That time of the month
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists deems our period as the 5th vital sign of health – much like respiratory rate, body temperature, pulse rate and blood pressure, your cycle is a marker of health.
While symptoms like what Lydia Ko mentions in her interview are so common that almost every woman can relate to it, it shouldn’t be normalised because it’s not normal.
When we get symptoms related to our cycle, it’s an indicator that our health is not quite optimal and that there’s an opportunity for improvements. In a well-balanced system, there would be no symptoms, there would be no inflammation.
Yes, we should accept that far too many women do suffer from many symptoms related to their cycle from painful periods, PMS, bloating, puffiness, painful boobs, hard to lose weight gain, mood swings, fibroids, cysts, endo, migraines, hives, joint pain (like Lydia) and more, and often we’re told, ‘oh, its just your hormones’ and most likely told to go on the birth control pill.
And the BCP, well that’s a whole other story.
I’m focused today on the symptoms. And the question to be asked should be – why are these symptoms occurring? Often it relates to estrogen dominance – so then why would someone be estrogen dominant?
Our bodies don’t WANT to be estrogen dominant, it wants our hormones in a happy balance so why would this happen?
Well, there’s lots of things that can influence this including –
- high stress causing progesterone to be out of balance with estrogen so you’re comparatively high estrogen in relation to progesterone
- estrogen ingested/absorbed from outside the body in the things we eat/medications or in our environment adding to our own endogenous estrogen
- gut issues and yeast infections causing excess estrogen
- slow liver clearance so estrogen can’t be cleared efficiently leading to excess estrogen
If we can get to the cause and address these with lifestyle changes, we can have a real impact on the symptoms – we can reduce inflammation, we can have our hormones in balance with each other and we don’t have to accept that its ‘just our lot’ to have debilitating symptoms each month.
If this resonates with you, talk to me about a functional health consultation to get to the bottom of your symptoms.
