Is your life alternating between good and bad weeks? Do you want to finally stop PMS? You're not alone. Around 75% of women worldwide struggle with mood swings, headaches, insomnia, bloating and other PMS symptoms that jeopardize their work performance, relationships, and well-being up to 2 weeks every month. But isn't that just part of being a woman? Shouldn't we just accept it as a normal part of our hormone cycle?

No. On the contrary. Although it’s normal to go through a few changes as your hormone levels fluctuate to prepare for menstruation, the symptoms you have from PMS are NOT normal. Much more than a woman's issue, PMS is your body's painful cry for help. Something isn't right with your hormones.

What Is PMS?

Premenstrual Syndrome or PMS involves the nasty physical and psychological symptoms 1 to 2 weeks before your period. Typical symptoms are acne, anxiety, bloating, depressive feelings, headaches, insomnia, mood swings, tender breasts, cystic breasts, weight gain, water retention, and heavy, painful or irregular menstruation.

If every month feels like a wild rollercoaster with symptoms like these, continue reading.

From Root Cause To Solution

PMS indicates a disproportionate ratio of estrogen to progesterone, resulting in estrogen dominance. This means you either have too much estrogen or too little progesterone. Renowned Women's Health doctor Sara Gottfried, MD, compares the relation between estrogen & progesterone with fire & ice

It's estrogen that makes us feminine, but it's progesterone that keeps us happy, slim and balanced.

Now, progesterone naturally drops mid-thirties. But it's becoming increasingly common to experience low progesterone levels already at an earlier age for generation stress. My own progesterone already dropped at an all-time low at age 24. Unfortunately, hormone-disrupting diets, increased levels of stress and sugar hormones, obesity, aging, and everyday exposure to hormone-disrupting cosmetics and environments, all make sure your estrogen levels keep on rising. Too much fire, too little ice. A hotbed for estrogen dominance.

Why Should You Stop PMS?

On top of all the nasty symptoms and a blocked metabolism, if not properly balanced out, estrogen dominance may lead to endometriosis, fibroids, hormone-related cancers (such as breast cancer), and metabolic syndrome.  

Click here to join Laura's Masterclass:
The PMS Cure - Food & Lifestyle for Pain-free Periods.

4 Simple Steps To Stop PMS

But it doesn't have to be that way. We've got to boost your progesterone and lower your estrogen levels in order to stop PMS. Here's how.  

1. Work on Your Stress Resilience

Excess stress is everything that brings your body too much out of balance. Stress raises your stress hormones, such as adrenaline and cortisol. Unfortunately, the stress hormone cortisol 'steals' from your hormone progesterone, resulting in low progesterone levels and thus estrogen dominance. So, if you want to boost your progesterone, make sure you're engaging in enough self-care time.

2. Lower Your Sugar Intake

Unfortunately, excess sugar is another trigger of PMS. You need the hormone insulin to get sugar into your cells where it can be burnt for energy… But if there’s too much insulin flowing around your system, your cells become resistant to it and your liver will convert sugar into fat cells. And too bad that fat cells work like estrogen-factories. The more fat cells you have, the more estrogen you'll produce. So, insulin resistance and estrogen dominance block your metabolism and make you resistant to lose fat.

3. Leave The Red Meat, Dairy & Alcohol

Another important factor to stop PMS is to improve your estrogen breakdown. And if you are overloading your liver with other jobs, such as filtering out the toxins from red meat, dairy, and alcohol, it won't have enough power left to clear up the excess estrogen. So, why are meat and dairy so toxic? Think about it.

• It's become a standard practice to give cattle dewormers and antibiotics to help them put on weight. But this practice makes the affected livestock resistant to so-called superbugs.Superbugs are bacteria that have grown resistant to antibiotics. In 2016, the UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said that antimicrobial resistance is a “fundamental threat” to global health and safety, with an estimated 700,000 deaths each year due to drug-resistant bacteria!
• Animals are also given steroid hormones to help them grow and fatten quicker. When you consume that meat, you'll consume the same growth hormones that'll fatten you too.
• Then there are POPs (persistent organic pollutants), that may act like fake estrogens in your body and raise your estrogen levels. Some have also been shown to harm the gut barrier - leading to inflammation and negatively affecting the microbiome.
• And let's not forget what animals are fed! By consuming that meat will automatically consume what the animal has eaten. If that's genetically modified grain, that will enter your body too.

In addition, every day you're exposed to chemicals in your diet and environment such as pesticides, herbicides, insecticides, alcohol, cosmetics, cleaning products and polluted air. And your liver simply won't know what to do to filter out all these toxins, so it sends them to your fat cells to protect your organs from toxic overload.

