As much as any environmental toxin, chronic stress can be a hormone disruptor too. But as with chemicals and pesticides, there are things you can do to reduce your exposure to chronic stress—as well as mitigate your response to it. I know this personally all too well.
On March 12, 2006—a few weeks before Easter—we had friends over for lunch after church, and everyone was enjoying the beautiful day. Nothing about the day indicated that my life was moments away from changing forever.
I can remember the sermon from church that day as well. The priest was talking about Abraham, who was called from God to sacrifice his son Isaac, and I thought, What a crazy old man. Our children are so, so precious.
That tragic day, my children were playing together inside, and I slipped away to use the bathroom. When I came out, my eighteen-month-old son, Garrett, was not with his sisters. I immediately knew something was very terribly wrong.
What followed next was beyond my worst nightmare, playing out in slow motion. I looked out the side door, then the back door, and then I found him. Somehow he had managed to get outside without triggering the door alarms and had fallen into our swimming pool. I raced to the pool, pulled him out of the water, and started mouth-to-mouth resuscitation right away. My nine-year-old daughter called an ambulance, and a neighbor who had heard my screams came to help.
Garrett had a pulse and paramedics prepared to race him to our small local hospital, but they refused to let me ride in the ambulance with my baby, despite my desperate protest. I know they too were doing all they could, but everything that could go wrong did go wrong. For instance, the breathing tube could not be inserted, and the ambulance was delayed in finding the entrance to the emergency room because it had recently been moved to the opposite side of the hospital. Garrett died at the hospital.
The next days are still a blur to me; I was in a trance of sorts. We refused to let our baby go—I even carried him into his funeral. Amid our friends, our community, and complete compassionate strangers, I handed him to our priest. The world as we knew it had come to an end.
My heart was irrevocably shattered for my son and for my family, my daughters and my husband. I faced and battled all the demons of losing a child—shame, fear, guilt, and blame, of myself and others. The emotional trauma was devastating. Nothing in our lives was ever ordinary again. Years have passed now, but I cry as I write this and there are still days where grief washes over me.
If you have endured grief and loss, it is important to not compare your experience with mine. That only minimizes it. All of our experiences, no matter how different, are real, and the emotional depth that we feel is ours to honor.
I can step away now and intellectualize from a medical perspective what trauma and grief do to us. There are physical consequences, for sure. I went through this myself. One of the earliest signs had to do with my breast milk. I had been breastfeeding Garrett every day of his life, and after the accident, not another drop of milk flowed from my breasts.
My heart physically ached in my chest. The heart feels tragedy. It is an endocrine organ that also has receptors for and produces oxytocin, the love and connection hormone. Agony depletes oxytocin. My body ached too. It hurt to put my feet on the floor in the morning.
My periods became irregular. Then they stopped altogether, because I developed premature ovarian failure and was told I was irreversibly in early menopause, which also meant I would not be able to have any more children, something we had planned for before losing Garrett.
I had trouble sleeping, not to mention checking on my sleeping children once, twice, even three times a night.
Tragedy affects relationships. I knew that statistics show that more than 70 percent of married couples divorce after the loss of a child. We were determined not to be part of that statistic. But we were struggling.
Of course, there were emotional effects too. I was depressed. The world around me sometimes felt foggy, and I struggled to make sense of even the simplest things. Life had lost all its color because I was overcome with grief. Although I wanted to escape my life, I held my family close and stayed strong for them. I wanted to give them a better example of how to handle adversity, stand up, and keep moving forward.
I needed some privacy to grieve, but I also needed to keep the earth moving under my feet. I would jokingly say that I had to travel around the world to learn that everywhere you go, there you are!
And so we decided to take some time as a family away from the place with which we associated so much sadness. I left my practice in the good hands of a trusted colleague, Dr. Deborah Shepherd. She enabled us to go on a healing journey. Travel for me has always been my meditation and a large part of my education, so I reasoned that traveling, experiencing indigenous cultures, and exposing our daughters to the world might help us. I’d arranged home exchanges and visits with family and friends around the world.
As I traveled, I learned native healing therapies. I asked what people did to heal fertility, to heal from grieving, and to apply spiritual and physical connections. I studied their foods, and I spoke with some of the most intuitive, as well as some of the leading physicians around the world. Our journey took me to Native American shamans and then into South America, the mountains of Peru and the Andes, which was where I learned about maca and the herb una de gato, or cat’s claw. From there, we went to Brazil and Argentina, and then to New Zealand and Australia, and several countries in Asia, the Middle East, and then Europe. I homeschooled my children along the way—a sign that I was partly insane!
