Part 2: Menstrual Cycle Symptoms: Heal PCOS, Endometriosis, and PMS with Nutrition

Transcript:

LEAH: Welcome to Dishing Up Nutrition brought to you by Nutritional Weight & Wellness. We are a Minnesota company that specializes in real food nutrition education and counseling. This is Leah Kleinschrodt, Registered and Licensed Dietitian. And at the time we're recording this show, it's March of 2025. Which means it's an important month for nutrition. It means that this month is National Nutrition Month. And back on March 12th was National Registered Dietitian/Registered Dietitian Nutritionist Day.

TERESA: Yeah. I'm sure everybody was out there celebrating.

LEAH: Exactly. I mean…

TERESA: Broccoli, apples.

LEAH: Broccoli, apples, and peanut butter and all the things, right? Yeah. So I first just want to give a shout out to all the wickedly smart, compassionate, and savvy ladies that I have the privilege to work with at Nutritional Weight & Wellness.

And this includes both the present gals and people we've worked with in the past. I wish I got to see everyone and interact with everyone on a daily basis, but I have every confidence, and I know that these women are out there working hard and changing the landscape of health for their clients, and their families, their communities, and also for the listeners of this show. And lucky for me, I have one of those aces in my pocket today as a cohost for the show. So, how's it going, Teresa?

TERESA: It's going well. Thanks, Leah. And, you know, thanks for calling me an ace in your pocket.

LEAH: Yeah.

TERESA: Yeah. I just feel like, I don't know. I'm feeling extra smart today. Maybe it's National Nutrition Month.

LEAH: Yeah, exactly. We've all got to put our best foot forward here. But I'm thinking in the same line as you as far as all the women that we work with. So I would like to give a big shout out to our founder, the woman who started Nutritional Weight and Wellness, Darlene Kvist. And also, Britni, Melanie, Alyssa, Brandy, Amy, Elizabeth, Kara, and Cassie; all the lovely ladies that we get to work with at Nutritional Weight & Wellness. I want to extend a special welcome back to Cassie as she returns to the nutrition counseling lineup.

For those of you who are longtime listeners, you recognize her voice and maybe some of you out there have even done some counseling with Cassie in the past. Cassie is one of those fantastic dietitians that saw clients for Nutritional Weight & Wellness many years ago. She took a step back from counseling to focus on raising her family, but still stayed connected with us by teaching classes and doing those early morning Dishing Up Nutrition shows on the radio.

She is now back to doing some part time nutrition counseling with us out of our Maple Grove office and she'll be starting that up in April. So I encourage people to drop by the Maple Grove office with a note or just to pop in and say hi to Cassie, or you could call to schedule an appointment if you're interested in top notch nutrition guidance from a professional.

LEAH: Yes, absolutely. We're so excited and thrilled to have Cassie back and you know what? I can see her listening to the show right now and just like embarrassment, like you're embarrassing the heck out of her right now by calling her out because she is one of those people that would rather not kind of take the front line of the show there, but we just wanted to give her a special shout out because again, we are so excited and she brings such a wealth of knowledge, information, expertise, compassion for people who are struggling with their nutrition. So this is just like, we're all excited to have her back as part of the lineup like you said.

March is National Nutrition Month, as we mentioned, but it is also National Endometriosis Month, which is one of the topics that we wanted to cover on our show today. It's a very important topic. Last month, Teresa and I did a Dishing Up Nutrition show called 3 Must Know Signs That Your Menstrual Cycle Is Healthy, and we set the stage at that time for what a healthy menstrual cycle looks like, what a balanced menstrual cycle should look like.

And at that time we teased out like, hey, there are going to be more of these topics related to women's hormones and menstrual health, things that we commonly see in clinic, like we're going to be doing more shows on that. So that was more like part one of the series.

Today for all you lucky ducks out there, it is part two. So today we're going to cover the topics of endometriosis, polycystic ovarian syndrome, or PCOS, and premenstrual syndrome, or PMS. And we're not here to say we have all the answers to these complex conditions, but we'd like to offer up some things that we know you can do with your nutrition to improve your outcomes and just improve how you feel.

