Excess Matters

Tag: naturopathy

  • Healthy Hormones by Belinda Kirkpatrick: Summary, Key Ideas & Review

    Book in one sentence: A naturopath with a Master of Reproductive Health walks women through the hormonal root causes of period pain, PCOS, endometriosis, and weight resistance, then gives them a practical diet-and-lifestyle toolkit to actually do something about it.

    What Is Healthy Hormones About?

    You’ve probably been told your painful periods are just part of being a woman. Maybe a doctor ran basic bloodwork, told you everything looked normal, and sent you home with an NSAID prescription. Belinda Kirkpatrick’s opening argument is worth hearing out: period pain is common, but common is not the same as normal. “A menstrual cycle should ideally be free of negative symptoms,” she writes, and the rest of the book is built around proving that’s achievable.

    Kirkpatrick is an Australian naturopath and nutritionist with a Bachelor of Health Science and a Master of Reproductive Health, and she’s been in clinical practice specializing in women’s health for over a decade. She’s not writing theory here. The book reads like a detailed intake session with someone who has heard these questions a thousand times and knows exactly which levers to pull. She covers PCOS, endometriosis, PMS, thyroid health, and fertility, using the same organizing principle throughout: symptoms are downstream of mechanisms, and mechanisms respond to targeted interventions.

    Where this book fits in the crowded hormone-health shelf: less clinically dense than Aviva Romm’s Hormone Intelligence, more mechanistically grounded than Angelique Vermeulen’s Happy Hormones. It lands in a genuinely useful middle range for women who want to understand what’s happening in their bodies without needing a medical degree to follow along.

    Why Your Hormones Are Driving Your Weight

    Here’s something that almost never comes up in weight loss conversations: hormones are not a separate problem from weight. They’re woven into the same system.

    Kirkpatrick maps out three specific connections worth understanding. First, oestrogen excess changes how the body distributes fat (hips, thighs), drives water retention, and creates the kind of persistent bloat that looks like weight gain on the scale. Second, insulin resistance (the most common root cause of PCOS, in her framework) works both directions: excess body fat raises androgen production and worsens insulin sensitivity, while insulin resistance makes fat loss measurably harder. The cycle reinforces itself. Third, cortisol drives visceral fat accumulation and carbohydrate cravings directly, not as a side effect of stress but as a core metabolic function.

    The practical implication isn’t “fix your hormones to lose weight” as some kind of magic shortcut. It’s that if your appetite and weight feel disconnected from your actual effort, the hormonal picture is worth examining. Systems respond better to targeted interventions than to willpower applied to one variable in isolation.

    For women with PCOS especially, this reframe matters. Kirkpatrick’s position (consistent with current endocrinology) is that PCOS is primarily a metabolic condition driven by insulin resistance that happens to express itself through hormonal symptoms. The ovaries, under the influence of excess insulin, produce more testosterone. That disrupts ovulation. Addressing the blood sugar upstream often does more than any hormonal treatment downstream.

    How Does Kirkpatrick Explain the Main Hormonal Conditions?

    Oestrogen Dominance

    The liver clears oestrogen by converting it into excretable forms. The gut then binds those forms to fibre and eliminates them. When either pathway fails (overburdened liver, low-fibre diet, disrupted gut microbiome), oestrogen gets reabsorbed rather than excreted, creating relative oestrogen excess even when the ovaries are producing normal amounts.

    The downstream symptoms of this are recognizable: heavy or painful periods, breast tenderness before the period, fluid retention, mood shifts around ovulation, and difficulty losing weight around the hips. These are not random or mysterious. They’re the predictable output of a specific physiological process.

    What supports oestrogen clearance, according to Kirkpatrick:

    • Cruciferous vegetables daily (broccoli, cauliflower, kale, brussels sprouts) provide compounds (I3C and DIM) that drive the liver’s oestrogen metabolism pathways
    • 2 tablespoons of ground flaxseeds daily for gut fibre and mild anti-oestrogenic lignans
    • Probiotic foods or supplements to maintain the gut bacteria that prevent oestrogen reactivation in the bowel
    • Reducing alcohol, since the liver prioritizes alcohol metabolism and deprioritizes oestrogen clearance

    PCOS

    Kirkpatrick draws a distinction that a lot of women have never heard: a polycystic ovary on ultrasound is not the same as a PCOS diagnosis. The syndrome requires a combination of clinical, hormonal, and imaging criteria. Many women are told they have PCOS based on imaging alone, which is both inaccurate and unnecessary.

    For women who do have PCOS (the syndrome), her framework is direct:

    “The fastest way to regulate your cycle and promote ovulation is by addressing insulin resistance in the ovaries. A low-sugar and low-carbohydrate diet is recommended for women with PCOS.”

