E281: Things You’re Doing To Decrease Progesterone And Make PMS Worse Without Knowing It

What if your progesterone problem has nothing to do with your hormones, and everything to do with your alarm clock? Stay with me. Your body steals progesterone to make cortisol every time you're stressed, physically or emotionally, and it does this without asking your permission, often before you've even gotten out of bed.

In this episode, I'm going rapid-fire through a list of everyday habits that are quietly draining your progesterone production. This isn't a beginner list, and I admit I’m guilty of some of these too! These are the sneaky, "literally everyone does this" kind of habits that feel so normal you'd never think to question them, but your body absolutely notices every single one. So, if you get through this whole episode and somehow find that you don’t identify with any of them, please message me, because I will be genuinely shocked.

And this matters even if a baby isn't on your radar right now. Building good progesterone today is basically how you bank yourself a smoother perimenopause later, and that's a season I'd love for you to walk into feeling like yourself.

Here's what I'm breaking down for you:

• Why your phone in the morning is priming your nervous system to be stressed for the rest of the day, and yes, switching to email counts just as much
• The real cost of always needing something in your ears, and what I noticed when I finally let myself sit in silence for five minutes
• What it actually means if you're waking up to pee at night, because "I drink a lot of water" probably isn't the full answer
• Two light habits almost everyone gets wrong, one in the morning, one at night, and what they're quietly doing to your cortisol and progesterone
• The way you're eating lunch that's messing with your hormones, and it has nothing to do with what's on your plate
• Why eating less can slow your metabolism and raise your cortisol, and why discipline has nothing to do with it

Some of this stuff is so woven into our daily lives that it feels impossible to even question. My husband legitimately cannot understand why I bought an actual alarm clock instead of just using my phone, and I get it, it sounds a little extra. But once you hear why I made that switch, you'll probably want to make a couple of these same "extra" swaps too. Same goes for the friend who insists she sleeps fine even though she's up to pee twice a night, or the one who can't sit in her car for a five-minute drive without a podcast playing. We've all just normalized so much that our bodies are quietly screaming about it, and a lot of it has nothing to do with food or supplements at all.

Here's the thing about progesterone: your body treats it like a luxury hormone. The second you're under any kind of stress - physical, mental, emotional, doesn't matter - your body will steal the raw materials meant for progesterone and use them to make more cortisol instead. So, if a few of these sound a little too familiar, that's not a coincidence. That's your body trying to tell you something.

You do not need to overhaul all of these at once; please don't, that never sticks for anyone. Pick the one that hits you the hardest, give it a few consistent weeks, and just watch what shifts. Progesterone doesn't respond to perfection; it responds to consistency, and that's actually really good news.

This episode is your permission to question the things you've just always assumed were part of being a busy woman. Hit play, and let's get into it.

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

PMS TO PEACE Private Podcast 

E279: These Emotional Patterns Are Keeping Your Hormones Stuck

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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! 
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Transcript

E281_ Things you’re doing to decrease progesterone and fertility without knowing it

[00:00:00] Are there things that you think are normal to do that are actually sabotaging your progesterone production and your fertility, and you don't even know it? Today, I'm gonna help you find out. All right, girlies. This is gonna be a little bit of a rapid fire episode, because I have a whole list of things that many of us are doing.

I am doing some of these things and working on not doing them. So this is not a list for beginners by any means. But these are things that actually will decrease your progesterone production, which can lead to painful periods, PMS mood swings, low energy, short cycles, irregular cycles, and not being able to get or stay pregnant, and even lower thyroid function, and many, many other symptoms that have to do with your adrenals and your thyroid and your hormones.

And in turn can affect your fertility. So this is not an episode specifically about fertility for those [00:01:00] of you who are not in that space, but it is about progesterone production, which we need to feel as good as we can feel in our busy lives as women. And when you have chronic stress, you are essentially cannibalizing your progesterone production to make more cortisol.

And so this is a foundation of this episode, is that these things are stressful on the body, but we feel like they're so normal and literally everyone around us is doing them, and we don't even realize how counterproductive they are to our biology and the way that our bodies are made and how women lived, not even hundreds of years ago, but like 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 50 years ago, and things that have changed in our lives.

