How Hormones Affect Your Health

From Puberty to the Pause

Your hormone story began when you were in your mother’s womb. As a growing fetus your hormones were higher than they will ever be again. All those hormones helped you grow from a tiny zygote to a newborn baby. At birth, you entered a hormonal slump. Although growth occurs, hormones are naturally low in childhood. But at puberty, your hormones entered a fantastic rollercoaster.

First your adrenals started pumping out high levels of DHEA—a hormone needed to metabolize protein and fat for you to grow rapidly. DHEA converted to testosterone and hair began sprouting on your body and you developed body odor. DHEA then converted to estrogen and your breasts budded. A couple years later, your ovaries woke up and you had your first period.

During this time your pancreas began pumping out glucagon to release stored baby fat and insulin to fuel your pubescent growth. A couple years after menarche, your growth hormone levels peaked and you reached your full adult height. Then your thyroid hormone levels reached a plateau to maintain your new young adult metabolism.

Perimenopause follows the same pattern as puberty, but in the opposite direction!

As we came in thus we go out….

First your adrenals falter. Stress greatly affects you and you get tired easily.
Then your ovaries slow down. Your periods become heavier, irregular, you begin skipping periods. You become moody, irritable, and forgetful. Then fat! Because your pancreas is producing more and more insulin to keep up with the Change and eventually you become insulin resistant.

Then your growth hormone levels drop and you just don’t heal as quickly. You do not recover from exercise or a late night out like you did when you were younger. Finally your thyroid slows way down. Why? Because you cannot have a high metabolism with low hormones….you would literally implode.


Hormones Also Affect Your Digestion and Detoxification



We are what we eat…literally.

We all know that protein builds muscle and that carbohydrates are energy foods, but did you know that every chemical you make, every hormone, every neurotransmitter, every cytokine, all come from nutrients derived from the food you eat?

If your diet does not provide all the nutrients necessary to run your system, then something has to go…Usually those parts of your body that are not crucial for life--your skin, your hair, your nails.  Your internal health is directly related to your external appearance.

Hormones are made up of protein and fat…specifically cholesterol. In fact, “steroid” hormones are derived from the “sterol” in cholesterol. When you reach middle age and your hormones begin to decline, your cholesterol naturally rises in response. Your liver is just trying to help out your failing ovaries!

Food is digested into protein, fat, and carbohydrates. These macronutrients provide calories and building blocks for new tissues and biochemicals like hormones. Micronutrients are the vitamins and minerals that help run the system. If you cannot digest your food properly, break it down into absorbable macronutrients and assimilate it into essential micronutrients, then you cannot produce adequate hormones to remain healthy.

Your liver and kidneys are organs that detoxify your body. They need energy from food (mostly carbohydrates) and essential amino acids (from protein) and essential fatty acids (from fats) to do their job. They also require micronutrients to run the detoxification pathways. It’s an incredibly complicated system -- One that most health care providers ignore.  

Years ago I was attending a medical conference. The physician presenter was lecturing on the drug interactions between a blood thinner and Tylenol. After the lecture, I asked: where in the hepatic detoxification pathways were the interactions occurring? When he didn’t answer, I clarified by asking specifically about phase I enzyme interactions versus phase II conjugation issues. As if I was speaking a different language, he said very slowly and very loudly, “I am a lung doctor, not a liver doctor.”

I replied, “Doctor, don’t all your ‘lung’ patients have livers? So wouldn’t it behoove you and your patients to know what detoxification pathways are affected? That way you can advise your patients on what foods, herbs, and supplements to also avoid.”  

He shook his head. “I just check their blood levels frequently.”

And his patients are dependent on him not to bleed to death!

Now I know that as a layperson, you probably do not have a clue about the hepatic detoxification pathways but I expected my esteemed colleague to understand. We learned this basic physiology in our undergraduate pre-med training. Yet so few of us utilize knowledge of biochemistry in our clinical practices. And it is SO VERY IMPORTANT!

That’s why as a patient you need to know how your body works so you can make the healthiest choices. Knowledge is power and very well may save your life.


I keep my Hormones in Harmony® and optimize my digestion, detoxification and metabolism by taking Genesis Gold® . So even the Pause is just another Joyous Transformation!

Genesis Gold - Creation in a Bottle

Balance takes Time

Hormonal transitions like perimenopause, andropause, even aging can be very challenging especially with the change in metabolism. You gain weight and lose muscle tone. You sleep poorly and have trouble handling stress. You have low energy, low sex drive, low motivation. 

