E236: 4 Things You Need To Know About Your Period Before You Can Make It Better

Tell me if this sounds familiar: your period app says it’s right on track, but your mood, energy, and skin all seem to have missed the memo.

If your cycle seems too long, too short, or just off, this episode is your new best friend. Because before you can fix your period, you’ve got to understand what’s really going on each month, not just track the dates.

Here’s what we’ll get into:

• 02:02 Why your cycle length is like a monthly report card on your hormones
• 04:48 How to know if you’re really ovulating (and why that matters even if you’re not trying for a baby)
• 15:38 The difference between what’s normal and what’s just common but not healthy

This isn’t a biology lecture, it’s a 20-minute, real-life crash course that’ll make your period symptoms start making sense. Pop this on during your walk or while you fold laundry, and get ready for a few “Ohhh, now I get it” moments that change how you see your body.

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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

• 2:02 Why your cycle length is like a monthly report card on your hormones
• 4:48 How to know if you’re really ovulating (and why that matters even if you’re not trying for a baby)
• 15:38 The difference between what’s normal and what’s just common but not healthy

Transcript

[00:00:00] If you wanna fix your periods for less mood swings and more energy, there are a few things that you really have to know.

[00:00:00] Today we are gonna talk about four key things that you need to know about your period that you really should have been taught a long time ago. And so if you didn't get taught a long time ago, then today is the day and I'm gonna help you get a little more clear on what you actually need to know about your period so that you can identify where the symptoms are coming from and be able to make progress forward before I go into.

That though, I want to remind you that I have a new private podcast coming out very soon, and this is going to be the last week where it is free,

this private podcast is the three steps you need to know to make your hormones well, which is step one key in what I do in coaching. This is gonna be really tangible, really action packed and easy to learn from. Sign up in the show notes for that, free for the wait list, and I will get it to you shortly.

Let's get into today's episode. The [00:01:00] first thing that you need to know about your period to be able to make it better is what is the regularity of your period? This is number one that women usually know, usually this is something that we track is we have an idea of like when the first day of our period starts, let me tell you why this is important.

We can really see quite a bit of. Information that we need as coaches from understanding, you know, how long your cycles are, and so anything that. Is between like 20, I would say 27 to like 32 days is what I would consider to be pretty normal for a period, from the first day of your period to the first day of your next period.

Anything outside of that I would consider to be a little too long, a little too short, something that probably is going to be symptomatic. And the reason that that matters is. When you have a long cycle, that tells me that your body is not getting the safety signals. It [00:02:00] needs soon enough to be able to ovulate well or to be able to ovulate.

Regularly, essentially. And so your body is pushing off ovulation because it's not getting the hormone signaling it needs to ovulate around that middle of the cycle, day 14, day 15, something like that. Now, can you have a perfectly normal cycle and ovulate like day 17, 18? Absolutely. Anything too far past that consistently kind of tells me that there is a nutrient issue, a signaling issue, a stress issue, or something like that.

So that's the cycle on the longer side if you happen to be someone with a longer cycle. The other piece of that is if you have a short cycle, which I see this actually just as often, maybe even a little bit more often, your periods are coming like every 25 days or so. if you notice that your period usually starts on the first of the month and then all of a sudden it's in the twenties, and then it's in the teens and it's kind of like moving around and it's getting shorter, then that is something that is really important [00:03:00] to note because it shows that your body is potentially ovulating too early and.

if not, then your luteal phase is too short. And so if you have a cycle that is, , 25 days, 26 days or shorter consistently, this is not like a one-off here or there, then that is a sign that your body is not. Probably making nearly enough progesterone or is making too much estrogen, and we'll get into that a little bit more here in a few minutes.

But knowing that your cycle, if your cycle is too short, you don't have a long enough time to make enough progesterone to keep things stable. and if your cycle is too long, your body is probably not getting safety signals on that side to be able to keep things regular either. So it's just really important to kind of know.

