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How Exercise Can Positively Affect Hormones

Overview

Hormones are a signaling system in your body and one of the main ones. Hormones are in charge of a lot of your feelings, think of them as a tiny traffic cop: They help direct biochemical messages that regulate everything from your sex drive to your metabolism, mood, sleep, and fertility.

Hormones are responsible for ferrying a lot of information, which sometimes can lead to mixed signals and might affect the way you feel and function. Keeping the different hormones in your body balanced and healthy is very important, one natural way to do this is through exercise and science is still discovering just how good a sweat session can be for your overall health.

“Increasingly, we’re learning that your muscle serves as another endocrine organ that plays a key role in metabolism by talking to other organs such as the fat tissue, brain, and liver, and most certainly, by releasing hormones,” says Sara Gottfried, MD, author of The Hormone Cure and The Hormone Reset Diet.

There are five major hormones that are greatly influenced by your fitness routine. They include irisin, estrogen, testosterone, human growth hormone, and cortisol.

Being conscious of keeping these hormones as healthy as they should be through exercise can put you on a fast track toward becoming your healthiest, happiest self.