E267: Which of These 3 PMS Hormone Patterns Matches Your Symptoms?

You know PMS symptoms show up for you most months, but do you know what your symptoms are telling you about your hormones? 

Today, I'm talking about 3 unique patterns that show up in the luteal phase and breaking down how the symptoms you're seeing each month relate to specific organ systems. 

In this episode: 

1. Is your PMS caused by burnout, blood sugar dysregulation, or gut problems? 

2. The common mistakes I see sold as "quick fixes" for each pattern. 

3. How to take the info your body is giving you with each pattern and simplify the next first step. 

Your hormones are signals, not the enemy! When you take the time to learn what they're telling you, it's easier than ever to improve hormone symptoms and start having those pain-free, PMS-free cycles that have always felt out of reach. 

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Don’t forget to subscribe, share this episode, and leave a review. Your support helps us reach more women looking for answers.

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

So you know that PMS is caused by hormones, but did that there are different hormones that can cause different PMS patterns?

00:00:08

And if you're working on your PMS and it's not working, you might be focusing on the wrong pattern.

00:00:15

Welcome to the Happily Hormonal Podcast.

00:00:17

Now, if you're a little iffy on whether or not the word hormonal is a good one, then you are in the right place.

00:00:24

This podcast is for women who are ready to simplify their hormone health, understand their bodies better than they ever have before, and ultimately step into a life without period, mood, or energy symptoms as a busy mom.

00:00:36

I'm Lisha Drewes, registered nurse and holistic hormone coach, as well as mama of three thriving and energetic kiddos.

00:00:43

If I can have happy hormones with this whole life, so can you.

00:00:48

Let's do this.

00:00:51

So I thought it would be fun to break down PMS into three separate patterns today, because I do talk about PMS a lot, but I've been talking about it more as kind of this umbrella term, this umbrella term that is premenstrual syndrome, which is just any symptoms you have before your period starts, whether that's physical symptoms, emotional symptoms, or a combination of both.

00:01:14

But we can break it down even further and help categorize it based on different hormones and different signaling in the body that can be causing these different types of symptoms for PMS.

00:01:26

And so I thought that it would be helpful to do that so that you have a little bit more tangible info to go on versus just this kind of bigger umbrella term.

00:01:35

So before I dive in, if you know a friend who has PMS,

00:01:40

It's okay.

00:01:41

They know it too.

00:01:42

It's not going to hurt their feelings for you to send it to them.

00:01:45

Take a second, send this episode to them or one of your recent episodes that you enjoyed.

00:01:49

Share with a friend.

00:01:50

And if you haven't already, go down in iTunes and just tap the star rating for me.

00:01:54

It makes such a big difference for me and truly takes, I don't know, 3 seconds if you're listening in Apple.

00:02:00

If you're listening in Spotify, same thing.

00:02:02

Leave me a star rating, a comment on the podcast or a review.

00:02:06

Any of those things helps so much.

00:02:09

for me being able to keep giving you this podcast for free every single week.

00:02:14

Okay, so the types of PMS.

00:02:16

Number one that I'm gonna talk about is burnout or stress-induced PMS.

00:02:22

So this one, I actually see this one come and go a little bit more often.

00:02:26

So this can be something that is chronic where it's every single month I feel this way, or it can be like one month is pretty good and then two months are pretty bad.

00:02:36

and it is directly related to your current stress patterns or like your stress patterns even from the month before.

00:02:44

So how do you know if burnout or stress PMS is you?

00:02:48

This is going to be primarily emotional.

00:02:52

With that being said,

00:02:54

Some of these types are going to crisscross each other a little bit.

00:02:57

So just keep that in mind.

00:02:58

Maybe you have one or two or even all three types of PMS.

00:03:01

But the burnout stress PMS is going to be more emotional.

00:03:05

So it's going to be more irritability.

00:03:07

It could be anger, overwhelm, anxiety prior to your period.

00:03:12

This can last for a couple of days.