Overviewing endometriosis

TERESA: Yeah, I agree. So Let's get started with endometriosis, since it has an honorable place at the table this month. Endometriosis affects 10 to 15 percent of women of reproductive age. The endometrium is the innermost layer of tissue in the uterus. During a normal menstrual cycle, the endometrium thickens and grows a large blood supply to prepare a possible pregnancy.

If an egg is not fertilized by a sperm and pregnancy is not in the cards that month, the top layer of the endometrium gets shed from the uterus, which is the bleeding that we know as our period. In endometriosis, endometrium-like tissue, or lesions, grow outside of the uterus and can spread to other areas of the body, like the neighboring bladder, the intestines, the abdominal wall, and even higher up, like things like the diaphragm or the lungs. The lesions lead to scar tissue and adhesions, which can cause a lot of pain for the women that have this condition.

LEAH: Yeah, right. And so I'm kind of thinking when I'm talking to clients, I'll hear them say, you know, they had debilitating pain with their periods. And then some will even say, like, I even have pelvic pain or have like heaviness in my pelvis area in between periods. So it's like they almost never get relief during the entire month. Super heavy bleeding is another common symptom I'll hear or even pain with sex, back pain. And then sometimes we'll see strange GI symptoms. It might be diarrhea.

It might be IBS types of things that like they, it never quite seems to correlate with what they're eating. So we kind of have some of these mysterious gut symptoms going on. Unfortunately, one of the tricky things about endometriosis is that the gold standard to diagnose endometriosis is a laparoscopic surgery.

So in other words, they have to literally go digging around in the abdomen and the pelvic area surgically and take a look around, take some tissue samples. So, you know, that's, I'm going to take a guess and say, that's not high on anyone's list of fun things to do. So that can, it's just one reason why many women suffer for a long time with endometriosis before anyone connects the dots completely.

TERESA: Right. That is a significant way to get a diagnosis, right? Is to have it go into surgery like that.

LEAH: Yep.

TERESA: So, this is why it explains for so many women why it can take over a decade to get that diagnosis of endometriosis. Probably why there's a whole month dedicated to raising awareness about this. And, in the meantime, these women are suffering. They may be struggling with unexplained infertility and carrying around extra inflammation. Now, it's the inflammation and associated pain that seems to be where we can make the biggest difference with nutrition.

LEAH: Yep.

Reduce inflammation with food

TERESA: How can we cut down inflammation using food? As we say, it's real food first. Real meats, fish, eggs, and full fat dairy. Real carbohydrates, like vegetables, fruits, potatoes, sweet potatoes, quinoa, wild rice, and beans. Real fats, like olive oil, butter, avocados, nuts, seeds, olives, and canned coconut milk.

Then, you make sure to put a protein, a carbohydrate, and a fat on every plate, and every meal; on your plate at every meal and every snack to balance your blood sugar, which this is anti-inflammatory. Some women need to consider some food eliminations like maybe gluten, dairy or soy, which could potentially be aggravating their immune system and increasing their endometriosis pain.

LEAH: Yeah, we have a great success story on our website about one of our clients, McKayla, who had struggled with ovarian cysts, which was caused by endometriosis for her. And then she also had a lot of digestive troubles like I was talking about related to the endo. And for her she found a low FODMAP approach very helpful for at least a few months during her healing journey.

So and that's just it's an example one example of a food elimination or like a specific eating plan that we might give somebody to help digestive symptoms or help that inflammation, and so I think really the takeaway here is that for clients with endometriosis there are a lot of possible avenues you could take to achieve that reduced inflammation.

It's just all ideally rooted in that tried and true real food approach. It might take a little tinkering to find the right combo for you, but that's where we as registered dietitians, I think, really could be of service because we've walked this path with clients before, we've seen what can happen or we can offer up things that maybe you haven't thought of before.

