Sheree 0:00
So one of the most common symptoms or complaints that I know I personally get in clinic and I know Krista sees a lot when it comes to female health, just in general, but also Hormonal Health is period pain. And firstly, I want to start off by saying that this is something that is common and not normal, right? It's something that I think a lot of us just go okay, well, it's a debilitating cramp that we get two or three days before our cycle heads or, you know, when women have got things like endometriosis, or deeper issues, deep seated issues, high levels of inflammation in the body, that are going on, they're killed over and pain, people are having to take time off work. They're having to rearrange plans. And this is not something that you have to live with. And this is something that we can do a lot about through dietary intervention supplementation, through managing our stress. You know, I know you see a lot of those to Krista, do you want to touch on it at all?
Christa 0:57
Yeah, the thing about period pain and heaviness is that it often can start in the teens, like early on the first few years of having periods, and then someone will say, Oh, it gets a lot. But it got better after I had kids, or the opposite can be true. They end up having pregnancies, and then their periods are nightmare afterwards. But no matter your age, I mean, that's the thing. It can cross the whole spectrum of of Age of having your cycles, and it can pop up at different phases of your life. But I think some women who have had it from the beginning think, oh, that's just that's just having a period. It's these intense cramps, right. But that's absolutely not normal. It doesn't have to be that way. And so I think that there are some targeted recommendations. I know you see this a lot as well. One thing top of mind, especially when I see women who are older and their perimenopausal phases is where we want to bring in some progesterone that can really help balance out some of that estrogen. We you know, estrogen dominance isn't necessarily that you're it's not that you're making too much. Most of the time, it's because you're not detoxifying it well, so you know, incorporation, we want to address that root cause of maybe some liver support through the way that you're eating and sue some supplements that really support liver health. also addressing gut issues, which I know you'll talk about a little bit, but you know, addressing gut issues, because if you're not having a good poop every day, you're not detoxifying, the hormones that your body is making, when you're not able to detoxify and get rid of these hormones, they are re circulated. they reenter the blood site blood system. So in essence, you have two months or the the estrogen, let's say because you're just not getting rid of it. So that's where we're seeing that estrogen dominant effect, not because you're making too much, but you're just not able to clear it. And that can lead to more painful periods, heavier periods, for sure more breast tenderness, bloating, all of those are signs that your estrogen is just too high. And so we want to come at it at different angles, like supplementing me with some progesterone as well as focusing on digestive health and detoxification. What do you tend to send recommendations wise to your clients?
Sheree 3:02
I think the biggest thing you know, you and I both do this in our practices is getting to the root cause, like why are we getting the pain? That's always what I asked, is there an underlying condition? Firstly, that we need to rule out? Is there endometriosis? Is there a cyst? Is this something that's deriving this cramps, that's a lot deeper. But if we're talking just about period pain, or the other name for it is primary dysmenorrhea. Right? Where it is literally Period Pain purely because it's that time of the month, there's no underlying condition going on. What it's telling us is there's inflammation in the body, whether that's driven, like you say, from having an estrogen dominance in the sense, there's too much estrogen there, whether that's from high levels of something called prostaglandins, which are what causes a lot of this cramping, a lot of this inflammation. And one of the biggest places to start really is without food, but there's also with supplementation. And so first prong is looking at things like seed oils. Now, this has had a lot of attention in recent years, but I don't think it's had enough attention. You know, with talking about canola oil, here, we're talking about soybean oil, we're talking about vegetable oil, we're talking about all of the oils that if you turn over the back of a packet of something unless it's olive oil, or coconut oil, it's probably going to inflame your body. And we're consuming more and more and more of this. And this I think is a huge part and parcel why a lot of younger woman