I love Aviva Romm – her books are loaded with information but also super practical. “Hormone Intelligence” focuses on dietary and lifestyle changes that can help balance women’s hormones.

The first chapters cover women’s bodies and how the many symptoms of hormonal imbalance – breast pain, mood swings, heavy periods, brain fog, irritability, anxiety, acne, insomnia, and so on – are signs of a system out of balance, but not broken. Aviva encourages women to understand their own bodies and use them as a marker of overall health, describing the broad spectrum of what is considered “normal” and when to seek help.

The second part of the book focuses on what she describes as the six root causes of gynaecologic symptoms – diet, stress, circadian rhythms, gut health, environmental exposures, and cellular repair – and the idea is that you follow the advice in one chapter per week to optimise each of these ‘roots’. This involves making dietary changes, improving sleep and removing sources of psychological and biological stress. Recommendations for supplements are also given.

Finally, Aviva delves more deeply into specific conditions like endometriosis and PCOS and offers protocols for these.

This is a great resource for any woman wanting to learn more about optimising their health and supporting their hormones, regardless of what ‘age and stage’ she is at. Even if you have no obvious signs of gynaecologic dysfunction, the advice given is practical and mostly easy to implement, and can help support women’s health throughout the lifespan. I hope you love Aviva’s down-to-earth and common sense approach as much as I do.