Three Things I’m Doing to Heal My Hormones and Take Back My Health

If you missed the first part of this mini health series click here. I shared how I’ve been dealing with hormonal imbalances for 10+ years now, how I’ve poured thousands of dollars into multiple doctors trying to get help, and how I’ve been stuck in the same place all of these years, if not worse up until this point…and still NO ANSWERS.

I’m sharing more intimately about this journey because so many women have messaged me about their health. Many of us are in a similar spot with our hormones being all over the place, not resting well at night, a wrecked gut, constipation, infertility, hair loss, heart palpitations, weight gain and/or overweight. The list goes on and on. Friend, this is not what God intended for our bodies. He made our bodies to WORK for us. WHY are so many of us dealing with bodies that are NOT working for us?

Well, here is an easy answer for you. OUR MODERN WORLD DOES NOT SUPPORT OUR HORMONES. It’s that simple. From too much time indoors, to blue light screens late at night, to processed food and an overabundance of sugar. It’s all wrecking our hormones.

I didn’t realize this until I started doing the research. And when I did, it’s all making SO MUCH sense. Think about the days shortly after creation when the earth was new and not so tainted. Think about just 200 years ago. What was different for the average person…say Ma and Pa Ingalls?

They worked hard to sustain their daily life. They ate from the land. Food was unadultered and not littered with chemicals. There were meal times and not snack times. Sweets and treats were few and far in between. There were times of plenty, and there were very lean times. There were no screens. After a long, hard day of work, they were ready to eat together and sit around the fire for some family time of reading or music, and then they fell into bed EARLY for a good night’s sleep. The next morning they woke up well rested and naturally with or just before sunrise…no alarm clocks for them!

Now let’s think about a typical day for the modern mom. She may hit the snooze on her alarm. She is not well rested at all, but realizes it’s time to get up when she hears the toddler awake in the next room. She grabs her phone real quick to check her email. She meant to be 5 mintes. 30 minutes later after scrolling Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, she realizes she better get moving or the kids will be screaming at her for breakfast. She rushes down to the kitchen and pulls out a box of cereal, sticks the kids in front of the TV while they eat so she can finish up her scrolling. Whatever the plans are for the day, it all takes place INSIDE, so none of the family is getting any sunshine or fresh air whatsoever. Lunch is the quickest thing she can grab. Ramen noodles work for today. Chores consist of some dusting, sweeping the floors, and washing a few dishes…nothing too hard at all. Her day passes quickly with the children, but when they go down for a nap, out comes that phone again. 2 hours pass by in minutes! She meant to take a nap because she’s so tired! Now the kids are up, and they need a snack ASAP, and it’s about time to start preparing dinner. But she wasted so much time on her phone, that she forgot she was going to fold laundry and thaw the meat! Shoot! She’ll have to just make a box of Mac and Cheese for the kiddos since dad won’t be home for dinner. She can eat that too. Back in front of the TV the kids go so they don’t interrupt her while she’s in the kitchen. It’s starting to get dark already, dad’s not home, so a movie sounds like a really fun thing to do during dinner with the kids. It will keep them preoccupied at least. After the movie, the kids are a wreck because they don’t want to turn it off. It’s baths and bed for them. She doesn’t have the energy to deal with the chaos. Not tonight. No relationship building time around the table or fire. To bed they go, and now to clean up the kitchen and catch up on the laundry that didn’t get done during the day. After that’s done, she decides to watch her own special show in bed. Around midnight she shuts it down and tries to get to sleep, but she’s too wired! When she finally does get to sleep it’s a fitful sleep at best…certainly not restful. And now she’s gotta do it all over again tomorrow! Sigh.

That seriously sounds like a miserable life, yet it is the life so many are living today!

What is the difference between the productive, satisfactory Ma and Pa life and the hamster wheel modern life? Let’s think through this. There is limited physical labor or exercise. Little to no time outside in the sunshine and fresh air. Hormone disrupting food and snacks. Unproductive. Too much screen time…especially late at night or early in the morning. Lack of relationship building. No energy. Terrible sleep. Not rested upon waking.

If you take the time to research it, you will find that each one of these things listed above that we are doing or not doing has a MAJOR effect on our hormones!

Many times when we want to fix our health, we just want to change our diet. JUST TELL ME WHAT TO EAT! This is literally what every single doctor and nutritionist has told me. But I’m learning that THE WAY WE LIVE OUR LIVES EVERY SINGLE DAY can either support or disrupt or hormones!

