What I'd Tell You if You Have Bloating & PMS | Ep. 136

I'm Bridget Walton, a Women's Hormone Coach helping ambitious women ages 25-40 naturally restore hormone balance, fix irregular periods, feel confident in their fertility, and resolve gut health issues without restrictive dieting.

If you struggle with missing periods, PCOS symptoms, bloating, or unpredictable cycles, this women's health podcast will teach you how to support your hormones through strategic nutrition and lifestyle changes that actually fit your busy life.

On I'm Hormonal, you'll discover natural solutions for period problems, learn how gut health impacts your hormones, and get practical hormone balance tips from a functional nutrition perspective - no more guessing what your body needs.

This episode walks you through how I would start off our work together if you came to me for support with PMS, tender breasts, bloating, and acne. Sounds like you? You will have actionable takeaways to try and see how they support your easiest period, clearest skin, and smoothest digestion yet. 

👉 DM us on Instagram @im_hormonal - we want to hear your biggest takeaway
👉 Ready to fix your hormones for good? Start at imhormonal.com/goals
👉 See real client transformations and results at imhormonal.com

Chapters

• 0:48 Introduction to Gut and Hormone Connection
• 3:37 Personal Journey with Hormonal Symptoms
• 4:56 Testing for Gut Health Imbalances
• 6:37 Nutrition Strategies for Hormone Balance
• 11:55 Exercise and Sauna for Estrogen Detox
• 12:46 Stress Management and Chemical Exposure
• 16:40 Closing Thoughts and Call to Action

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Once you realize that your gut health is really closely linked to your hormone health or to your PMS, a whole world of opportunities opens up to you, because that can be the key to improving your PMS, and that's what we're going to talk about today. If you've got daily bloating, if you experience PMS, tender breasts, anything else, then this is going to be a good episode. I'm going to walk you through a case study of how I would start out with a client who's experiencing just this. 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? Hey friend, welcome back to I'm Hormonal. I'm your host, bridget Walton, a women's hormone coach. I'm so happy that you are here and, like I said in the intro, if you are dealing with bloating every day, doesn't matter what you eat, doesn't matter what you're doing, doesn't matter what part of your cycle you're in. This is going to be a good one for you If that has also brought on some PMS, in whatever form. You are so lucky as to have that in right, because PMS could be tender breast, headaches, mood swings, irritability, could be trouble sleeping, could be an array of other challenges too. So you're in the right place. I want to walk you through how I would start to approach a conversation with a client who is going through this same thing, because, transparently right, this is exactly what I was going through years ago. This is why I started on this journey to become a women's hormone coach. To start, I'm hormonal and so, yeah, literally this is why I'm here, because I'm like this shit was lame to experience for all of those months and years. I don't want you to have to do that. So my hope for you is that today's conversation will give you some good things to think about, give you a couple of actionable or practical takeaways that you can start to experiment with in your daily life and see what is going to be moving the needle for you. So let's start this off, and I'll give you a little bit more context too. This is what was present for me back in the day. So we talked about the bloating.

Speaker 1: 2:45

When it came to my luteal phase, right that week or 10 days before my period started, my boobs were so sore I'd be like going down the stairs in my house and like have to hold my boobs because it was too much. I would have pretty regular cycles, like. My period was relatively predictable. My periods were about four days long. I did have some pretty legit cramping on day one, maybe even day two. It didn't prevent me from living my life. But, you know, certainly a factor, a part of the equation that helps when we're trying to put the picture together of what's happening. When I would have less regular cycles, it would be because I was traveling during a time or after a time of stress, so that definitely happened.

Speaker 1: 3:38

And then I was one of these adults with acne. I literally did not know until a couple of years ago that skincare lines existed for a reason other than preventing acne. I literally thought the only reason for skincare products, like I didn't get why people with clear skin would use it anyway. That's the context, that's the background that we're going in with. So what is the first thing that I would want to talk about with.

