How to Balance Hormones Using Eastern Medicine (Tips You Can Actually Use)
Are you feeling tired and run down? Do you have irregular or painful periods? Do you feel like you’re trying to lose weight to no avail? If so, these are all signs you’re dealing with hormonal imbalances. And while Western medicine typically relies on hormone replacement therapy or medication to correct a hormonal imbalance, there are many ways to balance hormones naturally using Eastern medicine practices and principles. Let’s explore how ancient systems of medicine, like Ayurveda and traditional Chinese medicine, can help to restore balance to your mind, body, and hormones.
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Hormones are messengers
First, let’s be specific about what hormones are, and why it’s important to restore balance. Hormones are chemical messengers that our bodies produce through various glands in our endocrine system, like the thyroid, pancreas, and ovaries.
These hormones have powerful effects on many of our bodies’ basic processes, from regulating hunger to influencing menstrual cycles. Hormones affect your mood, weight, sleep cycle—you name it.
Watch: How do you know if your hormones are imbalanced?
There are many different types of hormones
When you hear complaints about “hormones” you probably only think about the ones involved in reproduction, like estrogen, testosterone, and maybe progesterone.
And while sex hormones are important, there is an entire orchestra of other hormones responsible for regulating each and every process within your body. And because there are so many types of hormones, there’s often not a singular fix, or a simple pill to take.
This is why a more holistic approach is often so effective to restore hormone balance.
Eastern medicine to heal hormonal imbalance
Ayurveda (a 5,000-year-old holistic healing system) focuses on overall balance within your mind and body. This includes your hormones.
But here’s what is different about Ayurveda: In its texts, there’s actually no mention of individual hormones themselves. Instead, these specialized chemical messengers are grouped by their function, such as digestion, energy, or reproduction.
Healing these different systems (and the hormones that control them) involves balancing the three main energies, called doshas—Kapha, Pitta, and Vata. And also unlike modern science, Ayurveda seldom treats only one system by itself.
You can take the Power Type quiz to find out more about how your energy affects your emotional, physical, and mental wellbeing.
Ayurvedic guidelines focus on overall balance
When there’s any hormone imbalance in your body, it’s likely there’s more than one hormone or system affected. Each hormone is intricately connected to the others, and when one is out of balance, the others are likely to follow. Just as each hormone exists in balance with the others, so too do the doshas of Kapha, Pitta, and Vata.
To use the wisdom of Ayurveda to restore hormonal health is to find your ideal balance of the three doshas, or energies. This balance won’t look the same for everyone, and can even change during different periods of your life.
We’ll use food, sleep, movement, stress management, and emotional health to regulate how you think and feel each day, including:
- Diet and healing nutritional deficiencies
- Meditation and Mind-body practice
- Herbs and certain dietary supplements
- Movement and exercise
This is more than just a diet or a quick-fix solution, but the benefits will reach every aspect of your life.
Related: 10 Ayurvedic Rules for Better Health
Symptoms of hormonal imbalance
In the modern world, we often dismiss signs of hormone imbalance, attributing them to stress or age, but these are important signs that your body is out of balance:
- Mood changes (irritability, depression, anxiety)
- Painful periods
- Menstrual cycle changes (shorter or longer periods, or irregular cycles)Sugar cravings
- Weight gain or loss
- Fatigue
- Trouble sleeping, insomnia
- Brain fog
- Acne
- Excess belly fat
- Hair thinning or hair loss
- Bloating
- Constipation
Symptoms of hormonal imbalance can be broad, and difficult to pin down even in your doctor’s office.
Learn more: Top 5 Teas for Hormone Balance
Balancing Kapha, Pitta, and Vata
Vata, stress, and your mood
Vata is especially susceptible to chronic stress, and it’s typically the first dosha to become imbalanced. Vata and the nervous system are in close communication with your hormones. An imbalance in this dosha can cause cortisol levels to ramp up sugar cravings, mood swings, and more. Everyday stressors such as being constantly plugged into social media, late nights, traveling, and overexercise are especially aggravating for Vata. This, in turn, triggers an imbalance in the other doshas.
Pitta, digestion, and energy
Hormones (as Western medicine classifies them) fall under the regulation of Pitta. Pitta is involved in transformative processes, like digestion, body temperature, and hormone balance. Pitta also governs the liver, where much of hormone metabolism takes place. Sour, acidic and an excess of ‘hot’ substances like spicy foods, caffeine, alcohol and tobacco aggravates Pitta and will affect your hormones via the liver. When Pitta is imbalanced you may experience digestive issues, reflux, or indigestion.
Related: How to Hormone Detox in the Liver + Digestion
Kapha, activity, and metabolism
People with a dominant Kapha dosha are often activite, fit types, but an accumulation of too much Kapha may result in the opposite—weight gain and fatigue. Similarly, a sedentary lifestyle and heavy diet lead to an accumulation of kapha, slowing down digestion and eventually blocking the flow of nutrients and waste elimination. Kapha imbalance in the body can also cause ailments like diabetes, depression, and excessive sleep.
