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#26 How Alcohol Affects Hormones: What You Need to Know

#26 How Alcohol Affects Hormones: What You Need to Know

naturopath paris carina greweling
THRIVE Podcast by : Carina Greweling on

#26 How Alcohol Affects Hormones: What You Need to Know

#26 How Alcohol Affects Hormones: What You Need to Know – Interview with Wendy McCallum

Wendy is a burnout & alcohol coach and helps professional women to develop a healthier relationship with alcohol. In this episode we share our different perspectives and approaches around alcohol. 

Tune in and discover: 

  • Why did Wendy decide to become an alcohol coach?
  • The most common myths about alcohol.
  • How does alcohol impact your hormones?
  • What effect does it have on emotions and mood? 
  • What is the culture of alcohol?
  • Tips for an alcohol-free night out.
  • Health benefits of not drinking alcohol.
  • How long does it take to detoxify the body before you can feel the positive effects? 
  • How much alcohol is safe to drink?
  • What can you do to support your body to detox alcohol quicker if you had some?

We would LOVE to hear from you any thoughts, reactions, or takeaways you have as you’re listening, so definitely screenshot and tag us @beatburnoutandbooze & @hormonecoachcarina .

Discover Wendy’s work here.  

6 Tips on How to Optimally Prepare Your Body for Pregnancy

6 Tips on How to Optimally Prepare Your Body for Pregnancy

Why am I not getting pregnant? Are you also one of the women who have been asking this question for a long time?

First of all, please do not lose sight of the fact that a man’s health also contributes 50% to a successful pregnancy. In my experience, this is often neglected. Many of the tips I give you in this article are therefore just as relevant to your partner.

Nevertheless, we can assume that the female hormone balance is more susceptible to disruption than that of men. Environmental influences, stress, nutrient supply, medication intake or other factors can reduce fertility or the chances of conceiving.

Ideally, you actively support your hormone balance for 6 to 12 months in order to increase the chances of conceiving and a healthy pregnancy. This is also a good time to get to know your menstrual cycle and determine your individual fertile days.

6 Tips on How to Optimally Prepare Your Body for Pregnancy

1. Stop Hormonal Birth Control

Okay, that’s logical if you want to get pregnant. But my main concern here is that you should ideally stop taking hormonal contraception 12 months BEFORE you want to become pregnant.

Hormonal contraceptive methods such as the pill, hormone patch, hormone spiral or vaginal ring have different mechanisms of action – but they all disrupt the natural hormonal balance and make pregnancy more difficult after stopping.

It is not uncommon for the body to take a few months to naturally restore healthy hormone levels and get back to a healthy cycle. And that, after all, is the basic requirement for getting pregnant.

Women who have been on the pill for years often suffer from hormone imbalances such as: estrogen dominance, low progesterone, hypothyroidism, androgen excess, weakened detoxification and digestive organs, reduced insulin sensitivity, cortisol imbalance and the associated symptoms.

A first very efficient step to detoxify the body from excess pill hormones is my Ayurveda Hormone Detox program.

It will help you strengthen your liver and intestines, break down and drain synthetic hormones, support the thyroid gland and thus optimally prepare your body for pregnancy.

>> Learn more about the Ayurveda Hormone Detox.

>> Listen to my podcast episode: How to Stop Taking Hormonal Contraceptives Safely with Ayurveda

2. Know Your Cycle

Familiarise yourself with your cycle. Begin recording daily basal body temperature and/or cervical mucus. With this you can find out if and when you ovulate or when your fertile days are in the respective cycle. A significant increase in basal body temperature for at least 3 consecutive days means you have ovulated. Fertile cervical mucus is stretchy and resembles egg whites. The chance of getting pregnant is greatest two days before ovulation until one day after.

More on this: >>> Ovulation: Signs how to recognize it for sure

3. Optimize Your Nutrient Supply

The ovaries need a constant supply of certain nutrients to do their job. Some of the key nutrients we need to support ovulation, regular cycles, balanced hormones and fertility include:

✔️ Zinc: made from organic red meat, oysters and pumpkin seeds.

✔️ B6 and B12: mainly in organic meat, organic liver, fish, walnuts, legumes, avocado.

✔️ Folate: from green leafy vegetables, nuts, oranges, eggs.

✔️ Vitamin D: 20 minutes of sun exposure daily at lunchtime.

✔️ Antioxidants: especially in colorful fruit and vegetables – organic berries or citrus fruits are great.

✔️ Iodine: fish, shellfish, seaweed, eggs, spinach, broccoli.

✔️ Minerals e.g. from mineral-rich foods and drinks such as bone broth, coconut water, liver, spinach.

4. Get Your Thyroid Checked

Optimal thyroid values ​​are a prerequisite for optimal sex hormone levels. If you’ve been trying to get pregnant for a long time without success, get your thyroid checked. Please note: Even levels that are “normal” by conventional medicine (but not “optimal” by functional medicine standards) can cause problems conceiving or contribute to miscarriage. Often only the TSH value is routinely determined, which alone has no meaningfulness about the functionality of the thyroid gland. In addition to TSH, fT3, fT4 and thyroid antibodies are also important.

Listen to my podcast episode: 5 Tips to Strengthen Your Thyroid

5. Eliminate Stress from Your Life

Persistent stress is one of the most common factors in fertility problems in both men and women. But what many people don’t realize is that stress has many faces. Whether it’s work or relationship stress, sleep deprivation, a restrictive one-sided diet, intestinal dysbiosis, high-intensity training, lack of exercise or too much coffee and alcohol – all of this can put the body in a state of stress, lower sex hormone levels and minimize fertility.

