E224: How To Increase Your Progesterone Naturally For Less PMS & Better Periods

Is today the day you're on the couch, with cramps and moody, wondering, “Why do I feel like this every month?”

You may have been told OR have self-diagnosed that your progesterone is imbalanced, so today we're talking about how you can get to the bottom of the progesterone puzzle and start to see less mood swings, less spotting, and longer, more predictable cycles. 

We'll talk about what progesterone is, why it matters, and how to make more without giving into fads and wasting money on the next magic hormone gummy. 

You'll learn:

• [04:20] How to tell if your progesterone is actually low, or just misunderstood
• [06:37] Why timing matters so much when it comes to hormone testing
• [09:44] What to focus on first if you want to support your body naturally 

I’m not here to tell you to try harder. I’m here to show you how very intentional shifts can make your body feel safe enough to do what it was designed to do.

So grab your drink, hit play, and let’s talk about what your body’s been trying to tell you, and how you can start listening with compassion, not panic.

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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

Chapters

• 4:20 How to tell if your progesterone is actually low, or just misunderstood
• 6:37 Why timing matters so much when it comes to hormone testing
• 9:44 What to focus on first if you want to support your body naturally (without adding 10 new things to your plate)

Transcript

[00:00:00] Could low progesterone be the problem causing your PMS, bad periods and general hormone chaos.

[00:00:00] Low progesterone is something that so many women think that they have when it comes to hormone imbalance, and sometimes it's true and sometimes it's not. So today you'll learn these three things. Number one is how to know if your progesterone is actually low. We'll talk symptoms and testing. Number two, why blood tests may not be accurate and how to know if your doctor tested right for actual low progesterone.

And number three is what it takes to make enough progesterone, including whether specific foods or supplements can help fix the problem. I think it's really important to start the conversation by understanding progesterone, what it is and how we make it in our bodies, because this is going to be the foundation for making more progesterone.

So whether you're here to actually fix low progesterone or you just want to optimize progesterone, this is going to be for you because so many of us could use optimization of our progesterone, even if it is [00:01:00] pretty good, pretty balanced.

Progesterone is just so important that it can always be optimized, honestly. 

 Progesterone is made by. A temporary organ that we as women have, and we make this only when we ovulate. So it is absolutely essential to be ovulating, to make progesterone, and this is why. In the early part of your cycle, estrogen rises and triggers some other hormones for ovulation. And when those hormones are triggered and ovulation happens, there is a little

follicle or like capsule around the egg that is ovulated, that collapses and becomes a temporary organ called the corpus lium that makes progesterone for the rest of that cycle. And if you get pregnant, it makes progesterone until the placenta is able to take over. that is how progesterone is made.

 But there is a whole cascade of events that has to happen for you to [00:02:00] be able to ovulate and to be able to ovulate well and make optimal levels of progesterone. The progesterone production is the end goal of the hormone cycle, but there are so many things that need to be in place for that to actually happen.

And there need to be things that are not in place for that to happen too, because stress plays a really big role in the amount of progesterone that you make, nutrients play a really big role. And so we're gonna go into all of those things shortly, but it's really important to understand that progesterone is not really an optional hormone when it comes to happy hormones

happy moods, PMS symptoms being minimal. When you are taking birth control, you are not ovulating typically and not making progesterone. You can ovulate, but I would pretty much go out on a limb and say, you're not gonna be making optimal levels of progesterone if you're ovulating on birth control. if you took birth control for a long time and weren't making progesterone, you were not getting the benefits of this hormone [00:03:00] for a long time.

Or if you're not ovulating now and you're not making progesterone, you're not getting these benefits. So it's really important that you are ovulating. So that you can make progesterone, because progesterone is not only pro pregnancy, but it is pro thyroid, pro metabolism. It is really helpful against anxiety, typically in most women, and it is really calming to the body.

It's pro sleep, it's pro, like that, more calm, centered feeling that you want to have, especially toward the end of your cycle. So progesterone is really important for those reasons. Now, what are the symptoms of low progesterone and how do we know if yours is actually low? Low progesterone symptoms can be short cycles, specifically short

luteal phase, which is the time after ovulation until your next period, shorter than 12 days, to me, is considered a short cycle, a short luteal phase. If you're not making enough progesterone [00:04:00] to last at least those 12 days, then you are likely not getting the optimal amount of progesterone to keep estrogen balanced and to support estrogen detoxing, and to have that, inverse reaction with estrogen that we wanna see in the second half of the cycle for optimal hormone balance. You could also see spotting with low progesterone, specifically spotting the last couple days of your cycle, and especially if that's combined with a short luteal phase or a short cycle this just tells me that your progesterone is just not making it far enough in your cycle to keep you from bleeding, to keep you from spotting.

