Hormone Imbalance Symptoms in Women: What They Mean and How to Feel Like Yourself Again

Understanding Progesterone: Your Secret Weapon for a Joyful Menopause

In this episode of Joyful Menopause, host Lynda Enright discusses the often-overlooked hormone progesterone, which plays a crucial role in managing menopause symptoms. 

Using the story of a woman named Sue, Lynda illustrates the common struggles women face during perimenopause and menopause, such as mood swings, sleep issues, and exhaustion. 

The episode covers the importance of progesterone balance, how stress affects hormone production, and provides practical tips on diet, lifestyle, and stress management to help women feel more like themselves. 

Lynda also emphasizes the significance of understanding hormone shifts and offers actionable advice for navigating menopause with wisdom and energy.

00:00 Sue's Story: The Unseen Struggle of Perimenopause

00:18 Introduction to Joyful Menopause

00:35 Understanding Progesterone: The Unsung Hero

01:27 The Role of Progesterone in Your Cycle

02:20 Perimenopause: The Hormonal Rollercoaster

03:16 Navigating Menopause: What to Expect

04:10 Supporting Your Adrenal Glands

04:33 Managing Stress for Hormonal Balance

05:21 Diet and Lifestyle Tips for Hormone Health

07:05 Creating a Sleep Routine for Better Rest

08:03 Combating Inflammation with Nutrition

09:05 Sue's Transformation: A Success Story

11:06 Conclusion: Empowering Your Menopause Journey

When you're ready, here are 3 ways I can help you to feel your best during perimenopause and menopause:

1. Want more science-backed health tips? Click here to sign up for my free weekly newsletter for practical advice on navigating menopause with confidence:

2. Click here to get the free guide: 5 Natural Ways To Reduce Menopause Symptoms.

2. For more information about Lynda and how she supports women on their health journey, click here to learn more.

3. Interested in seeing if nutrition coaching with Lynda is right for you? Click here to book a free discovery call with Lynda.

