Stress Messes with Your Sex Hormones | Signs, Symptoms, and Why It Matters

Did you know that stress can have a direct impact on your hormones? When seeing an integrative medicine doctor, one of the first things they'll address is how lifestyle factors–like stress–affect your body. The most common hormones that are impacted by stress are cortisol, reproductive hormones like estrogen and testosterone, and your thyroid. These endocrine messengers play a role in many different bodily functions, including metabolism, mental health, and how you feel on a daily basis. When these hormones are out of balance, it can lead to a number of health problems.

So how do you mediate the effects of one of the most prolific and problematic health concerns? Here's how to stop stress from messing with your hormones–and what to do if it does.

The effects of stress on your hormones

Here’s how it happens: You're late. And sitting in traffic watching the minutes tick by while you mentally berate yourself for not being on time for this meeting. You didn’t sleep well last night and are–yet again–relying on coffee and sugar to get through the day. You feel overwhelmed. This is how stress starts. Without you knowing, a tiny gland in your brain sends the message - cue the stress hormones. And suddenly your adrenal glands release a cascade of fight-or-flight signals, including the stress hormone, cortisol. Your heart rate increases and your breath is shallower (1).

Your liver increases blood sugar in case you need a quick burst of energy. This also results in a slight uptick in insulin. Mood-stabilizing and reproductive hormones are temporarily deprioritized.

Essentially, all your body’s resources are rerouted to deal with the situation at hand.

Modern stressors are usually chronic, which is bad for sex hormones

All of the above, of course, is a carefully designed process to help your body prepare for rapid reaction in impending stressful situations. However, in our modern lives, stress looks a little differently than when this biological process developed thousands of years ago. Now, it’s less about avoiding physical danger or natural disasters, and more about navigating a demanding lifestyle. And there's no quick burst of energy to burn off stress hormones and allow your nervous system to return to its resting phase.

These stressors simply…persist.

These long-term, or chronic stresses are things like financial worries, relationship complications, or the cycle of poor sleep and caffeine intake. And this spells trouble for good hormonal balance.

Conditions we treat: Learn more about Adrenal Fatigue

Can stress cause a hormone imbalance?

So what happens when stress hormones get stuck in the ‘on’ position? Reproduction, digestion, immune function, and even collagen formation are deprioritized in favor of stress hormone production.

If you’re chronically stressed, estrogen and testosterone production can decrease, as can the availability of progesterone–as cortisol consumes a large portion for the purposes of trying to keep your body safe.

And because your sex hormones–estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and others–also play a role in things like mood and metabolism, any fluctuation can cause physical symptoms.

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The pregnenolone ‘steal’

One theory for why sex hormones are impacted during times of stress is the concept of “pregnenolone steal”. Pregnenolone is a precursor for hormone production. It’s made from cholesterol in your body and then goes on to make either progesterone or DHEA for testosterone and estrogen. This proposed theory states that during times of stress, pregnenolone is shunted toward progesterone production, and then that progesterone is used up to make cortisol.

Simply put, this proposed mechanism essentially ‘steals’ the precursor for testosterone and estrogen.

However, researchers haven’t determined this to be true, and evidence would suggest that the impact of stress upon sex hormones is more complicated than simply a substrate availability issue (2).

Stress affects mood, fertility, sleep, and metabolism

Your body’s hormonal response to stress is part of a complex symphony of chemical signals. But that doesn’t change that the effects of chronic stress are a growing problem throughout modern society. The hormonal dysregulation resulting from chronic, unresolved stress increases the risk of obesity, high blood pressure, thyroid disease, more severe infections, sleep disorders, anxiety & depression, and digestive problems. It’s hard to understate the negative effects of too much stress on the body.

Here’s how stress impacts your health and the body’s primary hormones.

Estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone

Elevated stress can cause reduced hormone production in the ovaries (3). This may lead to an imbalance between estrogen and progesterone, or Increased stress can cause estrogen dominance. The main symptoms are PMS, tender breasts, endometriosis, and (in some cases) fertility trouble.

Stress also has a direct impact on testosterone levels. When stress levels are high for too long, reduced availability of DHEA (a precursor to testosterone) may also lead to reduced testosterone production. This may be due to the presence of inflammatory cytokines (4). Low testosterone levels have been linked with decreased sex drive, infertility, and a number of other health problems in men.

