E245: How Your Caffeine Habits Can Make Or Break Your PMS & Periods

Are you drinking too much coffee for YOU? If so, it could be making your PMS and anxiety worse, even if you’re not drinking “that much.”

So many women blame their mood swings or breast tenderness on hormones alone, but caffeine plays a much bigger role than we realize. If your symptoms flare up right before your period, it may be that your caffeine tolerance is changing and is affecting your system differently at this time, so your body's minerals, liver, and blood sugar are trying to tell you something.

Before you swear off your morning coffee or decide you’re totally fine, I want you to understand the full story. Because caffeine isn’t the root problem, but it can absolutely make existing hormone issues feel louder, especially during your luteal phase.

Here’s what you’ll hear:

• How caffeine triggers your stress hormones and why that matters for PMS
• What slow vs. fast caffeine metabolizers experience during their cycle
• The best way to drink caffeine so your body actually tolerates it better

This is not about quitting coffee. It’s about using caffeine in a way your body can handle, so your luteal phase doesn’t feel like an emotional roller coaster every month. Pop those headphones in, take a walk, and let’s get to the bottom of your coffee habits and if they’re working for you.

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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] Today I am talking about something that almost all of us are doing that is making our PMS our periods and our energy worse. So let's dive in.

[00:00:00] Today we're gonna talk about caffeine, and this is not an anti caffeine episode actually. I just wanna help you understand, number one, how caffeine is or isn't affecting your PMS mood symptoms in your periods. I want to help you understand your caffeine metabolism and how. The way you're using caffeine could be affecting your stress hormones and your minerals so that you can make an informed decision and make changes accordingly if you need to.

So this is gonna be a fun one. I have a lot of notes and I am gonna go through and just walk through what you need to know. To use caffeine responsibly, essentially. Let's just start with how caffeine could and does affect hormones and PMS because caffeine isn't inherently bad on its own, but when you have hormone imbalances, when you have PMS mood swings, when you have painful periods, energy crashes, we need to know what's going on with your mineral status, with your liver [00:01:00] function, with your stress hormones, and with your caffeine metabolism to be able to say.

Whether or not it is helping or hurting you in this season. Now, I don't think there's always a one size fits all with caffeine. I do have kind of an across the board recommendation that I give, but when we have more information, we can always use this more effectively and figure out what caffeine is actually doing for you.

So let's just talk about how caffeine affects stress hormones and how that affects your sex hormones. Number one, caffeine does raise your stress hormones because it stimulates the adrenal medulla. From in your adrenal glands to release adrenaline, which is epinephrine and cortisol. This is a normal response from caffeine.

This is what it does. It's not like it can do this if you don't metabolize it well, or it can do this if you're stressed or can do this. If your minerals are depleted, it does do this now. The extent to which it does, this does [00:02:00] depend on all of those factors. So if magnesium, sodium, potassium are depleted, which is a mineral pattern that I talked about really recently, a couple weeks ago, that I see, such a huge percent of the time, I don't wanna say.

probably 80% of the time in my clients I see that these minerals are depleted. So super common in PMS and caffeine will exaggerate the stress response in that case when these minerals are depleted. What that looks like is actually in increased PMS anxiety or irritability, more breast tenderness prior to your period, because there's estrogen dominance, because you're actually using more progesterone to make more.

Cortisol and suppressing your progesterone production. You can have more blood sugar swings from the cortisol and adrenaline being dysregulated, and actually more cramps too because stress uses that magnesium and causes more tension in your uterus. So if you have low magnesium, sodium, and potassium, this can really affect the way that you are processing caffeine and can make it more [00:03:00] likely that your body is not going to tolerate it super well.

Now we will talk about phases of your cycle and how to use caffeine in the different phases too, because it does change the way that you can use or tolerate. Caffeine typically can change throughout your cycle, especially if you are one type of caffeine metabolizer that we'll talk about too. So caffeine intake does decrease magnesium overall, And especially like quite high caffeine intake can decrease magnesium and when you don't have a lot of magnesium. You'll have some of the symptoms we already talked about, but specifically more cramps, worse mood and irritability, headaches, heavier bleeding, and poor sleep, and sensitivity to a little bit of everything during PMS.