are experiencing even more horrific cramps or even worse periods in general, or really bad hormonal imbalances is because of the high consumption of these trans fats, and his highly corrosive list seed oils, and we ended up in this position where we've got way more omega six, which is really quite toxic to the body to our omega three, which is very anti inflammatory. You know, if you're at all interested in how you probably heard, ate your fatty fish, have your salmon have your tuna have your omega threes, they're going to support your inflammation levels. And so that's a huge part of this, too. Remove, not just add in some omega threes to try and help with that don't take it to officials a day and hope for the best. Take out the stuff that's actually going to be driving a lot of the inflammation. And maybe it's gluten for you as well. A lot of people I find or dairy, a lot of the research supports period pain can be tied to dairy. So first prong is to start with the food. The second is supplements. Now, if you think about it from a cramp perspective, and a lot of us know, when you get a muscle cramp, you're going to end up wanting to take some magnesium, right, because cramping is like Oh, magnesium deficiency, a lot of people are very well aware of that, by this point. Think about the uterus in that exact same way, it's a muscle and it's going to contract. And if it's cramping, it needs magnesium, like, I'm not gonna lie and say that I have perfect period, like pain free periods every single month months of highest stress levels. Because again, the more stress you are, the more magnesium you use, I'm going to burn through more magnesium. And so I do my best to take enough. But sometimes I will get the little twinge of cramp. And I will let you just mix up magnesium because I have a powdered form right there on the spot, take that and have cramps pretty much go away. The other one that I have I use primarily just on a day to day basis with clients that I pop in to support their Hormonal Health is zinc. But an interesting study came out that show it was actually done on 103 high school students, high school girls, and it was tracking over a three month period. So you know, this is great to see all they changed, all they change was adding in 40 to 50 milligrams of zinc sulfate. So that's the form of zinc, over a three month period, three days, three to three, literally three days from the onset of the period. That's it, they didn't take this all three months, they didn't do anything else, there was no dietary intervention, right? That's the whole point of a study. That's the only thing that changed. And by the third month, there was significant reduction in pain scores. And so even if that is all you start with giving your body some of the key nutrients. And I think this is because it helps regulate those prostaglandin levels, it helps support some of the enzymes involved in regulating a hormonal function, that is what support and versus the placebo with a girl. So no, not really any reduction at all and my pain. So those are my primary interventions,
Christa 7:17
same cutting out sugar, cutting out dairy, you know, experiment with it, see what your body how your body responds, you know, everybody's body's going to respond slightly different. But I think, you know, instead of running a million tests and food sensitivity tests and things like that, I'd say try it for a full month like just say, hey, for 30 days, I'm going to really cut back on sugar, I'm going to avoid dairy cows dairy completely, right, and supplement with the zinc and the magnesium. Those are my go to as well. You know, I'm not a big, I always tell people to avoid incense when possible, because it really does disrupt the gut lining and things like that. But NSAIDs or actually, Motrin, Advil, things like that, you know, I do you, for the most part, how people avoid those when they can, but they are very effective for that prostaglandin reason, like it does cause pain, that contraction and everybody, you know, genetically, some people are more responsive to that stimuli, pain wise, and then the next and in that case, I would say, you know, maybe two days a month if you need to use an NSAID that can be really effective at getting you to where you can go to school, you can go to work, you know, and function that they can also bring down some of the heaviness of the period. So in those cases, I do say, hey, let's let's use an NSAID. Curcumin is another really great one to just lower inflammation and that pain response in general. So doing high amounts of curcumin, let's say even 1000 milligrams morning, 1000 milligrams at night, can really also be helpful to drive down that inflammation. Yeah. What are your takes on heat, like heat for you know, warm baths where we heat? You know, I think that can also be helpful. Have you found that helpful for people?
