Balancing your hormones is an essential part of a woman’s overall fertility health. With the vast amount of information and tools available today, there are many ways for women to take control of their health and manage their hormones at home.
What Role Do Hormones Play in Female Fertility?
Hormones play a major role in fertility health. The endocrine system sends hormones to deliver messages to cells in the body to manage bodily processes. Food, stress, exercise, toxins, weight fluctuations and other factors all affect the body’s hormone levels, in turn also negatively affect fertility if hormones are not balanced.
Continue reading to learn more about the relationship between hormones and fertility, and how to naturally balance your hormones for optimal fertility health.
What hormones are responsible for fertility health?
Optimal fertility hormones and hormone levels vary from men to women. Let’s take a look at which hormones play key roles in fertility.
For women, the following hormones are important for fertility health: estradiol (E2 estrogen, progesterone, luteinizing hormone (LH), follicle stimulating hormone (FSH), cortisol, androgens, DHEA (dehydroepiandrosterone) and testosterone. The anti-mullerian hormone level is also important to test while on your fertility journey because it determines the viability of a woman’s egg reserve for pregnancy.
Meanwhile, important fertility hormones in men include estrogen, progesterone, luteinizing hormone (LH), follicle stimulating hormone (FSH), cortisol and DHEA.
Learn about the signs and symptoms of hormonal imbalance here.
How to Optimize Your Hormones for Fertility the Natural Way
Although every person’s body is different and has individualized hormonal needs, there are foods, vitamins and stress-relieving activities that provide hormone-balancing benefits.
Balanced Foods for Balanced Fertility
A common cause of hormonal imbalances is poor nutrition. A lack of whole foods, eating a high amount of processed foods, eating too much or not enough, and not eating not eating enough of each macronutrients – carbohydrates, proteins and fats – can all throw off hormonal balance and can cause inflammation in the gut.
You can start taking a closer look at your diet by writing down typical staple foods in your daily routine. Seek out gaps you notice where whole foods can be added to begin eating a more well-rounded diet. Potentially harmful substances such as excessive amounts of caffeine and alcohol also negatively affect your hormonal processes.
Supplemental Vitamins for Hormone Imbalances
Along with aiming to maintain a well-balanced diet, vitamin and mineral supplements can be helpful in regulating hormones in the body.
Bumpify, a complete prenatal and fertility supplement, can be helpful for supporting overall fertility hormone balancing. This formula also works to counteract the hormonal effects of pre-diabetic or diabetic women who are trying to conceive.
Consult a physician to explore which vitamin complexes might be best for your needs.
Stress-Relieving Activities to Enable Conception
As the body reacts to the mind, stress greatly impacts your body’s hormone levels.
If the amount of the stress hormone, cortisol, gets too high, this disrupts many bodily processes.
Practice stress-relieving activities such as yoga, acupuncture, meditation, moderate exercise, and sexual intercourse.
What If Home Hormone Balancing Is Not Enough?
There is only so much you can control on your own, and sometimes, making every positive lifestyle change suggested is not enough for couples to conceive naturally. If this is your situation, the next step you should take is to make an appointment with a fertility specialist to explore other options available in your fertility journey.
With the guidance of your doctor, you and your partner may consider taking fertility hormone tests, or beginning fertility treatments such as In Vitro Fertilization (IVF).
How to Best Monitor Your Fertility Levels at Home
Innovative Health Diagnostics (IHD) is here to support the fertility needs of individuals and healthcare providers by offering simple, affordable and accurate at-home hormone testing.
Our team offers the Anti-Mullerian Hormone Test as mentioned above, to give women the necessary additional information on their fertility hormone levels. At-home hormone testing like this can help ensure individuals make the next best healthcare decisions for their fertility planning needs.
Contact Us today for more information on the tests we offer.