So this is really common. If this sounds like you, it doesn't mean you just need to take some magnesium pills. There's actually multiple layers of things that you need to do to be able to. Use and regulate magnesium better in [00:04:00] your body. Now, taking some magnesium supplementation could be part of it, but we need to look at your potassium.

We need to look at your sodium. We need to look at how you're getting magnesium. Topical magnesium is often better tolerated at first, there are some nuances with that, but caffeine can deplete magnesium, which can make PMS symptoms worse. And then caffeine also increases copper dumping when metabolism is stressed.

So this could actually sound like a really good thing. With that being said, we have to know. If you actually have excess bio unavailable copper. If you don't, then this is not necessarily a good thing. But when you have, when you are increasing this copper dumping, when your metabolism is stressed, when minerals are low, it can lower your ceruloplasmin, which means more unbound copper in the body.

Now when you have more unbound copper, it even exacerbates PMS symptoms more like anxiety, irritability. I don't have to say the symptoms every single time, but there are different symptoms related to these different minerals. They all come back to [00:05:00] the same thing that we're already dealing with, which is those PMS, mood changes, irritability, breast tenderness, all of those things.

And so when we look at the big picture of caffeine, magnesium, and copper, we can see that caffeine, especially in excess, I do think it's dose dependent, can really make a difference in your PMS symptoms for the worse. , If your liver function is sluggish, we talked about a second ago. Your liver is really important in the body, but one of the things, some of the things it does is it clears estrogen, so moves estrogen out, which is step two in my nourish your hormones.

Coaching is detoxing hormones. Well, a lot of this looks like detoxing estrogen. Well, we do support your liver. It is about your liver. It's also about your other detox organs. Caffeine can. Cause your liver to not clear estrogen quite as well. caffeine is metabolized by your liver, so if your liver is sluggish, it may potentially not be able to clear caffeine as well as not clear estrogen as [00:06:00] well.

So you're just overloading the liver and it can decrease estrogen clearance, increase estrogen dominance, and even decrease progesterone activation, which is really important in balancing that estrogen as well. Another way that caffeine affects the liver is it can impact your blood sugar. And when your blood sugar is dysregulated, your liver has to work harder to keep it regulated, and it also increases cortisol levels.

And so you have more cortisol increase, which can increase blood sugar for the short term. And then you have these crashes, which is another reason that cortisol will elevate. You have this cortisol cycle happening. And when caffeine is involved, it can increase that cortisol as well. And so you have these, you have more signals throughout your day that things are not safe.

And when the blood sugar is dysregulated and caffeine is involved and blood sugar dysregulation, you can have a lot more symptoms of not only anxiety and irritability during the day, but you can also have afternoon crashes [00:07:00] and disruption of sleep as well. So this is important to think about. and then caffeine also increases aldosterone, which changes the sodium and potassium balance.

 this is important because it can increase sodium loss and increase potassium wasting. Now this, pattern that I was talking about on the HDMA test that I see all the time with my clients who come into me with PMS and mood changes and painful periods and low energy

as we're fixing these things over the first couple of months that we're working together, one of the things we're really focused on is increasing your body's retention of sodium and potassium actually in the cell. This doesn't mean holding onto water or retaining, baby or water weight. It really.

Looks at making the cell more permeable to nutrients and things that it needs , as well as other hormones like insulin. And so sodium and potassium. When we are using a lot, burning, a lot, not keeping a lot in our body, we have increased [00:08:00] stress in the body, in the cell. When we are able to replenish those things, we are going to.

See improved energy and improved nutrients in the cell. But caffeine can work against that by wasting more sodium and potassium. Especially if you have symptoms like fatigue and dizziness during certain parts of your cycle, this could be a factor as well. so there are a lot of things I know this does.

