Keep a watch on the following symptoms to keep your hormonal balance in check:
- Appetite and Weight Gain: You may gain weight during hormonal shift, such as menopause.
- Sudden Weight Loss: Your thyroid gland helps control how fast your body turns food into fuel. When it makes too many hormones, your weight can drop.
- Irregular Periods: Irregular periods are symptoms of PCOS. It means that certain hormones are too high or too low.
- Sleep Problems: Progesterone helps you catch sleep. Low level of estrogen can trigger hot flashes and night sweats.
- Chronic Acne: An excess of androgen can cause oil glands to produce more oil. It can also affect the skin cells. Both of these things can clog your pores and cause acne.
- Dry Skin: A shift in hormones can leave your skin parched. A thyroid issue is to blame.
- Brain Fog: Changes in estrogen and progesterone can make your head feel foggy and makes it harder to remember things.
- Belly Problems: Increased levels of estrogen and progesterone can cause diarrhea, stomach pain, bloating and nausea.
- Ongoing Fatigue: Excess progesterone can make you sleepy. If your thyroid makes too little hormone, it can also sap your energy.
- Night Sweats: Low estrogen is the cause of night sweats.
- Mood Swings & Depression: Estrogen affects key brain chemicals like serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine causing mood swings and depression.
- Hair Loss & Thinning Hair: Drop in estrogen causes testosterone to have a bigger impact resulting in thinning of hair and hair loss.
- Headaches: Drop in estrogen is the major cause of headaches.
- Thirst: When the level of estrogen and progesterone changes, you find yourself more thirsty than usual.
Sadia Salman
Sadia Salman is a certified nutritionist from Tufts University, USA and the CEO of Diet by Design(Int’l). She has over seven years of experience in treating patients with various health issues through food both in Pakistan and in Canada. Most of her work is on managing diseases like hypertension, cholesterol, diabetes etc through weight management. She believes in building a healthy community by educating the masses in any capacity that she can.