How Hormones Affect Your Health

Clients who workout in Alexandria, VA, at the Worx, do so for a variety of reasons. One of the reasons is to help improve their overall health. Working out affects the balance of hormones in the body, such as cortisol and hormones affect your health. So while most just want to get into shape, the added benefit of balancing hormones is an added benefit. Hormones affect your health. They are the messengers that trigger all the functions in the body to keep it functioning at its best.

Stress hormones not only affect your health, they affect your appearance, too.

If you find that all your fat collects in your abdomen and your waistline just keeps getting bigger, you probably have a problem with stress and the accumulation of cortisol. Stress hormones make changes in the body to prepare it to fight or run. There are receptors for cortisol, one of those hormones, in almost all cells in the body. It’s the messenger that affects your memory, controls blood sugar levels, maintains blood pressure and regulates your metabolism.

Too much cortisol in your body contributes to health issues.

Do you have a rapid heart beat? That’s probably from too much cortisol that wasn’t burnt off with exercise. It does more than just increase your heart rate, it increases the potential for obesity and is one of the leading causes for heart disease and high blood pressure. One way you can improve your health is to keep stress at a minimum. It’s not an easy task, but finding ways to prevent it before it gets out of control, such as meditation or even immediate exercise like running up and down stairs can relieve the stress-response quickly.

There are all types of hormones, including sex hormones that contribute to health issues.

Stress can affect the balance of female hormones, just as toxins or poor nutrition can. If a woman has too little progesterone and too much estrogen, it can show itself with weight gain on the hips, thighs and abdomen, fibroid tumors and a low sex drive. Gall bladder disease, heavy bleeding, painful periods and mood swings are also symptoms. Women aren’t the only ones to face health risk by hormonal imbalance. There are issues with both too much testosterone and too little for men. Too much or too little can create heart issues, with too much increasing the risk of prostate cancer and too little causing weight gain.

• If you’re having problems sleeping at night, maybe your hormones are out of whack. The pineal gland creates serotonin that affects your ability to sleep. Adequate sleep is important to good health.
• The system that creates hormones is the endocrine system with the hypothalamus as the major gland. Hormones control thirst, sleep, body temperature and more.
• One of the most severe hormonal problems comes from too much insulin or too little, also known as type 1 diabetes or hypoglycemia.
• Exercise helps regulate many hormones. Eating healthy is another way to help boost hormonal health. Come in for a free training session and see how good you really can feel.

For more information, contact us today at The Worx by Maia