I haven't said anything good about caffeine yet. We'll get there, I promise. what I just want you to know is that caffeine actually does affect your body on multiple different levels. And these, a lot of these things that I just mentioned directly impact your hormone function and directly impact your periods in your moods.

People will tolerate caffeine differently. There are two different types of caffeine metabolizers, and they do experience PMS differently. So a slow metabolizer, it has to do with an enzyme, which is called CYP one A two that will be on the test guys.

if you have a slow [00:09:00] metabolism of caffeine and maybe generally slow metabolism of other things as well, you will have more estrogen dominant symptoms. You'll have a higher risk of fibrocystic breast tenderness with caffeine. You'll have more anxiety, more PMS mood symptoms and worse sleep. So these are specific hormone symptoms.

There are other symptoms too, but I just wanna talk about the breast tenderness for a minute because I definitely have clients who will see improvements in almost everything else and still have that breast tenderness in their luteal. , Or their estrogen is really balanced, their progesterone is better, everything else is feeling better, but they're still having breast tenderness.

And caffeine can be a factor in that, in removing caffeine, especially in the luteal phase, can make a difference in that fibrocystic breast pain. And when I say fibrocystic breast pain, it's the breast pain that comes on at a specific part of your cycle, and there's kind of like some lumpiness associated with it.

Of course, if there's lumpiness. Always get that checked out and make sure that it's okay by your provider. [00:10:00] But there is like cyclical lumpiness that can come and go. That is not a sign of breast cancer, but it's not a sign that your hormones are metabolizing well or that your breasts are as healthy as possible either.

So it is definitely something to pay attention to, but this can be a sign of a slower caffeine metabolizer. Now, you also may just know that you're a slow caffeine metabolizer because you just. Caffeine hits you harder. This is me. , I have to be careful with caffeine. I really don't drink much of it, but when I do, I have to be careful and I have to know that, I'm doing it in a way that my body tolerates.

And we're gonna talk about that's our last thing here in just a minute. But, if you notice that you're sensitive to caffeine, it could be your minerals. Absolutely. And it could just be. That you metabolize caffeine a little bit slower,

Now the opposite can be true. If you are a fast metabolizer of caffeine, you would probably tolerate it better, have less hormonal disruption and less PMS sensitivity. And some of this can have to do with your minerals too. So if you used to be a fast caffeine metabolizer and [00:11:00] you used to tolerate it better and then you don't tolerate it as well, it could be a sign that your adrenals and that your minerals need some support.

So just to kind of reflect and recap. All of this caffeine can make your hormones and PMS worse by raising your stress hormones, depleting magnesium, lowering progesterone via the cortisol steel of progesterone, and then increasing unbound copper to make anxiety and mood swings better.

Messing with estrogen clearance, destabilizing blood sugar, and disrupting mineral balance. So there's a lot of ways that caffeine can just essentially make the symptoms worse that you might already be having with PMS. If you had none of these symptoms in the first place, caffeine would not make them happen.

But if you have these symptoms, caffeine is probably making them worse. To be able to personalize this and figure out what you need to do about it, the first question that I have is, how much caffeine are you consuming on a daily basis? If you are consuming [00:12:00] more than one caffeinated drink in a day, I typically think that this is causing issues, especially if you are more of a slow metabolizer of caffeine.

When we're talking about phases of the cycle, the luteal phase, so from the time you ovulate until your next period is typically the time, you would be more sensitive to caffeine as well, Less than a hundred milligrams a day of caffeine would be most ideal. In my opinion. This is half a cup of coffee to three quarters of a cup of coffee.

it could be a small matcha, it could be about a cup of black tea above a hundred milligrams of caffeine. Again, everyone's body is going to be different, but this is a general number. Cortisol spikes become more pronounced. Magnesium, potassium loss increases and blood sugar swings worsen and

estrogen clearance slows as well. all of these things will aggravate PMS and make your PMS symptoms worse. So a caffeine fast in luteal phase could be something to really consider. Now if you are really struggling with [00:13:00] caffeine, then even less like 50 milligrams in the luteal phase could be. More ideal for you.

