As an almost 40 year old black woman, I am always looking for natural ways to stay healthy. I'm not too keen on taking tons of medication for every little thing either. I wanted to share with my readers, what I've found to help me manage and balance my hormones better because your girl can get emotional at times, regardless if I'm on my cycle or not. Let me say, I don't think I've ever paid so much attention to my hormones until these last past couple of weeks. I have been stressed as a full-time entrepreneur and could be found just randomly crying over the littlest thing. Which leads me into the first way, to balance your hormones:

Manage your stress

I take birth control pills faithfully and relied on them to balance and manage everything from the regularity of my cycles, to help prevent acne and definitely to keep these hormones of mine in check! Well, stress and science even in the form of birth control, does NOT go together at all. Saying goodbye to your 30's is a different level of stress for some women, not to rub it in but, it's uphill from here on out. Turning 40 years old is great and how you adapt to your body changes, dictates how you will embrace your new life, mid-way through. Your hormones will never be in alignment no matter how old you are if you don't manage the day to day stressors in your life.

Eat enough protein during every meal

In our modern and busy world we live in, our hormones can be imbalanced simply by the foods we eat or lack thereof. Eating healthy and including proteins to your meals ensures that your body is getting adequate amounts of amino acids that your body can't produce on its own. I never knew there was a such thing as a "hunger hormone." Well adding protein to your healthy lifestyle, controls your appetite and food intake. PubMed Central states that, "To optimize hormone health, experts recommend consuming a minimum of 20-30 grams of protein per meal.

Avoid sugar

According to Dr. Stephanie Young Moss, "If you are someone who suffers from mood swings or mental health issues, you might notice that they become worse when you consume a lot of sugar. Sugar causes a short-term boost of energy that leads to a much longer sugar crash. This in turn can make it harder when dealing with mental health issues like depression, as the crash often mimics a depressive episode. Too much sugar can also cause severe mood swings and irritability." Check out her full blog post Negative Effects of Sugar on Your Body.

Drink Green Tea

I love iced green tea (with no sugar) but recently, I noticed that when it's that time of the month, I have a little craving for hot green tea to help calm my mood, not knowing that this was actually how you can naturally balance your hormones. While researching this more, I found out from Pacific Herbs that, "The biochemicals in green tea can change a woman’s estrogen metabolism, and as you may know, estrogen dominance is undeniably linked to breast cancer." So, some mornings replace that cup of coffee for some green tea or drink it while you unwind for the evening.

Balancing your hormones ladies, is an every day job. If you are suddenly emotional more than knowingly before, it could be due to unbalanced hormones. You can take supplements, prescribed medications or contraceptives to help you balance them or you can do it the old fashioned and natural ways as I mentioned above. Of course there are more natural ways to balance your hormones, I figured these were a great start to get you on your way.