Schedule Nutrition Counseling

TERESA: Right, and that's our job is to, and, and helpful that we have an outside perspective. Because sometimes when you're in it, it's very hard to see where to go next. Sometimes I compare it to throwing darts at a moving dart board, that it's hard to pin it down. That every time you do something, the dart board shifts, and this way we can help maybe stabilize the dartboard so we can get a bullseye.

LEAH: Yeah, that's a great analogy.

TERESA: In McKayla’s story, it is very powerful. So if somebody is looking for a real example, I would say, check it out. It's posted on our website. And like I said, just go to weightandwellness.com and check that out.

Supplement options to reduce inflammation

In addition to food changes, there are lots of options for supplements that can help to reduce inflammation. Omega-3s are always going to make the top of any anti-inflammation list, and I wouldn't hesitate to go for a higher dose right out of the gate for women with period pain or known endometriosis.

So that means like four to six thousand milligrams per day split up, you know, at your meals throughout the day. So maybe two with breakfast, two with lunch, two with dinner or however you would like to do that.

Vitamin D and a good magnesium like Magnesium Glycinate help to decrease inflammation, as does curcumin, the active component of turmeric. We're also going to talk about some estrogen metabolism support a little later in the show, which may also be an approach we use in endometriosis as endometriosis lesions can make their own estrogen supply.

LEAH: Yeah. I didn't know that until I was doing some of the background research for the show so I was like gosh, that's some devilish little tissue in there. Oh man, and I feel like we could spend the whole show just focusing on endometriosis and lowering inflammation, and we have done other shows on endometriosis, but I do want to switch gears now away from endometriosis and talk about another weird huge topic in women's reproductive health, which is polycystic ovary syndrome or PCOS for short.

What is PCOS & associated symptoms?

You know, I actually did my master's thesis on PCOS and carbohydrate intake, so it's a condition I've just kind of had an interest in for a long time. It's been on my radar for a long time. I'm not claiming to be an expert by any means, but it's something that I have done a fair amount of reading on.

TERESA: You know, Leah, I've known you for 10 years, and this is the first I'm hearing about this. So I'm very curious as to what you're going to say about PCOS.

LEAH: Well, hang on to your hats. So yeah, well, so PCOS, pretty similar to endometriosis, actually. It affects about 8 to 15 percent of women. So again, it's similar in occurrence to endometriosis. At least with PCOS, you don't need to have a laparoscopic surgery for diagnosis.

You need to hit two out of three things. So you either need to have menstrual cycles that are consistently longer than 35 days, which amounts to like eight periods per year or less. So you need to have like basically irregular menstrual cycles. You need to have too many androgen hormones, and usually this means too much testosterone floating around and/or have cysts on the ovaries, which can be seen by ultrasound.

So those are the big three criteria. If you have two out of the three, you can have a diagnosis of PCOS, but there can also be a lot of other symptoms that go along with PCOS.

TERESA: Right. And I think that that gets confused sometimes.

LEAH: Absolutely.

TERESA: Classic symptoms of PCOS are insulin resistance, easy weight gain or difficulty losing weight, irregular periods, acne, male patterned hair loss or hair growth. But symptoms can also be more broad or nebulous, like mood shifts, low energy, headaches, high cholesterol. So sometimes it still takes a while before a diagnosis of PCOS will get nailed down.

LEAH: Yeah, I'm working with a client right now who didn't discover her PCOS until she started having troubles getting pregnant and actually, I mean, she had a little bit of troubles with her first one, but managed to conceive naturally.

It wasn't until trying for her second that, okay, nothing's really happening. So they're doing a deeper dive into things and boom, we discover, okay, we've got some PCOS going on. So she was likely one of those women who either she didn't have some of those classic symptoms, like maybe she did have regular cycles or, you know, nothing else really happening, or those, the symptoms that she was having, they were just attributed to other things, like other environmental factors or just, you know, kind of written off as like, oh, okay, maybe it was due to X, Y, and Z, you know, so again, something a little bit more nebulous.