And you want to feel better now... yet balance comes with time 

Everything that lasts takes its own sweet time to ripen and mature.

Your current state of health did not happen overnight. Who you are now is a result of years of choices. Lifestyle choices including what you eat, when you sleep, how much activity you get, what toxins you've been exposed to, even your belief systems affect your health.

I created Genesis Gold to help our bodies heal naturally.

Choosing to take Genesis Gold is making a commitment to your future health. For those newly ill, most recently out of balance, it may take weeks or months to optimize their health. For those out of balance for many years, it'll take longer. 

It's like making the choice to quit smoking. Let's say you've smoked a pack a day for thirty years.  You feel worse before you feel better. You cough up pretty yucky stuff as your lungs clear out years of toxicity. It'll take at least thirty months to restore healthy lung function. 

Same with Genesis Gold. Most people find it when their health is truly challenged. Oftentimes they've tried many therapies before finding my website, reading an article, or being referred by a friend. I counsel them that according to how long they've been ill is reflected by how long it'll take to restore wellness.

Those who commit to taking Genesis Gold as their daily foundational support will keep optimizing their health. 



Which product should you take— Genesis Gold or Sacred Seven?

Genesis Gold has adaptogenic herbs to help support your adrenals, sea vegetation to support your thyroid, whole plant nutrients to optimize digestion, detoxification, immunity and energy production as well as the Sacred Seven amino acids to balance your hypothalamus. Genesis Gold provides foundational support for lasting change. 

Adding extra Sacred Seven to Genesis Gold for the first few months or during times of extreme stress will provide the hypothalamus with extra support to speed the healing process. 

 Remember - Balance comes with time.

After eighteen years of no menses, it took two months of taking Sacred Seven before I had my first normal period. Yet not until I started taking Genesis Gold was I able to stop taking all the other supplementation to support digestion, detoxification, and hormone metabolism. And when I began the menopausal roller coaster a few years ago, I added back Sacred Seven to my Genesis Gold to help me flow through this hormonal challenge as gracefully as possible.

Hormones in Harmony Videos are Now Available!

In my 25 years of practicing Intuitive Integrative Medicine, I have found that the biological roots of dis-ease often lie in miscommunication within the neuro-immune-endocrine system. Your neurotransmitters, immune cytokines, and endocrine hormones communicate directly with your DNA. And your DNA dances to the song of the hormones. 

In these videos I share how to keep your biochemistry in balance in order to express your optimal genetic potential. In other words, be as healthy and vital as you can possibly be!

The same information I share with my patients for less than a tenth of the price.

HORMONES IN HARMONY—THE SECRET TO OPTIMAL HEALTH

	In this two hour video, Deborah Maragopoulos MN FNP-BC presents her pearls of healing wisdom for Women through life’s transitions—from puberty to menopause and beyond. How to keep all your Hormones in Harmony including adrenal, thyroid and glucose metabolism. How to balance mood, increase vitality, thrive in the most stressful situations. Are you ripe to receive the gifts of the Divine Feminine? Hormones in Harmony® Video -The Secret to Women's Optimal Health
	Deborah Maragopoulos MN FNP, Intuitive Integrative Medicine Nurse Practitioner, presents her pearls of wisdom regarding: Physical Fitness and Growth Hormone, Sexual Health and Testosterone, Stress and Cortisol, Heart Health and Insulin, Diet, Cholesterol, and Hormones. Hormones in Harmony® Video -The Secret to Men's Optimal Health
	Our most intimate relationships are at the root of our experience of life.They are the basis of our joy and our pain. And more so our relationships provide a foundation for our deepest soul growth. Living in Sacred Relationships with your spouse, your lover, your children, your family, your friends, your co-workers, your community, animals, plants, especially Mother Earth is an art and profoundly healing way of being for all consciousness. In this video, Deborah celebrates the LoveDance of Sacred Relationships with you! The Secret to Sacred Relationships Video

 

Hormones Affect Your Health

Excerpt from The Survival Guide for the Hormonally Challenged Woman

As the interface between the energy of the environment and the matter of your body, hormones affect everything ~ Your moods, your memory, your metabolism.

Your appearance, your aging, your appetite. Your sleep patterns, your stress response, your sex drive. Everything.

When I refer to hormones, I mean all the body’s messengers—the traditional hormones of the endocrine system, the neurotransmitters of the neurological system and the cytokines of the immune system. All of these act as hormones affecting everything we do, everything we feel, everything we think.