What the regularity of your cycle is. So if you've been tracking it in an app and you're just putting in the first day and not really paying attention, it would be good to go back and look at that and just see what kind of the link typically is, because that is a sign of cycle health as well as [00:04:00] something to know if you're looking for help with your cycle

that's the best place to start. Number two is the thing that I would say more women do not pay attention to, or at least not very, intentionally

or very accurately is ovulation knowing when you ovulate. So I'm gonna tell you how to know when you ovulate . Some women will track ovulation just by symptoms, which is totally fine and sometimes very accurate. Some women will track ovulation just by an app that says, this is when you should be ovulating and not pay attention to symptoms, and that is typically much less accurate, especially if your cycle is not perfectly regular every single month, even if it is perfectly regular every single month.

Sometimes that can be wrong if you're ovulating a little bit early or a little bit late compared to what. The app would typically track. Tracking ovulation, I would argue, is one of the most important free tools to start to understand your cycle better so that you can see where symptoms are [00:05:00] actually coming from.

So how do you do that? Ovulation occurs typically right in the middle of the cycle. And again, like we'll say a perfect 28 day cycle, and it's when estrogen rises and triggers G luteinizing hormone and follicle stimulating hormone enough to be able to. Tip over into ovulation. Now, if you're using ovulation strips to track, which some of us do that, what you see on that strip is LH G Luteinizing hormone, and it has to get, it has to build over several days, and you get to a point where the lines on the test are just as dark.

You know, they're both. The same darkness, and that tells you that the luteinizing hormone has peaked and usually 24 hours, within 24 hours ovulation will occur. So it's kind of like a predictor of ovulation. That can be fairly accurate way to track that if that's something that you want to do.

and just to clarify, we want to know when ovulation is happening because we want to see if you're ovulating early, which would indicate higher estrogen typically, and it's tipping [00:06:00] that LH over the edge sooner, or if you're ovulating late, which would indicate that your body doesn't have, as much of the nutrients and ingredients it needs to make those hormones well.

When you're ovulating early, there can be the same. Cause there often though it is more of a detox issue, than a making estrogen, making enough estrogen issue or making estrogen at the right time issue. So that in itself does give us some. Clues into ovulation. And then when we know when you're ovulating, we also know how long your luteal phase is, which is really important indicator for progesterone, which is also really, really important in the cycle.

And we wanna be making enough progesterone because as you may know, listening to this podcast, progesterone is pro. Thyroid, it's pro metabolism, it's pro stable mood. It's procal, and so we want all of those things in your body for as long as possible. Each cycle, which we would hope is gonna be about 12 to 14 days in the luteal phase.

And so what [00:07:00] that means is. We wanna know when you ovulate so that we can see how long you are making progesterone and if that is sufficient. And then between knowing if you're ovulating early, if you're ovulating late, and how long your luteal phase is, it's very, very helpful to be able to see where the problem is in your cycle.

I'm just gonna clarify that because as coaches and as , hormone experts, we can see this, but I want you to actually understand it too. So if you see that you're ovulating early in your cycle, say you have a short cycle, you're ovulating day 10, day 12, something like that, that potentially and probably means that estrogen is rising too quickly.

Potentially because you're making too much estrogen or because you're not detoxing your estrogen very well, you could be reabsorbing through your gut, especially if you were having some gut issues or just some detox issues with that. And so if you're ovulating early and having a shorter cycle. Typically that is an issue with estrogen rising too quickly. Now, you could also be having a short [00:08:00] luteal phase, and then you have a really short cycle. You know, even like 21 days, 23 days, 24 days, something like that. And then you have a shorter luteal phase. So once you actually ovulate and then you start counting the days toward your next cycle, you're only getting to 10.

You're only getting to 12. . I'm okay with 12, but anything shorter than that. Is not optimal, especially if you want to get pregnant. It's just not optimal for being able to keep, , an egg implanted long enough to be able to be viable essentially. When we see that that is short and we see a short cycle, there could be issues on both sides making the hormones well, detoxing the hormones.

 And usually there is a lot that we can do to help boost that. And then if we're looking at, you're ovulating at a regular time, so say you're ovulating day 14, day 15, but your luteal phase is still short, you're still like a 10 to 12 day luteal phase, and so you're still hitting a shorter cycle that is probably more of a progesterone issue than an estrogen issue.

