Ep. 54 Why You Can’t Seem to Balance Your Hormones—And How Your Water Might Be to Blame

Hey friend,

Welcome to Episode 54 of The Balanced Hormone Solution Podcast!

Still feeling tired, bloated, or moody—even though you’re drinking tons of water?

You might be hydrating with water that’s actually hijacking your hormones.

In today’s episode, I’m breaking down:

👉 What’s really in your tap water—and why it matters for your hormones

👉 How endocrine disruptors in water throw off your thyroid, cycle, and metabolism

👉 Why clear pee doesn’t mean you’re hydrated

👉 The exact types of water I recommend for hormone healing (and the one I drink daily)

👉 How to upgrade your water at home without overhauling your life

🎧 Listen to Episode 54: Why You Can’t Seem to Balance Your Hormones—And How Your Water Might Be to Blame

Because hydration isn’t just about more water. It’s about the right water—clean, structured, and mineralized to support hormone balance from the inside out.

Let’s make water work for you—not against you.

In health,

Tracy Erin

Links:

Good Water Distiller

Best Water Distiller use code TRACYERIN5

Recipe for Sole Water

Transcript

Speaker 11: 0:09

Welcome to the Balance Hormone Solution Podcast. If you're a woman 35 plus feeling exhausted, struggling to lose weight, and wondering where your libido went, this is for you. I am Tracy Aaron, a functional medicine practitioner who helps women balance their hormones naturally. Without prescriptions, guesswork, or trending Nonsense.'cause here's the truth, your symptoms aren't random. They're signals. And if you know how to listen, you can fix the root cause and start feeling like yourself again. If you're ready for real solutions, let's get to it.