And is very likely dropping off. And you can see this really well when you're taking basal body temperatures. We can see what's happening with your progesterone if we see that it's dropping off early, if your temps are dropping, if we're not seeing a very big raise in temps. And so this is why I love to look at that with my clients because it really tells us a lot about your estrogen and progesterone production when we're able [00:05:00] to look at temperatures.

 Estrogen dominant symptoms can also indirectly be a sign of low progesterone. And this can be a little bit tricky because you can have high estrogen in normal progesterone and have estrogen dominant symptoms, but you can also have normal estrogen and low progesterone and have those symptoms. in the case of low progesterone, you could still see estrogen dominant symptoms, but it could be more that

your estrogen and progesterone are just out of balance versus that your estrogen is actually high, and those symptoms are, the classic hormone symptoms. PMS, mood swings, hormonal acne, breast tenderness, painful periods, heavy periods, clotty periods. So much can be blamed on estrogen and progesterone being out of balance.

But that can be a sneaky sign that your progesterone is not adequate to balance out your estrogen. Now, when we test for progesterone I actually see that [00:06:00] testing is not done accurately a lot of the time. It's really important that you're testing progesterone in the luteal phase of your cycle in about five to seven days after ovulation.

If you're doing a blood test with your doctor. Now, I had a friend come to me and say, Hey, will you look at my labs? I looked at them and her doctor had written a note that said, your progesterone is low. You probably should take birth control. To balance this out. I got really mad because she had tested her progesterone on day, like it was between like three and five of her cycle, and it was within range for days three to five of your cycle because it's supposed to be low at that point.

And this friend of mine actually wants to conceive soon. And so going on birth control would actually just be completely counterintuitive to what her body really needs and what she even is wanting for her family. But that was the answer to this quote unquote low progesterone that was not even low progesterone.

Now, [00:07:00] could this friend have low progesterone? Absolutely, she could, but we don't know because it was tested in the wrong part of the cycle. So this is really important if you get typical blood work done with a typical doctor that you actually pay attention to when that blood work is done so that you can get an accurate result.

 I would only consider a progesterone result to be accurate, those like five to seven days after ovulation. And ideally, you're actually tracking ovulation to know when that is. So that is. Why blood tests are often not accurate, and it's not even that the blood test itself isn't accurate, it's just that it's being tested wrong.

I personally don't even do blood testing for hormones most of the time. I really like the Dutch test because you can see how the hormones are made and detoxed, which is so important in my case, and I like to see the balance between estrogen, progesterone. And also cortisol, which is often not tested on blood work when they're testing estrogen and progesterone in a typical doctor's office.

And I like to see [00:08:00] cortisol because cortisol can be a big factor in progesterone being low because if cortisol is high and , you can actually be stealing progesterone to make more cortisol, to keep you in that high stress state that your body, feels like it needs to be in at this point.

That is something just that is really important to understand too, that your hormones are working together and that being able to see the whole picture with something like a Dutch test, instead of just a couple little snapshots potentially at the wrong time in your cycle with blood testing it could be really leading you astray and telling you that there's problems that aren't even there.

So what does it take to actually make enough progesterone? You have to have the ingredients coming in to make hormones well and. We're not even talking about detoxing hormones. But estrogen detox is a part of making enough progesterone. When we're looking at just the first part though, making hormones we have to step back and look at the big picture of what it takes to make progesterone, [00:09:00] and there has to be a certain level of safety in the body to be making progesterone optimally where your body is getting enough nutrients in.

So this looks like eating whole foods consistently throughout the day, paying somewhat attention to your macronutrients so that your blood sugar is balanced. Looking at your micronutrients, making sure that you're getting antioxidant rich foods. You're getting brightly colored fruits and vegetables that your gut is functioning well enough to be absorbing those nutrients well.

And then that you are in a low enough stress state, hear me? I'm not saying it has to be perfect, but low enough stress state that your body can interpret that these nutrients can be used for egg quality and that they can be used for ovulation versus they have to be used just to help you survive. So getting those nutrients inconsistently.

This is. Almost no one [00:10:00] is doing this really well on their own that I've seen, or the women who come to me often are close, but there are some fairly big gaps that need to be filled in to be able to really be getting the nutrients they need throughout the day consistently, not only to get the nutrients they need, but to keep blood sugar balanced so that you're not having those blood sugar emergencies in the body that raise cortisol, that steal progesterone as well.