The Lord truly has given us all we need for life and health…and best of all it’s all FREE!

So what are the three things I’m doing to heal my hormones and take back my health? Let’s talk about them!

CIRCADIAN RHYTHM

I know. It sounds weird, right?! I had never heard of this before until one of my dear readers told me about it and how much it has changed her life. If someone I “know,” tells me how much it has changed her life and shows me real, tangible results, I’m game for at least looking into it. I’ve tried everything else, why not try this too?!

However, I was just fascinated when I started doing the research. WOW!

Circadian Rhythm in Christian layman’s terms is to get outside and enjoy God’s beautiful creation, and live your life the way God intended you to live it! Haha! Yes! Literally it’s that simple!

The doctors and promoters of this style of living are not Christians believe it or not. They are very loud evolutionists. You’ll hear a lot of words such as primal, and instict, and evolved. However, when you take their research and look at it through a Biblical worldview, it makes SO MUCH SENSE! God truly knew what He was doing when He made the human body, and nothing, down to the teeniest cell, is by accident!

Sunlight and being outside is very important in a Circadian lifestyle. The rising of the sun and the different spectrums of sunlight throughout the day signal your body to make certain hormones at certain times. It makes sense then that if you are getting little to no sunlight throughout the day, your body is missing out on the signals to produce these hormones! No wonder so many of us have hormones that are all over the place!

The studies about blue light on our screens have been so fascinating to read. When you look at your phone first thing in the morning, it has the same light signal as the middle of a summer day. Your body then tries to pump out a bunch of cortisol thinking it’s noon in mid-June, when really it’s 7:00 am in late November! And imagine looking at that same light at 11:00 at night when your body is supposed to be producing melatonin for a good night sleep, and instead it’s cranking up the cortisol! We are literally confusing our bodies! It makes so much sense why we are dealing with so many hormonal imbalances!

I could go on and on. There really is too much to say in one small blog post, but here are the simple changes I’ve made in my daily life to live more of a Circadian lifestyle.

1. Wake up and get outside to watch the sun rise each morning with a naked eye (no glasses or contacts). This signals your body to shut down melatonin and start producing cortisol very slowly. (You don’t have to watch the actual sunrise. You just need the light.)
2. Quit the phone and screens in the early mornings and nights. (If I do have to be on a screen, I try to do it OUTSIDE, where the sunlight offsets the bright blue light.)
3. Break my fast with a high protein low carb (or no carb) breakfast to stabalize blood sugar.
4. Get outside often throughout the day to get as much sunlight as possible.
5. Eat dinner 3-4 hours before bed.
6. Prioritize sleep!

It’s that simple! Enjoy God’s creation and stay off the phone especially when it’s dark outside. Later, I’ll share my results after just 6 weeks of Circadian Rhythm!

You can search YouTube for information about Circadian Rhythm, but I’ve been learning mostly from Sarah Kleiner. She’s got a lot of great quick and easy info on her instagram account as well: @sarahkleinerwellness

FASTING

I’m not super into fasting (as in the trendy fasting for health and weight loss…not talking about biblical fasting), but if you put two and two together, you’ll see that with the Circadian lifestyle, you are naturally fasting from dinner (which is supposed to be eaten as close to sunset as possible) to breakfast the next morning.

After realizing that I was intermittant fasting without really trying, I decided to do a little more research into fasting as well. I had heard great things about the book, Fast Like a Girl, so I grabbed it last week.

To be honest, I wasn’t really interested in the fasting part of the title as much as I was interested in the sub-title talking about healing your hormones.

I zipped through it in a week. It was so good. Like I said, I really didn’t care much for the fasting portions of the book. But I was very intrigued by the amount of information given about how your hormones work, and how you can eat differently throughout your cycle to actually support and heal your hormones! Whoa! Every woman needs to know this information!

Circadian Fasting is still fasting with a little bit of a twist. You don’t want to skip that first high protein meal of the day within an hour of sunrise, as that is another “circadian signal” to get those hormones moving for the day just like that morning sunlight is. Instead of fasting from after dinner to mid day or early afternoon as is typical for intermittant fasting, you just adjust your times to eat your last meal EARLIER, fast whatever number of hours you are wanting to, and then break your fast in the morning. It’s still fasting, just a different time of day than is normal for the intermittant fasting world.

