WELLTHY Generation Podcast!
Welcome to the WELLTHY Generation Podcast - I am your host - Naihomy Jerez.
Your Bronx raised dominicana, wife, mother of 2, new BFF, AND Food & Holistic Health Coach!
I went from living a surface level healthy life, to learning FIRST HAND how to live my BEST life rooted in wellness and get my sass back!
Whether you're a wellness enthusiast, a food lover, or simply curious about creating a healthier, more vibrant life, this podcast is your guide. We're going to dive deep into topics that will inspire you to make positive changes and elevate not only your WELL-being, but those of generations before and after you.
Stay tuned for exciting conversations, expert interviews, and a whole lot of inspiration that will lead to ACTION. Welcome to the WELLTHY Generation Podcast, with me, your host Naihomy Jerez!
WELLTHY Generation Podcast!
31. Understanding Your Top 5 Hormones and 14 Tips to Get Balanced - Part 1
With this comprehensive episode on hormone health, I urge you to reflect on the environmental and lifestyle factors influencing our hormones. From the menace of plastic water bottles to the allure of blue light glasses, I arm you with simple yet impactful recommendations to protect your hormone balance. For those ready to take the next step, I offer a personal invitation for a consultation call, promising a customized support system tailored to your unique needs. Whether your goals include healing your body or shedding unwanted weight, this episode is brimming with wisdom to empower your journey to optimal hormone health. Join me, and let's pave the path to wellness, one hormone at a time.
Thank you so much for listening!
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Hey friends, welcome back to Wealthy Generation Podcast that's W-E-L-L-T-H-Y wealthy. Today's episode you're gonna probably want to listen to two or three times. It's probably gonna be a two-part episode where there's part one and part two, because I don't wanna make this super long and I want to give you all this information. Because I don't want to make this super long and I want to give you all this information, I don't want to cut anything out. So if it starts to get too long, I am going to do a part two. What I'm going to do today is I want to help you better understand your hormones not all of them. I am going to go through the major ones, the ones that have the biggest effect on you and the ones that you can really work on balancing. So I am going to cover today 14 or probably seven, and then part two, another seven or probably seven, and then part two, another seven, depending on how long this goes ways to keep your hormones balanced. Now again disclaimer I am a certified integrative nutrition and hormone health coach. I am not a doctor. Please go to your doctor. Listen to what they have to say. If you want to chat with me directly about something you may be going through. Please don't hesitate to send me an email, a DM, hit me up, even book a consultation, right, just so we can talk through things. Know that these are general tips, but tips that are helpful, and these are tips that I have given every single one of my clients, not necessarily all at once, but depending on their circumstance, depending on what they are trying to heal, depending on what their personal hormone imbalance is, these tips have come in helpful for them. So, like I said, you want to pay close attention. Maybe you want to grab a pen and paper to write things down and please go ahead and share this with friends who might be suffering from certain health concerns and they're just not aware that tweaking a few things in your lifestyle can be so helpful. The 12 not 12 14 tips that I'm going to go over in total are purely lifestyle changes that you can do, that you can take immediate action on and can literally change your life. By balancing your hormones, you can start feeling better in your skin, you can start reducing your bloating, you can start reversing prediabetes like really, really healing, and I'm here to provide that for you. All right, so let's get started.
Speaker 1:The way I want to get started is by covering which hormones I'm going to be highlighting here, what they do in our body and why are they important, okay, so, um, one, two, three, four, five I have my notes in front of me, so it's five hormones that my tips are going to support. Number one is cortisol. Okay, cortisol, okay, cortisol is a master hormone. There's two hormones I'm going to be talking about today that kind of run the show. They run the show and when they become dysregulated, they start dysregulating other hormones in your body. So these two are like big bad hormones not bad like they're bad, but they're just like really dominant in your body and one of them is cortisol.
Speaker 1:Cortisol is really needed for you to survive. It is what the hormone that gets activated when you are in a stress response. Okay, um, it is a hormone that can serve to protect you, but there's something called a hormone like loop where your body closes the loop. Cortisol keeps you actually safe because it alerts you to danger. It gives you the what you need to get to a safe place. So it'll do things like increase your heart rate and increase and make your breath a little bit more shallow and it'll dilate your pupils. What does that remind you of getting out of danger right, like that way you're able to run, get out of the way, go to a safe space, be able to see better, breathe faster, move faster. So this is what cortisol does for us. It also wakes us up in the morning. This is your wake-up hormone. This is what goes up in the morning. When you open your eyes, cortisol is high. It is what wakes you up. It is actually here to keep us safe.
