A Guide to Understanding Your Hormones to Optimise Your Health and Performance
Over 2,500 years ago, Hippocrates advocated the personalisation of "nourishment and exercise" as the "safest way to health". He knew that our behaviours influence our health, but he did not know why. This book explains the missing link: the crucial role played by our hormones and what we can do to optimise them.
Hormones set in motion the physiological processes that keep us alive, bringing our DNA to life by directing gene expression. Hormones are the protagonists in the interaction between lifestyle and health.
We can harness our hormones positively to optimise health through our choice of behaviours. Conversely, mistiming between our actions and internal hormone biological clocks can derail the intricate interactions of hormone networks. For example, in relative energy deficiency in sport (RED-S).
This book reveals the clandestine world of hormones, navigating the path to achieving full personal potential, through the different stages of life. This is relevant for both men and women, whatever your objectives, whether you are a high-level athlete; looking to improve health and fitness; seeking to understand hormone disruption; or meeting the challenges of physiological changes in hormones during life such as perimenopause and menopause. Practical tips and "hormone stories" provide actionable advice and real-life examples of how to tune in to your hormones and maintain hormone health.
As the human lifespan extends, it becomes ever more desirable to remain healthy into old age. Understanding how and why your choice of lifestyle affects your hormones empowers you to take informed decisions to improve your personal health. A life-long, healthy mix of exercise, nutrition and sleep is open to anyone, at minimal cost.
Author Dr Nicky Keay
Publisher Sequoia Books
Contents
Prelude
“If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment
and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the
safest way to health.”
Hippocrates
Act 1
Scene 1 What is Health?“Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being
and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”
World Health Organisation (WHO) 1948
Scene 2 Hormones for Health“Setting in motion”
ὁρμῶν (hormon)
Scene 3 Harnessing Hormones“Walking is man’s best medicine.”
Hippocrates
Scene 4 It’s all in the Timing“Not just a question of what, rather when we eat, sleep and exercise.”
Scene 5 XY Of Mice and MenTestosterone Rex?
Scene 5 XX Of mice and Men . . . and Women!Ὁρμή (Horme)
Goddess of effort, energy, and action
Scene 6 Hormone Supermodels“Medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability.”
Sir William Osler
Scene 7 Bare Bones“Make no bones about it”
Scene 8 Mind the Gut“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”
Hippocrates
Scene 9 A Balancing Act“All parts of the body which have a function, if used in moderation and exercised in labours in which each is accustomed, become thereby healthy, well developed and age more slowly, but if unused they become liable to disease, defective in growth and age quickly.”
Hippocrates
Scene 10 In the Red“Before you heal someone, ask him if he’s willing to give up the things that make him sick.”
Hippocrates
Entr’acte
“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.”
Shakespeare
Act 2
Scene 1 Infancy“At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.”
Shakespeare
Scene 2 Childhood“And then the whining school-boy with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like a snail,
Unwillingly to school.”
Shakespeare
Scene 3 Teenager“And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad,
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow.”
Shakespeare
Scene 4 Young Man (and Young Woman!)“Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth.”
Shakespeare
Scene 5 Middle Age“And then the justice,
In a fair round belly, with good capon lin’d,
With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws, and modern instances.”
Shakespeare
Scene 6 Old Age“The lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound.”
Shakespeare
Scene 7 Dotage“Second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”
Shakespeare
Coda
“If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health.”
Hippocrates
Dr Nicky Keay
www.nickykeayfitness.comwww.linkedin.com/in/nickykeay@drnickykeay
Dr Nicky Keay is a medical doctor with specialist expertise in the field of exercise endocrinology. Her research into the impacts of lifestyle, nutrition and exercise on hormone networks has been published in peer-reviewed journals. She is the author of “Hormones, Health and Human Potential”. Nicky holds the position of Honorary Clinical Lecturer in the Division of Medicine, University College London. Nicky’s clinical endocrine work is particularly with women experiencing perimenopause and menopause and all ages of exerciser, dancers and athletes, with a focus on relative energy deficiency in sport (REDs). Nicky’s passion and objective is to provide a more personalised approach for female hormone health to optimise the overall health and performance of the individual. Nicky is medical advisor to Scottish Ballet and a keen ballet dancer.
Nicky studied medicine at Cambridge University. After gaining Membership of the Royal College of Physicians, London UK, Nicky worked as a Research Fellow at St Thomas’ Hospital, London, where she was part of the international medical team that developed an anti-doping test for growth hormone. Nicky is a member of the British Menopause Society (BMS) and has completed the BMS Principles and Practice of Menopause Care training programme. Nicky is currently working with colleagues at University College London, backed by leading women’s health organisations, to develop a UK menopause support programme.