You also could be ovulating later, as I mentioned. And that can be more of an issue with your body having the [00:09:00] safety or the nutrients. And this can go into more like , PCOS picture insulin resistance, sometimes, not always, I'm not saying every single time, but if you're ovulating late and then having a normal or a short luteal phase, then that is.

A completely different issue in your cycle. So I just wanna hopefully clarify with ovulation why we want to know those things and why it matters. And we see, one month doesn't tell us much, but multiple months in a row tell us quite a bit. So sometimes one month can be weird, but if it's like, no, this is how my symptoms are every single month, and this is what it looks like now that we know when I'm ovulating, then that is really, really helpful.

I find that a lot of women think that it's only necessary to track ovulation if you're wanting to get pregnant. Especially if your husband has a vasectomy or something like that where you're not really, you know, needing to track fertility. But I actually think that it is really important for women to track ovulation in general to some extent, to be able to understand your cycle well.

 it depends if you're like really, [00:10:00] really trying to get pregnant or you're really, really trying to not get pregnant, you're gonna need to track more carefully. Or if you're really, really. Chasing down hormone symptoms, you're gonna need to track more carefully. If you're in a pretty stable place, then maybe you just need to know some of the signs to pay attention to, so you have a general idea so that if things get wonky down the road a few months, you have some data to go on.

A few more ways to track ovulation. I mentioned ovulation strips. Those are honestly what I use the very least, but they're pretty common. There's something that you can get, you know, Walmart, Amazon, all the places, and track ovulation that way. My very favorite way to track ovulation is through basal body temperatures, which sounds way fancier than it is literally just taking your temperature in the morning and tracking that and looking for patterns, and you're gonna see a pattern of lower temperatures the first half of your cycle, and once ovulation occurs.

You're gonna see a rise of about half to one degree, and you're gonna see a pattern of higher temperatures. It doesn't mean it's a perfect line. It's definitely usually not, but we see a pattern of higher temperatures, and once you see that first higher [00:11:00] temperature and then confirm it with a couple more days of higher temperatures, that first higher temperature is usually the day right after you ovulate.

So you can count the lower temperature the day before as the day of ovulation, and then you start counting your luteal phase. With that first day of the higher temperatures throughout the end of your cycle. That is a really simple, easy, almost free way to be able to track your ovulation. The way to make it even more accurate is to be tracking your cervical mucus as well.

And so you should see a rise in cervical mucus just before ovulation occurs, when estrogen is rising to trigger those other hormones. And you see this is something that I have definitely covered in other podcasts, but I'm gonna give you like a little. A brief overview of it right now and. What that looks like is you can see, you know, typically this is enough that it'll show up in your underwear.

You'll see it there. It starts with almost , kind of like a dry line of a little bit of discharge, and then you start to see more water content as you get more fertile and closer [00:12:00] to ovulation. You're gonna see more of like a lotion light consistency, kind of like a creamy consistency, and then a little bit more water content that can get to almost like a stretchy or egg white consistency optimally right before ovulation.

And that is a really good sign for. Your own fertility for the sperm to be able to live in your body long enough to make it to the egg essentially. And that's, I always like to talk about this because I just think that there's a couple, I mean, there's a million really, really cool things about a female body, but, , this is one of them that actually if you have sperm in the body for, say, two days before ovulation and you, or even up to five, to be honest, but for a few days before ovulation, and you have that, , fertile cervical fluid, or you have, any.

Really amount of cervical fluid, that cervical fluid has nutrients in it to nourish those sperm and keep them alive and safe until the egg is ready to show up. It's really cool how those things work together. And how our bodies are not only just like they're [00:13:00] nourishing that baby before the baby even happens.

And then also, of course, like cervical fluid makes it easier for the sperm to travel to the ovary where they need to go to be able to fertilize the egg. With all of that being said, we'll sidetrack there on fertility, but it's really important to be able to track and understand where you are in your cycle so that you can really have a much clearer picture with ovulation.

What's happening now? Again, I have podcasts that go way further into tracking, so just search in the podcast app that you're in, like happily Hormonal fertility or ovulation. And there will be some or even like BBT. Those would be things that I would search and you'll find more podcasts on that. We can also put some in the show notes, but you can go way deeper into that and get really, really good at tracking.

