E274: You’re Doing Everything Right - So Why Do You Feel Like A Different Person Half The Month?

Do you ever feel like you have two completely different versions of yourself living in the same body?

Like one half of the month, you’re calm, patient, productive, and enjoying your life.
And then something shifts. Suddenly, you’re overwhelmed, snapping over small things, exhausted by the afternoon, and wondering where you went.

And what makes it even more confusing is - you’re not careless about your health. You eat well, take care of yourself, you’re paying attention… And it still keeps happening.

I wanted to sit down and really talk this through, because this pattern isn’t random, and it’s not you “failing” every month.

In this episode, I get into:

• What’s going on behind the scenes in your brain and body when that shift hits (and why it can feel so intense, so fast)
• How constantly adding more (supplements, routines, pressure...) can quietly pile onto the problem
• The piece most high-functioning women miss: how constant “go mode” and stress start working against your hormones

This is one of those conversations where you might feel a little called out, but also a little relieved. You’ll realize that you’re not doing it wrong. It’s just that your body’s been working hard to keep up with everything you’re asking of it.

Press play; your “week before your period” self might have notes.

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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

E274_ You're doing everything right — so why do you still feel terrible for half the month

[00:00:00] Two weeks out of the month, you feel like yourself. You're energetic, patient, connected to your husband, present with your kids, productive, and generally a dream come true to the world, right? And then something shifts. The anxiety creeps in, you start to feel exhausted in the afternoon, you're snapping over little things and then feeling so guilty about it, and you look in the mirror the week before your period, and you genuinely don't like who you're seeing.

You don't feel like yourself. And the worst part is, you're doing everything right. You eat well, you exercise, you're taking your supplements, you're not ignoring your health or your hormones. So why does this keep happening every single month? I'm unpacking that for you right here, right now.

All right, girlies, we are talking about severe PMS, PMDD, mood, and body symptoms and why they are higher in the girls who do it all. It's not because you're doing things wrong. It's because you're [00:01:00] doing so many things right that your body can't keep up, essentially. So that's what we're gonna dive into today in a very more scientific way than that.

So when we talk about this phase of the cycle, the luteal phase, the last half of your cycle, maybe it's the last week of your cycle and the week of your period that you're feeling these mood symptoms or even physical symptoms. Maybe it's just, like, once ovulation happens, you start to have some issues.

Either way, when we're talking about the luteal phase, it truly is something that can be night and day different for women who are struggling with hormone imbalance and these symptoms and women who are not. And it actually-- I truly believe it actually steals so much joy from our lives when we are fighting constantly against our own mood, and we feel like there's got to be something that we are doing that makes it like this, where it's like we do not feel like ourselves.

We feel snappy, and it [00:02:00] feels so strong and so uncontrollable that you're like, " Babe, I'm sorry, but I just, .. i can't. , I can't get myself out of this," irritability or anger or grumpiness or straight-up anxiety or rage. , It can be all of the things. And what I want to just emphasize as we go into the why, and we're gonna unpack the how to change it as well.

But as we go into the why, I just want to emphasize that your body is responding to signals that it's getting, and it is trying to protect you, and it feels so uncontrollable because It is truly not something that you can just, , think your way out of or, , , talk yourself into having a good attitude.

Sometimes you can, okay? So I absolutely believe in the power of speaking life and renewing your mind. I think that that's so applicable [00:03:00] here. I think it's a part of the puzzle to getting yourself out of this. But also, we need to understand what is happening in your body that is keeping you here so that we can strip away some of the guilt and the shame and , , beating yourself up for not being the wife or the mom or just the woman that you want to be so that that's not another layer of stress keeping you in this hole, essentially.

And so I just wanna create this episode with a lens of so much grace and self-accountability and some science behind it so that we have the layers we need to truly understand this as a holistic picture when you're like, "I am not myself." And if you even are not yourself for three to five days out of the month or a week out of the month, that's still a significant amount of your time and your motherhood and your life, right?

