CHP Magazines CHP Magazines Spring 2019 #16 | Page 66

HORMONES, FAT
LOSS AND HEALTH
Kristy Curtis
I am a firm believer that things come into
your life for a reason, whether those things
are good or bad or just simply to make
you stop and think. I believe that what
we hold onto emotionally and spiritually
manifests itself in our physical bodies.
That toxic relationship you are holding
onto, that job you should of left months
ago and then bang…..the sickness or
injury occurs like a bolt out of the blue to
gently remind you ‘I told you so’. These
‘reminders’ may manifest in minor
symptoms like a flu or a common cold, or
they can be more serious such as a weight
gain, an auto-immune dysfunction, thyroid
issues or a more sinister chronic disease.
.
Upon researching the topic for this article I thought
it would be relevant to survey the people I come
into contact with on a day to day basis, namely my
personal training clients and secondly, my social media
audience. I wanted to find out the health issues that
were important to them. What were the burning topics
they wanted more information about.
Quite surprisingly, the overwhelming response
to the survey was ‘hormone health’. This was not
isolated to women going thru menopause but women
experiencing inflammatory problems bloating, poor
digestion and elimination, skin problems, auto immune
dysfunction, thyroid disorders and body fat that they
just could not shift no matter how they little they ate or
how hard they exercised.
As I dug a little bit deeper to find out more about
what all of these women had in common it seemed
that they were all ‘rushed’, ‘stressed’, ‘had no time for
themselves’ let alone ‘not enough time in the day.’ A
lot of them felt overwhelmed with life, coupled with
trying to do it all and be it all! (sound familiar?). In
regards to their diet, they were living off multiple cups
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of coffee throughout the day coupled with processed
food and bookended with some wine of a night! (A
concoction for a minor and major health melt down!)
Naturally as adults we all want to be liked, loved
and to fit in on some level. If we pulled the curtain
back and were completely honest with ourselves
what frightens a lot of us is what other people think of
us. In this pursuit of other people’s approval we have
exhausted ourselves from keeping up the appearance
of being kind, thoughtful, energetic, inspiring, funny,
independent or strong or whatever other adjective
we think we should live up to. It is more important
for people to see us like this to maintain this like/love
familiarity, unfortunately at the expense of our health.
The Rushing Women’s Syndrome
Dr Libby Weaver a Nutritional Biochemist first
identified the term ‘The Rushing Women’s Syndrome’
due to the health issues of the women she started
seeing in her practice. They were stressed out,
strung out and busy, busy, busy. Dr Libby observed
in her clients the effect that long-term stress was
having on these women. Some were presenting with
polycystic ovarian syndrome, adrenal fatigue, hormonal
imbalances, auto immune diseases like Graves
disease and hashimoto’s, unexplained weight gain and
infertility problems.
Dr Libby looked at the biochemistry of what
happens to your hormones when you are in this long
term stressed state and the role that nutrition and other
lifestyle factors has on your overall health.
What Dr Libby found was that when we get stressed
our bodies ‘sympathetic nervous’ system or our ‘fight
or flight’ response is activated. This stress response
causes our bodies to release adrenaline, our blood
pressure fluctuates, and our digestive system shuts
down. This elevated adrenaline changes the fuel that
your body perceives as safe and appropriate for you to
use. During this process the body is making a decision
whether to use glucose (carbohydrates) or fat as the
fuel it burns. Most of the time when our lifestyle is in
balance, the nervous system uses a combination of