3 Ways Omega-3s Support Hormone Balance

There’s no getting around the fact that everything in the body is interlinked.

Inflammation affects our whole bodies—our skin, emotions, cognitive function, joints, hormones, immune system... you get the idea—nothing escapes inflammation.

Diet and lifestyle play a significant role in managing or perpetuating our levels of inflammation.

Omega-3s are an essential nutrient that our bodies require, but cannot produce themselves—they must come from the diet, from foods like oily fish.

This nutrient is a powerful tool for managing our inflammation levels to keep them within a healthy range.

And coming back to the notion that everything is interlinked, managing our inflammation levels is just one of the ways we can support the balance of our precious hormones.

Here are three ways that omega-3s support hormone balance:

1. Omega-3s are one of the building blocks for hormone production.

Hormones are like chemical messengers that get fired all around the body, essentially telling it what to do, how to think, feel, and operate.

Our clever bodies build some hormones from scratch. Some of the 'ingredients'—or precursors—our bodies actually produce themselves, but others need to instead come from our diet or supplementation—omega-3s are one of the ones we need to supply, in particular for the production of our sex hormones, oestrogen, progesterone, and testosterone.

Omega-3s not only aid their production but also facilitate more efficient transportation and communication by boosting the sensitivity of receptor sites.

2. Omega-3s support healthy inflammation levels.

There’s a two-way street between inflammation and hormones—inflammation contributes to hormone imbalance, and hormone imbalance contributes to inflammation.

On the flipside, the good news is that what supports reducing inflammation, supports hormone balance. By taking steps to manage one, you’ll inadvertently be supporting the other at the same time.

Omega-3s support modulation of the inflammatory response.

3. Omega-3s support blood sugar stability, which is essential for hormone balance.

In a nutshell, if you can’t stabilise your blood sugar levels over a day, you won’t have any chance of stabilising your hormones over a month.

Our bodies interpret high blood sugar levels as a stressor—just one of many typical of our modern-day lifestyle!—which stimulates the release of cortisol, our stress-response hormone.

Cortisol shares many of the same precursors as our sex hormones.

Our bodies will prioritise building cortisol, our stress hormone, over sex hormones, because immediate survival will always take priority over reproduction… and fair enough too, as the body understands, you can’t reproduce if you’re not alive.

Note that omega-3 aren't going to solve all inflammation and hormone imbalance issues—there's no silver bullet for anything, ever!—however, it does play a very important role in reducing inflammation, one factor from which hormonal imbalances do stem.

The balance between omega-3s and 6s must first be regulated for hormone balance: an omega 6 to omega 3 ratio of 4:1 - 1:1 is ideal.

When the amount omega-6s outweigh the amount of omega-3s too greatly, we run into issues with inflammation, and subsequently wobbly hormones, too.

 

3 Tips for Hormonal Balance

1. Reduce intake of processed and refined foods.

It’s no secret or surprise that processed foods aren’t great for our health. We don’t have to avoid them all the time to enjoy a good level of health, but we do need to consume wholefoods more often less nourishing foods. The 80/20 approach is a good rule of thumb.

Refined sugars, gluten, and highly processed foods have high levels of omega-6s, which throw out the balance, and create inflammation in the body.

2. Take a high-quality, high-strength fish oil.

As omega-3s are one of the building blocks for hormone production, it makes sense to stock up on supplements from a high-quality source!

Sufficient omega-3 levels have a myriad of other benefits for our wellbeing, such as supporting aches and pains in our joints, skin, hair and nails, mental health and cognitive function, blimey, even our eyeballs, and of course, hormone balance!

So we’re killing lots of metaphorical health birds with one potent metaphorical nutrient stone. Very efficient.

3. Take proactive measures to manage stress levels.

Earlier, we mentioned that the production of sex hormones is a second priority below cortisol. By managing our stress levels and therefore reducing our body's need to produce cortisol, we have more resources to funnel into the production of progesterone and oestrogen.

These sound like really simple solutions—maybe even too simple to be effective measures—but the answers aren’t always complex...

• Deep belly breaths throughout the day.
• Restorative exercise such as a gentle walk around the block, a yin yoga class, a paddle at the beach, or swimming.
• Legs up the wall for 5 minutes. This action communicates to your nervous system that you are safe, and don’t risk being killed if you relax.
• Journaling to work towards untangling manageable stressors. Ask yourself: What can you do about it? Who can support you? What’s beyond your control, and what can be let go? Even making plans to manage sticky situations can reduce our levels of stress and anxiety, and therefore, our cortisol.