Got PMS? How hormone imbalances could be affecting your health.

Do you suffer from PMS symptoms? Maybe some cramping, low moods, hormonal break outs? These annoying, painful and sometimes quite serious complaints can be attributed to an imbalance of reproductive hormones.

These hormones take part in a delicate balancing act and affect each other in the role they play in your monthly cycle.

Low Progesterone:

Low Progesterone could be a factor if you're feeling really down in the dumps around menstruation time (PMS) feel bloated or suffer from cramps. A major cause for low progesterone is simply that we are too stressed! We all lead such hustly and bustly lives and can cause our bodies to go into "fight or flight mode" more often than we should be.

Fight or flight mode causes our adrenals to pump out cortisol- the stress hormone that, if we have an excess of too much of the time can really mess with our digestion and the ability of our bodies to utilise the progesterone it produces. Left too long and we end up with these PMS symptoms, and we can even stop producing enough progesterone to even ovulate month to month.

High Progesterone Levels:

If low progesterone is not is causing your symptoms, it could be high levels of progesterone at different times of your cycle. How confusing!! Again this could be brought about by high ongoing levels of stress, or also a sluggish liver that isn't clearing these hormones as efficiently as it should be. This can be brought on by poor diet and lifestyle choices. Some symptoms of high progesterone levels are insomnia, anxiety, low moods and bloating around the time of menstruation.

Excess Oestrogen:

Another reason you could be suffering from PMS symptoms is Oestrogen dominance. Again, a sluggish liver has a lot to do with the clearance of oestrogen from our system and lead to an excess. Stress is again a big factor- are you seeing a pattern here?? Slow digestion can also be the culprit of excess oestrogen, a lack of fibre leading to constipation means that excess oestrogen is not being excreted as it should. Ovulation pain, heavy painful periods, fibroids, sore breasts around menstruation and low mood are all symptoms of excess oestrogen.

So how do you know if you have a hormone imbalance and what imbalance you actually have going on? Your allied health professional or doctor can run a hormone profile test to see what exactly is going on and where the work needs to be done to bring these hormones back into the perfect harmony they require to work at there best.

So how do you fix an imbalance in hormones? Thats a post for next time! Stay tuned for part II!

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