Importance of stabilizing blood sugar for PCOS

TERESA: Mm hmm. And I can see where this can be a tricky diagnosis, even if the diagnosis doesn't require surgery like endometriosis. However, like endometriosis, women with PCOS also tend to hang out in this higher level state of inflammation. So everything we talked about in terms of lowering inflammation with endometriosis also to PCOS.

I know when I get a client with PCOS, I usually spend a lot of time focusing on stabilizing her blood sugar since insulin resistance is such a big undercurrent in most PCOS situations. We look for foods or other factors that might spike blood sugars regularly and find ways to reduce, eliminate, or find a better substitute.

LEAH: I think we try to take advantage of those substitutions as much as we possibly can. It just, it eases the transition. So when, you know, someone might think about trading their sugary coffee drink, if they're doing that five days a week for making coffee at home and you use a little real heavy whipping cream. Maybe you use a couple of drops of some chocolate or toffee flavored stevia drops if you do like that little bit of sweet in coffee.

And we have a kind of a nice little handout on our website. It's embedded in one of the articles and I kind of like the combo, the equation that they use there. So they say, okay, if you're, here's how you can create kind of like a good balanced coffee drink.

So you start, I mean, you start with your coffee, then you add something creamy. And then you add something sweet, like not necessarily sugar or anything, like they give some other alternatives. And then if you want to add something additional for flavor, so thinking like cinnamon or nutmeg or like a spice or something like that.

So those, you know, if you have a chance to go over to the website and, and check that out. If you just type in, like, healthy coffee creamer alternatives, I think that, that article should pop up.

TERESA: It's a great resource.

LEAH: Yeah, it is a great resource. And I know we featured it on, like, Instagram and our Facebook page here and there too. Maybe it's time to give that one another go around.

TERESA: Right, and as the weather is warming up, I'm sure a lot of those options could be switched from a hot coffee to an iced coffee.

LEAH: Absolutely. Yeah. And, you know, another example could be, okay, let's say like, I'm thinking of some of my clients that work downtown and like they go for, they go for a little jaunt to go get, like a muffin from the pastry little outlet store down in the skyways.

And, you know, would they be, would this person be willing to try one of our protein muffin recipes as a different example? So you still get the muffin experience, but something that's a little higher protein, it doesn't disrupt those blood sugars as much; has some of those healthy fats on board. That would just be another substitution I could think of.

TERESA: And that's one of those recipes that I make all the time because my kids actually like those muffins. One option that I've been really hot on these days is making substitution for granola. So many people love to have yogurt and granola with fruit, which can be a lot of carbohydrate depending on the yogurt you choose, the granola you choose and the fruit you choose.

And so there is a way to just make this a little different. I like to use a high protein, like a Greek yogurt that's low in sugar. On our website, we have a nut and seed granola that does actually have a little bit of oat in it. So it's not completely carbohydrate free, but it's very low carbohydrate compared to store bought granolas or other homemade granolas.

So that can be the fat component and then using a low sugar fruit, like berries or maybe melon or something along that line. I've used kiwi, which is a really fun, that's a great microbiome support by the way, when we get into talking about how important intestinal health is for our hormones, is that we've got the probiotics or the good bacteria in our yogurt.

We've got the prebiotics in our kiwi. And then we've got all kinds of fiber in the nut and seed granola. So it's just great. And then I like to add a scoop of collagen powder to just bump the protein even higher. So that's my current favorite substitution that, you know, we can have a little bit of what we really like, but it can be healthy versus being so much sugar.

LEAH: Yeah, I love that example.

TERESA: And we like to do that. I mean, that's a part of our job where we like to find ways to reduce those extra sugars, get rid of some of the refined flours. You know, another example of that is I love to make a mayo-based chicken salad and put it over a bed of greens rather than having it in a sandwich, just eat it with a fork and you'll save so much of that carbohydrate, reduce the refined flour.

And then, you know, as far as meal planning, just making sure that at every meal and snack, it has a protein, some fat and some real food carbohydrates. The protein and fat parts of a meal and snack are key to keeping those blood sugars balanced and anchored in a good place.

