My Journey With Acupuncture For Balancing My Hormones

At the beginning of 2020 and after two years of suffering from imbalanced hormones, I decided to go down the route of acupuncture in an attempt to help heal my hormones.

If you’re not up to date about my hormone journey, then you can catch-up here.

First things first, let’s rewind back to March 2020 (3 months into traditional chinese medicine and acupuncture) when I finally started seeing results.

The start of my hormone balancing journey

To make the picture pretty clear, since my journey began in January, I was going to acupuncture every other week and taking Chinese medicine daily (as recommended by my Chinese Dr).

The acupuncture itself was pretty straight forward. I’d lay on a bed for 60 minutes with needles in my feet, shins, stomach and head whilst I did my very best to ‘chill out’. Once my time was up, I’d head outside to see my Dr, provide her with a quick update on my cycle and new symptoms I may have had, and leave with my next week’s worth of Chinese medicine (3 tubs of Chinese herbal pills).

At first, I noticed no change in my symptoms (breakthrough bleeding a week before and after my period with severe PMS), but after 2 months of treatment, I finally noticed a difference in my cycle. The spotting I had suffered with for so long? Well, it had almost gone.

For the first time in years, I had only 2 days worth of spotting before my period (which is sometimes considered the norm anyway depending on the heaviness of your period). Hallelujah!

But just as things started looking positive, Covid-19 roared its ugly head and my acupuncturist had no choice but to close shop. If I’m honest, I didn’t think much of it at the time, I guess I was slightly naive how much of an impact the acupuncture had on my hormones, but two months into lockdown, my hormones not only become unbalanced again, but my symptoms became much worse.

Rebalancing my hormones post-lockdown with acupuncture

As soon as the lockdown restrictions started to lift in June, I decided to go back to acupuncture but this time round, to a different practice close by.

July 23rd I had my first session with Lyndsey from Heiwa Clinic in Fareham, Hampshire. Lyndsey is a licensed acupuncturist and has a post-grad diploma in Paediatrics, fertility, obstetrics & gynaecology. In addition, Lyndsey is also a qualified Touch For Health Kinesiology Practitioner too.

Lyndsey certainly ticked all of my boxes – especially her post-grad degree in gynaecology as I so desperately wanted to speak to a professional in this area.

I was a little confused as to what my first session would entail, but after my first consultation, Lyndsey recommended that we start with kinesiology nutrition…

Kinselogoy Nutrition for balancing hormones

For those that don’t know (don’t worry, I didn’t either), Kinesiology is the scientific study of human or non-human body movement. It addresses physiological, biomechanical, and psychological dynamic principles and mechanisms of movement.

By performing kinesiology, your practitioner is able to help you maintain and harmonise your body’s energy by exploring the structural form, biochemical and emotional dimensions. By doing so, they can analyse what nutrition, foods or chemicals can balance, strengthen or weaken your body. This, in turn, helps create and develop a successful awareness of nutritional requirements to allow your body to regain full health.  

​I’ll be honest with you. At first, I thought kinesiology was completely and utterly nuts. That was until when Lyndsey starting telling me things about my body (and life) that only I would have known…

What happens during kinesiology?

It’s hard to explain what happens during kinesiology but to put it bluntly, Lyndsey tested my muscles (by pushing and pulling on certain ones) to see what was going on in my body.

We began by going through all of the nutritional supplements that I take daily to see how my body responds to them.

Here’s a list of the things Lyndsey noted during kinesiology…

• I was suffering from a lack of strength in my pull-ups (true) due to an incorrect dosage of magnesium and zinc.
• My body was under a lot of physical stress (well, that made sense as I was training for my half marathon).
• I wasn’t fuelling my body enough with the energy it was burning (true).
• My body is struggling to metabolise estrogen (which explains my symptoms).
• I’m dairy intolerant (true).
• My body dislikes gluten (this could explain my bloating as I previously ate a LOT of gluten).
• Sluggish liver.
• I’m a very anxious person (so very true).
• I’m currently dealing with a stressful situation that will be over in roughly 3 months time (also true and this shocked me that Lyndsey could tell)

The above may sound nuts. I mean, how can one person get all of this information just by testing your muscles, right? But 15 minutes into the session I found myself in a daze as Lyndsey was suddenly telling me more about my body than I had even begun to realise.

Yes, my pull-ups had definitely been poor. Yes, I was going through a stressful period that would probably end in three months time. Yes, I’m a very anxious person and yes, I suffer a lot from bloating.

I think, however, in order for kinesiology to work, you really do need to have a positive approach to holistic healing going into it. If you don’t, chances are you won’t follow the advice given to you in order to help your body heal.

After Lyndsey performed kinesiology on my body and had discussed what other supplements I should be taking to help support my body, she then went ahead and performed moxibustion (through acupuncture).

Since then, I’ve been seeing Lyndsey weekly (moving forward it will be every other week) to help rebalance my hormones with kinesiology nutrition and moxibustion.

Since going back to acupuncture I have…

• Noticed a huge improvement in my bloating (I rarely bloat)
• Reduced PMS symptoms to almost none at all

Stopping running to help support my imbalanced hormones

Sadly though, my continued spotting is yet to disappear and both Lyndsey and I have agreed that the ongoing training for my half marathon is only increasing the stress my body is going through – as well as other symptoms too. As a result, we’ve both agreed that taking a step back from running is the right thing to do for my body right now.

Annoyingly, poorly managed stress can absolutely sabotage hormones. How? Excessive stress, whether you may feel it or not, can lead to less progesterone and increased anxiety. Progesterone is present in the luteal phase and helps stimulate the GABA receptors in the brain which make you less anxious & chilled.

Less progesterone = increased anxiety & low mood. Anxiety = more stress

More stress = unhappy hormones, estrogen dominance (yup, that’s me), high cortisol levels, rinse, repeat. Here are a few common signs of low progesterone…

• Brease tenderness
• Mood swings
• Anxiety
• Insomnia
• Tearful
• Regularly waking up

My opinion on acupuncture for hormone support

While I’m yet to see success this time around, I can absolutely say that I will continue to help heal my hormones with acupuncture.

It’s been three weeks since I’ve stopped running and in that short amount of time I can already notice a difference in my body. I’m sleeping better, I’m less tearful, my anxiety has improved and I still have no PMS symptoms whatsoever. Bye-bye sore boobies!

It’ll be interesting to see what happens now that I’ve stopped running and fingers crossed, my body will finally be back on the road to recovery. Either way, I’ll be sure to keep you all updated.

Have you tried acupuncture for hormone health? I’d love to hear your comments below!

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