That is nourishment. What I also see is that mineral depletion is a really big piece when it comes to progesterone because you need to have adequate minerals to be able to, again, create that safety in your body, to make those hormones, to detox those hormones, and to just have the energy that you need.

So your body says, Hey, I actually have enough energy to promote fertility to focus on hormone balance versus just needing to survive because hormone [00:11:00] production is almost like the first thing to go when it comes to. The hierarchy of needs in the body. And we don't need to be fertile when there's a raging fire all around us, right?

Like it's just not important in that moment. if that's how your body is interpreting your environment right now, you are going to have a harder time making enough progesterone. We wanna look at not only the nutrients coming in, but we also wanna look at blood sugar, balance minerals, and then things like sleep.

Getting enough sleep and quality sleep really makes a difference for progesterone. And even when we look at like blue light exposure versus sunlight exposure, if you're getting mostly artificial light, your body is not gonna be interpreting that the same way as it interprets the healing light outside.

None of these things, like I said, have to be perfect. But if there are big gaps that are missing here, then you are not going to be able to out supplement [00:12:00] or, focus on one type of food that's supposed to help with progesterone and see a really big difference here. And so it comes back down to energy in versus energy out.

We have to take a step back and really take responsibility for, honestly take responsibility for what is happening there for us. If we know the energy going out is way more than the energy coming in and we've just accepted that for this season, for motherhood, for life in general, it's probably time to assess that.

How can we. Look at that picture. Is it just physical energy? More physical energy is going out than coming in. Okay, so then how do we bridge that gap? Is it a little bit more sleep? Is it a little bit more nutrition? Is it a little bit less stress going out? Maybe that means decreasing caffeine, that's something that doesn't take more time necessarily.

Maybe that means working out in a way that works better for your body. Maybe that means saying no [00:13:00] to a couple things that are making you stay up late at night. There's going to be a give and a take when we're looking at energy balance, and it's so important to. Again, just take the responsibility to say, Hey, where I am is maybe not optimal for my body, and I need to see what can change, I want this to come

to you where it doesn't give you a sense of overwhelm of like, oh my gosh, I have to change everything about my life and I can't, and so I'm stuck in, I don't, I'm not gonna have progesterone I give up. That is not at all what I'm saying. I think that sometimes it is just a couple of small changes that can really start to move you in the right direction where your body can say, Hey, you know what?

I do have what I need. Everything is going to be okay, and I can start focusing on hormone balance again. This episode actually came from an email that I got that said, Hey, I'd love to know what some foods and supplements are that can help increase my progesterone and I.[00:14:00] 

I'm never gonna be someone who just says, Hey, you should just eat this food and it's gonna increase your progesterone. Now, there are foods that can help increase progesterone. Number one is whole food, vitamin C. I love whole food, vitamin C for progesterone production, and it can even help a little bit with cervical mucus.

It's also just very antioxidant rich. It's really good for even estrogen detox. It's good for your body in general. There's lots of benefits to whole food vitamin C, and by that I mean like Kimu, camu, acer, cherry, something like that. If you're taking a supplement for the whole food vitamin C, or foods that are high in vitamin C, like citrus and pineapple and guava and bell peppers, like those are all really great options to get more vitamin C.

And I'll even give you a range typically. You may have to work up to it if, especially if it gives you histamine issues at first, but at least 750 milligrams per day. So I will give you that, but I will tell you that just whole food vitamin C in an environment in [00:15:00] your body where you are super stressed, where you're not sleeping enough, where you're not getting the nutrients you need and your blood sugar is a hot mess.

It's still gonna be good for you, but it's not gonna fix your progesterone. It won't, there's no one food that's going to fix that. I just want to caution you that you can't count on that if the foundations are not in place. Same things with supplements. A lot of people really like Vitex or chase tree for progesterone production.

I see that typically more as a bandaid than something that's really helpful because again, if you're struggling with progesterone production and these lifestyle factors are not in place. It is not going to fix things. It may push your body a little bit harder toward progesterone production, but it's not a long-term fix, and sometimes it's not even a quick fix to be able to make more progesterone long-term.

So it really does come back to the basic foundations of. [00:16:00] Making those hormones well, and I say basic, but that doesn't mean necessarily they're super easy. It does take work to be replenishing your body and to be supporting hormone production, and sometimes it is a season where it feels like that could be too hard.

And so I just wanna encourage you that you don't have to do everything at once. Sometimes being able to actually step back and find a couple things to say no to. That are draining you, that are a, net negative when it comes to energy, whether that is, like a nighttime activity that is making it more stressful for dinnertime.

