Читать книгу Zita West’s Guide to Getting Pregnant - Zita WEST, Zita West - Страница 28

A question I get asked all the time is, ‘How do I know if my hormones are balanced?’ Hormone balance is such an important part of a woman’s fertility, and so easily influenced by poor diet, stress, lack of sleep and environmental factors, that assessing a woman’s hormone levels – and addressing any rebalancing that needs to be done to help her achieve optimum fertility – are important aspects of the work I do. And although there are sometimes quite clear indicators of hormone imbalance, often a bit of detective work is needed.

The one major thing that will help balance hormones is a well-balanced lifestyle – which seems to be increasingly difficult for many of us to achieve these days.

A well – balanced lifestyle is important for hormonal balance because all hormone activity is an interplay between different hormones, which are the body’s chemical messengers: for example, secretion of fertility hormones will be affected if the body is producing too many stress hormones. Understanding the inter – relationship between all the hormones in the body is the first step towards achieving a positive balance.

Like all hormones, oestrogen and progesterone operate as chemical messengers, in this case controlling the length of a cycle, and ovulation, while also having an impact on other body systems. When in perfect balance, their effects are hardly noticeable, but most women have a degree of hormonal imbalance within the normal range, which makes these hormonal fluctuations more noticeable. Although the effects can vary – not just between women but also from month to month in the same woman – knowing about them and recognizing your own emotional and physical response to them are helpful when you are trying to understand your own cycle.