00:03:13

It can last for a week.

00:03:14

It lasts for a couple of weeks.

00:03:16

If you're in that boat where it lasts for a week or two, you absolutely

00:03:21

would benefit from help on this because it's affecting such a big part of your life and it is faster to have someone help you than to figure it out yourself.

00:03:29

It can also be poor sleep and just feeling like very overstimulated during that PMS window.

00:03:36

So after you ovulate, at some point between ovulation and your next period, that's when I see this burnout stress PMS most often.

00:03:46

The root cause of burnout stress PMS is actually

00:03:51

lower progesterone in relation to estrogen, whether it's low numbers of progesterone, like actually technically low on a lab test or not, low in relation to estrogen in the second-half of your cycle.

00:04:05

But the cause of it is that your body is stressed enough, whether it's physical or emotional stress, that it is causing your cortisol to raise above an average level and

00:04:18

Sometimes your body actually needs to steal from your progesterone to make more cortisol to keep you going in that like fight or flight stressed state.

00:04:28

And so it's actually a root cause of stress, cortisol levels, stealing from your progesterone, causing that low progesterone in that second-half of your cycle to cause these mood symptoms.

00:04:39

Now, it also is very often related to mineral depletion, mineral imbalances, and nervous system dysregulation.

00:04:47

which are the catalysts of keeping you in that fight or flight state and keeping your body saying, I need to keep making more cortisol.

00:04:55

And reproduction is really not the most important thing right now, so I'm going to steal progesterone to do it.

00:05:02

This type of PMS, like I've mentioned, is something that can come and go a little bit more often.

00:05:08

But if you have this type of PMS, the biggest thing that you need to know

00:05:13

is that the more safety you can create in your emotional and physical self, the closer to regulated you will be in that luteal phase.

00:05:24

And I really like to just think of our luteal phase as a time where we can't really BS our way through it anymore, right?

00:05:30

So you are stressed.

00:05:31

If this is, you are probably stressed your whole cycle, but this is a time where you can't hide it anymore, where it's just like the most honest version of you.

00:05:42

But

00:05:42

not in a great way, right?

00:05:44

And so if this is you, knowing that stress is a root cause is really important.

00:05:50

And then taking the time to just sit with that and ask, like, what do I need to change?

00:05:56

What can I change?

00:05:58

even if it's something little.

00:05:59

And we've talked about this many times before, if you've been here for a while, that sometimes you can change the stressors and sometimes you can just change the way you're reacting to them or even change just like a little bit of your day to give you a little bit of buffer or a little bit of cushion or a little bit of peace.

00:06:15

And that can start to move the needle forward, whether it's all the way forward or not.

00:06:19

So that is the type one burnout or stress PMS.

00:06:23

Type 2 is

00:06:26

blood sugar dysregulation PMS.

00:06:28

Now this one is going to overlap with stress PMS as well because blood sugar dysregulation causes stress.

00:06:34

But the more primary route of this one is related to undernourishing, not having the right macronutrients at the right times in your day.

00:06:47

We'll get into why here in a minute.

00:06:48

But what that looks like physically is a lot of cravings in luteal phase or even throughout your whole cycle.

00:06:56

a lot of crashes.

00:06:57

So like energy crashes, if you have that crash in mid-morning, mid-afternoon, if you just can't keep your eyes open at night, if you feel like this is, there's like a pattern of crashes throughout your day or your week, it can be mood swings as well, especially like hangry, irritability, just feeling like a sudden sense of overwhelm where you're like making dinner and everyone's around you doing their normal thing, even if it's like normally chaotic.

00:07:22

And sometimes you can handle it and sometimes you're just like,

00:07:25

I actually can't get through this.

00:07:27

Like, I'm going to yell, I'm going to explode, I'm going to go hide.

00:07:32

Like, I cannot handle what I'm feeling right now.

00:07:36

That type of dysregulation is typically triggered by blood sugar dysregulation.