Living in today’s fast paced, high-stressed world of the interminable electric light and too many manmade carbohydrates create havoc with our hormones.

Think of the hormones as the software program of the human computer. Many of us are so Hormonally Challenged—sick, aging, tired, or just plain stressed out—that we need a software update.

From Puberty to the Pause

Your hormone story began when you were in your mother’s womb. As a growing fetus your hormones were higher than they will ever be again. All those hormones helped you grow from a tiny zygote to a newborn baby. At birth, you entered a hormonal slump. Although growth occurs, hormones are naturally low in childhood. But at puberty, your hormones entered a fantastic rollercoaster.

First your adrenals started pumping out high levels of DHEA—a hormone needed to metabolize protein and fat for you to grow rapidly. DHEA converted to testosterone and hair began sprouting on your body and you developed body odor. DHEA then converted to estrogen and your breasts budded. A couple years later, your ovaries woke up and you had your first period.

During this time your pancreas began pumping out glucagon to release stored baby fat and insulin to fuel your pubescent growth. A couple years after menarche, your growth hormone levels peaked and you reached your full adult height. Then your thyroid hormone levels reached a plateau to maintain your new young adult metabolism.

Perimenopause follows the same pattern as puberty, but in the opposite direction!

As we came in thus we go out….

First your adrenals falter. Stress greatly affects you and you get tired easily.

Then your ovaries slow down. Your periods become heavier, irregular, you begin skipping periods. You become moody, irritable, and forgetful. Then fat! Because your pancreas is producing more and more insulin to keep up with the Change and eventually you become insulin resistant.

Then your growth hormone levels drop and you just don’t heal as quickly. You do not recover from exercise or a late night out like you did when you were younger. Finally your thyroid slows way down. Why? Because you cannot have a high metabolism with low hormones….you would literally implode.

Hormones Also Affect Your Digestion and Detoxification

We are what we eat…literally. 

We all know that protein builds muscle and that carbohydrates are energy foods, but did you know that every chemical you make, every hormone, every neurotransmitter, every cytokine, all come from nutrients derived from the food you eat? 

If your diet does not provide all the nutrients necessary to run your system, then something has to go…Usually those parts of your body that are not crucial for life--your skin, your hair, your nails.  Your internal health is directly related to your external appearance.

Hormones are made up of protein and fat…specifically cholesterol. In fact, “steroid” hormones are derived from the “sterol” in cholesterol. When you reach middle age and your hormones begin to decline, your cholesterol naturally rises in response. Your liver is just trying to help out your failing ovaries!

Food is digested into protein, fat, and carbohydrates. These macronutrients provide calories and building blocks for new tissues and biochemicals like hormones. Micronutrients are the vitamins and minerals that help run the system. If you cannot digest your food properly, break it down into absorbable macronutrients and assimilate it into essential micronutrients, then you cannot produce adequate hormones to remain healthy.

Your liver and kidneys are organs that detoxify your body. They need energy from food (mostly carbohydrates) and essential amino acids (from protein) and essential fatty acids (from fats) to do their job. They also require micronutrients to run the detoxification pathways. It’s an incredibly complicated system -- One that most health care providers ignore.

Years ago I was attending a medical conference. The physician presenter was lecturing on the drug interactions between a blood thinner and Tylenol. After the lecture, I asked: where in the hepatic detoxification pathways were the interactions occurring? When he didn’t answer, I clarified by asking specifically about phase I enzyme interactions versus phase II conjugation issues. As if I was speaking a different language, he said very slowly and very loudly, “I am a lung doctor, not a liver doctor.”

I replied, “Doctor, don’t all your ‘lung’ patients have livers? So wouldn’t it behoove you and your patients to know what detoxification pathways are affected? That way you can advise your patients on what foods, herbs, and supplements to also avoid.”

He shook his head. “I just check their blood levels frequently.”

And his patients are dependent on him not to bleed to death!

Now I know that as a layperson, you probably do not have a clue about the hepatic detoxification pathways but I expected my esteemed colleague to understand. We learned this basic physiology in our undergraduate pre-med training. Yet so few of us utilize knowledge of biochemistry in our clinical practices. And it is SO VERY IMPORTANT!

That’s why as a patient you need to know how your body works so you can make the healthiest choices. Knowledge is power and very well may save your life. 

I keep my Hormones in Harmony™ and optimize my digestion, detoxification and metabolism by taking Genesis Gold®. So even the Pause is just another Joyous Transformation!

