As Women

As women, we can take on a lot. In our 20’s and 30’s we can feel invincible. We are confident, happy, energised, unstoppable! For some this continues throughout life, but for others , the 40’s and 50’s can paint a very different picture.

By the time we reach our 40’s we may be balancing a career with a young family; we may have ageing parents who need our care, then there are the bills, the running of the home, the children that are becoming challenging teenagers. Whatever the situation is, many of us respond the same way, by putting ourselves at the bottom of the list; just ploughing on, keeping all those plates spinning, with little thought to the impact it’s having on our body.

And if this isn’t enough to deal with, from 35 our body starts entering the realm of fluctuating hormones, made worse by the amount of stress we are under and the lack of nurturing we are giving our body. We trundle on, trying to ignore the signs because we ‘haven’t got time’ to be tired, we haven’t got time to look into why we are gaining weight or feeling generally fed up. We justify it by saying it’s because we have so much on or it’s just our age BUT actually it could well be Perimenopause. If we recognise this, we can learn ways to support our body and get ourselves back to functioning as we did in our 30’s!

Alternatively, if we ignore the symptoms and never stop to listen to our body, we can elevate our stress hormones; cortisol and adrenaline. When elevated, they create a cascade of events to enable us to ‘run’ from the danger (stressors). This includes the releases of sugar into the bloodstream for energy which, if not burned off, gets stored around the belly for a later date. It also makes the body temporarily suppress other less vital systems, including digestion and reproduction- we don’t need to be procreating or digesting food if we are facing a near death situation! This is fine short term, but sadly modern day living can mean that we are subjected to micro stressors all day long, be it life, toxins, environmental, emotional or dietary stresses. This can mean that our body is in a high alert situation for way longer than it would like and this can impact the rest of the body, including the hormones.

In current day life, this is a ‘design flaw’, but one we need to understand if we want to have any chance of getting and keeping our hormones (and the cascading events that occur thereafter - raised insulin, fat storage, and all the other symptoms listed above) in balance.

Get in touch with me directly (click here) to book a free 15-minute discovery call to discuss your symptoms.