    The supporting protocol includes spearmint tea (2-3 cups daily, supported by clinical trials for reducing free testosterone), cinnamon tea (2-3 cups daily for insulin sensitization), strength training as the exercise priority, and practitioner-supervised supplementation with inositol, zinc, magnesium, and chromium.

    Endometriosis

    Endometriosis is oestrogen-dependent: the tissue that grows outside the uterus responds to oestrogen the same way the uterine lining does. Reducing oestrogen load is structural management of the condition, not a lifestyle preference. Kirkpatrick stacks the oestrogen-clearance protocol above with anti-inflammatory nutrition: eliminating dairy, gluten, corn, soy, and sugar; limiting red meat to roughly one serving per week (arachidonic acid feeds inflammatory prostaglandins); and replacing coffee with green tea.

    She’s explicit that this works alongside medical management, not instead of it. Surgery, when indicated, should happen. The dietary approach shapes the hormonal environment that surgery is operating in.

    Stress and the Cortisol-Progesterone Relationship

    Both cortisol and progesterone are synthesized from the same precursor molecule. Under chronic stress, the body preferentially makes cortisol, leaving less substrate available for progesterone. The result: short luteal phases, premenstrual spotting, heightened PMS, suppressed ovulation. This explains why cycles get worse during high-stress periods. Most women have noticed the pattern without ever having a name for the mechanism.

    “High cortisol levels can decrease the production of progesterone and result in a relative progesterone deficiency or relative oestrogen excess. This may exacerbate negative menstrual symptoms and, in cases of severe or chronic stress, even delay ovulation.”

    Kirkpatrick’s response is specific rather than vague. For heavy exercisers especially: reducing high-intensity exercise frequency (bootcamp, running) to no more than 2-3 times per week, because intense exercise raises cortisol acutely and can suppress ovulation. This is counterintuitive and often resisted. She states it directly and explains why.

    What Does the Naturopathic Toolkit Actually Look Like?

    Kirkpatrick’s core nutrition framework is almost aggressively simple: every meal should contain protein, good fats, and something fresh. That’s it. No calorie counting, no macronutrient math. The formula ensures blood sugar stays stable (protein and fat slow glucose absorption), inflammation is managed, and micronutrient needs are met through fresh produce. Carbohydrates exist but they’re accompaniments, not foundations.

    Beyond food, the toolkit has three practical layers:

    Herbal teas as daily protocol. Kirkpatrick organizes teas by mechanism rather than vague “wellness” claims. Spearmint for androgen reduction. Cinnamon for insulin sensitization. Dandelion root and St Mary’s Thistle for liver support. Licorice root for adrenal recovery (contraindicated with high blood pressure). These are low-risk, self-prescribable, and supported by at least some clinical evidence for each use.

    Pathology testing literacy. Most women who go to a GP with cycle symptoms receive a single blood draw without context. Kirkpatrick explains what a useful baseline looks like: Day 3 hormonal panel (FSH, LH, oestrogen, progesterone, androgens), mid-luteal progesterone timed to 7 days before the period (not necessarily day 21), and a full thyroid panel including antibodies. Her key point:

    “Optimal health is what we are aiming for, not just absence of ill health.”

    Falling within standard reference ranges is not the same as functioning at an optimal level. A mid-luteal progesterone of 6 nmol/L confirms ovulation happened; it does not confirm a luteal phase capable of sustaining early pregnancy, which ideally sits above 30 nmol/L.

    Environmental oestrogen reduction. Kirkpatrick treats this as structural, not optional. BPA from plastic food containers, synthetic fragrances in personal care products, pesticide residues concentrated in animal fats: these add to the body’s total oestrogen processing load. She recommends implementing changes gradually over months (swap plastic containers for glass, choose fragrance-free cleaning products, go organic on animal products first) rather than attempting an overwhelming overhaul.

    Is Healthy Hormones Worth Reading?

    Read this if you have cycle symptoms you’ve normalized (painful periods, PMS, irregular cycles, persistent bloating), if you’ve been given a PCOS or endometriosis diagnosis and want to understand the dietary and lifestyle picture, or if your appetite and weight feel disconnected from your effort and you haven’t looked at the hormonal layer yet.

    Skip it if you’re looking for a clinical textbook with systematic review citations (try Aviva Romm’s Hormone Intelligence instead), or if you need a structured weight loss plan rather than a hormonal health framework.

    One caveat: This is a 2017 book from an Australian naturopath, and some of the supplement dosing ranges are wide enough that self-implementing without a practitioner is genuinely tricky. Kirkpatrick is consistent about directing readers toward naturopath supervision for complex cases, which is the right call. The book is strongest as a primer that gives you enough clinical literacy to ask better questions, not as a standalone treatment protocol.

