I'm Hormonal | PCOS, periods, gut + hormone health insights

Hormone Basics 101: The Crash Course We Should've Gotten in School | Ep. 96

• Bridget Walton, Women's Hormone Coach • Episode 96

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Foundational knowledge about your menstrual cycle is essential before you can effectively address hormone imbalances causing problematic symptoms. Understanding the key hormones at play during different phases helps you recognize patterns and identify potential imbalances affecting your health.

• Five important hormones regulate your menstrual cycle: estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, luteinizing hormone, and follicle stimulating hormone
• Your "cycle" refers to the entire month from day one of your period to the day before your next period starts
• The cycle divides into two halves with ovulation as the midpoint – estrogen dominates before ovulation, progesterone after
• For more detail, think of four phases: menstrual, follicular, ovulatory, and luteal phases each with distinct hormone patterns
• Cycles naturally change as you age, especially during your 40s when progesterone decreases and later when estrogen fluctuates
• Red flags include periods shorter than 2 days or longer than 7 days, cycles under 21 or over 35 days, inconsistent cycle lengths
• PMS and period pain are common but not normal – they indicate hormone imbalances worth investigating

Referenced episodes:

  • Cycle Syncing Series, Ep 6: A phase by phase break down | Ep. 45

  • Cycle Syncing Series, Ep 4: Workshop to get clear on your phases | Ep. 43

  • 7. Estrogen & Why It's Critical for Your Cyclical Health



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Speaker 1:

Now it is going to be pretty dang challenging for you to get a grip on what is going haywire with your hormones if you are not yet savvy on the basics of your cycle, and that is why, in today's episode, we are going to be going back to those basics to do an introduction to your menstrual cycle hormones. If you are just at the start of this journey, figuring out what's up with your period, then you're in the right spot. Let's dive in. Welcome to I'm Hormonal, your source of information about women's hormone health and how to support your body. Naturally, I'm your host, bridget Walton, and I'm a certified functional hormone specialist and menstrual cycle coach. I am on a mission to hold these hormone conversations with as many menstruators as possible, because you deserve easier access to accurate information about what's up with your unruly menstrual cycle and with your fertility mysteries. Don't you think it's time that we figure this out once and for all? Hello, hello and welcome to this 96th episode of I'm Hormonal. I'm your host, bridget Walton, and I just want to say a special welcome to those of you who are listening to I'm Hormonal for the first time today. I'm so glad that you found me. I've loved hearing feedback from those of you who, yeah, are listening for the first time, have questions, have feedback. I'm always interested and enthusiastic to hear what you've got to say. So you can connect with me on Instagram at Bridget Walton, if you want to send me a DM there and let me know what you think, what questions you have or anything else. If you've listened to the podcast before, then welcome back to you and thank you for coming back. I know you guys have so many options, so it is certainly not lost on me that you're spending some time with me in your earbuds. I started this podcast a while ago I guess a couple years ago now because I think it's so important to share what I know and what we all collectively know about how our cycles work, how our hormones work, how our bodies work, because you really deserve to understand what's happening in your body and you deserve to feel better. You deserve to feel your best. So that's what we are here to do. Like I said in the intro, it's going to be really tough to understand what's going on with your hormones if you don't have a good baseline for how does my cycle work? What hormones do I even need to be thinking of, and just have a place to start. So that is what we're going to be focusing on today as we dive back into the basics together of the menstrual cycle, and hopefully this will be a really good resource for you if you are just at the beginning of your journey, trying to understand what's going on with your period and why. This will help you to be oriented, have some more context for what's going on and, hopefully, better allow you to express what is happening in your body and therefore note what's happening, keep track of it. So, with all of that out of the way, let me just give you a rundown of the five questions that I'm going to be walking through throughout this episode, so you know where we are headed together.

Speaker 1:

The first question that I'm going to be speaking to is this question of what hormones should I be aware of? I'll walk you through the five most common or the five most relevant hormones as it relates to cycles. Next, we'll talk about how you can keep track of your cycle and, again, how you can talk about it. Third, we'll talk about how you can keep track of your cycle and again, how you can talk about it. Third, we'll look at how your cycle is broken up. Right, we'll break it up into some phases so you can make sense of you know where does the first half start, and then the second half, and why do you even care about halves, right? So we'll get into that. We'll answer the question of how does your cycle change over time as you get older. What are those changes that you can expect to see? And then, fifth and final, we'll talk about what are some of the red flags to look for when it comes to your cycle. So you know a little bit more context, for, okay, this is normal and this isn't normal. This is something worth investigating.

