Hormones
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Hormones
The role and impact of hormones in our body
ELEMENT 4.1: HORMONES
“Whenever we feel stressed out, that’s a signal that our brain is pumping out stress hormones. If sustained over months and years, those hormones can ruin our health and make us a nervous wreck.”
–Daniel Goleman
YOUR MESSENGERS
Hormones are in charge of regulating most of our bodily functions, as well as our emotions and mental acuity. Hormones are chemical messengers that travel throughout the body coordinating complex processes like growth, metabolism, and fertility.
Hormones also influence our immune system, digestion, behaviour, and mood. When our hormones are out of balance, the effect on our health—and our performance—can be catastrophic.
The hormones you may be the most familiar with are testosterone and estrogen, which regulate sexual functioning in men and women. However, there are other hormones—produced by the thyroid, pancreas, and adrenal glands—that regulate growth, metabolism, and the body’s response to stress.
Our hormones do all the heavy lifting in the body, from helping us fall asleep at night to converting a particular calorie into fat or muscle. However, the production and uptake of these essential hormones can be drastically affected by external invaders, such as unhealthy food, caffeine, alcohol, and drugs. Hormones can also be disrupted by stress, negative thinking, depression, and exhaustion.
When your hormones aren’t able to do their job and reach the places where they’re most needed, your body begins to shut down. However, when we bring our hormones into balance, we look and feel better, and we perform at a whole new level of effectiveness.
YOUR HORMONES
- The hunger hormones: ghrelin and leptin
- Ghrelin, which makes us feel hungry, is secreted by the stomach walls.
- Leptin, which is released from our fat cells, tells our body that our energy stores are full and that we shouldn’t eat any more.
- If our diet is unhealthy, the effect of leptin is reduced and the effect of ghrelin is increased, causing us to overeat.
- The metabolism hormones: T3 and T4
- The thyroid gland produces both T3 and T4 hormones, which travel throughout our body telling each cell how much energy to produce and expend.
- These hormones determine our metabolic rate, which affects whether we gain or lose weight.
- Iodine is essential for a healthy thyroid, so make sure you are getting enough iodine in your diet.
- Muscle-building hormones: IGF-1 and HGH
- These two hormones break down fat and use the energy to strengthen our muscles, ligaments, and tendons. Our body makes these hormones naturally, but after we reach the age of 20, their levels drop rapidly by more than 10 percent each decade. Anaerobic exercise (such as weight training) helps boost their production.
- The sleep hormone: melatonin
- The pineal gland cycles melatonin based on our exposure to blue light, which is made up of the stimulating short-wave beams emitted by the sun (as well as by phones, tablets, computers, and televisions). If you spend time in front of a screen after sunset without blue-light blocking glasses, you will disrupt your natural sleep cycle.
- The male sex hormone: testosterone
- Testosterone channels protein to a man’s muscle cells, boosts sex drive, and increases sperm count. Testosterone production slows with age, but this deterioration accelerates in men who are overweight. Alcohol also inhibits the production of testosterone.
- The fat-burning hormone: irisin
- The body has two types of fat: brown fat and white fat.
- White fat is the flabby stuff, while brown fat is firm and burns calories.
- Irisin is a hormone that converts white fat to brown fat, and you can increase its production through regular exercise that targets the big muscles in the back and legs (e.g., rowing, running, weight-training, and cycling).
- The energy hormone: insulin
- Insulin is responsible for moving fat and sugar from your bloodstream to your fat and muscle cells for storage. Excessive sugar consumption throws off the insulin/sugar balance in your body. However, by controlling how much sugar you consume and exercising regularly, you can maintain a healthy level of insulin in your bloodstream.
YOUR HORMONE CYCLE
Scientists now agree that men have daily, monthly, and yearly hormonal cycles, just like women. This is not something you can control, but it pays to be aware of it. If your hormones are out of balance, these hormonal cycles can become very disruptive.
- The daily cycle: When a man goes to sleep, his testosterone levels rise hour by hour and are at their highest when he wakes in the morning. His testosterone levels start to fall after midday and are at their lowest ebb in the evening.
- The monthly cycle: Men have a monthly hormonal cycle, but it does not fluctuate as much as women’s cycles do, and it is far less predictable. Research shows that male testosterone production waxes and wanes over the course of a month. However, the timing and the extent of the changes are unique to each man.
- The yearly cycle: Studies conducted in Australia, France, and the U.S. have found that men produce their highest levels of testosterone in October, and it gradually falls away (by 22 per cent) to reach its lowest levels six months later in April, before climbing back up again over the next six months.
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