Yes, in the midst of the Grand Cross, Grand Square, prophesied bedlam and potential world turmoil, women everywhere are having wild mood swings. Fluctuations, deficiencies, and excesses in hormones cause changes in the mind, body, and emotions. When our hormones are in balance we feel good, sleep well, think clearly, are emotionally steady, and our chances of being healthy are greatly increased. When they are not in balance any number of symptoms can arise: low energy, rage, depression, fibroids, weight gain, loss of sex drive, hair loss, even cancer.

We often hear that hormones are difficult to keep in balance, but by taking a holistic approach and healing from the inside, hormones can work together as nature intended. One reason for the general belief that hormones are difficult to balance is because many different factors affect them. Sometimes it is hard to pinpoint what exactly is affecting your hormones. It is often a combination of things.

Exposure to sunlight and moonlight, food, emotions, stress, and environmental pollutants affect hormone levels. The amount of time spent indoors under artificial lighting in relation to being outdoors in nature and fresh air can affect hormones. And nature herself causes fluctuation, such as pregnancy. (photo)

Simple tests are available to you to have your hormone levels tested. For example, hormones in your saliva can give an overview of your levels of estrogen, testosterone, progesterone, cortisol, and DHEA. Saliva tests can help evaluate how your body metabolizes estrogen, an important issue for both men and women, and particularly for women with problems associated with the reproductive system. Saliva tests are easy and noninvasive, performed at home by putting your saliva into small vials that are labeled and shipped for testing.

Common sense tells us it is better to heal the root cause of an imbalance, in ways that support the body. However, many people take estrogen-blocking drugs, synthetic hormones, or the popular bioidentical hormones without any idea of what the drugs are doing to their bodies. It’s best to be informed and know your alternatives. If you want to see how your body metabolizes estrogen and other hormones, request the tests from your doctor. Do-it-yourself test kits are available online, but it is wise to work with a natural health practitioner to translate your results. You can then be guided to your unique personal plan to harmonize your hormone levels.

There are many ways to bring hormones into balance. One supplement your practitioner might recommend is diindolylmethane (DIM) known to stimulate natural detoxification enzymes and hormone metabolism. Derived from indole-3-carbinole and cruciferous vegetables, DIM has been shown to assist with estrogen metabolism and promote hormonal balance.

Your diet and food choices will help balance your hormones. Avoid foods and products that increase xenoestrogens (fake estrogens). These lead to estrogen dominance, a modern malady due in part to chemicals and pollutants in our environment that create an estrogenic effect in the body. Minimize and/or eliminate your exposure to synthetic products and harmful chemicals, including plastics that touch your water or food.

We are rarely advised to strengthen our endocrine system when we have symptoms of hormonal imbalance. But the adrenals, thyroid, and pituitary glands play important roles. A competent holistic doctor or naturopath can advise you on how to best proceed with supporting your endocrine system based on your hormone test results.

While there are many things you can do to bring your body into balance, having some knowledge of where to begin and why is helpful. It’s certainly time to stop accepting the prevailing viewpoint that some of life’s natural processes, such as menopause, are diseases that need to be treated with drugs. All of our life transitions and accompanying moods are gifts for greater personal power, inner awareness, and deeper wisdom.

you might have heard that alcohol effects hormones in the human body? so, it seem only fitting that this post be non-alcoholic!

SHIRLEY TEMPLE COCKTAIL
8 oz Club soda
1 oz Grenadine (made with REAL as in NOT FAKE pomegranate!)
1 slice Orange
1 maraschino cherry (go the health food store and buy maraschinos dyed NATURALLY, not with toxic cadmium #40)

Mix soda and grenadine. Serve in tall glass with straw, garnished with orange and maraschino.

Dr. Christina Grant is a holistic healer and spiritual counselor who uses astrology in her work to help people better understand their purpose and life circumstances. She works in person and by phone. She has helped hundreds of people attain physical, mental, emotional and spiritual well-being through personal transformation. Her writing is published nationwide. To learn more, see WWW.CHRISTINAGRANT.COM

so what’s summer without frozen drinks? especially a summer such as this. here in the northern hemisphere, we’re practically being roasted by heat waves and record breaking temps on an almost daily basis. personally, i love it! but i am in the minority, as most love their air conditioners a whole lot more. in this respect, global warming ain’t so bad. to me, there is no greater pleasure than sitting out on my beautiful porch, enjoying the steamy night heat, sipping the frozen beverage i just whipped up. now that, my friends, is a little piece of heaven on earth. sound good? if so, go get yourself a blender and 101 BLENDER DRINKS by kim haasarud. this new book is chock full of creative concoctions, such as the “brazilian pepper crush,” which calls for cachaca, jalapeno-orange marmalade, grenadine, kumquats and of course, ice: wow! ($16.95)

cheers to finally, for the most part, securing the gulf’s gusher. it’s only been since april 20th, but as they say better late than never. question is… will it hold? and will this have taught us anything?