Speaker 1:

Let's dive into this first question of what hormones you should be aware of. There are five that we're going to touch on. These five will be estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, luteinizing hormone and follicle stimulating hormone. Now, now I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that those first three estrogen, progesterone and testosterone are going to be the most top of mind, right? You remember that from eighth grade biology or whatever class, health class, maybe back in middle school and starting, starting with estrogen first. I mean, estrogen is one of the most important hormones. Well, they're all important. We need them all to be balanced.

Speaker 1:

But when we think of women's hormones or menstrual cycle hormones, estrogen is what comes to mind. Estrogen is the hormone that is going to help your body get to the point of ovulation, of releasing that egg from your ovary in order to potentially get pregnant. Right, but whether or not your intention is to get pregnant, it's important that that cycle still happens each month. A lot of good health benefits there. We can get into that later. So I also want to mention, too, that while estrogen is really important for the menstrual cycle, it's also beneficial for skin health, heart health, bone health, brain health and more. So it's not just something that impacts your cycle, but it can also impact other parts of your life, other parts of your experience, and I think that's really important to know.

Speaker 1:

Now progesterone, the second hormone that I mentioned. This is kind of the opposite like estrogen, progesterone, yin and yang a little bit. I don't know, maybe somebody else would disagree with me on that, but to me, right when we think of are your hormones balanced? Or you know, if you're having that conversation with your provider, with your friend, most of the time, what you're talking about is this balance between estrogen and progesterone. So, again, progesterone is predominant in the second half of the menstrual cycle, which is after ovulation, and that's because progesterone is produced from the spot for the unofficial term but from the corpus luteum, which is that follicle from which you ovulate in the middle of your cycle. So what does this actually mean? Why do we care? Why is Bridget saying that progesterone is produced from this same spot that the egg is released from? So that's just to tie this together in your mind that if you are not ovulating, then you're not going to be producing progesterone. Or if you don't have a quality ovulation maybe it's like a relatively weak corpus luteum then that can negatively impact your progesterone levels, lower than what you expect to see or than what you want to see, so that you can either carry a healthy pregnancy or just so that you can feel more relaxed. Right, progesterone will have, for most menstruators, a good impact, a positive impact that we like to see as it relates to nervous system regulation and stress and sleep. Okay, so super quick recap Estrogen predominant in the first half of the cycle, then progesterone in the second half.

Speaker 1:

Where does testosterone fall in this picture? Well, testosterone is definitely an important hormone for women, even though we think of it as being just a male hormone. Yes, certainly it's found in greater quantities in men's bodies, but it's really important because actually estrogen is made from testosterone in our bodies. So TLDR testosterone is important. It is going to peak mid-cycle. It's right around the time of ovulation, and so you know, if you're somebody who maybe you're wondering already if you have PCOS, or you say, okay, my cycles are really unpredictable. That's why I'm listening to this episode in the first place, while there certainly are other things to look at too. When testosterone is high, when it's a little bit out of whack, then that can certainly connect to irregular cycles. So something to think of there.

Speaker 1:

Now, the last two that I wanted to touch base on luteinizing hormone and follicle stimulating hormone. We'll just call them LH and FSH. These are important, especially if you are looking to conceive right. Lh is the hormone that will peak just ahead of ovulation. It's that like last signal to your body, like go, go, go, it's time, it's time to ovulate. And follicle stimulating hormone, as you may have guessed, is the hormone that helps to stimulate follicle growth, which is going to be then impacting how much progesterone you're producing. So there are more hormones than just these five to be aware of, but these are the five that I want you to be aware of for where we're at now and to start off with whatever troubleshooting that you might be looking to do.

Speaker 1:

Now let's talk about how you can keep track of your cycle and how should we talk about it Now? You may have already noticed or asked yourself a question on this, because you're hearing me say cycle, not really saying period. So let's differentiate between a cycle and your period. Now, your cycle is the entire month, right? Or another way to say that, from the first day of your period, like think of the first day of your most recent period. That was cycle day number one, and then that cycle went all the way through until the last day before your next period started. Or the cycle that you're currently in now will go until the day before your next period will start. Do you follow me? Hopefully that makes sense.

