Is it stress, is it hormones, or is it a brain chemistry imbalance? Often women see the signs that tell them something is not quite right with their health, but it’s difficult to know what the signs are pointing to.
The truth is that stress, hormones, and brain chemistry work in concert, and it’s impossible to separate or isolate any of them. Stress affects hormones, hormones affect brain chemistry, and brain chemistry affects stress. When any one of these three aspects of female health gets out of balance, it starts a vicious cycle that will continue to get worse if left untreated and eventually cause dire consequences.
Here are some of the facts about the stress-hormone-brain chemistry relationship and the reasons why stress management is not just nice, it’s essential for women’s health and vitality.
Frequently Asked Questions About Stress, Hormones, and Brain Chemistry:
Q: What is the connection between stress and hormone imbalance?
A: When we’re under stress, our adrenal glands produce cortisol. Cortisol is the stress hormone.
When cortisol is high, it blocks your estrogen. So you end up with less estrogen getting into your cells. Less estrogen causes low serotonin. So now you end up with low serotonin and you have a short fuse and “thin skin.” Low serotonin also causes you to not be able to sleep, and that makes you agitated, irritable and cranky.
Another thing that happens when serotonin drops, is that another chemical in the brain is released called norepinephrine. When norepinephrine gets released, all of a sudden you get a pounding heart, you wake up in the middle of the night, you get an upset stomach or hot flashes, and those symptoms cause you even more stress.
Now you have physical internal stress going on in addition to all the external stress that started all of this in the first place. So, cortisol gets even higher, blocking estrogen even more, dropping serotonin even more. And before you know it, you’re in this vicious cycle and you don’t know how to stop it.
Q: Are you saying that stress is the cause of hormone imbalance and not “change of life?”
A: The vicious cycle of hormone imbalance can start with the hormones themselves being out of whack, which causes a biochemical stress response. It could start with perimenopause or menopause and your estrogen is actually dropping. And you start feeling really blah and you can’t focus and you can’t concentrate. All of a sudden you feel like you’re looking out the window and the world is not in color any more. All of a sudden everything is in black and white.
That’s one way that the vicious cycle can start. But, in answer to your question, yes, hormone imbalance can also start with high stress which then causes the hormones to get out of whack. Sometimes we don’t know which came first – the hormone imbalance or the stress.
Q: How can women know if they are caught in the vicious cycle of stress and hormone imbalance? What are the symptoms they will be experiencing?
Watch the video below to hear Mia Lundin describe the symptoms of the stress-hormone vicious cycle that millions of women are caught in every day.
Q: So the stress-hormone vicious cycle is also the cause of weight gain for women?
A: Insulin is like little Pac Men. It starts eating up all the sugar and the carbohydrates and the little extra wine you have at night, which is all sugar. Insulin takes that and stores it all around the middle and in your breasts. So we wind up with big breasts and big middle in midlife.
It’s sad, but it’s caused by stress and hormonal imbalance. So, hormonal imbalance causes weight gain in the middle. Bioidentical hormones do not cause weight gain. It’s the opposite.
Q: Why is stress such a big issue for women these days?
A: The lifestyle of today is very stressful – just being. We women are very, very sensitive beings. We’re not designed to be out there running around being both male and female. Women are put into the same box with the other sex that is wired completely differently when it comes to handling stress.
Q: What do you mean when you say that men and women are wired differently when it comes to stress?
A: As an example, we women like to talk because when we talk, we release something called oxytocin in the brain. Oxytocin actually blocks the stress hormone, so we feel better. So that is the actual biochemical reason women want to talk.
Men, on the other hand, when they talk and release oxytocin, it blocks testosterone. That’s the last thing that men want. What they want is to sit by themselves in a corner, or watch TV, or go out and play golf and not talk.
Women don’t have the support from other women any more that they so much need. We need to have that support group of women where we can talk and share experiences.
Q: Why do you think that women don’t get as much female support as they need?
We’re doing too much. We’re all doing too much. We have our “To Do” list that we’re all trying to finish and we feel like if we can get to the bottom of that list, everything is going to be fine. But by the next day, we have another list that’s just as long that we need to do.
We’re running around doing chores all day and we never take the time to stop and really listen to ourselves. “Who am I? What do I need? What is my body telling me?”
Symptoms mean that something is wrong. It’s your body’s way of telling you, “Help! Fix me!” Women don’t take the time to really check in and see what is going on. How are you really feeling? How could you feel better?
- More about serotonin and stress
- “Female Brain Gone Insane”
- The dire consequences of female imbalance
Posted on February 25th, 2010 by admin
Filed under: Brain Chemistry, Female Brain Gone Insane, Hormone Imbalance, Mia Lundin, Stress | 2 Comments »
