Does Stress Affect Hormones- The Truth!

Nowadays, many people’s health is out of order. Why is that? Our life has become stressful and artificial, maybe because we live a life of consumption, instead of living a natural, the way we are created life. We have made so much comfort that is a significant development and so many toxins and stress.

Does stress affect hormones?

For sure, it does! We are created with all our hormones and neurotransmitters in flow with the seasons of a year and our life. You can’t deny that our body’s processes slow down if we become older as we move towards old age and death. Our human life is depending on reproduction, multiplying our species. We live in a modern bubble, and we already have adopted this lifestyle, thinking we are untouchable. Everything is controlled and manipulated; people are not allowed to die anymore a natural death.

People are receiving medications not to heal but produce more symptoms by being fed with more medication and staying unhealthy and ill. Many doctors nowadays treat symptoms instead of healing the body. Pharmacy tells them what to do. Don’t you believe it? You better investigate and read direct reports. Luckily, more doctors are now standing up for their profession, telling the truth. Unfortunately, since the start of patenting medication, the money stands in the front line, not the patient.

However, some doctors still believe in natural treatment and root out the cause, not the symptoms. My doctor is an alternative working doctor, and I am pleased to have met her, even though she is pretty far away from my town. Because of my own story, I have dived quite deep into hormones and their functions, which helped me survive my autoimmune diseases. There are not only the sex hormones but also many others that all play together, likes in sinfonie; every tone must fit.

Our lifestyle and pollution of the environment, the enormous stress people experience, have disrupted this sinfonia.

How is Stress Impacting Our Health?

Many, yes, most people in this world experience massive stress due to all kinds of situations. The focus of caring for the family, earning enough income to provide food, and all the basic needs we have, is throwing many people into a stressful situation. But also, the unfair competition people experience daily by trying to keep up with friends and family members is not healthy.

Consuming the wrong food creates chronic diseases, resulting from disruption of the delicate hormone cycles. Our body is made so perfect that everything falls in place if we live healthily and the way we are created, a natural, happy life. Unfortunately, many people, older and younger, have a difficult or no social life anymore, throwing them into chronic isolation that makes them sick. In addition, our negative thoughts disrupt neurotransmitters and hormones, using up many minerals to detox the waste products of our mental process. As a result, people have a difficult time being happy and laughing very often.

But, how can you stay positive if the financial difficulties are like a flood drowning you daily in sorrows? Our mental state, a response to the imbalances in our bodies, let us make wrong choices and decisions daily, like food choice, purchase the bad products, not moving ( no sports), isolating ourselves instead of reaching out for help.

If you are in such a situation and feel inadequate, I tell you, you can still have a beautiful house and look well-dressed while better spending your money on real healthy food. There are so many affordable products these days, so you would never look shabby or poor. Secondhand shops have great items to beautify your house and fill your wardrobe, and it doesn’t cost the world.

The only difficulty is when you have kids who don’t understand the situation and wish to keep up with the wealthier classmates because of being bullied for their clothes. In my younger days, my parents had not much money, and every day they had to make the right choices of what to buy and not to buy. We had many of our fruits and vegetables grown in our garden, and I had to help process them into a form of storage. I have learned so much from my youth, and believe me, I was not too fond of the work I was confronted with when I was young. Now I profit from my knowledge.

Most important for me was that my parents are honest to us, not trying to keep up a financial state they can’t, but telling us the truth. If you tell children about the situation, they will understand and even help you, learning something for their life.

Being able to purchase every product we desire has to create an artificial picture of false welfare. Lots of people are indebted to the bank. It is not a harmless situation.

Chronic stress is disrupting our hormones very much. For example, if our stress hormone cortisol is getting pumped out daily, our adrenal gland will not produce the cortisone and will be exhausted after a while, which might end up in burnout. Many people nowadays have suffered one or several burnouts due to their job or general life demands. For example, in Germany, my job has always been stressful due to my employers’ inability to provide enough colleagues but performing our work 200 %  without being paid enough.

