Ep. 2: Happy hormones naturally, for general health, easier periods and optimising fertility (Part 1 of 2)

This episode was inspired by the patients who come to see me with symptoms such as painful, heavy or irregular cycles, with growth such as cysts, fibroids and endometriosis - and also those who come to see me with imbalanced hormones (whether estrogen, testosterone, thyroid or stress hormones, and so on). Because Chinese Medicine is a functional medicine, each treatment is highly personalized and can differ greatly from person to person. But what often doesn't differ are the lifestyle and dietary tweaks that I recommend as supportive therapies. Join us as we discuss some common factors underlying imbalanced hormones, and simple health hacks we can use to restore balance. Be sure to also catch the following episode (3) for more on this topic. Show notes Transcript Today's episode was inspired by the various patients who come to see me with symptoms such as painful periods, heavy bleeding, irregular cycles, with growth such as cysts, fibroids and endometriosis - and also those patients who come to see me with imbalanced hormones (whether estrogen, or low testosterone and so on). Because Chinese Medicine is a functional medicine - and it views symptoms as the body's cry for help - it sees symptoms as the body's message about what is out of balance. Because it does so, it seeks out the root cause of the imbalance so that this can be corrected, rather than just masking the “cry for help” (or dialling down its volume). This means that the acupuncture and the Chinese herbal medicine that I give (for my patients with the symptoms I just mentioned) is highly personalized - it differs greatly from person to person. But what doesn't differ, is that the lifestyle and dietary tweaks that I recommend as supportive or adjunct therapies are very often common to all of the patients who come to see me for help with these symptoms. This is because in situations of changes to the menstrual cycle - or overgrowth of tissue (as in cysts or fibroids, or the growth of tissue outside it's physiologically-designated area, as in endometriosis), or various hormone imbalances - very often in these situations, there is an underlying foundation of inflammation, and / or of excess estrogen. Therefore, any lifestyle adjustments are going to aim to reduce inflammation, and / or rebalance the hormones as required. So before we go into these natural health hacks for happy, healthy hormones, let's briefly talk about sex hormones. All humans produce in varying amounts, estrogen, progesterone and testosterone. There are various subtypes of each of these hormones, but for the purposes of this discussion, we'll just stick to the three main, overarching types. These hormones - estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone - affect not only our sexual and reproductive health, and the development of secondary sexual characteristics (such as the growth of breasts, or the deepening of the voice), but they also have wide-ranging effects on the body, beyond the reproductive system. This is because we know now in modern medicine - and Chinese Medicine has been talking about this for millennia - that all of the body's systems are integrated, and they're in a constant interplay of communication with each other. Therefore the balance and health of our sexual hormones is going to have knock-on effects throughout the body. The hormones mostly involved in the menstrual cycle are estrogen and progesterone. Estrogen governs the first half of the cycle, and it prompts ovulation, the release of mucus, the growth of breasts and uterine lining, whereas progesterone is released midway throughout the cycle, at ovulation, and it helps to regulate the cycle. It's important to prepare the uterus in pregnancy, but it is also important for the production of testosterone in people assigned male at birth. So it's important for everyone, and I love the shorthand that Chinese Medicine terminology offers us when we talk about sex hormones - it's really beautiful, because it enables us to talk about the many complex biological pathways, and all the different interactions that are going on in the body, in a simple way that's accessible to all of us. All of us, regardless of our gender, are a mix of Yin and Yang. Yin and Yang are complimentary opposites, and they're in dynamic balance with each other; from a biomedical or Western medicine perspective, we'd see this as the state of homeostasis, or the body's ability to return to balance in a dynamic way, in response to all the ups and downs and events of life. Yin and Yang are complimentary opposites, and each contain at least a seed of the other. There is no 100% Yin or 100% Yang in nature, as the very interplay of the two is what creates life. We can see a visual representation of this idea in the Yin and Yang symbol: we see that one half of the circle is Yin and one half is Yang, but each contains the seed of the other, and each is constantly changing into