E220: Why I Ditched Seed Cycling & What To Do Instead for Less PMS

I know you’ve scrolled through all of the hormone advice on social media and probably tried most of it - seed cycling, hormone supplements, and blue light glasses, but it’s NOT working. 

Your body is not broken. You're just stuck in a cycle of trendy fixes that never get to the root of the issue.

Today, I’m sharing why I used to seed cycle and take all the hormone supplements, and why it never worked for me either. You’re not alone!

You’ll learn:

• Why flax and pumpkin seeds aren’t the miracle fix they’re promised to be
• What seed cycling might be doing right, and why that’s still not enough
• How to finally address your PMS, fatigue, bloating, and low libido by looking under the hood instead of slapping on a shiny quick-fix

Press play for a quick listen to help you change your mindset and results so you can finally feel better without spending all of your dollars on quick fixes.

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Disclaimer: Nothing in this podcast is to be taken as medical advice, please take informed accountability and speak to your provider before making changes to your health routine.

This podcast is for women and moms to learn how to balance hormones naturally in motherhood, to have pain-free periods, increased fertility, to decrease PMS mood swings, and to increase energy without restrictive diet plans. You'll learn how to balance blood sugar, increase progesterone naturally, understand the root cause of estrogen dominance, irregular periods, PCOS, insulin resistance, hormonal acne, post birth-control syndrome, and conceive naturally. We use a pro-metabolic, whole food, root cause approach to functional women's health and focus on truly holistic health and mind-body connection.

If you listen to any of the following shows, we're sure you'll like ours too!
Pursuit of Wellness with Mari Llewellyn, Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark, Found My Fitness with Rhonda Patrick, Just Ingredients Podcast, Wellness Mama, The Dr Josh Axe Show, Are You Menstrual Podcast, The Model Health Show, Grounded Wellness By Primally Pure, Be Well By Kelly Leveque, The Freely Rooted Podcast with Kori Meloy, Simple Farmhouse Life with Lisa Bass

Transcript

[00:00:00] Leisha: Today I'm talking about why seed cycling and hormone supplement trends are not helping your hormones, and I'm gonna tell you what to do instead.

 If you've been around in the holistic health world for a while, I think that it's really easy to see that the only thing that is consistent is trends. There are always trends in the health world, and if you have been around here a little while, like me, you have seen them, right? So we go through all kinds of different trends, but the hormone space is no different.

We have probably all been through the paleo phase, the whole 30 phase, pro metabolic phase, maybe six or seven other things in between. And you can find evidence on both sides of the aisle for everything, right? But one of the things that I've seen stay pretty consistent as a. Recommendation for hormone balance is seed cycling.

I think it used to be more popular than it is now, but there's actually some evidence behind it that makes it seem like it might be helpful, and I'm gonna talk about why I used to do it and why I don't do it now, and what we can do instead. That's actually gonna be much more effective for hormones. if you're like seed cycling, what is this?

 Seed cycling is essentially eating certain kinds of seeds during the first half of your cycle versus the second half of your cycle, and it's claimed to balance hormones, boost fertility, and ease symptoms of menopause, even to eat flax and pumpkin seeds. In the first half of your cycle and sesame and sunflower seeds in the second half of your cycle.

And the claim is that it can do all kinds of things for you. It can help your thyroid and your hair and cellulite and pretty much everything that women don't want to have or we wanna fix. You can find evidence on the internet, good evidence, you never know for. seed cycling, helping with it.

I definitely have tried it. I'm a hormone coach. I used to do it all the time. But what you do is you eat the flax and pumpkin seeds for the first, like half of your menstrual cycle, and it's supposed to help with phytoestrogens. So it's supposed to somehow help both raise and lower estrogen as needed in that first 14 days of your cycle.

Now, flax seeds, and I will say there's good to most of these trends, it's just is it actually worth the time? Is the conversation here? So flax seeds can be helpful for phytoestrogens, especially in people who have low estrogen and there is also really good fiber that can help bind and move estrogen out of your gut potentially as well.

 so there's evidence to some extent that can actually be helpful. And then the pumpkin seeds are supposed to prepare your body essentially to make more progesterone in the second half of your cycle. And that has the pumpkin seeds have zinc. They're also good.

Anti-parasitic pumping seeds are typically like an anti-parasitic recommendation. Especially if you happen to be ovulating like around the full moon, you could be doing yourself some good with that seed cycling. But what I find, especially with any seeds but flax seeds specifically is flaxseeds can actually be inflammatory if they are.

Rancid. And if you are buying flax seeds and not keeping them in the fridge and not like grinding them fresh every day, they can pretty easily go bad and actually be a little bit more inflammatory. So that is one reason that I just stopped bothering with it overall because I found that it was maybe doing me a little bit of good, but not enough that it was worth the trouble essentially.