Eliminate or reduce your individual stressors and bring your nervous system into a relaxed state several times a day: breathing exercises, meditation, spending time in nature, lots of sleep, yoga, painting and much more.

And quite clearly: even an unfulfilled desire to have children is a major emotional stress factor for the body. I would like to give you the recommendation not to focus so much on the end result “finally being pregnant”. Instead, when you are trying to have children, you should above all work on balancing your hormone system naturally – through hormone-friendly nutrition, self-care, relaxation, supporting medicinal plants or dietary supplements and support for your detoxification and digestive organs.

We should rely less on artificial reproductive medicine and draining hormone treatments, which unfortunately often come with side effects. However, in some circumstances they are inevitable. We should ask ourselves how we can use our diet and lifestyle to bring the hormonal balance back into balance in a natural way – completely free of side effects.

6. Reduce Your Toxin Exposure

Every day we are exposed to hundreds of so-called endocrine disruptors – hormone-like substances that negatively influence the hormone balance. They are found, for example, in food (via herbicides, fungicides), cosmetics, care and cleaning products (shampoo, lipstick, perfume detergents) or household items (plastic cans, cling film). They influence the balance of our sex hormones, thyroid hormones and have a negative effect on insulin and cortisol levels.

Start minimizing pollutants in your household and bathroom step by step in order to stabilize your hormonal balance and support the health of your egg cells.

More on this in my podcast episode: >> Endocrine Disruptors: How Environmental Toxins Throw Off Your Hormone Balance

You might feel a little overwhelmed after reading the article:

 >>>That’s so much!

>>>Where should I start?

>>>What exactly is meant by hormone-friendly nutrition?

>>>How do I know which hormones are out of balance and above all: how can I fix it?

>>>Which medicinal plants help me to regulate my menstrual cycle, menopausal issues and other hormone imbalances?

And and and … .

If you want precise guideline on how to naturally bring your hormones into balance and thus give your body the best conditions for pregnancy – I heartily recommend my 20-Week Hormone Thrive Program.

>> More information about Hormone Thrive.

#14 Tantric Yoni Massage – Interview with Christiane Ameya

#14 Tantric Yoni Massage – Interview with Christiane Ameya

naturopath paris carina greweling
THRIVE Podcast by : Carina Greweling on

#14 Tantric Yoni Massage – Interview with Christiane Ameya

#14 A yoni massage is not primarily about experiencing an orgasm. It is about your own body awareness and feeling your own genital area in its full extent.

The massage of the female vagina from the inside and outside is just the last step. This is preceded by discussions and learning of special meditation techniques by a therapist trained in tantric yoni massage.

Meet Christiane Ameya, a feminine leadership mentor, trauma-informed sex, love & relationship coach and author. She gives you deep insights into Yoni massage.

Tune in and discover:

  • Why did Christiane start doing this work?

  • What does Yoni mean?

  • How does Yoni self-massage work? Where does it originate from? What are the benefits of it?

  • Receiving a Yoni massage – how can this look like? 

  • What are the benefits of Yoni massage?

  • Can it influence the menstrual cycle positively?

  • How can it help to improve fertility?

  • Online course about Yoni massage

Discover more about Christiane’s work here:

Website
Instagram
Christiane’s book Intuitive Living

#13 Womb Healing – Interview with Claudia Aurora

#13 Womb Healing – Interview with Claudia Aurora

naturopath paris carina greweling
THRIVE Podcast by : Carina Greweling on

#13 Womb Healing – Interview with Claudia Aurora

#13 Womb Healing is less of a method than a very personal, spiritual path for women who want to get in touch with their innermost feminine power.

By strengthening the feminine side, which we often lose in our male dominated society, an inner balance should be established that enables us women to live our feminine side consciously and calmly.

The uterus is intimately linked to the menstrual cycle and the development of life.

Moreover, it is not only a reproductive organ, but it is like a sponge that constantly absorbs our experiences and emotional states.

Tune into the interview with Womb Healing expert Claudia Aurora and discover:

  • What does womb symbolise?

  • What chakra is associated with the womb?

  • What’s womb healing? What practices and exercises does it imply?

  • Why is it so important to heal the womb?

  • What can the healing process look like?

  • What are the signs of womb healing?

  • How can womb healing help improve our sexuality, fertility and creativity?

  • Can I also heal my womb when I don’t have a uterus anymore?

  • Upcoming womb healing ceremony. 

  • One simple technique women can do to start their womb healing process.

Stay connected with Claudia

#008 Balancing your Hormones with Ayurveda

#008 Balancing your Hormones with Ayurveda

naturopath paris carina greweling
THRIVE Podcast by : Carina Greweling on

#008 Balancing your Hormones with Ayurveda

#008 Essentially, Ayurveda teaches us that in order to regulate our hormones we need to bring balance into our lives – and that means mind, body, and spirit.

Our hormone system is a finely sophisticated information system in the body, which not only has a major impact on our well-being, but also on our cycle, our energy level and weight.

Imbalances often occur that we cannot explain with the usual methods and do not make the connections between different hormones and their functions clearly comprehensible.

Ayurveda can not only balance you in general, but also your hormones in particular.

In this episode you will find out:

  • How the different areas of the endocrine system are related.
  • The role of the Doshas: Vata, Pitta & Kapha
  • Stress, sleep and digestion and your hormones
  • Why Ayurveda is perfectly suited to take a holistic view of the hormone system and bring it into balance.
  • Which hormones are particularly important and are often out of balance
  • How insulin and cortisol are related
  • Ayurvedic tips to restore hormonal balance

Read the article:  What’s Your Digestive Type?

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Connect with me on IG @carina.greweling