Hormones and Some Info That Might Just Change Your Life :)

   Hormones. I feel like in this day and age hormones are 'almost' a curse word. I have hormones on my mind for multiple reasons right now. So many people I know...and my family included....are struggling hormonally. Hormones make us who we are. They are so connected to how we feel and act, how our skin looks and it is amazing how much of us do not fully realize that. When our hormones are off we can be over anxious, extremely exhausted, our skin can be oily and broken out, we can feel full of anger and the list just continues. We also can gain a lot of weight or have troubles losing weight. It is just so intense how much our hormones control our lives.
   I also feel like a lot of us need to have a general knowledge of how to help our hormones but we just don't know how to. If we go to a medical doctor (as a woman) we will be STRONGLY advised to go on birth control, which is synthetic hormones, which translate to long term poison for your body and also masking the issues that are causing the hormone imbalances in the first place.
   I have had hormonal issues for years because of the cancer that I had. I have never been able to get them very balanced but after reading a book called 'Trim Healthy Mama' I feel like I have a lot more knowledge as to how to help myself. I also have a wonderful Naturopath doctor who has helped me so much along the way. I thought I would write out some of the things I have learned along this journey. I do NOT profess to know much, but I do know SOME things and it has been so helpful to me so here is some info I wanted to share with YOU....
   I wanted to list a couple basic things you might try if you have horrible PMS or awful skin, or if your husband is showing signs of hormonal imbalances (tons of fatigue, depression, lack of drive etc) or your children, friends etc...
   First of all you might want to get all your hormones tested. It might be a struggle with your doctor but it is worth doing. You should also get your thyroid, liver and iron levels tested (get your iron levels tested especially if you have really heavy periods). You need to go on day 21 of your cycle to get this blood test to get your hormone levels accurate. That is important to know!!

   Hormone levels are affected by stress and toxins and that is because this directly affects your liver which is what regulates your hormones. If your liver is not doing well you do not generate new hormones every month and you just reuse your old ones. To give you a tiny hint...most of us have struggling livers in this day and age. We are so surrounded by toxins! To start helping yourself hormonally I would recommend a parasite cleanse first (hate to break it to you but pretty much everyone has parasites), followed by a liver and gall bladder cleanse. This will clear your liver of thousands of small stones related to parasite refuse. My husband just did this and although he was not very hopeful it would help it made a tremendous difference in his health. You can find cleanse protocols on line. Another thing to do is take some things to gently assist your liver to optimum health. You can look up some natural things to eat and supplements you can take for a healthy liver.
   After you have done this the next step is to figure out if you have any allergies. These will wear you and your liver down. It is not fun to do this but you can try some eliminating dairy and gluten first. Do this for at least three weeks. If you are still feeling gross and your skin is not doing well eliminate anything that makes you feel bad. After you have eliminated things slowly add one thing back into your diet at a time. If you feel sick after you eat it or your skin breaks out you need to be free of that food for a year. That will give your body some time to heal from it.  When our body is struggling one of the first things it does is form an allergy. It is like a cry for help from our body. Another thing you can do to help your liver is get digestive enzymes and take them before each meal. This will assist your body in digesting your food and hopefully you can absorb nutrients better.
   Another thing you can do for your hormones is take Evening Primrose Oil pills and drink Raspberry Leaf Tea every day. This will hopefully help lessen PMS symptoms. I have had a lot of success with drinking large amounts of Raspberry Leaf Tea.
   Your body also needs healthy fats to produce healthy hormones ~ coconut oil, avocado, butter, fish oils, adding those into your diet every day will help your body out a lot.
  Another random thing that might help is getting rid of synthetic soy. Try to cut down on the soy you consume and also try to use makeup, shampoo, body soap and toothpaste that is free of parabens and toxins ~ even if it is just for six months to give your body a break. Our skin absorbs so much!
   Another good thing to do is to think about the life style you are living. Are you able to exercise gently to sweat out toxins? Are you drinking enough water? Could you add some apple cider vinegar to it or lemon juice to help flush you out and make your body less acidic? Can you up your vitamin C levels and Vitamin D levels? Would you consider a B complex supplement? Could you go to bed around ten every night for a few months and take some liquid magnesium before you went to bed? How about baths with baking soda and eps and salts in it? Could you lessen your stress levels? Could you spend more time outside and less time staring at a screen?
  All of these little things put together will help your body hormonally. Of course some people are going to need hormone therapy. Well, what is out there other than birth control? According to most doctors there isn't anything...there is ONLY birth control. Well...you can take bio identical hormones. Those are totally different than synthetic.  You have to get your doctor to prescribe them and you have to go to a compounding pharmacy to get them but they just might make all the difference in the world for you health! Do some research on that. Once you have had your blood test and you know your hormone levels do some research and figure out at what times of the month you are struggling the most and figure out what is dipping or rising hormonally during that time. You might need to be using some progesterone cream at a certain time because your progesterone levels are way too low etc. Look up how each hormone affects your body. It will probably blow your mind and you will probably be able to figure out if you have issues with too much testosterone or estrogen etc just because of how you feel and how your skin is.
  It is also good to do some research on how cortisol affects your body and how having too much of it may have caused your adrenal glands to tank. Check out adrenal fatigue online...but know doctors here do not recognize it so once again you have to get creative in how you treat it. You need to be informed and confident.
 I write all this because I am so sick of feeling so tired, so anxious, so angry and knowing that so much of it has to do with my hormones. I feel like so many girls are trapped because doctors let them down over and over again. Birth control is not the answer! Your liver needs help, your adrenals need help. You need rest and healing. You need supplements and good fats and you need to probably eat protein every three hours and more complex carbs not mixed with fats. Eat your fats with lean protein and with veggies...Eat your carbs with protein and veggies but not with much fat. It will help in all ways good :) Also cut down on inflammatory foods if you can. That will help your body in so many ways!!!!
  I am still a nursing mom so there is not a ton I am doing for my hormones right now but after I am done I hope to have the self discipline and energy to really make some huge changes. Right now I am working on helping my adrenals but I need to get consistent sleep to really make a change for them and that is a pipe dream right now.
 If you have been feeling like you are so not yourself and you feel like you don't remember if you used to be a nice calm happy person...but you think you were?...it might just be your hormones!!!!! Or if your period is ridiculously heavy....it is most probably your hormones!  Take heart!  It's a process, but your body and your spirit will thank you if you take some steps to help yourself! It takes a choice only you can make.
You can do this! One day at a time, one step at a time. You are worth it :)

