Taming Teenage Hormones

Any parent of a teenager will know how powerful hormones can be! Some days it feels like you’re on a veritable roller coaster – one minute they’re up, the next they’re down – and you never know what twists and turns they’ll throw your way next.

It’s common knowledge that hormones have a drastic impact on teenagers’ moods, transforming our formerly friendly and polite tweens into veritable volcanoes, erupting with emotion and anger.
But hormones can also affect teens physically, causing skin breakouts, bloating, headaches and weight gain.

Of course, hormonal changes in the teenage years are completely normal, but did you know that food, lifestyle and environment can heighten hormonal changes, making them more unpleasant than they need to be.

The good news is we can use this fact to our advantage, and make a range of lifestyle tweaks to better balance those unbridled hormones.
Here are my top five tips to establish harmonious hormones for your teens.

Skip the sugar
Through a complex cascade of events, sugar influences the level of many hormones and is a key culprit in teenage acne. Sugar is not only found in obviously sweet foods but also in many savoury foods. The best way to escape the hidden sugars found in our foods is to eat more fresh, natural foods such as vegetables, salads, fruit, eggs, nuts, seeds, fish and meat.Use natural sugar substitutes such as dates, coconut sugar and rice malt syrup. Make your own muffins, biscuits and raw treats so you can control the amount of sweetness that goes into them.

Look after their liver
The liver has an important role to play in hormone metabolism, so it follows that keeping the liver happy improves hormone levels. Sugar, processed foods and caffeine all put extra stress on the liver, leaving it with less resources to deal with hormone balance.
Cruciferous vegetables such as cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli and brussel sprouts contain a constituent which helps to improve the metabolism of oestrogen in the liver. Fresh lemon, garlic and onion can also aid liver function.

Maintain a healthy weight
As teens hit puberty their body shape often changes due to the surge in hormones they experience, but carrying excess weight can heighten this hormonal flood. Be careful how you address weight with your teens, as we don’t want the focus to be on how they look or how much they weigh. Simply encourage an active lifestyle and fresh food diet.

Move that body
Not only is exercise a fantastic outlet for stress and negative emotions, it also has a favourable effect on hormone balance. If your child is not into team sports, encourage them to hop on their bike, go for a walk, jump on the trampoline or dance around to their favourite music. Get the whole family involved and schedule it in as you would sport practice.

Reduce Plastic
There are a number of chemicals in our environment that act as hormones when absorbed into our bodies, known as xeno- oestrogens. Plastics contain these chemicals so we must be careful how we use them. Avoiding exposure to plastics is easier said than done but there are a few golden rules to follow:

  • Can it! Tinned foods are generally lined with plastics, so decreasing your intake of canned foods will reduce your exposure to these chemicals.
  • Heat and plastic don’t mix! Never heat food in plastic containers or store hot food in plastic. Heat releases the chemicals from the plastic straight into your food. Put your food into ceramic, glass or stainless steel to heat it.
  • Unwrap it! The softer the plastic the more phytalates it contains, which are potent hormone disruptors. What is the softest plastic you know of? You guessed it, cling wrap! Use a stainless steel lunch container, or aluminium foil to wrap your lunch instead.
  • Bottled water is designed for one use. Yes it’s bad news for our environment, but when you use your plastic water bottle again and again it disintegrates and leaches the plastic chemicals into the water you drink. There is a solution. Invest in a good quality stainless steel water bottle and carry it wherever you go.

While it may not be possible to ever balance teenage hormones perfectly, there is much that can be done to reduce their impact

Teen hormones will never be perfectly balanced but the current and rapid rise in teens experiencing hormonal conditions is a strong indicator that our modern day diet and lifestyle has a lot to answer for when it comes to hormone health.

While it may not be possible to ever balance teenage hormones perfectly, there is much that can be done to reduce their impact. Following these five strategies will not only save you from angry outbursts in your child’s teenage years, but will also give them a healthy foundation for balanced hormones long into their future.

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