If you’re like most people, when you think of hormones, you normally think of sex hormones like testosterone or estrogen. There are so many different hormones that affect the body and have an effect on your health. Hormones are just messengers that deliver instructions to the body’s cells. For instance, the hormone ghrelin tells your body it’s hungry, while the hormone leptin brings the message that it’s full. Hormones keep your body working properly when they’re functioning normally. They affect all processes, including heart rate and body temperature.
Hormones that come from stress play a role in your health.
You always hear about how stress affects your body negatively, but you do need stress hormones like cortisol or you’d die. Cortisol is necessary for many bodily functions, which is why almost all cells have cortisol receptors. It helps with your metabolism, reduces inflammation, aids in brain functioning, like memory, and even helps control blood sugar levels. While it’s a necessity for good healthy, having too much is bad, too. It’s the hormone that prepares the body for the fight or flight response. If you don’t do either, it remains unchecked and keeps the body in readiness with a rapid heart rate and less blood flow to the digestive tract. That has a negative affect, plus can cause accumulation of abdominal fat.
Insulin is a hormone you require to survive.
Insulin does so many things in the body and without it you’d have type 1 diabetes. However, you can have so much insulin that you develop insulin resistance that can turn into type 2 diabetes where your cells don’t use the insulin properly. In both cases, the cells don’t get the insulin they need to create energy. It can cause nerve damage, stomach problems, high levels of toxic ketones, high sugar levels in the blood, low energy levels, damage to all cells in the body and eye problems. This hormone affects every cell in the body, since it affects the cells fuel supply.
Sleep is important to good health and a hormone affects how much you get.
Can’t sleep? Maybe it’s because you don’t have enough serotonin. Hormones are created in several locations that are all part of the endocrine system. The master gland is the pituitary gland, but in the case of serotonin, it’s created in the pineal gland, which is also called the thalamus. Lack of sleep has been shown to create heart issues, brain fog and low energy levels. Low serotonin levels also cause depression, mood swings, irritability, poor memory, low self-esteem and a low sex-drive. Eating simple carbs can boost insulin levels, which in turn allow an increase of tryptophan to the brain where it converts to serotonin.
- An imbalance of sex hormones can cause health issues, such as fibroid tumors, weight gain, gall bladder disease, heavy periods and a low sex drive.
- HGH—human growth hormone—plays a role in heart functioning, body fluids, bone growth, fat metabolism, body composition and sugar metabolism. It’s called the fountain of youth and strength-building exercises can boost it.
- If you want to help regulate hormones start a program of regular exercise. It helps burn off hormones of stress and regulates excess estrogen.
- Sugar plays havoc with insulin levels, even natural sugars. Switching your diet to whole foods that are lower in sugar has helped prevent and treat Type 2 diabetes and reduce insulin resistance.