You know that saying, “Give someone a fish and they’ll be fed for a day. Teach someone to fish and they’ll be fed for life”? Well this is exactly the way it is with our health, particularly when it comes to “hormone balancing”.
If you have acne, or any other problem that has been linked to a hormone imbalance like infertility, there are a couple different choices to make. The first, and most likely easiest, is to just ingest or inject actual hormones. This is certainly not without problems, as I mentioned in yesterday’s blog on hormone replacement therapy, and can really be viewed as the “give a fish and be fed for day” method.
The birth control pill is usually only ever a temporary fix. Not many women, whom I have talked to, have ever actually seen their acne stay away when they stop these medicines. The results are only good while on the pill. In other words you are fed with your daily gift of a fish, but once the fish stops coming in, then you starve (or have an acne break out again!)
The best way to balance your hormones would be through methods that lead to long lasting results. This is the choice that lets you be in charge and which teaches you how to live a healthy life, or “how to fish” so to speak. I see this as a two part method:
- Lifestyle habits to balance hormones
- Medicines, other than the birth control pill or other hormone replacement, that fix the underlining reason the body’s hormones are imbalanced in the first place.
In lifestyle habits I like to think of simple, yet powerful, acts that you can do on a daily basis which will compound into long term gain. This includes proper exercise, with at least 20 minutes of everyday spent being active (I would prefer this to be much longer, but we all have start somewhere). Exercise has been found to have very profound effects on the regulation of insulin, the stress and the reproductive hormones.
Eating a good diet is the next best activity one can do to balance their hormones. Again think simple. Eat a wide variety of whole and fresh foods. Eat more vegetables, in the 50% range. Seek out good quality protein sources and have some at every meal. Eat less sugar, drink less alcohol, and for sure give up soda pop!
Meditate, in your own way, every day. Dedicate a small part of the day, even just a couple of minutes, to come back in tune with yourself, with your God, with your sense of spirituality. Remind yourself of that sense of higher Good and Purpose in life. Break out of the mundane for just a few minutes, so as to become recharged to continue on.
Play with your friends and loved ones. Bring joy back into your life and remember that “inner child”, that just wants to laugh. Be an adventurist and explore this beautiful Earth that we live on. It is now autumn and the colourful leaves are falling, rake up a pile and go jump in!
Then rest and ensure you get a good nights sleep. Let your body repair and let go. Let it process your daily activities.
Remember simple, yet powerful, daily habits that lead to long term goodness. We all have it in us to do these, and they are truly the best methods to regulate ones hormones as well.
Now in terms of medicines, sometimes we do have to take them. Right from time beginning, of written history anyways, people have noticed that we sometimes needed a push beyond what our healthy lifestyle could provide. This then became the role of medicine, or substances that are to be taken for a short period so as to re-balance the inner workings of our bodily systems. And up to just a hundred or so years ago these medicines were herbal.
The difference between the birth control pill and herbal medicine is that while the pill actually gives you real hormones designed to do the work for you, just like giving you a fish to be fed for a day, herbal medicines (which do not contain any actual hormone) work by fixing your inner mechanics so that your body learns how to properly produce and utilize its own hormones again. Herbal medicines balance hormones by correcting any excesses or deficiencies within your body, so as to work properly on its own. They try to remind your body what it is like to be normal and healthy, so that it can stay there on its own, without any future medicine intake. No dependancy.
Years ago I remember Dr. Jeff Roberts, one of the leading fertility Doctors at the Pacific Coast Reproductive Medicine clinic in Burnaby, explaining his amazement of how Chinese medicine could regulate a woman’s menstrual cycle, from 45 days back down to 28, without any reliance on hormones like the birth control pill. He admitted the limitations of western medicine in this regard, saying that they really do not have any such thing.
Healthy lifestyle changes combined with properly prescribed herbal medicines can be a very effective package to help balance not only your hormones, but your whole body – skin and everything underneath.
Wishing you health,
Dr. Trevor Erikson
Copyright © 2019 Dr. Trevor Erikson