Could a Dysregulated Nervous System Be the Reason Your Hormones Won’t Balance?
Could a Dysregulated Nervous System Be Wrecking Your Hormone Balance?
You’ve probably heard this before: “Balance your hormones and everything will fall into place.”
But here’s the thing no one tells you:
Your hormones don’t balance themselves.
Estrogen doesn’t decide on its own to behave.
And your thyroid isn’t out there sabotaging you for fun.
The real power player? Your nervous system.
When your nervous system is stuck in fight-or-flight (🤓 sympathetic pathway), your hormones struggle to balance.
Why the Nervous System Comes First
Think of your body like a symphony. Your nervous system is the conductor. If she’s panicking and waving her arms wildly, the whole orchestra (your hormones, digestion, immune system) falls apart.
When you’re locked in survival mode:
The HPA axis (hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenals axis) starts firing stress signals on repeat. Cortisol goes haywire—spiking, crashing, completely flat-lining...
The HPT axis (hypothalamus-pituitary-thyroid axis) sloooowwwwwwws everything down. Metabolism tanks. Energy disappears.
The HPO axis (hypothalamus-pituitary-ovaries axis) goes offline. Ovulation gets delayed… or completely ghosts you.
Even your gut (um so like DAO enzymes responsible for breaking down histamine) and immune system (histamine overload, mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS)... TLDR lots of acronyms here) feel the ripple effects.
Why Protocols Don’t Seem to Work When You’re Stuck in Stress Mode
This is why you're:
Eating perfectly balanced meals… and still crashing in the afternoon.
Taking all the right supplements… and still feel like your body’s betraying you.
Drinking the damn adrenal cocktail… and still waking up at 3 AM with your heart racing.
Side Note: It's also why you can eat bread in Europe and can't when you're back home... cause you're nervous system finally shifts into relax mode when you're on vacation but is so wired at home you struggle with everything.
Anyways back to the point of this section, protocols don't work when your body's stuck in fight-or-flight. In this pathway, the body protects. It prioritizes cortisol over ovulating, starves your cells of thyroid hormone (even when sufficient levels are circulating in the bloodstream), and keeps your immune system on high alert because—evolutionarily speaking—making a baby, repairing cells, digesting food even isn’t a priority when you're “running from a tiger.”
Problem is, somewhere along the way your nervous system confused tiger for deadlines, the boss from hell, an overpacked schedule, and every other go-go-go of modern life that makes it hard to easily switch lanes from the fight-or-flight pathway to the rest-digest-heal pathway.
And this inability to easily switch lanes just like you would out on the 5 is why you're struggling with a body that's got more symptoms than you can shake a stick at.
Hormonal chaos. Thyroid dragging. Histamine surges over nothing (and feels like a million ants attacking your bladder or that "raw" feeling you get after meals... especially breakfast for some reason).
It's why one minute you’re wired (usually at 11, midnight, and 3 am) and can’t sleep, and the next (like during daylight hours) you’re too tired to even move.
These symptoms aren't random. And it’s not that you’re broken.
This is just what happens when your nervous system gets stuck in survival mode (and it freaking sucks!).
But here’s the catch no one tells you (it's why nothing's worked): You can’t think your way out of fight-or-flight.
You can meditate. Journal. Do somatic breathwork. And still—your subconscious will loop back into the same hypervigilant pattern it’s practiced for years.
Why?
When your nervous system is stuck in fight-or-flight, those stress pathways become the default autopilot. It’s not about thinking your way out—it’s about years of reinforced neural wiring.
These pathways are entrenched! Etched deep into the subconscious. Trying to think yourself out of it is about as effective as catching water with a net.
How to rewire the nervous system to get your hormones back online
Stress etches pathways into your nervous system like deep grooves in a dirt road. With every repetition, those grooves get harder to steer out of—until fight-or-flight becomes the only path your body knows.
Hands-on nervous system work (of which Spinal Flow is one modality) gently guides you out of those tracks and reshapes the terrain itself, so new, smoother routes (new neural pathways) emerge. This is how healing happens—not by forcing the mind to think differently, but by empowering the nervous system with more agency to respond differently.
Ready to feel what happens when your body drops out of fight-or-flight?
30 Days of Unlimited Spinal Flow—hands-on nervous system work to pull you out of survival mode and begin patterning new neural pathways is the best place to start. Why 30 days unlimited?
Why 30 days?
Because for some women, it takes a hot minute for the nervous system to unclench its grip on survival mode.
When your body’s been stuck in overdrive for years, it doesn’t always trust ease right away. At first, it might fight it. Hold on tighter. Resist dropping in—because letting go feels dangerous when fight-or-flight has been your baseline.
That’s why 30 days Unlimited Spinal Flow gives your system space to unwind at its own pace. Some women drop in on their very first session. Others take a few visits for their nervous system to even remember how to soften.
Either way, 30 days unlimited means there’s time for the shift to happen—and once it does, your whole world changes.
This isn’t another mindset exercise. It’s the reset your body’s been craving.
Get your 30 Day Unlimited Spinal Flow Ticket here.
Next up: “What Actually Happens to Your Hormones When You Shift Into Parasympathetic Mode”
We'll unpack why ovulation stops in stress, how cortisol tanks thyroid function, and why your body won’t balance hormones until it feels safe.
References
Charmandari E, Tsigos C, Chrousos GP. Endocrinology of the stress response. Annu Rev Physiol. 2005.
Tsigos C, Chrousos GP. Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and stress. J Psychosom Res. 2002.
Ulrich-Lai YM, Herman JP. Neural regulation of endocrine and autonomic stress responses. Nat Rev Neurosci. 2009.
McEwen BS. Protective and damaging effects of stress mediators. N Engl J Med. 1998.
O’Mahony SM, Clarke G, et al. The vagus nerve as a regulator of brain–gut axis in stress and inflammation. J Physiol Pharmacol. 2014.
