Mental Health + Hormones: Part 2
Welcome to week two looking at connections between our hormones and our mental health. This week we are looking at how our relationship with food can impact our overall mental wellbeing as well as the balance and production of hormones in our bodies. This is something that is especially important in disordered eating.
What do you think of when you think about food?
Do you see it as something stressful? Do you see it as something just associated with weight? Do you see it as energy? Do you see it as a way to support your body?
When there is stress around food it is often hard understand how nutrition impacts your body. It is hard to understand that the low energy that you feel could be from the food that you are eating or not eating. It is hard to see that the worsening anxiety could be from not hitting nutritional requirements. It is hard to see that changes in your hormones – whether reproductive hormones, metabolic hormones, or stress hormones, can be from not having the nutrients to support the production of these hormones. Let’s take a closer look at our reproductive hormones.
How Hormones are Made
All of our different hormones including both stress hormones and reproductive hormones are made from cholesterol. In addition to cholesterol, our body requires many different nutrients and cofactors to convert cholesterol into hormones. This can include things such as different B vitamins, zinc, and magnesium just to name a few. All of these building blocks are things we primarily get from food.
What Happens in Undereating?
When we are under eating or manipulating food we might not be getting the appropriate amount of cholesterol to make hormones at all. In the same way if we do not have enough zinc or B vitamins we will not be able to turn this cholesterol into resources that our body can use. All in all, inadequate or inappropriate nutrition can prevent us from creating hormones we need even if the resources are available.
This can lead to conditions such as PMS, loss of a period, hormonal imbalances and burnout. As we talked about last week, when we don’t have enough estrogen and progesterone it can cause a whole slew of symptoms throughout our body and our mind. Being able to make reproductive hormones is one of the ways that we keep our ENTIRE body and mind healthy.
The hard truth is that if we are not getting ENOUGH nutrition we will not be able to keep our hormones in balance and we WILL start to experience the plethora of symptoms that come from a reproductive hormone imbalance. This includes further intensification of any existing mental health experiences including anxiety and depression. This cycle can further make the eating patterns and stress around food worse.
In this sense eating disorders can create a dangerous cycle with our hormones and our mental health.
As we restrict food to try to make ourselves feel better we are also depriving of bodies of the nutrients that allow our body to make hormones and neurotransmitters. When we are unable to make adequate amounts of our hormones and neurotransmitters our body is not able to balance our nervous system, which leads to increases in anxiety. This can lead to further restriction and manipulation around food to try and cope with this increased anxiety. This leads to further physical imbalances and the cycle continues driving us deeper into this cycle of anxiety and depression than when things first began.
To stop this cycle, you need to begin to change the perception around food. This means looking at food as the building blocks for our hormones, neurotransmitters, and as the tools for our organ systems to run properly. For those with disordered eating this is not as simple as it seems and further support might be needed.
Please do not hesitate to reach out to our team of NDs for support with disordered eating and hormone support.
If you have any questions please feel free to reach out and one of our Naturopathic Doctors would be more than happy to assist you!
Ready to make a change?
Remember that you are not alone in this. Support for mental well-being is available through Naturopathic Medicine and many other tools. I am always sending so much love and support. If you’d like to learn more about how Naturopathic Medicine can help, you can book a free 15 minute consult with me.
Sending so much love,
Dr. Alexandra Sisam, ND