Five Signs Your Hormones Are Out of Balance—and What You Can Do Naturally
Written By: Dr. Kristen Burris, DAcCHM
Doctor of Acupuncture and Doctor of Chinese Herbal Medicine and Functional Medicine
Hormones are our body’s brilliant and speedy chemical messengers, influencing everything from our energy levels to sex drive, to quality, restful sleep to fertility, mood, and even our metabolism. When hormones are out of balance, the effects ripple across your physical and emotional health recklessly. Today, in modern medicine, we often hear providers and even our besties talk about estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, thyroid hormones, cortisol, and insulin. Hormone therapy or HRT is on a steep rise again with many providers touting it as the preventative medicine we have all been missing since studies showed how dangerous they can be when not balanced properly.
In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), we use completely different language, because the word “hormone” didn’t exist when this medicine was first created. However, fascinatingly, the concepts overlap beautifully. Just because the word is different, doesn’t mean our awareness of its impact and how to balance them was created long ago. TCM describes imbalances in terms of Qi (energy), Yin, Yang, Blood, and the organ systems that govern them. The organ names mean something and intimately affect how well our hormones are balanced.
When you translate between these two reliable and trustworthy medical frameworks, you get a deeper, more holistic understanding of what’s happening in your body. Below are five common signs of hormone imbalance, how they are explained in both allopathic and TCM terms, and natural steps you can take to restore balance and feel better fast.
1. Irregular Menstrual Cycles or Fertility Struggles
Allopathic lens: Irregular cycles can stem from fluctuating estrogen and progesterone levels, polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), thyroid dysfunction or disease, or as a woman enters the perimenopausal phase of her life. When hormone fluctuations affect ovulation and your ability to ovulate is inconsistent or non-existent, conception becomes more difficult.
TCM perspective: In TCM, the menstrual cycle reflects the health of Blood and the Kidney, Spleen, Liver and Heart system. The Kidneys house your essence (Jing) and drive reproductive health, while the Liver ensures the smooth flow of Qi and Blood. If the Liver Qi is stagnant or Blood is deficient, your cycle can become irregular or absent. There are many patterns in a woman’s body that contribute to irregular cycles or anovulation, but this is one common imbalance we often see in our patients.
What you can do naturally:
Nourish Blood and Jing: Focus on foods rich in iron, minerals, and protein. These include dark leafy greens (look at the produce section and anything dark, green or leafy counts), beets, black sesame seeds, bone broth, and lentils.
Reduce blood stagnation: Gentle movement like yoga, tai chi, or brisk walking helps improve our energy and circulates our blood. Acupuncture can be especially powerful for regulating the menstrual cycle, vitally important to moving blood in hard to reach areas of the body and regulates hormones well when paired with TCM herbal medicine matched to your specific pattern of imbalance.
Reduce stress in every way possible: Stress spikes cortisol, which disrupts ovulation. TCM recognizes excessive stress often as Liver Qi stagnation. These patients will feel impatient, irritable, sigh often and burst out with anger explosively. Practices like meditation, acupuncture, or even creative hobbies can ease stress and restore cycle regularity.
2. Fatigue That Doesn’t Improve With Rest
Allopathic lens: Fatigue may signal adrenal dysfunction (cortisol imbalance), thyroid disorders (low T3/T4), anemia, or insulin resistance. Chronic fatigue can also stem from poor sleep, underlying inflammation or fighting infections acutely or chronically.
TCM perspective: Fatigue is seen as a depletion of Qi, particularly Spleen Qi or Kidney Qi. The Spleen governs digestion and energy production. If it’s weak, you feel sluggish, bloated, and unmotivated. You may find yourself worrying excessively. Kidney Qi depletion often manifests as profound exhaustion, low back weakness, or difficulty recovering from stress. You may find you are fearful of your future.
What you can do naturally:
Stabilize blood sugar: Eat balanced meals with protein, fiber, and healthy fats to prevent insulin spikes and crashes. Don’t go too long between meals especially if you feel anxious, restless or weak.
Strengthen Spleen Energy: Warm, cooked foods including soups, stews, and roasted vegetables, are easier to digest and support your overall energy. Minimize raw, cold foods like salad, yogurt and ice cream, ice in your drinks and excessive sugar in food and drinks.
Rebuild Kidney Energy: Prioritize sleep, stay hydrated, and avoid chronic overwork or working out too hard. In TCM, practices like acupuncture and herbal medicine when prescribed appropriately by a doctor of TCM help recharge depleted systems. Look for the license DAcCHM to find a doctor of Acupuncture and doctor of Chinese herbal medicine.
3. Mood Swings, Anxiety, or Depression
Allopathic lens: Estrogen and progesterone fluctuations influence neurotransmitters like serotonin, dopamine, and GABA, which all help regulate mood. Imbalances in cortisol also contribute to anxiety, irritability, and depression.
TCM perspective: Emotional health is inseparable from physical health. The Liver is central here—when Liver Qi becomes stagnant, irritability, frustration, or anger surfaces. If the Heart is disturbed by Yin deficiency or excess heat, or is depleted by too much blood loss, sleep and mood suffer and most will feel anxious or restless.
What you can do naturally:
Balance stress hormones: Mind-body practices such as breathwork, meditation, and regular exercise calm cortisol surges.
