Variana Volk

To all people who struggle with their hormones - start your fix here: 1. Eat breakfast.
Within 60 minutes of waking. With protein, carbs, and salt.
It stabilizes blood sugar, lowers cortisol, and turns on your thyroid. 2. Stop skipping meals.
Fasting is a stress signal. It kills ovulation, lowers testosterone, and raises adrenaline.
Feed yourself before your body starts eating itself. 3. Stop overtraining.
Too much cardio or HIIT = chronic cortisol = low progesterone and testosterone. Lift weights, walk, recover. 4. Get sunlight every morning.
Natural light sets your circadian rhythm and drives dopamine, thyroid, and reproductive hormones. 5. Replace seed oils with saturated fats.
PUFAs suppress thyroid, slow metabolism, and promote estrogen dominance. Use butter, ghee, or beef tallow instead. 6. Balance calcium, magnesium, and sodium.
They regulate adrenal output and smooth out stress reactions.
Low minerals = unstable hormones. 7. Sleep like it matters.
No blue light at night, no scrolling in bed.
Deep sleep is when hormones actually rebuild. 8. Track your hormones and morning temps.
It’s the only way to see if your metabolism is truly working. Do these for 30 days before touching a single supplement.

@kimjongthunberg yes, all true!!

What's even more interesting about it is that usually a large wingspan is a sign of high androgen status in men during puberty, which is an advantage in martial arts for example. But in this case it's long arms but also narrow clavicle bones. Which of course isn't something you should want. Also proper diet and lifestyle is so extremely important during the development and especially the puberty of boys, all parents should be very well read about this subject. Height, shoulder width and masculine facial development are mostly grown during puberty and after you're done growing there is very little you can do about it. I'm 183cm but I just know I could've easily been 10cm taller, since my diet was awful during the crucial years of puberty and I did not eat not enough. Uncles from both my mothers and fathers side are around 188cm and I know from my parents told about their youth that their diet was quite bad as well. Dad is short (173cm) and the same height as my mom because he was forced by my grandma to eat oats with milk every day and he's one of the few Dutch people I know that are lactose intolerant, so milk actually stunted his growth. Even though I would say I'm above average looking facially, I just know it could've been so much better had my diet and lifestyle been better during puberty.

People have an exceptional ability to recognize patterns that are off, even if they can’t explain why. A lot of that comes down to proportions. This body type is called “eunuchoid habitus.” It’s what people end up looking like when sex hormones are low or delayed during puberty. During normal development, testosterone and estrogen signal the growth plates in long bones to close at the end of adolescence and complete the development of muscle and overall structure. If that signal doesn’t come through properly, the bones keep growing longer than they should, while the rest doesn’t fully catch up. So you get a very specific look: • Noticeably long arms relative to height • In males: lack of normal shoulder broadening • In females: reduced pelvic widening (narrow pelvis) • Less muscle • Incomplete sexual development It’s a direct consequence of testosterone and estrogen not rising at the right time during a critical window. Puberty blockers can produce the same body-proportion pattern if they are used long enough during the growth years. By the way historically, the term “eunuchoid habitus” came from observations of males castrated before puberty. But medically, it simply refers to a skeletal growth pattern caused by delayed exposure to sex hormones and that physiology applies to both sexes...

I went down this rabbit hole recently looking into aromatase deficiency in men. One thing led to another, and suddenly I’m deep into how hormonal issues translate into very specific, recognizable looks. Then I saw that post about the actor in Wicked, where everyone was asking why she looks like that...

@TheracelLab Interesting, learned something new today! Thanks! 🧠📈

@TheracelLab Next time someone says "I can't eat real food, too busy," I'm sending them your thread with a note: "Behold the babushka-approved cheat code." :)

Gelatin + acerola cherry maxxing in the morning. Add a cup of raw milk with blueberries - literally zero-effort start to the day. Blunts the morning cortisol spike, prevents muscle breakdown, supports energy + natural vitamin C. Great for skin too. No excuse not to give this to your kids as well.

@GowfIsLife like you said in your article zero supps needed

@TheracelLab I'm over here still trying to maxx my coffee with.. more coffee. Teach me your ways, queen of zero-effort alchemy! 🧪💙

You need to understand something about hair loss, volume and quality. Your hair follicle is one of the most metabolically demanding structures in the body. It needs T3, iron, CO₂, and adequate glucose. When metabolism drops, hair is the first thing your body sacrifices because it's "non-essential." This is why people lose hair on low-carb diets. This is why hypothyroid women shed like crazy in the shower every morning. The follicle literally enters a dormant phase because the body is triaging resources. Nobody is deficient in biotin. You're deficient in metabolic rate. Restore thyroid, eat enough, stop running on cortisol. The hair comes back once the body stops sensing a resource deficit.