Speaker 1:Now, where things go left with cortisol is when it is always in our body and the loop doesn't close. You don't use up that energy that cortisol is giving you is always present. It's called chronic stress. Hello, sounds familiar to anybody Chronic stress. You might not even be aware that you're always under a stress response. You might not be aware what in your body triggers you to feel stress, right.
Speaker 1:So things that can dictate you're under a stress response is if you clench your jaw, if you always have like tight shoulders and they're up by your ears, if you stop breathing. This is me. When I'm getting really stressed out, I stop breathing or you're breathing very shallow breaths, like they're just in your chest. They never go down into your belly. So oftentimes people are like I'm not stressed. And then I start asking them questions like is your jaw tight, is your breath shallow, are your palms sweaty, like things like that, and then they're like oh my gosh, I didn't even notice that I was under stress.
Speaker 1:So all of these hormones serve a purpose and they're really good. The problem is when they get overused by your body. It also cortisol being present all the time can lead to fat storage around your belly area. So usually when people have are like it's really hard for me to get rid of my belly. There's like three kinds of bellies. One of them is a stress belly, okay, so this is why you know a lot of people talk about calories in, calories out, you need to be on a calorie deficit to lose weight, and all of this. But you know what the truth is, that sure, that's true. And what's also true is that if your body is consistently under high stress and you don't even know that, it's going to be hard for you to lose weight still Because you might be experiencing one of the three bellies, which is a cortisol bellying. Okay. So the next hormone that we're going to cover is insulin.
Speaker 1:Insulin is a hormone that gets produced in your pancreas and gets delivered out into your bloodstream. When the blood sugar gets too high in your bloodstream, insulin is responsible for coming and clearing it out. And there's a few ways that you can help your body do this. One of them is through insulin, but other ways is through your muscles. Your muscles receive blood sugar is I mean sugar is one of the main sources of energy for our bodies. It is the main source of energy and then it's fats for our bodies, and when our muscles get depleted from that energy, then it brings on more. But if your muscles never deplete the energy, if you never move, if you never use your muscles, then your muscles are never going to help insulin get the sugar out of your bloodstream right.
Speaker 1:So when insulin gets very dysregulated, it causes a cascade of chronic illness in our body. It causes prediabetes, it causes diabetes, it causes PCOS, which is called diabetes of the ovaries. It causes dementia, where it's called diabetes of the brain, like there is just so much that happens when insulin becomes dysregulated and your body's not sensitive to it anymore. So between cortisol and insulin, they are two hormones to be respected. They are two hormones to be respected. They are two hormones to know how to keep in balance in your body because they will bully the rest of your hormones in your body to not be right. Okay, so, a lot of the things that you're feeling, a lot of the illnesses that are happening, if you just learn how to manage your stress and how to manage your blood sugar, my friends, you are in a road to healing quickly, without you even knowing it.
Speaker 1:Okay, so we can help give insulin a hand by moving our body, by eating balanced meals, by so many things right, and you'll see in my tips that it's not just food that causes a blood sugar, a higher blood sugar response, because actually other, I believe, is your liver also can produce blood sugar in a pinch. It's called like when, when people are doing ketosis and all that. So you might not eat and you might see a spike in your blood sugar and you're like but wait, what happened? I didn't even eat anything because, environmentally, your body is like oh, I need to give you more energy. Remember, sugar is the main source of energy. Carbohydrates are the main glucose. Okay, is the main source of energy in your body. Carbohydrates turn to glucose, sugars, glucose right, so we don't need to eat it. Our body can also produce it if it's needed.
Speaker 1:If your body's like, oh, oh, you're stressed, my friend, your cortisol is going up, that means you need energy to get out of this situation. Boom liver, let's go, let's go, let me get some glucose. Your blood sugar goes up, right, and there are certain things that can cause that, like blue lights being stressed out. Um, temperature, right, like temperature can be stressful if you're too hot or too cold, like these are all stressful situations in the body If you get hurt, you know. So it is definitely a hormone to be respected. Now you know cortisol, insulin, master alpha hormones in your body that you want to know how to keep in balance.
