Female hormones – they catch a lot of flak and take the blame for a myriad of problems, namely weight loss, energy and mood, among others. Thing is, if you’ve got a hormonal imbalance, it can be detrimental to your athletic performance goals too! And since certain hormones decline over time, supplements to boost female hormones are a must.

Regardless of age, a female who works out regularly has increasing nutrient demands, especially for things like bone health, metabolism, and energy. Luckily, a nutrient dense diet (whole foods and supplementation) and healthy lifestyle factors can help restore hormonal balance to help you look and feel better. When it comes to a hormonal imbalance, a focus on supplementing with these specific nutrients can accelerate and optimize your hormonal health, while boosting performance.

Ashwagandha (Sensoril)

Asha-what?! Yes, this is a real nutrient that has some pretty powerful properties all around. Here’s how it works: Ashwagandha is an ancient herbal medicine known as an adaptogen. Adaptogens help your body manage and process stress. It has been used for well over 3000 years to increase energy, reduce stress, and improve concentration. Since ashwagandha’s benefits have been well researched, we’re going to focus on its key characteristics – energy, exercise performance, metabolism, weight loss/maintenance, antioxidant defenses, brain function, thyroid function, and stress response.

Energy 
How does ashwagandha boost energy? It does so by supporting and protecting your body’s cellular mitochondria. Mitochondria break down nutrients within cells to be used as energy.

Exercise Performance 
Ashwagandha acts as an ergogenic aid during exercise in the way it helps the body deal with stress. This means you’ll have more endurance and strength while recovering faster.

Metabolism
Ashwagandha benefits include helping your body better metabolize carbohydrates and sugar. Ashwagandha root reduces blood sugar and improves insulin sensitivity – which is a good thing for anyone -- especially those with type 2 diabetes.

Body Weight
In addition to blood sugar and insulin control, ashwagandha has also been shown to support healthy leptin signaling -- the hormone that tells our brain/body to stop or start storing fat.

Antioxidant Defenses
Another incredible ashwagandha benefit is that it acts as a powerful antioxidant that increases the body’s natural killer cells ultimately reducing inflammation. It also helps detoxify cells while shuttling the king of all antioxidants (Glutathione) and oxygen to cells.

Brain Function
Another major bonus is that it helps regulate hormones important for brain health and healthy brain cells. With a better brain you’ll have an easier time focusing on things important to you, including getting through a tough workout. Ashwagandha also helps boost memory and improve reaction time.

Thyroid Function
A thyroid hormonal imbalance is often blamed for the inability to lose weight. And if thyroid hormones are not in harmony, they may be rightly accused. Ashwagandha can help regulate, balance and maintain the health of your thyroid hormones.

Stress Response
Ashwagandha may help reduce cortisol levels – the body’s stress hormone – in chronically stressed people. Considering exercise is a stressor on the body, ashwagandha helps reduce recovery time after a strenuous workout. Plus, when you have regularly high circulating cortisol levels, your percentage of fat cells goes up too. This can wreak havoc on your exercise performance and weight loss efforts.

Pomegranate

These tiny pink seeds, aka arils, are more than meets the eye! Sure they’re a fab fruity snack, salad or yogurt topper – but they also help to balance female hormones. About 80% of pomegranate seeds contain a super rare fatty acid called punicic acid. Punicic acid acts similarly to CLA in its fat burning capabilities, but in addition, punicic acid helps increase super oxidant dismutase, an antioxidant that helps break down harmful compounds. What’s more, punicic acid is naturally estrogenic, meaning it can act like estrogen in the body. Plus, pomegranate seeds contain more phytoestrogen (plant estrogen) than any other plant!

Pomegranates also contain ellagic acid – which inhibits androgens from being converted to estrogen. Why does this matter? Because of this, ellagic acid may help prevent and protect against breast cancer. On top of that, ellagic acid helps reduce inflammation and maintain the integrity of collagen in the skin (hello less wrinkles and firmer skin!) and has been shown to reduce the risk of obesity by helping improve insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes.

MCTs

Fats play an important role in the production and balance of hormones. That’s why it’s important to supplement with fatty acids like medium chain triglycerides (MCTs) regularly. To start, MCTs have been shown to help balance hormones, including leptin allowing us to feel fuller and not hungry. In addition, MCTs promote exercise recovery, help deliver nutrients to cells, helps balance blood sugar and insulin levels, and help manage healthy cholesterol.

L-Theanine

An amino acid primarily found in green and black tea leaves, l-theanine is known as the relaxation pill. That’s because l-theanine helps increase relaxation without increasing drowsiness. As such l-theanine also helps reduce cortisol levels, improving stress and anxiety. Winding down with a cup of hot tea in the evening never sounded so relaxing! Bonus: l-theanine passes through the blood brain barrier, which means it works quickly. Yes please, to a relaxing evening after a stressful day!

With so many different supplements on the market and protein for women, staying well informed about all the ingredients available, will help you choose the right product for you. Whether you’re correcting a possible hormonal imbalance or aiming to optimize female hormones in general, ashwagandha uses and benefits should be on the top of your supplement list. Round out your supplement arsenal with ingredients like pomegranate seeds, MCTs and L-Theanine to take your protein for women to the next level.

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