Balancing Hormones
Have you ever been told that, “Your thyroid test came back in the normal range!” or “The dose of thyroid medication you are on is perfect!”? You know in your heart of hearts that something is wrong because you still have hypothyroid symptoms! You feel fatigued! You can’t seem to get yourself going in the morning! You don’t sleep well! You have mental fog and seem forgetful! Your joints and muscles hurt! You feel a little depressed! You can’t lose weight! If you lose weight you gain it right back and then some! You just know something is off. Your doctor might tell you that, “Your weight gain is not due to your thyroid. Maybe you are over eating and you are not getting enough exercise.” So you skip meals and try to muster the energy to hit the gym or go for a run. Nothing seems to work for long. Sound familiar? It’s a vicious cycle.
We’ve talked about all the thyroid hormones and thyroid hormone conversion on our Facebook Live series, so be sure to check those out! One of the things that is needed to have good thyroid hormone conversion (inactive T4 to active T3) is hormone balance. Testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, insulin, cortisol, human growth hormone, leptin, etc. all need to be in balance.
There was a study done in 2012 by the National Academy of Hypothyroidism that looked at why the TSH test could be in the normal range but patients were still suffering from hypothyroid symptoms. The TSH test (thyroid stimulating hormone secreted by the pituitary) is the blood test most conventional doctors use to determine thyroid health. The researchers found that TSH levels and even T4 levels could be normal but the conversion of T4 into T3 in the tissues like your muscles, could the problem (20% of conversion happens in the tissues like muscles, 20% in the intestines and 60% happens in the liver).
What this study revealed, is that in many incidences, T4 was being converted into Reverse T3 which has no function. This plugs up the T3 receptor sites on the cell membrane, so T3 that is available, can’t attach and influence cell energy production. This gives you all of the hypothyroid symptoms even though your bloodwork comes back normal. In our book, Thriving With Hypothyroidism, we talk about all 15 or so of the things this study revealed that influenced conversion.
Hormone balance was one of those important areas that was needed for proper conversion of T4.
In this blog we want to talk about Human Growth Hormone (HGH). It’s one of the “Master Hormones” produced by the pituitary, (referred to as the “Master Gland”) just like TSH. HGH and TSH are two very important hormones because they control other hormones.
We tend to think that HGH is only active in children helping their bones to grow and their body’s to mature and once their growth plates have come together it is no longer produced, or, we think of weight lifters who use high doses of illegal HGH from China to get their muscles to grow abnormally large. But HGH is so much more important than just helping our children grow. It’s very important to the health of adults as well.
Have you ever wondered why your children bounce back from a cold quickly and you are still stuck in the bed? Or they have played soccer all day long and you think to yourself, if I had been running up and down that field all day like my child, it would take me a week to recover? It’s all about HGH. HGH increases the body’s repair of tissues.
In adults, HGH plays a key role in cell repair, muscle growth, strength and exercise and sports performance, helps to recover from injury and disease and illnesses, boosts the immune system, helps to repair muscles after a workout, helps with sleep, helps with metabolism and fat burning, improves mood, increases energy levels, balances other hormones and a whole host of other things.
Not having optimal levels may negatively impact your quality of life and increase your chances of diseases and cause fat gain, especially around the middle.
HGH starts declining around age 20, and after 25 it falls faster and by the time you are 30-40 your levels are as low as someone who is in their 70’s. In doing this work and writing our book, we are finding chronic disease is developing in many people at an early age.
Many of the people we have had the pleasure of talking with have common complaints.
They can’t lose weight, they don’t have the energy to workout, their joints hurt, when they do workout it takes them a week to recover from that delayed muscle soreness and they don’t sleep well, they are a little depressed and feel overwhelmed.
One of the reasons for this is low HGH. HGH can be produced throughout your life. What causes HGH levels to decrease around age 25? At this age, we are finished with college, hitting the rat race of working, raising a family, worrying about how to make ends meet, not sleeping, not eating like we are supposed to, maybe too much alcohol and staying up too late.
Researchers are finding that it’s more about detrimental lifestyle changes that suppress its release. They say it is similar to what happens with other hormones as we age, our lifestyles cause hormone resistance. Like insulin resistance that comes from high carbohydrate/sugar diets or leptin resistance that comes from constant over eating. Our bodies just don’t respond the hormones as well.
Same thing with HGH. Declining levels of HGH have been shown to increase cardiovascular diseases, decrease in heart function, reduce exercise capacity, reduce muscle strength, decreased organ function, abnormal thyroid hormone conversion, decreased ability to burn fat, fat accumulation especially around the middle. etc. The more fat you have on your body the less HGH is produced.
With hypothyroidism, your ability to burn fat is decreased and the amount of HGH you produce is decreased. What came first, was it the low HGH or the toxic load or the bad diet, sedentary lifestyle? No one knows but to help with thyroid function and to burn fat, you must increase HGH production.
3 Tid Bits for today to increase HGH
Lower your insulin production by changing your diet. High insulin levels suppresses HGH production.
Get better sleep. Easier said than done sometimes but getting into bed by 10pm is one of the best things to do. You need deep sleep in order to produce HGH and most is produced before 12midnight.
Get your workout on! Not just any workout but workouts that will increase your HGH and testosterone. Cortisol, the stress hormone and the hormone that leads to fat gain and aging, is produced even when you work out. But the type of workout you do determines whether cortisol is playing with insulin or whether it is playing with testosterone and HGH. When cortisol is in the presence of testosterone and HGH then your body becomes a fat burning furnace! When cortisol is in the presence of insulin, it becomes fat storing.
There are many other things that we can talk about to improve HGH production. If you need help getting your metabolism back in check, reach out to us, we can help!
