10 Lifestyle Factors Causing Your PMS

I grew up believing PMS was just something women had to endure, that we were just ‘hormonal’. I felt ashamed of my hormones, I even had the belief that women were somehow inferior to men as a result of having these hormones inflicted on us. Erg, patriarchal conditioning at it’s best. If you think these things too, it’s not your fault, it’s literally been spoon fed to you from birth not just by men in fact women are often guiltier!

The truth is a lot of PMS symptoms are caused by a lack of progesterone and too much oestrogen. When your hormones are out of balance you will feel all the rage, anxiety, worry & raid the cupboards the week before your period not because you’re an irrational/hormonal psychopath, but because your body is not functioning as it should. Why weren’t we taught this in school? If you experience these things it is a sign that your hormones aren’t balanced and this affects your health on a wider scale, so it’s time to do something about it . . .

Here are 10 things IN YOUR CONTROL that influence whether you’ll be raging at your partner for not loading the dishwasher, raiding the biscuit tin and worrying about whether snow leopards are going to go extinct at 2 am (just me? Ok…)

 1. Swimming upstream against your cyclical nature

Do you ever find yourself at a social event at the beginning of your period and thinking what the F am I doing here when the only place I want to be is curled up at home watching Netflix without having to speak to ANYONE?! Ok so we can’t always avoid this stuff but having more conscious awareness of how you feel across your cycle (Newsflash, you are physically & emotionally different at every stage, even day!) and living in alignment with your cyclical nature will TRANSFORM YOUR LIFE!

It’s time to get to know yourself, PROPERLY, work out what you actually need and make it happen. The more you push against your needs the LOUDER YOUR PMS WILL SCREAM!

Learn more about this is Cyclical Sanctuary! 

2. Limiting beliefs

You’ve probably heard of the law of attraction right, well there’s a lot of research into it now, it’s not just anecdotal airy fairy BS. Your thoughts create your reality, there is no doubt about it. So if you are expecting to get PMS, you are expecting to be miserable and you are in a self pity party (NO judgement here, I’ve been there) then guess what? That is what you are going to experience.

My lovely coach tells me mindset work is like a multivitamin, it’s not something you do when the shit hits the fan, it’s something to commit to everyday. This is a key focus for me in my coaching offers & inside all the yoga platforms I teach, as it is so powerful. Change your mindset, change your life!

3. Blood sugar rollercoaster

I’m going to level with you, this is something I struggled with for a looooong time and is it any wonder, food companies literally have ingredientologists who’s job is to make their food as palatable and addictive as possible, so that we never feel satisfied and we keep coming back for more. We cannot win on will power alone. But none the less the hard truth is when your blood sugar peaks after a tasty treat it comes down again with a wollop, that wollop influences your mood big time and creates irritability, when you couple that with the drop in oestrogen (which stimulates the feel good hormones serotonin & dopamine) in the second half of your cycle you have a perfect PMS shit storm.

Giving up sugar isn’t easy, BUT it can be done. If you need support with this I can help you, jump on a FREE WELLNESS CALL, to find out how we can work together and you can finally kick that sugar habit in the ass!

4. Allll the stress

A high level of perceived stress doubles the risk of severe PMS (Period Repair Manual, Lara Briden, P 205) and it’s not just stress the week before your period that matters, the stress you’re experiencing now can cause PMS weeks in the future. This is because your follicles (which release eggs) take 100 days to mature, so anything that happens in that time will influence your experience of the period when that egg is released.

The good news is you can learn to reduce your stress, you might not be able to get rid of your awful mother in law (careful…!) or mute your kids 5^th tantrum of the day, but you can change how you react by learning breathwork techniques, affirmations etc to cope. Also practices like meditation, mindset work all help to create more resilience to stress by calming your nervous system so you can cope with more before you get to breaking point (hopefully it doesn’t get that far…)

5. Move it, move it!

Exercise is great however excessive exercise can stop you ovulating (which means you won't produce progesterone at all, which as you read above is key to preventing PMS) or stop your periods altogether (a sign your body is under significant stress) Your energy levels, ability to recover & resilience to stress vary across your cycle, so following a weekly exercise programme that is the same every week is not going to work well. Progesterone is particularly sensitive to stress so if you’re hammering yourself trying to get PB’s in the second half of your cycle progesterone will take a nosedive (Hi PMS!)