Our time away and my exposure to other healing modalities was indeed restorative. As I began to heal physically and emotionally, I did conceive again. It happened more than a year after Garrett had passed away and after I was told I was infertile and in early menopause. We learned the happy news in Israel—I couldn’t help but feel we’d experienced a kind of holy miracle!
After coming home, pregnant and grateful, I returned to my practice in full swing and tried to resume life as it had been. I poured myself into my work, bringing much of what I learned from our world journey and world medicine into my holistic practice. But it’s clear to me now that I suffered post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) for a long time after our return. I didn’t really understand it. But I knew I felt like a train going downhill with no brakes—out of control and scared a lot of the time. And, sadly, my marriage was falling apart—we were becoming the statistic we swore we would evade. Three years later, we divorced.
Stress comes in all shapes and sizes—we worry about our children, our parents, our finances, our health, our jobs. We are exposed to stressful news, situations, and people on a daily basis, and the combined load of it all produces chronic stress, which can, as the details of my own personal story show, affect the quality of our lives in so many ways. But it doesn’t have to be that way. When I began devoting my life to hormone balance, I was stunned at the lack of information and understanding about the relationship between stress and hormone levels. My own trauma forced me to understand it, piece together its puzzle, and make sense of it so that I could ultimately help my clients heal. I know personally and professionally that each of us can take control over the amount of stress in our lives and stop its assault on our hormones, health, and relationships. In time, you can—as I did—become more resilient and better equipped to heal from stress.
Located atop the kidneys, the adrenal glands quietly produce more than fifty hormones that are necessary for your survival. Stress—whether perceived or real—can lead to their overproduction and alter their balance in significant ways.
In response to stress, a hormonal cascade of events occurs in the body, leading to the release of cortisol in the bloodstream, which in turn allows your body to quickly react to the stress you are experiencing.
Cortisol is actually manufactured from another hormone called pregnenolone. Pregnenolone is commonly called the “mother hormone” because in addition to cortisol, it is the hormone from which estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and DHEA are also derived. Pregnenolone therefore plays a major role in the hormonal symphony in your body.
Under stress, though, the body preferentially calls on pregnenolone to make cortisol in order to handle the pressure you are experiencing. But when pregnenolone is pressed into service to produce cortisol, very little estrogen, DHEA, and testosterone are made. Daily, unresolved stress therefore jeopardizes your normal hormone production.
Cortisol is not inherently a good or bad hormone. It just does what it was designed to do, which is to help the body to respond to stress, a challenge, or a threat. It has a natural circadian rhythm that is vital for quality of life. Its production peaks in the morning—which wakes you up and gets you out of bed, hastening an energetic day. Then it goes down in the evening, signaling bedtime, and normally stays low during sleep.
Cortisol is also a natural anti-inflammatory. Too much cortisol is bad. Too little cortisol is even worse. Cortisol in perfect balance with other hormones optimizes health.
Some stress can be good, even necessary for life. It helps keep us fit, alert, and ready for challenges. But it is bad when relentless. The adrenal glands keep on responding with no chance to normalize, resulting in excess cortisol levels in the blood. This can cause high blood sugar, insulin resistance, high blood pressure, metabolic syndrome, immune system suppression and autoimmune disorders, protein catabolism (the body breaks down protein from its own muscles for energy), osteoporosis, behavioral issues, insomnia, and even hypothyroidism.
Persistent stress can also turn the natural circadian rhythm upside down, causing a restless energy at night and a low during the day (what we call the “tired and wired” sensation). Low cortisol all day creates a devastating condition called hypocortisolism, otherwise known as adrenal fatigue. It is common in people with PTSD, chronic fatigue, adverse childhood experiences such as abuse, and fibromyalgia. It feels like burnout.
The adrenal glands don’t actually give out, but through a feedback system, part of your brain, the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus, sometimes is told to back off and stop producing corticotrophin-releasing factor because, in essence, too much cortisol has been frying our system, specifically the mitochondria—the energy powerhouses of our cells. This is why adrenal fatigue is so complex and hard to treat.
Why is this a big deal?