00:07:42

And then because that blood sugar dysregulation triggers cortisol, then it can help, it can trigger, it triggers your stress response and then triggers your nervous system as well.

00:07:52

And if you're already dysregulated in the nervous system because you have some of this PMS burnout, and then you've got blood sugar dysregulation on top of this, is where it gets really severe and really hard to handle.

00:08:04

It can also show up, the blood sugar dysregulation PMS can also show up as headaches and brain fog, especially headaches that kind of like last, not necessarily just like a migraine here or there, but something that's like kind of a consistent, you have a headache several times a week or every day or certain times of day or something like that.

00:08:22

that can be blood sugar related.

00:08:24

So the root of that is blood sugar dysregulation, which comes from typically undernourishing or not having the right macronutrients in the right balance for you throughout the day.

00:08:38

Not having carbs and proteins balanced specifically is typically an issue and not having them at the right times of day.

00:08:45

Now there are some

00:08:47

kind of across the board rules for that, but also it does need to be personalized so much of the time.

00:08:52

So if you're noticing that maybe your cycle does affect your PMS symptoms and you're noticing this happens more during the second-half of my cycle, then

00:09:06

But it definitely could be that it only shows up in that part of your cycle.

00:09:10

But if there's blood sugar dysregulation, it often might show up in the first half of your cycle too.

00:09:14

It would just be worse in the second-half of your cycle because during your luteal phase, you actually do need more nutrients and more energy.

00:09:20

And your insulin sensitivity changes as your progesterone changes in that second-half of your cycle.

00:09:26

So when you are eating healthy, but you're not eating enough, or you're not eating balanced, or you're relying on a lot of caffeine to get you through the day,

00:09:36

or you're just really eating the wrong breakfast consistently and not giving yourself something to start with in the morning, this is where the blood sugar dysregulation, PMS, shows up.

00:09:46

So the biggest tip that I have for you with this one is that you eat the right breakfast.

00:09:52

And I have quite a few episodes on this that you can just search happily hormonal breakfast.

00:09:58

and listen to those.

00:09:59

I also have a $7 breakfast guide that truly walks you exactly through this is how you fix your breakfast for blood sugar dysregulation.

00:10:07

and it will create some safety in your body, help you feel more balanced, and help balance your hormones.

00:10:13

So that one is absolutely worth the investment of $7 and makes a really big difference.

00:10:18

And I put that together for you so you have it all in one place.

00:10:20

You don't have to go piece it together in podcast episodes.

00:10:23

And it even has some specific eat these breakfasts.

00:10:26

So it has a couple little recipes and things like that for you.

00:10:29

So that is the second type of PMS.

00:10:31

And then type 3 is detox or

00:10:36

gut issues causing PMS.

00:10:38

And that one is typically more estrogen driven because estrogen is not detoxing well.

00:10:43

I mentioned at the beginning of this episode that we always want to be making sure we're making hormones well, which is typically driven most by stressors in the body.

00:10:54

So are we making enough progesterone because our body thinks things are safe?

00:10:57

Are we making the right amount of estrogen

00:11:00

based on safety signals in the body.

00:11:02

But sometimes you can be doing those things, but not detoxing well, and your hormones are still going to be a mess.

00:11:08

So this type 3 is really more related to that back end, the detox piece, causing PMS symptoms.

00:11:16

So this one looks like more physical symptoms that are really familiar for many women, like bloating prior to your period,

00:11:26

like stomach upset prior to your period, whether that's like nausea, stomach upset, or you can't tolerate foods as well, or you have constipation or diarrhea, like gut stuff is happening around your period or before your period.

00:11:38

Believe it or not, that actually is not normal, even though many people will tell you that it is.

00:11:45

Breast tenderness prior to your period is typically related to detox issues or low progesterone in relation to estrogen.

00:11:53

Acne prior to your period,

00:11:55

and heavy or painful periods.

00:11:57

These are all related to this detox piece specifically.

