How Hormonal Imbalances Affect Your Brain

I'm sorry. Yesterday got away from me, and tomorrow is more of the same. So this will be it until Sunday. Shoulder is acting up again, but the hormones, they are much better. As always, when things go askew, I look for answers, so last week I read the book Women’s Moods: What Every Woman Must Know about Hormones, the Brain, and Emotional Health. It was a great book about overall hormonal health and described how hormonal issues are physiological imbalances in the brain that manifest as emotional behavior, because the hormones involved affect the areas of the brain that regulate our emotions.

On the one hand, I wish I’d read this book years ago, as it was first published in 1999. On the other, I’m glad I didn’t. While the authors completely explain the devastating effects women's hormones can have on your emotional life, they are firmly in the camp of using medication to treat these brain disorders that affect women throughout our reproductive years.

That’s fine if you want to go that route, but there are other options available now to women who suffer from hormonal imbalances. These options are given a cursory mention and dismissed. Which, if I’d read the book ten years ago, or even five, I would have come to the conclusion that there was no alternative to my hormonal imbalance short of medication.

That, for me, would have been very depressing indeed. I know there are millions of women out there who have severe hormonal imbalances that may well require medication to control them—notice I say control them—not manage them. Me, I manage my symptoms through nutrition and exercise and positive lifestyle choices. If I took medication I wouldn’t need to be so vigilant about my health—the medication would handle the problem for me. But in my case, with the PMDD, I can’t see taking medication every day for something that only occurs a few days a month.

Still, there are days when the thought of it tempts me. But most days it does not.

As I said, to have read this book five years ago would have been devastating for me. Because the authors insist over and over that without treatment, your imbalance will only get worse. There is no light at the end of the tunnel without treatment—this is absolutely true--but their treatment of choice is medication.

So, that aside, I was able to read the book and learn much about the causes of hormonal imbalance and how and why these imbalances can and do get worse later in life without some type of intervention.

Hormonal imbalance is a very serious and practically rampant problem for women, and is all but neglected by the medical community. The only people paying attention are those who can profit from the condition. Most of the information women receive regarding hormonal imbalances comes from companies whose drugs have been approved for treatment of these imbalances.

Which is why we need more books like Women’s Moods to read, even if it is somewhat outdated. Because we need more than to be told a certain medication can solve all our problems. We need to understand the underlying causes of these imbalances and find ways to heal ourselves and prevent the need for chemical solutions. We need to understand the unique female brain/body connection and how it makes us vulnerable to mood problems at the most challenging times in our lives. Puberty, pregnancy, post-partum, peri-menopause, menopause, and post menopause. Every time you have a child, your hormones undergo an enormous amount of stress, and yet society acts as if there’s nothing to it. Life goes on and you cope.

But what happens when your ability to cope fails you? What happens when, as these authors aptly describe it, you have an internal “earthquake” and mood disorders erupt?

All this attention is given to heart health, but brain health is equally important. We need to learn to care for our brains as diligently as we do our hearts. Not only the heart can be strained by a woman’s genetic make up, life experiences, and stress load, but so can the brain. If our brain doesn’t work right, we don’t work right, and all sorts of mayhem can ensue.

No amount of “being strong” is going to re-regulate a brain that has gone askew. It just isn’t going to happen.

The way this book and many others describe it, our brains have neurological pathways that become worn over time like ruts in a road. When any situation arises, our brains immediately locate the memory of how we dealt with that situation in the past, so that we can effectively do so again. And each time we deal with that situation again, a new pathway is created over the old pathway.

This works fine if your brain is healthy, or operating at optimum level. But what if your brain is not? Then your brain is creating new pathways over damaged roads, and only more damage ensues.

Genetics plays a factor in this, of course, but so do your thought processes. In short, how we deal with stress affects our hormones, which in turn affects our brain. This stress can come from any and all sources, trauma from an accident or abuse, be it physical, emotional, sexual, mental, spiritual, financial, you name it, or from naturally occurring life events such as birth, death, marriage, divorce, loss of a job or health or relationship, to name just a few.

When your hormones are in balance, your body deals with these stresses in a normal and healthy way. When your hormones are out of balance, your body and brain do not. Little stresses can be magnified into big stresses, completely out of proportion to the situation. When your hormones are out of balance and your brain is dysregulated, you can feel like you are under attack 24/7. Your brain makes no distinction between the threat of an oncoming car or someone who simply disagrees with your point of view. Both, to your dysregulated brain, are threats to your very existence.

It’s not logical, in fact is completely irrational, but that’s what it is. Your dysregulated brain is not properly processing the threat.

This is why women with mood disorders or even simple hormonal fluctuations seem so irrational at times. But we’re not crazy, we’re simply out of balance.

Come back next week for ways to regain that balance.

On PMDD and Cravings -- and All Chocolate is Not Equal

I have no guest author scheduled for today, so you're stuck with me and what's on my mind :). So sit back, have some cyber chocolate and enjoy!

Having come freshly off a week of spending up close and personal time with The Alien, who kicked my butt so badly the last day she was here I had to take a three-hour nap in the middle of the day, on top of getting a full night’s sleep, today I feel uber-qualified to write about how it feels to experience PMDD. The thing is, now that the episode (aka her latest visit) is over, it’s the last thing I want to think about.

I look around and see all that didn’t get done over the last week, the laundry piling up, the floors that need to be cleaned, the clutter of all I didn’t feel up to coping with and simply set aside, and would much rather regain some semblance of control over my life--if only its external appearance--than write about the dark place I inhabited for eight full days and change this time around.

