By naturopath Margaret Jasinska

Do you dread one week each month? Many women are caught in a cycle of disrupted hormones, and the terrible side effects. When your hormones are working well, you’ll be mostly happy and life will be sweet. When hormones are out of balance, they can cause emotional and physical chaos and lead to a whole range of symptoms that can interfere with your day to day life.

Your liver is the major cleansing and detoxification organ of your body and is responsible for breaking down and clearing out excess hormones. If your liver is sluggish, fatty or inflamed, its ability to break down oestrogen is reduced. Oestrogen starts to build up in the body, and leads to oestrogen dominance. Oestrogen and progesterone need to be balanced with each other, but when oestrogen rises and progesterone drops, a whole range of hormonal issues can occur. The symptoms will be worst in the week before menstruation begins. Common symptoms include low mood, anxiety, anger, fluid retention, sore breasts, poor quality sleep, food cravings, painful or heavy menstrual bleeding.

Your liver is constantly dealing with chemicals and toxins all day, every day, through car fumes, pesticides and herbicides, cleaning products, processed foods, artificial sweeteners, personal care products, alcohol and plastics. This places a large load on your liver and over time, it can cause inflammation or damage to the liver and lead to inefficient clearance of hormones. Another problem is the fact that many environmental chemicals contain artificial chemicals that resemble oestrogen. These are known as xeno-oestrogens and mimic the effect of oestrogen in the body, leading to hormonal imbalance.

Solutions to help balance your hormones

• Try to avoid chemical cleaning products: Most conventional cleaning products contain nasty chemicals that overload the liver. Swap these products for natural, chemical free versions, which are easy to find, or use natural substances like vinegar and bicarb soda.
• Minimise use of plastic: Using plastic bottles/containers is not only bad for the environment, but can leach chemicals into your food and drinks, particularly when heated. Swap for glass alternatives.
• Choose natural cosmetics and personal care products: So many non toxic brands are now available.
• Limit alcohol: Alcohol is toxic to the liver and will only do harm to it. Try to reduce your overall alcohol consumption to give your liver a break.
• Increase water consumption: Your liver needs water to flush out all the toxins, chemicals and waste products that it has to process. Aim for at least 2 litres of filtered water every day.
• Fill up your plate with veggies: Load up on a variety of brightly coloured fresh vegetables. These contain antioxidants, vitamins and minerals that help your liver work more efficiently.
• Reduce your carb intake: High carbohydrate foods can lead to inflammation and fatty deposits in the liver. Cut the amount of rice, bread, pasta, sugar, soft drink, chips, and cake you are eating. Eating sufficient protein and fat is the easiest way to reduce carb cravings.
• Progesterone should help: Bioidentical progesterone is identical to the natural progesterone produced by your body and can help to restore the balance. This needs to be prescribed by a qualified healthcare practitioner, and dispensed at a compounding pharmacy.
• Protect your liver: The ingredients in Livatone Shots and Livatone Plus have been used in traditional European herbal medicine to promote healthy liver function.
• Breast PMS Relief capsules help relieve breast pain and tenderness associated with pre menstrual syndrome. They contain iodine, vitamin D, selenium and zinc.