And the same thing with the seeds in the second half of the cycle, which I will talk about here in a minute. The second half of the cycle you would do the sesame seeds essentially it's known or it's, I don't know about known. It's said to increase levels of some other sex hormones, but not necessarily estrogen.

So there's not so much evidence for the nutrients in the second half of the cycle to be as helpful. But some women have said that it can be helpful for psycho regularity. A length and luteal phase and cyclical breast pain. Why would this potentially work? It could actually just be the extra fiber. And it could just be that you are doing something consistent and maybe I would even.

Guess that if you were being consistent with seed cycling, you might also be consistent with getting, a certain meal at a certain time of day or like some other things that are probably going to help your hormones potentially even more than the seed cycling because you're in a good routine and rhythm with it.

 With that being said, there's not really hard evidence that seed cycling is really helpful. There are some women who swear by it, and if that's the case. I don't think it's harmful, but what I do see with seed cycling is that again, it just is a trendy. Like bandaid solution in my opinion, because it's not really going to fix things at a root cause.

So if your root cause for painful breasts and PMS symptoms is an imbalance of estrogen and progesterone. These seeds in and of themselves are not going to give you enough nutrients and enough fiber to completely change that when under the surface there's likely gut dysfunction, inflammation, there's likely blood sugar imbalances.

There's likely thyroid and adrenal hormone imbalances. There's likely so many different layers. That are causing that tip of the iceberg to finally stick up and show hormone symptoms. That thinking, that seed cycling is. Even really a partial fix is just not very realistic because it's such a small thing to do.

It's just these little seeds that are going to have, you know, they could be, even if they're like powerhouse of nutrients, they're still not going to fix a problem at a root cause by any means. But if they took the edge off of symptoms because they were helping scrub the gut out a little bit more, they were providing a little more zinc that your body needed.

Then essentially there's not harm in that again, as long as the seeds are good quality and they're not going bad before you're eating them and things like that. I find that. It's a little bit more, I don't wanna say a placebo effect, because I really hate that gaslighting mentality to be like, if seed cycling helped you, you're making it up.

Not true. If seed cycling helped you, great, but I still think that we have to think about the root cause of the issue versus just doing seed cycling. I also mentioned at the beginning of the episode that. I was gonna talk about hormone supplement trends and I see hormone supplement trends all the time on Instagram.

And it's things , I always joke about, like the happy flow supplements. There's definitely those. I see ones that are. Like a libido supplement, there's a libido powder that I've even tried because I'm always up for trying something and seeing if it helps. Or seeing , if the ingredients are good might as well see how it feels.

 So something like a libido supplement or a PMS supplement, that's like a powder that's supposed to fix your PMS. Again, even the most well researched powder to fix, your PMS. It's a trend, it's a quick fix, and it goes back to this mentality that so many of us have that we don't want to actually deal with what's going on under the surface.

I think that this goes for emotions too, so much of the time where it's like we just. Don't wanna look under the hood of the car because who knows what the heck has happened in there since the last oil change. And I'm using this analogy on purpose because almost everyone listening to this is a woman.

If you're a man, hello. I'm surprised you're here, but. As most women, I know there are those badass women who know how to fix cars, and I am so impressed by you, but most of us really don't know anything about cars and we don't really care to. If we were to lift the hood of the car, you can probably tell if something's been on fire, you could probably tell like.

If there was a big oil leak, but other than that, we're not gonna necessarily have the background knowledge to know what's going on under the hood, right? And so it's easier if something's like smoking a little bit to be like, I need to get someone else in there to look at it, I don't want to look under the surface and see what's happening here.

 This is an example that, it's going a little off the rails because if your car's actually smoking, you have to do something about it, right? But say we're just gonna shine up the top a little bit and hope for the best because there's not too much smoke.

That is essentially what we're doing when we're like, okay, something's going on under the hood here. And I am a hot mess. One week outta the month, I'm yelling at everybody. I'm super irritable. I'm not myself. My period shows up. I have these terrible cramps and I'm noticing, that my gut is really off , some of the other days of the month too, I'm noticing these symptoms.

But I don't wanna look under the hood because it might be scary. Like, What am I gonna find? Is there something really wrong with me? I think that's something to sit with for a minute, because I think that's a fear a lot of times for women where we're like, is there something actually really wrong?

Because we've heard the horror stories of someone else's experience, probably on social media, probably not even someone we know of. Something underlying that was really scary that. We don't wanna know if it's there. With that being said, is that serving you to not look under the hood and not be like, what's the root cause here of these symptoms?

It may not even be that. It may just be like time. It could also be you're a mom and everyone else's priorities are priority. I am guilty of this plenty of times where. Two things. One thing is the kids are louder than me. If they need something. My focus is on them a lot of the time, or even my husband, or even my clients or everyone else we're so good at taking care of everyone else and I'm checking the boxes, like I'm feeding myself, I'm working out, I'm getting sunshine, I'm checking them, but maybe I'm checking them two thirds of what I need to do because everyone else's priority is a priority.