Because the adrenal glands are part of the HPA-G axis. Its component glands—the hypothalamus, the pituitary, and the adrenals—communicate among one another and with the sex glands or gonads (ovaries or testes) to make sure our hormones are balanced. If one of these organs in the HPA-G axis (such as the adrenal glands) gets imbalanced, this can disrupt the delicate dance of hormones that keep you feeling healthy, happy, and sexy.
Unfortunately, today’s modern lifestyle is highly stressful, and it seems almost as though it was designed to create hormone imbalance. We spend our days indoors doing sedentary work. Our families are separated for most of the day and even in some cases, much longer. We fill our brains with stressful images from TV, computers, tablets, and phones. We can’t wind down, and we feel like we have to keep performing. It’s no wonder that so many visits to primary care physicians are for stress-related complaints.
If “post-traumatic stress disorder” makes you think of battle-scarred soldiers returning from war, you’re not alone. Until the turn of the millennium, most doctors thought of PTSD as battle fatigue too. But today we know you don’t have to fight in military combat to develop it. Acknowledged triggers of PTSD include domestic violence, child abuse, adverse childhood experiences, sexual assault, a serious traffic accident, a serious illness or injury, being the victim of a crime, suffering natural or man-made disaster, and many other things outside the range of normal human experience. Any of these experiences can alter stress hormones and, therefore, behavior.
Women have been hit hard by PTSD. According to the National Center for PTSD, about 10 of every 100 (or 10 percent) of women develop PTSD sometime in their lives, compared with about 4 of every 100 (or 4 percent) of men.
Although PTSD has different degrees of severity, it mobilizes cortisol. Some trauma is so disturbing—especially sexual trauma in women—that the cortisol stress response does not turn off. In such cases, levels of cortisol and other normally protective stress hormones become imbalanced and cease their protective power. This imbalance begins to usher in heart disease, fatigue, behavioral problems, depression, anxiety, and more.
Chronic stress also depletes the hormones progesterone and pregnenolone, which protect the female brain and support memory and mood. This can lead to a very difficult period around menopause, when progesterone levels are already rapidly dropping.
Additionally, in women with PTSD there is a significant decrease in the conversion of progesterone into allopregnenolone. Allopregnenolone is the hormone that increases levels of GABA, the neurotransmitter that makes us feel good, calm, and ahh.
Another huge factor in a woman’s response to stress is oxytocin. Under short-term stress, oxytocin levels aren’t actually disrupted. The presence of that hormone can make you feel calmer, less afraid, and more social. But with unrelenting stress, chronically elevated levels of cortisol decrease oxytocin production, and you start feeling disconnected from everyone and everything. And when our circadian circuitry is further disrupted—when we have chronic low cortisol with chronic low oxytocin—this emotional disconnect is worsened.
This is exactly what happened to me in the years following my son’s death—I kind of checked out and detached from many around me. Ultimately, however, I came to understand the relationship between cortisol and oxytocin, and what to do about it. For me and so many of my clients, it was a powerful revelation just to understand how this physiologic disruption causes us to feel disconnected, alone, and burned out, no longer loving the things and activities and, most important, the people we once did. Knowing that there is a physiological reason for feeling this way is amazingly validating.
The good news in all this is that we can reset and restore our optimal physiology, empowering us in mind, body, and spirit. There are simple strategies that can reduce stress and calm your mind.
Stress management will look different for you than it does for me. My personal favorite strategies are taking a walk, going to a yoga or boxing class, and taking a mineral bath with essential oils. I also read something inspirational, such as a devotional, and I meditate too. To be honest, quieting my mind and meditating are challenging for me, but I’ve found a good resource in a product called the Muse headband. It senses activity in the frontal cortex of the brain (the region responsible for impulse control, problem solving, and judgment) and gives you biofeedback, a treatment technique that trains you to improve your health by using signals from your own body.
The key is to incorporate activities you love into your daily routine. Maybe painting or sculpting relaxes you—or exercising, being in nature, reading a great book, or just kicking back and watching your favorite TV shows. In the long run, developing your own techniques will serve you well in managing your physical, mental, and emotional health. Here are some other specific activities to consider in order to create resilience and defend yourself against stress and the hormonal imbalances it creates.
Keeping our stress levels in check starts with nourishing our bodies with foods that heal. Following my Keto-Green diet is the first, most basic step. Enjoying more alkaline foods (especially green plants) helps to normalize cortisol, supports your adrenal glands and gut bacterial health, and improves your natural progesterone levels. Eating healthy fats, especially naturally sourced DHA—which can be found in foods like fish and flaxseeds—is also hormone-healing.
