Keto Diet by Josh Axe

Author:Josh Axe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2019-02-18T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

Ketosis Is a Hero for Hormones

The Diet That Can Help Balance Estrogen, Testosterone, Thyroid, and More

When I met thirty-year-old Miriam, she was forty pounds overweight, her posture was slumped as if she couldn’t muster the energy to hold her body upright, and she looked tired. I wasn’t surprised when she told me she’d been diagnosed with hypothyroidism, or low thyroid, which causes fatigue and weight gain. She also had polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), a hormonal disorder that strikes an estimated 10 percent of women of reproductive age1 (but may actually be far more common) and causes a constellation of symptoms, including weight gain, infertility, irregular periods, fatigue, moodiness, insomnia, acne, and facial hair.

Miriam’s doctor had recommended a low-fat diet to get her weight under control and prescribed medication to bolster her thyroid hormone level. When those strategies failed to help her lose weight or improve her energy, she went to a naturopathic doctor who recommended B12 shots, which help with energy, and suggested she start eating organic produce and meats. Miriam began feeling a little more vital. But she still struggled with frequent fatigue, she wasn’t losing weight—and she worried she’d be on medication for the rest of her life.

I listened to her history, then proposed a different approach. I told her my goal was not to treat the PCOS or the thyroid disorder but rather to cure the root cause of both those hormonal problems. I explained to her that hormones are chemical messengers, and they work in concert, affecting one another in important ways. Some hormones’ sole responsibility is producing more of another hormone! Hormones also affect every cell and function in your body. They regulate your metabolism, your hunger and thirst, your interest in sex, your ability to become pregnant, your energy, your sleep cycle, your immune system, your response to stress, and your emotions and mood.

Each type of hormone is stored and produced in a certain gland, like the ovaries, testicles, thyroid, pancreas, or adrenals, to name a few. In response to a signal from the brain, the thyroid, say, secretes thyroid hormone into the blood, which carries it to the cells in the body with receptors designed to respond to its particular chemical signal. In some cases, you can treat a hormonal problem in isolation. But that approach can be like replacing one violinist and expecting the whole orchestra to improve.

In order to make more global, lasting changes in people’s health, you need to affect the conductor of the orchestra, and if there’s one way to do that, it’s by focusing on insulin. This pivotal hormone, which runs amok when you eat a sugar-and carb-heavy diet, affects everything else. I suspected Miriam’s cells had become insulin resistant, causing her blood levels of glucose and insulin to become elevated. (A reminder about how this works: After a meal, the pancreas secretes insulin, which takes sugar out of your blood and transports it to the cells in your muscles and brain to use as fuel. But

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