Speaker 1:Now the three other hormones that we're going to go over is one of them is estrogen. It is the hormone that is linked to femininity. It is E2 that facilitates your cycle and the release of an egg. There's estrone, which happens in postmenopause, and then there is estriol, which is released from the placenta during pregnancy. But, aside from helping females reproduce, what estrogen also contributes to is your cholesterol levels, your urinary tract, your heart and blood vessels, your skin, your hair, your mucous membranes, your pelvic muscles, your brain, health and function. So, as I mentioned this, because estrogen is a hormone that starts to decline the deeper we get into menopause or perimenopause, postmenopause. This is why they say that women are more susceptible to high cholesterol because estrogen is not around so much to control that we have. We're more susceptible to heart disease, to urinary tract infections, to weakened pelvic floor muscles and we all be here peeing when we laugh and things like that so we start to lose, like, our mental sharpness. So it is an a hormone that naturally just declines, especially post menopause, a year after your last menstrual cycle, and there are things that we can do to help with that. But this episode is not about that, so we're just going to keep moving, not about that. So we're just going to keep moving.
Speaker 1:Another, um, the other hormone we're going to talk about is progesterone, which is essential for proper menstruation. Okay, progesterone is a hormone that starts to, that heightens, and it's part of your menstrual cycle when you release an egg. When you release an egg, the egg follicle that was in that your egg was in starts to produce progesterone and that alerts your uterus to start creating a uterine lining for possible implantation of an egg. All right, so when, if an egg implants, then you're pregnant and other things start to happen in your body. If an egg does not implant, then progesterone drops, your uterine lining gets released, aka you get your period, your uterine lining gets released, aka you get your period.
Speaker 1:So the reason why this is super important progesterone and the reason why estrogen sorry, not estrogen, cortisol and your period are so closely related and intertwined is because how many times have we heard stories of women either skipping periods or periods being late because they're really stressed out, or athletes that their periods disappear because their body's under a lot of stress? So this is turning into a whole hormone lesson. So I'm sure to get to the tips, because I want you to understand how these tips work right, like why are they, why are they important and how is it helping balance your hormones? So when things in the body are not like black and white one, two, three, like they are connecting pieces to things, they come together in a certain way. There are parent hormones that come into play, like it's like puzzle pieces, and our responsibility is to give our body all of the puzzle pieces so we can come together and do what it needs to do. So, fun fact cortisol and progesterone the hormone that helps you create a uterine lining have the same parent hormone hormone, which is called pregnenolone.
Speaker 1:Okay, so your body is does not have unlimited resources. So when pregnenolone is deciding what to give its resources to, whether cortisol or progesterone, if you're always super stressed out and your body's like man, I need to give this chick more cortisol because she's stressed out and she needs this to survive. Guess what you don't need to survive to get pregnant? That's the last thing you need to do if you're in danger. So your body only responds to chemical messages that it's receiving. It does not know left from right. It does not know that you're not actual and legitimate danger. It does not understand that you're just sitting in front of a computer and your boss is stressing you the F out, so it's still going to give you what it thinks that you need. And what you don't need right now is a uterine lining to get pregnant. So your body is like, all right, pregnant alone and give all the resources to cortisol. Guess what happens? You miss your period. Guess what happens? Your period is late. Guess what happens? You don't have a thick enough uterine lining for egg implantation if you are looking to get pregnant, all right.
Speaker 1:So consistently being under high stress affects your fertility, affects your menstrual cycle, affects how you're feeling, affects so much and this is what I mean when I say that cortisol is one of the boss hormones, because it will knock other things out that you don't necessarily need at the moment. So this is why hormone balance is important, because it can start to throw off so many things in the body. So, again, it is important to be able to manage your stress. It is not always that you get rid of stress I think that's always around is how are you aware that you're stressed out and how do you manage it? Because it affects things like your menstrual cycle and, trust me, aware that you're stressed out and how do you manage it? Because it affects things like your menstrual cycle and, trust me, even if you're not trying to get pregnant, if you don't have a well-functioning menstrual cycle, it will throw off other things and you will not feel balanced. Again, this is generally speaking. Every woman is different, but essentially this is how hormones work.
Speaker 1:Insulin can also mess with your menstrual cycle. Think of PCOS. Pcos is, like I said, diabetes of the ovaries. It will change the way your ovaries work. It will start producing more testosterone male hormones than it does estrogen, and it throws everything off when your blood sugar is so dysregulated and it starts affecting your ovaries. Your ovaries is what makes estrogen, and then it'll switch on you and it won't do that anymore. Right, and that was a bit of a tangent, but I want you to understand how closely related all of these hormones are and why it's so important to learn how to balance them out. So progesterone is important because it is the one of the main important hormones for your menstrual cycle. Um, and cortisol can really really affect that.