And also like we're great at making it work, right? If I just have a symptom one day a month, it's hard to take the time to really investigate that because it's only bothering me one day a month. But if it's bothering you one day a month, there's something smoking in the engine. Okay? There's something smoking under there that.

Potentially could turn into something big, bad, and scary down the road. Probably isn't that now. But if you keep just slamming the hood shut and fanning the smoke away with seed cycling or with a happy hormone supplement. Whether that is something that's researched and has good ingredients, or it's beef liver based, right?

I see that one all the time. That's like female organs from. Not from liver, from a cow with liver. And it's like this fixed everything. I lost weight. My cortisol was perfect. The Happy Juice. I think that's what it's called, the gut stuff that's supposed to help fix your mood and your anxiety and your gut bloating and all of these things, again, it can be well researched, it can work for people, but it is a bandaid.

And the smoke is still going on. Even if you manage to seal up that lid of the front of your car and the smoke's just in there and it's not really coming out very often, it's still smoking. This is where I find seed cycling hormone supplement trends and influencers selling them on social media.

Ads selling them on social media. Girls, I am the best at getting sucked into an ad. I love marketing and I don't even mean like marketing for my business. Being marketed to. I love to buy things and that is something I'm working on, but. I am just saying I can get sucked in with the best of them and it's not serving you well.

It's not serving you well to be sucked into these things and just trying like this or that. And if you were to sit here and ask yourself like, how many years have I been doing that? When. Really just diving in and sucking it up and figuring out what that smoke is coming from could have served me so much better.

That is just a question that I want you to ask yourself because if you're drawn to seed cycling or these supplements or just these kind of like quick fix things, it's because we have this mentality that a quick fix is better. easy is better, but sometimes. Doing the actual work makes such a difference in the long run that it's worth it to get in there and figure the things out and do it so that you are no longer scrolling because your mood's a hot mess and getting sold random things every single month when you're dopamine seeking on your PMS journey.

Whether it's skincare, whether it's haircare, whether it's new clothes. 'cause you just want something to make you happy, right? How much are you spending because your mood is off and your dopamine seeking and all the things, because there's a stinking fire under the hood of that car. That is where I just can't get behind the trendy hormone things that are supposed to fix everything because.

To be honest, nothing is the one thing that fixes everything. And I hate that because I want the one thing that fixes everything for every problem in my life. And I just keep finding that's not how life tends to work. When we're looking at hormones and we're looking at these hormones, symptoms that are showing us that there's something smoking under the hood, there's something going on under the surface in the body at a root cause.

We have to be willing to go a little deeper, ask the right questions, look for the right full picture of things. when we work with our clients and nourish your hormones, we are looking at the whole picture as much as possible. We're looking at food that's huge. We're looking deep at food. We're really asking, what are you eating, when and how are you eating it, and what are you putting it with and what are the ingredients and how do you feel after.

All of those things we're looking at food for you. As a big picture. There are some quick fixes to some extent where you, when you get help, it makes it so much easier. It doesn't feel like such a burden on yourself. We're looking at your cycle as a whole picture, not just when are you ovulating, but what else is happening after ovulation?

How are you clearing estrogen? Where are these symptoms exactly showing up so we can pinpoint what we need to do about them. We're looking at this cycle as a big picture. We're looking at your energy as a big picture. What's coming in versus what's going out and where is that balance?

Does it need to be a little bit of an excess of energy coming in versus out for this season of life? Are you in a hard enough season that we need to just really focus in on the bare minimum to get through and help you thrive as much as possible? We really wanna look at that as a big picture, and then we look at hormones as a big picture, like what's going on with not only your.

Estrogen and progesterone because, someone came to me today and she was like, okay, I think I have low progesterone and this is, my symptoms. And it's like, absolutely, you might have low progesterone. I probably agree with that assessment, but we have to know what else is going on. Is it your thyroid?

Is it your cortisol? Is it your estrogen? Playing a role as well as it testosterone it, like what stress hormones, what other hormones in the body are playing a role in this low progesterone, because just saying oh, it's low progesterone. I just need to again, take a progesterone supplement or even take Vitex, which helps produce progesterone or even take pumpkin seeds, which might help produce progesterone or vitamin C.

It's like, but why? But why is the progesterone low? Because you can put all the vitamin C you want in your body and it might be great for you. I do like vitamin C if it's whole food, vitamin C, but if the reason that your progesterone is low is because your stress hormones are stealing your progesterone, we gotta focus on the stress hormones.

