Harness your hormones
Ooshh it can be tough to be a lady sometimes.. am I right!? Every month we get to experience the friendly reminder that we are a woman and as many gifts and talents that we get the pleasure of enjoying as a female, our monthly gift isn’t something most of us look forward to.
So those pesky PMS symptoms, are they normal? Well, yes and no.
To a certain extent we can expect some level of discomfort during this time, after all, the uterine lining is shedding so we can expect there will be some mild cramping involved and some level of mood changes around that time and in the days preceding our bleed too .
However for so many women, PMS symptoms can become much more severe, extremely painful cramping, clotting, fatigue, headaches, mood swings, anxiety, decreased sex drive, bloating, breast tenderness, endometriosis, fibroids, and hormonal weight gain. These symptoms can become debilitating, preventing us from working and enjoying our lives to the fullest.
This is commonly caused by oestrogen dominance. Oestrogen dominance is when we have too much oestrogen in relation to other sex hormones. We usually have too little progesterone to balance out the oestrogen and this is when issues begin to arise.
Our body processes excess oestrogen through the liver but with increased stress, environmental factors, processed foods, and alcohol (which are all very taxing on our liver) it becomes overworked and is unable to keep up with the demand.
Furthermore we can have low progesterone levels, exacerbating the imbalanced ratio to oestrogen. Commonly low progesterone is due to stress and blood sugar imbalances (can be mental/emotional stress or other stress in the body such as gut imbalances)
Thankfully we have strategies and tools we can use to bring our hormones back into balance. For most, simple diet and lifestyle changes can have dramatic effects on the health of our hormones.
Incorporating cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, broccoli sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage and kale into our diet can be extremely helpful. These vegetables are rich in diindolylmethane (DIM) which helps to bind up excess oestrogen to be detoxed out by our liver. Carrying out a functional medicine detox can be the boost our liver needs to reset and recharge.
Managing the stress response is absolutely crucial if you have low hormones especially low progesterone. The ingredients needed to create our sex hormones are the same as the ones needed to create our stress hormones. When we are stressed, those vitamins get used to synthesise stress hormones and we are left with nothing to create our sex hormones. ( this makes sense from an evolutionary point of view, our body perceives it is in an unsafe situation therefore wouldn’t be the best time to bring a new life into the world. It therefore diverts the energy and vitamins to the systems enabling us to run and fight, and away from our baby making systems. Finding ways to manage our stress cannot be underrated!
Breathwork, meditation and yoga are extremely helpful tools that allow us to activate the Parasympathetic nervous system ( rest and digest). Incorporating even a few minutes of these techniques into our day will send a message to our body to feel it is safe and can relax. It will then be able to use the vitamins needed to synthesise our sex hormones and boom we will begin to feel a whole lot better!
Stabilising our blood sugar is essential to having balanced hormones too. Sugar cravings, constantly feeling ravenous, and difficulties losing weight are all signs of unstable blood sugar levels. To support this, eat plenty of leafy greens, high-quality protein and healthy fats at every single meal.
I hope some of these tips help you understand a little further about what this all means. It can be a confusing world of information out there and it can be hard to know where to begin, I totally understand!
If you’re feeling like your hormones are imbalanced, or you would like to do a functional medicine detox, get in touch. I have personal experience with this and I know you can feel better, I would love to help you.
