Lara Briden - The Period Revolutionary
Leading the change to better periods
How the microbiome and gut health affects period problems including PCOS, endometriosis, PMDD, estrogen excess, and perimenopause. Treatments discussed including the use of probiotics to treat period and hormone problems.
Endometriosis is not like other period problems. It’s not a hormonal condition like PMS and PCOS. It’s affected by hormones, yes, but fundamentally endometriosis is a disease of immune dysfunction.
The medical consensus has not yet caught up with the new research into endometriosis and immune dysfunction so hormonal suppression remains the primary treatment.
There is a better way.
Every time I tweet my concern about women losing their periods to a low-carb or keto diet, I get a lot of angry responses.
“It’s purely anecdotal,” men explain to me. “There is no known mechanism, so it can’t really be happening.”
Except it is really happening. Ask anyone who works with young menstruating women. Or not menstruating, as the case may be.
PMS is my favorite thing to treat because it responds so well to natural treatment. I love to hear patients say: “I was surprised when my period just arrived. I didn’t even feel it coming.”
No irritability. No headache. No food cravings. It is possible.
The first step to easy periods is to value female hormones. Both estrogen and progesterone are powerful assets, and not something to be switched off with hormonal birth control.
I invite you to think differently about polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and the types of PCOS.
PCOS is not one thing. It is not one disease. Instead, PCOS is a set of symptoms, with the key symptom being impaired ovulation which leads to androgen excess or a high level of male hormones. Androgen excess then causes the common PCOS symptoms of hair loss, hirsutism, and acne.
To treat PCOS you must first ask: “Why, in your particular case, do you not ovulate?”