HAPPILY HORMONAL | hormone balance for moms, PMS, painful periods, natural birth control, low energy, pro-metabolic
Worried your painful periods, low energy, and PMS mood swings will be with you until menopause? Do you want to have more energy, good periods, and a stable mood without taking birth control, a million supplements, or going on an unrealistic restrictive diet? Do you want to know where to start to balance your hormones naturally? You're in the right place.
Happily Hormonal will help you unlock the secrets to:
Balancing hormones in motherhood with simple nourishment strategies
Using food to have better periods and less PMS, even with a busy schedule
Balancing blood sugar for more energy and less anxiety
Getting rid of painful periods for good
Losing the drama of PMS week
Feeling more present and joyful
Increasing your capacity in motherhood and life
Understanding your body and cycles on a deeper level
Having regular, pain-free periods and ovulation
Making more progesterone
Taking back control of your health and your hormones so you can show up as the woman you really want to be
Host Leisha Drews, RN, BSN, FDN-P and Holistic Hormone Coach, brings you realistic, actionable conversations so you can start to peel back the layers of hormone balance in a way that feels simple and doable for the first time ever, so you can have balanced hormones even as a busy mom.
CONTACT LEISHA:
Email: hello@leishadrews.com
Podcast guest inquiries: happilyhormonalpodcast@gmail.com
Website: www.leishadrews.com
IG: @leishadrews
HAPPILY HORMONAL | hormone balance for moms, PMS, painful periods, natural birth control, low energy, pro-metabolic
E265: Decoding Your PMS - What’s Normal And What’s A Red Flag
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If taking a supplement was the magic fix for PMS, wouldn’t we all be feeling amazing by now, right?
In this episode, I’m breaking down PMS in a straightforward way. Not every change before your period is a problem. Some shifts in mood, energy, or appetite are completely normal. But there’s also a point where PMS becomes your body’s way of saying something deeper is off.
The real issue often isn't just your hormones. It’s all about looking at the bigger picture of what your brain and body are experiencing every day. When your system is constantly stressed, depleted, or unsafe, maintaining hormonal balance becomes much harder.
You’ll learn:
- What mild PMS looks like when hormones are functioning well
- Symptoms that indicate deeper stress or imbalance
- How stabilizing minerals and blood sugar can be more effective than random supplements
One of my favorite moments recently was a client telling me that her kids said, “Mom, you’re being silly again, like you used to.”
That’s the real goal. Not just fewer symptoms, but feeling like yourself again - laughing more, having the energy and patience for your family, and moving through your cycle without just trying to survive half the month.
The good news is that these changes often start with much simpler steps than most women expect. Tune in to learn how to get there.
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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
And when I say red flag, I mean red flag for your health overall, for your
sanity right now and just for inflammation in the body and not feeling safe in your own body.
And these are all things that are really, really common when it comes to PMS.
And we're going to talk about that too.
So I'm going to start by just defining PMS.
So one of them is we have a, essentially like a happily hormonal podcast cheat sheet.
We have specific episodes for painful periods.
We have specific episodes for energy, blood sugar balance.
So both of those resources are free.
All you need to do is sign up.
is symptoms that show up before your period that are related to your hormones.
That is the most simplified version of a definition.
Now, there is a difference between premenstrual syndrome and PMDD.
or premenstrual dysphoric disorder, which is much more deep, much more serious.
And I love working with women on those symptoms because they are life-changing.
When you have them, it changes your life for the worse.
When you don't have them, it changes your life for the better.
Now, PMDD, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, is
I'm not here to tell you don't take medication for it.
I am here to tell you there is a reason underlying
that will not be fixed by medication.
Even if you decide you need to take it for a while, that's totally fine.
But there are reasons underlying that are causing those symptoms.
That stands true for PMS or PMDD, but PMDD is more mood related.
It can also be physical, but more mood related where it's like severe anxiety, severe depression,
And those symptoms are about a week before your cycle.
You have to have five criteria to be diagnosed.
And I just see it as a spectrum, to be honest, kind of like a sliding scale of BMS to PMDD.
We just need to know that we need to work on it, essentially.
That is my definition of PMS, PMDD.
Why does it happen is an important question.
So why do we have these symptoms the week before a period?
So it is typically caused by a hormonal imbalance.
So you're here because you're like, I know I have a hormone imbalance and I need to fix it, okay?
They're just not their own problem.
It is not fixing the root cause problem.
to prioritize proper hormone regulation.
Those 2 things have to happen for your hormone symptoms to improve.
You mamas who have had several babies and feel like a hot mess, your minerals are probably
I see this all the time because I do HDMA testing with my clients.
Wondering where that mom went, who was fun, versus the mom who's just overwhelmed all the time.
Wondering where the wife went, who was fun, versus the one who's just like, stay away from me.
That is not your fault in a lot of ways.
There's a lot of responsibility you can take.
There's a lot you can do to help yourself.
And there are underlying causes.
That's one huge reason that I see.
