Lara Briden - The Period Revolutionary
Leading the change to better periods and hormones
The gut microbiome plays a role in many women’s health conditions including endometriosis and premenstrual mood symptoms.
The vagus nerve is a cranial nerve that activates the parasympathetic nervous system and increases levels of oxytocin and the calming neurotransmitter acetylcholine. Supporting the vagus nerve and thereby improving parasympathetic tone promotes relaxation, sleep, digestion, and healing.
Activating the parasympathetic nervous system dials down the sympathetic nervous system or fight-or-flight response. In that way, the vagus nerve acts as a built-in “stress-reset button.”
Headaches, anxiety, insomnia, brain fog, hives, and nasal congestion. These are just a few of the symptoms of mast cell activation or high histamine.
Histamine symptoms are more common in women and often track with the menstrual cycle, occurring when estrogen is high at ovulation and then again just before the period.
Thank you to my nutrition professor, who first taught me about vitamin B6 (pyridoxine or pyridoxal-5-phosphate) for PMS. It is an effective, reliable treatment for premenstrual mood problems, including PMDD.
Back then (30 years ago), vitamin B6 relieved my own premenstrual symptoms so dramatically that it became my eureka moment in natural health and menstrual health. I realized that although premenstrual mood symptoms are common, they’re not normal. And going forward, I had much higher expectations of what a period should be like.
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.