PMS is fun! Said no woman ever. I’ve had gnarly PMS my whole life, my transition into womanhood arrived at a very young age and I experienced severe pain, mood swings and lethargy for so many years. Sometimes the PMS would last for 2 weeks out of every month. The ups and downs were draining and a pain for those around me, I was a little monster.
It’s easy to fluff off and say its like that for every woman and PMS is just a fact of life. This is true to a certain extent, as women it’s completely normal to experience highs and lows in energy and fertility. The monthly cycle should be honoured as a method of renewal. But for so many of us women its become a time of dread and frustration. I learned through trial,error and lots of reading about how to deal with PMS and that I could bring my hormones into balance naturally and drastically alleviate most of my symptoms.
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What Causes Hormonal Imbalance
Modern gals have to factor in a lot more than our forebears ever did when it comes to environmental substances which affect our hormones. With so many environmental toxins and strange food additives that mimic estrogen our poor bodies are getting pretty confused. Let me be clear that these substances affect men too, just in different ways. For us women its really important to have balanced levels of estrogen and progesterone. This just keeps us in check, its like ensuring you get enough good vitamins and minerals.
The top 4 substances that mess with our hormones
1.Plastic
The use of plastic in almost everything has become ubiquitous, rarely does food come in glass, even our homes are made mostly of petroleum products. While certain groups are committed to protecting the environment, we seldom think about the effect environmental plastics have on us humans. There are so many chemicals in plastic, too many to list, and even in small amounts they are all harmful to our endocrine systems. Protect yourself, and help the environment by not drinking bottled water or storing your food in plastic. Make the switch to glass or stainless steal- for your health and the environments.
I know it can seem ridiculous as were so accustumed to these things. The little changes add up to healthier hormones, my peak of crazy hormones was during a trip to India in which I consumed only bottled water. Combine that with pollution and an abundance of GMO cooking oils and you have a recipe for PMS, and other problems associated with imbalanced hormones.
2.Conventional Meat
It’s really a shame that we went and took animals that were meant to eat grass and forced them to eat grain, not just for the animal but for the humans consuming them as well. Cows, pigs, chickens, sheep, turkeys- none of them are meant to be healthy on a grain diet especially when that grain is commonly soy and nearly always GMO.
Soy contains high levels of xenoestrogen, a substance which isn’t quite estrogen but tricks the body into believing it is. There are traditional ways of preparing soy, like fermentation which break down the xenoestrogen, but you can be sure this isn’t the soy they use in our food supply.
Even if you think you don’t eat soy or GMO’s, unfortunately it’s what all the conventional animals are fed.
There’s also the issue of growth hormone being injected into animals to get them to grow faster. Just remember, you are what you eat.
Making the switch to organic, pastured or free-range meat,eggs and dairy is a huge step forward towards healthier hormones and not to mention, far more humane. Yes it’s more expensive, but our health is worth it!
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3.Water
For so many of us city water is our only option, maybe passed through a brita filter or other pseudo water filter. I hate to be the bearer of bad news but those filters really don’t do much of anything, aside from perhaps removing a bit of chlorine. The truth is there are far more harmful invisible elements in city water.
A lot of us know about fluoride already and how it calcifies the pineal gland and is very difficult to filter out. There are also residual pharmaceutical compounds which we take in. Think of how many women take birth control pills for instance, what happens to those hormones or any other pharmaceutical drugs when we urinate? A portion of them re-enter the water supply and are far from being filtered out. An excess of synthetic hormones will mess anyone up, is it a coincidence that rates of reproductive cancers are skyrocketing?
The solution here is to drink the best, most pure water you can find. This might require an adventure to find natural spring water, if your up for it here’s a list of springs all over the world. Otherwise, look into getting a really good water filter that removes fluoride, like the Berkey Water Filtration System 
4.Pollution
To an extent, environmental pollution is out of our control, of course there are ways we can contribute to it less, but I digress. The health affects from growing environmental pollutants greatly affect our hormone health. The best way to combat the ill health affects of pollution is to consume an abundance of antioxidants to negate the excess of cell destroying free radicals.
Antioxidants are rich in fruits, vegetables, chocolate, red wine, botanical herbs, teas and coffee. Enjoying plenty of them in our diet is the best way we can fight against the physical effects brought on by pollution. Balancing estrogen and progesterone levels is helped along even more by consuming broccoli, kale and cabbage, as these foods are high in indole-3-carbinols which break down excess estrogen in the body. Eating a plant based diet has many other advantages too, such as increased energy and improved digestion just to name a few.
Bringing Back Balance
When I made these few simple changes in my life my hormonal problems and severe PMS disappeared. I lost weight and found more energy to achieve my dreams. Getting healthy has all sorts of positive side effects. Freeing yourself from pain and dread for the what should be a special time of month is liberating. Now I can use my moon time as a space to reflect, cleanse and release old baggage, and I wish you the same!
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