If you want to better your personalized recommendations for food, exercise, self-care strategies, and even your ideal beauty routine—take the Power Type quiz.
Blending Eastern with Western—3 Principles
Combining Eastern traditions and Western science in what I like to call the East-West approach doesn’t have to be complicated. You can begin with the foundational basics.
1. Find a balance in your energy
Too much stress, processed foods, ill health, over-exercising, prescription medicines, and a high toxic burden are all ways modern life creates an imbalance in energy. Basically, your body perpetually works to compensate for the stress of unhealthy things, and eventually can no longer keep up.
2. Eat for hormone balance
The foods you eat, when you eat them, and the environment in which you eat meals influences what Ayurveda calls agni, or “digestive fire”. Taking care of your digestive system is perhaps one of the strongest tools you have available to balance your hormones naturally.
A big part of what makes up your digestive fire is your gut microbiome. This system regulates hormone detoxification, food cravings, and is a major controller of optimal health. Try to avoid fried foods, reduce added sugar intake, and increase fermented foods as well as prebiotic foods to support healthy gut bacteria.
In practice, this means choosing foods that are fresh, seasonal, and suited to your particular dosha, or energy type. You can learn more about these patterns when you determine your Power Type
3. Follow your circadian rhythm
Your body naturally gravitates toward a regular routine for restorative sleep, eating, and exercise. When you align your actions with this biological schedule, you’re more likely to experience balance in other areas of your life too—including your hormones (1).
5 Easy + Practical East-West Tips to Balance Hormones
Drink something warm first thing in the morning—but not coffee
Sipping something warm first thing in the morning—before breakfast or coffee—helps prime digestion for the foods you’ll consume later in the day.
Try CCF tea, which stands for its ingredients—coriander, cumin, and fennel. And even Western studies show these herbs aid gut health, fight inflammation, and may even help you lose weight (2,3). These herbs are also good for all three doshas, or energy types.
Alternatively, you can sip warm water mixed with a healthy squeeze of fresh lemon. This practice supports your digestive fire by getting your gastric juices flowing and priming your system to absorb nutrients.
Try this: My Healthy Morning Routine
Reduce stress
How often do you participate in things like stress-scrolling social media, zoning out to the TV, or having a glass of wine only for it to turn into three?
These are all mechanisms that let you know your energy is imbalanced and your nervous system needs help calming down.
Your mind controls your body just as much as your body can influence your mind, so it’s crucial to include your mood, emotional health, and mental wellness in your hormone balance journey. Try:
- Journaling for about 10 minutes first thing in the morning, or before going to bed.
- Practicing a 4-7-8 breath. (This is great if you’re busy and short on time during the day—these micro-moments of re-centering your energy really do matter!)
- Keeping caffeine and alcohol to a minimum (or omitting altogether) as caffeine can worsen anxiety and even moderate alcohol consumption disrupts hormones in women.
Watch: Easy Tips to Build Your Stress-Reducing Toolbox
Try an oil massage
In Ayurveda, the practice of abhyanga (Ayurvedic oil massage) is recommended daily. But don’t worry, this form of massage is easy, accessible, and an incredibly beneficial alternative to traditional massage therapy.
In fact, a study examining the effects of Ayurvedic oil massage on stress found that this practice lowered both heart rates and blood pressure, and reduced the effects of stress on the body (4).
If you have trouble relaxing and focusing on the present, practicing oil massage for 10-12 minutes before a shower is a great way to calm your mind.
Read: 7 Incredible Benefits of Black Seed Oil for Women
Don’t eat between dinner and breakfast the next morning
After you have dinner, try to fast until breakfast the next morning. This practice supports digestive health as well as hormone balance.
This is a type of intermittent fasting, but allowing your gut to rest overnight gives your body an opportunity to perform other detoxification functions. Fasting overnight is also more in tune with natural biological rhythm, and can even activate antioxidant enzymes (5).
Calm your gut and support a healthy microbiome with Belly Fix.
Use adaptogens to support hormone balance
Herbal medicine is a staple in Eastern tradition, with the use of targeted herbs and other supplements to gently restore balance where you need a little extra help. Some supplements that may be beneficial for hormonal imbalances include:
-
- Vitex (chaste tree berry) for healthy progesterone production
- Ashwagandha to help manage stress
- Magnolia bark to support a restful night’s sleep
- Red clover to support healthy estrogen
- Milk thistle to promote natural liver detox pathways
Watch: 5 Herbal Teas for Hormone Balance
Work with a holistic provider to heal hormone imbalances
With this special blend of East-meets-West medicine, I believe that everything is connected. If one system in the body is out of balance, it can have an impact on other systems as well. This is why it’s important to take a holistic approach when it comes to your health—and that includes how you care for your mind and body. Whether you have complex hormonal issues, or just want to find out where your baseline is, a qualified holistic practitioner can help you find your way back to feeling like your best self.
If you’d like to dive deeper into the world of holistic health, join me inside the Superwoman Circle for the support you need to change your health—and your life.
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