Hormones are a major contributor to women's health, and medical science has recently started to look into them. We have learnt how important it is to have a healthy female cycle, but little information is available on how to get female hormones to work without problems.
Csedén Dali-Halmágyi, a detetician, founder of the Csediet site, is mainly interested in women's health, fertility and hormonal balance in different stages of women's life (adolescence, menopause, post menopause). Her work focuses on polycystic ovary syndrome, thyroid dysfunction and endometriosis.
In the first half of the interview, we talk about hormonal symptoms and solutions, and then turn to how fragrances and toxins affect our daily lives and health. Csedén's helpful thoughts and pointers will be of great help to anyone who is challenged with healthy hormone balance and creating a toxin-free environment. There is a big connection between the two!
How did you start working in this field?
Because of my own involvement. It's been almost 5 years since I was diagnosed with PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome - editor). This was the turning point when I became interested in this field. As I delved deeper into it, I began to discover how much guidance was needed in this area. Because even though I had learned about it in my university education, there was still a lot of information that I couldn't always unravel the first time.
The picture shows Dali-Halmágyi Csedén
So is this a never-ending story?
Absolutely, as science is always evolving in this field and more and more studies are coming to light. Women's health has not been researched for many centuries. Most medicines and remedies were tested on men, so the mysteries of the female body remained unknown. But fortunately, research is starting to pick up. So we can now formulate concrete ideas, but I am not going to close the subject just yet. I always want to learn new, relevant knowledge.
You mentioned that so far the pharmaceutical industry has been doing research specifically with biologically male bodies. But, if I generalise too much, the first thing that comes to mind about hormones is women.
Yes, that's really the attitude that's been prevalent, which goes back a long time, to the idea that women are unpredictable creatures, controlled by hormones that work in unfeasible ways (laughs), which is not true. We have a very beautiful system in our functioning. The secret is not to compare it to men, because the female body is a whole in itself, and it is not incomplete compared to the male body, it is just different.
If we were to compare the male body to the female body, to use a very extreme example, their deficiency would be childbirth. But that is not the case at all, they are simply not made for it. It's worth approaching women's hormonal health as a completely different world to men's, and one that needs to be addressed in its own right.
Am I correct that while a woman's cycle lasts 28 days, a man's lasts 24 hours?
More or less, yes. Men operate on daily cycles and women on monthly cycles. They restart their clocks every morning, for us women it takes about 28-35 days. That's a huge difference, especially when you look at it from a performance perspective. Women should not be expected to perform the same every day of the month. Because women don't start the day with a new momentum, but their energy levels build up and then drop over the days, and therefore fluctuate.
In women in general, what can we call a hormone problem?
The term 'hormonal problems' covers many things. We could be talking about polycystic ovary syndrome, thyroid problems, early menopause, or difficulty getting pregnant.
How can we alleviate these hormonal symptoms? What should we look out for to stay healthy?
I'll try to keep it in a nutshell, because we could talk about this for at least 5-6 hours (laughs) I know that much because I have a recorded body of knowledge and it's this long, which you can access by clicking here.
It would be impossible to go into too much detail on this topic, but there are some main guidelines to consider when it comes to women's health. It is very important to make sure that you get enough sleep, thatyou spend plenty of time in natural light and that you do not set a strict calorie intake. The latter can be a challenge because of the diet culture that is still thriving today, where the thin body is idealised and fatty foods are demonised.
Make sure that your body is healthy and not a showpiece that looks good on the outside but doesn't work well. That is, no menstruation, no ovulation, etc. These are accompanied over time by hair loss and other unpleasant symptoms. Therefore, from a nutritional point of view, it is essential to get enough nutrients while staying within the right calorie range for us, and not to choose calorie-dense, nutrient-poor foods, but vice versa: a nutrient-dense, lower calorie diet with the right calorie content.
Can the movement be included here?
Yes, exercise is also very important from a hormonal point of view, and balance is the key here too. It is important to be active every day. We can walk in natural light and then kill two birds with one stone! Also, use your muscles, do your own weight-bearing exercises, weight training if you can, two or three times a week. But be careful not to overdo it. If we make the mistake of overdoing it and not allowing time for our bodies to recover, and even overdoing it with a diet, it can really put the brakes on our cycle. So we can even start to head towards hormonal problems.
All in all, these three pillars - eating, exercise and rest - need to be coordinated by paying attention to the environment we are in, the chemical compounds that enter our bodies externally, the things we use on a daily basis, be it cosmetics, cleaning products or even kitchen utensils. But the spiritual side cannot be left out of the equation either, spiritual replenishment, a healthy self-image, self-awareness and so on.
It's a complex subject that can seem daunting at first, as it permeates our everyday lives. But the aim is not to paralyse us with fear. It can't be done perfectly, and it doesn't have to be done perfectly, especially not right away. But it can be done step by step.