And some of these things have not changed. Some of these things women have probably been doing for hundreds of years and have thought they were normal. Even though something is common does not mean that you have to stay there and that you have to continue in those patterns, [00:02:00] especially if you are trying to optimize hormones for fertility or optimize hormones for progesterone production or even to prevent a bad perimenopause.

This is something that is coming up more and more and more in conversations with my clients is, how do I go into perimenopause and not struggle and not be just like perimenopause is my new personality? This is how you start to bank progesterone. You start to really focus on your progesterone production, whether or not it's a problem right now, but if you're here, it probably is.

And you start to really focus on creating safety in the body again and again, over and over in different ways so that your body can heal. And part of that, that I have been really hitting on in more recent episodes is your mental and emotional patterns that are telling your body you're not safe, even if you're doing all the physical things right.

So this is really more physical, this side of things, but go back to the last couple of episodes, especially the last [00:03:00] one sorry, 279, not the last one, and listen to that if you haven't yet when you are done with this one because those are gonna be the more emotional and mental root causes.

And these are just things that you're probably doing that you just don't even know are an issue. Okay, so Number one is going to be scrolling first thing in the morning. You probably know this one. Actually, several of these, you're gonna be like, "I know that." But are you doing it the right way?

Probably not, because it's so easy to be in these patterns and routines of just thinking that the rules don't apply to you or, maybe it doesn't really matter or this is just what I have to do. And so I would highly recommend questioning those belief systems, and those are ones that I am also questioning on a regular basis.

So scrolling first thing in the morning is an instant cortisol and dopamine hit before your nervous system is even regulated. And this is the big kicker with this one: it primes your HPA axis, which is your cortisol, production system from your brain to [00:04:00] your adrenals, to be reactive all day long. So if you are starting off your day and you need that dopamine, cortisol hit right away in the morning, you start scrolling, you start doing things on your phone, you start checking emails.

I feel like a lot of us have gotten off of social ema- social media and have switched to checking your email excessively or checking all of your messaging apps excessively. I have seen myself doing that, where I'm like, "I have seen these emails," right? And even another dopamine hit can be going to your email, reading an email, and then leaving it unread so that you can deal with it later, but you got the satisfaction of knowing what it's about.

That is also part of this loop. So if you're like, "I'm not on social media. I'm not doing this," if you're getting on your phone first thing in the morning and doing really anything, you are creating this cortisol, dopamine system that needs to be replenished all day long. And instead, you could be walking outside, away from your phone, and getting some peace first thing in the morning, getting some sunlight.

We'll go into this in a minute. But scrolling first [00:05:00] thing in the morning has to stop if you are doing it. Highly recommend getting an actual alarm clock. My husband thinks you don't need one, because he's like, "Whatever. Just use your phone," and I'm like, "We're not doing that." So I have a little clock by my bed, a little, analog clock that has a little light on it so I can see what time it is in the middle of the night or what if, when my four-year-old wakes me up super early in the morning, I can tell him whether or not it's actually morning, because sometimes it's light when it's not really morning, in my opinion.

 anyway, getting an alarm clock does not give you the excuse that you need your phone in your room for an alarm. So actually plugging your phone outside of your room, turning it off, highly recommend for your nervous system because you are just not having to be always on, which is another point that was further down on the list, but I'm just gonna go to it now.

 So always being on This should be self-explanatory, but raise your hand if you're doing it. Like, just raise your hand in your car and acknowledge to yourself, you know I can't see you. But if you're in your car, you're washing your dishes, you're taking a walk, and we're hanging out together, raise your hand and, really [00:06:00] admit to yourself if you are always on.

That means no true rest. You still feel kinda stressed, kinda busy. There's always things going on in your mind, even if you're, like, quote-unquote, resting. If this is you, you're always available, with your phone, you're never bored, your nervous system never down regulates, you don't take time for quiet.

Something I was talking about, in a coaching call yesterday was even just the tendency to always need to have something in your ears or in front of your eyes. You're, like, always watching a YouTube video, always listening to a podcast, always listening to an audiobook. Whether it's for entertainment or for learning, this, constant flow of information is damaging.