Well, and speaking of keeping blood sugars anchored in a good, good place by including protein, fat, and carb at all meals, I had an interesting experience just recently because I started wearing a continuous glucose monitor just kind of for fun. I told my parents that's what dietitians do for fun.

LEAH: I was just going to say like, that's the dietitian in us, like it's fun to put this thing on the back of your arm and watch what your blood sugars do, right?

TERESA: So I had this meal that I would think by most people's standards would be relatively healthy. I had pork tenderloin and the only vegetables I had at home was this bag of mixed vegetables; the one where it's like the corn and peas and carrots and green beans. My kids like that one, that's why I buy it. But it's not my favorite, but that's what I had.

LEAH: Yep.

TERESA: And I was rushing out the door, so I had the pork tenderloin. I just threw the bag of vegetables in and off I went. Went to work, lunchtime, made it. After I had eaten that, that particular meal, just the pork tenderloin and the mixed vegetables, my blood sugar spiked so high, and I was not expecting that at all.

But as I analyzed what I ate, the carbohydrates, particularly probably the corn, I think, spiked my blood sugar, but there really was no fat there, right? Pork tenderloin is very lean.

LEAH: Yep.

TERESA: And those veggies maybe tended to be on the higher carbohydrate side of veggies And so it was just it was a really interesting experience. So moral of the story is fat is very important for anchoring blood sugar, even when it's healthy food; right; like it was not an unhealthy choice. It just lacked that fat to anchor the blood sugar down.

And so there's probably some degree, a little bit of inflammation, perhaps with that elevated blood sugar, but it's so easy to do even when eating healthy. So that's why we really stress the importance of eating all three. And it also is one of those things that we can say, well, we don't do it perfect either all the time.

LEAH: Yeah, absolutely. Yes. Even dieticians run out of vegetables in our house. Just like, you know, we're not perfect. We don't always make it to the grocery store on time. Like sometimes even when you do this for a job like it doesn't always happen the way that we want it to.

TERESA: Well on that point, Leah, we have to take a quick break, but we'll be back in a moment to continue this conversation about common issues with the menstrual cycle.

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LEAH: Welcome back. Before we went to break, we were talking about the importance of blood sugar balance related to PCOS. Blood sugar balance is of course important for everybody, but in the case where you already are kind of working upstream against insulin resistance with PCOS, blood sugar balance tends to be a big thing we hone in on as dietitians.

Teresa, you shared a great example of what happened to your blood sugars after, like, again, like it's still a real food type of meal, but it just didn't quite strike some of that balance in there. One thing I'll hear from clients quite often, it just makes me chuckle a little bit on the inside. I will often have clients who will just, they'll sheepishly admit, “admit” that they, they're a meat and potatoes type of person, but I always tell them like that's great. I actually love that framework. It's so we start with a good meat.

You do a half a cup of potatoes not like half a plate of potatoes And then you do two cups of like one or two different kinds of vegetables or you do that side salad. Like that is actually what we're looking for that perfect balance plate combo.

TERESA: Yeah, it's real food. I get the same comment from people. People say meat and potatoes as if it's a bad thing.

LEAH: Yeah, exactly.

TERESA: And just like you said, we usually just need to adjust the amount of potatoes and add some veggies. So, in getting back to that idea of blood sugar balance in PCOS, this is a huge priority, right? That's really what we focus on. In one note though, not everyone with PCOS has insulin resistance, but it is very, very common.

LEAH: The majority. It's usually a part of the picture.

Supplement support for PCOS

TERESA: So we're often looking at that with PCOS. We also do some things with supplements as well. Omega-3s and magnesium and vitamin D, as we had mentioned earlier, are still good default choices. They're good for all people, including, you know, including those with endometriosis and PCOS.

LEAH: Yep.

TERESA: But lesser known supplements that I like to trial with women with PCOS is inositol. Inositol is a nutrient very similar to our B vitamins. It has insulin sensitizing capabilities. It nourishes the ovaries, and it can help regulate ovulation and periods, and it can reduce testosterone. That hits on every major imbalance with PCOS, which is pretty impressive. 