You mentioned the non-natural objects and tools in our environment. How do you think these affect hormonal problems?
At one time they were considered a great technological achievement, and everyone rejoiced at the discovery of plastics, for example, and at the advent of different dyes, varnishes, pesticides, pesticides. Then they started to be studied for their long-term effects, and today there are many studies showing that it is not worth using them too often.
It can definitely be linked to hormonal problems. The two main evils are phthalates and BPA, which are particularly bad for you and can be found in many places, such as laminate furniture, paints, perfumed products, but also on bus tickets, parking tickets, cash register blocks, the inside of tins, and so on.
These two chemicals have been shown to be extremely harmful during the first 12 weeks in the womb. This is the period when the foetus is still very sensitive. This is the time of the first 12 weeks of life in utero when the ovaries are developing in the little girl foetus. This is when they are most fragile. Women are born with full term eggs, so if they are damaged in utero, it will affect them for the rest of their lives. If a pregnant woman comes into contact with a lot of these chemicals, breathing them in can severely damage her maturing follicles. This can later be a trigger for PCOS and has been linked to endometriosis.
As women, even if we are not born with damaged follicles, we often come into contact with toxic substances in our daily lives and these can enter our bodies and 'mimic' oestrogen, upsetting the hormone balance. These are called xeno-estrogens, which can prevent ovulation.
Men may experience a decrease in sperm count. Or, returning to intrauterine life, male foetuses can be affected by hidden testicular or urethral problems, among other things, due to exposure to toxic substances.
Csedén's lectures provide a wealth of useful information on female hormones and healthy living.
What solutions have you found to replace toxins?
My first step was to get away from fragranced products, because that felt the easiest. Think of how many things we have scented. If you count, for a banal example, there's underarm deodorant, hand lotion, perfume, shower gel, shampoo, fabric softener, washing powder, dishwashing liquid, floor mop or room fragrance spray. These are among the top ten most common items that are found in almost every household. These ten different fragrances are the source of ten flatas. They may seem small, but a lot of little goes a long way and they accumulate over time.
I try to avoid harmful substances where I can, for example by reading the product label carefully.
For cleaning products, for example, I chose the vinegar base over chlorine. I really like CYCLE ' s products, they are easy to use, contain natural fragrances or I can choose fragrance-free. They are easy to use and my little girl was enthusiastic about refilling them.
Speaking of fragrances. This is a challenge for us too. Many people expect all cleaning products to smell like a field of flowers.
It's a very interesting story of how our attitudes to scents have evolved. The psychological background is very complex. It was sometime in the 20th century that psychologists and marketers noticed that housewives were more likely to buy cleaning products that left a pleasant smell in the home. Because smell was associated with a sense of reward. When we clean, we are looking for the smell of cleanliness, not necessarily the feel of it; but the smell of cleanliness wafting around the home. It makes us feel relaxed.
That's why the assumptions we have in our heads are interesting. I've had people comment that if you clean with a vinegar-based cleaner, you'll get a stable smell in the bathroom, and because it's very pungent, you can't stand it. We are used to the fact that the disinfectant has a delicate, floral smell, but at the same time it contains at least three chemicals that are seriously harmful and should not come into contact with the skin or mucous membranes because of the consequences. When we enter independent adulthood, we are not given any information on this.
So it' s understandable if you're initially worried that your clothes won't smell as good without fragrances. To wonder if they will smell of vinegar if they rinse their clothes with it? It' s now the norm for a well-groomed, clean adult to smell of perfume, which means we have expectations that may not be healthy for us and it takes time for them to break down. To reinforce in us that it's not about being clean or presentable, how many different scents I'm wearing, but that I know I'm clean and that I'm okay.
What is your approach that you would like to share with readers?
It is important to take it step by step. The aim is not to shock yourself suddenly, stick with the iron rigour for a few weeks and then throw it all away. We are more effective if we build it up gradually. I abandoned the flush at first because it seemed completely unnecessary. I then changed my cosmetics to fragrance-free, as sensitive skin is irritated by these substances anyway, so I actually only gained.
It can be scary when we realise how harmful some chemicals are to us. Especially if we have a bit of perfectionism in us. It's also worth considering whether we really need to completely disinfect our homes.
Because we don't live in an operating theatre, we don't need 99% of the bacteria on the ground to die. Kitchen surfaces don't need to be disinfected all the time, and toilets don't need to be cleaned manically. On the one hand, because it is not the messiest part of our home, but the light switches, doorknobs, keyboards, phone screens, etc. On the other hand, because our bodies are not a sterile environment, but a lot of bacteria living on us, in us, in symbiosis. The good germs are more susceptible to these influences than the bad ones, so the good ones suffer and the bad ones become more resistant. The result of this is that the microbiome that lives on our skin, lives in our gut, changes and becomes distorted in a direction that is unhealthy for us. We don't necessarily have to strive to constantly clean everything with different chemicals, we can safely give way to nature.
