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Class OverviewHormonal balance is key. Your whole body can suffer anything from poor memory to weight gain to moodiness to exhaustion. This class will break down ten ways to master your hormonal production. (Check out the Top 10 Big Ideas from the class below!) Your ProfessorDr. Jennifer Landa specializes in helping women and men balance their hormones, restore their energy, and replenish their sex lives. Her practice focuses on hard work and lifestyle changes for increasing health.How to Master Hormone BalanceWhen it comes to energy, hormonal balance is key. These crucial chemical messengers rule everything from how well you sleep, to how clearly you think, to how passionate you feel. And when they’re in balance, so is your mood, your weight, your appetite, and you guessed it—your sex life. Your hormones are your body’s unsung heroes. When they’re humming along in harmony, you feel vital, confident, powerful, sexy. In fact, there are five main hormones that influence your level of sexual desire. And a healthy sex life pays back in spades—it makes you more healthy not only physically, but mentally and emotionally as well. As you know if you’ve ever been on a sex high—which is actually a hormone high—the boost you get in the bedroom trickles out into the rest of your life. Can’t remember the last time you felt flush with desire? It’s likely your hormones. As an ob/gyn and hormone specialist, I see too many women settling for lukewarm sex lives, or none at all, due to low libido. And that’s because the hormones that fuel it can be thrown off by uncontrolled stress, sleep deprivation, and even the wrong foods. Out-of-whack hormone levels leave you feeling exhausted, bloated, frazzled, apathetic—everything but frisky and desirable. You know what happens then: You stop exploring sexually; those hot-and-heavy, gotta-have-you-now feelings for your partner become a distant memory; and sex becomes a chore that you do out of obligation—or you start putting it off, like your taxes. Your partner may feel unloved or undesired, and think you’re not attracted to him anymore. You long to connect and miss the days when sex was easy, but you just can’t muster the verve to do anything about it. You just don’t want it. There could be other factors contributing to how you feel about sex, including any resentments in your relationship, which should be addressed. But a key step toward reviving your drive is mastering your hormone balance, because without it, your body won’t be able to produce what you need to keep your sexual interest. And remember, it’s not just your sex drive that takes a hit when your hormones go haywire.  Your whole body can suffer anything from poor memory to weight gain to moodiness to exhaustion. Here are my top ten ways to master your hormone balance. The Top 10 Big Ideas1Cut Down On Sugar If you needed another reason to stay away from sweets, new research shows that sugar actually reduces the amount of testosterone in the blood—bad news for your sex drive. And it’s not just sugary treats that have this effect; anything that converts to sugar in the bloodstream, such as baked goods, cereals, breads, will disrupt the balance of estrogen and testosterone in your body. Avoid packaged foods as much as possible (they’re usually sugar traps) and try using safe sugar substitutes, the plant-derived sweeteners stevia and lo han guo, in small amounts. 2Eat Testosterone-Boosting Fats Testosterone revs your libido, making you crave sex. In fact, its effects on a woman’s sex drive are so potent that testosterone therapy has been used to treat women with sexual dysfunction in recent years. You can boost your levels naturally by eating healthy fats including small portions of avocados, nuts, seeds and coconut or olive oil. 3Get More Iodine Your thyroid needs iodine to function properly. If you don’t get enough in your diet—and most people don’t, since iodine isn’t present in many food sources today—your body can’t produce thyroid hormone. Without thyroid hormone, your metabolism and energy levels tank. If you use salt, switch to iodized salt and eat more sea veggies, such as seaweed and kelp, to boost your intake. 4Eat Every 3 to 4 Hours Steady blood sugar levels support sexual function, while uncontrolled levels can kill it. In addition to zapping your energy, bouncing blood sugars can disrupt the pH balance of your vagina and put you at risk of vaginal infections. Eat smaller, more frequent meals to prevent the blood sugar spikes and dips that occur when you wait too long in between meals.  5Opt for Healthier Soy Soy is a controversial food but I’m a big fan of it—if it’s eaten in the right form. Studies have shown that processed soy, the kind found in most soy milks and packaged soy products, may mimic the activity of estrogen in your body and throw your levels off—and even contribute to estrogen dominance. Estrogen is crucial because it keeps your vagina well lubricated for intercourse, helps you reach orgasm, and keeps your breasts perky. Rule of thumb: avoid soy milks and yogurts with processed soy protein and soy isolate and choose whole-bean instead. And opt for safe soy sources, like edamame, tofu and tempeh, which contain high levels of protein, fiber, and breast and heart-healthy isoflavones.6Beat back PMS Bloating, crankiness, constipation and/or diarrhea are not sexy. Progesterone is considered nature’s Prozac, and when its levels fall right before your period, you’ll feel your mood drop, too. Improve your mood so you can get in the mood by supplementing for hormone balance. Try taking 100mg of chasteberry, which has been shown to improve PMS symptoms.7Make Out Every Morning A sexy wake-up call can do wonders for your hormone health, and you don’t even need to do the deed to reap the benefits. Kissing, lying skin-to-skin, and snuggling with your mate can boost oxytocin, the hormone of love and social connection, in the same way that sex does. You don’t have to have sex, though don’t be surprised if your interest grows—oxytocin increases your urge to bond with your partner and triggers a love rush that can make him seem irresistible to you. 8Google a Guided Meditation A big reason people don’t meditate is that they feel they don’t know how. But what do you do when you want to learn anything new? You find proper instruction. A simple Google search will yield tons of free guided meditations led by experts—so you don’t have to worry about whether you’re “doing it right” and can focus solely on reaping the benefits. Meditating for a few minutes a day lowers the stress hormone cortisol, which needs to stay in its sweet spot for your sex hormones to remain in balance. Try it for a day. A week. See if it doesn’t improve your mood and, before you know it, your desire. 9Stick to a Bedtime Routine Set aside at least an hour to wind down before bed, without your laptop, phone, tablet, or television. When you eliminate these distracting stimuli, your mind can slow down long enough for your body to want to be stimulated sexually. And you’ll sleep better, too—being too plugged in to devices can suppress your production of melatonin, the hormone that helps you drift off. 10Get More Shuteye In the battle between sex and sleep, sleep wins every time. As it should! Your body makes and secretes hormones during sleep that are critical to your body’s repair, reproductive, and immune processes. You need to be well-rested to feel healthy, and also to devote any energy to your sex life. Make sure you get between 7 and 8 hours a night.