Anyways, I’m still learning about this one and not utilizing it as much as I probably could, but I am getting a good 13-15 hours of daily fasting in naturally just by following the Circadian Rhythm lifestyle.

ANNA’S WILD YAM CREAM

(By the way, have you noticed that not one of these lifestyle changes up to this point have cost me a cent!? This cream is the first thing I’m using that I actually spent money on!)

Anna’s Wild Yam cream is a progesterone stimulant. Unlike other progesterone creams out there, you are not putting synthetic progesterone onto your body. The herbs in this cream actually stimulate your body to MAKE it’s OWN progesterone. You must listen to Barbara O’Neill’s talk about hormones. She explains what it does well. And the reviews about this are just insane!

Now that I’ve done a lot more research since ordering the cream, I can understand why and how it would work so well! Bottom line, our bodies need progesterone for so many things…number one of those things being a healthy cycle!

Stress kills progesterone! And besides the stress of our normal daily lives, just think of all the added stress we are putting on our bodies that I mentioned above…the blue light, the processed food, the limited outside time! No wonder we are all dealing with hormonal issues!

And get this…with low or no progesterone, you will have terrible PMS symptoms AND your body will be unable to hold a fertile egg. Whoa! PMS and infertility…two of my symptoms right there!

I’m telling you, this research has just been so fascinating! And what has been fun for my mathmatical brain is that I’ve had all the bloodwork and saliva and stool tests done, so whenever I read about such and such number being low, I run up and check my test numbers for that particular thing, and sure enough, they are low! But through all this research, I am finally understanding the why behind my numbers, and I’m finding tools to FIX those numbers! Praise the Lord!!!!

P.S. If you buy the Anna’s Wild Yam Cream, keep in mind that it will take 2-3 months to get to you because it’s backordered. It almost feels like a scam! But I promise, it will come! You just have to be patient!

I’ve been living this life for six weeks. SIX WEEKS!!! That’s all!!! Why would anyone tell you about something only six weeks in? Because I’m seeing progress. And progress after 6 weeks’ time is insane when there has been NO PROGRESS in six YEARS’ time! It’s something to get excited about! Two months ago, I couldn’t get through a day without a nap. And here I am at 2:30 in the afternoon typing away on my computer feeling just fine! Wow!

I look forward to keeping you updated about seeing if all these simple changes are truly the answer I’ve needed all along. But something tells me they are, because the Lord is perfect in wisdom and knowledge and has created His world with the tools we need for our health and hormones! How have I missed this for so long?!

SIX WEEK RESULTS AFTER IMPLEMENTING THESE THREE THINGS

Below you’ll find my “journal” of results throughout these last six weeks. I find it best to keep some sort of a journal of symptoms while you are trying to heal your body because sometimes it feels like you aren’t making any progress or maybe even regressing, and if you look back at what you’ve written down, you’ll see that you are still ahead of where you started.

Week 1

My sleep cycle corrected within 2-3 days of watching the sunrise. Unbelievable! I have wakened naturally without my alarm every day since. Before this, I was turning off my alarm and sleeping 30-45 minutes past and waking up frustrated that it was so late, and not well-rested. Now, I’m waking up well before it ready and raring to go! I’ve noticed that I feel really amazing all morning long. A year ago I was dragging from the time I woke up to the time I went to bed.

Week 2

Noticeable change in my energy levels. Up until this point, I have taken a daily nap. This whole entire week I haven’t needed a nap! Insane!

I didn’t realize that I had any issues with sleeping, but there is also a noticeable difference in my sleep quality. I am sleeping very deeply and wake up refreshed and not still tired.

And before, I took quite awhile to fall asleep. Whereas now, I’m out in just a couple minutes. One other thing, I’m basically ready for bed by 9. I used to be a “night owl,” now I’m feeling I MUST be in bed for sure before 10 if not by 9:30. Crazy!

Week 3

I was a little nervous about this week just because we went out of town on a vacation, and every time we ever go on a trip, I completely wreck any sort of diet or health plan I am following!

I continued to watch the Florida sunrise every morning, which was so beautiful there on the water, I didn’t want to miss it anyways! We spent a TON of time outdoors because the weather was so beautiful. I continued with a high protein breakfast as best as I could. I did have more carbs than I normally would at home, but it’s vacation! I did my best with my other meals as well, but I did have some gluten, which I don’t normally have.