Speaker 1: 4:08

If a client came to me with this same situation and that would be looking at or talking through if using a GI map stool test, to see what's going on in more depth, in great depth, with the gut health, that's where we would start. If bloating is all the time, then is there some sort of imbalance in the gut microbiome? The gut microbiome, your gut health, is absolutely foundational to the health of your hormones and basically everything else in your body. So if we want to make progress well with your gut health, with the blooding, we gotta know exactly what is going on in there. So that's where I would start off with a stool test like the GI map, depending on what the person's experience is. What this client's experience is maybe would add in an MRT sensitivity test, a food sensitivity test, to see if there are any other triggers there.

Speaker 1: 5:09

Sometimes, of course, you'll want to remove sources of inflammation as you're trying to support your gut health and repair. So that's where we would start first, zoning in on this GI map, getting those results back so we can put together a pointed and efficient protocol that is going to help address inflammation in the gut. That is going to probably have a pretty good impact on what's going on with your acne, and then, of course, bloating too, which is that day-to-day experience. So from there we'd start the conversation about nutrition. If you've listened to this podcast before, you know that's what I'm all about here. Right? Nutrition first approaches, because if you don't have nutrition dialed in, then the other things that you do, like you know supplements or you know whatever's the flavor of the week castor oil pack, like that's not going to have the same impact, the same benefit, ability to move the needle on your hormone balance and your gut health.

Speaker 1: 6:17

So, specifically, I would want to ask about caffeine and alcohol intake. Of course, lowering intake of both of these things would be helpful. Why is that? That's because when you're consuming alcohol, when you're consuming caffeine, that's going to put a little bit more work on your liver. That's what your liver is there for, in part right To filter out these different things in your system. But if there seems to be a backup of estrogen and let me take a step back If you're experiencing PMS, it could be because you have relatively high levels of estrogen. That could be if you have a hard time eliminating those estrogen metabolites. So that's why you probably don't want to be putting extra work on your liver's plate, right? That's why taking out caffeine, taking out alcohol, especially in the second half of the menstrual cycle, I mean that's a good staple to start off with.

Speaker 1: 7:24

One other thing to focus on, to add in this time, though, would be breakfast. So, for me, at this time in my life and did I mention this at the start of the episode? I was doing this whole time restricted eating thing. I was feeling pretty good doing it, but just basically every day of the month, right, I would start eating at like 10 am, stop eating, you know, by 7 am, but my recommendation for somebody who has these experiences with their hormones and gut health would be to incorporate a breakfast, a savory breakfast, in the second half of the cycle. The reason for that is because that could be supportive of your hormone balance, right when it comes to PMS, also when it comes to, then, like you know, tender boobs, that whole part of the equation.

Speaker 1: 8:16

The other thing to think of here is that, in the second half of the menstrual cycle, after you ovulate, when estrogen levels are relatively lower for some of us, you're going to be a little bit less sensitive to insulin, meaning that your blood sugars could be a little bit more erratic. When your blood sugars are erratic, you can incorporate a savory breakfast in order to start mitigating that, start supporting more stable blood sugar levels. This is something that is a little bit more niche and nuanced. There are a lot of. Well, if I X or if I Y, then is this the right option for me? Glucose goddess super high quality, lovely resource for more information on blood sugar stability, blood sugar regulation, great book, the glucose goddess method. Check it out and see if your local library has it. You can rent it and take that for a cruise this weekend because you will learn a lot. Your blood sugar stability will have a big impact on your hormone balance and also on your PMS presentation.

Speaker 1: 9:28

Another thing and this is the third and final component for nutrition that I would recommend off the bat is starting to incorporate more cruciferous veggies and fiber, probably all month broccoli, broccoli sprouts, cauliflower radishes, kale, collard greens. They have certain enzymes in them that help to support your liver function. Also, fiber is going to be great. It can come from the same cruciferous veggies right, two birds, one stone. But fiber is really helpful, of course, for regular bowel movements and you are going to want to be having a bowel movement every day regardless. But if you have PMS and you're not having bowel movements daily, let's zone in on that and figure out how we can get that daily bowel movement pattern occurring, because that is how your estrogen is eliminated, in part through your stool, and if you're not having daily bowel movements, that can be another thing that is getting estrogen and estrogen metabolites kind of backed up in the system.

