What if PMS and pain aren’t normal?

You’ve been told your whole life that your period is meant to be awful.
Painful. Messy. Something you just have to put up with.
But what if that’s not true?

Because just like your blood pressure or body temperature, your period is a vital sign — and when you know how to read it, you can actually use it to feel better, not just dread it coming each month.

Key Takeaways:

• The signs that your period might be trying to tell you something — and how to start listening before things feel out of control.
• What a truly healthy cycle looks like (hint: it’s not what most of us were taught)
• Why things feel harder in your 40s — and how to support your body without overhauling your whole life

Sneak Peek:

“Every cycle, every bleed, every single symptom — or lack of symptoms — it’s all feedback from your body. And when you know how to interpret it, you can stop just surviving your cycle… and actually be pleasantly surprised by its arrival.”

If your period feels like it’s running the show — or like your body is doing things you don’t understand — this episode is for you.

Listen to Episode 88 now and start changing your cycle to a “new normal.”

Find out more about Sarah, her services and the Freebies mentioned in this episode at https://www.ThePerimenopauseNaturopath.com.au

• The Perimenopause Decoder is the ultimate guide to understanding if perimenopause hormone fluctuations are behind your changing mood, metabolism and energy after 40, what phase of perimenopause you're in, and how much longer you may be on this roller coaster for.
• For more, follow on Instagram at @theperimenopausenaturopath.

WORK WITH SARAH THE PERIMENOPAUSE NATUROPATH:

• PerimenoGO (because who wants to pause anyway?!) A self-guided program to help you reverse weight gain, boost energy, and reclaim your mood — without extreme diets or cutting carbs. Perfect for women who want a realistic plan that fits around kids, work, and actual life.
• The Chaos to Calm Method: A 1:1 personalised program for women who want a more personalised plan and support — especially if you’ve got 10kg+ to lose, other health issues, or feel like your body’s just stuck. Includes comprehensive blood testing and analysis, Metabolic Balance ...

Transcript

If you've ever struggled with mood swings, cramping, clotty periods, or just feeling like a completely different person every time your period rolls around. Well, I'm glad you've joined me here today because I'm breaking down what's actually normal when it comes to your period, and what's not. So make sure you stay tuned with me right through the episode because we're gonna cover what a healthy cycle actually looks like, why things feel more intense in your forties, and what you can do to feel more in control of your period, have what I am gonna tell you as a normal period starting from this month. I wanna tell you about a client of mine. She came to me having lived with painful periods for nearly three decades, nearly 30 years. Gosh. Bloating, pain, clots, mood swings. She had the works every month. And her period was regular, so that's something.

Yay. And, but she had accepted that as her normal because that's kind of what she'd told what had been told was normal for her and what she could just expect as normal for a period. So we looked at what she was eating, drinking, and doing each month, and within weeks of changing how she did that and giving her body more of what it needed, she messaged me and said she had just had her first pain-free period in 28 years.

So, and I wanna say as well, that wasn't a once off, that continued for her there as well. And she wasn't, certainly wasn't doing things perfectly like it's not never about being perfect, it's just about doing more of what works well for your body. And yeah, that's the power of learning what your body actually needs.

Also learning like what is possible, what can be normal or what is normal? And yeah, giving your body what it needs instead of just accepting that, alright, well that's normal. I can't do anything about it. My only options are the pill or the Mirena or something like that.

Hi, I am Sarah, the Perimenopause Naturopath, and I've helped hundreds of women over 40 navigate perimenopause with confidence to feel great in their bodies and reclaim their mood and energy.

So if you are feeling like you're changing hormones or hijacking your mood, energy, and weight, and you wanna change that in a holistic way, then this is the place for you because each episode I share with you my views on what's happening in your body. Why you're feeling the way that you are and how you can change that with actionable advice to help you move from chaos to calm and feel more comfortable in your body.

So welcome to episode number 88 of Chaos to Calm. Today I'm sharing what's actually normal when it comes to your period. Spoiler alert straight up front, it's not PMS and pain. So I hear it a lot in clinic. I just thought this was normal. I having pain or lots of mood swings or just having to block out your calendar for the week before your period because you can't, interact with other humans for fear of what you might say or do.

There's a lot that you all are putting up with in the context of thinking that is normal when it comes to your menstrual cycle so whether it's clots or heavy periods or pain that puts you in bed with your hot water bottle for days at a time, or those mood swings or your filter gets removed, maybe you just dread your period every month because of a bit of all of those things.

But we're all taught that this is just part of the deal. But I wanna tell you something really clearly. Just because something is common doesn't mean it's normal. So I say that a lot. Common doesn't mean it's normal. Actually haven't said it here for a while. It's well overdue.

