4 Strategies to Improve Hormonal Imbalances in Your 30s

Shocking stat: Perimenopause is happening earlier than ever before. The onset can now happen as early as 35 years old! Many of us are still having babies at 35!

Here’s the thing: our world is more toxic, dysregulated, and stressed than ever before. 

And under those conditions, it’s no wonder our bodies are a little “haywire.” 

Good thing that there is plenty we can do about it. 

We are diving head first into this topic today, by first looking at the signs you might be headed towards hormonal imbalance, the causes, and what we can do about it (there’s no shortage of strategies, we’ll only cover my top 3). 

Alright, let’s dive in:

What are the signs you may need to look past calories and address hormones? Here are my top red flags:

• Weight gain or inability to lose excess weight
• Irregular or painful periods
• Mood swings and not feeling like yourself at different points during the month
• Low libido
• Fatigue

Sounds familiar? Also sounds like a million other “disorders” that exist? 

That’s not a coincidence. The body does not work in isolation. All of our systems overlap, which is what makes the healthcare field so complex. It’s also why a pharmaceutical product is rarely the answer and almost always causes side effects on a different part of the body. 

If you are experiencing any of the above symptoms, you likely have a hormonal imbalance, but it’s also quite possible that your toxic burden is high and that more than just addressing hormones is necessary. 

It's also very important to not "blame" your hormones, which is an easy trap to fall into. 

Our hormones do not start changing without a reason. Age, living incongruently with what our body needs, stress, poor sleep, poor diet, all of these can be root causes of why hormones start to act up. 

With that said, here are a few of the common causes I see of hormonal imbalances:

1. Poorly regulated glucose and insulin rhythms: not only does this cause inflammation in the body, exacerbating any other issues you may be having, insulin resistance, pre-diabetes, and diabetes will dramatically impact your mood, libido, sex hormone dyregulation, energy, and weight stability. 
2. Previous hormonal birth control (HBC) use: this is a rarely spoken about topic, but any use of HBC not only has been shown to be incredibly depleting of vitamins and minerals and it artificially over-rode your natural hormone production. This is a recipe for a hormonal fallout that needs to be addressed. If you were put on HBC because of acne, PCOS, severe PMS, or any other reason OTHER than actual birth control, you masked the original problem, which means it went untreated forever how many years you were on it.  
3. Perimenopause: yes, age does tend to catch us off guard, and perimenopause is often a wake up call for many. If you have lived a life of eating processed foods, not prioritizing sleep, being on birth control, over-stressing the body by either under-eating, overexercising, or both, and burning the candle at both ends, you might REALLY get caught off guard. I liken perimenopause to a wake up call that tells you the status of your health. If you slowly and steadily head into perimenopause with very little symptomatology and it doesn’t seem to affect you much, you did something right in your previous decades. If your journey to menopause was littered with horrendous hot flashes, insomnia, PMS, and mood disorders, your body is trying to WAKE YOU UP that something is amiss and you need to address it. 

Don’t let any of these causes pass you by. Don’t gaslight yourself thinking “this is all normal.” It’s not. 

4 Strategies to Improve Hormonal Imbalances

It’s hard to limit this section to only 4, but if I kept going on and on, you’d probably stop reading anyway, so here they are:

1. Address insulin: eat real food, less often, and stop snacking. 
2. Exercise in a way that heals your body, I recommend walking and walking a lot. 
3. Sleep. We are not 20 anymore and you cannot exist on 6 hours of sleep, even if you always have. It’s time to focus on healing and replenishing your body at night. If you struggle with sleep, the first two suggestions may help or it’s time to try supplementation until you can figure out why you can’t sleep.  
4. Eat fat and protein. Your hormones are created from the building blocks of cholesterol. And yes, our body does manufacture this via the liver, but you also need to be consuming this from your diet. You also need way more protein than you likely thought–this is critical for women as we begin to lose estrogen, which impacts our bone health and puts us at risk for osteoporosis. 

There are a few supplements that I also often suggest for hormonal imbalances, but they are most always used as a bridge as my clients work to improve their overall health and root causes. 

Vitamin D3 + magnesium are excellent for bone health, energy, and mood. 

Ashwagandha + maca are great for those “perimenopausal symptoms” such as hot flashes and insomnia. 

Omega-3s are wonderful for inflammation (although I would prefer you get these from fatty fish, such as salmon). 

Life doesn’t end when you hit your mid-20s. Life IS JUST GETTING STARTED! 

But your body IS changing (lol flashbacks to 6th grade sex ed anyone?).

And it will go a long way to honor it and not fight it. The same things that worked in your 20s don’t work anymore. Your body needs something different. 

If you need personalized support, please don’t hesitate to reach out and schedule a consultation. We’ll see if working with me is the next right step for you.

Here at Larson Family Health, we are hosting a Fall Bootcamp: Conquer Your Cravings. 

Overcoming cravings is one of the biggest hangups I hear about when it comes to women FINALLY hitting their health goals. So I am teaching on this for 4 days, September 24-27th. We hope you join us!  Sign up HERE.