You're going to bed later. You have the kitchen and clean. When you all get home late, the kids are going to bed later, and so that night, not only are you more stressed, maybe not eating as well, also not getting enough sleep for just this activity. Those are the kind of things that I would

do a gut check and say, Hey, is this giving us enough benefit? We love it so much that it is worth [00:17:00] this. Or are we just doing it because someone else wanted us to, or because we should, or because whatever. And if it's something like a kid's activity, then maybe they're getting so much benefit out of it that it's worth it to you and that is great.

But how many things are like that where someone else is getting a lot of benefit? You maybe aren't getting as much and you're the one who is draining your energy tank to make it happen. Maybe there's a no for a season. Maybe there's a way to shorten it. Maybe there's a way to say you can have one activity versus two or three.

 it may not just be kids activities. I'm just using that as an example. I know there's so many other things that can drain our energy. But even if we're thinking of this as a cup that's. That's leaking, that's empty. It's like, where can we just make the hole a little smaller by plugging up these energy leaks?

And where can we have the water turn on just a little bit more, like we're filling ourselves up a little bit more. Maybe your cup isn't full all the way, but what if it's half full and it used to be all the way empty, right? You're [00:18:00] going to feel better. And what that turns into is more emotional stability, less cortisol needing to be produced, which does lead to the ability to produce more progesterone.

 I could honestly go out on a limb and say that if your lifestyle is fairly solid when it comes to, nutrition, sleep, things like that, maybe you could heal your progesterone completely with just changing your emotional stressors. I think that. Could definitely be the case, and that's gonna be obviously a case by case basis, which is why I love to look at this with you in the big picture and coach you through it in nourish your hormones, but.

When you take the time, if you actually take this episode and say, you know what? I'm going to take advantage of this and I'm going to take stock of where I am right now and what may be going on with my progesterone, physically, emotionally, the whole picture, this could change things for you if you just take real stock of your energy in versus your energy [00:19:00] out.

What's draining you and what is emotionally, physically? Causing your progesterone to be low versus just saying like, I'll just try some more whole food, vitamin C, I will, take some chase tree and or even taking or doing a progesterone cream, even if it is natural. Even if it's one of those that's compounded for you, or it's like one of the good brands of progesterone oil, adding progesterone like that.

Is still a bandaid because if your body is struggling to make progesterone you are going to be signaling something to your body by adding more progesterone externally, adding any hormone externally. if you are adding progesterone externally, you potentially could see improvement of symptoms for a little while because you have that extra progesterone, but.

It's telling your body that there's more progesterone here than your body is really making. And so it's not going to encourage your body to move toward making more [00:20:00] progesterone over time with the foundations that we've talked about, but it is going to tell your body that it doesn't have to do that.

 if you do see a reduction in symptoms, you could potentially see those as long as you're taking the progesterone or you could see them just for a little bit until your body has realized that's not real progesterone and that you're not getting those same benefits. And there are benefits to heart health, blood pressure, thyroid hormone.

There are so many benefits long term to making your own progesterone that there is not. From getting a synthetic or even like a natural bioavailable progesterone that your body doesn't make. I don't think that there's never a time for that. I think sometimes, you can add that if it's a season where you really feel like you cannot do anymore for your progesterone, but I can't say that it makes it any easier for you to balance your hormones long term and potentially could make it even a little bit harder to do that.

 I just wanna encourage you that your progesterone [00:21:00] can change, that you can see better symptoms, less PMS, more energy, less painful periods. This is all. Very common, very normal within my programs and my students and my clients, and so that is something that I would always love to help you with.

You can always book a call to talk about that and see if it's the next step for you. See if you're ready now, I would love to do that with you, but I also have something new for you that is going to be free just for a little while. I almost have it finished. So I am inviting you to get on the wait list for this.

And if you are on the wait list, it will be free for you when it is ready. It is a private podcast. That is the three first steps to making hormones. So this is what we're gonna be talking about. Everything we've talked about today, I'm boiling it down into a few action steps for you where you can get started on balancing your energy in and out.

Making sure your nourishment is at [00:22:00] least a little more on point than it is now and starting to replenish your minerals. Those are gonna be the three first steps that I will give you in this private podcast. I'm gonna put a link in the show notes and you can sign up for that wait list and it will be out very soon.

Make sure to share that with your friends too, who are like, I just need somewhere to start, and I am really excited to share this with you. Make sure you click that link and I will send it to you, ASAP, and I'll see you next time.