And yeah, nowhere is that more true than with your period. And I think it's, no wonder so many women dread their period when we are told from our first periods or in puberty that it's meant to hurt. It's meant to mess with our heads. Oh, she's just hormonal or she's on her period. We get told those things all the time or people say those things about us.

And we expect that our period is gonna throw our bodies out of whack. But your period isn't the problem. Our period is we are meant to even and flow across the month. We do live in a world that's made for men's hormones. It's the same. It's flat 24/7, so that's part of the problem as well.

Our period is one of the most powerful tools that you have for understanding what's going on in your body. In fact, many integrative doctors and some gynecologists as well will now refer to your menstrual cycle as the fifth vital sign of naturopaths like me. You love your period if you and especially if you track it and track your symptoms, gives us so much information almost more than what the other four vital signs do.

So blood pressure, heart rate, your breathing rate, and your body temperature at the other vital signs. But every symptom that you experience is part of your period. And also other symptoms as well. They're all information. So every cycle, every bleed, every single symptom or lack of symptoms, it's all feedback from your body and it tells us a lot about your current state of health, but we need to listen to it.

We need to listen to it and understand what it's telling us, and then we can change how we feel because we can give it what it needs. And then when you understand how to interpret and work with it, that's when you can stop just sort of surviving the cycle or stop dreading it coming and start being pleasantly surprised by its arrival, as in like there's no signs or symptoms really.

It's just, oh look today is my first day of my period, so let's talk about what a healthy period actually looks like and why things can get a bit out of whack once you hit your forties. So, yeah. Let's start a healthy period. What does it actually look like? So if your hormones are humming along nicely, here's what we're aiming for.

Your cycle length. So this is from the time, the first day of your bleed in one cycle to the start of your next bleed there. We want that length to be between 21 and 35 days. Like all ranges, somewhere in the middle is optimal, is best, but between 21 and 35 days is within the range of normal.

You want to bleed for between three and seven days. Anything longer than seven days is a heavy period or a long period, and we don't want that. We also don't want it too short. You don't want it spotty, like just a bit of spotting. We don't even really need to use period products. You want it to be bright red or crimson blood.

Okay, so not like brown or black or not with lots of clots. In it there as well. Little to no PMS or pain might notice a, maybe a little bit of a dull ache or cramping towards that first day, but certainly nothing that's leaving you cuddled up in bed with around your hot water bottle. Flooding, spotting also not ideal, and regular ovulation. Like ideally you'll ovulate every month as we move into perimenopause. Of course that changes and that's normal and part of that process there as well. But through the rest of your time, from when you're a young adult, when you're going through puberty, your body's still trying to work things out.

You may not have ovulated regularly, but the sort of through your twenties and thirties, you ideally would ovulate with each cycle. Now, if you're listening and you're thinking, mine's the opposite of that, you are not broken. Don't feel overwhelmed. Your period is quite responsive to what you're going to do.

So again, we just need to get curious. Always be curious, curious, curious, curious, and ask questions, of what your body's wanting or needing, why is it responding the way that it is? What's changed? Like if these things, PMS, pain, whatever are new for you, what's changed? What's changed in life in terms of what you are eating, what you're drinking, what you're doing, your stress levels, your busyness, all of those sorts of things.

Talked a bit about that last episode as well, and in other episodes too, always being curious, the art of reflection and review. I did do an episode on that late last year in 2024. All about reflecting and reviewing, and I think that's a single handedly one of the best health habits that you can get into is yeah, tracking your symptoms or tracking your body and your state of health, what it's telling you, and reflecting and reviewing that as well.

So let's, have a chat about what might throw your period out of balance. This is just a high level overview. Of course, your, what's going on for you will be different to someone else as well. 'cause we're all unique beings with different genetic makeup and lifestyle and health history and all of those things.

But. This is really important, like I was just saying about reflection and review. This is the juicy stuff here. Because I wanna talk about estrogen because estrogen getting out of balance or getting into sort of higher levels or relative excess is often the problem behind a lot of your period, issues or not, but you know if it's too long or too heavy or too much PMS and pain and moodiness and all those sorts of things, it's not bad.

It does lots of things for us. And as you find out when you move through perimenopause to menopause, all of your cells rely on estrogen and they miss it. A lot when it's gone. So we do definitely need it. But when it's too high relative to progesterone that's when you'll get those symptoms like heavy bleeding, sore breasts, mood swings, clots, anxiety, irritability, insomnia, all those things, the rage.

So what contributes to that? So you're skipping ovulation, so that can definitely happen in your forties. It's normal to have at start having cycles where you don't ovulate. But remember when we don't ovulate, we don't make progesterone. And this happens in puberty too. So if you've got 10 girls in your life keep this one in mind.

If they do have some heavy periods or clotty periods. Or more PMS or pain, their body's still their brain is still working out the hormone levels and how the messages to send to your ovaries and things like that too. But in your forties, you've got the process going in reverse to those teen girls but still the same outcome.