Speaker 1:Now, the last hormone that I'm going to talk about is melatonin. All right, a lot of us suffer from sleep and we go and we buy the little melatonin gummies that they sell, thinking that that's going to help. Or we, you know, drink the sleepy girl mocktail with the cherry juice and the magnesium and all that good stuff. But here we go again. If you don't know how to manage your stress, that ish ain't going to work that well for you, because guess what? Cortisol, like I said, is high in the morning and throughout the day is supposed to dip down, and throughout the second half of the day, melatonin should start to go up. So they do this little switcheroo.
Speaker 1:Now, if you don't know how to balance your hormones, this little switcheroo won't happen and your cortisol will remain high throughout the day into the night, and this is why you might feel like you're exhausted but you can't sleep. This is why you might feel like you wake up in the middle of the night and you can't go back to sleep. This is why you might feel like you slept the whole night, but now you woke up and you feel like you have not slept not even for five minutes, and you're super tired. Okay, and then at night you're wide awake. Guess what this means? Your circadian rhythm is totally thrown off. Totally thrown off, which means you have a hormone imbalance.
Speaker 1:All right, so it's not necessarily about being cute with your sleepy girl mocktail or your little gummies, is more about how do you balance your hormones so that they're actually doing their job. Okay, because there are a lot of other factors that can throw off our sleep, like perimenopause. When estrogen and progesterone start like being flaky, then it starts to affect other things. So the most important thing that we can do for ourselves to try and help ourselves is help balance out cortisol and insulin as much as possible. As we get into perimenopause, we don't have that much control over estrogen and progesterone, even though there are things we can do to help. Um, and then melatonin it just is kind of along for the ride, like like it gets thrown off real easy, depending on what you're doing.
Speaker 1:Okay, so now that you know a little bit of what these hormones are, how they work in your body, now we're going to tie in the tips. How can we keep our little five friends more balanced so that you actually feel good in your body, you get your regular periods, you're not having really bad PMS, you're not having migraines, you're not bloated, you're able to lose weight OK, you're not super fatigued and tired and relying on sugar and caffeine to keep you up. Doesn't that sound good, man? That sounds good Like just just from your lifestyle, like just doing some things to help yourself out. All right, let's get started.
Speaker 1:The first tip I have for you is don't have coffee on an empty stomach. I know you want to pause me. You want to stop. Right now You're ripping your earbuds out, or you're like trying to put the radio on in your car, or you're like trying to put the radio on in your car. Do not, please, have coffee on an empty stomach.
Speaker 1:Coffee actually triggers a little bit of a cortisol response, a little bit of a stress response. It's trying to, you know, get that pep in your step, wake you up. That's what you want, right? But it's bright and early in the morning. You should be up because cortisol is up in there anyway, right? So if you add coffee to your empty, poor belly, it is going to make cortisol go up even higher. Okay, it is going to spike up your cortisol even more, which will put you in a much more heightened stress response.
Speaker 1:So what you want to do is two things you want to give cortisol time to just calm down. You're up, you're awake. Give it a little bit of time to calm down, maybe an hour or two, and you might be like Naomi I do not have an hour or two to wait, I need my coffee, stat when I wake up. If you cannot wait that long, then here is tip number two Please have something that's high protein before your cafe. This is going to help you blunt that cortisol response, because now you have something in your stomach which is also going to help balance out your insulin for the day.
Speaker 1:Here we go, showing cortisol and insulin right straight up in the morning. Who's the boss. You're the boss, okay, you are the boss of your hormones. You can tell them how to act, all right. So tip number two is to have high protein before you have your coffee. As women, we should be having high protein at least like within an hour at least of waking up. It really helps manage your insulin. It really helps bring balance to that.
Speaker 1:And why is that important? Because what you do in the morning can set you up for success the rest of the day, or it can throw off the rest of your day. So if you're feeling super snacky throughout the day, if you're craving a lot of sugar throughout the day, if you're very tired throughout the day, is because, most likely, your body is in this blood sugar rollercoaster accompanied by cortisol. They are just having a field day inside your body because you did not tell them what to do and how to act. Okay, so that's all. You can have high protein, and by high protein I mean 25 to 30 grams of protein.
