How Diet Can Optimize
Your Hormonal Health

We all know that eating a healthy and balanced diet comes with a lot of benefits. Proper nutrition can help you feel energized, keep your digestion running smoothly, and aid in weight management. But one thing we don’t often mention when listing the benefits of nutrition? Our hormones! Hormones play a key role in almost every function of our bodies, so keeping them balanced can help our overall health and well-being.

What we eat can have a big impact on our hormones, for better or for worse. These impacts aren’t always obvious and improving your hormonal health with diet can be tricky. So, let’s get into the details! Read on as we discuss how diet and hormonal imbalance are related, the signs of hormonal imbalance, and how hormone-balancing foods can help.

How food affects hormones

Let’s start things off with a quick science moment about hormones! Hormones are chemical messengers that play an essential role in almost every process in your body, from regulating mood and energy to supporting digestion and reproduction. They’re made in one organ—like your brain or reproductive system—and are transported through your blood to either trigger or stop certain cells in another part of your body (1).

So, how does your diet affect your hormones? Well, what you eat can influence the production, release, and functioning of hormones. Once broken down in your stomach, food travels through your bloodstream, and its nutrients can act as messengers—similar to how hormones work (1). Certain nutrients can help hormone balance and production, while others can trigger inflammation or disruption. Examples of how food affects your hormones include:

• Healthy fats: Omega-3 fatty acids affect the body through insulin and thyroid hormones. These healthy fats can help prevent insulin resistance—a precursor to diabetes—and can increase your T4 thyroid hormone levels (2, 3).
• High-quality proteins: Eating protein gives you essential amino acids, which are building blocks of many hormones, that your body doesn’t make on its own (4).
• Complex carbohydrates: These foods take longer to digest, which helps stabilize your blood sugar and prevent spikes in insulin, a hormone used in energy regulation (5).

A balanced diet can help support hormonal health by reducing inflammation, promoting a steady energy supply, and making sure your body produces a balanced amount of hormones.

Signs of hormonal imbalance

Okay, so we understand that different foods can affect our hormones in different ways. But, how do you know if you should start adding hormone-balancing foods into your diet? Eating a diet full of healthy fats, protein, and complex carbohydrates is usually not a bad idea. But, this kind of diet can be especially helpful if you’re dealing with hormonal imbalance!

Hormonal imbalance can show up in many different ways, and they’re more common than you might think. Signs of hormonal imbalance can include:

• Irregular periods (6)
• Severe PMS symptoms (7)
• Fatigue or low energy levels (8)
• Unexplained weight gain or loss (9)
• Difficulty losing weight (9)
• Mood swings, anxiety, or depression (10)
• Hair loss or thinning (11)

A lot of these signs of hormonal imbalance are also symptoms of polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), and that’s no coincidence! PCOS is an endocrine disorder—aka an issue with the hormonal system–characterized by a higher level of androgen hormones. There’s no cure for PCOS, but maintaining a healthy weight with the help of hormone-balancing foods—like the foods found in the Mediterranean or ketogenic diet—can lessen the effects of PCOS symptoms (12).

Hormones that can impact weight

Maybe you’re already eating a diet full of hormone-balancing foods or maybe you’ve got it on the to-do list. Either way, it’s useful to understand what hormones your food is impacting!

Inside your body, you have more than 50 kinds of hormones working hard to keep your system functioning and regulated. Fertility, metabolism, growth, and development are all coordinated by hormones–and can all be impacted by hormonal imbalance. With all that in mind, let’s look at a few types of hormones and their functions.

• Estrogen: Estrogen is a super important female sex hormone. It helps to regulate your periods, maintain pregnancies along with progesterone, keep your vaginal tissue healthy, maintain bone density, and so much more (13)!
• Insulin: After you eat, your pancreas releases insulin to regulate your blood sugar. Insulin also tells your cells to absorb glucose in your blood to use for energy (14). If your body doesn’t respond properly to insulin it’s called insulin resistance, which can lead to prediabetes and type 2 diabetes.
• Leptin: This hormone helps control your appetite and maintain your weight. Leptin resistance can make you feel hungrier and eat more, leading to overweight or obesity (15).
• Thyroid hormones: Thyroid hormones help regulate your metabolism, body temperature, energy, and the growth of your teeth, skin, and hair. An overactive thyroid can lead to weight loss, and an underactive thyroid can lead to weight gain (16).
• Cortisol: Cortisol is most well-known for being the “stress hormone,” since the cortisol levels in your blood increase after a stressful event. But, cortisol also helps control your metabolism (14).

Best hormone-balancing foods

If we’ve covered anything so far, it’s that our bodies’ hormones are complicated! Eating a nutrient-dense diet can help keep those complex hormones balanced and your body’s functions running smoothly. Food for hormonal balance includes:

• Cruciferous vegetables: This category of veggies includes broccoli, broccoli sprouts, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts, and cabbage. Cruciferous vegetables can help your body better metabolize estrogen, which some studies have shown to lower your risk of estrogen-related cancers (17).
• Healthy fats: Salmon, flaxseed, walnuts, avocados, olive oil, and chia seeds are high in omega-3 fatty acids. Omega-3s influence your leptin levels–the hormone that helps you feel full–and have been linked to a lower risk of obesity (18). Plus, these healthy fats can also help with period cramps by balancing inflammatory and anti-inflammatory hormones (19)!
• Fiber-rich carbohydrates: Carbohydrates like whole grains, vegetables, and fruits are high in fiber. Eating a fiber-rich diet can improve your blood sugar and insulin levels, impact your leptin and hunger hormones, and help you feel fuller (20). And, these carbs can help lower the amount of cortisol in your system (21)!
• Probiotics: Fermented foods like yogurt, sauerkraut, kimchi, and kombucha are packed with probiotics. These foods can be especially helpful for your hormones if you’ve gone through menopause. Probiotics can decrease testosterone levels in postmenopausal women, which might help protect against sex hormone-related diseases and cardiovascular risk (22).

Foods that can cause hormonal imbalance

Now that we have our list of hormone-balancing foods, it’s time to look at a few foods that can throw your hormones out of whack. Foods that can cause hormonal imbalances include:

• Refined sugar: Added sugars like sucrose and fructose can disrupt the hormones that deal with your metabolism. These foods reduce your body’s insulin sensitivity and can increase your risk of diabetes (23).
• Ultra-processed food: Processed foods are generally high in sodium, saturated fat, trans-fat, and added sugar. These foods don’t regulate your hunger and satiety hormones as efficiently as unprocessed foods (24).
• Alcohol: Drinking large amounts of alcohol can cause hormonal imbalance throughout your entire system, leading to issues with stress, thyroid problems, reproductive complications, and other health complications (25).

Keeping your hormones balanced

While it can be tempting to place all the blame on diet, a lot of other factors also affect your hormones! The amount of stress you’re under, how much you sleep, and your physical activity levels all play a role in keeping your hormones balanced. That’s why it’s important to adopt a full-body, holistic approach to your health and hormones—and understand that no one is perfect!

Taking small, consistent steps can lead to big changes over time. And if you’re looking for a little hormonal help–with weight management, menopause, fertility, or PCOS—know that Wisp has got your back. Reach out to a Wisp provider to get started today.