Stressful Thoughts Can Trigger Cortisol Hormone Production

Although short, intermittent bursts of cortisol helped our ancestors survive and still come to our aid today, prolonged exposure to stress hormones can have devastating effects to your health and well-being. Stress is your body's response to feeling threatened. Often called the stress hormone because of its connection to your stress response mechanism, your stress-response mechanism is not always provoked by real circumstances. Simple stressful thoughts can also activate metabolic pathways that lead to weight gain and insulin resistance.

Are you guilty of squeezing more work and play into your day?

Hormones have no chance to work properly without you getting a good night's sleep. Medical research suggests women need 8 to 10 hours of sleep at night to maintain hormonal balance and avoid symptoms, such as:

• Weight loss resistance
• Mood swings, PMS, depression
• Fatigue and lack of energy
• Chronic insomnia
• Infertility and irregular periods

When you lose sleep, you really can't catch up. If humans go much more than eighteen hours without sleep, they can "zone out" for a few seconds (known as micro sleep). It's a myth that you need less sleep as you age. Sleep disorders are just that common in older individuals.

Avoid One-Size-Fits-All Menu Plans

Everybody has a unique and complex chemical and biological makeup that best benefits from a customized or personalized menu plan. Estrogen, testosterone, adrenaline and insulin are important chemical messengers that work together to control the level of hormones circulating throughout your body. Often your body sends you important messages that you need to make changes in how you eat, sleep or manage stress. There are several things you can and should do to improve your hormonal balance. Eating the right food and supplementing your nutritional intake top the list. Contact Metabolic Research Center for a FREE consultation to discuss a hormone balancing approach to restoring your well-being.