    Books Like Healthy Hormones

    BookAuthorBest For
    Hormone IntelligenceAviva RommDeeper clinical coverage with stronger research citations; better for complex cases
    Happy HormonesAngelique VermeulenLighter and more accessible; less mechanistic detail than Kirkpatrick
    The Happy Hormone GuideShannon LeparskiPlant-based lens on cycle syncing and hormonal nutrition
    The Hormone ShiftTasneem BhatiaPerimenopause and midlife hormonal transition; picks up where Kirkpatrick leaves off
    Women Food and HormonesSara GottfriedHarvard-trained OB/GYN with stronger research backing on oestrogen, cortisol, and weight

  • Happy Hormones by Kristy Vermeulen: Summary, Key Ideas & Review

    Book in one sentence: A nutritionist’s practical, hormone-by-hormone guide to understanding why you feel off and what food and lifestyle changes can actually help.

    What Is Happy Hormones About?

    You go to your doctor exhausted, puffy, irritable, and stuck at the same weight despite doing everything right. The labs come back normal. Nothing is wrong. Here, maybe try an antidepressant.

    Kristy Vermeulen wrote Happy Hormones for exactly that moment. She is a nutritionist who specializes in women’s hormonal health and who has been through her own version of the frustrating cycle: high cortisol, estrogen excess, progesterone deficiency, the whole cascade. The book is organized around a core premise she states plainly in the introduction: “Though these symptoms may be common, they are not normal.” That distinction, common versus normal, is doing a lot of work. It is the moral center of everything that follows.

    The book covers six major hormones (estrogen, progesterone, cortisol, thyroid, DHEA, and testosterone) and gives each a dedicated chapter with its own symptom list, food recommendations, and lifestyle changes. There is a self-assessment questionnaire up front that routes you to whichever chapters apply to you. You do not need to read it cover to cover to get something useful out of it.

    Where does it sit on the crowded shelf of hormone books? Less clinical than Aviva Romm’s work, less protocol-heavy than Sara Gottfried’s. Think of it as the book you read before those books, the one that gives you a map and vocabulary before you go deeper. For anyone who suspects hormones are involved in their weight struggles but does not know where to start, this is a reasonable first stop.

    How Does Vermeulen Organize Hormone Advice?

    Most hormone books give you a program. Vermeulen gives you a ladder.

    Every chapter in the book follows the same six-step hierarchy, ordered from least to most interventional: (1) diet modification, (2) lifestyle changes, (3) nutritional supplements, (4) herbal support, (5) homeopathic remedies, and (6) bioidentical hormone replacement. The order is intentional. The idea is that you work through the foundational steps before reaching for anything more involved, and many women improve substantially at steps one through three.

    This is actually a useful corrective to both conventional medicine (which often skips to pharmaceuticals) and the wellness industry (which often skips to supplements). The framework implies that your body is trying to regulate itself and will do so if you remove obstacles and provide the raw materials it needs. That is a reasonable place to start.

    One honest caveat: step five is homeopathy, which has no plausible mechanism and does not perform above placebo in controlled research. Its inclusion, presented without any caveats, is the book’s main credibility problem. Skip that step. Everything around it, the dietary foundations, the herbal support, and the bioidentical hormone discussion, is on much firmer ground.

    The six-step structure is also what makes this book modular. A woman dealing primarily with thyroid symptoms can read the relevant chapters and leave with something concrete. Someone in perimenopause can go straight to the estrogen and progesterone chapters. The questionnaire at the front tells you where to go.

    Which Hormones Does the Book Cover?

    Estrogen and the Environmental Load

    Vermeulen’s estrogen chapter does something most books in this space do not: it makes the environmental argument concrete. Xenoestrogens (synthetic chemicals in plastics, pesticides, conventional cosmetics, and cleaning products) accumulate in the body and add to the total estrogenic load. The chapter gives a workable reduction protocol:

    • Swap plastic food containers and water bottles for glass or stainless steel
    • Check cosmetics and personal care products for phthalates and parabens (the EWG Skin Deep database is her recommended tool)
    • Choose organic, hormone-free meat and dairy when possible
    • Switch to green cleaning products
    • Filter tap water rather than relying on plastic-bottled water

    This matters because estrogen excess is not just about what your ovaries are doing. It is also about what your liver is metabolizing and what your environment is contributing. That is a more complete picture than most women receive from a standard gynecology appointment.