Speaker 1:What I do because I really do not have time to sit and eat a high eat like chewing food in the morning I'm usually running out the door, either to the gym or to drop off my kids at school is that one. On the days I drop off my kids at school, I'll have a protein shake at least 25 to 30 grams, and then I'll have my coffee. And the days that I go to the gym, I have a cup of Greek yogurt, sometimes with blueberries, and then I'll have a cup of coffee. But just these two tips I can promise you will change your life. And, by the way, just to clarify, when I say coffee I also mean no oat milk, because oat milk is straight up sugar and no added sugar in your coffee. Don't hate me, okay, please don't hate me. I am just looking out for you, um, so I, I'm, I'm pretty okay with dairy, so I put a little bit of grass fed milk in my coffee. Or you can choose a plant-based clean milk for your coffee, or you can have it black, but I would say no oat milk, no sugar, um, because then this also is going to trigger a sugar response, a blood sugar response, early in the morning.
Speaker 1:If you start your body off on this sugar rollercoaster is going to be really hard to gain back control. Okay, especially, how backwards is this? Especially if you haven't had a good night's sleep, because now your body isn't like, um, I don't want to say panic mode, but it needs to work a little bit over time to try and help you, because now you're sleep deprived, right? This does not apply to new mommies. Like I get it, girl. I know it's hard having newborns, I know it's hard having little kids, so you do whatever you need to do to get through the day, but I can promise you eating high protein is going to help you too. Okay, all right, let's move on to tip number three.
Speaker 1:Tip number three is to learn how to identify and manage your stress throughout the day to keep those hormones balanced. Like I mentioned towards the beginning of the episode, there are probably signs or things that you do with your body that you don't even realize is because you're having a stress response. And again, I'll mention a few, like if you are very tense, if you have, like, your shoulders up by your ears, um, and you're very tense in those areas, if you clench your jaw really tight, which is something I do, if you have shallow breathing or stop breathing, which is something that I do, you want to learn how to identify that and how to remind your body that you're actually safe, and a way that you can remind your body that you're actually safe is taking very deep belly breaths. Okay, like you can. You can YouTube this like videos of of people just showing you how to take a really deep breath. You can hold it.
Speaker 1:Why is this effective? Because it's kind of impossible to run and be in danger and try and get out of the way and take deep breaths at the same time, like I don't know if you've ever tried that, but if you're like in the middle of running and you're trying to take a deep breath like, it's literally not even possible. So what taking a deep breath does is it gives your body. It goes right into the vagus nerve which gets massaged and pressed when your lungs are all the way full, and it is actually a nerve that runs from your brain all the way down to your gut and you either have diarrhea or you have constipation and your stomach hurts and you don't know. So that's because when you're super stressed out, your digestive system gets affected.
Speaker 1:Stress will take over your body. Stress will shut down everything else that is not needed for survival at the moment and if you are consistently under that stress response, this is what's going to happen. So it will shut down hair. This is why a lot of people under stress lose their hair. It will shut down your nails, because why do you need nails for? It will shut down your reproductive system. It will shut down your digestive system, because if you're in danger and you're stressed out, then no one have time to sit down and eat nothing.
Speaker 1:And this is why a lot of people, too, say, oh, but I'm not even hungry. I'm not even hungry. Well duh, you're not hungry because your cortisol is so high and it's telling your body not to let you know that you're hungry or not to make you hungry because there is no time to eat. So not being hungry is actually not a flex. Not being hungry actually means that your hormones are not imbalanced. That's all it means, all right.
Speaker 1:So when you start to understand what stresses you out and when you are in a stress response, then you can all of a sudden do things to help your body understand that it's actually safe, and something that's always available is a deep breath. You can have do a deep breath in your zoom meeting and in person, like whenever. And then there are other things that you can probably do that you probably don't have access to all the time, like go for a walk or um, take a bath or take a shower. Like read a book, journal, like there's many things you just need to find, like what's your thing that helps you de-stress. But the breath and like a quick body scan to see what's going on can really, really really help you balance out cortisol and, in turn, balance out insulin and your blood sugar, because if cortisol is on high all the time, then your body's like man. We need to give this girl more energy and it'll kick in. The sugar Cool, all right. The sugar Cool, all right.