So, that estrogen excess can come because there's less progesterone than normal. So your estrogen level might be the same, but there's just less progesterone to counterbalance it. So lack of ovulation, chronic stress also lowers your progesterone as well. I call progesterone your people pleasing hormone.

So with lower progesterone, estrogen runs the show. Estrogen is assertive, are assertive hormone. So quite the opposite of that. People pleasing. So that's why it can feel like you've got no filter and you're just like, everyone's irritating you. Like my sister messaging me, why is everyone on the train breathing so loudly today?

Or maybe you are filled with rage at the sound of your husband chewing a few days before your period. That's probably your estrogen and progesterone. A little bit outta whack there. Now exposure to Xena estrogens from plastics, fragrances personal care products. I have done a podcast episode on this, and so I will link to it in the show notes, but that will increase your estrogen, and your immune system as well.

So, in perimenopause, as our hormones change, we get stuck in a bit of a loop where that higher level of estrogen stimulates one of our immune compounds and neurotransmitters, histamine. Which again is not bad in and of itself, but that raises histamine, which then triggers the release of more estrogen, more histamine, more estrogen.

So you get stuck in a bit of a loop there, and that with them egging each other on. So that can really push up your estrogen levels there. And finally, blood sugar. There if you're living on coffee and toast or skipping meals, that messes with your insulin and cortisol, which messes with your sex hormones of estrogen and progesterone.

It's all interconnected. And no one teaches us this stuff, so it's not your fault if you don't know about it or you're doing things that might be inadvertently contributing to that imbalance between estrogen and progesterone. So it's also not just about how much estrogen you have, it's how well your body is clearing it, balancing it, buffering it with that calming and protective progesterone.

Which reminds me that I forgot to mention, one of the ways that estrogen gets out of whack is, if your gut is inflamed or maybe you've got slow digestion or you are so you're not detoxifying and eliminating or clearing that estrogen properly. So your liver packages estrogen up and sends it to your bowels for elimination if it sits there for too long.

And if your microbiome's out of balance as well, then that estrogen can be unpackaged and reabsorbed into your bloodstream, which is gonna push the levels up there. Okay. So that's one of the main reasons that I see particularly in perimenopause. Let's talk about how to support your body with some simple things that you can do, especially around your cycle, so that you can help, help balance it, help have a what I suggest to you is more like a normal period, so.

During the time or around the time of your bleed, think about it as you want comfort, so you wanna go for warm, comforting iron rich meals. So this is the time to eat those slow cooked meats, broths soup stews, if it's wintry, if it's summertime, you might still wanna eat the solely cooked meats, but maybe you've got maybe you're eating them.

You've precooked them and eating them cold or something like that. Go with the, go with what feels right for you from that respect. But you're looking for warm foods that are easy to digest, easy for your body to get the most of, and we want to be able to replace the iron that's being lost during your period There.

You wanna also make sure you're eating magnesium and Omega-3 rich foods to help with your cramping. So salmon with the skin on leafy greens, flax seeds cacao. So yeah, you could have some dark chocolate. Avoid the flavors so that try and keep the sugar down with that. Or you might have like the actual.

Cacao powder and make yourself some lovely hot chocolate or something like that. Again, try and keep the sugar to a minimum. You wanna try and avoid those more cold or raw foods that will your digestion has to work harder. Your body's doing a lot around your cycle and we wanna sort of reduce its workload and just keep it at calm there as well.

Now in the second half of your cycle, so sort of around ovulation and into your period, you want to look at, well actually you could even consider this for the rest of your cycle there as well. You can tweak and adjust it a bit more depending on whether it's the first half or the second half.

The first half. You kind of generally feeling sort of more, and especially around ovulation, more outgoing, more like socializing, more like starting new projects like creativity. If you are an athlete, your performance is highest towards the end of your bleed and, in the first half of your cycle.

And then the second half is more about sort of finishing things up and finishing up your projects. Winding things down. In that week before your period's due, you might sort of have less socializing time and you might feel like going out less and sort of be withdrawing and going within.

So first half is outgoing, the second half is more Ingo. And you can definitely work your schedule, your socializing schedule, your work schedule around your cycle. This is where we really dig into the power of our cycle and ourselves as well when we're not just trying to push, push, push, push, push with exercise and our workload and keeping it at a high level the whole month round.

If you are working in that first month might be when you're doing more socially work-wise giving yourself more creative time to think of new projects and things. And second half might be more about the doing and the getting of things done, and less outgoing, less socializing there as well.