Then, as this book emphasizes throughout, you can get into ketosis. This targets insulin and makes your body more insulin-sensitive. As a result, you’ll become more hormone-balanced, with fewer stress-provoking symptoms such as hot flashes, weight gain, and foggy thinking. Ketosis also prevents fluctuations in blood sugar, which place unnecessary strain on adrenal function and are a common cause of excess cortisol production.
On this page, I provide a rundown of the daily supplements I recommend to my patients who are on the Keto-Green Diet: a daily multivitamin, omega-3 fatty acids (via fish oil), vitamin C, magnesium, a probiotic, a liver detoxifier (if your self-test determined you need one), fiber, and maca. If you’ve been diagnosed with adrenal fatigue or exhaustion, however, you may need to take a few more.
In some cases of adrenal fatigue, your doctor may prescribe cortisol supplements. These can be a helpful temporary measure to help reset or reinvigorate your adrenal glands, allowing them to begin secreting cortisol again by themselves. However, long-term cortisol use can shut down the adrenals completely, which has a harmful effect on hormonal balance in general.
Vitamins and minerals. A supplement with high-quality bioavailable B vitamins is essential, including methylated folate, B6, B12, and B5. Extra B vitamins are needed for adrenal support above and beyond what you find in a typical multivitamin formula.
Zinc is a good mineral to supplement if you are under a lot of stress. An active component in more than eighty identified jobs in the body, zinc plays a vital role in many biological processes. Chronic stress can lead to a zinc deficiency. I recommend supplementation of 30–60 milligrams daily with this mineral.
Botanicals. There are a number of herbal supplements I recommend. As I have already mentioned, my favorite is maca. Others that are particularly helpful for women under stress are quercetin, resveratrol, and grape seed extract. Another one I love is curcumin (derived from turmeric), which can reverse harmful effects of chronic stress. Medicinal mushrooms such as reishi are also beneficial.
Adrenal glandulars. These extracts are formulated with actual adrenal gland tissue usually derived from bovine (beef) sources. They help human adrenal glands repair themselves so they can heal and function normally again. An adrenal glandular can be a good source of adrenal support for mild to moderate cases of adrenal fatigue. Follow the manufacturer’s recommendation for dosage.
Bioidentical adrenal support hormones. In addition to adrenal glandulars, another good option is to supplement with DHEA and pregnenolone. Both are normally secreted by the adrenals and may help to stimulate the adrenals to begin working normally again.
Before supplementing with oral DHEA, however, have your levels tested. If your DHEA-S (not DHEA) level is low (under 120 µg/dL), I recommend beginning treatment with 5 milligrams of DHEA per day and slowly working up to what feels like an optimal level to you (usually not above 15 milligrams) while doing the other adrenal-boosting activities. Your physician should be able to help you adjust your dosage accordingly.
For pregnenolone, I often use a progesterone topical cream that has 20 milligrams of progesterone and 10 milligrams of pregnenolone per pump dosage, applied in the evening at bedtime.
Note: It is best to work with a functional medicine doctor when you are struggling and get tested and your hormones and supplements customized for your personal needs. (To search for a functional doctor, see the Resources section.)
For a long time I have done a kind of daily inventory of my spiritual health that is loosely based on the “Daily Examen” by St. Ignatius Loyola, a Spanish Basque priest and theologian. Now I’ve expanded my reflections and try to ask myself the following questions as a way to feel peace, check in with my stress levels and outlook, and hold myself accountable:
Where did I see God/goodness or love today?
Where could I have been more kind, patient, or loving today?
What am I grateful for today?
Where could I have laughed at myself more today? (That list is usually longer than I would like it to be!)
How did I nourish myself today, physically, emotionally, and spiritually?
Did I act based on love or on fear today?
Try this yourself. It is very powerful. Simply sit in a quiet place without interruptions, open yourself to the feeling of love, then ask yourself the questions above. Review your day with gratitude and look optimistically toward tomorrow; after all, it doesn’t have any mistakes in it yet.
An American Psychological Association–approved therapy, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) works by engaging similar brain mechanisms as those that underpin rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. It is most often used to treat PTSD, in which symptoms of constant fear and panic follow a devastating event, but it has been so effective in many other areas of mental health.