Because you have cycles for a long time. And so this is important no matter how many days of your month it is. But heck, , it's a [00:04:00] heck of a lot more important if it's two weeks out of your month, for sure. So I'm gonna actually do a little more deep science than I've done in the last few episodes to really, really talk to you about these hormone changes that happen, and especially when they're kind of going wrong in PMS.

So you've heard me say probably a thousand times, estrogen rises in the first half of your cycle, then progesterone rises in the second half of your cycle, and oftentimes symptoms come when there's not enough progesterone, at least in accordance with estrogen. You're not making hormones well, you're not detoxing hormones well.

If you need a refresher on that, go to the Simply Nourish Cycles,, private podcast that I have a link for , in the show notes. It's free. Listen to that because that's gonna really help clarify the safety and the body piece, why it matters so much, , or even just go back to a few of the last episodes, and you will hear me talk about that.

With that being said, we're gonna get deeper into the science behind why [00:05:00] the luteal phase can be such a hard time for mood. So we're gonna talk about all the hormones that are actually involved here. And so when progesterone starts to be made after ovulation, progesterone converts to a neurosteroid called allopregnanolone in the brain, okay?

Allopregnanolone is one of the most potent natural activators of GABA receptors. So GABA is your primary calming neurotransmitter. It makes you feel relaxed and patient and able to let things go. And if you're listening to this in your luteal phase and you're like, " I Am dying to feel like that again, I don't need to wait two more weeks, then this is really, really important for you to hear and understand.

When progesterone is actually low in the luteal phase instead of high like it should be, allopregnanolone drops with it and GABA activity tanks. Okay? So this is why anxiety, irritability, you can't cope with things that normally wouldn't even bother you, [00:06:00] feel so strong, because your brain is not getting the neurotransmitter that calms it down.

Your brain is running low on its own natural anti-anxiety neurotransmitter. Okay? So some women have a hypersensitivity to allopregnanolone fluctuations, so it's not just when it's low or not just when it's, , out of range, but when it's changing, it can cause some response in the GABA receptors.

So that makes even a normal progesterone drop feel catastrophic. And I say catastrophic, like,, truly, to be honest. , If you have felt it, you've felt it, and you know what I'm talking about. So even a normal progesterone drop those last couple days before your period starts, if you're like, "I'm fine," and then all of a sudden, "I am not fine," then it could be that you are responding a little bit abnormally to the shift in allopregnanolone and in progesterone versus having, you know, these longer symptoms because progesterone [00:07:00] is truly low , all of the luteal phase.

So then let's talk about estrogen. , Why doesn't this happen in the first half of the cycle if you don't have progesterone in the first half of the cycle? Well, estrogen is really potent and present in the first half of the cycle, and estrogen directly upregulates serotonin production and keeps your serotonin receptors more sensitive.

So that means you feel a little bit happier and a little bit more calm because serotonin is typically a happy hormone or neurotransmitter. When progesterone is low and estrogen is dominant in the luteal phase, you would think that serotonin would be okay, but estrogen dominance in this context is usually more like estrogen is not clearing well.

It's being, , recirculated from your gut. And so it's more of an inflammatory estrogen metabolite picture than, this fresh, good estrogen that you have in the first half of your cycle where you're trying to make... you're making that fresh estrogen to help your body ovulate. So those metabolites [00:08:00] interfere with the enzyme that converts tryptophan into serotonin.

What that means is you don't have that fresh, good estrogen just turning, you know, supporting appropriate serotonin production like you do in the first half, you've got kinda like old sticky estrogen that's sticking up your liver and makes it harder to turn that tryptophan into serotonin. So even if you're eating enough protein and getting enough tryptophan, your conversion pathway is disrupted if you are not detoxing hormones well in the second half of that cycle.