To get the best results try to workout in harmony with your cycle & find a rhythm that feels right for you. Shameless plug, you can take all the guesswork out of this in the Cyclical Yogi Studio!

• Reduce your xenoestrogen exposure

There is no doubt that we live in a synthetic, chemical laden world & this is having an impact on our general health & menstrual cycles. Xenoestrogens are similar enough in structure to our natural oestrogen that they cause hormonal responses. The more you are exposed to them the greater the negative impact on your fertility & menstrual health. To minimise their impact filter your drinking water & try your best to limit your exposure to* . . .

• Hormonal Contraceptives
• Non organic meat, dairy, veg & fruit
• Scented beauty & period products
• Scented cleaning & air fresheners
• Canned food
• Plastic food & drinks containers
• Non-stick cookware
• Textiles treated as water or stain resistant
• Environmental toxins (Fumes, pesticides, flame retardants etct)
• Processed soy products

Don't get too obsessive with these as it's impossible to limit your exposure completely & getting stressed about it could be more detrimental to your health that their impact!

*The Firth Vital Sign. Lisa Hendrickson-Jack. P196

6. Your Gut Health

There is more and more research coming out about gut health, it impacts the health and function of our entire body, including your menstrual cycle. Good gut bacteria help eliminate excess oestrogen (as we’ve already seen when oestrogen is in excess compared to progesterone this causes PMS). However unhealthy gut bacteria actually cause the opposite effect, they cause oestrogen to be reabsorbed! It’s beyond the scope of this article to go into how to improve gut health, but this is something I can help you with inside my coaching offers!

7. Inflammation

Chronic inflammation disrupts hormonal communication, it interferes with hormone production and hormone receptors, it is a major cause of PMS. All the good stuff in this article will help reduce it; sleep, getting the right nutrients, good gut health, reducing exposure to xeonoestrogens & the obvious ones smoking, alcohol, processed food (all the fun stuff, sorry…) eating real food, eating food that is not inflammatory FOR YOU (this can be a journey of discovery, something for another blog perhaps!), exercising, managing stress, doing the things that make you happy, time in nature, being with people you love, they all reduce the inflammation in your body. Everything is interlinked!

8. Nutrient deficiencies

A lack of magnesium, Vitamin B6 and Zinc have been associated with causing PMS but before you rush off to Holland & Barrett, it is worth reading up on these a little more first and of course always consult your doctor before taking supplements. This is a useful article for some more information.

9. Get better quality (not necessarily quantity) sleep

All sleep is not created equal, ideally you need to be getting 4 – 5, 30 – 40 min windows of deep sleep a night so your body can replenish and repair. Put simply if you aren’t sleeping well your hormones won’t be balanced. There are a lot of things you can do to optimise your sleep. Checkout this blog for my top tips!

10. Not having coping strategies 

When PMS strikes what do you do? If you are anything like I was before I got into all this period stuff you might accept it as the inevitable suffering of being a woman and surrender to the hormonal onslaught! However I'd like to paint a different picture, whilst you cannot undo (in the short term) the reasons you're in the evil grip of the PMS daemons, you can do something about it to find quick relief! Have a set of tools to hand for when the binge eating need, rage, anxiety & evil inner critic are raging! You can find all this in the PMS SOS Toolbox, I've designed exactly for when the shit hits the fan!

So there we have it, this is a non-exhaustive list, there are other things we can do to support our menstrual cycles,  but it’s a great place to start! I hope this article hasn’t left you feeling overwhelmed, but it if has and you’ve got a long way to go on your healing journey, know that I was there once and so were many of my clients and it is possible to slowly and sustainably build a life that supports your hormones and your health and leaves you feeling amazing! It's not a race and with one little change at a time you will get there!

If you want more support you can find all I have to offer to help you at www.cyclicalsoul.com and follow me on Instagram @cyclical.soul

Much Love

Lizzie X