So generally eating to support your cycle. I talk about it all the time like I've done podcast episodes on the perimenopause diet. And one thing they have in common is eating a good amount of protein, your fats, your phyto estrogens and your fiber there as well. So the fiber from your vegetables, your fruit, slow carbohydrates, like starchy vegetables, whole meal grains brown rice or wild rice or other grains, whatever. Takes your fancy there as well so you can really boost that fiber that's gonna help with that healthy elimination from your bowels of that excess estrogen, and also give your body all that it needs.

The building blocks particularly iron that's gonna most impact your period in terms of heaviness and clots and headaches and migraines at the end of your bleed. Speak about your iron levels there as well. So that's another thing that can really impact your cycle and how it fields is your nutrient levels.

So it's well worth having your iron studies checked at least annually. But if you've got a history of low iron or low B12 and B nine, then you really wanna perhaps do that more regularly especially if your period starts getting heavy. It's, yeah, that's actually really important. Can't believe, I forgot to put that in my tips in my tip section, but I'm glad I remembered it now.

So yeah, so there's a few few things like that. That relates to your estrogen levels, your nutrient levels and there may be other things going on for you individually, but also knowing that, your insulin, insulin resistance can impact your estrogen levels as well. It's, it's not just ever about a couple of hormones on their own.

They're all interconnected and influence each other there as well. So what I was saying through your cycle, eating your balanced meals with your protein, fats, phytoestrogens, and your fiber take it easy with the alcohol, sugar, caffeine. I know I say that a lot, but they just don't really do your hormones any favors.

And, even though you might feel like you need them sometimes for the energy boost, they're actually part of the problem and the reason that you're feeling that way. A couple episodes ago I did one on caffeine and, how the timing or the placement of it matters as well. So make sure you go and have a listen to that too.

And like I was saying be kind to yourself and think about your cycle when you're scheduling your activities, your projects, your workload, all of those things. Think about the different phases of your cycle and trying to keep those more of your social events around the first half and, of ovulation and the second half or the week leading into your period.

Think about trying to keep it quiet and honoring your body and what it needs when you know it's going through a massive process every month. In creating the endometrial lining and then shedding it, and then creating all the red blood cells that it's lost and the iron and those things. So we really tuning into that and, honoring the work that our body does and supporting that there as well.

So if you're nodding along and thinking, oh gosh, I had no idea my period was telling me all of these things you're definitely not alone. We are really taught to ignore it and just want it to be over and done with. Like you think about it, oh we celebrate. If we only have a couple of days of a bleed, or we think yes, so exciting and perimenopause and menopause, I'm gonna get rid of my period.

But those hormones, those female hormones do so much for us. We wanna hold onto it for as long as we can, and we're gonna have a nice. Healthy hopefully you'll see now what normal can, should look like for you and work towards that. And you don't have to figure it out on your own either.

 You know that I give this kind of support to my clients in my high touch or my one-to-one program, the chaos to car method, that's where I use personalized nutrition to help with your gut, your hormones, your blood sugar, insulin, cortisol, all of those things. We have a look at all of you and find your unique factors and what needs addressing there as well.

And we work on what you're eating, drinking, and doing to help you feel good, have a normal period there as well. So if that's something that you think. Would be good for you. Maybe you wanna know more about it. You can certainly book a free clarity call on my website. And we can talk about what you think your cycle might be telling you or what it needs.

 When I talk about normal periods and what can be normal, I always think about one particular client who I worked with a few years ago now, four years ago, I think. But I still remember clearly her, because she had always struggled with endometriosis and periods were a nightmare for her.

She used to get pain from like most of her cycle around, but particularly from ovulation through the first, the start of her bleed. It was horrific for her. And then one day we were talking on a session and she was like, oh, my period, just, I got my period today and I wasn't expecting it.

So she'd had no pain, no discomfort, no premenstrual warning signs as she usually had. It had literally just come on and she'd forgotten that it was coming. So yeah, she said it was her best period ever and she was excited and that continued for her as well. So yeah, your period can take you by surprise in a good way.

Not like, oh my gosh, I'm out and I've got white pants on kind of way. But that's what's possible when you stop settling for what you've been taught is normal and start listening to your body and giving it what it needs. So I wanna say before I finish up, if this episode's given you a new perspective, I'd love you to share it with the girls and young women in your life, your daughters, nieces, students, friends, kids, whatever.

Let's help them grow up knowing that cramps and chaos and heavy periods and PMS and that aren't just something to put up with. That there is a different normal that they can expect. I really want to help break that cycle and we can do that at one conversation at a time.

So thank you, friend, for tuning in to today's episode on what's actually normal when it comes to your period. If you found this helpful, please make sure to follow the podcast so you don't miss future episodes and tips. And while you're there, please rate the podcast, leave a review, or let me know what you'd love to hear more about.

All of those things help more women be shown the podcast and have the opportunity to transform their perimenopause from chaos to calm. So once again, thank you for listening and sharing your time with me today. Until next time, keep transforming your perimenopause from chaos to calm.