Three Simple Foods That Will Help You Balance Your Hormones 

If you’re a client of Dedham Acupuncture, you probably know that we specialize in women’s health, fertility, and hormones! We see and treat just about every hormone problem out there, including infertility, irregular periods, low testosterone, menopausal symptoms, endometriosis, and PCOS. All of these issues come with their own list of complexities, but we try our best to make our treatments simple. 

Since the foods we eat play such an important role in our hormones, treatment usually involves a diet plan. A lot of diet plans you’ll find for these issues are very involved, time-consuming, and take a lot of effort. This can be difficult for patients who are already experiencing brain fog and chronic fatigue from their conditions. So while for some a comprehensive diet plan may be a good option, more often than not, clients want small actionable suggestions that they can implement right away.

It’s important to keep in mind that our hormonal system influences not only our sex hormones like estrogen and testosterone but also our stress hormones, our metabolism, and our insulin resistance. This is key to understanding how diet influences our hormones and choosing the best foods to help balance them!

One of our wonderful acupuncturists, Michelle D’Amboise, has her own quick solution to improve hormones with a diet that anyone can implement!  So, without further delay, here’s the scoop on the 3 things that you should eat every day for 2-3 months to heal and balance your hormones! 

 

1. Avocado

Love a good avocado toast or guacamole? Well good news, so do your hormones! Our body uses natural fat to make estrogen and testosterone. You might see a lot of fad weight-loss diets promoting a “low fat diet”, but eating low fat actually decreases our estrogen and testosterone levels. Certain medications such as statins can also create a need for more fat in the diet. Extremely low-fat diets or taking certain medications like statins can lead to infertility issues and hormone imbalance. Avocados are one of the best food sources of natural, healthy fats!  Eating a third of a large avocado a day (or half of a small one), can increase your fertility, and decrease symptoms of hormone imbalance like hot flashes and low libido.

Not sure how to incorporate avocado into your diet? Try adding slices of avocado to your sandwiches or mixing them into a salad. The acupuncturists here at Dedham Acupuncture love to cut up avocados and add them to all kinds of soups! They’re super yummy, and easy to make!

2. A Handful of Berries

What’s better than taking vitamins? Eating them! Our bodies need Vitamin E, C, D, E, and K to make new cells and function on a healthy level. Berries have a ton of antioxidants and vitamins to support cellular health and you only need a handful to get the benefits! They’re loaded with vitamin B6 which helps to balance progesterone, and the antioxidants are great for the immune system and hormone regulation! 

The best part? They’re so easy! Berries go great with so many foods. Add them to your salads, make a yummy berry smoothie, or mix some in with your morning oatmeal! If you really want to make it simple, just eat a handful in the morning to “check the box”. Berries truly are a superfood, and when consumed in just small doses-they can really improve your hormone health. 

3. Sweet Potatoes 

Don’t be intimidated- we know this one may seem harder than the first two suggestions, but keep reading for the easy hack that we use at Dedham Acupuncture to incorporate these veggies into our diets!

Our gut health affects every other system in our bodies. We need good gut health to properly digest food and produce estrogen and testosterone. In Chinese medicine, sweet potatoes are THE vegetable that can help balance your gut bacteria. They have a lot of natural prebiotics, are loaded with vitamins, and are the perfect source of healthy carbohydrates. They have so many health benefits beyond gut health and hormone balancing too, so these are a must in your diet! 

Adding sweet potatoes into your diet is actually a lot more simple than you might think. Our hack? Bake a handful of sweet potatoes on the weekend and simply add half of a reheated sweet potato daily with lunch or dinner. Easy peasy!

These 3 diet hacks may seem too easy to make lasting hormonal changes. But, since we began suggesting these foods to our clients several years ago, we have seen profound changes in their health. Sometimes, less really is more!

We hope that this helps you make small but impactful daily health changes.