During a typical session, you recall a troublesome memory (starting with a mild one, then working up to more traumatic memories). You then assign a number to the feeling of anxiety and apprehension associated with that memory, and identify any area in your body that may be holding tension or pain in association with that memory. Next, you’ll hold that memory while watching a series of flashing lights or following a therapist’s finger in front of your face from eye to eye, twelve to twenty-four times, re-creating the REM that occurs naturally in sleep. You’re supportively guided through painful memories long enough to process and resolve them. EMDR causes you to remember the trauma, but in a calmer, more removed way. For instance, a rape victim may begin by feeling, I’m no good. I feel ashamed and guilty. At the end of treatment, she feels, The shame is the rapist’s, not mine. I’m a strong, resilient woman.
At the end of each session, you’re instructed to take a deep breath and then discuss your emotions or any other memory that crops up. You then move on to the next memory when you feel satisfied that the first no longer has a strong physical and/or emotional hold on you. EMDR works dramatically, though it is not clear why. It seems like the unprocessed memory is tucked away. Brain scans pre- and post-EMDR have shown increases in hippocampal volume in the brain. The hippocampus is a region of the brain associated with memory, emotions, and motivation. I’ve found EMDR to be very effective for myself and for many of my patients. They’ve been able to quickly heal old wounds and positively reset their physiology. It’s like speed therapy!
Another helpful tool is Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), which also helps heal psychological trauma. I’ve used EFT with myself and with my patients. The theory behind it is that blockages in the body’s energy systems actually cause distress, and that tapping key points on your energy pathways can remove these blockages and the associated distress.
In a typical EFT session, you talk about your problem with a therapist or coach, followed by a description of the symptoms you experience when you think of that problem. Typically, your therapist asks you to rate the symptoms on a scale of 0 to 10, depending on the distress you feel. Then the therapist will have you tap on key acupressure points while focusing on specific emotional issues. As the therapy proceeds, you’ll do more tapping as you think about the stress and rate your distress. In most cases, your number will have dropped.
As an obstetrician, I have spent years listening to babies’ heartbeats in utero and paying close attention to heart rate variability (HRV), the beat-to-beat fluctuations in heart rate. We listen and look for a high heart rate variability in order to reassure us that a baby is doing well. High HRV is a good sign of well-being and resilience. Low heart rate variability, on the other hand, is a sign of a stressed baby and stressed heart. At that point, we move quickly to get the baby delivered.
Through my own healing, I came to realize how important HRV is to adults too. When you are feeling calm and relaxed, HRV goes up, and you can more effortlessly manage stress. In healthy people, HRV is high. A high HRV determines your cardiovascular health, your fitness level, even your longevity. I have found consistently low HRV in clients under chronic stress and with PTSD.
Knowing this, we can do simple biofeedback training to improve HRV.
The HeartMath Institute (heartmath.org) has a website that offers great resources and an app called Inner Balance that requires a sensor. It takes you through various meditations and exercises with it. There are also now free or inexpensive apps for smartphones that use your camera and its flashlight tool. Just search “HRV” on your phone’s app store.
Keep practicing and improve your HRV. Naturally, you’ll want to do everything you can to raise it. Here are some other suggestions:
Try yoga. According to a study published in the International Journal of Medical Engineering and Informatics in 2010, HRV levels are higher in people who practice yoga than in nonpractitioners. Yoga is definitely a stress reliever. It is also excellent for flexibility and strength, and it is low-impact. It may also lower cortisol and bring you peace and centeredness.
I particularly like yoga because it bends and stretches you in all directions. If you’re not fond of yoga for whatever reason, make sure you’re wiggling, bending, shaking, and reaching out in all directions each day. Have fun while doing this—and sweat for its detox benefits.
Get grounded. “Grounding,” also known as “earthing,” elevates HRV. Grounding involves going barefoot outside, gardening, or swimming in the ocean. Other ways to ground include camping, hiking, or walking on the beach.
The Earth has a natural energy field. When you have physical contact with its surface, you absorb its natural healing energy. A study in Journal of Environmental and Public Health in 2012 demonstrated how grounding improves HRV by counteracting stress. It calms the autonomic nervous system, which regulates functions such as heart and respiration rates and digestion. An added benefit to grounding is that you will necessarily be outside to do it, which increases your exposure to sunlight and the all-important vitamin D that’s created by the body when skin is exposed to sunlight.