In Germany and the Netherlands, I suffered two massive burnouts; one has resulted in developing Hashimoto Syndrome, an autoimmune disease of the thyroid. Treated by standard medicine, giving synthetical hormones to treat symptoms, but not looking into the cause of the disease has cost me losing a big part of my thyroid that my body has destroyed over the decades.

In the Netherlands, I met a so-called specialist for endocrinology in a hospital where I had an appointment due to the enormous symptoms I have experienced because of massive private stress. This doctor even laughed at me, telling me that he can’t do anything for me, my thyroid will be destroyed one day, but I should not worry because I can consume thyroid hormones for the rest of my life.

Years later, I began to investigate the internet and many beautiful people who represent alternative medicine, like Dr. Mercola, Dr. Axe, Markus Rothkranz, Chris Cresser, and many more. By joining them, reading their articles, and their recommendations, I learned about the cause of my autoimmune disorder and changed my lifestyle.

As a result, I feel so much better, and if I don’t suffer the enormous pressure of abnormal stress, I can function without taking thyroid hormones. But still, I need to avoid extreme stressful situations; otherwise, my thyroid, gut, stomach, liver, and heart are suffering again.

I tell you something. If you suffer from any disturbance of your thyroid function, it is pure stress, and you better change your lifestyle, stopping the inflammation in your body, and live an everyday healthy life again. You will do it!

There are so many women experiencing a disrupted menstrual cycle due to the stress they experience. A lifestyle change will bring everything into balance, but you need to stop the toxic problems in your life. So please find out the stressor; I believe that you know it anyway and stop it.

Female Hormones and Stress

Because of reproduction, we women are created with a delicate menstrual cycle that develops around 12 – 15 years of age and mostly stops when we hit 50, some earlier, some later. This cycle is easily disrupted by stress, and we experience so much pressure nowadays that many women have difficulties getting pregnant. In general, most women have a menstrual cycle of about 28 days, where they will be fertile and being prepared to receive a child and going into pregnancy.

This happening is depending on four hormones in particular. First, when a girl is maturing to a woman, gonadotrophin-releasing hormone (GnRH) stimulates the pituitary gland to produce luteinizing hormone (LH) and follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH), which in turn cause a girl’s ovaries to start making other hormones. The main female sex hormones are progesterone and estrogen, also some testosterone which helps with muscle building and bone growth.

The menstrual cycle is mainly performed by LH, FSH, estrogen, and progesterone which are essential for maturing eggs, preparing the woman for a pregnancy every month until she hits menopause. Women experience a massive change in their hormones in pregnancy, with estrogen and progesterone not performing their usual fall at the end of the menstrual cycle. The stimulation of the ovaries produces higher levels of these hormones through another hormone which we check in pregnancy test kits to find out if the woman is pregnant, HCG (human chorionic gonadotropin).

You can see how delicate this team playing is and that every interference is disturbing the hormone cycle. Stress is very unbeneficial for women who suffer from all kinds of symptoms due to the hormone imbalances caused by enormous stress. Men can better cope with stress, while many women have problems performing their daily tasks standing under pressure. It has to do with how we are created and how we actually lived in former times where men went hunting, and women have done the childraising and cooking or collecting food together. You can still observe this form of social living in natives in the Amazon and Africa.

I don’t say that we can’t be in leading positions because many great women perform exceptionally. Still, maybe they are good at delegating tasks and can see the priorities of task-shifting.

Women suffer from enormous pressure and stress, resulting in imbalances in the menstrual cycle; getting pregnant  Miscarriage might also answer the body to stress. Of course, more factors are coming together, like not being grounded, eating the wrong food, pollution of the environment, and living in toxic relationships.

In menopause, when estrogen and progesterone decline, many women experience symptoms that won’t happen if they live a balanced life. The disruption by stressors like poverty due to divorce or disease has an enormous impact on women’s health.  To feel better many menopausal women are consuming hormones, and that is not a bad thing if they are bio-identical and not synthetical, which even is doing more harm than any good.