Why such a long visit this time? I think I know. I think it had something to do with the stress of travel, the staying up later than usual, sleeping in strange environments, the change in diet, the miniscule amount of alcohol consumed, although in comparison to my usual alcohol intake, it was a big jump. Let’s see…over the course of two weeks I had three beers, one glass of wine and a glass of Bailey’s Irish cream. More than I’ve had in the last 6 months, since the cruise, and more than I had in the year or so before that.

Still, it was a toxic substance my system isn’t used to. Add that to the copious amounts of caffeine I consumed during the conference and while on the road, the pasta-heavy fare at the conference, and I think I’m getting the picture. At home, I’m usually caffeine free—or close to it. No coffee, maybe a cup of caffeinated tea in the morning, if I feel the need, and chocolate only when “the cravings” come. And I hadn’t had pasta or bread in weeks before the conference.

Why? All of these are bad for women with PMDD, or anyone with a neurotransmitter imbalance. Caffiene, alcohol, sugar, flour, hence the bread and pasta. But why am I so sensitive to their effects? I know women who practically live on caffeine and sugar, others who drink freely, others who love their bread and pasta. Is it possible they feel as miserable as I do, or more so, but deny their misery and continue to self-medicate with food and drink?

Because attempts to self-medicate is what these addictions (for lack of a better word) are. My research is showing there are very few true physical addictions in life. Most compulsions are emotionally or psychologically based. Only in rare cases is an addiction physiological.

That’s not to say we can’t get cravings. But cravings are cravings, temporary urges for some kind of substance to relieve our mental, emotional, or physical discomfort. Cravings are not addictions, although when you are in the throes of one, it can feel like an addiction. But as someone writing a book on dealing with addiction recently pointed out to me, “You’re not going to stick a gun in someone’s face for a piece of cake.”

Cravings are the body’s signals that some physiological need is not being met. You’re low on some vital nutrient, to be exact. Your body is saying, for instance, “I’m low on magnesium,” and you feel a sudden urge to eat a banana, or some almonds, maybe some oatmeal, or, yes, some chocolate.

Chocolate is one of the best known substances we crave. What confuses the issue with chocolate is not only its physical healing properties (of which there are many), but its emotional associations. We associate chocolate with feeling good. But not all chocolate is equal. Some are better for us than others. Much better. Others are almost useless, physiologically speaking. In the example above, a banana would provide as much magnesium as a 1.5 ounce chocolate candy bar, but a handful of almonds or cashews would provide almost three times as much magnesium as either the banana or candy bar.

So why do we reach for the chocolate? It’s as much for the emotional fix as the nutrient needed. More confusion arises when we don’t know the difference between types of chocolate, due to the marketing and advertising claims of their manufacturers. Manufacturers is the key word here. Quality chocolates from true chocolatiers abound with the beneficial properties of chocolate. True dark chocolate is a rich source of flavanoids and antioxidants, with the cacao bean containing more than twice as many antioxidants the so-called superfoods like blueberries, kale, spinach or broccoli.

It’s the cheap, mass-marketed brands that--while they may contain miniscule amounts of chocolate’s beneficial properties—have processed most of the antioxidants and flavanoids right out of the chocolate. To derive any benefit from eating these lower quality chocolates, you need to eat way more than is healthy for you. When this happens, the negatives outweigh the positives—and you could end up outweighing all your friends.

If that’s not enough, did you know that adding milk to your chocolate, or even drinking milk with your chocolate totally nullifies its good effects?

Meanwhile you’re bewildered, thinking chocolate is supposed to be good for me, right? Milk is healthy for me. Isn’t that what the ads say? By eating chocolate and drinking milk, I’m doing something good for my body, right? So why do I feel so miserable?

Because all the chocolate in the world isn’t going to solve your problems, honey, and while I may crave it like mad at times, neither is it going to make my PMDD, or Pre-Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder, go away. For all its mood-enhancing abilities, even the finest Belgian chocolate won’t “cure” dysphoria.

Dysphoric is the opposite of euphoric. Euphoric means happy, dysphoric means depressed. As in depression. But only pre-menstrually, which I suppose can be considered a blessing.

In some atypical cases, however, the dsyphoria can come AFTER a woman begins her period. Lucky me, I’m atypical. Mine usually starts on Day 3, if it’s going to come. It doesn’t always come. Which is what drives me batty, trying to keep on top of what I need to do--or to avoid--to keep it from returning. I lead too full and rich a life to keep being knocked flat by this unwelcome change in my body. It makes me feel like I’m constantly behind—on everything.

As women, we all know “it will never all get done,” but to have something come along and steal a full week or more out of your month, something that no matter what you do or don’t do seems to be totally beyond your control…it’s more than frustrating. It’s crazymaking.

I’m here to tell you you’re not crazy. I’m here to tell you there are scientifically proven physiological reasons for why you crave the things you do—like carbs--and what happens to your body as a result of that. I’m here to tell you there’s help, and hope, but it’s far from easy, living in a body that seems to have a will of its own at times, and a manufacturing and marketing culture that promotes unhealthy foods as healthy because of their base ingredients, while completely ignoring the toxic effects of their processing processes.

That said, the first step is to forgive yourself for falling short of your own expectations, and to understand that what is happening to you is as involuntary a response as an allergic reaction. You can not control it. You can try to mitigate it, to be sure, by living a universally healthy lifestyle, once you understand what that truly is, but you can not control it.

Nor can you deny it and simply plow through it, as most women do. We have commitments, responsibilities, schedules and deadlines. We have people counting on us to be there for them.

But first, we have to learn how to be there for ourselves.

More on this, when I get a chance.