NourishDoc: Hello, everyone. Well, we are talking about balancing. Guess what? Hormone balancing, especially in women. Progesterone and estrogen. Well, how do we maintain the balance? That is the topic. We are talking with Brittany today. Brittany is a functional nutritionist and somatic therapist. Welcome.
Functional Nutritionist Brittany: Thank you. Thank you, Amita, for having me here today. It’s so great to talk about one of my favorite topics. This is a delicate balance and this ratio dance that we tend to do all the time.
How To Start To Balance The Hormones
NourishDoc: All right. How do we start the balance? Let’s say start with that.
Functional Nutritionist Brittany: Okay, so, no hormones are bad or good, and I feel like, over time, hormones like estrogen have gotten this terrible reputation, right? Because we hear the term estrogen dominance a lot in the wellness hormone world, and we think about bad periods, and cramps, and clotting, and acne breakouts, and all this kind of stuff, and yes, that’s true, if there and Balance and Estrogen but I do want to just kind of paint the hormone estrogen for a second with a little bit of a good guy brush because we do need it for so many amazing things in the body.
Here, the key is that our estrogen and progesterone have to be within ratio in the body. And so we start to develop issues and symptoms and problems when that ratio, when that scale gets tipped, and often we see estrogen be higher, right? So, we hear estrogen dominance over progesterone, and this is where Amita, we start to see all of the symptoms that women are complaining about today, like bloating, acne, bad periods, and PCOS of those kinds of things.
So, I want to walk you through what I would walk through a client. I want to give you accurate information that the listeners and people are viewing today; you can take this and start to kind this into your daily dues to help balance the estrogen to progesterone ratio. So, the first foundational thing I do is look at nourishing the metabolism. So, think of your metabolism because any hormonal issue, it’s like a water re-fall effect.
So, has any hormonal issues come after many other issues? And so, think of your metabolism as the foundation of balancing these hormones. We want an optimal metabolism. How we’re taking food and how we’re converting that food to energy. So how much energy does our body produce? Well, if we have a slow metabolism meaning we have low energy, then we have slowed every other process in the body. This includes ovulation, right? Detoxification is key in progesterone and estrogen balance, which is another key in cleaning excess estrogen.
So, the one step I take in balancing these two hormones is nourishing female physiology and metabolism. What I see, and I would like to know if you see this, Amita, a lot in the wellness world. We’re often focused on taking so much out of people’s diets or fasting, or you know, causing women a lot of the times to be undereating or under-nourishing, so the approach I take is very different. So, what are you eating? Are you eating whole foods? How frequently are you eating? So, going three to 4 hours nourishing that metabolism for proper energy, processes, ovulation, and all that stuff.
My number two is asking the question, are you ovulating? Are you ovulating? So, many women don’t even know this, but it’s when ovulation happens, and the egg leaves the sack that little sack turns into, called the corpus luteum. It is what produces our progesterone. So, after ovulation and this process is so delicate. There’s about a 24-hour window for this sack to turn into almost a gland.
This is how brilliant the female body is. So freaking brilliant. Turns into this little gland and takes over producing progesterone for us, and this is to balance out that estrogen and so many women are not having this odd; they do not have proper ovulation. So, maybe they’re producing a little bit of progesterone, but again, if they’re suffering from a low-energy diet, if they haven’t nourished that corpus luteum which needs vitamins A, D, E, K, all your micronutrients, all your minerals, then, chances are you’re not producing enough progesterone month after month after month, and so, that will start to catch up with you because estrogen continues to come in and so ways. And if you’re not producing your monthly dose of progesterone, you will have an imbalance.
How Nutrition Can Be Important
NourishDoc: Okay. So, there’s a lot of information that you gave. So, fundamental is nutrition. So, most of the women, if they’re nutrition deficient, that’s what I understood, and I’m not a science or a nutrition student here. I bet. That’s what it is really like, right?
Functional Nutritionist Brittany: Yeah, it’s giving your body. Your body always wants to find its balance, but we have to give it the right recipe or ingredients so it can do its job, like detoxing. We talk so much about, like, I want to detox and get my body to detox. Well, your body’s constantly detoxing. That’s a built-in mechanism, but it’s how are we nourishing that detoxification system, and that’s also key in getting rid of excess estrogen in the body; we need to make sure our liver is functioning correctly, and that goes back to what you just said is we have to be eating nutrient-dense foods. Saturated lovely clean carbs, all that stuff, and it’s so. Animal protein is an excellent source of vitamin A and all the fat-soluble vitamins I discussed.
Hormone Imbalance Process, Testing, Strategy
NourishDoc: So let’s go back to the first of all testing, right? How do we know that there is an imbalance? That’s the question I wanted to bring up. Once you know there’s an imbalance, what is the strategy? This is a quick five-minute session that we will take, and then we can take a question from Chantal. So quick 10-minute session we bring daily.