I use progesterone and DHEA  and have no difficulties with menopause. I used an estrogen cream as well but did always pause for some time. It is better to consume flaxseed daily that contains phytoestrogen, which is a weaker estrogen in the plant. While it docks on the estrogen receptors in our body, it prevents bad estrogen-like xeno-estrogens from plastic and other sources in our environment, holding on to our receptors and disturbing our physical performance.

You see, we have very vulnerable bodies. So, please take good care of yourself!

Do you have any experiences with the impact of stress on your hormones? Please, let us know! What have you don’t rebalance your hormones?

DHEA- The Youth Hormone

DHEA( Dehydroepiandrosterone) is a significant hormone! Men have a high amount of DHEA in their bodies before they have reached a mature age. The body is processing DHEA to estrogen or testosterone, which makes it a precursor for sex hormones. The body also knows exactly what it needs for a male or female body; you remember the sinfonia?

DHEA is produced in the adrenal gland. The peak is in early adulthood and declines with aging. While many voices are saying it is not beneficial to use it as an anti-aging hormone, others claim it helps prevent many diseases. I am using it already for years with great results, and I directly feel if I have not taken it for a time, resulting in feeling low energy, muscle decline, gaining too much weight, having little focus, feeling pain in my joints, bones, and muscles.

Low DHEA levels are connected with many chronic diseases we face nowadays, like diabetes, heart and kidney diseases, cancer, etc. It is for sure the youth hormone. If we experience chronic stress, we experience a drop in DHEA production, leaving us feeling ill and exhausted due to the decline of estrogen and testosterone.

Women produce very little DHEA, so the amount of 10 mg taken daily is already enough. You also don’t know if the body is using it for producing estrogen or testosterone, which could lead to some male features, but this is easily corrected by reducing the amount of this hormone or stopping for a while. It is always better to be under the control of an experienced doctor than to do it yourself. Here in the Netherlands, you only receive the hormone with a receipt from your doctor, but I know that in the States of America, you can order it from Amazon.

Thyroid in the State of Emergency

Thyroid and stress are not a good combination. There are worldwide so many people suffering from chronic thyroid disease, especially hypothyroidism or autoimmune disorders like Hashimoto or Graves Disease. The enormous stress people are experiencing in this world due to artificial lifestyles and pollution, wrong food, existential worries has a significant impact on the thyroid. However, trace minerals like selenium and iodine are deficient in our food, resulting in inflammation of the thyroid, decreasing the production of thyroid hormones. The real problem is that conventional medicine is only treating the symptoms but not the cause. The inflammation destroys much tissue, creating a dependence on synthetical hormones for the rest of their lives.

But the first step towards healing is to exclude the causes, like chronic stress, hormone imbalance, food intolerance, heavy metal intoxication, mineral deficiency, underlying illnesses, etc. Our artificial lifestyle is killing us; we need to stop, rethink and return to our roots. Our stress response is a response of our reptilian brain, like fleeing, fighting, or freezing. Every animal does respond to stress this way, and we as well. If stress becomes chronic and unmanageable, we will develop a hormone imbalance with all diseases we can imagine, especially autoimmune diseases, and finally crash.

It is up to us to change our lives and remove the ill-making components like a stressful job, relationship, wrong food, or a lack of moving the body. We are responsible for ourselves, not others.

Final Thought

Stress affects our hormones! Finding our balance and recovering our bodies, we need to discharge the stress factor in our lives, mainly because a considerable amount of stress makes us ill. We are the creator of our lives and should never allow diseases or lifestyle causes to develop. Our bodies are made for a naturally balanced life; everything works in sinfonia as long we live in harmony. Of course, life is the experience of ups and downs. Some situations belong to life and will imbalance our bodily functions. But many people experience extreme stress from the fear of war and hunger, a low income that provides much pressure, diseases, daily negative news.  We can’t escape global stress if we stay tuned to it, but we can choose what we let come into our bodies. Take responsibility for your health!

There are more hormones, and I will write another article on the impact of stress on our bodies.

Please, let us know how you experience stress in your life? We would love to hear from you!

To Your Health,

Sylvia