And I always plug the book, taking charge of your fertility. Get $0 from that. But it's a really, really good book and I think that it's so helpful for women to read. If you wanna understand tracking ovulation and tracking basal body temperatures better, this is also something we work with our clients on [00:14:00] all the time and really love to teach inside of coaching where we can really help you understand your own cycles.

We look at your charts a million times together. Every single week if you want to in coaching. And so I just wanna empower you with as much information as I can today to understand your ovulation because it is so incredibly helpful. Also, something that I didn't mention is you can have a regular cycle and not be ovulating regularly.

And so, especially if you're like, Hey, my symptoms are weird, or I'm not getting pregnant and I haven't been tracking ovulation with something like, basal body temperatures, you might not be ovulating. And that would be a really, really big missing piece. Especially in a fertility journey, but also just in a hormone balance journey.

So it is really, really important to be able to track that and understand for yourself what's happening, and you can have positive ovulation strips and then not actually ovulate. It's fairly rare. I'm not saying that that's happening a lot of the time, but that's why I don't use them as my main form of tracking.

 Okay. Third thing that you need to know is what is [00:15:00] normal in the cycle and what is not normal. Because if you don't know what's normal. What are you even aiming for? So what is normal in a hormone cycle is when I'm gonna start at the beginning and get all the way to the end of your period or your cycle.

Day one of your period, you bleed. You bleed a moderate amount that does not debilitate your day, that does not have a lot of clots. You have bright red bleeding that is manageable. And would soak through maybe a couple of pads in a day or a few tampons in a day. , Even up to, I would say five to six tampons, , in a 24 hour period is kind of my line of normal.

And this would be probably like a super or, emptying your period cup one or two times . And , they're all different measurements, but just a general idea is that would be a typical, like normal amount of bleeding for day one, day two, and then it should really taper off from there.

You should not [00:16:00] have really any pain, to be honest, because the pain is a sign of inflammation, it's a sign of dysfunction, it's a sign of hormones being imbalanced, I truly do not have period pain. Sometimes I will notice a little bit of like a feeling of heaviness in my uterus or like in my cervix, but I don't have cramping and I used to have cramping.

So this is something that I do understand having. but. cramping really is truly not normal and a lot of women will have some light cramping and I would say, you know, your uterus is contracting, you are expelling tissue. I could give that a normal, but a little bit maybe a two out of 10, maybe a three out of 10.

Anything above that I really do not think is normal. And I have seen. Improve. So I think there's always a reason behind that if you're having pain with your periods, if you're having a lot of clotting with your periods, you know, like maybe a clot I could give you [00:17:00] as normal, but really anything more than that.

Dark blood, clotty blood, really just, super heavy periods. These are not things that are normal and they're typically a sign of imbalance in the body. Not even just estrogen imbalance, but other imbalances that are driving that. hormonal migraines, headaches, pain in general, pain in the body, exhaustion.

None of those things are normal. Maybe feeling a little lower energy day one of your period or like the couple days before. I do see that sometimes. In myself even. But with that being said, , there's typically other causes. There's other reasons behind that. I've had a really crazy week.

I haven't been sleeping enough. Like those type of reasons. , Hormonal migraines and headaches are not normal. They're also a sign of imbalance in your hormones or in your lifestyle, and just like those inflammatory triggers being. Triggered during your period because there is increased inflammation with prostaglandins and with moods.

What is really normal? I'm not talking about common, I'm [00:18:00] talking about what's actually normal and healthy in your body would be, , that few days before your period, maybe your mood is just a little bit. Different than before. Maybe you're like a little bit more tired, maybe a little bit more overwhelmed, but you're not crying at the drop of a hat, you're not yelling at everybody, you're not feeling irritable, you don't wanna get a divorce, you don't wanna quit your job.

Like those things are excessive and so common. Everything that I'm saying, the heavy periods, the heavy bleeding, or sorry, not the heavy bleeding, the period pain, the PMS mood swings so common. That we think they're normal. I just wanna be super clear right now today that those things are not normal.