It truly is damaging because it just floods our systems with overwhelm. And so this always being on, getting in the car, you have to have music, getting in the car, you have to have a podcast, ... you have to have something going all the time. This is something that I have really changed in [00:07:00] my life.

And while I do still love listening to podcasts, while I still do, some YouTube videos, I have changed my habits pretty drastically from always having, while I'm doing something else, always having, a show on or a podcast or a book or something, to actually creating some space where my brain can just think.

Even if I'm in the car by myself on a five-minute drive, I used to always be like, "Oh, I can listen to this. I can do this." But it's like, what if you just sat in that silence? And this, this was not even from a scientific perspective for me. I clearly heard the Lord's voice. I was praying, and I was like, "God, why can't I hear you?"

I don't know how long ago this was. A year ago, more than that. I was like, "God, why can't I hear you?" And when I asked Him that question, I did hear Him, and He said, "Because you always are listening to something else." And that hit me really hard because it was so true. How could I hear God's voice or even my own thoughts when I was [00:08:00] always having something else coming in?

And this can be also just, like, your kids, too, right? So they're gonna be around. They're gonna be having input, and that's a good thing. And creating boundaries and space where you have quiet And then actually accepting that quiet and not filling it with something else is hugely important for your nervous system and for your cortisol to not be elevated all the time or, constantly trying to produce more.

And as I mentioned before, and I have this in my private podcast, Simply Nourish Cycles, so you can just, grab that in the show notes totally free. I really walk you through understanding why safety in the body is so important from a physical level with the cortisol, progesterone, steel, and some other, specific hormones in the body.

So go listen to that. Download that if you don't have it. We'll make sure that is in the show notes today. But we have to create some space in our lives. And I just think that it's counter-cultural at this point to have any space in your brain or your life. Okay, so this is kind of in the same [00:09:00] line, and I promise a few of these are a little l- or different than this, but this is kind of the same, theme.

just working through lunch, even if you're not at a traditional job with a lunch break, not actually resting, but just, eating on the go. this could be eating without taking a deep breath. This could be eating while walking around in your kitchen, even while you're feeding your kids. This could be eating while scrolling.

This could be eating while doing anything else besides, sitting down and having a conversation with the people around you and just taking the time to smell your food, chew your food, know that you're even eating, and not be in fight or flight when you're eating, not be driving, as much as possible.

So just understanding that that not only affects digestion, but it actually affects your hormone production. Because when you are not absorbing your nutrients as well, you are not going to have the nutrients you need to make hormones well or detox hormones well, which are both huge pillars [00:10:00] of being able to actually have balanced hormones and happy moods.

Okay. a couple of specific things on light. We are doing several things wrong with light, and you probably do know this, but again, I just want you to check in. I hope that every one of these points, you're just asking yourself, "Hey, is this me?" Like actually, is this actually me? And some of these will not be you, and some of these will be you.

I don't know that... . actually, please message me if you get through this whole episode and you're like, "I'm doing all of it. I totally have this," because I would love to hear from you, and I will be surprised if I get even one message from the hundreds of people listening to this. Okay, so we are often not getting sunlight in the morning, first thing, for many reasons.

But if you are not getting sunlight in the morning, you don't have as much of a cortisol awakening response, and your whole daily rhythm will be off with your cortisol and your circadian rhythm. This looks like being tired but wired at night. This looks like afternoon energy crashes. This looks like being sluggish in the morning.

This looks like weight gain. [00:11:00] This looks like feeling chronically anxious and even having insulin resistance. Sunlight in the morning changes your life. It really does, and it seems like it doesn't, so it's easy to skip. But chronic misuse of light is a huge factor in so many hormone imbalances, cortisol, but also it has been started to be...

It's also been studied in cancer studies, and so that, that's always the one that'll get me that I'm like, "Okay, I don't want that, so I'm going to get, get in shape," right? and then the other piece is, of course, light at night. So blue lights, overhead lights that are too bright, whatever that looks like for you.