Read: 7 Signs of Low Progesterone

Cortisol and DHEA levels

When you’re feeling stressed, your body’s primary response is to secrete the hormone cortisol. This messenger is responsible for a number of important functions, including:

Regulating blood sugar levels
Preventing the release of stored glucose from the liver
Reducing inflammation
Helping to regulate other signals like adrenaline and norepinephrine

Cortisol is released in response to physical, mental, and emotional stressors. However, when stressors are continuous and unrelenting, cortisol can remain elevated for long periods of time. This can lead to a condition known as HPA axis dysregulation (or adrenal fatigue), which is characterized by:

Exhaustion
Inability to handle stress
Poor sleep quality
Cravings for sweet or salty foods
Weight gain
Depression

HPA axis dysregulation, or adrenal fatigue, is a very real condition that can have serious consequences if left untreated.

Shop: Integrative Therapeutics Cortisol Manager

Thyroid

The thyroid gland is responsible for producing two important hormones: T3 and T4. Your thyroid then releases them as needed. These hormones are essential for regulating many different aspects of your body’s metabolism, including:

How quickly you burn calories
How much energy you have
Your body’s sensitivity to other hormones
How well your brain function works

When stress levels are chronically high, it can lead to an imbalance in thyroid hormones (5). This may result in a number of different problems, including weight gain or difficulty losing weight, feeling cold all the time, hair loss, and mood changes

Insulin and blood sugar

Prolonged elevated levels of stress hormones negatively impact insulin and blood sugar levels. This can lead to a condition known as insulin resistance, which is when the body’s cells no longer respond to the hormone insulin (6). Insulin resistance is a precursor to type II diabetes.

Basically, chronic stress causes cells to become “rigid” and unable to respond to the message insulin sends–which is to allow the cell to convert blood sugar to energy. Over time, this pattern leads to chronic blood sugar and insulin dysregulation, which is a significant risk factor for many diseases.

Health issues you might not know which are worsened by stress

There are a number of health conditions that can be made worse by stress. These conditions include:

PCOS
Hair loss
Fertility struggles
Anxiety
Depression
Digestive problems
Sleep disorders

If you are experiencing any of these health issues, it is important to address the root cause and find ways to reduce your stress levels. Functional medicine can help to identify the underlying causes of your stress symptoms and provide you with an individualized treatment plan to improve your body’s resilience to stress.

6 Ways to improve stress response and balance hormones

There are many things you can do to improve your stress response and balance hormones. Here are six tips:

Get enough sleep: Most people need around 7 to 8 hours of sleep per night. Make sure you’re getting enough rest so that your body has time to recover from the day’s stresses.

Exercise regularly: Exercise is a great way to burn off excess stress hormones and improve your mood. Numerous reviews show that exercise supports overall hormonal, mental, and emotional health.

Eat a healthy diet: Eating a balanced diet full of nutrient-dense foods helps your body to function at its best. Make sure you’re eating plenty of vegetables, some fruits, minimally processed grains, healthy fats, and quality proteins.

Manage stress: Learning how to manage stress is an important part of maintaining hormone balance. There are many different techniques that can help, such as yoga, meditation, and deep breathing exercises.

Take supplements: Supplements can help improve hormonal imbalance and mediate stress symptoms, like omega-3 fatty acids, magnesium, and l-theanine.

See a functional medicine practitioner: A functional medicine practitioner can help provide hormone testing and analysis and identify any underlying causes that may contribute to your stress symptoms.

Decrease stress for better hormone balance

Stress can really interfere with your hormones. These chemical messengers rely on their ability to send signals from your brain to your body, and back again, and high levels of chronic stress prevent them from doing their job. Reproductive hormones like estrogen and testosterone and metabolic hormones like T4 and insulin are also affected by stress.

Working with a qualified functional practitioner can help you not only identify the underlying causes of a hormonal imbalance but also provide holistic coping mechanisms to reduce stress and improve resilience.

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About
the author

CentreSpring MD, formerly known as Atlanta Center for Holistic and Integrative Medicine, provides the best medical care by using an integrative approach to find a patient’s centre—their core—empowering them to spring forth into health.

Blog Reviewed By:

Dr. Taz Bhatia, M.D.

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At CentreSpringMD, we do medicine differently. Our focus is on giving you hope and your life back.

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