this spring’s gulf spill was so big it overshadowed the other disastrous oil spills happening around the world simultaneously. like say, the other gulf spill. or the spill in the red sea. in fact, it is estimated that oil spillage off the coast of nigeria surpasses that of the gulf of mexico spill, EVERY YEAR! (but because it affects shack-dwelling africans, rather than wealthy, ahem, americans we don’t hear about it. if you’re an oil spill junkie, you can keep up with the latest crude catastrophes here on wiki. whatever you do, please don’t tell me we need to drill, baby drill. oil spills are not isolated incidents, and now matter what drilling precautions are taken in the future, or how many safety laws are adopted, the spills will remain inevitable. it’s time to get our alternative energy on!

of course in the apocalyptic (unveiling) times we find our selves living, this whole scenario comes as no surprise. earth has an incredibly challenging–and blessed–chart forecast for this summer. a perfectly synchronized cocktail party of cardinal crosses, grand squares, sensitive trines, new planets, stressful angles and unrelenting celestial energies that are stripping our world and everything in it to its core, exposing the flaws in both our own personal lives, and in the bigger sociopolitical arena. hello BP cover up? hollywood couldn’t write a movie like this! but get ready for more still because august is predicted to be the most intense month yet, according to most astro blogs. “We are in the midst of formidable astrological energies. we finally undergo a Grand Cardinal Cross on August 7th 2010.”

but hey, think positive peeps, because the fun lies in rebuilding it all, better than it ever was. after all, my fave ascended master saint germain, has decreed this to be the golden age–and 2010 the year of creation. if you still think the gulf spill was merely an unfortunate accident, you’ll think again after reading these words of oil wisdom from gerald o’donnell.

i concocted this libation to symbolize our addiction to oil. the glass is rimmed with sand, the contents are saturated in crude, and the garnish is floating, belly-up. because i don’t know about you… but i could use a drink.

GULF SPILL
1.5 blueberry juice oz
.5 oz kahlua
.5 oz chocolate liqueur (i prefer godiva)
3 blueberries
sand colored sugar, like raw or demerara
optional:
bar spoon chocolate sauce to make extra chocolatey! if you’re an addict, and chocolate is your poison, might i suggest CHOCAGAVE. this stuff is amazing and sort of healthy (considering that it is chocolate sauce!)

shake ingredients over ice and strain into sugar-rimmed glass. float berries on top.

what i love most about FRAGOLI STRAWBERRY LIQUEUR is the cute little strawberries floating in the bottle. they look like little strawberry stars, floating in a sea of passionate strawberry love… yummy!

it’s unfortunate that the beautiful red hue is augmented with dye not from natural sources (aka oil). i recently learned that italy banned the use of cochineal beetles to provide color in food-grade products. as this colorful libation is from italy, i guess FRAGOLI didn’t have a choice. but in this time of getting back to nature, it’s ironic that we’re increasingly expected to consume toxins. i wish they’d stop doctoring up our food and drink with dye, sulfur and god knows what. personally, i’d rather consume a little less color and a possess little more health!

but, hey, the good news is that FRAGOLI’S strawberries are wild-picked––hence free from pesticide. (750 ml $36 / 375 ml $20 / prosecco gift basket $30)

now that we’re in full swing mojito season, this recipe is a delicious twist on the same ‘ole, same ‘ole. so simple, so stupendous. kind of like a goat, kind of like THE goat. there’s really no such thing as a young capricorn. born that little bit wiser than the all other signs, they enter this world years beyond their age, and actually seem to grow younger rather than older. the good news is that you don’t have to be an old goat to enjoy the depth of character and darkness of color in this normally light beverage.

the incredibly powerful acai berry is ruled by saturn due to it’s rather dull taste and dark color. the one negative to this amazing fruit is that it is actually high in acid. cheers!

MOJITO NOIR:
2 oz spiced black rum
1 juicy lime, cubed
2 tbsp sugar (superfine)
açaí juice

Muddle 3 sprigs mint with sugar, lime. Add ice, rum. Top with açaí juice. Stir.