And when we start to see your body be able to make hormones well and detox hormones well, like I talk about all the time, we can see those symptoms go away. So especially when I have women come to me and say, Hey, two weeks outta the month. My life is really hard. Like I'm a moody mess for a week and then my period [00:19:00] comes and I'm exhausted and I have pain and I'm bleeding all over the place, that is not normal.

And that is something that typically we can see really big improvements in when we find the root causes and when we work on making your hormones well and detoxing your hormones well. Just getting really, really clear on what is normal versus what is not is really important. And even if it's normal for your family, even if it's common, everyone around you has it.

It does not mean you have to be stuck there ever like forever. Okay, number four, when symptoms pop up in your cycle. And what that means. I'm just gonna go through this part pretty quickly. It is important to understand when symptoms pop up in your cycle. And so I'll talk to women all the time and ask them okay, so , you said your mood's all over the place.

When is that? so with mood, that's kind of an easier one sometimes. usually it's right before their period, but I'm like, is it for a day? Is it for a week? Is it for the whole month? And they're like, well, you know, let me think about that. So knowing when your symptoms are showing up, it can be really helpful to just track that a little bit [00:20:00] closer and notice, oh, you know what, actually I have a one really moody day around ovulation, and then I have like four around my period.

Okay, good to know. Because. Even if you never ask for help and you're just keep figuring it out on your own, just knowing that is even helpful for your own understanding of your body and your own understanding of what to watch for yourself. If you're like, okay, I'm always moody around ovulation. There's, causes for that that you can track down.

But also just knowing that makes you feel a little less crazy when you're like, what the heck? , I just got my period and now it's not my period, and now I'm feeling moody. Okay, well then you have an idea. This has been happening every month around ovulation. You can kind of mitigate that. You can try putting the bubble around yourself.

You can try detoxing, there's lots of things you can do. Actually, even when I say you can try detoxing, don't take a lot of, um, don't just do like a detox supplement. That's not what I mean. I just mean supporting detox pathways like we teach here on the podcast and in coaching all the time. I just feel like saying you should detox is a little [00:21:00] bit, too unclear and can be interpreted in too many ways.

Another thing is just like noticing when fatigue symptoms come up, noticing when. , Digestive symptoms come up. Understanding when that's happening in your cycle, especially if it's not just right with your period, is really, really helpful for us to be able to help you track down symptoms or for you to be able to track them down or not track down symptoms, sorry, be able to track down causes and make progress versus you, , just having no idea when that's happening.

So I really think that honestly, the big overview of this whole episode is just that actually tracking things in your cycle is really helpful. So just having an app, I always use KRA with my clients. If you're thinking about joining coaching, you might as well just start using KRA now so we can see a few cycles.

You can also come in with no tracking at all, and we will teach you and we will start with you right away and you can still get results. So I just wanna encourage you, do not. Give yourself the excuse of like, okay, well I need to track for three months before and just feel crappy for three more months.

Don't do that. Come ask us for help before [00:22:00] that, and if you're not ready yet, start tracking. In Kandara especially, you can make little notes, so you're like, okay, day 14 moody, day 17, tired. put those things in. Literally just write a note like that to yourself.

And you probably will start to notice some patterns that you didn't know were there. and even like, Claudia, on day two, Claudia Periods, like things like that, just start to track them because it will be so helpful in knowing. Where those symptoms actually are coming from, if we know where they are in the cycle.

all right ladies, that's all I've got for you for today. We do have a couple of coaching spots still open for October. If you want to join us in nourish your hormones coaching. We would love to have you love on you, help you fix your hormone symptoms. We are seeing results every day in coaching. Little by little, our ladies are having less mood swings.

Less headaches, less painful periods. GI symptoms are going [00:23:00] away. We just see consistent progress and consistent encouragement with our community, and we love the ladies in there. We're excited to love on you. When you're ready to come in, you can always book a call at the link in the show notes, and we will chat about it and we'll decide if it's right for you.

No pressure, no gimmicks. Just a real life conversation where I look at your hormones and I tell you how I can help and you decide if it's right for you. So. Book that call if that's you this week, and I will talk to you soon.