00:12:02

Now, what does that mean?

00:12:03

If you're like, okay, I'm not detoxing hormones well, does that mean I need to do like a liver cleanse or does that mean I need to do a parasite cleanse or something like that?

00:12:11

The answer to that is, well, I'm only going to know that by actually talking to you and helping you figure that out.

00:12:19

or if you talk to another professional, another provider that you trust, that is something that can be answered.

00:12:24

But typically my answer is not necessarily.

00:12:27

It's not necessarily that you need a big detox.

00:12:29

It's that we need to figure out what's happening under the surface that's causing your detox organs to be more sluggish.

00:12:37

So it's not just the liver, it's not just the gut, it's the skin, it's the lymphatic system, it's the kidneys.

00:12:43

There's so much that goes into detoxification.

00:12:46

But

00:12:47

When the root cause of PMS symptoms is these gut and detox pathways as an issue, you typically will have more of those estrogen dominant symptoms.

00:12:58

And it just comes from really not detoxing your hormones.

00:13:01

The biggest things that I see with this is I actually see just underdiagnosed gut issues where someone will, every time I talk to someone who is potentially wanting to be a client, we talk about symptoms.

00:13:15

and what's been going on.

00:13:16

And we talk a lot about hormones.

00:13:18

We talk about periods and moods and how you've been feeling.

00:13:20

And something that I always ask is, how's your digestion?

00:13:23

And most of the time, I've been talking to someone for 15, 20 minutes before I ask this question, because it's just like where we get to in the conversation.

00:13:32

And I want to say 7 out of 10 times, they say, oh, yeah, I forgot to say that.

00:13:39

Like, my gut has always been a mess.

00:13:41

Ever since I was little, I had constipation.

00:13:43

Or since the last couple years, I have noticed that my gut has slowed down or I have the gas and bloating or I only go to the bathroom a couple times a week, but that's always just been normal for me, so I forgot about it.

00:13:54

This is huge as a red flag for me.

00:13:56

When we are working on your hormones, you have to be moving hormones out.

00:14:00

There are different reasons for the gut to be backed up.

00:14:04

It can be parasites.

00:14:06

It can be bacterial imbalance.

00:14:07

It can be very poor digestive habits, like running around while you're eating and never thinking about your food and never doing it.

00:14:15

can be low stomach acid.

00:14:17

It can be low digestive enzymes.

00:14:19

There's lots of different factors, and that's why I like to do testing with the GI map so that I can see those factors and see where the inflammation is and where the imbalances are so that we're not guessing.

00:14:28

And whatever those causes are,

00:14:33

If you are not moving your bowels every single day, at least once, if not twice, you cannot detox estrogen.

00:14:42

There's just no way to do it because estrogen is moved out of your ovaries, out of your, into your bloodstream.

00:14:50

It is filtered through the liver.

00:14:53

And when it is filtered through the liver, there are multiple super complicated processes, honestly, that help

00:14:59

filter your hormones through the liver.

00:15:01

It's tagged and sealed and ready to go.

00:15:05

It's water soluble, ready to move out of your body, moves into your gut.

00:15:08

And if your gut is sluggish or not moving well, it gets stuck there.

00:15:13

And then because your gut is permeable, which is it's supposed to be to some extent, there's a too permeable, but whether or not that's you are going to reabsorb that estrogen, if it sits in your gut too long,

00:15:27

and pull it back into circulation, and that can cause estrogen dominant symptoms in and of itself, even if nothing else is going on in the body.

00:15:33

But if the gut is inflamed, that is going to also be a trigger for stress, which could trigger that burnout type of PMS.

00:15:40

It's going to be a trigger for blood sugar dysregulation as well, because the inflammation in your gut and things backing up in your gut slows your liver down, slows your digestive enzymes down.

00:15:52

Blood sugar will be dysregulated even just through that process, because the liver is huge.

00:15:57

in blood sugar regulation.