So that means less serotonin, lower mood, more reactivity, worse sleep, and more food cravings, especially carbs, because your body is actually trying to drive tryptophan into the brain through insulin, and you need carbs to spike insulin. So your body is incredibly smart.

If, and if that's all you take away from this, your body is incredibly smart. There's a lot of complicated things happening, and even though it is on surface level [00:09:00] an estrogen-progesterone issue, it affects a lot more than that. Let's also talk about a couple other things. Dopamine to start with. Estrogen also supports dopamine signaling.

So in the luteal phase when estrogen shifts, goes down, , in a normal cycle, dopamine can drop, which shows up as less motivation. It can be a loss of enjoyment, kind of like a flat feeling where you're just, , not feeling very excited. And so if you have low serotonin at the same time, you are not going to feel like yourself.

Even if you're not to the point of feeling depressed or sad, you're just like, "I don't feel like myself," , "I'm not getting excited about things like I usually would," or, "I'm just, , feeling more easily irritated," and those kind of things. So that also is why on the flip side of this, many and most of us feel pretty good when all that fresh estrogen is flowing because it's supporting dopamine and it's supporting serotonin, and progesterone [00:10:00] hasn't come into play yet to really, , cause any problems if your body isn't responding well or you're not making enough of it, even though progesterone in and of itself actually does signal GABA and encourages this feeling of calm when things are working appropriately.

. And then let's really get a little bit more specific here because when you are a high-achieving woman who does all the things and does all the things right and checks the boxes and is still feeling like crap, the cortisol compounding effect is probably a piece of this puzzle. And so this gets really clear when we look at cortisol and progesterone.

And cortisol and progesterone actually compete for the same receptor on the cell, which is the glucocorticoid receptor. When cortisol is chronically elevated, ding, ding If you're always doing all the things for all the people, and probably yourself too, and honestly killing it for the most part, [00:11:00] at least half of your cycle, your cortisol is going to be at least elevated for a while, and then sometimes it starts to tank, but you're still trying to make more.

So not only are you stealing from your progesterone to make more cortisol, typically when you have this elevated cortisol, it essentially blocks progesterone from binding properly. Even if your progesterone levels aren't super low, it just can cause it to not bind properly and go into the cell properly.

- By the way, this is just a little side note. This is even worse if your minerals are dysregulated. If your sodium potassium are low on a hair mineral test, and that means you're not getting things into the cell effectively because sodium potassium pump essentially is what lets everything into the cell.

And then you might have some high calcium as well from long-term stress. This causes a little bit of a shell around the cell, like a little bit less permeability. This is a perfect trifecta on top of this issue with higher cortisol blocking progesterone, [00:12:00] stealing from progesterone, and it means that you're not getting the progesterone that you need into the cells to feel good.

And then you might have low progesterone on top of that, and that's really gonna mess things up. So cortisol directly suppresses the enzyme that produces allopregnanolone from progesterone, coming back to the beginning of this conversation. So chronic stress doesn't just steal progesterone, it blocks the brain from using the progesterone it has.

So this feels like a lot of bad news, if I'm being honest, right? As I, , walk through every step of this, it's like, what the heck? There's, , a way even more complicated pathway of how progesterone isn't working in my body. This is why the body needs signals of safety to make hormones well and to detox hormones well.

And this is why the luteal phase is such a touchy, touchy phase when it's not working well. And the beauty of everything in life and hormones is that when we [00:13:00] start to get the right signals in, not because you're doing anything wrong, probably you're just doing a few too many things right. Once you're getting some safety signals, it changes the way your body starts making cortisol, which means you're not blocking your progesterone quite as much.

You're not stealing from your progesterone quite as much. We can get that to start balancing so that you're a-able to get more GABA in the second half of your cycle, and you're starting to detox your estrogen better so that old, rusty, crusty estrogen isn't sticking around blocking your liver from metabolizing tryptophan into serotonin All of those things start to happen when we get to the root causes and foundations of-- and honestly, root causes isn't even what I meant to say, the foundations of hormone balance.

