It’s All About Balance …
How important is a healthy hormone balance? Can the hormones that keep us healthy and happy be the same hormones that cause emotional and physical distress? Our hormones are the most delicately balanced system of our bodies. Women with a healthy hormone balance tend to enjoy long, healthy and productive lives. Long-term hormone imbalance, however, can make life pretty miserable for women and their loved ones. Hormone imbalance can contribute to such common problems as premenstrual syndrome (PMS), perimenopausal difficulties, infertility, miscarriage, osteoporosis, breast cancer, heart disease, fibroids, endometriosis, menstrual difficulties, mood disorders and ovarian cysts.
Hormone treatments of all kinds are growing steadily more popular. Women are taking proactive approaches to finding a healthy hormone balance. Many women feel that if they can keep things in balance they can prevent adverse health conditions from insidiously developing over the years, producing problems with more dangerous consequences. Women are now less likely to accept their lot in life, especially an unhealthy state of being.
Hormone fluctuations can take a strong body and render it weak, unpredictable and unreliable. However, hormonal problems should not be seen as an inevitable part of being a woman or something that we should just accept. Hormonal problems that occur at different stages of life do not have to be accepted as “normal.” It definitely seems, however, that women are experiencing more hormonal difficulties than ever before. Whether it is PMS in their 20s and 30s, menopausal problems in their 50s, or osteoporosis in their 70s and 80s,women don’t have to accept these health problems as a normal part of the aging process.
Women, by nature, are made to be strong and resilient. These attributes are necessary components to enable them to bear and raise children. Women’s bodies have been created to be healthy and in harmony and balance. Strength, energy, productivity and glowing health should be enjoyed through- out all the stages of a woman’s life, from girlhood through motherhood to old age. Good health is possible to obtain if we are making the right choices.
If our bodies’ needs are not completely met from the food we eat, the amount of exercise we receive, and from reducing the stress in our lives, we may experience health difficulties. Diet, nutrition, exercise, and stress reduction are some of the basic changes women need to make in their lives in order to restore hormone balance. Some women may need hormone supplementation to help bring their bodies back into balance. Obtaining a basic under- standing of our hormones will begin the process of restoring our body’s natural synchronization. Hormones have too much impact on our lives to ignore. Every aspect of our life- style can affect hormone balance and, just as importantly, hormone balance can profoundly influence every aspect of our lives.
Written by Lauri Lee – Copyright © August 2010, Women’s International Pharmacy.