A once-a-week hike in Nature can restore balance in your mood and hormones.
That’s a bold statement. Don’t believe it?
Think you need hormone replacement and anti-depressants, even if they are natural?
We often forget that we belong to Nature, so we underestimate that when we stop sequestering ourselves and get back in Nature, just doing that will start to restore balance.
Let’s see how
Just getting out of the rushing syndrome, having to do, and finding some rest will start to balance your hormones. There is nothing that depletes hormones and makes you more irritable and unhappy faster than reacting to life in a stressful manner. Leaving that and getting out in Nature, even for an hour a week, can be enough to bring you back to center.
Getting out in the sun without sunglasses brings nutrients through the eyes to nurture your feel-good hormone, serotonin.
Scanning the horizon as you hike in Nature, appreciating the beautiful scenery calms through bringing down elevated cortisol from a stressful week. Ahh . . . beauty has the ability to make everything else irrelevant.
Simply moving in a forward motion on the hike tells the amygdala to calm down because you are moving away from any threat; it is far behind. This allows oxytocin to flow so you feel that nothing can throw you off-balance. Also elevated cortisol comes down. Now you can be insulin-sensitive so your blood sugar is balanced. Now you can regulate your sex hormones.
One more level up
Hiking with your best friends boosts oxytocin, the love hormone at the top of the hierarchy. This filters down to also calming elevated cortisol and boosting dopamine, the motivation neurochemical.
Chatting with your best friend helps you verbally process the week. Not only do your feel heard, this brings balance by supporting estrogen levels for further mental clarity.
Breathe in Nature
Hiking outside, you may choose a trail by a pond or stream, or amongst trees, or in the open desert. If you are lucky like I was, I got to pass through this whole variety on a long hike.
Breathing the air in different environments provides us with exposure to a different mix of microbes which are fundamental to the functioning of our whole bodies. Not only can digestion improve, the diversity of microbes contacting your skin and those you breathe support your body’s function.
Even the microbes brought to you by your dog strengthens your immune system and digestion just from their diversity.
This may sound contrary to what you thought about health because we have been taught to fear microbes, whether viruses, bacteria, or fungi. Instead, these little critters can:
- Make serotonin which keeps us happy
- Make GABA which calms us down
- Help control our immune system
- Help regulate blood sugar
- Make vitamins
- Break down harmful forms of hormones
Do it!
When it is time to choose what to do with your free time to restore yourself, get out of the house! Get back to Nature to allow her nurturing gifts to balance you!
Get out for a hike with your bestie!