And so when you are a high-achieving woman, when you are the one who is good at all the things and you're doing all the things all the time, the drive that makes you so good at life is also the drive that tanks your progesterone [00:14:00] because that survival mode all the time gives you these constant signals that things are not safe.

And we get a little used to it. We get a little where we kinda thrive on it. It's like, okay, maybe, maybe we've got a little bit of ADHD swirling around in there too, and we procrastinate until the last minute, and then we, , are really good at getting things done at the last minute. B- and that also spikes our stress quite a bit, and we just get used to feeling this way.

And when we are always in this always-on mode, in survival mode, that is what triggers this cascade of hormones going the wrong direction. So more healthy things can worsen the problem. More exercise, too much. More, , restriction and even more supplements, specifically more supplements that are more stimulating and trying to force your body to do something that it is on purpose not doing because it's keeping you safe.

 , so let me give you an example of this. For example, you're taking [00:15:00] a desiccated thyroid supplement or a desiccated adrenal supplement that is supposed to boost function to your thyroid or to your adrenal glands. Well, the idea of that is all well and good, except for if your body is protecting you by decreasing function of that because there are not enough nutrients to adequately run your thyroid to the level that it would ideally run.

Or that your adrenals are burned out, and they're not running at the level that they should be running, but you are trying to push with a supplement or with adaptogenic herbs or some sort of stimulating herbs to make your thyroid or adrenals work harder, essentially. Your body is working smarter, not harder, when it is suppressing function because you do not have the nutrients or the ingredients needed to make those thyroid hormones well or [00:16:00] to regulate those adrenal hormones well.

And so when we are boosting function without considering something like mineral balance or are you truly getting enough nutrients in or are you getting the right amount of sleep and sunshine and movement without burning yourself out? When we are just doing more and we're pushing harder to make things happen, this is what Just keeps the problem going essentially.

And so that's why I feel so strongly that it is so, so important to get these foundations right before you do the fancy things, even before you do testing sometimes. Because we can test your gut, but if you have been undereating and over-stressed and not pooping and not getting enough minerals and taking care of everyone else's everything and not taking care of yourself, your gut's gonna be a mess.

But when we have some of the foundations in place, and then we check in with your gut or your hormones, and we find that there are some issues that still need to be fixed, it's much more [00:17:00] doable to be able to see progress and to be able to move forward, and we can fix some of the problems without even knowing exactly on paper what those problems are, if that makes sense.

So speaking of labs, if you go to a traditional doctor for sure, maybe a functional doctor as well, you are going to have labs that come back normal even though you feel like you feel. And you're like, "Listen, something's going on," and they say, " Oh, honey. Oh, honey, it's just your stress. Oh, honey, it's just your hormones.

Have you thought about your age? It's probably 'cause you're getting older. You are 34," right? Listen, don't 'oh, honey' me when I'm telling you something is wrong with my hormones or my thyroid or other things in my body, okay? That is a strong personal stance that I have, and I think we can all have that stance because if you know something's wrong, then you need to find someone who's going to listen to you and help you find out what it is.

And so [00:18:00] when you are at , those doctors and they say everything looks normal, everything looks good, you're fine, and you don't feel fine, then - someone needs to look deeper. Because when we're testing inadequately and we are not looking for optimal function, you will continue to have good, fine, okay, normal labs because .

you are not to the point yet, yet where you need medication or hospitalization. And so these labs coming back normal does not mean things are okay. And them telling you, "Oh, honey, it's just your hormones," or, "Oh, honey, it's perimenopause when you're only 32," is a bunch of baloney. So that's my take on that.

And the last thing that I wanna say in this context of high-achieving, incredible women who are just still feeling terrible, this is not a willpower issue. This is not a time for you to push yourself harder to fix your problems. It is a pattern that needs to shift in your body, and that pattern has to have safety to shift, and you have to be in a place where you can accept [00:19:00] safety.