The Farm

We used to live on a farm. It was sort of magical and at the same time I have to be realistic and know that there were lots of parts that were not. It was not our farm. However we got to design and transform the inside of a large shed into a house for us. The shed had a cow barn beside it on one side, but on the other side and in front was field. Oh my soul...it was so beautiful.

My husband is an artist, a designer and can make anything out of wood he puts his mind to. I loved my shed house ~ so much.

This is the front entry way and the door to my pantry (to the left). The slice of door you can see leads to the bathroom and laundry room.

When you walked into the house you were standing in the front entry with the kitchen to the left and to the right was a coat closet, the door to the bathroom and laundry room, the umbrella stand and the pantry door. Straight ahead was the living room and if you walked past the pantry door you could turn right to go down a hall and then right again to go up the stairs.

                                                                    I miss this pantry :)

When you went up the stairs you were looking down from a mezzanine into our living room. This is the mezzanine. There were two bedrooms, a bathroom, a huge storage closet and a massive play area up there.

 This is the dining area. I had a large wall for all my homeschooling things. That I eventually set up. This was what I did first but changed to homeschooling later.

                 This was between the kitchen and dining room and so we had a little sitting area. It also changed looks a couple times.

                   This was the island from the dining room point of view. I LOVED this so much.

My husband made the window sills in this house extra wide for all my treasures. Note the view ~ so amazing!

And the living room...where we danced, played soccer, rode bikes, skipped and skated.

 The ceiling was a little high so changing light bulbs was sort of a life threatening endeavor.

We had a wood stove that heated the whole house. The bright green you can see on the right is my son's room. There is a door at the end that headed into a garage and another door on the right at the end that was a mud/coat room.  There is also a door on the left that was my room. I had an amazing walk in closet.

                                                  This was the view from my kitchen window.

                                                   
                                                  Some of the year it was full of corn.