Speaker 1: 10:47

So, moving on, we talked about testing, then nutrition, I'm going to talk about exercise and then we'll wrap it up with stress, because exercise moving your body sweating I would recommend to somebody in this situation to check out the sauna at their gym during the luteal phase. I mentioned just a moment ago that estrogen is eliminated through your stool. Yes, also some through your urine and through your sweat. So maybe during your luteal phase your energy levels aren't in a place where you want to go run six miles, or maybe you never want to run six miles. Same like. That's good too, and that's when checking out a sauna can help you to support estrogen detox and hopefully move the needle for you on your PMS experience. Friendly reminder too, that walking actually is exercise. Like walking is exercise. That can just be your workout for the day. Don't forget about that.

Speaker 1: 11:49

Okay, moving on to the topic of stress, if you have stress, that will certainly impact what's going on with your hormones. So if I were starting off with a client who again has bloating and PMS and some cramping, we would start off by strategizing a little bit about how to mitigate the stressors that life presents. Are you traveling a lot? Can you travel less? If you travel right, because I know a lot of you listening travel quite a bit for work. Well, can you pick flights that leave a little bit later so you're not waking up at 3 am? Can you pick flights that leave a little bit earlier so you're not getting home at midnight? Getting sleep that or I should say not getting enough sleep that in and of itself can be a form of stress, for sure.

Speaker 1: 12:44

On the topic of stress, something else that I love to strategize with my clients are routines. Right, I don't know if you're like me or if you're like a lot of my clients, but having some type of routine, whether it's your morning routine, your evening routine, whether it's like a little routine that you have around mealtime, something to help you kind of feel grounded, feel calm, feel like okay, I'm not just being cast into chaos despite all of the things that are going on in my busy life. Whatever that routine looks like for you, I want you to know what it is, I want you to commit to it, I want you to feel so good every time you go through your routine, because that is an underrated if you ask me way to keep stress levels down. Setting good boundaries, that's also a pretty solid way to keep your stress levels down. But as it relates to, like, things that you can control, sometimes we can't control our schedule, sometimes we can't control what our mother-in-law thinks about you know something, but sometimes creating a routine that works for you like that is something I'm optimistic will have a positive impact on your stress and I actually, if you you listen to this, you make some changes to your stress and you are feeling good. If you listen to this, you make some changes to your routine and it's really supporting and helping you to feel good. I would love to hear what is the easy change that you made and how that, like how that helped you. What did that free up for you? What did that allow you to do? Final honorable mention for stress right, we kind of covered the like mental, emotional side.

Speaker 1: 14:35

But another form of stress can be from like chemicals that we put on our skin, that we breathe through the air, and so just doing a little audit of what are the fragrances that are around me, what are the things that I'm putting on my skin and do those products have any type of chemicals in them that could be impacting my hormone health?

Speaker 1: 14:58

Think about what am I eating off of? How often am I interacting with plastics? Or especially eating off of plastics or eating off of hot plastics? Please, if you are multitasking like, come back to me, come back to me. Please stop eating off of plastics and especially off of hot plastics and especially styrofoam. That's a good recipe for chemicals from those plastics to be just leaching into your food and then into your bod and that can certainly impact your hormone balance, impact your experience in the last, you know, seven to 10 days of your cycle. I hope that this was helpful for you to hear me walk through what would be top of mind if I had somebody come to me with these experiences of bloating and PMS, and I hope you implement some of these things if that is you and that you realize, you know, before your next period shows up like you can be feeling better. You can see the results of some of these changes that you're making. You've got this. I believe in you. If you have any questions, if you want me to talk through any hypothetical clients like this, that I would walk through what's top of mind and send me a DM, you can connect with me on Instagram at I'm underscore hormonal. Okay, my friend, thank you so much for listening. That's all I've got for you today. Again, my name is Bridget Walton. I'm a women's hormone coach and I will see you on the next one.

Speaker 1: 16:38

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 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. All right, we'll see you on the next one.