And safety sometimes feels like stillness. Safety sometimes feels like slowing down and not achieving everything that you think you should achieve. Not getting everything perfect, not checking all the boxes. In my experience, it's taken some pretty hard life circumstances for me to get more comfortable with slowing down.

I used to love to be busy all the time. Like, I don't have something on my calendar every minute, I'm afraid of it. , That used to be me. And I have had a big change of heart over the last year because it stopped feeling safe to be busy. It stopped feeling safe to be always overscheduled, and I started to get to a place where I didn't really believe that my plans were going to work out.

, Or I couldn't really count on if I made a plan that I'd be able to follow through with it. And so I had to start making changes to my plans and stop making as many [00:20:00] plans, and it has not been a comfy scenario. But what I have learned from it is that there is actually a lot of safety in slowing down to some extent, and being able to face those fears of like, if I'm not busy all the time, what, what is my life worth?

Or if I'm not always pleasing someone, then what does that mean about me? Or if I'm not as productive as I used to be, then who am I, right? That's a real one. But I have found that I have found my own worth outside of productivity, outside of my podcast growing, outside of making more money, outside of... And those things have been a priority in the past, less of a priority recently because my family has been a really big priority.

But also I've always built this coaching business and podcast, very, very part-time because being with my kids and with my husband is a huge [00:21:00] priority for me, and I also absolutely love to help other women change their lives. Get me on track with that all the time. , I love doing that, and my kids are gonna come first every single time.

And so since that's the case, a lot of times I'm recording the podcast at un-ideal times, okay? Or things are just, , a little messier than I would like them to look. And my worth is not in my productivity. My worth is not in the cleanliness of my house. I have very wonderful real friends who can walk in the front door, and I don't have to say a thing about the toys on the floor or the dishes on the counter or my hair looking like a hot mess Because I found that my worth is not in the appearances and the productivity and the,, achieving that I used to think it was in.

And I found that the people who really love me don't care about that stuff. And [00:22:00] they want that for me because I love having a clean house and I love having productive times and growing a business and all the things. And coming back to the basics of what is really important is like, man, I have a little boy who is still healthy and strong and with me.

I get to spend time with my kids. I have a husband who loves me. And even though we've been through some really hard things with our son this year, we're still in it together. And the Lord has been so good and so faithful to us in every single step of the way. And that has not always made it feel real easy.

And I can sit with those things in a different way than I ever used to be able to when I was just scared to slow down and I always had to have something coming up and I always need to be planning something. And my nervous system was not safe to slow down enough to just be. And I wasn't able to just let things go because I never had to.

And that was a blessing in and of itself. I never had to. I could always just kind of like make things happen. [00:23:00] All that to say, your brain has to get different signals to get a different result. And so we've started really leaning into that in coaching, really learning about rewiring your brain and getting rid of patterns of beliefs and bitterness and just this overproductive mentality that is holding you back when you're trying to balance your hormones.

And so I just want you to know that even if you're checking the other boxes and you're still just running yourself ragged on a treadmill for what you're not even really sure, then that's a place to address in your own heart. And that is something we can address with you and it will make a difference.

So this is, again, a different kind of deep dive on BMS. And I would love for you to go and listen to the Simply Nourish Cycles training. If you have not listened to it yet, link is in the show notes. And if you are ready to get into this and to see changes, I have just a couple of [00:24:00] true one-on-one spots open, no group coaching, just one-on-one.

I have not opened this up in over a year. And praise the Lord, my life is at a place where I can do some one-on-one coaching again. So I have a couple of spots. So if you want to talk about that, you want to cut through Any extra fluff that could possibly be there, you wanna just do one-on-one coaching, maybe some testing, do some deeper work together, just email me, hello@leishadrews.com, , just say like, "I'm interested in one-on-one," and we'll talk about it.

See you next time.