Artificial light at night suppresses melatonin production, disrupts your cortisol rhythm, and decreases progesterone downstream. So you don't sleep as well. You are not going to be able to do the things you need to do to make hormones well and detox hormones well. So there are times that I cannot get away from light at night.

This is something that I'm constantly working on. I'm constantly the [00:12:00] one going around our house, turning off bright lights. We have, amber in- not infrared. incandescent. I think that's right. Now I forget. But They're not LED lights, incandescent bulbs that are amber color in all of our overhead lights.

And then we also have LED lights, which I personally hate, as can lights in the ceiling, but I make sure those are off at night because it makes such a difference. And then I also will wear my red light or my red colored night glasses if I have to be on a screen. And I really try to structure my day where I'm not gonna be on screens at night, but sometimes I am.

And so I really just am really careful to wear my glasses, to be on the screens as short as possible, and then give myself as big of a window as possible before bed, to be away from those screens. So again, turning off your phone, plugging it in somewhere else, and leaving it ASAP at night, especially once it gets dark, especially once the kids are in bed.

It not only leads to you going to bed sooner because you're not constantly, responding to things, but it also leads to a little bit of space [00:13:00] where you can breathe and let your brain rest, and think, and journal, and pray, and hear from God, and hear your own thoughts, and hear your own intuition, and all of those things that are just likely not happening if you have no space for that.

Okay. The really, really big one that I wanted to talk about in this episode is sleep. And I've already talked about several reasons why your sleep may not be great, because you are chronically overstimulated, and on your phone, and on screens, and not getting sunlight, and all of those things. I know that some of you have been working on this for a while, like I have, and so some of those things are starting to get worked out.

But if you are not sleeping enough or you have this like low level of under sleeping, six hours, seven hours feel functional, and a lot of people can get away with it, quote-unquote, and feel okay, but it's not enough for your body to truly recover, [00:14:00] replenish, detox, and optimized to be able to build hormones well.

This chronic low-grade under-sleeping can sneak up on you. You think you're like, "Oh, yeah, I go to bed at 10:00," but then really if we're being honest, it's like definitely 10:30 before you're actually asleep or maybe even in bed, but you've been trying to go to bed at 10:00, so you think you do, and then you think you wake up at 6:30, but when we really peel back the covers,somebody woke you up before that, and you've gotten interrupted a couple times in the night, or you wake up to go to the bathroom in the night.

To me, that really is a red flag, honestly. If you have to wake up once a night, maybe I could get ... let you get away with that and say it's okay, but really any more than once a night waking up to go to the bathroom is a sign that you are not in deep sleep, unless you just are a water guzzler at bedtime.

But your body should be able to handle itself for you to sleep seven, eight hours at night without waking up to go to the bathroom. So that even is a sign that there's something going on with [00:15:00] stress, with, adrenal function, water balance, and really truly just your depth of sleep and, ability to stay asleep.

Because even if you have to go to the bathroom a little bit, but if you're in deep sleep, you're not gonna notice essentially. so that is a huge piece. And , another piece that comes into this is caffeine. Obviously, caffeine can disrupt sleep for many of us, and I, I really do believe I've seen in practice that there are two types of people with caffeine, and I think there's two different metabolization. I don't think metabolization is a word. Two different ways you can metabolize caffeine, some people are more sensitive, and some people are not essentially. I know there's people who are like, "I can drink coffee and go straight to bed and sleep all night."

Maybe so, but are you waking up to pee? Because it might be the caffeine. so caffeine, too much caffeine too early- Is something that you might have heard me say, no caffeine before breakfast, ever. Eat your breakfast first. Eat your real breakfast first, and then have a cup of coffee if you need to [00:16:00] and want to and love it.

And that should be it for the day. It really should, because if you are sleeping enough and you're getting sunlight, you should have enough energy to be able to make it through the day without having to just prop yourself up with coffee. And if you're not just constantly on and pushing through, then you should have energy to be able to sustain.

And so if you're hearing this and you're like, "What the heck?" "I've never felt like that," then this is something that we need to look into, and we need to look into your food and your sleep and your lifestyle and the supplements you're taking and everything you're doing as a big picture and give you this in-depth view of what's actually happening in your body to make your hormones upset, to give you these PMS symptoms.

