Ladies! End Your Monthly Misery – Change your hormones with your diet!

The latest research offers a possible alternative approach to many problems suffered by most women during their lifetime associated with their hormone production. Rather than taking prescribed additional hormones or other drugs, simply changing your diet may be the answer.

Why should a change of diet have any significant impact on these problems that include; premenstrual tension, severe period pains, fibroids, endometriosis, menopausal problems and fertility? 

We have all heard the old saying, “We are what we eat”, but how many of us have really taken this idea onboard?

Well, it is now recognized that a change of diet can rapidly change the hormones our bodies produce with often remarkable effects; menstrual cramps gone in a month after a change of diet, fertility restored after a few months, diabetes improving within weeks, improvement of thyroid function, along with normalization of weight and general improvement of health.

Why haven't you been told about this before?

Well, you may be surprised to learn that nutrition does not represent a significant part of every doctor's medical training and it is only in the last few years that research has been directed at this simple approach to health improvement. 

Why so? Well, the vast majority of medical research is funded by drug companies who are more motivated to discover new remedial drugs, rather than how to improve people's lifestyle to avoid diseases. Another reason may be that doctors often find patients unwilling to make any serious changes in their diets or lifestyle and expect “a pill for every ill”

There is a good physiological reason for the dietary effects that can be very briefly explained here:

The ovaries and adrenal glands use fat cells to produce many different hormones. With the right level of fat cells, hormone production is normal, but with any many major deviation of fats cell availability whether too low or too high, hormone production is seriously disturbed.

In addition, body fat is associated with the production of a special protein that can control the action of sex hormones. Too high body fat can reduce this protein, and this combined with increased hormone production creates the above problems. Too little body fat may also have serious impact on health. Just like Goldilocks tale, “just right” is what is needed!

What then is just right? 

A simple measure is the BMI measure, the Body Mass Index that compares a person's height with their weight. Roughly speaking a BMI over 30 or under 20 could be significant but this varies with age so check this out. 

Additional dietary problems are associated with inadequate fibre in our diet, especially with a high meat and dairy diet that provides almost no fibre. There is an added problem associated with dairy foods that have a high fat content, zero fibre and additional hormones normal in all milk.

So what might help with all these problems?

Very simply, a Whole Plant Diet of a great variety of fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts and seeds, with little or no meat, fish or dairy products. This is a diet that used to be the staple of many countries such as Japan and China where most of our modern diseases were rarely seen, until their diets began to become Westernized.

For a brilliant and detailed explanation of this topic, I highly recommend the newly published book by Dr. Neal Barnard “Your Body in Balance – the new science of food, hormones and health.”

It is available on Amazon HERE