Speaker 1:Let's move on to number four. I believe we're on number four. I messed up these numbers y'all, because I switched these numbers around and now I'm like wait, I'm having trouble counting. Yes, okay, number four. So number four is to please reduce the amount of plastics you are using. If your main source of water is from plastic water bottles, if the containers you use at home to store your food is plastic, if you buy things and you microwave them in plastic, if you buy coffee and they have those plastic lids like as much plastic as you can, why? Because even if they say they're bPA free and this and that free, they usually have some sort of chemicals inside, and those chemicals part of them are called xenoestrogens and they mimic estrogen in your body. Having too much estrogen, called estrogen dominance, is a really not so good imbalance to have, because that's the kind of imbalance that will lead or promote fibroids, endometriosis, extremely heavy periods, really bad cramping. You don't want so much estrogen in your body. Your estrogen is supposed to get cleared out, all right. So to have your body think that it has more estrogen than it actually does is no good, and one way that we can do that is by eliminating as much plastic as we can from our daily lives.
Speaker 1:Now, there are many things that come in plastic. It's really hard to control a lot of the times, but what I find is that a lot of you drink a lot of water from plastic water bottles. So get yourself a home filter, like one that you attach to the faucet, or a Brita filter and I know don't come at me I know brita pictures Oftentimes are plastic too, but the thing is that we don't know how these individual plastic water bottles have been handled. We don't know what temperatures they've been under, we don't know. You have a little bit more control and autonomy over a Brita filter that's in your home, but these water bottles we don't. And please, for the love of God, please do not keep cases of water in your car. Please do not do that, because the temperature fluctuations really mess with the plastic.
Speaker 1:First of all, I'm telling you to get rid of the plastic water bottles. If you don't want to listen to me, at least don't keep them in your car, please. There are many other options. This is one of the biggest things that will completely throw off your hormone balance. So you know, soon I'm going to have an Amazon store, or you can message me, I have my favorite reusable water bottles. So you know, soon I'm going to have an Amazon store, or you can message me, I have my favorite reusable water bottles. You will also be helping out the planet, all right. So number five is similar, but it has to do with your home.
Speaker 1:Fragrances in your home. These smells, like these candles, the plugins, plugins, the air fresheners, um, the cleaning, like, like freaking mistolin and what's the other one that we use? As a spanish, oh, oh, this one, fabuloso, please stop. This also has xenoestrogens inside. The smell can mess up your hormones, the chemicals that get released from these toxic smells. Although it smells nice. It's not really that nice. It is just chemicals. There are natural ways to fragrance your home and to fragrance. Honestly, when I mop in my house, I put no fragrance. I literally put um white vinegar in the water. My house does not smell like a salad okay, like it does, maybe for a few minutes, but I don't really care because it's a natural disinfectant. It will disinfect my floors and it will give my house a neutral smell, like I don't need the fabuloso Trust me, I was a fabuloso girl pine soul, misoling, whatever but the truth is that we don't need that and it's just ruining our health.
Speaker 1:So remember when I said that one of the bellies, when you have a lot of mass around your belly, is cortisol. Another one is estrogen. There's a cortisol belly and there's an estrogen belly. Okay, when you have a lot of excess estrogen, you start to produce an excess belly, okay, and what happens is that that excess fat actually produces even more estrogen. Okay. So now you end up in these endless cycles of trying to control and balance out your hormones because it just starts getting out of control and your body needs to figure out what to do with it. It always needs to figure out what to do with it to bring more balance to your body.
Speaker 1:So, um, another thing that's included in this is perfumes. Girl, you don't even know how much body bath and body work, petunia, or whatever, plumeria, um, you know, sprays I used to have when I was younger. Um, so, perfumes, body sprays, um, lotions, that are super fruity and smelly things for your home let's talk about, like, all these things, if you just tone it down, can be super helpful to balance out estrogen. All right, we did that. Let's do number six. Oh, number six was that, like the products you use on the body, so there's products you the body. So there's products you use for your home. There's products you use for your laundry, there's products you use for your body. I know it's overwhelming and it's a lot. Just pick, just pick one tip, like, if you start anywhere and just start with the water bottle, please, water bottle and coffee, you're golden. All right, you can start switching these. If you're interested. Like things for your home, things for your body, you can just start switching that out little by little, all right. Number seven please use blue light glasses towards the nighttime.
