7 Hormones Every Woman Should Understand

Are you a woman having hormone issues? Or do you know a woman having them?

The way you could tell would be things like…

• Low energy, sleeping a lot, never feeling rested
• Hot flashes, low sex-drive, skin issues
• Frumpy, a spare tire, and yo-yo eating problems

These are just a few VERY common symptoms of hormone imbalances for women. Here’s the problem with trying to help each of you reading this: the symptoms above don’t indicate which hormones are out of balance.

And that makes it hard to provide recommendations that apply to masses.

My good friend, Dr. Sara Gottfried (harvard trained MD turned functional medicine doc) is really good at breaking down this topic and putting together easy to use protocols that apply to most everyone. And it just so happens she’s got a new book coming out about this!

Click here, for a free copy of her new book (you do have to pay shipping and handling).

Who doesn’t want a super-cheap, up-to-date guide to women’s hormones? Trust me, there are enough action steps and cool tricks about supplements in this book for anyone with the issues above that you won’t want to miss out.

Regardless, what I want you to take away from this today are the 7 hormones that you need to be concerned with and 2 important takeaways about Carbohydrates and Berberine.

Hormones You Should Be Concerned About

Here’s just a sample list of the hormones you need to know about and be concerned about as a woman who’s having any health issues:

• Estrogen
• Insulin
• Leptin
• Cortisol
• Thyroid hormones (T3, T4)
• Growth hormone
• Testosterone

Us men, luckily, have less complex hormone systems. We need to worry about these same 7 as well, but the ability to change them and understand why they’re out of balance is much easier.

That being said, research on women-specific hormone patterns has really exploded (finally!) in the last few years. It’s much easier now to understand the interplay between these hormones and the symptoms that are bothering you.

Now in general, optimizing for one of these hormones isn’t going to cut it, because of the feedback loops in the body. Everything is tied to everything, meaning if you think that PCOS is just a testosterone problem or just an insulin issue… well you’re wrong. All the hormones impact each other.

So, if you are doing certain things to increase or decrease one, the others will be changing, too.

Dr. Gottfried understands that but doesn’t come right out in her book and say it. But then again, her new book isn’t aimed at someone like you who’s a rock star researcher and reader.

The book is geared a bit more towards mainstream. HOWEVER, I learned several really cool tips and tricks and I KNOW that you will learn a lot from it, too.

Why? Because Sara has had 1000’s of women patients and that kind of experience builds an amazing tool set of being able to describe hormones in a scientific but understandable way AND learn lots of really cool “hacks” to optimize them without a ton of testing.

My Thoughts On Her New Book (2 IMPORTANT TAKEAWAYS)

I love 90% of it. There’s some amazing analogies I’m going to borrow (steal) from her to help explain hormones and how they work. There’s at least 4 GREAT supplement tips for different women’s hormone issues I saw (like what to do about hot flashes).

Plus, the 21-day reset that she steps you through would be a great value-added test for anyone this year – Men or Women.

I love all the checklists and quizzes in each chapter and the advice about well-being, moods and social circles. These 3 areas are so important for health, but almost all of us are lacking.

I do have a few small points I disagree with her on. At over 250 pages that ALWAYS happens, but I wanted to share for those who are smart enough to get the book and read it.

1.) At the end of the book, after you re-test all the foods you cut out to create a custom diet (which I love), she recommends eating less than 49 grams of carbohydrate a day. I think this is way too low and would recommend at the end, as you add in more carbohydrate foods, that you test up to even 200g of carbs a day and see where you feel the best (only from real food though!). Most women will likely end up between 100 and 150g, but it’s super-wise to always be testing and tweaking so you feel your best. This is based on our experience working with lots of women.

2.) On page 230, she recommends Berberine for it’s anti-inflammatory effects and it’s ability to lower blood sugar (it’s better than the drug Metformin). I love that she’s getting the word out about Berberine. It’s a powerful supplement, BUT I believe it’s too premature to be recommending it without warning people that, in my opinion, it’s DANGEROUS to use beyond 8 weeks straight. Why? Well, we used it in our consulting practice to Kill pathogens and re-boot gut bacteria. This is why I believe it actually helps with blood sugar so much. But after 6-8 weeks the gut flora will have been sufficiently altered and I believe you’ll be artificially shifting the flora after this point and significantly increasing the likelihood of creating Berberine-resistant bacteria. NOT GOOD!  Is there any research to back this up? Not yet, however there is research that shows that the gut bacteria will develop resistance to even herbal killing agents like antibiotics. So to summarize, you might try Berberine for 6-8 weeks. STOP after that and take 6-8 weeks off. Do Not Under Any Circumstance Take It For Months or Years Without Stopping.

As I mentioned, I disagree with every book on my bookshelf. Why? ‘Cause I’m me, and I have my own opinions and ways I see the world, which I see as being natural and healthy. And I wanted you to know about those 2 issues above because I think they are important.

Here’s the Deal… 

Get a free copy of her book here. Then, crack it open and start skimming – you WILL find simple, NEW, and interesting ideas about helping your health that we’ve never covered and I’ve actually not seen anywhere else.

This book is a wonderful introduction to women’s hormones and a great 21-day body reset for anyone who’s looking to get help with her hormones.

I hope you check it out.

-Steve

P.S. – She is giving away 11,000 free books, when they are gone they are gone. She had to pay the publisher to give these away (full retail price!!!). That’s how this thing works; the authors typically get screwed because the publishers just care about money. Anyways, you get the ability to pay just S&H which is a no-brainer. Get your copy while they last here.