How Your Fitness Is Defeating Your Hormones

Have you heard about the hypothalamic–pituitary–thyroid axis or the HPT Axis for short? This is the most important hormone area in my opinion for those trying to lose weight or balance hormones. A study done found that when you do long high intense workouts the Serum T and Free Testosterone will start to decrease in a number of weeks. This has an effect of that "low t" syndrome that you may have heard about. When you exercise you want to feel those great endorphins that are released by your pituitary gland when it's working well. Overexercising then starts to cause this inflammatory issue within the HPT Axis. And then add in this over abundance of hormones that you don't want raised and you start to inhibit your endorphin production.

Also they've studied and found that for both men and women this decrease, especially the lower FT level is a significant predictor for loss of muscle mass. I saw a Finish study that showed that doing a heavy lifting session of just 5 reps produced the highest testosterone response. And so for those lifting to increase testosterone you want to make sure most of your resistance training is being done with compound exercises that work many muscle groups at once. Think CVX or Total Synergy.

I know so many moms that get 3 hours of sleep, then do a long run and cannot figure out why their testosterone is so off. Let me share with you, cortisol reduces and antagonizes free testosterone levels.This cortisol dysfunction promotes abdominal fat gain and again, muscle loss. Stressing your body out by overtraining, too much stress and not enough sleep is a one way ticket to this HPT Axis crash.

Yesterday I talked a lot about estrogen, but that is because estrogen inhibits thyroid activity. That leads you down the road to low thyroid. If you have the right compliment of progesterone, testosterone and balanced cortisol levels your thyroid is a happy camper. That means you have to balance out the testosterone in order to have functional estrogen.

Dr. Willian Hrushesky believes that natural killer cell activity and interleukin 2, both powerful immune system components, are compromised by estrogen dominance and promoted by adequate progesterone. His opinions were presented in the Journal of Women’s Health.
Dr. John  Morrow, PhD and Dr. David Isenberg PhD say that estrogen has been shown to decrease the size of the thymus [depresses immune system] and to cause a reduction in the level of thymic hormone in the blood. 

So how are you going to balance out that testosterone, for you that means less heavy, and more HIIT. Something like Focus T25 is going to be better for someone dealing with PCOS and higher testosterone levels than someone that has low testosterone and needs to boost it.

So it's time to balance out those hormones

A Missed Miscarriage

This is not the way I had wanted to start the new year. I had hoped to continue to have morning sickness, back pain, hormonal influx, mood swings, you know... all of the good things that you get before you can hold that amazing little person in your arms. Instead I'll be going into the doctor after having what I believe was a missed miscarriage. A missed miscarriage is when embryonic death has occurred but there is not any expulsion of the embryo. It is not known why this occurs. Signs of this would be a loss of pregnancy symptoms and the absence of fetal heart tones found on an ultrasound.

I had all of the symptoms of being pregnant. The implantation cramps, the "lightening crotch" and of course the morning sickness had started. Even had the "faint" second line on the pregnancy test. But then it all went away. I have had many months of peeing on sticks with the BFN, but this of course is different and it's heart breaking. I thought I was okay with it, but this morning it hit!!

Emotions Flowing 

This morning I have started my new challenge groups which meant starting P90X3 first thing this morning. It honestly took me an hour to go through a 30 minute workout. I was dealing with stuff that was stuck trying to escape. Then I hit the shower... emotions overflow!! I found myself just bawling in the shower. I realized that this Whole 30 / Virgin Diet / P90X3 change is the start of a renewal. Almost a rebirth in more ways than one. I slathered on the clary sage and geranium for emotional healing, and of course for healing internally the frankincense and basil. I will make it through this, and be stronger for it. I had my power shake, and I'm ready to do this. Going forward into a new day. Women over the age of 45 can have up to a 50% chance of miscarriage, sad but it's the reality of where we are. Feeling really crampy today, and drinking my shake and just going through the motions. Trying to not make any rash decisions in my moment of emotional madness.

And you know what I mean?? Emotions where you want to quit... but I can't quit, it's not in my nature. <3 life, and going to keep going for it!