Hormone Puzzle

“Why did he behave like that now?”, “Was this the time to get so angry?”, “Our boy has gone completely off the rails now!”, “So-and-so has really gone downhill lately and has been pulling a long face lately.” 

What are these mood swings? Understanding the underlying causes of the situations we often summarize as hormonal problems is very important.

I would like to share some clues about hormone imbalances with you.

1. Stubborn weight gain: There may be cases where success cannot be achieved in losing weight despite the implementation of diet and exercise programs.
2. Fat accumulation around the waist and decrease in muscle mass: When under too much stress, the secretion of some hormones decreases while others increase.
3. Low libido: Hormonal imbalance causes irregular sleep, and irregular sleep reduces the secretion of sex hormones.
4. Fatigue: A state of weakness occurs around noon, and there is a need to take a nap after lunch.
5. Anxiety, sensitivity, and depression: When the body is under too much stress, it may have problems with hormone secretion and may not be nourished enough at the same time.
6. Sleep disorder: The body becomes stressed and starts to secrete too much cortisol.
7. Hot flashes and sweating: Difficulties experienced during perimenopause and menopause seriously decrease the quality of life.
8. Digestive problems: Bloating, food intolerance, and inability to digest food occur.
9. Cravings: Situations like eating twice as much as usual, and drinking half a bottle of wine in one sitting are generally due to insulin hormone resistance, adrenaline hormone fatigue, and other hormonal secretion problems.
10. Menstrual discomfort: Excessive pain, heavy bleeding, and deep mood swings are experienced.

Of course, the reasons for all these difficulties may or may not be hormonal, but we can obtain clearer information through blood tests. The hormone system is important for supporting other systems to function properly and ensuring the healthy and smooth functioning of the body.

The pituitary and pineal glands are located in the head area, the thyroid and parathyroid glands in the throat area, the thymus gland in the chest area, the pancreas on the left side, and the liver on the right side in the middle of the body, the adrenal glands on both sides of the back, and the ovaries or testes in the lower abdomen.

In the context of yoga anatomy, there is a hormone gland corresponding to each energy center in the body, which is called the chakra. A healthy and active chakra ensures the healthy functioning of all organs located in the physical body projection of the area it is located in. Therefore, yoga practices targeting organ or hormone gland problems in these areas focus on chakra-centered practices.

Women experience serious problems during the adaptation period when estrogen hormone secretion decreases at around 40 years old, leading to a decrease in ovulation and eventually stopping completely. Considering that the adrenaline glands of 21st-century humans are also tired when productivity ends in a normal organism, the body needs to produce estrogen only for a healthy life, which should be provided by the adrenal and pituitary glands, but since the tired glands cannot produce estrogen at full capacity, women experience hot flashes, night sweats that wake them up from sleep, irritability, sensitivity, decreased libido, dryness throughout the skin especially in the vagina, mood swings, and depression.

Similar problems develop in men during their andropause period, which starts around their 40s, such as erection problems, premature ejaculation, prostate problems, frequent urination, inability to hold urine, and changes in mood and behavior.

Everyone experiences hormone problems in a certain period of their life when their lifestyle deviates from their natural state. Especially thyroid gland disorders are one of the most common illnesses in women today. The thyroid gland causes various discomforts that affect the entire body and mood of the person by either functioning hyperactively or hypoactively due to various reasons. In addition to all of these, diabetes, which we never see as a hormonal disorder, is a disease caused by the pancreas not being able to secrete insulin hormone or having high levels of insulin resistance, which is another hormone gland.

Hormonal disorders are usually treated in medicine with synthetic hormone supplements. However, many people do not want to use them due to their side effects. Especially when synthetic hormone supplements are taken during menopause for a long time, they can cause cancer in women. However, in addition to taking hormone supplements, it is now possible to stimulate and regulate the functioning of hormone glands in the body and produce extra hormone secretion through certain combined yoga practices. Brazilian yoga instructor Dinah Rodriguez has achieved very positive results on people by combining some yoga techniques. Over the years, she named this system “hormone yoga therapy” and began to share this system she developed for people living in different parts of the world to benefit from. Hormone yoga or hormone yoga therapy has become widespread, especially in Western countries, over the last 10 years.

Hormone yoga combines yoga asanas, special yoga breathing techniques, locks applied to certain parts of the body in yoga, stress-reducing techniques, and yoga nidra (yogic sleep or deep relaxation). It regulates and stimulates the entire hormonal system, starting with the pineal and pituitary master control hormone glands in the head, and including the thyroid, parathyroid (conductor of the body’s orchestra), thymus, pancreas, adrenal glands, and ovaries-testes in the body. It stimulates glands that work poorly or not at all over time and ensures a balanced and healthy environment throughout the body.

We can categorize the benefits of Hormone Yoga Therapy studies into three groups: physical, mental, and energetic.

Physical:

Mental:

Energetic: