The Connection Between Diet Exercise and Hormones

Exercise, Hormone Diets Comments (2)

How are Diet, Exercise and Hormones Connected?

Unfortunately, dieting is not enough to maintain hormone levels, stay slim or lose weight at the age of menopause and andropause.  If you follow one of the hormone diets, whether it’s Dr. Oz‘s recommendations, Suzanne Somer’s Somersizing plan, or Dr. Natasha Turner‘s hormone diet or eat the low glycemic index Mediterranean diet, you are going to have to exercise as well.  Not only that, you will still probably have to supplement with nutritional supplements because of the loss of nutrients in food either because of soil depletion or cooking methods.  You will also have to exercise your muscles to increase your metabolism, build up muscle to combat muscle wasting and in turn, exercise your heart muscle to fight off heart disease.

Age management is not just a matter of dieting, in other words.  One has to make life style changes, diet changes, monitor hormone loss, replace lost hormones and exercise.  The benefits of exercising are many.  First and foremost, you are burning calories, boosting your metabolism and making your muscles stronger.  This helps you to look and feel better.  However, did you know that as a person grows older, you lose muscles, strength and endurance?  By the time we reach 50, we have lost up to 15% of muscle function, strength and mass.  After the age of 50, and by the age of 70, we lose even more of that muscle function, mass and strength.

Exercising is also great for strengthening your bones and fighting against the onset of osteoporosis.  Osteoporosis affects both women and men.  However, most don’t know that we have it.  There are no tell tale signs.  You need to have your bone strength tested by a doctor to determine if you have acquired this health problem.  Hips fractures are a dangerous problem which can cause death.  Diet, natural hormone supplementation and a variety of nutritional supplements, as well as exercising can help deal with osteoporosis.  What kind of exercising should you do to prevent osteoporosis?  Weight training is a great choice.  Weight training will help build stronger bones AND stronger muscles.

Even if we exercise frequently, the bad news is that muscle loss will still occur.  Combining diet and  natural supplements you need daily (this can be determined by speaking with a naturopath), balancing your hormones by replacing the hormones that are depleted, reducing inflammation, stress reduction and preventing damage to your body by free radicals can help to prevent loss of muscle mass, strength and function.

Exercising and a healthy hormone diet can also fight feelings of depression.  Many people eat unhealthy diets with too much sugar and too many carbohydrates when they feel lonely, bored or depressed.  Exercise will help fight these negative feelings because exercise causes a surge of hormones in the body that make us feel good.  Hormones such as oxytocin, the endorphins and serotonin help you to feel happier and reduce anxiety.  Exercising reduces stress and anxiety and thereby reduces cortisol hormone levels in the body.  Excess cortisol caused by stress and anxiety causes menopause weight gain – unwanted belly fat, slows down your metabolism, disrupts your sleep and speeds up muscle loss.  Dealing with your excess cortisol by reducing stress levels will help you to lose weight.  Can stress kill you?  The answer is yes because of the excessive amount of cortisol production. The benefits of exercising combined with one of the healthy hormone diets benefits the production of the “feel good hormones” and reduces the dangerous over-production of the hormone cortisol.

If you start on a hormone diet, start exercising gradually.  Exercises that will help and are good for you include yoga (excellent also for stress reduction), walking a half hour to 40 minutes a day, weight training and swimming.  Be sure not to over exercise because too much cardiovascular/aerobic exercise will raise your cortisol levels.  Include stretching and strengthening in your workout routine.

Connecting a hormone diet with exercise will not only strengthen your muscles, your heart and blood vessels will become stronger increasing blood flow and improving your circulation.  Your muscles and overall activity level will experience greater endurance.  Bones and the connective tissues will improve and strengthen.  Health wise, your risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, breast cancer, diabetes and stroke will decline dramatically.  Your lungs and respiratory muscles will strengthen, you won’t be having to catch your breath during workouts or just walking upstairs.  Exercise boosts immunity and increases you natural anti oxidant defenses.  Exercise will decrease your carbohydrate and sugar cravings and naturally decrease your appetite, another benefit to adding exercise to your life.  You will decrease the amount of estrogen in your body and avoid the dangers of excess estrogen.  These are the many, many benefits of adding an exercise routine to your life on a regular basis when you start and live by the hormone diet you choose.

Related Posts

• Hormone Diet Sabotage
• Suzanne Somers Hormone Diet
• Menopause Weight Gain

G. Broker @ May 15, 2010