WomanCode: Unlocking Women's Health - A Holistic Approach to Hormone Balance, Fertility, and Wellness Through Nutrition and Lifestyle Changes

by Alisa Vitti

birth control pills increase the need for folic acid and vitamin B12, two vitamins that are already in short supply in many women).

Hormones affect everything. Have you ever struggled with acne, oily hair, dandruff, dry skin, cramps, headaches, irritability, exhaustion, constipation, irregular cycles, heavy bleeding, clotting, shedding hair, weight gain, anxiety, insomnia, infertility, lowered sex drive, or bizarre food cravings and felt like your body was just irrational? It’s not; it’s hormonal.

The conditions that women exhibit might be different from one female to the next, based on your genetic predisposition and lifestyle factors, but focusing on the symptoms and/or the conditions is less valuable than addressing the underlying causes.

By going to the root cause of endocrine disruption and treating it properly, we can actually trigger the endocrine system to get itself into healing mode and start functioning the way it was intended. That’s because there’s an order and logic to how your endocrine system works. Once you gain a deeper understanding of how your hormones work, which won’t remain a mystery much longer, you’ll know what you need to do for your endocrine system to enable it to perform much better than it does today.

when your endocrine system is working at its best, you’re more excited about yourself and about life. This, in turn, leads you to attract greater opportunities, enjoy moments of creative expression, and connect more intimately with others.

TCM provided a framework for understanding the interconnectedness of glands and organs in the body in ways endocrinology could not. If there’s a deficiency in one gland or organ, I learned, another will step in and overcompensate. This perspective allowed me to see the domino effect that can occur in the body: consistently poor diet or lifestyle choices can set off a chain reaction, and if you don’t correct those choices, your endocrine system is forced to work in ways it shouldn’t. This inevitably results in hormonal breakdown and causes the variety of symptoms that may have led you to pick up this book in the first place. While these first two fields—endocrinology and TCM—enabled me to understand how the endocrine system works, the question remained, How best to fix it? That’s where the functional nutrition piece came in. In my research, I came to see just how powerfully impactful food could be, not only in resolving symptoms in the short term, but in helping the body stay symptom-free in the long term. If poor food choices could lead to a state of hormonal collapse, then well-chosen foods contained the nutrients necessary to support hormonal health. Through my research and personal experimentation, it became clear that food would be the key “medicine” to be used in my protocol.

Health coaching was born nearly two decades ago. At the time, there was one main program—the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. These days, prestigious institutions like Duke University certify health coaches, and well-known physicians such as Dr. Mehmet Oz and Dr. Andrew Weil support our growing discipline. Holistic health coaches guide people to make diet and lifestyle changes in a sustainable way—that is, in a way that will still work for them decades down the road. We look at what people have been eating and doing that has created their symptoms and then work with them to develop a plan to resolve those problems. My greatest goal as a health coach is to guide patients to a point where they can bear witness to their own healing power. When a patient has attained his or her health goals and thanks me, I always tell them that if I did my job correctly, I was their best guide. They, however, did all of the essential work making the food and lifestyle shifts. I simply showed them how to think about their daily habits differently so they could heal themselves.

the only way your hormones can achieve balance is if your body does the job—and only if you safeguard and nurture it, with every meal and habit, every day, to optimize endocrine function.

WomanCode: Stabilize your blood sugar Nurture your adrenal glands Support your organs of elimination Syncing with your menstrual cycle Engage your feminine energy

Use plenty of positive assurances: I am healing. Change is possible. I am getting better. My body is capable of fixing itself. The more you bring positive statements to mind, the faster you’ll interrupt the negativity, until it’s no longer your first reaction—or any reaction—when you set out to create change in your body and health.

Libido Restoration and Improvement Do any of these symptoms sound familiar? • Fatigue/exhaustion • Insomnia

Depression • Fuzzy-headedness

Thyroid issues such as hypothyroidism or hyperthyroidism • Anxiety • Mood swings

Inability to reach orgasm or attain the sensations you once had during orgasm

FLO Blocker 2: Cultural conditioning I also like to call this category “hypersuck,” because women tend to get “sucked” into believing that our bodies are wild, scary, shameful places that need to be managed by an outside source, medicated, controlled, and sterilized. (We have the media and other social influences to thank for that.) We are rewarded for acting/speaking/looking like young girls versus confident women. We have too few powerful, healthy role models, but plenty of exhausted moms and emaciated models front and center on our cultural stage. We have a hard time appreciating our grown-up female bodies. We’re made to feel that female intuition is fickle. We suspect that our energy is unstable. We’re conditioned to think that our periods are shameful and disgusting. We look for ways to fix what’s broken. We discipline the highs and lows of our female essence. We disconnect from our own bodies and, often, our deepest sense of knowing. Ultimately, our mind-body conversation tips the scales in a negative direction, and this too affects hormone balance. And since hypersuck (that old cultural conditioning) tricks us into thinking our bodies are supposed to be acting this way, we allow serious hormonal issues—and all the symptoms that tag along—to linger for years before seeking out any kind of sustainable action to help ourselves heal. Sadly, many women lose faith long before reaching the point of action.

It’s no coincidence, given all the estrogenic chemicals in our lakes and seas, that there are fewer male fish in the world; in the human world, men produce less than half as many sperm as they did fifty years ago, and women suffer from estrogen-dependent diseases such as endometriosis at a historically high rate. We’re also inundated by stress, another endocrine disruptor. Chronic low-grade anxiety affects the feedback between your brain’s hypothalamus, pituitary gland, and adrenal glands—a configuration known as the HPA-axis, which regulates digestion, immunity, moods, libido, and energy.

Of course this makes sense: an apple is an apple and broccoli is broccoli no matter how you grow it, and it is extremely logical that the nutrient content—calories and vitamin content—would be the same. However, what is most definitely not the same is what you’re getting in addition to that commercially grown apple or broccoli that you’re eating. These foods contain pesticides, organophosphates, and other farming chemicals that wreak havoc on your delicate endocrine system, congesting your liver, acting like estrogen in your body (often referred to as xenoestrogens), and confusing the hormonal conversation your body needs to have to create balance and avoid symptoms and diseases.

WomanCode Organic Food Essentials • Fruits: blueberries, strawberries, apples, melons, pears, peaches • Miscellaneous: celery, peppers, tomatoes • Root vegetables: potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash • Leafy green vegetables: all lettuces, kale, cabbage, spinach, other greens • Animal protein: beef, poultry, dairy, eggs (especially because these animals, when not organically fed and properly pastured, are fed a diet of antibiotics, growth hormones, and genetically modified foods that will exacerbate your existing hormonal imbalance)