HOWEVER, this is probably the best I have ever felt on vacation! I was not constipated all week long (even after eating gluten!) like I normally am on a trip, and two weeks out, I can confidently say, I did not fall off of the bandwagon once we returned home! Neither did I gain any weight after all of the good eating we did! Woohoo!

I was very encouraged after this trip!

Week 4

This week I started my cycle. I had absolutely NO PMS, and was surprised when my cycle showed up! HUGE WIN! (Chalking this one up to Anna’s Wild Yam Cream.) However, I was miserably tired the first few days of my cycle and needed a nap again pretty much every day. You stop applying Anna’s Wild Yam cream on your cycle, so I wondered if the tiredness was simply from not wearing the cream. Does it really make that much difference?! I could not wait to start it again!

Week 5

I broke out in an itchy rash centered on the insides of my arms and legs, but also spread to my neck and chest area and has been hanging around all week. I have never had a rash other than maybe once or twice as a toddler. So this is very weird for me. I have three theories, and I’m not sure which is right, so I will be monitering the appearance of a rash closely in the next couple of months.

One, it showed up about an hour or two after I ate some preseasoned pork. I have not consumed any sort of preseasoned food in a very, very long time so it could possibly be something that was in the seasoning that I had an allergic reaction to. (However, this has never happened before.)

Two, I started applying the Anna’s Wild Yam Cream again on day 5 of my cycle as the directions stated. The rash showed up a couple days later. I did use the cream without any sort of issues the previous month. This would be devastating if the cream was the cause!

Thirdly, I’ve read that as your body heals from certain conditions, it can shed toxins which will show itself in the form of many things including even a rash. I’m really hoping it’s the third option and it’s a sign of my body healing! (After finishing the book Fast Like a Girl, I am almost positive that this is the case.)

In good news, I’ve taken great strides with my constipation in the last week or two, so that is HUGE! Going 3 times a week is major progress from the 7-10 days it used to be.

Thanksgiving was this week. Holidays are another time I haven’t ever been able to stay “on plan.” Thanksgiving morning I woke up and had my sunrise and high protein breakfast. Then I ate a huge lunch and not much dinner. I did have way more sugar than usual, but cut off eating around 6:30 and didn’t eat anything after that.

I did not sleep well that night…probably from the larger amount of sugar and chocolate than normal. And Black Friday is the first day that I actually slept up until my alarm went off. But that’s ok, because I still did not miss sunrise! I have gone to bed late almost every night this week (as I’m sure we all have with the busyness,) and each morning I’ve woken up later and later. But again, haven’t missed a sunrise, so I’m confident that the sleep will correct itself within a few days of getting myself into bed early!

Week 6

Sleep has corrected itself, and I’m waking earlier than my alarm.

Appetite Correction. This is kind of crazy, and only something I’ve read about, but am just now seeing. Nutritionists and doctors have told me I need to eat every 2-3 hours because of my functional hypoglycemia. But in the cirdadian world, that is a huge no-no. They say your appetite should correct itself within a few weeks after starting this lifestyle. You have to take it slow if you are used to eating 8 times a day. Well, that happened slowly over the last six weeks, but this week, I am down to three meals a day with no snacking in between! Whaaaat!

There have not been any other signs of significant progress this week. One day, I had a bad headache all day and felt sick to my stomach. However, by the evening, I felt just fine.

I felt really light one day, like I had lost some weight, so I decided to get on the scale, which I don’t do very often. I have not lost an ounce in six weeks time, BUT I haven’t gained an ounce either…even through vacation and Thanksgiving, so I’m calling that a win! I’m wondering if feeling thinner and lighter is due to inflammation going down, but I’m confident the extra pounds will come off as my body continues to heal.

Final Thoughts

There are good days and bad days. Some days I need a nap, and some days I don’t. Some days I feel amazing, while other days I’m still dragging. But when I compare my life to a year ago when I was miserable, I can be thankful for the small progress. Am I healed? No. But I think I can confidently say, I am healing. And that is something to be so, so excited about!

A final thought I’ll leave you with from the book Fast Like a Girl:

AM I LIVING A LIFE THAT IS WORKING WITH MY HORMONES, OR AGAINST THEM?

Praying you find answers to your hormone issues too!

Sarah