Diabetes and Hormone Imbalance: Are They Linked?

Your hormones are critical in enabling the proper functioning of your body’s systems. The endocrine system is a sophisticated messaging system directed by your glands, which produce and send many different hormones to your cells and organs.

Hormones control everything from how you sleep and whether you gain or lose weight to your ability to get pregnant and your mood. There are certain times in life when your hormones go through major shifts, like pregnancy and menopause, but when your hormones get out of whack, the imbalance can impact serious health conditions, like diabetes.

The Gain Wellness Center team has solutions for hormonal imbalance, especially if it’s related to a life-altering health condition like diabetes. Dr. Mandeep Walia-Bhatia and Dr. Jeremy La Motte combine the best in advanced care based on a functional medicine model with true concern for their patients to heal them from the inside out. 

The connection between diabetes and hormone imbalance

There’s a two-way link between diabetes and hormonal imbalance.

Diabetes develops as a result of a hormonal imbalance. Your pancreas produces the hormone insulin, which is absorbed from your blood by your fat, muscle, and liver cells and used as energy. Insulin also aids other metabolic processes in your body. 

With type 2 diabetes, your body develops insulin resistance. As a response, your pancreas works harder to produce more insulin to reduce elevated blood glucose levels, but it can’t keep up. Uncontrolled high blood sugar is the result. 

The two-way aspect of diabetes is that diabetes also causes hormonal imbalance. 

Let’s take middle aged men and women as examples. 

Menopausal hormonal changes iinfluence your blood sugar level, and postmenopausal women can experience more blood sugar drastic fluctuations if they have diabetes.

The weight gain associated with menopause might also require that your diabetes medication be changed, while lower hormone levels can also disturb your sleep, which also makes it harder to manage blood sugar levels. 

Women with diabetes may also experience more sexual dysfunction than usual, because the condition is associated with damage of the cells in the vaginal lining. 

Men experience comparable problems when their bodies produce less testosterone, including lowered muscle mass and a sluggish sex drive. But many people don’t know that lowered testosterone also contributes to insulin resistance.

A functional medicine approach is key to controlling diabetes and balancing hormones

The relationship between diabetes and hormonal imbalance is clear now. At Gain Wellness Center, we take a holistic approach to treating you through functional medicine. In other words, we look at the many factors that contribute to your health and any conditions you live with in addition to hormonal equilibrium:

• Gut health
• Mental health
• Cardio metabolic issues (one being insulin resistance)

This approach is the ultimate in customized care because your personal health history, family health history, current lifestyle — including your diet, daily exercise, and stress management — all impact your health.

It’s our job to dig deep and find the root cause or causes of your hormonal imbalance, while supporting your wellness surrounding diabetes management. If it seems like you’re experiencing hormonal imbalance, we perform a blood or saliva test to learn more so that we can create your treatment plan.

We treat hormonal imbalances by assisting you with:

• Getting to and maintaining your desired weight through eating healthy food and exercising every day
• Taming stress through exercise, mindfulness, and finding what gives you joy
• Analyzing cellular toxicity and ridding your body and home of toxins

We also offer hormone replacement therapy treatment, or HRT, which is natural, safe hormone supplementation that helps mitigate the many symptoms of hormone imbalance, including blood sugar fluctuations. 

If your doctor decides that you’re a candidate for HRT, we offer oral and topical treatments, as well as injections. These medications deliver the hormones you’re low on or missing to ultimately enhance your health and comfort, and complement your overall diabetes management plan. 

Call our office to schedule a free complete wellness evaluation with us, or book one online. 

Author

Dr. Mandeep Walia-Bhatia, DC, AFMCP Dr. Mandeep Walia-Bhatia, DC, AFMCP, is the founder of Gain Wellness Center in Poway, California. At the integrated medical practice, one of Dr. Walia's, greatest goals, as a health care provider, is to provide her practice members with alternative, but healthy and safe choices that will enhance their health and well-being. She likes to motivate and educate her practice members to take charge of their health by providing them with evidence-based information so that they can make informed decisions regarding their own personal health and take control of their health. Dr. Walia was born in India and raised in Canada before moving to San Diego. She attended McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada for her Master of Science degree with specialties in Biology and Physiology. She had various publications in research articles during her time at McMaster University funded by the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada. She has three kids and enjoys cooking, hiking and going to the beach with her family.