Sara Gottfried

Believe it or not, most problems, including hormone imbalance, can be largely relieved through lifestyle changes alone.

She practices what is known as “functional” or integrative medicine, which works to optimize the minute-to-minute processes and functions of the body before diagnosable diseases develop.

perimenopausal years as the big wake-up call—a time when we reach a crossroads in our lives. Everything that is no longer working has to be addressed and left behind! One road says Die; the other says Grow.

easier to rebalance your hormones than to live with the misery of hormonal imbalance.

Diane began a new way of eating (no gluten or sugar for three months) and targeted exercise that

lowered her cortisol rather than raised it (studies show that running raises cortisol levels). She set aside fifteen minutes each day for conscious de-stressing, in this case relaxing yoga, and we mended her hormonal imbalance with three supplements: fish oil, phosphatidylserine, and rhodiola.

grew to understand that an entire world of prevention, healing, and repair exists through nutrition and lifestyle; that the answers to health challenges cannot be found solely in a bottle of prescription pills; that eating whole foods is the foundation of robust health; that regular exercise and contemplative practice can keep your body humming.

Who knows, maybe you too will dance at your great-granddaughter’s wedding.

And I discovered what millions of other women face: my hormones were seriously off kilter. I was a frazzled new mom, harried wife, and busy doctor, with significant imbalances in my estrogen, progesterone, thyroid, and cortisol levels.

But rather than masking the symptoms of my hormone issues, as I had been taught to do (usually with a birth control pill or antidepressant), I wanted to seek the root causes.