00:15:58

And so this type of PMS can trigger the other types of PMS as well.

00:16:03

And the gut cannot be overlooked when we're looking at hormones.

00:16:07

That is why this type of PMS I see really commonly.

00:16:11

I see all three.

00:16:12

And I really see that so much of the time, all three types are working together, or at least two out of the three types are working together to cause your symptoms to be more severe.

00:16:23

So that's why

00:16:25

It's helpful instead of making the common mistakes that I see so often, which are like hormone balance supplements like Chaste Tree or DIM.

00:16:33

And honestly, I pretty much don't use those at all.

00:16:36

I don't find them helpful.

00:16:37

They're not looking at the root cause, not understanding that your gut is a mess because it's always been a mess, or just being like, oh, I'm a little constipated.

00:16:46

It's probably not that big of a deal.

00:16:47

I'll just try a probiotic.

00:16:49

I love probiotics in the right amounts for the right person, but I don't see probiotics really doing a lot of good if you're just slapping them on as a band-aid, essentially, or even just too many protocols.

00:17:01

You've already tried hormone balance protocol.

00:17:03

You've already tried a gut protocol.

00:17:04

You've tried a cleanse.

00:17:05

You've worked with practitioners who are supposed to be root cause, but they just do a test or just look at symptoms and then give you like 47 supplements and tell you to go on your way.

00:17:15

But when we are not looking at things as a whole and we're not able to personalize, it gets really complicated.

00:17:24

It gets really expensive, to be honest, because you're using things that aren't even working for your body and the results are not there.

00:17:31

And so that's why it's so important with any of these types of PMS to be able to personalize to you which type of PMS is happening, what hormones are involved, whether we test or we don't test, and

00:17:46

understanding that there are underlying reasons in the body that these things are happening, that we can work on and be able to help your body move forward.

00:17:56

And so my steps when you come into coaching with me is I always personalize first with a hormone audit.

00:18:03

And we make sure that the action steps that you're doing are the most important for you to start with.

00:18:10

And then we simplify.

00:18:11

So we get that personalized picture.

00:18:13

This is your pattern of PMS, this is likely why it's happening.

00:18:17

And then we simplify as much as possible the steps that need to be taken to move you forward and to move the needle without giving you 40 more things to do or 100 more things to do.

00:18:30

It needs to be simple, it needs to be focused so that we're not adding to the stress and burnout, so we're not adding to the overwhelm, so we're not just overwhelming the gut,

00:18:38

with a bunch of new supplements when it's already sluggish and backed up.

00:18:41

We're not just throwing some pills at blood sugar dysregulation when what needs to happen is we need to audit your nutrition together and troubleshoot it together several times to get you to a place where your breakfast is right, your lunch is right, your dinner is right, and it works for your life because some of you

00:19:00

can do dairy and some of you can't.

00:19:02

Some of you work a full-time job and some of you have seven kids, right?

00:19:06

It's not gonna be the same for every single one of you.

00:19:08

And that's why personalize and simplify is the strategy that I use that makes the biggest difference and gets the best results.

00:19:17

And so I just want you to know that if you have PMS, if you identify with one or three of these types and you are ready for help, that I'm here for you when you're ready.

00:19:28

If you send me the word audit to my inbox, hello at AliciaDrews.com, or you can send it to me on Instagram too if you want to.

00:19:37

I have been doing some mini audits the last couple weeks.

00:19:39

I've been having a really fun time doing those.

00:19:41

So all you need to do is e-mail me that word.

00:19:43

I will do a free mini audit for you and I will just tell you, this is what I see with your hormones.

00:19:48

I see that maybe as more of a

00:19:50

making the hormones issue maybe more of a detox issue.

00:19:52

I'll go into that for you and let you know this is what I see as a picture for you and give you some options of what we can do about it.

00:19:59

So I hope that this episode gave you a little bit of clarity on PMS.

00:20:05

And if it did, share it with a friend and I will see you next week.