    Cortisol and Why Stress Affects Everything

    The cortisol chapter is where the cascade logic becomes clearest. Chronic cortisol elevation does not stay in its lane. It competes with progesterone for the same upstream building block (pregnenolone), suppresses thyroid production, and accelerates DHEA depletion. What shows up as PMS, thyroid sluggishness, or total burnout may all be downstream of the same driver: sustained stress.

    Vermeulen’s symptom picture for high cortisol reads like a description of a significant portion of working-age women: anxiety, insomnia, abdominal weight gain, wired-but-tired sensation, and cravings for sugar and carbohydrates (the body seeking fast fuel in a perceived state of threat). The herbs she recommends for this pattern, ashwagandha chief among them, have accumulated a solid evidence base since the book’s original publication. Multiple controlled trials have shown ashwagandha reduces salivary cortisol and self-reported stress, which places it in a different category from most of the herbal recommendations in the book.

    “Cortisol is designed to be a short-term process, not for the days, months, and years that chronic stress is today.”

    Thyroid and the TSH Problem

    This section is pointed and, for many women, the most practically useful part of the book. The current conventional reference range for TSH runs from 0.45 to 4.5 uIU/mL. Vermeulen argues that this range is too wide and that hypothyroid symptoms often appear when TSH exceeds 2.0. A woman with a TSH of 3.8 who is exhausted, cold, constipated, and stuck at her weight is told her thyroid is normal. She is not getting the full picture.

    “The reference range for TSH is currently set from 0.450–4.500 uIU/mL. This range is too wide, and anyone with a TSH greater than 2 uIU/mL can be experiencing hypothyroid symptoms.”

    She also addresses the T4-only treatment problem. Standard levothyroxine provides only T4, which the body must convert to active T3, and that conversion requires zinc, selenium, and a functioning liver. When conversion is impaired, T4-only treatment does not resolve symptoms. Desiccated thyroid (which provides both T3 and T4 directly) is her clinical preference for most confirmed cases.

    Why Do Hormones Make Weight Loss So Hard?

    For anyone who has followed the rules, reduced calories, exercised consistently, and still not lost weight, this book offers a few useful lenses.

    Estrogen excess and fat distribution. High estrogen relative to progesterone promotes fat storage in hips, thighs, and belly, increases water retention, and can make weight loss resistant to calorie restriction alone. Addressing the root cause (xenoestrogen load, liver metabolism, stress-driven progesterone depletion) targets the mechanism rather than just the symptom.

    The cortisol-food loop. Elevated cortisol raises blood glucose, drives insulin resistance, and creates cravings for fast carbohydrates. It also disrupts sleep, which then compounds hunger hormone dysregulation through a separate pathway. Vermeulen does not use emotional eating language, but the physiology she describes is one of the most common underlying drivers of it.

    Subclinical hypothyroidism. A slowed metabolism is real and measurable at TSH levels that conventional labs consider normal. Women who eat cleanly, exercise, and still cannot lose weight are sometimes dealing with this without knowing it. It is worth asking harder questions at your next lab appointment.

    Routine as metabolism. This one is underrated and shows up consistently across every chapter. Vermeulen recommends a fixed wake time, consistent meal timing, and a regular movement window for every hormonal imbalance, because the circadian rhythm governs cortisol, insulin, melatonin, and growth hormone. Irregular scheduling is a stressor on its own. Chronobiology research since publication has reinforced this point considerably.

    One of her case examples ends with a patient saying the supplement protocol was fine but the thing that actually moved the needle was establishing a consistent daily schedule. That kind of quiet finding, buried in a case example rather than on the cover, is worth paying attention to.

    Is Happy Hormones Worth Reading?

    Read this if you suspect hormones are affecting your weight, energy, or mood and want a readable, organized starting point before working with a practitioner. Also useful if you are in perimenopause, navigating PMS that feels out of proportion, or curious about bioidentical hormones and want a balanced, non-scary introduction.

    Skip it if you need citations and want to evaluate the evidence yourself (Sara Gottfried’s work is better suited for that), or if you want a single authoritative protocol rather than a flexible framework.

    One caveat: The supplement dosages should not be self-prescribed from the printed pages. Some are well-supported, some are extrapolated from small studies, and the book does not signal which is which. Take the framework to a practitioner who can run actual labs and dose accordingly.

    Books Like Happy Hormones

    BookAuthorBest For
    Hormone IntelligenceAviva RommMore clinical depth, stronger citations, good for PCOS and perimenopause
    Healthy HormonesMagdalena WszelakiPractical food-first approach with meal plans
    The Happy Hormone GuideShannon LeparskiPlant-based angle, cycle-syncing focus
    The Hormone FixAnna CabecaKeto-alkaline diet meets hormone balance
    Women Food and HormonesSara GottfriedResearch-heavy, best for readers who want clinical detail