0:50

Hello. Welcome back to the Balanced Hormone Solution Podcast, where today we are gonna decode the real reasons why women feel burned out, bloated and hormonally off. And I am here to give you clear science back solutions to reclaim your energy, libido, and sanity. So I am your host, Tracy Aaron, registered nurse and functional medicine hormone expert, and today we're going deep into something we all do. Every day, which is drink water and why the type of water you choose could be messing with your hormones more than sugar. Or stress, can you believe it? So let's talk water, and not just any water, but the kind of water that actually supports your cells, your hormones, and your healing. So if you've ever wondered why you still feel puffy, depleted, hormonally chaotic, even though you're hydrating like a boss. Then this episode is for you.'cause I used to think that hydration was simple, right? Just drink more water. But when I was deep in my own burnout cycle, chugging filtered tap water by the court still leaves you with headaches, fatigue, chronic bloating. I. And it wasn't until I dug into the science of endocrine disruptors and hydration at a cellular level that things finally clicked for me. So spoiler alert, your city tap water might be a hormone disrupting cocktail. Is that hard to believe? Some people just. Survive off of their tap water, and I honestly don't know how they do it. For me, it was the initial smell of chlorine that let me know there's something better for me out there. I should probably stop drinking all of these chemicals. And when I did my deep dive, I initially went to a Burkey water filter and then a reverse osmosis. And now where I'm at now is distilled water. But I'm here today to talk about the real truth. I. About water and your hormones, and I've got a couple points for you. Number one being that that tap water, that you just flip open your faucet and it comes right out into your glass and it looks harmless, it looks fine. It's not neutral. It truly is a hormone disruptor. And that's because it contains chemicals that we would classify as endocrine disrupting chemicals, right? And that's things like pesticides, BPA, which is plastics, even pharmaceutical residues. Think about that. People who throw away their medicine, maybe wash it down the toilet or the drain that ends up in the sewer system, which ends up. Those pharmaceuticals don't get filtered out before they come to your house. Leave your faucet and into your drinking water, and let's say you're filling your baby's water bottle with tap water, you're giving them somebody else's. Okay? Maybe it's a low dose, but still think about it, you're giving them pharmaceuticals that are not meant for them. Okay? So you are familiar with that group? Environmental Working group, ewg.org. Right? They have found that over 85,000 synthetic chemicals exist in our environment. Okay. And those are manmade chemicals, and many of those 85,000 end up in our municipal water systems. So why this is a problem, among other reasons, is because they end up mimicking estrogen in the body and they block hormone receptors. They take the place of what our natural hormones should be doing. Now, hormones are set up on feedback loops in our bodies, and if our bodies. Can't get the hormone to where it needs to go. It begins to think maybe it already has enough, and we over time begin to produce less. That's a problem when you have a space holder on your hormone receptors instead of your natural hormone. But another reason is that chlorine and fluoride, they're just straight up harmful, like fluoride, which is used in most city water supplies, is a known thyroid disruptor. Okay. Because in chlorine, right, think about community swimming pools. It kills bacteria, but it also disrupts your microbiome and your skin barrier. Okay? And we have to think about this too, especially during hot showers where inhalation. Magnifies the exposure, right? When we warm things up, things get soft and supple and open up, right? That's what's happening to our skin when we're taking hot showers. Our skin is absorbing more water, which means more chemicals there. So also, uh, we know that these endocrine disrupting chemicals, they affect our fertility. Our monthly cycles and even our metabolism. So according to a 2012 WHO report, we see proof that long-term exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals is linked to things like obesity, PCOS, early puberty and thyroid dysfunction. Okay. It's not harmless coming out of your tap into your beautiful glass. Okay? It might taste okay, but it doesn't mean that it is okay for us, so. The thing we need to look at is that like clean water, it's not just filtered. Let's go another level deeper. It also has to be absorbed by the body. So just because your pee is clear, it doesn't mean automatically that you're hydrated. What cellular hydration. Means is that it doesn't matter necessarily how much you drink, but we're looking for the level of absorption in the cells. So if the water is structurally damaged or contaminated by chemicals, that water's going to be poorly absorbed in the body, and that is because minerals matter now. Systems like reverse osmosis and distilled water. What that does is it actually removes the contaminants, but that means it also is stripping the water of minerals. However, that's not a bad thing if you're adding minerals back, intentionally giving you control of relying on unregulated. Natural minerals in water that may include heavy metals. What do I mean by that? Everybody gets up in arms about the idea of distilled water being stripped of all of its minerals. Well, is it such a bad thing if we're taking out inorganic minerals from water that are actually dangerous to the body? And furthermore, most of the minerals we want comes from food anyway, and those are organic minerals. But I am in the habit and I teach all of my clients to add minerals back into their water. That's an easy thing to do. Also, adding electrolytes a couple times a day will give us a lot of the key minerals that our bodies need in order to make sure that we are hydrated on a cellular level. Another thing is something called structured water. So if our water is structured, it definitely improves the absorption. So structured water is a type of water that mimics natural spring water and structured water improves that cell permeability and that cellular hydration. So think of it like bioavailable water. When you look at supplements today, you can see that there are some forms that are. Easily absorbed in the body and some that have to go through a couple extra steps before a body can use them. Right? That's a similar concept as being bioavailable. Well, tools like the alma wand, which I use and I love, can help restructure the water so we can put. Regular tap water through a filtration system like reverse osmosis or dis distillation. And then if we structure it, we go that extra layer to make sure that it is usable or bioavailable by the body. Now this isn't crucial. It's not as important as a step, I would argue as the