Increasing your progesterone and reducing your hormonal symptoms is possible for you, but only if you are not making any of these three mistakes that I commonly see. Read on (or watch my YouTube) to learn about increasing progesterone naturally: mistakes to avoid.
** Progesterone Series: Boosting Progesterone Levels in Perimenopause **
This is the fourth blog in a series on boosting progesterone naturally in perimenopause. If you have missed the previous blogs, you can grab them here: 4 Signs of Low Progesterone, Increase Progesterone Naturally with Food and Supplements to Boost Progesterone Levels in Perimenopause
Increasing Progesterone Naturally: Mistakes to Avoid
Mistake 1: Not considering what is going on with oestrogen
Progesterone and oestrogen are sister hormones, they work together. When progesterone falls in perimenopause, we naturally end up in a state of oestrogen dominance with symptoms like heavy bleeding, painful periods, breast tenderness, and rage.
To create balance we have to clear that excess oestrogen which requires strong gut, liver and bowel health. Within the microbiome, we have the estrobolome which metabolises excess oestrogen. The liver then detoxes, and the bowels eliminate those excesses. If any of these organs are sluggish or do not have the nutrients required to function optimally, excess oestrogen is re-absorbed back into our system.
For optimal oestrogen clearance, we want to eat cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale and Brussel sprouts. As well as sulphur-based vegetables like those from the onion family and bitter greens to support the liver and fibre for the bowels.
Mistake 2: Not Looking at the Whole
Further than looking at oestrogen we must consider the whole – we are all physical, mental, emotional and spiritual beings. We can’t achieve health without considering this and looking at the mind-body connection.
And it’s the same for hormones, you can’t look at one hormone in isolation. When we talk about hormones, we are talking about the endocrine system. We can think of the endocrine system as an orchestra and each hormone is one musician in that orchestra. If one musician is out, it affects the sound of the whole orchestra, but if all musicians are playing the same tune, in the right key and tempo, beautiful music is made. Your endocrine system is the same, if one hormone is out, it affects the whole system.
Mistake 3: Not addressing stress
We live in a very busy, toxic, over-stimulated world. We are all stressed. Even if you don’t feel it and think you don’t have any stress – you are chronically exposed to stress. We are not supposed to be this ‘on’ all the time. We are designed to spend most of our time in a parasympathetic rest and digest state with small amounts of time in fight or flight. In our modern world, we spend most of our time in fight or flight. This fight or flight state tells the brain that there is a threat to life, and in that state, the brain down-regulates, or even switches off any functions, that are not needed to ensure you stay alive.
So you might not be dealing with any big stresses like financial worries, caring for sick relatives, or working in a job you hate. Still, we are all exposed to daily micro-stress doses. They are cumulative – your alarm clock stresses you out of sleep, traffic jams, emails, impossible work deadlines, trains not running, meetings overrunning, ‘friends’ that drain you, doing the wrong type of exercise, eating ultra-processed foods, drinking tap water, social media, 24-hour news cycles – all of these little things add up all day every day.
When we reach perimenopause, we don’t have the sex hormones to provide us with stress resilience, then it starts wearing us down, exhausting the adrenals and that comes at the expense of hormone production. Stress hormones will always be prioritised over progesterone production.
Perimenopause is our time to examine what is serving us and what is draining our energy. We want to remove those things that drain us and at the same time, carve out some self-care time every single day. This doesn’t have to be a huge thing, even 10-mins a day will help. Just keep it simple and enjoyable so that you do it and stick with it – it could be yoga nidra, meditation, breathwork, reading, prey, being in nature, daydreaming – it doesn’t matter what it is as long as it’s quiet, restful, and it is not stimulating you.
These are the three mistakes that I regularly see when people are trying to boost progesterone naturally. But with all this information, where does one even start? I always recommend starting with food – when you are eating well and you have the nutrients required for better energy levels, then you can start looking at changes in other areas. So if you haven’t already seen it check out my blog on using food to boost progesterone, and if you prefer video format, why not subscribe to my YouTube channel?