A journey through your monthly cycle

A journey through your menstrual cycle

It’s important to note that pretty much everyone will experience natural periods of hormonal imbalance or fluctuations at key hormonal turning points in their life – like puberty, pregnancy, and perimenopause. The rest of the time, there is the natural ebb and flow of hormones on a monthly basis. Some months your experience might feel better or worse than others.

Your hormones can be disrupted by the toxins you absorb, stress, poor diet, lifestyle choices, and your weight. The result can have you feeling slightly out of balance, or they might be significant enough for a medical diagnosis. If you have any concerns about this aspect of your health, always talk to your doctor first.

What’s normal?

You probably already noticed, but different phases of your cycle feel different, and I don’t just mean the difference between bleeding or not bleeding. It commonly looks like this, but don’t forget, everyone is different and a ‘typical’ cycle is not always 28 days.

Week 1 of your cycle – You’re on your period. You might start off feeling a little low if you’re getting cramps or headaches but, since your oestrogen levels are on the up and oestrogen generally has you feeling brighter and more positive. You can expect to start more patient, more energetic, sociable, focussed, curious and more creative in the next few days. If you’re not feeling great at the start of your period, you might fancy more comfort foods but that will soon pass and you’ll be happier with lighter, more balanced meals.

If you’re a fan of fasting, once bleeding and any discomfort has passed, you might find it easy to fast longer in the first half of your cycle than at other times.

Week 2 – You’re likely to be in a good mood more often than not. You might be more open, tolerant and hopeful as oestrogen levels climb. You might notice your sleep is great, too. Your libido starts to reach a peak as a result of high oestrogen and testosterone, the latter will also have an impact on how assertive, ambitious and competitive you feel. Although mostly good, the flipside is that some women can be sensitive to the high levels of oestrogen, making them feel a little more on edge. When it comes to food, your hormone balance makes eating healthily easy.

Week 3 – During the first few days of this week, your mood may dip and you may become irritable as oestrogen starts to fall away and progesterone comes in with its typical sedating effect. You’ll start to become quieter, more tired, subdued, doubtful, cautious and more emotionally sensitive as progesterone starts to rise. Your libido also definitely takes a hit thanks to diminishing oestrogen and testosterone. Some women are more sensitive than others to the change in progesterone levels. If this is you, you could notice a dip in your mood, making you feel a little sluggish, sad or irritable.  You may experience blood sugar imbalances this week, making you feel a little hungrier. Some women get a little constipated, water retention and breast tenderness due to the rising levels of progesterone.

Week 4 – Your moods are a little more unpredictable in your premenstrual week as both oestrogen and progesterone drop so you could be happy one moment, then angry or sad the next. This drop in oestrogen can trigger PMS, bringing with it mood swings and irritability depending on your sensitivity to changing hormones. You might find you have a bit more energy than you did last week but sleep is trickier thanks to the lower levels of oestrogen. If you incorporate fasting into your daily routine, you’ll want to scale this back during the run-up to your period. Your body will naturally crave more starchy, comforting foods, and restricting your eating window will feel like an uphill climb.

Monitoring your cycle

The more you know about your own body, the more you start to understand how you uniquely work and the greater chance of spotting something ‘wrong’ that you want to seek medical advice for. This is true of your menstrual cycle, too. Monitoring your monthlies is never a bad thing and there is a variety of smartphone apps to help you do that. These include, Clue, Flo , Period Tracker. There’s also a tracker for your Apple Watch.

Whichever you choose, these apps will help you monitor your cycle effectively. When you count which day of your cycle you are on, you will count day 1 as the first day of your period. If you’re in the middle of your cycle, count from the first day of your last period. If you don’t have a cycle, I suggest counting day 1 as the first day of the new moon. This might sound a bit woo woo and maybe it is but it’s as good a place as any to start.

There have been claims over the years that your menstrual cycle naturally wants to follow the moon. The suggestion is that moonlight might have an impact on your hormones. It’s not entirely unreasonable since we already have the sleep/wake cycle where your body secretes the ‘sleep hormone’ melatonin in relation to levels of light.

Although the words “menstruation” and “menses” come from Latin and Greek words meaning month (mensis) and moon (mene) and the average menstrual cycle is the same as a lunar month, that’s where the similarity likely ends.

It might be that your cycle ties in with the lunar cycle, but the people at Clue, the app that can help you track your cycle, ran the numbers on over 1.5 million women and 7.5 million cycles and concluded there was no correlation between the lunar phases and when their users started their period.

That said, if you’re not currently cycling, you have to start somewhere, and it may as well be with the phases of the moon. Use this resource to find out the moon cycles so you know where to count from - https://www.timeanddate.com/moon/phases/uk/london

As a nutritional therapist I take a food and lifestyle first approach and work alongside other medical practitioners you might be talking to. I have witnessed first-hand how diet and lifestyle changes can improve health with clients. If you would like to talk to me about my hormone-balancing nutrition programmes, please use the link to book a free call https://calendly.com/eatwell22/discovery-call