Keep Hormones in Harmony™ naturally with...

Genesis Gold®— Creation in a Bottle

By harmonizing the hormones, Genesis Gold® optimizes genetic potential. The whole food, organic herbal and essential micronutrient blend encased in Genesis Gold® supports optimal digestion, absorption, and assimilation of nutrients as well as optimal detoxification and mitochondrial energy production.

360gm bottle only $150 Buy Now

Copyright 2013 DMaragopoulos

For permission to reprint this article please contact Deborah@lovedance.com

As I enter the portal of menopause, I yearn for a way to release when my blood no longer flows. My cycle prefers to mimic the moon—menstruating on the dark moon, ripening with the waxing moon, experiencing the fullness of my power on the full moon, releasing with the waning moon—over and over every month, since I began Genesis Gold.

Not before. No, I had such low body fat that I did not have enough sex steroids to menstruate. Years of bulimiarexia had taken its toll. Until 2000, when I first took Genesis Gold, a botanical formula that came to me in dreams, did my body finally realize its Sacred Feminine potential and I had my first period without the aid of bio-identical hormone replacement therapy. It was a miracle that I even conceived my children. Both came to me in dreams and then I would gain five pounds and conceive...without menstruating…on my own. My gynecologists were flabbergasted, but my pregnancies were healthy, although delivering the babies was difficult.

It wasn’t until my daughter was eleven that I tried to turn the tide of my eating disorder which began just before I entered high school. Although my mother had educated me well throughout puberty, she was disempowered by her upbringing, so my first period was not received in joy. Without a sacred chamam of women with which I might retreat and understand my budding feminine powers, I felt the burden of becoming a woman. So I stopped eating—lost twenty pounds, my breasts, and my period.

In the fall of 1999, I was determined to make peace with my femininity and began wearing a long gypsy skirt during my menses. It was my own personal red tent. My family treated me differently, because I began to treat myself with loving kindness. I rested, drank tea, took long baths, and retreated to my garden to commune with the earth. A few cycles of wearing my period skirt and I began to have lucid dreams. In response to my prayerful meditation during my moontime, I conceived Genesis Gold. And within two months of taking it, I gained five pounds (the same five pounds I needed to make enough hormones to conceive my children) and started menstruating without exogenous hormonal support at the age of thirty-nine. My body has been following the moon cycle ever since.

So now at the portal of my next feminine transformation, my body still tries to cycle with the moon. At this time, I am taking bio-identical hormones again, a luscious blend of botanicals, I conceived with a wonderful compounding pharmacist. I am ever grateful that my body has waited this long to go through the change. With the support of Genesis Gold, I am entering menopause 4-5 years later than my younger sisters.

So this cycle like so many before, I celebrate with a great release. Under the new moon in the presence of countless stars, I set my intention to bleed out the illusion of unworthiness. It is this not-good-enough attitude that fueled my eating disorder for so long. It is time to let it go.

Just before going to bed, I watched a you tube video of conscious men apologizing to the Sacred Feminine. I wept with joy. I accepted their apology, released our past unconsciousness and opened to receive sacred partnership with the Divine Masculine. I am blessed to be in such a relationship with my beloved husband. And more so blessed to be alive at this time of transformation as the Divine Masculine awakens to honor and co-create a new reality with the Divine Feminine. Then I fell asleep and had a dream.

In my dream, I was ministering to my youngest sister. Her beautiful tan skin was peeling off and underneath was the pale blue veined skin of a man—one that has haunted my dreams since childhood. My daughter, a nursing student, was with me and started to examine her aunt’s desquaminating leg. I shook my head and told her silently, This is a condition that affects women who give up their power and choose to live in parasitic rather than symbiotic relationships with men. Treat her with love but do not take on her dis-ease.

I woke up knowing that the fabric of illusion called unworthiness was finally ripped. I had protected my Divine Daughter with Divine Mother Wisdom. I no longer must wear my not-good-enough veil. Blessed am I to be a woman at this precious time on earth.

A powerful woman healer once sang this to me…and now I can sing it to myself.

Hail, Deborah, full of grace. Blessed is the fruit of my womb. And blessed is the world to receive the sweetness of my labor.

And now I sing it to you…

Hail, Sister, full of grace. Blessed is the fruit of your womb. And blessed are we to receive the sweetness of your labor.

Thank you, dear sisters, for doing your soul work. For cycling with the moon and dancing with the Divine. I am honored to be in your sacred presence and look forward to celebrating your feminine transitions with love and joy.