Sheree 8:56
Yeah, I think this is this brings up a great topic, because we're seeing such a huge trend. And we've talked about it numerous times, like cold showers, cold immersions, ice baths, all that sort of thing. And those are fantastic. But it really lends us to, okay, this heat side of things, our bodies, and it was quite interesting, you know, when I was personal training, and had one of my Asian clients because she was really familiar with Chinese medicine. Look at me and pointed my drink bottle was she actually had a like a language barrier. And she's like your tummy cramps, and she knew I had tummy cramps that day. She's like, why are you drinking cold water? And it was the first instance that I was like, Oh, wow, I of course, the body gets more stagnant in the cold blood gets more stagnant when you're cold, you need to actually encourage the blood flow. And so whilst I'm a huge, huge fan of cold showers, three to four days before my period, and the days on my period, I avoid any kind of cold or particularly because you think about a shower or even an immersion that's really cold around your core. You're having the running water where you're sitting in that cold If you're actually constricting the blood flow, which means the uterus might have to cramp a lot more to get the blood moving, and getting it out of the body. So heat is huge. And with that comes things like ginger. Ginger is actually a beautiful food or supplement you can take, that helps heat up the body. So leaning into more of these pro heat, things. And that being said, a lot of Chinese medicine also does talk to the need to not look like the science of staying away from saunas, so not having the excessive heat either, because we do tend to have a lot of heat in the body when we're on our period. So it's really like, Okay, this is just a small window of time that you might keep some of those practices out and focus on heating up the body internally with its that you need the ginger to help suppress the cramping. Or you're heating up the body with a heat pack or you know, that sort of thing. But ultimately, at the end of the day, if you're getting period cramps, there's something it's feedback, biofeedback, that something's not right, we want to get to the root cause.
Christa 11:05
Yeah, I think it's also allows, you know, the opportunity to really explore the ebb and flow of hormones and really be aligned with your activity levels for your cycle. So you know, just to really recap, exercise and activity, you want to be kind of low key that first week, the week of your periods, so longer walks, yoga, stretching, that kind of a thing. And then I reserved week two and week three, for more intense activities, longer runs, I'd say more intense lifting heavier weights, we have those hormones, then higher testosterone and estrogen, this anabolic hormones that help to support muscle growth anyway, and then reserving week four, which is the week before you anticipate starting your period to go back to lower intensity workouts, maybe longer, low intense cardio, those kinds of activities, lighter weight lifting. So all of those things kind of come into play, right, supplementing appropriately, maybe shifting the diet, experimenting, see if cutting out dairy really helps. And then really being in tune with your body, like what does my body need each week, of course, I'm referring to people who are not on birth control, because if you're taking an oral birth control pill, you're really cutting off that that normal natural cycle, but there's so much that we can do if you're taking a birth control pill for cramps, you're not, you're still not eliminating the actual problem as to why you had the cramps. So I still challenge my patients, if they can have some other form of birth control. As far as pregnancy prevention, then let's get off of the actual pill and start to work with your body to figure out how can we heal it from the root.
Sheree 12:42
And we do have an episode all about the pill and how to transition off effectively as well. So that's if you're sitting here going okay, that's my next step. Encourage you to go back and listen to that one as well. Yeah, yeah,
Christa 12:54
I think this is really helpful. I think most women can relate, you know, every period every month can be slightly different as well. So if you come across a month, you're like, Wow, this period is really, you know, one thing to keep in mind, it takes about 90 days for about three cycles for our bodies to express whatever is going on. So sometimes you had a really stressful month, and you don't really feel the effects of that until three months later. So it's good to kind of reflect to like, what's, what's my life been over the past three months, and then you know, it takes it on the on the flip side, it takes about three months to really heal that. So some of these things that we're mentioning, you may want to experiment with for about three months, just to make sure like, Hey, am I giving my body enough time to recuperate and to, you know, have more comfortable periods where it shouldn't stop you in your tracks? It should not stop your full day. Right? So if that's the case, I would, yeah, trying these things I think can be really helpful. Now
Sheree 13:46
that's a beautiful point that you bring up I say to my clients like the egg that you ovulate with has been kind of brewing maturing for that 90 to 100 days. And you know, the study I mentioned before, I personally reckon that that is why that wasn't till the third and the third month intervention that they really saw the pain scores drop because they'd actually be implementing it like you say, for that time that it takes for the for the egg to be released. That's going to have an effect that periods beautiful points. And
Christa 14:12
yeah, I love it. I hope you guys have found this helpful. We'd like to pop in and just have a little chat about what we find we see most commonly amongst our clients and patients. And this is one that I think across the board across the age span, the lifespan of menstruation and pop up and it's uncomfortable. So yeah, I think both of our hopes is that you have listened to this and you apply some of this and let us know give us some feedback on if you've tried any of this and if it helps. Thank you
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
