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July 17, 2009

Are Your Hormones Making You Miserable?

My hubby forwarded this article to me that he found here. "Are your hormones out of balance? Does your life feel like a song played badly out of tune? If so, the problem may have to do with imbalances in your hormones, which are wreaking havoc on your body and mind.

Do your mood and energy swing up and down, making your life crazy?

• Do you crave sugar or salt?

• Are you overweight and putting on more and more belly fat?

• If you are a woman, do you have premenstrual syndrome, painful or heavy periods, and a low sex drive?

• Are you depressed? Do you sleep poorly?

• Do you feel tired but wired?

• Do you need coffee to wake up in the morning and a few glasses of wine to calm down at night?

If you answered "yes," your hormones may be out of balance, and you are not alone.
There are four big epidemics of hormonal problems in Americans today that are sending millions of people out of balance: too much insulin (from sugar), too much cortisol and adrenaline (from stress), imbalances of sex hormones such as estrogen and testosterone, and not enough thyroid hormones.

When you eat too much sugar, flour, and white rice, your insulin levels spike. When this happens, your cells become resistant to its effects. So you pump out more and more insulin, become even MORE resistant to its effects, and end up in the vicious cycle of insulin resistance. Insulin resistance can cause energy and mood swings -- AND it can take you down the slippery road toward high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, cancer, brain aging, dementia, and more.

Historically, we ate the equivalent of only 20 teaspoons of sugar a year as hunter-gatherers.

But just 200 years ago, we started consuming about 10 pounds of sugar per person per year -- a 5,000% increase over our evolutionary ancestors!

As if that weren't bad enough, we now we eat 150 pounds per person per year, or about 1/2 pound each day -- that's the equivalent of drinking 6 cans of Coke or eating 8 Snickers bars per day."


This is one of the better articles about hormones and focuses on insulin.

For two years I eliminated sugar and sugar products from my diet. Then last year I started using sugar again. I started experiencing some symptoms that I had not noticed during the sugar-free cycle. Now today, for two months I am again free of sugar and I am slowly feeling better. For someone like me, this article makes so much sense. I answered yes to all the above questions and because I was listening to my own body whine and moan, I had already changed my diet and increased exercise before the doctor told me I have diabetes. It will be interesting to see the blood sugar results next month to see how much being pro-active can change the test results.

4 comments:

Berni said...

Good to remind folk about the hazards of sugar. I have always been careful not to eat things that raise insulin levels as my Dad was a diabetic but I lost anyway and was diagnosed as type 2 Diabetic last year but my doctor said if I hadn't been careful all these years I would have had all sorts of complications but Praise God I don't have any. I live on a very tightly controlled low carb diet now and am able to keep my blood glucos in control so I don't need meds and my A1C is normal. It takes a lot of dedication and learning how to do things differently to eat as little carb as I do. If you need Diabetic information I have lots of links you may find interesting.

Did you also know that cancer loves sugar, deprive your body of foods that turn to sugar and cancer cells start to die. They don't like oxygen either so exercise is good. I try to walk at least 30 mins a day.

Debbie said...

That is excellent advice and reminders. Thanks.

Carver said...

Thank you for your visit to my blog and comment.

This was an interesting post. I'm not sure how much of a factor diet is with me although I worry about what will happen if I ever stop taking hormone replacement therapy which I've been taking since I had a radical hysterectomy.

CiCi said...

Dear Berni, you are a dear. Yes I would like any diabetic info you wish to share with me, please send to recoverygirl@mailhaven.com when you have a chance. Thank you! I try to walk and after what you said I will put forth more effort.

Hi Debbie, thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment. Hope things are going well for you.

Hello Carver, thanks for the comment. I understand your situation with the hysterectomy. We should compare notes sometime.