Hormones are chemical messengers in the body that affect your mental, physical, and emotional health. They play a major role in controlling your appetite, weight, and mood. The body needs to produce the precise amount of each hormone for various processes to keep you healthy.
However, sedentary lifestyles and Western dietary patterns will affect your hormones negatively. Moreover, levels of certain hormones decline with age, and some people experience a more dramatic decrease than others. Above all of these, we need to make sure that our dietary and lifestyle habits are aligned with our goals of keeping hormones on track. Thus, below are a few habits that you need to get rid of to prevent hormonal imbalance.
Excess Caffeine Intake- Food and diet play an important role in keeping the hormones on track. It is essential to be careful of what you eat or drink. Drinking caffeine on a regular basis can mess up your hormones. Too much caffeine increases the number of stress hormones the adrenal glands produce which leads to sleep loss, appetite changes, digestive issues, and a drop in energy levels, One should avoid drinking more than 2 servings of caffeine and people suffering from caffeine sensitivity must avoid it completely.
Excess alcohol consumption can also contribute to hormonal imbalance. Drinking causes estrogen dominance and can increase the risk of serious problems like abnormal pancreatic function, insulin resistance, liver disease, anxiety, and malnutrition. Drinking can also lead to a reduction in testosterone and interfere with the sex drive of a person. US NIH recommends one drink per day for women and two per day for men. But generally, the less alcohol you consume, the better your hormonal balance will be.
Taking too much stress due to professional or personal reasons can also lead your body to react physically via the production of stress hormones. The US National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine has various studies on the relationship between stress and hormones. Stressful phases in one's life cause hormone fluctuation and imbalance. The increase in the stress hormone cortisol can cause anxiety, weight gain, reduced focus, and depression.
Smoking harms one’s health and lifestyle habits. It is not only associated with an increased risk for lung cancer but it can also affect the respiratory system. Smoking also affects the reproductive hormones like estrogen and testosterone. Research proves that smoking has been linked to decreased fertility in women, shortening their reproductive period by up to 10 years.
Not getting enough sleep can also cause hormonal imbalance. A nutritious diet and regular exercise cannot replace the need for sleep to avoid any kind of hormonal imbalance. Poor sleep can cause an imbalance in levels of hormones like insulin, cortisol, leptin, ghrelin, and HGH. Doctors recommend at least 7 hours of sleep to keep the hormones on track.
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