In today’s time, diseases due to poor lifestyle choices are on the rise. Poor lifestyle choices can cause several day-to-day problems like obesity, stress, hypertension, and worst of all – hormonal imbalance. Hormones are your body’s chemical messengers that travel via your bloodstream to organs and tissues. These chemical messengers impact not just your mood, but your overall health too. If you are someone who is struggling with hormonal imbalance, it is important to find the root cause and tackle it. Let’s find out which daily habits you need to change and what foods you should include in your diet to balance the hormones in your body adequately.
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Here Are 5 Practices That Are Disrupting Your Hormones:
According to dietician Manpreet Kalra (@dietitian_manpreet), these 5 practices are disrupting your hormones and daily life activities.
1. Consuming Sugar Post Meals
Many of us crave sugar after our daily lunch and dinner meals. However, that could be harmful to our body. As per the expert, having sugar or sugary treats post meals can cause insulin resistance. For the unversed, the hormone insulin helps control the amount of sugar (glucose) in the blood.
2. Phone Before Sleeping
It is a common habit among many to scroll through the phone before sleeping. Even if you turn on the ‘yellow light’ feature on your phone, it could disturb melatonin production in the body. Melatonin is a hormone produced by the body that regulates night and day cycles, or sleep-wake cycles. When your sleep cycle is disrupted, you will sleep and wake at odd hours, and feel tired all the time.
3. Caffeine Post 4 PM
Sure, we consume several cups of coffee and tea thinking it won’t affect our bodies, but it does. Coffee, tea, and aerated drinks contain caffeine that has a direct impact on cortisol. As per the expert, consuming caffeine after 4 pm impacts cortisol – a hormone that plays an important role in the stress response. Moreover, it is recommended that you don’t consume caffeine at least 10 hours before you sleep so that it doesn’t affect your sleep cycle.
4. Consuming Carbs On Empty Stomach
If you have been eating high-carbohydrate food first thing in the morning or on an empty stomach, then it’s time to change your habits. As per dietician Kalra, consuming carbohydrates on an empty stomach can cause insulin resistance in your body, which, in turn, can affect your blood sugar levels. This is particularly harmful for people on the brink of developing diabetes.
5. Low Vegetable Consumption
If your diet is high in fats and not in vegetables, then you should start changing the way you consume food. Having a diet low in vegetables can cause disruption in estrogen detoxification, as per the expert. For the unversed, estrogen detoxification is the metabolic process by which the liver helps excrete this hormone from the body. This detox is essential to maintain a hormonal balance in the body. So, start including more vegetables in your diet if you don’t already.
5 Types Of Foods That May Help Balance These Hormones
While dietary and lifestyle changes can affect the hormones in your body, certain foods can help restore your body back to its best. According to dietician Manpreet Kalra, include these foods:
1. Boost Your Cortisol Levels with These Foods
The expert shares that if you want to restore cortisol levels in your body, you should consume cacao, broccoli, and walnuts in your diet.
2. Melatonin-Rich Foods
If you have been having trouble sleeping or maintaining a healthy sleep cycle, then this could mean your melatonin levels are disrupted. To balance this hormone in your body, the expert suggests that you should eat munakka, cashew, or chamomile tea.
3. Balance Insulin with These Foods
Insulin resistance is a common problem faced by many. To balance this hormone in your body, the expert suggests that you should include methi seeds, cinnamon, and coriander seeds in your diet.
4. Rebalance Your Progesterone with These Nutrient-Packed Choices
If you feel like the progesterone levels have imbalanced in your body, then the expert recommends you balance it by including chaste berry tea, sweet potatoes, and chickpeas in your diet.
5. Don’t Skip Good Fats
Good fats or ‘heart-healthy fats’ are important to maintain a good, healthy functioning body. However, if you skip these fats from your diet, it can cause progesterone imbalance in your body. Progesterone is a sex hormone in the body that supports pregnancy and menstruation in women or people who menstruate. Low levels of progesterone can cause problems like irregular periods, mood swings, and trouble conceiving.
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So, ditch these habits and include these foods in your diet for a healthy and happy body and lifestyle!