Functional Nutritionist Brittany: Yeah, yeah. So often, women will test blood, they’ll test saliva, and although this is an okay marker, blood is just the highway of it’s a snapshot of what’s going on with your hormones. So it’s only sometimes showing us estrogen is stored in the tissue? On average, women are too dominant in estrogen and lacking in progesterone. So, I would go off symptoms and then, okay, now, I know that I’m estrogen dominant. What do I want to do? I want to look at the sources and causes of estrogen that I no longer want in my body.
So, this is where we have to look at like xenoestrogen. So, what are you putting on your skin? What are you washing your hair with? What are you washing your clothes with? So, all of the chemicals in personal care products and dyes and all of that, These things mimic estrogen and duplicate our levels of estrogen. So we call these xenoestrogens. So, step number one is to start to go green. Start to clean out the toxins in your beauty care products, cleaning products, and all that stuff.
Step two would be to open up those detoxification pathways, an easy tip I give for women who are like; I want to start to clean out that excess estrogen, and you’ll see them on my Instagram. It’s called a raw carrot salad. It’s from Doctor Ray Pete. I can’t take credit for it, but it’s a combination of shredded carrots, coconut oil, and vinegar, and it just pulls; it helps to pull out and detoxify these excess estrogens that we no longer want in our bodies. And so those are the steps you want to nourish correctly. You want to open the detoxification pathways. And then you want to stop the excess estrogens from coming in. Because there are so many angles to talk about, right? Because it’s the body.
So, it works as a symphony. I’m not your best ten-minute interview. One visual thing for my clients and those who are listening is thinking of your progesterone as your superwoman hormone. So, progesterone is your anti-anxiety hormone. So, many women around their cycle experience mood issues and anxiety. Some women have panic attacks. So, this is a good sign that you’re not; your progesterone levels are not where they need to be.
So, think of your progesterone as your superwoman hormone. There a, if you think about when you’re stressed out like if you’re somebody who’s on the go, go, go all the time if you’re always anxious, which I know so many women are today, you have a lot going on in your schedule, all the things, right? Type A’s. If you are producing cortisol, a stress hormone, you are not producing progesterone. So, cortisol and progesterone start with the same kind of precursor hormone. They start with the same ingredient and raw material so that you will produce one or the other. It won’t go down both pathways.
So, an excellent visual for clients, as I’ll say, like, do you live in the cortisol pathway, or are you in the progesterone pathway? Meaning, are you stressed out all the time? Right? Or are you able to produce the hormones your body needs to produce? And chances are they’re in the cortisol pathway all the time. Because if your body wants to decide between survival and reproduction, it will always choose survival. It’s like the essential primal response of the body. So, stress is so umbrellaed. We can umbrella it as the cause of every disease and issue. However, we want to manage stress for this specific topic, progesterone, and estrogen. We want to manage the cortisol.
Recommended Diets For Hormone Imbalance
NourishDoc: But all of us are living in a stressed society. That is the way it is; there’s no running around. We can’t go start living in the Himalayas now. So, while we know the yoga meditation, that’s the usual thing we need to do. From a nutrition point of view, is there any recommendation that you want to leave us with, before we wrap up today, from stress-free foods? There is any magic pill that I can take, you know.
Functional Nutritionist Brittany: I love that. I will go with always having a protein and a carbohydrate when you sit at a meal. Always combining a protein and a carbohydrate. This helps us balance our blood sugar, creating safety in the body and ensuring you’re on the low-carb train. I know I’ve been on the low-carb train. Many people have done that but have started bringing in more carbs, right?
Some healthy carbs. Some fresh fruits, Some root vegetables, Like start to bring in more carbohydrates and balance with that protein and frequently so, within 60 minutes of waking in the morning and then, maybe every three to four hours depending on who you are. That, from a nutrition perspective, can help you handle stress better. So clients, even just incorporating those two things, eating in balance, right? Protein, carbs, and eating frequently show a tremendous difference in anxiety, mood, and blood sugar. Yeah, it’s just balancing the blood sugar.
NourishDoc: Yeah. All right. Well, thank you so much. I love the session on the balance part, and there are so many tips you give that we could do. We have to focus and eat a nutrient-rich diet. We pay attention to a diet, of course, and so many other things you talk about, cortisol and progesterone. So, I don’t. I’m not going to repeat everything, but thank you so much. Anything else you’d like to add before I wrap up today? Do you want to share the handle or anything? Feel free to do that.
Functional Nutritionist Brittany: Yeah, yeah. Try that carrot salad I talked about. You’ll see it in one of my reels on my feed, and you can find me Yep at Brittany Lynn Wellness on Instagram. That’s where I hang out the most. Sometimes Facebook, but generally not. I’m in. And then we have our free community called Awakens Hunger. And that’s where you can find my 12-week hormone balance program. All of the things that I offer in terms of coaching and all of that good stuff. And I know Amita, you and I get to chat about that stuff afterward. I look forward to it.
NourishDoc: Yes. Thank you so much. I will end the session, and we will catch up soon. Thank you, everyone, for continuing to support us. We are over 250,000 followers, which I would have never imagined when we started this. So, please continue to support us, and we are launching our platform soon. So, thank you, and namaste.