Speaker 1:

But this is all to say your cycle. That does not denote the time when you are bleeding that would be your period but it denotes the time from day one to day one, which is ideally from about 21 to 35 days or a little bit closer to that 28 day range. That's really sort of classic. That's what we know from the textbooks as what to shoot for when you are talking to your like, or rather when you're logging in your app or just talking to your friend about something and you say, okay, my period lasts for seven days, but my whole cycle lasts for 29 days. That is the difference between those two things. So hopefully I'm not totally beating a dead horse here, but I think there is some confusion sometimes when I'm working with clients, or even I've had, you know, when you go to the doctor and they always ask you about the first day of your last period, and I had a nurse once who was so confused when I was like oh well, I'm on cycle day 14 now, so I guess my period must have started. You know, whatever the date was, she's like oh my gosh, are you bleeding? You've been bleeding for 14 days. I was like my girl no, no, I got to send her this podcast maybe so she can know that your cycle is the whole month. Okay, I think I've gone on too long about this, so let's move on to the next question of how is the cycle broken up Now?

Speaker 1:

You heard me before reference the first half or second half of your cycle, and I'll break it that down a little bit more now. Let's start by looking at cycle day one. And so that, again, is the first day of your period and this begins, you guessed it, the first half of your cycle. Now this is going to go all the way up to the time in your cycle when you ovulate. You may not know when you ovulate because for a lot of gals there aren't any physical symptoms of when you ovulate. But I'll get into that a little bit more in just a second. Just know that generally around the middle of your cycle, around 10 to 14 days before your next period begins, that's when you ovulate. And so it's this time between the first day of your period and ovulation, which is the first half of your period, and ovulation, which is the first half of your cycle.

Speaker 1:

Now throw back to the most common hormones that we talked about for your cycle. The first half of your cycle is when estrogen is the predominant hormone. It's growing, growing, growing until you get to mid cycle. Then, once you cross that line, cross this ovulation line and are in the second half of your cycle, which is the time between ovulation and that last day before your next period begins. That's again when progesterone is predominant and that's when you know if you have a hormone imbalance. It oftentimes would present in a way. Let me actually back up one second to make this make more sense For those of you who experience PMS right before your period.

Speaker 1:

You are just not feeling like yourself. You have breast tenderness, maybe you have really heavy bleeding once your period does start Just those kind of unsavory symptoms that happen towards the end of your period. That can be a signal that progesterone and estrogen are off balance. Now I'm mentioning that here because knowing which half of your cyclin and which hormone should normally be predominant, that can be a good clue to what's going on. Now. It's also worth mentioning that. Or I should say, sometimes you'll hear people talking about the four phases of the menstrual cycle. Sometimes people is me right. If you want to check out episodes from, I think, july, August, I'll I'll link it in the show notes of 2024, I did a whole series on cycle syncing and I really broke down the four phases, what's happening hormonally in each of those four phases, and I will give you the light version of that in just a moment here.

Speaker 1:

But when it comes to the basics two halves let's not overcomplicate it and understand which hormones are most relevant in each half. If you do want to get a little bit more granular with it, then let's identify the four phases, if you want to break it up that way. The first phase is the menstrual phase. That's the time when you are on your period, you're bleeding, and it's followed by the follicular phase, now follicular follicle. This is the time when the follicle is preparing. Essentially, this is when estrogen levels are rising, and so it's the time between the last day of your period and that time just before ovulation. It would logically follow then that the next phase is the ovulatory phase. So stick with me here. This is going to be the phase that's about three or four days long, just in the middle of your cycle, kind of when estrogen and testosterone are at their highest levels throughout the cycle, and once those levels start to go down, you're going to roll right into the luteal phase. This is the normally 10 to 14 days before your next period begins, when yes, you guessed it progesterone is the predominant hormone. I'm so sorry for saying this 8,000 times, but I hope you'll remember it. And the luteal phase is also the phase when most people are experiencing these unsavory period symptoms, right, oftentimes an indication that progesterone levels are relatively low. When estrogen is relatively high, and you'll want to focus on okay, well, why is estrogen high and what can we do about it?