And that is something that we can test, we can support, we can replenish and we
see moms come out of the fog all the time when minerals start to balance.
the right macronutrients together at meals.
You're skipping meals, you're not paying attention to what you're eating.
Even if you are eating healthy food, this is still probably happening for you.
And how you would know is your energy is not great.
You have crashes during the day, your sleep might not be great.
These are big signs of blood sugar imbalance, but the ones that I mentioned just a minute ago are...
That is an emergency response in the body.
That is a huge ding, ding, ding.
things are going wrong here for your body, it can take care of it.
But the more times that happens, the less time your body stays in a safe mode.
If things are not safe, then 10X everything that I just said.
When we look at hormone balance in this way, this is like core principles.
And this is why we personalize in coaching.
As far as like so many women come to me and they say nothing about their gut.
And when I ask, they're like, oh, I've been constipated for my entire life.
I poop like two times a week, three times a week.
Or I have to try really hard to make it happen.
I have to make sure I take fiber powder or there's all the things that we try, right?
then gut is something that we're going to need to work on.
If that's not you, it may not be.
But again, this is why we personalize.
Your kidneys can work better to detox because they have the nutrients that you need.
We start to move in specific ways so your lymphatic system can be working better.
So you're sweating some of the time.
instead of throwing a bunch of random stuff at your body and seeing what sticks, essentially.
You can Instagram message me too if you want to with the word audit.
This is where you need to start to do something about it.
I cannot do a million of them, but first come, first served, I will do as many as I can.
So e-mail me with the word audit.
I'll see it a little bit later than I'll see it in e-mail.
I will do a mini audit for you and help you kind of personalize this.
But for these protocols, it doesn't matter.
We're just looking at like, let's just bring the estrogen down.
Well, that's not ideal because it's not going to actually change anything under the surface.
And what else is the supplement doing in your body?
So for example, DIM is a really, really common one for estrogen balance.
It's in so many of these hormone supplements that are supposed to balance your hormones.
only decreases estrogen by putting it down a little bit of a different pathway.
And it's only appropriate in some cases, and it's only appropriate for short amounts of time.
Another one that I see all the time that I really never use is Chaste Tree or Vitex.
That one is supposed to create more progesterone.
Could it possibly increase progesterone for you?
I know there are studies on this.
With that being said, at what cost?
So chaste tree is another one that I see.
changes your calcium levels, not in a good way.
And it can affect your zinc as well.
B complexes, they can be good, but so much of the time they are so, potent.
Let's just see how fast we can burn out.
Now, does that mean it's never a good thing?
No, sometimes it is a good thing, but we have to know
what's going on in your body, we have to calm things down before it would even be helpful.
Zinc can change your copper levels.
And when copper and iron are out of balance, it can make hormone issues way worse.
And while I do use some liver support herbs, you just, again, you can't take this
We need to know what's going on in your body and how we can support that versus the
No one ever looked at your bedtime routine.
No one ever looked at how stressed out you are.
And they just said these supplements are going to fix your problems.
And so you take them and you rely on them and you think they're going to help.
And then you give up for a while until something gets worse.
And then you find another solution, right?
So if that's you, this is a time to take action on what's actually going to help you.
So I am going to go over that.
So normal PMS in a cycle, in my opinion, is in the luteal phase.
So once you've ovulated, it is normal.
And I mean, like, it is fine if your hormones are balanced, you still might feel this way.
It is normal to be a little bit more sensitive to stress.
So if you're in your luteal phase,
You feel a little bit more tired in that part of your cycle.
It is also normal to just need a little bit more personal space.
The other thing that is normal is to need more calories, specifically more carbs during this phase.
So sometimes that shows up as cravings because we think that it's bad to eat more.
But eating a little bit more carbs during this phase is actually normal and is good.
face because your hormones are changing.
And so you're going to feel different.
Anything more than that is a red flag to me.
And I told you, I see this as kind of a spectrum.
You can live through it, right?
This is like the low end of the spectrum.
Now, we can be far other end of the spectrum where things are really hard.
You are feeling absolutely not like yourself for a week or two weeks out of your cycle.
You're depressed, you're sad, you're anxious, you can't cope with life.
This is more on the severe side.
I also consider that a bigger red flag, right?
And the way that we do that is, number one, we personalize.
So we get the big picture of what your body is doing and why it doesn't feel safe.
So we audit that with nutrition, supplements, lifestyle,
and any other factors that we need to.
We find what starts to work and we stick with it long enough for it to really work for you.
And then we snowball from there with what is realistic for you.
You have more stable moods, you have better energy.
And my very, very favorite result is that you start to feel like yourself again.
And she was like, This is what it's all about.
And we both were just celebrating for her because this is what it's all about.
Or you've noticed that yourself, like you're laughing more.
You're not so stressed out about dinner.
You're noticing that you got through your luteal phase.
and you had two hours that you felt off instead of an entire week.
You start to feel like the mom you wanna be.
You start to feel like the wife you wanna be.
And it's just incredible how our bodies can heal when they have what they need.
All right, ladies, I'll see you next week.