LEAH: I remember reading about inositol can have similar, if for some people not, not better effects than metformin, which metformin is a common blood sugar lowering medication that often gets prescribed for women with PCOS. So in my mind, I think like anytime we can leverage a powerful nutrient like that, it's, it's always worth a go.

And we carry a few options for inositol in our Nutrikey store. My go to for PCOS clients is a supplement called Ovasitol. And this one has two different kinds of inositol in it. It comes in a packet form, so it's a powder. You can mix it into water or pretty much anything else that's like liquid or semi liquid and you do two packets a day.

It's a little pricey upfront, but it is a three month supply. So, when you break that big bag up into a, like say a monthly basis, it's actually fairly reasonable. So you buy it once and then you're good to go for quite a while. The other one I like is called Cenitol from Metagenics. And this is a combination of both inositol and magnesium, which again, how often are we recommending magnesium to clients all the time.

TERESA: All the time.

LEAH: All the time. So this combination can be helpful for sleep and for anxiety in addition to the PCOS related symptoms that we were just talking about.

TERESA: I agree. Inositol is such a unique little nutrient with a lot of potential to do good. So it certainly is a supplement a woman with PCOS could consider. And I'm with you. I really like the Ovasitol for the women with PCOS. Again, I wish we could dedicate a whole show into picking apart more details regarding the PCOS.

Overviewing premenstrual syndrome (PMS)

But we do have to move on to one last condition before we sign off. And that last condition is premenstrual syndrome, or PMS. Ladies, you probably know what I'm talking about; that magical seven to ten days before your period where you may feel a little more edgy, irritated, more sad and hopeless, bloated and puffy, or your inner sugar and carb monster come out, that insatiable urge to eat all the time. This is such a challenging time of the month for many, many women.

LEAH: Yeah, yeah. Challenging may be a better word than magical.

TERESA: I think so. I think so.

LEAH: You know, we'll run with it either way. The vast majority of women in their reproductive years will experience at least some kind of mild PMS. So that's, again, not uncommon, maybe not even necessarily abnormal, but now there's some 30 to 40 percent of women who report such intense hormonal effects that it does require some kind of intervention.

And then you have a smaller percentage, but about 3 to 8 percent of women who will experience PMDD, which is, it's like PMS, but on steroids. So to me, 30 to 40 percent is still a pretty significant number of women who get fairly uncomfortable for a week or so before their periods. According to the book, Real Food for Fertility, we have quoted this book many times on our hormone related shows. It's one of my big go to's ever since it was released.

Progesterone & estrogen: achieving the best balance

This book shows or explains that for women who experience more intense PMS symptoms, they tend to have a pretty significant, almost kind of like dropping off a cliff type of experience of their progesterone level in the three to five days or so before their periods. And they also just overall tend to run a little higher in estrogen, lower in progesterone, just kind of have this in general imbalance in the second half of their cycle.

So we love our estrogen, it does so many great things for us, but if estrogen runs amok unchecked by progesterone, that's when we can start to see more of these intense hormone symptoms creep in.

How do we help the body feel safe, nourished & protected?

TERESA: Right, so if we continue with that line of thought, then we'd want to do what we can to make sure our body is producing a good amount of progesterone. The way I might explain this to a client is to ask, how do we help your body feel safe, nourished, and protected. Depending on the client, we might talk about things like eating enough food in general, eating foods that help us meet our vitamin and mineral needs, eating in a predictable pattern throughout the day to sustain our blood sugar and our energy, and troubleshooting sleep issues.

LEAH: Mm hmm.

TERESA: Anything that helps our bodies feel like the environment around us is safe and plentiful will help with the production of progesterone.

LEAH: And sometimes that's a tall order, the way we live our lives today or just the way society is kind of set up and structured or like the families that we're raising. It's hard to kind of hit the chill pill button for a little while.

TERESA: Almost impossible.

