Lara Briden - The Period Revolutionary
Leading the change to better periods and hormones
How hormonal factors such as PMDD, perimenopause, and hormonal birth control influence mood and sleep. Articles explore the role of mast cell activation, histamine, and body-identical progesterone.
The pill was an important step in our struggle to legalize contraception. I celebrate that, of course. Hormonal birth control can also be medicine for debilitating conditions such as severe endometriosis and very heavy periods. I celebrate that.
What I don’t celebrate is the distorted message that hormonal birth control is the only birth control. And I don’t celebrate its widespread prescription as “hormone balance” for any hormonal symptom that might arise in women and teenage girls.
As my patients can tell you, I prescribe magnesium for almost every hormonal condition, including PCOS, insulin resistance, PMDD, migraines, and perimenopause.
Magnesium deficiency is common because modern soils are depleted, and your body dumps magnesium during stress. So, if you’re under stress, you probably need magnesium.
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Ovulation is beneficial because it’s how women make hormones.
Every month, as the ovaries get ready to release an egg, they pump out estrogen. Estrogen, in turn, stimulates serotonin, which is why women can be more outgoing and energetic in the few days leading up to ovulation.
Every month, after ovulation, one of the ovaries releases a huge amount of progesterone—the calming, soothing, anti-inflammatory hormone.
Our stress response system—the HPA axis—is calibrated for intermittent, severe threats such as lions. Not for the incessant, trivial threats of modern life, such as difficult phone calls. We don’t want our hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis to charge up and release cortisol every time we drive in heavy traffic, but it will do so.
If you’re like me, you’re trying to ease up on the HPA throttle. I practice yoga. I take magnesium. I switch off my computer in the evening like a good naturopath. I sternly instruct my HPA axis to power down, but I must say that it does not always listen. If I could only be more Buddha-like, then I would not need to coax my HPA axis with a herbal medicine like Rhodiola.