So we've got to look at the bigger picture. We've gotta look at sometimes the gut is a big part of that bigger picture. If you have imbalances in your microbiome, if you have low good bacteria. You might have disrupted intestinal lining and not be absorbing your nutrients as well. Well, Hello. You can seed cycle you want, but if you're not absorbing well then you're not going to be seeing the benefits.

You might have some nasty little bacteria causing a bunch of inflammation. You're also not gonna be absorbing as well. And it also can affect your mood and it can cause other inflammation in your body and cause thyroid issues and weight gain and low energy and hair loss. There's all kinds of layers to this and you don't have to know every single layer to start to get better.

You absolutely don't. But the more pieces of the puzzle we can put together, it's so much easier to see what that picture looks like. And so if we have half the puzzle, we can see, we have three quarters of the puzzle. We can really see, we get as many pieces as possible. We can really see what that big picture looks like.

And I think that is just so key in. Being able to actually see the results long term and have it not feel hard long term where you're just confused and overwhelmed and can't figure out what this big picture even looks like. The other thing to just hit on that you, if you're my OG girls here, you've heard me say this, but you probably still need to hear it again because I need to hear it all the time.

The foundations are the most important. So seed cycling supplements, it's all these little cherries on top of a beautiful ice cream sundae that needs a foundation of actual ice cream. Okay? an ice cream sundae is just really not any good if all you've got is the fudge and the whipped cream and then the cherries on top.

I could eat it, but I would rather have it with ice cream. And you need that bottom layer, that foundation in place to make. The whole thing work, and the foundations are going to be the things that you hear me say, like really nourishing food, blood sugar, balance, supporting your detox pathways, sleeping, anybody doing that, working out appropriately for your age, for your cycle, for your season of life, your stress levels at the time of day.

You need to be getting those things in as a whole picture versus. Just doing them here and there. We have to have the foundations in place and that is what we are so good at helping our clients with is like really getting those foundations set. really setting them in concrete where you know what yours are.

Your friend knows what hers are, I know what mine are, and we just stick with those foundations and then we build. Build on top of that a little bit at a time until we get to the point where you're really feeling like you want to feel versus having to start from scratch again. When you did some sort of hormone balance, meal plan and a supplement and found that you didn't really see the results you needed, or it was.

Too complicated or it was too, you didn't know why you were doing it, you really weren't bought in. All of those things can make such a big difference in the long-term results, and that's why I've built nourish your hormones how I have, and that's why I work with clients how I do now, because over the last six years I've seen what works and what doesn't work, and fanciness all the fancy trends, they come and go, but they're not going to ever.

Make a dent in the symptoms and in the root cause, like really getting clear on what the big picture is and getting consistent with those foundations. And I know that's not super fun and sexy and it's hard to market, right? If I made an ad that was like, you have to have foundations for your hormones to work, people are gonna be like, that sounds boring next, 

, buy me that. Ovary supplement the beef ovary because probably my ovaries need some beef ovary in them, and it's just because it's not as flashy. But sit with yourself for a second and ask how many times has the flashy thing actually worked? And I promise I'm gonna start asking myself that when I see ads too, because usually no, usually it really doesn't.

And the only exception that I can think of right now. To that is completely unrelated to hormones, but it's my mopping vacuum that is trendy and flashy, and I love it. I just love it. So if you came to this episode looking for hormone advice and all you get from this is that mopping, vacuums are worth it.

It's so true. My floor is so much cleaner and I just have this little part of my brain that is lighter because I don't walk through my kitchen every day and be like, Ugh. The floor. Because I have three kids and they love to go in and out of the door. And I think that you can relate to that. outside of mopping, vacuums marketing for these easy, quick fixes, it's just not true.

And I imagine that at some point, my mopping vacuum will break and I'll have to, reconvene on that idea. But I just wanna encourage you that if you are taking the time to listen. Not only to this podcast, but listen to your body and ask the right questions and look for those root causes. You are going to see results over the long term in such a better way where you don't have to keep chasing the quick fixes.

So I just wanna encourage you if you've been in that cycle, or if you hear that and you're like, Ugh, it's me. That, that pattern can change and you can see so many better results because of that. And I also just wanna say before I. Get off of this podcast. I never take it for granted that you're listening and I love that you're here.

I would love to hear from you. You can send me a text on the show just in the show notes, send me a text and just say, Hey, I like this episode, or. Tell me about this or whatever. I love to hear from you. It's kind of interesting to be sitting here recording by myself and not be able to have the actual conversation with you.

But the other thing is I would absolutely love it if you share this episode or one of your other favorite episodes with some friends and help me get this message. On the podcast to other women because I hear so often that it's just needed and it's encouraging. And that's what we want for not only ourselves, but our friends too.

And if you're feeling really generous and fancy, if you wanna leave me a review, I would also love that it makes such a difference in other people finding this show. Alrighty, ladies, I'll talk to you soon.