Transcript

0:00

Sue was only 42 when she started waking up at 3:00 AM every night. Her heart racing, her mind spinning, her mood was unpredictable. Her brain fog made work harder and she felt exhausted every single day, but no one had told her that this could be perimenopause. Sound familiar? Hello and welcome back to creating a Joyful Menopause. I am so glad you're here today. We're talking about a hormone that doesn't get talked about enough progesterone stick around and I'll tell you Sue's story, more details and how the changes that she made turned everything around for her. You've probably heard a lot about estrogen when it comes to menopause, but estrogen has this partner, progesterone, and when it starts to drop during perimenopause and menopause, a lot of the symptoms that we blame on estrogen are actually tied to this missing piece of the puzzle. If you're in perimenopause, it might feel like your hormones are all over the place, kind of like puberty in reverse. It's not your imagination. Today I wanna help you understand what's happening with progesterone, why it matters, and what you can do with your diet and lifestyle to feel better as your body changes. Let's get started. Menopause doesn't have to feel like you are living in someone else's body. Your host, Lynda Enright, has spent the last 25 years helping women to thrive in midlife. Here you'll find science-based practical advice that you can start using today to get real results for your health. Welcome to Joyful Menopause. Progesterone is one of the main female hormones like estrogen, but while estrogen often gets all the attention progesterone quietly does a lot behind the scenes, especially when it comes to how we feel on a day-to-day basis. During the first half of your monthly cycle, estrogen goes up. That's part of the cycle that prepares your body for ovulation. But after ovulation, then progesterone kicks in, and that's when we often feel calmer. We sleep better and just kind of feel more balanced overall. Progesterone also helps to reduce inflammation, support mood regulation, improve sleep quality, and even protect your bones and your brain. So it's a pretty big deal. The tricky part, we only make a good amount of progesterone if we ovulate, and as we get older, that starts to happen less often, which leads us into what happens next. As you move into, for most women, forties and beyond, your cycles can start to get more unpredictable. One month, you might have a normal period the next month. It's heavier or comes earlier, or it doesn't come at all. That's because you're starting to have cycles where you don't ovulate, and when you don't ovulate, your body doesn't make progesterone or make very much progesterone. So estrogen is still there sometimes in high amounts, but there's not enough progesterone to keep it in check. So this is when a lot of women start noticing things like heavier periods, more mood swings and irritability, trouble sleeping, feeling edgy, overwhelmed, or just plain exhausted. That frustrating brain fog in menopause when you can't focus or remember what you walked into the room for. So what can be happening here is estrogen dominance, not because you have too much estrogen, because you don't have enough progesterone to balance it out. So then once you reach menopause, which for a reminder, that means you haven't had a period for a full year, then ovulation stops altogether. So that means progesterone production mostly stops too. Your adrenal glands. Those glands that help with stress make a little bit of progesterone, but it's not very much. So your body now has to adjust to this new lower level of hormones and that period of adjustment is what can cause so many of the hot flashes symptoms, perimenopause, fatigue and brain fog, menopause experiences that women talk about. The good news, there are things you can do to support your body through it. Today we are talking about your hormone progesterone and how it changes throughout perimenopause and into menopause. What you can do to support your hormone balance so you can feel like yourself again. So let's get into what you can do about it. Let's start with your adrenal glands. These little glands, they sit on the top of your kidneys and they're best known for pumping out stress hormones like cortisol. But what many women don't realize is that after menopause, your adrenals actually step in and take over some of the hormone production. Especially when you're ovaries, stop doing it. So that means that your stress level really matters. If your adrenal glands are constantly working over time because you're stressed, you're tired, you're skipping meals, maybe you're running on caffeine, they can't do their best job of helping with hormone balance. So this is why working on balancing your nervous system is the first thing we work on in my Joyful Menopause coaching program. If we don't get the nervous system in balance, it's harder to get the benefit of the other things like diet and exercise. So what can help your adrenals? First, managing stress in ways that feel doable, like deep breathing, just even a little bit. Take a few deep breaths before you're eating or when you're washing your hands. Those little bits can really add up. Going for a walk, just a short walk. Getting outside in nature or simply saying no more often would be helpful too. Second thing you can do is eat enough protein and get nutrients like vitamin C and B vitamins. B vitamins play a really important role in hormone production, your stress response, and overall health of your adrenal glands. And third, avoiding long periods without food. Intermittent fasting is something I talk about in another episode, and a lot of women are trying it because they think it might be helpful to lose weight it, and it can be for sure, but it's not for everyone. So if you're having symptoms like you're feeling shaky, anxious, or tired because you haven't eaten, that's your body telling you that something is not working quite right. Another big support is keeping a regular rhythm in your day. So all your body's hormones, they're all connected and they follow a natural daily cycle. So one of the simplest things you can do is go to bed and wake up around the same time every day, even on the weekends. Also, just eating your meals at consistent times. This helps your blood sugar and your hormones stay better balanced. Think of it like giving your body a routine that it can count on your hormones love that kind of predictability. Now let's talk about two big areas that affect how you feel also. Huge areas of sleep and inflammation. So first up, menopause sleep problems. One of progesterone's superpowers is helping you get good restful sleep. So when progesterone drops, it's common to wake up in the middle of the night, have trouble falling asleep, feeling maybe wide awake at 3:00 AM. Sound familiar? Something I find so many of the women I work with are struggling with, and I can really do. I get it. I've experienced the same thing. Creating a great sleep routine is a good place to start. This is something we work on in my Joyful Menopause Coaching program like my client, Sharon, I have seen so many women find a dramatic change in their wellbeing when their sleep is supported well, I have a few things you can do to support your sleep. Turn off screens an hour or even two before you go to bed. Blue light confuses your brain to think that you should be awake longer. Keep your bedroom cool and dark, and get sunlight in the morning to reset your body clock. It really works. The recommendation is 10 to 30 minutes in the morning to get outside and absorb some sunlight. I get it. It's easier said than done. Sleep can be elusive for women in peri menopause and menopause for sure. The first place to start is creating the best environment you can, but there are other things that are important too, including nutrition, exercise, and stress management. All things I work on with my private clients. Then there's inflammation. As estrogen and progesterone go down, inflammation tends to go up. Both hormones can help to suppress inflammation. So when you have increased inflammation, your symptoms can be worse. Things like joint pain, brain fog, menopause mood changes and fatigue in menopause can feel so much worse. So what can you do to calm inflammation? Number one, eat a variety of colorful vegetables, leafy greens like kale, spinach, and collard greens, berries including blueberries, raspberries, black berries, sweet potatoes, colorful peppers. Second thing you can do, you can include nourishing fats like olive oil, avocados, wild salmon. And third herbs and spices. Things like turmeric, rosemary, and ginger. These are underrated for sure and can be really powerful, natural anti-inflammatories. And number four, make sure you're getting enough protein and eating regularly to avoid blood sugar crashes. Before we go, I wanna share a quick story about Sue. Sue came to me in her early forties feeling completely out of sorts. She said things like, I just don't feel like myself anymore. And I, I hear that exact sentence often. She was exhausted. She couldn't sleep well. Her mood was up and down. She was gaining weight even though nothing had changed with her diet. And her brain just felt foggy. But because she was only 42, she wasn't thinking about perimenopause yet. In fact it hadn't even crossed her mind when we started working together. I asked about her family history when her mom or her sisters had gone through menopause, and that opened up a really important door. She found out that her mom and her older sister had also started experiencing symptoms in their forties, just hadn't come up. They hadn't talked about it, and that's so common. So many women go through this alone, not realizing what's going on. So once Sue understood that her symptoms were tied to hormonal shifts, especially declining progesterone something shifted for her. She said, I finally feel like I'm not crazy. There's a reason, an explanation for how I've been feeling. So we began with nutrient testing to see what her body was really needing at this stage in life. We found what nutrients she was lacking in her diet and where her levels were low, and I helped her create an eating plan and supplement regimen that brought her back up to normal levels. And one of the first things we focused on was supporting her adrenal glands. Sue had been under a lot of stress for years, growing her career, raising her kids, always pushing through. Her body needed nourishment and recovery. She worked on stress management techniques. I helped her to figure out things that would actually work in her busy life. So again, all these things like, sounds good, but when am I gonna fit that in? And that's what I helped her to do, is like really figure out how it was gonna get incorporated into her life. She really started noticing differences pretty quickly. She started sleeping better. Her mood evened out. The weight started to come off naturally, and maybe most importantly, she felt calm, clear, and back in control of her body. So if you've been feeling off and wondering if it's just you, it's not, you're not alone and you're not powerless. If this episode gave you some clarity or a sense of, oh, that might be what's going on with me, I'd love for you to share it with a friend. Chances are she's wondering the same thing. And if you wanna go a little deeper, go to the show notes to download my free guide. Five Natural Ways To Reduce Menopause Symptoms. It's a great starting point to better understand your symptoms like brain fog, fatigue, mood swings, hot flashes. And to take some simple steps toward feeling like yourself again. Thanks for spending some time with me today. I will see you next time on creating a Joyful Menopause because this chapter in your life can be one of wisdom, energy, and joy. You just need the right support.