal itself.

Treatments are individualised and multifaceted and typically include specific herbal and nutritional medicine that supports the body's healing processes as well as other holistic aspects such as dietary and lifestyle interventions.

Natural Solutions

Nutritional Medicine

Nutritional medicine plays a key role in hormone health, as we require optimal levels of specific nutrients to support reproductive function and sex hormone production. Some key hormone-balancing nutrients include:

• Magnesium

• Zinc

• Vitamin B6, B12

• Omega-3 fatty acids

• Probiotics

• Prebiotics

• Vitamin D

• Myo-inositol

Herbal Medicine

The use of botanical medicine has a long history of supporting women's reproductive health. Its use for conditions such as endometriosis, dysmenorrhoea, amenorrhoea, and menorrhagia is well documented within the texts of the Eclectics (Hechtman et al.,2019).

Some key herbal medicines indicated for female reproductive conditions include:

🌿 Chaste tree (Vitex angus-castus)

🌱 Peony (Paeonia lactiflora)

🌿 Dong Quai(Angelica sinensis)

🌱 Shatavari(Asparagus racemosus)

🌿 Black Cohosh (Actea racemosa)

Herbal medicine is “next-level” individualised, allowing for completely customised formulas tailored to the patient's specific needs. This means we can go deeper with tailoring a formula to suit the patient in other areas that are impacting their hormonal health.

For example, herbs supporting the nervous system can be included if stress is a contributing factor. If digestive issues are present, digestive-supporting herbs can be added. So the tonic can be an absolute game changer for patients as it can address so many health concerns all from within one tonic.

Dietary interventions

Diet is one of the most powerful tools for hormone regulation. Adopting a hormone-friendly diet that includes nutrient-dense foods like healthy fats, fibre, and lean proteins is essential for treatment. Additional therapeutic dietary interventions can also further assist with specific treatment depending on root causes identified, such as flaxseeds, leafy greens, and omega-3-rich sources.

Lifestyle Support

Stress can be a significant contributor to hormonal imbalances, so managing stress is critical for healthy reproductive function. When we're stressed, our sympathetic nervous system activates the fight-or-flight response (which is normal as it is designed to keep you ‘safe'), which can suppress ovarian function leading to reduced reproductive capacity (Hechtman et al.,2019).

Incorporating stress-reducing techniques such as mindfulness, yoga, breathwork, daily belly laughs, getting enough sunshine, and regular outdoor walks can be very grounding and assist with restoring your nervous system back into the parasympathetic state.

How Long Does It Take to Balance Hormones Naturally?

It's a good question, and the answer depends on the type of hormonal imbalance that you're trying to resolve. Natural healing takes time especially when it comes to re-establishing a healthy cycle. While some patients notice improvements within a few weeks, others may require several months of consistent changes.

Given it takes about 100 days for ovarian follicles to complete their journey and mature to ovulation, if follicles were impacted by stress or some other factor during any part of the maturation process, the result could be an abnormal cycle or period of up to three months later.

Generally speaking, treatments that are directed at rebalancing hormones can often be expected to take up to three months, depending on the severity of your condition, how it is being managed, and the impact of dietary and lifestyle factors.

In summary

Balancing your hormones naturally is possible with the right support. The key benefit of Naturopathic medicine is that it addresses the root causes of hormonal imbalances via a holistic, individualised approach.

While generic approaches usually only gets patients so-far, as a one-size-fits-all approach simply does not allow for individual nuances, such as nutrient deficiencies, test results, genetic influences, microbiome status, liver function that influence hormonal health.

Ready to take control of your hormonal health?

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• 1:1 Naturopathic consultations are available which supports uncovering the underlying cause of your hormonal concerns and your healing process.

• Find out more information here on how Naturopathic consultations work.

References:

Hechtman, L., (Ed.). (2019). Clinical naturopathic medicine (2nd ed.). Elsevier.