@CharlieBonepipe 💯!!

@TheracelLab No, totally fine. I was curious. Sometimes - the years, what one does with one's energy, how one handles stress, and takes care of the body has a big effect.

healthy carbs enjoyer vs keto- thyroid destroyer - bye-bye hair

@WellnessWisdomm And 40 is still young, btw. On the right diet and lifestyle, you can mog people in their 20s.

@TheracelLab He looks about 40.

@WellnessWisdomm Yeah, it’s sad. I actually don’t know what happened to the guy, but there’s definitely a lot of cortisol involved.

@TheracelLab exactly my thoughts

@CharlieBonepipe No idea what actually happened to him. I’m just being a bit of a dick and using the change in his appearance to illustrate what long-term keto tends to do.

@TheracelLab What happened? This guy changed his diet?

@cleobug101 I like the spice you didn’t mention, but that’s clearly visible in your pic #respect 🫶🏻

used turmeric for health benefits in my burger patties that’s why they look yellow lol

made burgers for dinner

read full article here: notes.theracellab.com/p/low-estrogen…

One of the strangest paradoxes in hormone physiology: a woman can be estrogen deficient and estrogen dominant at the same time. Two camps dominate estrogen conversation and both miss the point. One says supplement estrogen. Bones need it. Skin need it. Brain needs it. The other says estrogen is basically a cellular poison. Promotes proliferation, suppresses thyroid, drives inflammation. Only progesterone matters. Avoid estrogen at all costs. Neither is looking at the full picture. Your body doesn't make a poison. It makes a hormone that requires specific metabolic conditions to be handled safely. Women with truly low estrogen don't ovulate properly, lose bone, lose skin collagen, get vaginal atrophy, recurrent UTIs, joint pain. Even men need it! Men who can't convert testosterone to estrogen develop osteoporosis in their 20s, insulin resistance, and their bones never stop growing. Deficiency is a real problem with real consequences. But so is dominance. And a woman can have both at the same time. Estrogen dominance was never about high estrogen really. It's a ratio problem. If progesterone crashed harder than estrogen did, you're dominant regardless of the number on your lab panel. And if your body can't clear the estrogen it makes, it recirculates and accumulates even when production is low. Three systems clear estrogen independently: 1. Liver conjugation packages it for removal 2. Bile flow transports it to the gut 3. Your gut bacteria (the estrobolome) decide whether estrogen gets excreted or recycled back into your bloodstream And hypothyroidism breaks all three at once. Slows the liver. Thickens bile. Slows gut transit. And suppresses progesterone production on top of it. This is how you get a woman with low estrogen on labs who still has breast tenderness, bloating, and heavy periods. She's deficient in production and dominant in tissue effect simultaneously. Treating only one side makes the other worse. In the full article (link in comments section) I break down the physiology of estrogen behavior and metabolism, the three estrogen clearance chokepoints, the delivery problem (oral equine estrogens vs transdermal bioidentical estradiol), and what testing actually tells you something useful.

@BryanaWitt @GowfIsLife So happy you are here Brie 🫶🏻

@GowfIsLife @TheracelLab Thank you!!! So happy to be here!

One unusually simple substance that can calm you down under stress: aspirin. I noticed this recently and decided to check whether it was a coincidence or an actual physiological effect. We already know that aspirin doesn’t just lower inflammation - it shifts the entire biochemical tone of the body. But what exactly creates that subtle calmness? Here’s the physiology that might explain it: • CO₂ rises. Aspirin increases CO₂ retention, and CO₂ is one of the body’s strongest natural relaxants. Higher CO₂ = calmer nervous system. • Anti-serotonin effect. Lowering peripheral serotonin reduces tension and irritability. And no - high serotonin isn’t “happiness.” Chronically elevated serotonin is associated with rigidity, stress, and slowed metabolism. • Prostaglandins drop. Aspirin blocks COX -> prostaglandins fall -> sympathetic tone drops. • Lower inflammation = cleaner energy production. This one we’re all familiar with: when inflammatory load drops, mitochondria run smoother and that alone can make your whole system feel calmer. So now I’m wondering: Is this just my sensitivity to aspirin’s effects, or has anyone else noticed this? If aspirin has ever made you feel calmer, I’m genuinely curious.

@cleobug101 Girl, I just gotta say - you’re a very wise young woman.