Because it's never just, "Oh, I just have too much estrogen for, no real reason." There's always something happening, and there's always something happening to decrease your progesterone as well. Okay, another big one is overcommitting and under saying no. And this is going to be very, very [00:17:00] similar to the always-on mentality, but overcommitting your day where you are always behind, always stressed, never can actually keep up.

When you are trying not to say no to other people or to yourself, you are saying no to something. So the more things you say yes to, you are saying no to something because you do have a limited capacity to whatever extent that applies to you. And so just checking in with that, if you're like, "Man, I really am always on, and I'm, doing things late at night on screens because I have to," and "I'm a victim to my own circumstances."

These circumstances oftentimes are things that we have created ourselves. And there are times that it is definitely out of our control, and I understand that, and I've been there. And I also am really focused currently on taking responsibility for everything that I can so that I can change the patterns that are not working for me or for my hormones or for my sleep or for my stress.

And so that is just something [00:18:00] to check in with , yourself on a heart level, is are you overcommitting constantly? And that stress changes your cortisol and your progesterone just like any other stress. , And really the only other one that I wanted to hit on today is Just this kind of like cycling with your diet, and I think I'm seeing this less than I used to.

I definitely am seeing this less than I used to, but this restriction mindset that leads to undereating, that less is more because less food means a smaller body, which means you get more, more attention, more good things, everything's better. It's just not true in, even in just the math sense of things.

Less food does not always equal a smaller body. Less food oftentimes equals a decreased metabolism and thyroid and weight gain that you don't want because your body is chronically stressed. And so this diet cycling though is the, like being more restricted during the week and [00:19:00] then treats on the weekend or treats in the summer, or this just overall picture of like, I have to restrict at some point so I can do what I want at other points.

And I just believe that it's so much more regulating to the nervous system to have a consistent, steady intake of good nutrients. And then when you have a treat here and there, your body already has the nutrients it needs, and so that's a bonus of just, something that gives you joy, something that is for social purposes, whatever that looks like.

But you also will not have the same cravings if you are consistently nourished throughout the day, and you will also have more regulated cortisol when your blood sugar is not out of alignment. So if this is something that you're struggling with, you can send me an email, hello@leishadrews.com, and ask me for a mini audit.

I can do a couple of these each week usually. And so if you email me and just say, "Hey, I'd love a mini audit," I will look at this for you and tell you [00:20:00] if your food , is the problem for your hormones, essentially. So send that to me. and really just getting realistic and consistent with your nutrition Not being too busy to feed yourself is absolutely a hundred percent key in balancing your hormones.

And we all have seasons, but if you want balanced hormones, and you want good progesterone, you want good fertility, you cannot have more seasons that are in survival mode than seasons that you can rest. .. we are all going to have hard seasons, and who you are in those seasons and if you allow yourself to become the victim of it really, really changes the way the next season looks.

And so if you have a hard season, and you weather it as well as you can, and you continue to take responsibility for what you can, and then you move into the next season, you don't always have to start completely over from scratch the same way you would if you fall into this mentality of like, "This is all out of [00:21:00] my control, and I can't do anything about it."

And this, this goes for food, this goes for exercise, this goes for screen time, this goes for sleep it goes for everything. I just wanna encourage you that whatever season you're in, this list is not totally comprehensive, and it's not also, a very small list. there's multiple things on here that affect us, and my goal would not be that you are perfect in every one of these, but it would be that you really sit with the ones that hit you in the gut the most and what you know needs to change the most, and just work on that.

Just work on that one thing, those two things. Don't give yourself eight things to do at once. It never works. And start to be consistent with it. So if it's, "Okay, my sleep's the thing," then I go to bed earlier, I'm not on screens at night And the exception is very much an exception and not just like it's a pretend rule that you have that you always break, right?

So it's that self-accountability again. All right. I think that is really all that I have for today. So I'm gonna let you [00:22:00] go and find something to change that is going to make a difference for your progesterone and make a difference for your fertility and be consistent with it so you can see that fruit in the next season, in the next month, in the next couple of weeks of actually making a change and seeing those results.

All right. See you girls next week.