Soothe Liver Qi: Bitter greens, chamomile tea, or peppermint tea can help move stagnant energy. Acupuncture along Liver meridians often provides immediate emotional relief. Laughter can be helpful and orgasms move negative energy well too.
Calm your spirit: Magnesium-rich foods, passionflower tea, and mindfulness practices support relaxation and restorative sleep. Apps on your phone can help you learn how to meditate or be more mindful and are easy to follow.
4. Weight Gain or Difficulty Losing Weight
Allopathic lens: Weight changes often connect to thyroid dysfunction, insulin resistance, cortisol dysregulation, or imbalances in estrogen and progesterone. Too many providers blame a patient saying they either eat too much, don’t exercise enough or both. When the realty is, many, many patients are eating well and exercising plenty but their body is out of balance and they struggle to maintain or lose weight.
TCM perspective: Difficulty losing weight often points to Spleen energy deficiency due to poor transformation of food into energy and damp accumulation of fluid retention resulting in metabolic sluggishness. We can often see this in a thick tongue coating, a scalloped edge to their tongue or they themselves will comment on how puffy they feel. If cortisol is chronically elevated, this resembles what is called “Liver overacting on Spleen” in TCM, creating stress-related weight gain around the middle.
What you can do naturally:
Balance insulin: Avoid processed foods and refined sugar- shop the outer aisle of your grocery store and limit boxed foods. Instead, eat whole grains, vegetables, lean proteins, and healthy fats. Trade out breads, cookies and muffins with veggie based recipes like spaghetti squash “pizza” with no dough at all.
Transform Dampness: In order to have less phlegm or fluid accumulation, minimize dairy, greasy, fried foods, and excessive amounts of alcohol, which create heaviness, fluid retention and even phlegm in the throat. Favor warming spices like ginger, cinnamon, and turmeric to help warm and cut through the dampness. A little spice can help loosen phlegm but too much hot and spicy foods will create more dampness- just picture what happens when you eat really hot food: you salivate, your eyes water and you may even “cry”. Your body literally creates dampness or water to try and put out the fire.
Support metabolism: Acupuncture and herbs targeting the Spleen, Stomach, Liver and Kidney can enhance digestion and fat metabolism. Daily movement—walking, strength training, or dancing—helps both blood flow, energy increase and calorie burn.
5. Sleep Disturbances and Night Sweats
Allopathic lens: Insomnia and night sweats are classic signs of perimenopause and menopause when estrogen and progesterone decline. Cortisol imbalances can also disrupt circadian rhythm making sleep elusive.
TCM perspective: In TCM, Yin (our quiet, sleepy, dark energy) nourishes rest and cooling. As Yin declines with age, especially Kidney and Heart Yin, Yang energy (our loud, hot, hyper energy) becomes relatively dominant, causing heat symptoms like night sweats, hot flashes, and restless sleep.
What you can do naturally:
Cool Yin deficiency heat: Add hydrating, Yin-nourishing foods like pears, cucumbers, watermelon, and asparagus.
Create a bedtime routine: Dim lights, avoid screens, and try herbal teas like chrysanthemum or jujube seed to settle our spirit before bed.
Support adrenal rhythm: Limit caffeine, especially in the afternoon, and aim for consistent sleep and wake times. Acupuncture and Chinese herbs can restore Yin and ease night sweats and improve sleep significantly with or without hormone replacement therapy.
Pulling It All Together
Hormone imbalance rarely exists in isolation. In both allopathic medicine and TCM medicine, the body is an interconnected system although TCM acknowledges that interconnectedness and allopathic medicine often ignore it. Stress, poor sleep, nutrient deficiencies, relationships and lifestyle habits all contribute to dysregulation. A powerful aspect about TCM is that it doesn’t separate the emotional from the physical—it recognizes that Liver Qi stagnation can show up as both irritability and PMS, or that Kidney Yin deficiency can underlie both emotional vulnerability, hot flashes and insomnia.
If you notice irregular cycles, unexplained fatigue, mood changes, stubborn weight gain, or sleep disruptions, your hormones may be asking to be addressed. Getting to the root cause, as we do in TCM and Functional medicine, can finally figure out the disharmony. Fortunately, there are many natural ways to restore balance: nourishing foods, weekly acupuncture, complex herbal medicines, stress management, and lifestyle shifts that support both modern endocrinology and ancient wisdom bringing about health and wellness.
Final Thoughts
Your body is constantly giving you signals. Rather than masking them, instead, take action with natural medicine. Hormone imbalance isn’t something you simply have to live with—it’s a call for recalibration. Whether you think in terms of estrogen and cortisol, or Qi energy and Yin, the solutions often overlap: eat mindfully, move daily, rest deeply, prioritize self-care treatments like acupuncture and cultivate emotional balance.
When East and West meet, you get a comprehensive roadmap for restoring harmony to your health. With the right natural strategies, your body can return to balance, and you can feel vibrant, centered, and fully yourself again or maybe for the first time ever.
For The Road
We hope you enjoyed learning about the five signs that your hormones are out of balance and what you can do naturally. If you would like to know more about this or any of our excellent services, we are happy to help. Just contact us and we can go over your options and help you find the best path for your chronic health problems, pain management or hormone balancing or fertility goals. You don’t live near us? No problem. We offer telemedicine coaching with our mastery in complex conditions treated with herbal medicine, supplements and lifestyle changes. If you have any questions or would like to schedule a consultation, please reach out to us HERE.