Speaker 1:

Now, the next question that I want to address is how does my cycle change over time? Right, you probably know that your cycle, from when you were 13 to you know, in your 30s, will be different, and it will surely change into your 40s and beyond. So if you are a gal who you're in your 30s, late 30s or maybe in your 40s and you notice some changes, that is to be expected, because we all go through this second puberty, right, like reverse puberty as we approach menopause. So this is going to be just a super short section, but really, what I want to do here is clarify for you that sometime in your late 30s more likely 40s you'll notice that your cycles start to lengthen out, right, instead of 28 day cycles, they might get longer, into 30 some days, and that is going to be a signal that your progesterone levels are decreasing. And then later on, you're going Cycles will become more erratic, right? If you hear about hot flashes, that's often what happens when estrogen levels are like going up and down really rapidly and then, finally, your cycle will come to an end and that's when you'll see that follicle stimulating hormone is at its highest and that's kind of you know, that's the way to confirm where you're at as it relates to menopause. So all of those details aren't super important for you to store in your memory right now, or maybe they're not, but I wanted to cruise through them because I want you to understand how estrogen, progesterone and follicle stimulating hormone will change throughout your life and how they can, when in different amounts, impact your cycle length, impact any symptoms that you're experiencing and, overall, indicate what is your fertility looking like.

Speaker 1:

Now, the last section that I want to run through with you, this last question I should say, is as it relates to red flags. And what do I mean by red flags? I mean, what are the signs that you should look for to indicate that something is a little bit off balance with your hormones? Now let's dive in. The first red flag would be if you notice that your period is less than two days or more than seven days. You probably don't need me to tell you that if your cycle is more than seven days, rather, if your period is more than seven days, that that's A probably annoying for you, but B can be an indication that you're not ovulating, because if you were, then your cycle would be a little bit shorter. Now there's some nuance, but regardless, let me come back to home base here. Two to seven days is what you want to see, and the red flag would be if your period does not last a full two days or last more than seven days.

Speaker 1:

The next thing you want to look for for red flags would be a cycle that is less than 21 days or more than 35 days. If your cycle is less than 21 days long or more than 35 days long, so from cycle day one to cycle day one, that's also going to be an indication that you're not ovulating and a signal that you want to do some more investigating. The third red flag to look for would be inconsistency in cycle lengths. What do I mean by that? I mean if your last month's period well, see even me mixing up cycle and period. It's okay, but we'll work on it. If last month's cycle was 28 days, the cycle before that was 36 days, the cycle before that was 22 days. See how those cycles are all more than four days apart in variation, as opposed to 28 day than 27 day, 29 day, which are within that four day range. That's going to indicate to you that something is a little bit off. There isn't this regular cadence, regular pattern, which is a sign of balanced hormones.

Speaker 1:

Next red flag to look for would be unruly PMS. We as a society have normalized PMS and we think that everybody has it and that it's normal and, yes, a lot of people have it. But if you have PMS, it's a sign that there is some sort of imbalance and I want to really encourage you to dig into that more and identify what you can do to feel better, which you know I'm preaching to the choir. You guys are already listening to the podcast Along the same note. The next red flag that I want you to keep in the back of your mind is period pain. It's again something that is really common, but can be a sign that there is something else bigger going on and that's definitely worth investigating. If you have period pain that is preventing you from going to work, going to school, doing whatever is your normal thing, then that is outside of what we're going to consider to be normal.

Speaker 1:

All right, team, I hope that this was a good recap for you or a good intro. If it's just been like 20 years since you have looked into this stuff, let me know what questions you have by connecting with me on Instagram at Bridget Walton. But I hope this was helpful for you in really starting to get grounded in where you're at and understanding what's going on with your cycle. So thank you again for listening and I will see you on the next one.

Speaker 1:

If you loved today's episode and got something good out of it, make sure you subscribe so that these episodes show up automatically in your feed, no work needed on your side. Let's put it on autopilot. As always, I need to give you my reminder that the information I share with you here is for educational purposes only, and it should not be used as a replacement for medical advice or diagnosis. Now, if you are, on the other hand, in the market for some one-on-one support, then I would love for you to take me up on my offer for a free strategy call. You can find these links and more in the show notes.