So just keeping that in mind and realizing that like less may be more in this phase if you're having these symptoms, especially the breast tenderness, PMS, mood, anxiety, especially. These are all things to really pay attention to. Now in general, outside of the luteal phase, outside of even being super sensitive to caffeine,.

My recommendation for my clients is one cup of coffee maxed in a day after breakfast. So a solid real food breakfast, and then coffee essentially immediately after where you have a full tank of fuel before you hit that gas pedal. And your body is not going to be shooting cortisol up quite as high. It's not gonna be messing with your blood sugar as much.

So it'll help stabilize blood sugar, reduce adrenaline output, and preserve magnesium, as well as prevent those mid-morning crashes. I highly recommend that if you are doing this differently, [00:14:00] that you change it. It will make a huge difference in anxiety. If you feel like you are ready to just go off the deep end and stop caffeine altogether, there are definitely arguments in this podcast episode that would help us say, you know, that's maybe not such a bad idea, especially if you're minerals are depleted, especially if you're having symptoms.

you just stop caffeine for a while, but if you're really, really. In love with your little coffee in the morning or your little Starbucks or your whatever, whatever it is, you like making your latte at home. I personally do really like that. then make it work for you. Do lessen your luteal phase.

Make sure you have breakfast first. Don't do it in the afternoon. All of those things are gonna make a difference. And then replenishing your minerals, supporting your liver, supporting your stress hormones, all of these things will make your caffeine intake so much. Better and your body will be able to handle it better.

So when we're working on all of the things that affect PMS, caffeine is just a little piece of the puzzle, if you are [00:15:00] struggling and you take caffeine out, don't expect that that is going to fix all the problems, but it could definitely take the edge off the problems. The problems are the problem, right?

It's not the caffeine necessarily, but we need to know how to replenish your minerals, support your liver, balance your blood sugar, and support your adrenal glands so that your hormones can balance long term and you should be able to tolerate it better at that point anyway. If that's something that you're like, okay, this makes sense.

I know I need to replenish. I know that I need to balance. Then this is a perfect time to come into nourish your hormones and let's fix the things. Let's look at your minerals and your gut and your hormones. Let's give you the big picture and the very specific action steps that you need, and let's help you do that so that you can have the shortcut so you don't have to keep.

 Throwing spaghetti at the wall, hoping that it sticks, and then cleaning up the freaking spaghetti off the floor because it doesn't stick and it's a mess. And it's another supplement in your cabinet. It's another doctor visit where they tell you things are fine. It's another month where [00:16:00] you're just like a disaster at the end of the month and swearing that you'll never do it again.

 I have been there with all of those things, and there is a better way. There is a shortcut. The shortcut is coming to someone who knows how to fix these problems and starting to feel better. This month, next month, not in six months, not in a year, not giving up and thinking you'll just be a disaster for the rest of your life.

We can fix these things and I would love to do that with you. There's always a link in the show notes to book a call. Do that. Let's talk about it and let's see if we can fix this for you. So the caffeine isn't even something you're wondering about. let's give you freedom in your life where you can eat good food consistently.

You're not restricted, you're not always looking for the next answer to try to fix your hormones, but your body just feels stable, it feels calm, it feels nourished, and you can just do the things you need to do without worrying if caffeine's gonna throw you over the edge or not without feeling like you're.

You have these crazy mood swings without your breast being super tender, without your periods just knocking you out. You can live in such a [00:17:00] different way and all you have to do is say yes to it and then I'll tell you what else to do after that. But you just have to make that step forward and say, you know what?

I'm willing to work on this. I'm willing to work on this now and not put it off any longer. And I want someone to hold my hand and have that 30,000 foot view. Who is not stuck in the same spiral that I'm stuck in. We would love to have you inertia, hormones. We would love to love on you and serve you and help you feel better.

This is the time. Come join us and I will see you ladies next week.