Limit exposure to electromagnetic fields (EMFs). Overexposure to the electro-pollution of radio frequencies (which typically come from cell towers, cordless telephones, and cellphones) can reduce HRV, says a 2009 study in the International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health. Consider ways to reduce your exposure: Limit the number and duration of cellphone calls. Turn off your router at night. And unplug electrical equipment when not in use. Stand back from your microwave while cooking. Try not to live near cell towers and high-tension power lines. Put your phone in airplane mode unless you are expecting a call.
Relax with music. Soothing music helps deepen your breathing, which elevates HRV, say researchers writing in Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine in 2015. Slow-tempo classical music is best. But select music that you like and truly relaxes you. If you don’t care for Beethoven, for example, it likely won’t have a positive effect on your HRV. We play lullaby instrumental music at bedtime more for me than my daughter.
Think positively. Negative thinking isn’t just bad for your mood, it’s also bad for your brain and your hormone balance. Chronic anger, hate, and resentment produce stress, causing your adrenals to release too much cortisol. Over time, high levels of cortisol shrink the hippocampus (the brain area associated with memory and emotions) and can cause more negative thinking.
I understand that you can’t always remove stressors from your life. But maybe you can change your perceptions and responses to some of them. As Dale Carnegie once said, “Everybody in the world is seeking happiness, and there is one sure way to find it. That is by controlling your thoughts. Happiness doesn’t depend on outward conditions. It depends on inward conditions.”
That quote reminds me of something a professor in medical school said to me: “You are the only one who can upset yourself.”
I had protested, “No, my boyfriend can really piss me off!”
To which he had responded, “No, you choose how to respond. You are in control of your emotions.”
I have kept that as a strong reminder—which is why I recommend reframing your negative thoughts whenever they bubble up. Ask yourself, “Is there another way of seeing this thought or situation? How would my best friend look at this thought? Is there a silver lining?” This helps you transform negative thoughts into positive ones.
One of my favorite Bible verses is Philippians 4:8: “Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” That passage is the essence of positive thinking.
Pause. Breathe. Smile. Connect. I put myself through college by working multiple jobs. I went to medical school and worked one hundred hours per week during my residency. Then I became a busy obstetrician, wife, and mother. I couldn’t have done all that without being a consummate multitasker! But after years of living life as an overstressed multitasker, I finally started living the following mantra: Pause. Breathe. Smile. Connect. When you breathe deeply, your vagus nerve—it starts at the back of your head and runs all the way through your body—tells your brain to get into relaxation mode. When you smile, there’s a measurable reduction in your blood pressure. Smiling releases endorphins (natural painkillers) and the feel-good hormone serotonin. Smiling lifts your face and makes you look years younger. Smiling makes us feel good and look good. It is a natural uplifting drug. Also, if we have to have wrinkles, I’d rather have smile and laugh lines than frowny lines.
Then there is connection. To me this means not answering a phone call or text while cooking dinner or spending time with my family. A car ride with my kids is phone-free time.
It would be unreasonable to completely forgo our electronic devices to spend endless time with our families, or stop multitasking altogether. All I’m suggesting is a little moderation. We don’t have to be enslaved to modern life. We get to choose. Choose simplicity.
I choose by designating certain times of the day when I give loved ones and friends my full attention. For example, I spend uninterrupted time with my ten-year-old daughter before she goes to sleep. I leave my phone outside the room and in airplane mode. This is a very sacred time for us, and I cherish it. Our loved ones need to know we are listening to them and that they have our attention too. This fuels our spirit as well.
These one-on-one connections actually increase our “love and bonding” hormone oxytocin. It is released when we connect with other people. We’ll get more into detail about oxytocin in Chapter 11, but for now understand this: When cortisol goes up, oxytocin goes down. This combination makes menopause a more difficult transition than it has to be. So part of the solution is to boost oxytocin and normalize cortisol through love, bonding, gratitude, a positive outlook, close family, and social connections. When we have those, we are more resilient and our passage through menopause is easier.
This is your time to smile and laugh more, connect with loved ones, take the time to eat healthy meals, take long luxurious baths, and discover new things. Nurture a positive outlook and be grateful for day-to-day blessings. When you adopt these ways of thinking, being, and living, you can control the impact of hormonal shifts on your life and move forward to the next great phase of your beautiful life while enjoying all the present moments.