Guest Post: Understanding Your Cycle & 3 Steps to Restart (Truly) Healthy Hormones
In therapy, we talk a lot about the connection between mind & body. From female clients, I often hear wonderings about hormone health and stages of their cycle impacting their emotional world. And ultimately, if it’s “normal” or not. I connected with health reset consultant, Jessica Michel, to share about a healthy menstrual cycle, symptoms that something may be off, and next steps towards health.
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Normal. A word that can send so many women into a spiral of confusion and concern when discussing hormones. What is normal? What is healthy? Are they the same? Experiencing the bliss of healthy hormones is rare these days, and understandably so, as there are many elements of modern life that impact and alter our hormonal states. What a doctor may categorize as normal is often far from the enjoyable everyday experience you or I desire. Normal is not the same as healthy. Normal simply means disease-free and sometimes even that is incorrect. We want to shoot for the other end of the spectrum, the vibrant, longevity-supporting, and optimal side. To get there, we need to start with identifying the healthy baseline.
A Healthy Cycle
What does it feel like to have a smooth cycle? For starters, it should be pain-free and juicy. Yes, you heard me. Cramping or muscle tension during menstruation or ovulation or any time in between is a sign that the body is struggling and asking for help. Bleeding is a beautiful time of natural detox and reset.
Bleeding solidly for 2-4 days and gently easing into the finish around day 6 or 7 is ideal. Your blood will be a bright, clean, and thin fluid with no clots and rarely any tissue.
A helpful sidenote: your bleed experience will reflect the state your body held during the previous month. For example, if you were stressed this month, you may notice cramping, moodiness, stool shifts or sleep loss around your next bleed, even if that’s not your typical experience. Your bleed is a free and natural assessment of the impact your present lifestyle has on your body. It’s a great self-check-in!
After the bleed portion of your follicular phase, it’s possible you will feel more driven and focused, with higher energy and motivation to move. As you approach and complete ovulation, your libido will increase, your skin will glow, your internal temperature will rise a bit, and, watch out world, because your magnetism will be off the charts.
Your cervical mucus will slowly start to appear and begin with a tacky and lotion-like release, then develop into an egg white-like drop. After ovulation, it will return to a lotion-like release until it dries out.
In your luteal phase, once ovulation completes, you may notice you’re extra calm, sleep feels restorative, and feminine energy and creativity just flow out of you.
Symptoms such as strong mood shifts, breakouts, sleep disturbances, long-lasting or extreme internal temperature changes, body aches or pain, brain fog, digestive discomfort, and stool changes are all messages from the body, letting you know something is off.
Hormones are the caboose of the train, so when they are off, we have to look upstream to identify the cause. The foundational systems and organs of the body will be out of balance first; your hormones are simply a reflection of this.
Capacity Matters
Whether you are currently menstruating or not, the depth of your body’s capacity matters. Do you possess the ability to initiate steady hormone release within your body? It all starts with the brain, the manager of the body and the director of your sex-hormone-producing organs – mainly your ovaries and adrenals. If your body feels safe and steady, calm and regulated, the brain will guide the body to keep production abundant. If your body feels compromised or maxed out, the last priority is going to be hormone production or regulation.
As I said, your hormones are the caboose of the train, so in survival mode, or what I call the alarm mode, your brain will direct all your body’s top resources and keep all production focused on the organs keeping you alive. It’s all about the present, not long-term needs. This is the body’s protective nature in action. It’s making sure you can handle what’s directly in front of you, because your body is always working for you. Yet, if you live in this state for too long, the compounding effects will deplete your hormone levels and leave you feeling run-down and eventually very ill. This can happen as early as your 20s and as late as your 50s.
What’s your capacity right now? If you’re unsure, remember your body uses your cycle to reflect this back to you. Take the time to tune in and observe.
Most Common Imbalances & Their Symptoms
Low Thyroid Function: exhaustion, low motivation, weight gain, hair loss, dry lack luster skin, low blood pressure, brain fog, and memory recall struggles
Depleted Adrenal Function: anxiety, exhaustion, abdominal fat hold, low stress tolerance, and melanin/brown spots on skin
Depleted Ovarian Function:
Low Testosterone Production: indecision, low libido, cellulite, weight gain, and lack of boundaries
Low Progesterone Production: anxious and nervous behavior, poor sleep/REM, enlarged breasts, breast cysts, tender breasts at palpation, ovarian cysts, endometriosis, and uterine fibroids
Low Estrogen Production: fatigue, depression, lack of enthusiasm, flat hair, upper scalp hair loss, dry eyes, gums disease, droopy or small breasts, hot flashes, low libido, gums disease, poor or no menstruation, and joint pain
Excess Hormones are Rare - My Unconventional Theory
You’ll notice I do not include hormone excess. Estrogen dominance is one such common excess label many women receive, especially in the alternative health community. In my humble opinion, this is a misunderstanding of the body. In my practice, I see deficient hormones on labs, not excess. What can be confusing is that these clients will experience symptoms of estrogen excess, without the lab presence to back it up or improper interpretation that does not consider the other factors at play.
