How this hormone doctor could help you to find balance

Londoners struggling with mood swings and problem skin are calling on Kay Ali to help them find balance, says Kate Wills 
Picture of health: nutritional therapist Kay Ali, who offers face-to-face and telephone consultations
Kate Wills25 March 2019

“I think it’s crazy that women tend only to think about our hormones when we’re trying to get pregnant or going through the menopause,” says nutritional therapist Kay Ali, who specialises in hormone balance. “From mood swings to poor sleep patterns, problem skin and irregular periods, nearly all women have experienced some symptoms of hormonal imbalance. But many don’t know their FSH from the SHBG, or how important testosterone really is.”

Where once “being hormonal” was something for women to feel embarrassed about or try to mitigate, now a conversation is emerging that pushes hormonal health in a new direction. Rather than just being associated with PMS or moody teenagers, we’re learning that hormones are crucial for bone health, weight and mental health throughout all stages of life. “Since I started specialising in hormones, my bookings have gone through the roof,” says Richmond-based Ali (youneedanutritionaltherapist.com), whose clients call her “the hormone whisperer”.

“I think it’s partly because the medical world is waking up to epigenetics and how our cells are affected by our lifestyle and environment.” Ali has clients all over the world, from London, to LA to Saudi Arabia.

This week, health-tracking service Thriva — which already has 50,000 users — launches its at-home female hormone test (£79), which uses a finger-prick blood test to determine if your hormones might be out of kilter. “We launched these kits because we know that many women feel as though they are in the dark when it comes to understanding their hormones,” says Annie Coleridge, Thriva’s strategic lead. “We have thousands of women on the waiting list for the hormone-testing kits and the response has been overwhelming. Our ambition is to help empower women to have informed conversations about their hormones.”

‘We have thousands of women on the waiting list for hormone testing kits. The response is overwhelming’ 

Annie Coleridge, Thriva

Meanwhile, private practices such as Harley Street’s London Hormone Clinic and the Omniya clinic in Knightsbridge are specialising in rebalancing hormone levels. “Any number of factors can contribute to irregularities,” says Dr Sohere Roked from the Omniya clinic. “Hormonal contraception such as the pill, as well as stress, pollution and lack of sleep, can all be an issue. Busy lives can stimulate too much cortisol, which can end up switching off the hypothalamus, the part of the brain that stimulates the pituitary gland into secreting hormones.”

After filling in a consultation form for Kay about my lifestyle and medical history, she tells me I’m not currently able to have an accurate hormone reading because I’m on the pill. But we discuss how before I went on the pill I had really bad acne, which Kay thinks might have been due to excess testosterone and the way my body was metabolising it due to things such as stress and sugar. If I wasn’t on the pill, Kay says she would recommend a dry urine test which involves weeing on a stick four to five times in a 24-hour cycle, meaning she can not only measure the levels of hormones such as testosterone, progesterone and oestrogen but also how your body is metabolising them.

“Think of your endocrine system as an internal telephone network — it’s how organs communicate to a cell what to do, and a hormone is like a text message,” she explains. “Cortisol’s message is fight or flight, oestrogen’s is to repair the body or rebuild bone.”

In the past few years, hormone health has become a hot topic. There are multiple articles and podcasts about balancing hormones on Gwyneth Paltrow’s website, Goop. There’s YouTuber Hannah Witton with her first-person v-logs The Hormone Diaries. The Library chain of gyms in London focuses its workouts on optimal hormonal function, which makes sense considering studies have found that high oestrogen levels can increase your risk of damaging a ligament during a workout. There are also hormone-tracking apps, like Moody Month, which enable women to recognise patterns in their hormones.

What sup, doc? Nutrients such as vitamin D and zinc can help you find hormonal harmony 
Getty Images/Image Source

So what can you do if you want to ensure hormonal harmony? Diet is a good place to start, says Kay. “Hormones are made from cholesterol, so eating good healthy fats such as avocados, olive oil and oily fish is essential. Zinc is also implicated in testosterone production, and with so many people pursuing plant-based diets now, it can be difficult to get enough zinc.”

Good sources of zinc include pumpkin and sunflower seeds, eggs and pulses. Similarly, a deficiency in vitamin D — which is actually a hormone, not a vitamin — can cause low oestrogen in women, which means a low sex drive and low serotonin, the happy hormone.

Ali says that in most cases you can support a hormone imbalance simply through diet and lifestyle changes. “Discovering your hormone levels and how to reset them can improve your wellbeing in so many areas of your life,” says Ali. Which is something to shout about, not whisper.

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