Enhancing Your Own Natural Hormones

Natural Hormones

While bioidentical hormones can restore our youthfulness, enhancing our own natural hormones with food, supplements and herbs is an even more natural approach to assist us in maintaining and/or restoring our hormones.

Bioidentical hormones have been used for many years and are believed to be safe and effective. But once someone begins to take bioidenticals, they will likely need to stay on them indefinitely so that the youthful effects continue.

The other option is to naturally support our hormones with nutrition, superfoods and herbs. The following information is based on research from raw foodist and health consultant, David Wolfe and Dr. Sangeeta Pati, MD, who founded the Restorative and Regenerative Medicine Clinic in Orlando, Florida. As always, be sure to consult your health practitioner regarding what diet and supplements are best for you.

Hormones direct our cells and tell them what to do. They help with:

weight regulation
anti aging
immunity function
body fat composition
energy levels

Natural Hormone Builders

The #1 builder of natural hormones is cholesterol. Cholesterol is produced by our bodies. It helps build sex hormones. In females, these hormones are estrogen and progesterone and in males, testosterone.

Cholesterol also helps produce the stress hormone cortisol in both men and women. In addition, cholesterol builds vitamin D when the skin is exposed to sunlight.

There are other natural hormone building blocks that can come from our diet. They include:

Bee pollen and pine pollen
Cacao
Chase or vitex berry (women) - contains bioidentical progesterone
Coconut products
Colostrums
Deer antler
DHA from fish oil and algaes
Fennel plants
Maca
Royal jelly
Saturated fat
Tongkat ali (men)
Tribulus (men)
Yam or sweet potato

Herbal Hormone Support

The following herbs and supplements can be used to support our natural hormones:

Ashwagandha (men)
Catuaba
Cistanche
Dong quai (women)
Ginseng (men)
Goji berry
Gynostemma (women)
Epimedium (horny goat weed)
Eucommia (jing herb)
Kelp – rich in minerals
Muira puma
Poria (mushroom)
Red clover
Red raspberry leaf (women)
Rehmannia root
Sarsaparilla
Saw palmetto (men)
Suma
Scha jargon
Tulsi (women)
Yohimbe (men)

Diet

In addition, Dr. Pati recommends the following diet as a foundation for good health and in support of our natural hormones:

maintain a diet of whole, natural foods at a plate ratio of 50% vegetables, 25% lean protein (plant or animal sourced) and 25% complex carbohydrates, at every meal.
vegetables should be of 8 different colors every day
raw and lightly cooked vegetables are a superior source of active phytonutrients and enzymes
avoid packaged, canned, boxed, refined and processed foods
based on recommendations from AMA and studies from Harvard.

This diet is very similar to the Mediterranean Diet which has many studies confirming it’s benefits.

Dr. Pati believes that everyone should be on a supplementation of essential vitamins, minerals and omega-3's.

Learn more about the the Mediterranean Diet research.

Our Liver and Hormone Methylators

Estrogen can get stuck in our liver if we don’t have enough methyl groups in our diet.

What Is A Methylator?

A methyl group is a molecule with one carbon and 3 hydrogen atoms. Methylation is simply adding or removing one of these molecules to a substance in our bodies.

In general, when a substance in our body receives a methyl molecule, this starts a reaction such as turning a gene on or activating an enzyme. When a substance loses a methyl group, the reaction stops.

Methylation Can Detoxify Our Liver

One of the methylation reactions is that methyl groups "turn on" detox reactions that detox the body of chemicals. We can get rid of the "bad" estrogen that has accumulated in the liver with methylation. Foods, herbs and supplements with methyl groups can detoxify our liver of the bad estrogens.

We need to have enough methylators in our diet to detoxify our liver of excess estrogen. Methylators include:

Betaine - used to aid digestion and can be found in sugar beets.
DMG Dimethylglycine - a derivative of the amino acid glycine and is a metabolic enhancer
MSM - (methyl sulfonyl methane) is a compound found naturally in foods such as cow's milk, meat, seafood, fruits and vegetables
SAMe - a compound formed naturally in the body from the essential amino acid methionine and adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the energy-producing compound found in all cells in the body.
Vitamin B6, B9
Methyl cobalamin B12 - Methylcobalamin is one of the two coenzyme forms of vitamin B12 (cyanocobalamin). Vitamin B12 plays an important role in red blood cells, prevention and treatment of anemia, methylation reactions, and immune system regulation.

Examples of food that can help with methylation in our diets are beets, gojiberries, and beet juice.

Removing The "Bad" Estrogens

In addition to detoxifying our livers with methylators, we still need to remove the bad estrogens from our bodies. Here are some foods and supplements that assist in removing the bad estrogens from our bodies

Bad Estrogen Removers:

Agaricus bisporos (button mushrooms)
Berries
Calcium D-glucanate (the gel like fiber of berries and other fruit)
Citrus essential oil
Citrus peel (lemon or lime)
Cruciferous vegetables
De-fatted flax
DIM (a metabolite of I-3-C)
Indole 3 carbinol (I-3-C)
Iodine – we generally need 13-15 mg per day
Lignin-rich foods and extracts such as white pine, birch white willow, maple and larch bark
Melatonin
Oats

Natural Aromatase Inhibitors

An additional issue can be when good natural hormones turn into bad hormones. Natural aromatase inhibitors can stop this process from happening. The following compounds block aromatization:

Passion flower
Chamomile
Nettle root (for men)
Soy extracts – genisten, daidzein
Resveratrol – from grapes
Oleuropein – found in all parts of the olive tree
Quercetin – found in onions, apple skins, berries, cruciferous vegetables

There is also medication available to inhibit aromatization. Arimidex is a medicine that is used to stop aromatization during breast cancer.