Speaker 1:So here's how melatonin starts to get triggered. Here's how cortisol starts to go down and melatonin starts to go up. If we think about it back in the day, there was no bright ass lights everywhere. Okay, even the bulbs at home were more dim. It was harder to see. There were no electronic devices, thus the light from the tv was not as bright like. We just were a lot closer to the cycle of earth, which was the sun starts to go down and the light starts to go down and the moonlight would is is not that bright Now.
Speaker 1:So our body starts to get the message that cortisol needs to calm it down and melatonin needs to start to rise to mellow you out so that you can sleep well. Through your pupils, through your eyes, through your eyes who knew, who knew? Okay, so our eyes would, the pupils would start to open up more to try and let more light in because it was getting darker, more to try and let more light in because it was getting darker. And as that happened, it sent the message to your brain to start creating more melatonin. Now guess what happens? We, our pupils, don't do that anymore. Why? Because we always have bright ass lights in our face, the lights in our home, the light from the phone, the light from the phone, the light from the tablet, the light from the TV, like everything is just so freaking bright Even outside, like the street lights and the lamps and the, the screens everywhere now for advertising like is out of control and is literally fucking up Excuse my language. It's really fucking up our sleep. It's really messing up our circadian rhythm, it's really messing up how cortisol and melatonin works and that throws everything off. Remember, cortisol is the master hormone.
Speaker 1:Okay, so if you start to protect the light around you as the sun starts to go down, it can really help balance out your circadian rhythm and it can really help you actually sleep, fall asleep, stay asleep, actually get a rest at night sleep, because just because you're in bed doesn't mean you're resting. I had a client once who would tell me that she was in bed for 10 hours. She would sleep for 10 hours and she was still tired and I'm like you're not resting, like there's one thing to be in bed and there's another thing to rest, and she was not resting. So when I say to wear blue light glasses is to start protecting that. If you wear prescription glasses, you can get a blue light protection on them, or they sell blue light glasses on Amazon that you can get. So the point is to start protecting your eyes from light. Like you can lower the brightness on your TV, you can lower the brightness on your computer, on your phone, on your tablet, whatever device you're using. Something I like to do at home is turn off overhead light and turn on, like dimmer lights If you have like those smart light bulbs that you can change the light. Setting something on the reddish spectrum is a lot better and conducive to sleep.
Speaker 1:So just setting the mood for nighttime and putting yourself in a routine like if you're a parent or if you've been a caretaker, you probably put your caretaker, you probably put your loved one through a bedtime routine, like to relax. And you need the same thing, friends. Like you need the same thing. You're not a, you're not a robot. Even, let me tell you, even the freaking computer, you need to shut it down properly, all right. And the same thing is with you. You need to shut yourself down properly. So it's no wonder that you're working, working, working, or you're in front of the TV and then you put your head down in the pillow and you're like oh my God, it's been 30 minutes and I cannot fall asleep. Oh my God, it's been an hour and I still can't fall asleep Because, since you did not unwind your body, your body will unwind, regardless whether you want to or not. It doesn't really care that you said you want to fall asleep immediately. It will still take its time to unwind itself. Okay, that's exactly what's going to happen. So protecting your eyes and the light that goes in, especially towards the nighttime, will help you get a better night's sleep. All right, and with that I am going to.
Speaker 1:I did the review of the five hormones and I did tips one through seven, and now I'm going to end it here to do a part two, because we're coming up close to an hour and I just want to break this up. So thank you so much for listening in. I hope this has been helpful already. I hope it helps you understand your hormones in your body a little bit better. If you found this part one helpful, I would so appreciate it. If you leave a review or you rate the podcast, you screenshot this, you share it on Instagram, tag me please.
Speaker 1:And yeah, if you want support in this, this is exactly what I teach my clients how to do, but super personalized to them and, if they have mind drama about it. We go and we do a lot of mindset work, but I literally help my clients heal their body, lose weight, by balancing out their hormones and, as you can see, they're very intricate. They have a mind of their own If you don't tell them what to do. Um, so it's really important to have this kind of knowledge and education and habit and skill building so that you can protect yourself and you can feel good in your skin and in your body.
Speaker 1:All right, now that, like all these hormones are doing whatever they want to. So if that's something that you know you need ASAP, I invite you to book a consultation call with me, with the link in the show notes. We will review all of this. We'll talk about what are your symptoms, what are your challenges, what has nobody else been able to help you, and I'll tell you how I can help you. Boo Okay, so I can't wait to talk to you. I'll see you next week on part two for tips eight through 14. All right, so I'll talk to y'all soon. Bye.