Hormonal imbalances occur when too much or too little of a hormone exists in your bloodstream. Even small hormonal imbalances can create side effects that resonate throughout your body.
Consider insulin. Eating too many sugary, processed foods can elevate this hormone, overwhelming your cells so they don’t “hear” its call. Your pancreas continues to secrete insulin, but your cells can’t easily take up glucose from your blood.
In other words, your cells become resistant to insulin’s message, leaving your pancreas to over-secrete this hormone. Insulin resistance can eventually lead to type 2 diabetes with all its related symptoms including disease, disability, and early death.
Insulin resistance, like any hormonal imbalance, doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It can knock other hormones like cortisol out of balance. Elevated levels of this stress hormone contribute to obesity, lead to adrenal burnout, and trigger inflammatory diseases including chronic fatigue syndrome.
Some hormones are more powerful than others. “Insulin is a such a powerful hormone that five other hormones counterbalance its effects,” says Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., in Living Low Carb. Those five hormones, in case you’re wondering, are glucagon, cortisol, growth hormone, adrenaline, and noradrenaline.
Hormones also have a circadian rhythm. Cortisol, for instance, is highest in the morning and should gradually taper down throughout the day. Ghrelin, your hunger hormone, is usually highest in the evening —just in time for dinner. When levels of these hormones don’t stay in an optimal range, you suffer the consequences of that imbalance. If you have high cortisol levels in the evening, for instance, you might have a wired but tired feeling.
No hormone is good or bad. Instead, they should be in optimized or balanced levels, which differs for everyone since we are all unique.