The Top 4 Strategies to Support Your Health During the Holidays
When I first started working with people on their health journey, I always worried about how they would handle the pressure of the holidays. I noticed that some people would start "falling off the wagon" at the end of October with Halloween, and then carry that all the way to Christmas. Then they would put an enormous amount of pressure on themselves for the typical "New Year's resolution" of weight loss and health. This kind of approach can be very problematic because it carries with it a lot of guilt and unnecessary extremes for the new year.
Top 4 Strategies to Survive the Holidays
#1 Support your Liver:
I think that the plan to tackle the holidays needs to be to first prepare your body for the possibility that you may be eating some foods that could possibly cause some inflammation. This liver cleanse is one of the best strategies for preparing your body for anything inflammatory that may be coming your way and reducing hormone fluctuations that could cause that holiday weight gain.
#2 Make Smart Ingredient Swaps"
So let's talk about what I think a healthy way to handle the holidays looks like. Fortunately, there are so many amazing ways to make desserts these days because of all of the grain free flours out there like almond flour, cassava flour, coconut flour etc. You can replace almost any traditional dessert recipe with these flours and sweeteners like honey, maple syrup or coconut sugar and get an amazingly delicious, healthier version of the same dessert. I mention desserts because I think that is what tempt people the most during the holiday season. Here is an example of some healthier desert options for you to try.
#3 Eat Before you go!
If you are heading to a party and you don't know what is going to be served there, eat before you go. Yep, it's that simple! Then when you get there, you can just grab what you know your body responds well to and you won't be tempted to eat things that wreak havoc on your health.
Preparing your body for the holidays is important when you are on a journey to getting healthy. I don't want you to feel like you are missing out at all which is why tip #1 is very important. But some of you are struggling with some serious health issues and any little thing that goes wrong can severely tip the scale into the danger zone of bad health for you.
#4 Support Your Stress Axis (HPA-Axis)
For most people, the holidays unfortunately come with a lot of unwanted stress. With traveling or having family staying with you, cooking for days in the kitchen and attending holiday parties, it's no wonder that a lot of people can gain a few extra pounds even if they manage to eat well during this time. This is because extra stress causes our cortisol (stress hormone) levels to rise. With the rise in cortisol, comes a rise in weight fain, sleeplessness and fatigue. Supporting your HPA-Axis with tools like meditation, light to moderate exercise and adaptogenic herbs like this blend, can give your body the extra support it needs to get through the holidays with ease.
I created this Holiday Duo to support your body through the holiday! When you purchase these two products as a set, you receive 20% off of their original price! Here's what is included in the duo: Order HERE!
The Best Testing for Adrenal & Sex Hormones
So many people are struggling with hormone imbalance and do not have any idea where to start when it comes to evaluating hormone levels or getting a proper treatment plan to help combat this issue. Until recently, the testing available was not very accurate and the only available treatment options were hormone replacement therapy (HRT). HRT comes with risks, like an increase risk for cancer, and is not addressing the root cause of the imbalance.
Cortisol, our stress hormone, is a very important hormone in the body. Too little or too much cortisol can cause symptoms like weight gain (especially in the belly), fatigue, insomnia, brain fog and more. Measuring this important hormone is extremely important when trying to figure out how these symptoms started and how to get rid of them. However, measuring cortisol on a blood test is not very accurate. A blood test is only a snapshot in time and we really need to look at how cortisol rises and falls throughout the day.
A few years ago, holistic doctors started using a saliva test to help get a more accurate reading of cortisol levels by taking multiple samples throughout the day. This was a great idea which came with some issues. For one, collecting a tube full of saliva is not easy to do, especially multiple times throughout the day. Another issue with the saliva test is that it only measures free cortisol, which is only 1-3% of total cortisol in the body. This method, while more accurate than blood, still presents with many flaws.
Photo taken from Precision Analytic website
Enter the new kid on the block in ultimate hormone testing, the DUTCH test. Finally a test that looks at free cortisol plus total cortisol and breaks down sex hormone levels like estrogen, progesterone and testosterone more thoroughly than any other tests out there. Here is more info on this test from their website:
DUTCH vs. Saliva Testing
While the free cortisol pattern in saliva has clinical value, there is a significant missing piece to surveying a patient’s HPA-Axis function with saliva testing – measuring cortisol metabolites. To properly characterize a patient’s cortisol status, free and metabolized cortisol should be measured to avoid misleading results when cortisol clearance is abnormally high or low. Likewise with sex hormones, measuring estrogen and androgen metabolites gives a fuller picture for more precise clinical diagnosis of hormonal imbalances and HRT monitoring.
DUTCH vs. Serum Testing
While the most universally accepted testing method (due to the availability of FDA-cleared analyzers that are reliable and inexpensive), serum testing is lacking in some areas. Adrenal hormones cannot be effectively tested in serum because free cortisol cannot be tested throughout the day. There is also a lack of extensive metabolite testing (especially for cortisol and estrogens).
DUTCH vs. 24-Hour Urine Testing
There are two primary drawbacks to 24-hour urine testing of hormones. First, the collection is cumbersome, and as many as 40% of those who collect, do so in error (Tanaka, 2002). Secondly, dysfunction in the diurnal pattern of cortisol cannot be ascertained from a 24-hour collection. Some providers add saliva for daily free cortisol. DUTCH eliminates the need for two tests.
Here is an example of someone with very low free and total cortisol levels. Typical symptoms associated with this type of presentation are:
- Puffy face
- Weight gain
- Trouble staying asleep
- Afternoon fatigue
- and more....
While cortisol is an extremely important hormone to measure, the sex hormone levels are extremely important to measure as well. Estrogen dominance is a very common issue that I see more and more women struggling with each day and includes symptoms like:
- Weight gain (hips, waist and thighs mostly)
- PMS
- Fibrocystic breasts
- Low libido
- Fatigue
- Anxiety/depression
Here is what this looks like on this test:
The company I use to perform this test has also added an organic acids profile, measurements of neurotransmitter levels, melatonin levels (sleep) and more. I use this test on about 95% of the people that I work with one-on-one and I recommend it to everyone I know.
I used to require people to be a patient of mine to order this test, but I am offering it now to anyone that wants to order it HERE! Knowing what your body is doing through testing is crucial in getting better. There are a lot of people offering programs to get rid of symptoms, but it is best to find out what is actually causing the symptom first before you can know what program will work best for you. Once we get your results back from the testing, you can schedule a consult with me for a detailed plan on what your test results mean and how to best support your body.
If you are not ready to order the test and want to know how to best support overall hormone health, read this article on liver support to learn more.