Living on the this farm totally changed my children. It gave them a freedom they had never before experienced. They felt wild and imaginative and they got to see their dad a lot. When we had to move it was very hard. I hope that one day we can again live on a farm :)

Dinner Time

  How do your dinners go? Is there steaming delicious food sitting on a beautiful table cloth? Does everyone gather round in anticipation? Do your children have impeccable manners and love everything you serve? Do you all laugh and eat and enjoy each others company. Does dinner stretch into hours? Is there dessert every evening? Are events of the day discussed? Do you do some sort of devotional or motivational something after you eat?
  Or....
Are you making grilled cheese, scrambled eggs and toast, or peanut butter and jam sandwiches most nights? Do you not own a table cloth and if you did you wouldn't know where it was? Have you given up eating together years ago because it was just too stressful? Do you have children who hate all food you serve? Do you hide in your room because dinner time means its been officially a ten hour shift with your children and you finally can get a breather because your husband came home and its HIS turn? Do you usually have the baby sitting ON the table sampling everyone's meals, spills are almost mandatory, and the stress levels at dinner are so high that you wish that it never had to be done?
  I was raised with the mentality that dinner time was a 'special' time that the family needed to enjoy in order for our family to be healthy. We needed to be thankful to God before we ate, enjoy each others company and have a devotional afterwards for dinner to be successful. We also all had to sit nicely the entire meal time and not get up from our chair. Somehow that never happened for us. There were many reasons.
  When my husband and I had our first child she learned manners, she ate nicely and everything on her little plate, and dinner time was perfect and precious. She was happy in her highchair and if she misbehaved she was firmly told that her behavior was unacceptable. She learned that throwing food on the floor was NOT okay and so she didn't. She learned to ask to be excused and clear her place. She helped wash dishes and she was happy to do so at the tender age of two.
  Fast forward to now and wow...what the heck happened????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
IF I make dinner it is akin to the miraculous. No one starves per say but grilled cheese if often on the menu. Our smallest family member feels sitting in a high chair is a sacrilege, and because his high pitched screams are so ear piercing they rival howler monkeys...we sort of just let him do whatever. Usually he is climbing on all our chairs behind us as we try to quickly eat. He also sits ON the table. It is worth it. I know it sounds like there is no way it could be, but it is. Our five year old has decided that dinner time is the perfect time to show everyone that she is her own person worthy of making her own decisions regarding her life. So she wont eat. I usually feed her every bite under protest. She is usually UNDER the table. Our nine year old is the one who wore us down to this degree...and although he is now doing a lot better...the damage and trauma has been done to his poor parents. Our oldest is still our angel. Everything we taught stuck...to some degree.
   It is funny how for years I stressed about these dinners. I thought I was failing our family because our dinners were so hellish. I didn't know what to do. I was literally in counseling about it! I tried lighting candles and doing all sort of creative things to distract and entice. Some days it worked but often it was another disaster with someone in tears. Last night my baby was throwing handfuls of chili. This morning I realized he had managed to hit the sliding glass door with it. I was writing as he was doing this. Everyone else was eating quickly because they wanted to get back to their movie they had been watching. We used to do devotions, sing a little song..I mean now we do often eat together but it just isn't the same. However I feel okay about it. I feel like that tiny dream of mine has not died. It just in hibernation right now. As the five year old works through her issues and my nine and eleven year old get better at helping out, as the baby gets tall enough to sit in a chair and see over the edge of the table, things will change. I assume at some point I will also have more energy and passion in regards to making food again. That might take a while though. I am pretty done.
  It is all in perspective right? Letting go of expectations ~ going with the process ~ realizing that there are things worth stressing over at some points of the journey and some things worth letting go.
  We have this incredible table we all sit around. It has been in my family for generations. It is very old and countless families have sat around this table sharing memories, fighting, crying, laughing and enjoying. This table is not giving up on my family. I know it. I also know that sooner than later our family dinners are going to be better again. It is going to be good. So if you are in the stage where you have these hours long family dinners, your food is delicious and incredible and your children akin to perfection...I salute you!!!! And if you are in the stage that I am in...I am with you sister! We shall keep keeping on.

Awaiting Spring

Are you wishing for Spring's arrival? Where I live Spring comes early and by late February the stirrings of Spring are everywhere.

Right now the trees are barren, dark and arrayed in clear drops of rain. They look downcast and like they are patiently waiting. They know that soon stirrings of sap will start. They know that their leaves will be budding.

I have seen signs of Spring's heralds. They are peeping their heads up through the earth. Seeming to ask if it is safe to come out. Some have already been quite bold. They seem to be coming earlier and earlier.

Winters here are not terribly cold or filled with snow. They are not crisp or shivery most of the time. Usually they are grey, bleak and wet. They are a damp and moldy cold that seeps into your bones. These winters are a very dull and dreary kind. By the end of January we are all waiting with bated breath for the planned sunshiney holiday or the arrival of SPRING!

That is the beauty of our Earth. Spring always comes! Soon it will be here. I am pretty excited.