Holiday Hormone Havoc

While the holidays are known to bring a whole lot of joy, they can also "hijack" your hormones because of the potential accompanying stress. Holidays bring the hustle and bustle, with many responsibilities between hosting family and friends, entertaining others, cooking meals, and even traveling. Add children to the mix, and you have more than a "full plate." These times of the year should be spent creating memories with laughs and smiles. Instead, many individuals are left burnt out after the holidays, wondering "what just happened" as havoc has been brought to their hormones unknowingly.

Stress, especially on women throughout this season, can leave them either dreading the holidays or dreading the recovering afterward. Not to say there isn't room for some holiday parties, but managing stress helps to keep females hormones balanced. It can ultimately save them from exacerbated menstrual discomfort, pre and active menopause symptoms, anxiety, insomnia, memory fog, weight gain, and eventually fatigue aka holiday burnout!

It's important to know going into the holidays to set healthy boundaries and schedule mental and physical downtime. Rather than booking a schedule that is "go-go-go," try to budget time between events that aren't spent preparing for the next, but that honors your body's need for mental downtime without responsibilities to recover from the past holiday party before moving on to the next. It may not be practical to schedule in a quick yoga session between holiday gatherings. Still, one intervention that is free and relatively quick and easy to incorporate is deep breathing.

Deep breathing has been shown to calm the nervous system and can quickly take one's body out of that fight of flight holiday chaos. It can have a profound impact on stress and cortisol levels.

While reading this, you can practice now:

Sit comfortably. Start by breathing in for 3 seconds (1-2-3), hold for 4 seconds (1-2-3-4), and breathe out for 5 seconds (1-2-3-4-5). If you can comfortably master that, consider extending your counting by a few seconds. Breathe in for 4 seconds (1-2-3-4), hold for 6 (1-2-3-4-5-6), and breath out for 8 (1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8). Count it out and continue over and over for as long as you have: 2 minutes or ten. Everyone can squeeze a few minutes in for deep breathing, whether it's in the car on the drive or maybe it's while wrapping gifts. The relaxation impact can be heightened by adding some guided imagery and closing your eyes.

Imagine yourself looking up to the sky. Close your eyes. What do you see? Light blue, gray, or dark blue? With gray or white clouds. Are they full and fluffy? Are they still or moving? What is their shape? Can you feel the wind go by? Keep deep breathing slowly. You could also try imagining yourself at the beach. What do you see? Waves? How fast are they coming in? What do you hear? The waves, the wind, the birds? What do you smell? Can you smell the ocean? What do you feel? Can you feel the wind or the sun?

By slowly breathing deeply, this allows you to turn on the parasympathetic calming (rest and digest) response, allowing your body to produce essential hormones like estrogen, progesterone still, and testosterone reducing that high cortisol that can lead to weight gain and eventually fatigue.

I actually tell my patients to go get away and deep breath anywhere possible, even in the bathroom, if that's all you have! This allows you a mental escape that many times our bodies need with the physical and mental holiday stress. Imagining yourself in such a relaxing environment while breathing deeply and slowly even for a few minutes can be so powerful. It can prevent holiday hormone havoc you didn't even realize was coming.

Holiday Hormone Havoc

While reading this, you can practice now:

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