But when also your fat cells are full of toxins, they'll be released into the bloodstream, which sends a message to your body to store even more fat. And... remember? More fat equals more estrogen production! So. If your estrogen levels are sky-high and you want to stop PMS, try to stay away from red meat, dairy and alcohol for a while and see what happens.  

4. Help Your Liver & Large Intestine Flush Out Estrogen

Whenever your liver and large intestine are congested with sugar, hormonal waste, chemicals, and toxins, it can't properly break down and remove estrogen from your body anymore. The elimination pathway is blocked and estrogen accumulates in the bloodstream keeping you stuck with all those nasty PMS issues. So, what we really want is a clear garbage process.

For that, we need to optimize the detoxification helping the liver and the large intestine with the right nutrients. Hormonal waste, chemicals, and toxins are fat-soluble. It's your liver's task to convert it into water-soluble waste so your body can eliminate it via sweat, urine, and bowel movements. In short, the essential nutrients for liver & large intestine detoxification are:

1. From Fat-Soluble Waste to Free Radicals...

• • Glutathione: found in carrots, broccoli, avocado, asparagus, and spinach
  • B Vitamins: found in vegetables such as dark leafy greens, poultry, eggs, fish, poultry, whole grains, beans, legumes, avocado, broccoli
  • Vitamin C: found in guava, black currant, red pepper, kiwi, orange, strawberries, papaya, broccoli, kale, parsley, brussels sprouts, grapefruit, peas, cauliflower

2. ...to make Free Radicals into Water-Soluble Waste...

• Amino acids: found in good quality organic poultry, fish, shellfish (if you're vegan take amino acids as supplement!)
• Selenium: found in Brazil nuts, poultry, eggs

3. ...to help Water-Soluble Waste leave the body via Large Intestine!

• Dietary fiber: up your vegetables intake so that the waste can bind in the large intestine

Click here to join Laura's Masterclass: The PMS Cure - Food & Lifestyle for Pain-free Periods.

 Bye, bye PMS!

All in all, it’s unfortunate that hormonal imbalances are often ‘treated’ with hormonal replacement therapy. It’s not uncommon for doctors to prescribe birth control pills or other synthetic hormones to treat your symptoms. By now you know that this does NOT solve the underlying problem. A lot of symptoms caused by hormones can be fixed naturally by addressing diet and lifestyle first, before turning to medicine.

You no longer have to accept feeling anything less than the most productive, energetic and happy version of yourself.

For years I struggled with PMS. My cycles were as short as 17 days. I was feeling down, held fluids for days, and woke up bathing in my own sweat. On top of that, I felt like someone was stabbing my breast tissue with hundreds of knives. But my PMS issues have disappeared ever since I changed my diet & lifestyle. And if I can do it, you can do it too. Can't wait to get started and seeing real results? Learn to eat the right nutrients and adopt the best lifestyle habits for your body type to fix YOUR hormones and feel good again with The Personal Body Reset.

Do you think estrogen dominance is causing your PMS, weight gain and other health problems? You can now join me in my latest free webinar The PMS Cure, where I'm going to show how to eat and live to battle your estrogen dominance, stop PMS and create a body and life you love.

So tell me, beautiful. Are you suffering from premenstrual syndrome? Are you as desperate as I was to stop PMS? What are you doing to restore hormone balance in your body?

We’d love to hear from you in the comments below. Because your message might be that one thing someone really needs to hear today. We often go through the same thoughts and struggles without even knowing it.

Also, when you know someone who’d love this, why not forward it to them right now? So grateful to have you with us, love! Stay on your health game and keep going for your dreams.

Laura x

Resources:

Baker, L.J. et al. (2012). Premenstrual syndrome (PMS): A peri-menopausal perspective. Maturitas, Volume 72(2), 121-125.

Direkvand-Moghadam, A., Sayehmiri, K., Delpisheh, A., & Kaikhavandi, S. (2014). Epidemiology of Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS)-A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Study. Journal of Clinical and Diagnostic Research : JCDR, 8(2), 106–109.

Farasati, N., Siassi, F., Koohdani, F., Qorbani, M., Abashzadeh, K., & Sotoudeh, G. (2015). Western dietary pattern is related to premenstrual syndrome: A case–control study. British Journal of Nutrition, 114(12), 2016-2021.

Girman, Andrea et al. (2003). An integrative medicine approach to premenstrual syndrome. American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology, 188(5), 56-65.

Gottfried, S. (2013). The Hormone Cure. New York, NY: Scribner.

Hulpach, A. (2016, September 21). UN meeting tackles the 'fundamental threat' of antibiotic-resistant superbugs. The Guardian.

Mohebbi, M., Akbari, S. A. A., Mahmodi, Z., & Nasiri, M. (2017). Comparison between the lifestyles of university students with and without premenstrual syndromes. Electronic Physician, 9(6), 4489–4496.

Vitti, A. (2014). Woman Code. New York, NY: HarperOne.