Healing Before, During & After the Pill
Whether you have decided to get off of birth control or just want to know what you should be eating/aware of while on it, there are tons of changes your body goes through, whether you can see it or not. We’re told that all of our terrible symptoms just “comes with being a woman” but ladies, these symptoms are a result of your body trying to tell you something is very wrong!!!
Screwed up hormones are the result of all of our systems being out of whack & birth control can create permanent damage to these systems, causing leaky gut, structural changes in the liver, depletion of key nutrients, thyroid & cortisol disfunction, metabolic shifting & so much more.
Here are a few things that can help all of your systems re-connect & regulate so that YOU can feel like YOU.
Know your hormones
Although birth control has an effect on every single hormone in the body, it is likely that there is at least one that is dominating. Blood testing is a great way to know which hormones are out-of-whack. Testing estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, insulin, thyroid, and cortisol will help you figure dive a little deeper into hormone-specific treatments.
Give your gut some love
Research shows that birth control has an extreme effect on our microbiome & creates the perfect environment for overgrowth & can lead to leaky gut. Your gut is a huge hormone regulator & is used to get rid of any excess hormones that may be floating around.
It is especially hard for the gut to remove estrogen, which then leads to estrogen dominance (cue bitch mode). Besides feeling like you want to kill someone, estrogen dominance can lead to ovarian cysts, fibrocystic breasts, weight gain & heavy/irregular periods.
In addition to eating lots of leafy greens/cruciferous vegetables & fermented foods, taking probiotics & decreasing environmental toxins, there are a few nutrients that have been shown to restore & heal gut health:
Tumeric
Garlic
Aloe
Ginger
Chamomile
Fennel
Zinc
L-Glutamine
Get your nutrients back
Birth control depletes key nutrients that our body needs to function. Things like major B vitamins (B12, B2, B6), Vitamin C, Selenium & Vitamin E & folate.
Foods that result in large amounts of insulin release, inflammation or simple (meaning not a lot of fiber) sugars should be avoided. These are things like dairy, gluten, starches, trans fats & highly processed foods. As mentioned previously, vegetables, fruits, high quality fats & meats should be added into the diet. Making these small changes to your diet & maintaining gut health will begin to balance and restore body function.