Can You Simultaneously Detox Your Body And Balance Your Hormones Naturally?

Balance Your Body

Hormone problems are one of the top health concerns I see in my telehealth functional medicine clinic. Hormonal imbalances are linked to everything from toxin overload to chronic stress. If you are one of these people, I put together a step-by-step guide on how to detox the body and overcome hormone imbalances. Here is everything you need to know about your hormones, detoxification, and restoring hormone balance.

What’s The Connection Between Detoxing And Hormone Balance?

Hormones influence every area of health, including mood, energy levels, gut health, and weight. Their primary role is to send instructions to every organ in your body to carry out specific tasks to keep you healthy. A hormonal imbalance occurs when your body produces too much or too little of a specific type of hormone.

Symptoms of a hormone imbalance can manifest in different areas of your body. An imbalance with one hormone often leads to an imbalance with another. No one set of symptoms is associated with hormone imbalance, but some that may reveal your hormones need some care include:

  • Fatigue
  • Moodiness
  • Low libido
  • Weight gain/weight loss resistance
  • Sudden weight loss
  • Thinning hair/hair loss
  • Frequent headaches/migraines
  • Blood sugar problems/cravings
  • Brain fog
  • Irregular periods
  • Premenstrual syndrome (PMS)
  • Acne
  • Depression
  • Bloating

Detoxing restores hormone balance by enhancing detoxification and supporting your body’s natural hormone production. It can also help with certain chemicals that are shown to act as endocrine disruptors and mess with healthy hormone production and your overall endocrine system.

These endocrine disruptors can lead to chronic inflammation that blunts hormone communication and your body’s ability to produce hormones effectively.

7 Ways To Detox And Balance Your Hormones

There are many ways you can detox your body and find hormonal balance. These seven changes provide a baseline for addressing all areas of health typically involved in poor hormone health.

Make Specific Dietary Changes

Your body relies on a specific ratio of macro and micronutrients to fuel hormone production. In my telehealth functional medicine clinic, I often find nutrient deficiencies to be the reason behind many people’s hormone imbalances.

  • Vitamin D-rich foods: Vitamin D is a key nutrient in proper hormone production, but it is also one of the most common nutrient deficiencies in the world! To boost your system, try eating vitamin D-rich foods, such as wild-caught salmon and eggs.
  • Healthy fats: Healthy fats – found in clean, whole food sources – can help fuel hormone production. Some of my favorite healthy fats include avocados, walnuts, coconut oil, and wild-caught seafood.
  • Cruciferous vegetables: Cruciferous vegetables can help balance estrogen levels. (1) Try incorporating veggies like broccoli, cauliflower, kale, and Brussels sprouts into your diet.
  • Green tea: Not only is green tea incredibly beneficial, it has a lot of protective properties. Drinking green tea has been shown to have effects against a lot of toxins that cause hormonal imbalances. (2)

Filling your meals with antioxidant- and nutrient-rich foods makes detoxifying easier. Additionally, when implemented with dietary changes, supplements like D3-K2 and Omega+ can help overcome deficiencies.

Related: A Functional Medicine Guide to Cutting Sugar Out of Your Diet

Get Quality Sleep

Sleep is essential for our well-being. Hormone imbalances have been shown to directly result from a lack of sleep. (3) What’s even worse, hormone imbalances can further perpetuate poor sleep. To get out of this vicious cycle, we have to prioritize getting the recommended 7 hours of sleep each night.

To get high-quality, uninterrupted sleep, you can avoid light pollution and blue light exposure. Turning off screens and having limited light can help prevent cortisol spikes and aid melatonin production, which helps you wind down. Prioritizing quality sleep allows you to set a circadian rhythm that positively impacts you and your system.

Read my article here for a complete guide to cultivating a nighttime routine that works for you.

Reduce Stress

Stress is the ultimate junk food for your body. You can be doing all the “right” things, but if you are feeding your body a slice of stress every day, you will still have trouble with your hormones.

When stressed, cortisol – the body’s main stress hormone – spikes as a normal, healthy response to protect you from the stressful situation at hand. When you are stressed out 24/7, though, your body never has a chance to return to its baseline state of calm. These chronically high cortisol levels lead to adrenal fatigue, poor metabolic health, and other hormone problems like insulin resistance.

We all find ourselves in stressful situations. Start incorporating stress-reducing techniques like:

  • Meditation: There are some great apps out there, like Headspace and Calm, to help you.
  • Breathing exercises: Can be repeated anytime, anywhere.
  • Look for ways to reorganize your life: An organized space is an organized mind.
  • Set up boundaries for the toxic people in your life: Learn to say no and give yourself alone time and time with the people you enjoy.

Cut Out Toxins

Another way to support your hormone levels is by cutting out toxins as much as possible. Our world has become increasingly more toxic, and this onslaught of toxin exposure has been linked to severe hormone problems. Some toxins to look out for and avoid are:

  • Xenoestrogens: These synthetic chemicals act as estrogen in your body, increasing your estrogen levels while making it more difficult for your body to break down and eliminate excess estrogen. They can be found in everything from household cleaning products to plastic to beauty products.
  • Atrazine: This toxin is an herbicide that is an endocrine disruptor. (4) Exposure can lead to birth defects, reproduction dysfunction, and developmental issues. As a pesticide, atrazine can be found on certain food products or in contaminated water.
  • Lead: This toxin is a metal found in old paints, certain industrial products, and contaminated water. (5) It can impact the brain and kidneys, cause high blood pressure and joint pain in adults, cause reproductive issues, and lead to behavioral or developmental issues in children.

