So we’ve talked about blood sugar balance going hand in hand with hormonal health, and hopefully now you are working on keeping blood sugar balanced by eating protein and carbs together and not skipping meals.
Another important factor for hormonal balance is daily bowel movements. Yep, that’s right, pooping every day is vital for keeping your hormones balanced! Why is that, you ask?
Well, our liver is responsible for detoxifying and inactivating any excess hormones (especially estrogen) in our bodies, but once it has inactivated them, it puts them in a nice package with a bow on it and sends them over to the colon to be excreted forever. If, however, we are not having a daily bowel movement, the package sits in our colon and there is an enzyme called beta-glucuronidase which essentially takes the bow off the package and sends that estrogen back into circulation. And that’s where we get those hormonal imbalance symptoms mentioned in other posts. Constipation not only makes us feel sluggish and congested, but can also impact our skin health (hello acne!) but also manifest in hormonal issues such as headaches, PMS, irregular periods and even hot flashes. So if we want to get that estrogen out, we need to poop every day.
How do we ensure we have daily bowel movements?
- Spend time every morning on the toilet at the same time. Take a leaf out of your male partner’s book, and take the time to sit on the toilet daily to ponder life! When we are rushing around like headless chickens in the mornings, we may miss the urge to go to the loo.
- Move your body regularly. Regular exercise can help promote blood flow and peristalsis and intestinal motility.
- Manage stress levels. Chronic stress can disrupt gut function and motility, it reduces our intestinal secretions making digestion (i.e. the breakdown of food) harder and therefore also impacting our ability to have regular bowel movements. It’s also important to not eat on the go or when stressed, so take some time to eat your meals in a peaceful setting.
- Include more mineral rich fluids into your diet.Include more mineral rich fluids into your diet. Bone broths, coconut water, herbal infusions, adrenal cocktails. Sea salt is also great to include to boost your mineral status.
- Include more fruits as a source of carbohydrates. If you are struggling with constipation, you may want to swap out your starchy carbs (grains, pasta, bread) with more easy to digest carbohydrates such as ripe or cooked fruit and well cooked vegetables. Some people do well with some root vegetables too.
- A daily raw carrot salad can also help move things along and is great as an intestinal brush to get rid of excess estrogens. Add a coconut oil dressing to help move things along even better 🙂
- Consider magnesium in the form of Epsom salt baths, magnesium spray and Magnesium bicarbonate daily.
These should get you well underway to having great daily bowel movements! If you are struggling with digestive or hormonal issues and would benefit from some support, I would love to chat with you! Click here to book a free discovery call and see how some bespoke diet and lifestyle changes can help your hormones flourish!
Click here for Tip #1: Balance your blood sugar
