Your Period Isn’t the Main Event

I am coming to you on day 3 of my period which is slightly ironic considering we're talking about ovulation today, but when inspiration strikes what can I say??

This past week I had the absolute honor of hosting a women’s hormone health workshop for the most fabulous group of gals at the gym that I work as a trainer at.

It was my first time ever formally sharing a sliver of this knowledge to a group of people in real life, and I was shitting my pants a little bit.

It was so exciting and fulfilling, but also just a new experience which is always scary. I try to force myself to do new, scary things like this as often as possible because it really does zest up my life and attract the most incredible opportunities that I never would have known about had I stayed in my comfortable little nest.

But despite my nerves, I ended up being immersed in the most supportive, kind, nurturing group of women that reminded me why I continue to put myself out there to spread this knowledge.

Women are dependent on community and the sharing of knowledge and wisdom. WE are each other’s primary sources of information and advice because we are never formally taught what we need to know.

There were a few questions at my workshop that reminded me just how little we are taught. It is not our fault that we don’t have this knowledge already- but it is our responsibility to seek it out for ourselves.

One of the main aspects of hormone health that we discussed for a while that I find to be very misunderstood and neglected is ovulation.

Ovulation, to put it simply, is the release of an egg from its follicle that is supposed to happen every month.

Your body grows a new batch of follicles every single month, as soon as you start your cycle (day 1 of your period). Around day 6-10 of your cycle, a dominant follicle starts to emerge (whichever follicle shows the strongest traits indicative of the best chance of survival). This dominant follicle continues to fully mature, and around day 14 of your cycle, its egg is released and ushered down the fallopian tubes to either meet a handsome sperm companion or get released from the body in the next period/reabsorbed into the body along the way.

When the egg is released, the now empty follicle morphs into a temporary endocrine gland called the corpus luteum.

The corpus luteum is what produces almost all of your progesterone output that you get in the second half of the cycle. If you fall pregnant, the corpus luteum stays alive and continues pumping out progesterone to sustain a healthy pregnancy until the placenta takes over. If you don’t get pregnant, the corpus luteum stops producing progesterone and gets reabsorbed into the body, which is what signals your body to shed the uterine lining (aka start your period).

So why is this whole process so crucial?

When you are consistently ovulating, it is an indicator that your body is producing adequate hormone levels, feels safe, has sufficient nutrients, is well rested, and just generally healthy.

When we are in a state of chronic stress, from things like high pressure jobs, excessive stimulation from social media, toxic relationships, chronic or acute disease, under eating, over exercising, and/or not sleeping enough, our body will not ovulate. This is because our body’s are extremely smart, and they know when it is a safe environment for a healthy pregnancy, and when it’s not.

It is also important to note that you can technically still have a period without ovulating, which would just be considered an anovulatory cycle.

So, you can really only ensure that you are ovulating by tracking your entire cycle and your biomarkers a little bit more in depth. This includes tracking basal body temperature, cervical fluid, and potentially LH levels.

Basal body temperature is our internal body temp immediately upon waking in the morning. It is an ovulation biomarker because in the first half of the cycle, our temperature remains lower, and then as soon as we ovulate, our temperature spikes and remains higher throughout the rest of our cycle until our next period. You can track to see exactly when this spike happens.

Cervical fluid (discharge) is an ovulation biomarker because is changes in quantity, texture, and color throughout the cycle. As we approach ovulation, cervical fluid increases in quantity and becomes clear fertile quality - more stretchy, slippery, egg-white texture, which allows sperm to swim through it more easily! Immediately after ovulation, our cervical fluid reverts back to a drier, sticky/tacky, sometimes pasty and white quality.

Finally LH, luteinizing hormone. This hormone is THE primary ovulation biomarker because without fail, there will be a LH spike right before ovulation. Our LH levels remain pretty low for the first half of the cycle until 24-36 hours before ovulation when it spikes. It then immediately drops and remains low again for the rest of the cycle.

So you know that ovulation is a primary sign of health. But, just as importantly, it is an essential process for our body to form a corpus luteum, and therefore get that juicy, juicy progesterone for the second half of the cycle.

We spoke in my workshop about how the second half of the cycle, particularly the last week, is consistently the most difficult time of the month for a lot of women. This is because our hormonal shifts affect everything. They affect our energy levels, our moods, our calorie needs, our sexual interest and responsiveness, our preference in partners***, how we respond to physical pain, exercise, immunological threats, and even psychotherapy.

***women have been shown to prefer a completely different type of partner when they are in the first half of their cycle vs the second. they have also been shown to prefer a different type of partner when they are on hormonal birth control (hormone levels are suppressed) vs. off birth control. some women have even lost attraction to their partner that they begun a relationship with on birth control and then later got off of birth control (pretty crazyyyyyyyyy). this is mainly because of evolution - our ability to find a strong, healthy, suitable partner when we are actually fertile was historically crucial to our survival. women are essentially biologically hardwired to prefer men with higher testosterone levels in their fertile phase, and can literally differentiate/prefer the scent of men with higher testosterone, which can signal good genes, health, and higher sexual desire*** (I think this is insanely cool if you can't tell).

What’s even crazier, considering how important our cyclicity is to our entire life experience, is that science and medicine have essentially completely ignored the second half of women’s cycles. They hardly include women in studies to begin with, but when they do, they are almost ALWAYS in the first half of their cycle, when estrogen is dominant and everything is happy and rainbows and about sex.

This leads to the vast majority of women constantly living in accordance to recommendations that were only created for women in the first half of the cycle. How they work, eat, socialize, exercise, sleep, etc. When women do not understand that they are cyclical beings whose needs shift throughout every single month, that is when we see intense PMS, inflammation and really, really difficult luteal phases. When we begin to understand the function and purpose of the changes our bodies undergo across each cycle, we can finally begin to understand what our bodies need in the luteal phase and find relief.

Back to the sweet, juicy hormone called Progesterone. My queen.

Progesterone gets a bad rep because it is dominant in the luteal phase, and therefore associated with all the luteal phase struggles.

However, progesterone is not the enemy. When it is produced in adequate amounts, it actually has a soothing effect on the nervous system. It eases anxiety, facilitates memory and promotes healthy sleep. It helps to maintain healthy brain function and mood regulation. It also supports breast and heart health, and acts to protect the brain from damage and help repair after injury.

She’s a beast!

Oftentimes, when someone is suffering from PMS, inflammation, acne breakouts, mood swings, irritability, etc. in their luteal phase, my first investigation is whether or not they are ovulating, and if so, whether or not their corpus luteum is producing enough progesterone.

Without these two things happening, our bodies miss out on the benefits of the hormone that is actually supposed to make us feel prettyyyyyyyy great and chill.

I hope this is as cool and interesting to you guys as it is to me. I feel like I need one of those white suburban mom decor signs that says “Keep Calm and Ovulate”.

The moral of the story is that our bodies are incredible and everything that happens internally is intentional, and for a reason. It is simply our job to pay attention, listen, and support.

Love you guys always,

Morganne