Eating organic, whole foods can help you avoid pesticides and herbicides, and using environmentally friendly cleaning products can help you avoid common toxins. Though you can’t avoid toxins altogether, you can mitigate their effects by supporting your body’s detoxification pathways as much as possible.

Exercise Regularly

Studies have shown that working out can help restore balance to hormones like cortisol, insulin, thyroid hormones, and more. Exercise also promotes sweating, further enhancing detoxification from hormone-disrupting toxins in your system.

Related: Your Functional Medicine Guide To Underlying Thyroid Dysfunctions + How To Heal

One great option for exercise is High Intensity Training (HIT). This training is useful for correcting hormonal imbalances caused by stress, poor diet, and a sedentary lifestyle. (6) HIT regulates hormones by improving insulin sensitivity, reducing excess hormones causing stress like cortisol, and stimulating the release of growth hormones.

Find a pace and workout that challenges you without overdoing it. Remember to give yourself rest days, as too much exercise without enough downtime can lead to chronic inflammation, which can contribute to hormone imbalance and production.

Take Supplements

Supplements can make restoring balance to your hormones much easier while detoxing. In conventional medicine, medications only act like a bandaid for your symptoms rather than treating the cause behind your hormone imbalances. Whether you are dealing with fatigue or female hormone imbalances like estrogen dominance, there are supplements out there for you.

Adaptogens are plant and herbal supplements known for their balancing effect on hormones and stress levels. With many adaptogens that support different areas of your health, you’ll find one for your particular symptoms. Be sure to check with your doctor for proper medical advice and precautions if you are on any medications, pregnant, or breastfeeding.

I always recommend The Brain-Adrenal Balancer from my supplement line, The Collection. It is formulated with clinically backed herbs to help your overstressed body and mind work toward their normal state of balance after repeated, frequent exposure to stress and cortisol

Try Seed Cycling

Seed cycling is the dietary practice of consuming certain seeds to help aid hormone balance and a hormone detox. This practice is specifically done to help women during their menstrual cycle.

Different seeds are added during the menstrual cycle's various phases, which helps regulate the sex hormones estrogen and progesterone. This hormone production helps with women’s health overall and proper hormone function.

Imbalanced hormones can cause weight gain, infertility, skin problems, and mood swings. With this simple practice, you can see the benefits of menstrual regularity, reduced PMS symptoms, improved fertility, and nutritional support.

Related: 4 Seed Cycling Benefits For Balanced Health + Hormones

Addressing The Root Cause

There is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to healing, especially when it comes to hormone imbalances. Detoxification is one way to rebalance hormones, but it all comes back to your specific health case.

In my telehealth functional medicine clinic, we run an array of hormone labs to definitively examine what is going on underneath the surface. By determining what is causing your hormone imbalances, we can personalize recommendations to address the areas needing support in your life. We approach hormone health through the lens of bioindividuality.

If you are struggling with hormone imbalances and want to learn how to detox the body and balance hormones naturally, schedule a telehealth functional medicine consultation.

As one of the first functional medicine telehealth clinics in the world, we provide webcam health consultations for people around the globe.

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  1. Vafaei, S., Alkhrait, S., Yang, Q., Ali, M., & Al-Hendy, A. (2024). Empowering strategies for Lifestyle interventions, Diet modifications, and Environmental Practices for Uterine Fibroid Prevention; unveiling the LIFE UP awareness. Nutrients, 16(6), 807.
  2. Chen, L., Mo, H., Zhao, L., Gao, W., Wang, S., Cromie, M. M., ... & Shen, C. L. (2017). Therapeutic properties of green tea against environmental insults. The Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry, 40, 1-13.
  3. Kim, T. W., Jeong, J. H., & Hong, S. C. (2015). The impact of sleep and circadian disturbance on hormones and metabolism. International Journal of Endocrinology, 2015(1), 591729.
  4. Stradtman, S. C., & Freeman, J. L. (2021). Mechanisms of neurotoxicity associated with exposure to the herbicide atrazine. Toxics, 9(9), 207.
  5. Kumar, S. (2018). Occupational and environmental exposure to lead and reproductive health impairment: an overview. Indian Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 22(3), 128-137.

Manferdelli, G., Freitag, N., Doma, K., Hackney, A. C., Predel, H. G., Bloch, W., & Schumann, M. (2020). Acute hormonal responses to high-intensity interval training in hyperoxia. Journal of Human Kinetics, 73(1), 125-134.

The information on this website has not been evaluated by the Food & Drug Administration or any other medical body. We do not aim to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any illness or disease. Information is shared for educational purposes only. You must consult your doctor before acting on any content on this website, especially if you are pregnant, nursing, taking medication, or have a medical condition.

Our content may include products that have been independently chosen and recommended by Dr. Will Cole and our editors. If you purchase something mentioned in this article, we may earn a small commission.

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BY DR. WILL COLE

Evidence-based reviewed article

Dr. Will Cole, DNM, IFMCP, DC is a leading functional medicine expert who consults people around the globe, starting one of the first functional medicine telehealth centers in the world. Named one of the top 50 functional and integrative doctors in the nation, Dr. Will Cole provides a functional medicine approach for thyroid issues, autoimmune conditions, hormonal imbalances, digestive disorders, and brain problems. He is also the host of the popular The Art of Being Well podcast and the New York Times bestselling author of Intuitive Fasting, Ketotarian, Gut Feelings, and The Inflammation Spectrum.

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