the other as well. We see that flow, or that cycle of life happening, visually represented. When we look at the root of the Chinese words for Yin and Yang, and when we look at the Chinese characters for them, we see that Yin describes a shady / shadowy part of the mountain (or the Northern side of the mountain, because it's stemming from the Northern hemisphere); whereas the Yang character describes the sunny side of the mountain (or the Southern side of the mountain). In general, we see more activity in nature during the day, while night time is a time of rest and renewal. In biology, this translates as Yin describing the more material, dense and dark aspects of our biology - the more solid aspects like body tissues, body fluids, bones, flesh, and so on, while Yang is the dynamic, functional and active aspect. When we think about things in this way, low Yang might manifest as low function in a particular area - it might be hypothyroidism, or depression or fatigue. Excess Yang might present as a hyperfunction in a particular area or body system, such as in hyperthyroid, or manic behaviour, or an inability to wind down. Excess Yin is an excess of substance: in Chinese Medicine, we see a relative Yin excess in cases where there might be fluid accumulation, swelling or an overgrowth of tissue - as in excess flesh or lumps like fibroids, cystic breasts and tumours. Yin is associated with the traditionally feminine qualities, and Yang is associated with the masculine qualities, and when it comes to sex hormones, we view estrogen as more Yin in relation to the Yang of progesterone. This is because estrogen encourages growth and the proliferation of substance: it encourages more material density, and we see estrogen as being essential to fertile mucus and breast growth, it leads to ovulation - and excess estrogen can manifest as weight gain around the abdomen and hips. Meanwhile, progesterone is more concerned with boosting function - that's more of a Yang aspect. We can see a very clear visual representation of this Yin and Yang relationship between estrogen region and progesterone, when we look at a BBT, or basal body temperature, chart. For anyone who's ever tracked their temperature throughout the duration of their cycle, generally we'll see that there is a fluctuation in the basal body temperature from day to day and throughout that time. The first half of the cycle is governed by estrogen, and generally has a lower body temperature, because Yin talks about the shady side of the mountain (and it's dense and dark), Yin is associated with cold, whereas the second half of the cycle, which is governed by Yang - which is warm and dynamic and sunny - generally has an elevated temperature. We have a boost of progesterone throughout this second part of the cycle, and this is why optimizing progesterone levels is so important in fertility work, as the presence of Yang is what allows for the spark of new life. It's also important for us in balancing menstrual and hormonal health, because progesterone keeps estrogen in check - so Yin and Yang are constantly balancing each other. And as we touched on at the beginning of this podcast, elevated estrogen is often underpinning many of the symptoms that we're talking about today. So why are estrogen levels so commonly elevated? in fact, they're so commonly elevated that some people have talked about an estrogen epidemic that affects all of us. Now there are many factors that contribute to elevated or excess estrogen levels, so we'll run through each of these in a little bit of detail. The first one is quite an obvious one, and that is hormonal contraceptives, because very often they flood the body with much-higher-than-what-is-physiologically-normal levels of these hormones, which then leads to a disruption of the healthy balance of hormone levels. Another factor that is so important to hormone health is gut health, and the balance of gut bacteria (the microbiome). In recent years, modern science has aligned with what Chinese Medicine has been talking about for millennia: gut health being the foundation of all of our health. We're now learning just how important gut health is in the treatment or regulation of many common conditions, and it's just as important in the balancing of healthy hormones. We know a lot about the microbiome - that's the whole population of bacteria and microbes that live in and on our bodies, and they outnumber our cells roughly 10 to one! So there's definitely more of them than us, and they can be helpful to us when we live synergistically with each other, and when they're in balance. In addition to the microbiome, there's also the estrobolome, which is the body of microbes or bacteria that help in the metabolism, or processing, of estrogen. When the gut bacteria is healthy - and our estrobolome is in order - then we can process excess estrogen and excrete it in order to maintain healthy hormone balance. Therefore, anything we can do that will support gut health will also support hormone health. ...