The clarifying piece here is the differentiation between synthetic and natural estrogen. Synthetic estrogen is a natural outcome of our modern exposures and resulting internal dysfunction. The amount of estrogenic chemicals and products in our everyday lives is intense and is also heavily impacting our detox systems. As a result, we are filling our bodies with non-useable estrogen, and our livers and colons are massively backed up.
Let me break this down. When your body finishes utilizing its naturally produced estrogens, it sends them through your liver to be turned off and packaged up to be excreted through the gallbladder, small intestine, and colon. When you are regularly exposed to synthetic estrogens or even elements that throw off estrogen reception and creation, your liver and entire excretion process quickly become overwhelmed. This means that both synthetic and naturally produced estrogen will have trouble moving through the excretion process. Typically, both are reabsorbed back into the body, which can be damaging and inflammatory.
When this occurs, it throws off the natural feedback loop of the body. The brain receives messages stating that the body has enough estrogen, so it slows down natural production and begins to create a deficit, when in reality, the high presence of unusable estrogens should not indicate a need to slow down production, but instead a desperate need for proper removal. This is how you can experience both estrogen excess and deficiency symptoms at the same time. The fix? Foundational organ reset.
Most Common Causes of Synthetic Estrogen
Toxic mold spore colonization and presence of mycotoxins
Heavy metals, like aluminum, in organs, like breast tissue
Regular exposure to plastics, phthalates, and parabens
Pesticides from food, water, and air
USDA and other conventionally-raised animal food sources
What Can I Do to Reset Hormone Imbalances
What do we say? Hormones are the caboose of the train! So truly, imbalance starts much deeper. If your hormones are off, it’s highly likely that you have imbalances within your digestive function, detox process and load, and inflammation cycle as well.
I always recommend a top and bottom approach. Provide bandaid “top” supports to ease current symptoms and expand capacity quickly. Once capacity returns, in other words, when you start to feel good, energized, and stable, then you can begin to investigate and address the foundational or “bottom” causes. While resetting your foundational imbalances, always stay on the bandaid supports until you have seen enough progress to feel good without them.
I cannot emphasize this enough, do not try to tackle the foundational issues, like gut microbiome imbalance or mold toxicity, with a demanding treatment plan or eradication protocol without first easing your everyday symptoms. This will lead to overwhelm, frustration, and healing blocks. You will give up quickly or burn yourself out. Support your here-and-now so that you can go the distance, because healing chronic and deeper imbalances takes time. Your present state took time to build up. Years, even decades, of your life contributed to your imbalances, so you will most likely need at least a year or more to resolve them.
How do I check my Hormone Levels?
Saliva and urine testing are preferred and, if possible, request a complete cycle mapping test to see the entire rhythm of your cycle.
The standard blood draw can provide a snapshot, but it’s often not helpful unless done very regularly, as in every 2-3 months to observe changes and shifts in response to your protocol tools.
You can order these through an Integrative MD, Naturopath or through me over at Mêrfleur Wellness.
3 Starter Steps
Now that you know the power of your cycle, journal through 1 or 2 cycles and note your body’s messages.
Include any muscle or skin sensations, cognitive shifts, pain or discomfort, breakouts and their location, mood changes, motivation levels, overall life perspective, libido presence, cervical mucus texture, body temperatures, and any inauthentic weight hold. This is how you start to hear your body.
2. Observe how often you are in your alarm mode versus your calm mode.
Alarm mode symptoms can include tense muscles, difficulty sleeping, feeling anxious, clenched jaw, always smiling/being nice, unable to sit still, hypervigilance, and constantly trying to look like you have it together.
Calm mode symptoms can include healthy stomach rumbles in between meals, slow deep breathing throughout the day, falling asleep easily, clear skin, feeling grounded, easily holding healthy boundaries, purposeful and focused thinking, and effortlessly maintaining your authentic weight.
3. Begin envisioning your ideal body and lifestyle.
Use the power of your subconscious mind to shift your health. How do you want to feel? How do you want to look? How do you want to move? How do you want to sleep? How do you want to live? Write this out in an imperfect, messy riff, then read it out loud and refine it. Once you love it, use a voice recording app and record your dream. Listen to your own voice speaking this new reality every morning right when you wake up (before you get out of bed) for 30 days straight. Watch your life rearrange itself to start moving you towards this!
Jessica Michel is a health reset consultant specializing in artists and sensitives navigating chronic or mysterious dis-eases. Her drive comes from spending the last 20 years resolving her own body and experiencing firsthand the frustration of not fitting into the standard medical boxes. Known for her ability to find solutions to the seemingly impossible, Jessica brings an intuitive and practical approach to healing that allows her clients to fully rebirth into resilient, whole, healthy humans! In her world, where functional health meets ethereal insight, creatives are restored and empowered to live out their life's work with gusto and gumption.
To learn more or to book a session with Jessica visit merfleurwellness.com or follow along @merfleurwellness.