filtration step itself. However, it is another thing that we can do to optimize our bodies and our hormones. So. I've already said this though, but distilled water plus the mineral support. This is my number one recommendation. I have house guests, I've got friends visiting. People will send me emails. They all wanna know what type of water is best for them to drink, and I always say the same thing. Distilled water plus mineral support. It's my number one recommendation now, distillation. That whole process of how we get distilled water, it mimics the Earth's natural water cycle. It is the only method that consistently removes everything. Fluoride pharmaceuticals. Volatile organic chemicals. And like I mentioned before, myths about it like leaching minerals from our body that truly has no solid evidence. So what matters is how you're putting back or replenishing minerals back into the body, and you can do that really easily by dropping minerals into your drinking water or by getting them from food. Okay, so next best would be reverse osmosis. I call this second best if you remineralize. So reverse osmosis filters are great at removing contaminants, but they do also require Remi Remineralization. I love Quinton Minerals. Body Bio has one too. My very favorite thing is homemade sole water. This salt water supports adrenal health and electrolyte balance. Super simple to do. All you need is large rock salts. I prefer the ones from Redmond's Real Salt. You get a quart of water, preferably distilled in a mason jar, and you drop one rock salt inside of this and put a little cap on it so that you can shake it up the next morning and every single morning thereafter. One teaspoon of this sole water every single morning. It can be enough to really pull people out of the depths of adrenal dysfunction and fatigue. It's really, really powerful and a great way to get minerals. Stop avoiding the salt. Salt your food as long as you're using real salt. I love Redmond's real salt, and what I've noticed is that you don't taste. The food that you're applying it to does not taste extra salty, even though you're getting the salt. Flavor, and it is enhancing the, the, um, quality of the food, but it doesn't get extra salty like iodized boxed salt wood, which is another plus. So it's easy to cook with and it's easy to measure in that way. But here's another thing is don't forget about your shower water. Right. So for a hot, again hot ke bean hot 10 minute shower, you can expose yourself to more chlorine and VOCs than drinking eight glasses of tap water. Crazy, right? Just this past year, I ended up taking out my Burkey shower filter and replacing it with the shower filter. Um, from a company called Jo Lee and I've been very, very happy with. It makes my skin soft. I don't use as much body oil and lotion on my skin. Plus it's stripping things like heavy metals and other pesticides. So there's something else that you can use for a, a bath if you like to take Epsom salt baths every single night, which I totally recommend, so you can get something called a bath ball. It hangs underneath your bath faucet and it takes out that the, uh, chlorine found in water. Another little trick that you can do is up to a quarter teaspoon of vitamin C powder, just straight up ascorbic acid powder form, or open a capsule and drop it in really easy way to neutralize chlorine in the bath water. And I want you to think about. This when you, when you're trying to convince yourself that this is actually important, your skin is your second mouth, you are absorbing a tremendous amount through your skin. Okay? So let's get to your action steps. I want you to upgrade your water. In one simple way this week, and there's lots of options of things you can do. Okay? So pick one thing from this episode that you're going to change. You either order a countertop distiller, I'm gonna link one in the show notes. That is my starter one. I got it off of Amazon. It's really easy and it's actually quite affordable. It makes a gallon of distilled water at a time, and I ended up purchasing. Um, three or four of the, uh, glass gallon growlers, and I just keep making distilled water on repeat. I've got one on my counter that I'm drinking out of. I've got one that's being made and I have two in storage. Really, really simple little system that I have there. I recently, over the last couple years, switched and upgraded my. Water distiller to a company that is made in America very happy with it. It is more of an investment, so depending on what your financial resources are, definitely recommend starting with that one on Amazon just till you get into the habit and the enjoyment of drinking distilled water, it truly is pure water. The only water that can boast 99.9% pure water, which is to say zero parts per million. That's huge. So I love. Distilled water. I'm so accustomed to the taste of it that even reverse osmosis feels like and tastes like it's got a little bit of something extra. So I will link both of those in the show notes, the one that I started with and the one that I'm using now from an American company. You can also start by adding minerals to your water. Whatever water you're drinking now, add organic minerals. Quinton is fantastic. I also love the one by Body Bio. And then here's an easy, easy one. Swap your plastic water bottle for glass or stainless steel. Stainless steel water bottles are everywhere. Now you can really. Really, uh, change the impact of endocrine disrupting chemicals that you're consuming on a daily basis by avoiding plastic water bottles. And lastly would be, think about in shower. Installing a shower filter. A really easy thing to do. You screw off the one that you currently have. You screw on this one by Joe Lee. Small changes add. Up. And when your cells start receiving that real hydration, real minerals, your hormones begin to respond with energy, clarity, and calm, which is what we're all looking for, right? So I want you to know that water isn't just water, it's medicine, or it's a hidden saboteur. So if you're trying to heal from burnout. So if you're trying to support your thyroid or you're rebuilding your hormones, clean, structured mineral rich water should be your first move and not your last. So don't let tap water be the thing that keeps you stuck in survival mode because you deserve better and your hormones deserve better. And now. You know where to start. If you have any questions, contact me. I'll be happy to walk you through all the options. All right, so cheers to clean drinking water, and I will see you in the next episode.

Speaker 13: 16:29

That's it for today's episode of the Balanced Hormone Solution Podcast. If this resonated, don't just listen. Do something about it. Make sure to subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next. And if you know another woman who's tired of feeling like a stranger in her own body. Send her this way for more support. Check out the show notes. I've got resources to help you get started. Just remember, your body isn't broken, you just need the right tools. See you next time.