Nutrients that help with progesterone production

LEAH: Yeah, so we do our best. And I remember many years ago, we did a Dishing Up Nutrition show with Ann Louise Gittleman, who's an author and nutrition expert, and she mentioned that zinc is a cornerstone nutrient for making progesterone.

I don't know why that particular, like, little fact sticks in my brain, but it did. So, I always think zinc when we're looking to stabilize or maybe build progesterone levels a little bit. Zinc is in oysters, pumpkin seeds, most meats, and seafood, but other nutrients for making progesterone include vitamin D. Where have we heard that one before?

TERESA: I think it’s been mentioned.

LEAH: It’s been mentioned a few times. Magnesium, same thing. Calcium is actually a big one for progesterone. And I mean, those are just, to name a few.

TERESA: Yeah.

LEAH: So many times just improving the overall quality of your foods, that's enough to start digging out of the whole of some of these common nutrient deficiencies as well as just seeing a decrease in some of those PMS symptoms.

Combatting high estrogen levels

TERESA: So raising progesterone levels is one avenue that can be helpful for clients who experience a lot of PMS symptoms. Other women may benefit from some support in their estrogen metabolism. There are a variety of reasons why a woman may have higher levels of not beneficial estrogens, which can override the natural calming, chill pill effect of progesterone. My mind tends to go to estrogen like compounds when we get exposed to in our environment, like plastics and the chemicals in beauty products and cleaning products.

Poor gut health can play a role in how well we get unused hormones out of the body. And genetically, some women are just not great detoxifiers and cannot clear estrogen well via the liver. So they may need a little help for a short time to ensure that things move along efficiently.

LEAH: Right. And I know I'm constantly reminding clients to drink their filtered water, eat their cruciferous vegetables like the broccolis and the cauliflowers and the cabbages, so all of those things help the body with some of that natural estrogen metabolism. But Teresa, I know you have a special concoction that you like to use with clients just to help with that estrogen metabolism. So why don't you walk us through what you like to do?

TERESA: Yeah, I love this protocol. In fact, it's a favorite protocol of mine and I personally use it three months out of every year to keep my own PMS symptoms in check. It's a combination of three supplements that we carry, Estro I-3-C, Sulforaphane Complex, and Calcium D-Glucarate.

So let me I'm going to explain a little bit about each supplement and why they are used together. So first, with Estro I-3-C, it is a supplement that works in the liver and is a combination of DIM and I-3-C, Indole-3-Carbinol. It helps to convert stronger, potentially harmful estrogens into weaker, less harmful forms.  This helps to maintain a healthy balance of estrogens.

The next supplement, sulforaphane, boosts the body's detoxification enzymes in the liver, helping to process and eliminate toxins, including excess estrogen. Let me explain a little bit about each supplement and why we use them together. So the first two work on the level of the liver and the last supports detox and elimination in the intestines.

So first, we have a supplement called Estro I-3-C. It is a supplement, like I said, it works in the liver and is a combination of DIM and I-3-C: Indole-3-Carbinol. And it helps to convert stronger, potentially harmful estrogens into weaker, less harmful forms. This helps us to maintain a healthy balance of our estrogens.

The next supplement, sulforaphane, boosts the body's detoxification enzymes in the liver. It helps to process and eliminate toxins, including excess estrogen. So in the liver, we are detoxifying these estrogens and we're helping to move them along to the next phase of elimination.

LEAH: Right. And Teresa.

TERESA: Oh, yeah, go ahead.

LEAH: I'm going to interrupt you for a second, too, because, I wanted to point out, so all those ingredients you mentioned, DIM, I-3-C, and sulforaphane, these guys are all found in those cruciferous vegetables.

TERESA: Yes.

LEAH: So, yeah, the broccolis, the cabbages, the kales, all of that, like this is where we find these things in nature. It's just now, you know, we've taken these as supplements, we've kind of isolated these nutrients and now we can make them a little bit more therapeutic in a more potent form, put them into a supplement form, but that is also why we talk about those cruciferous vegetables all the time, because that's actually, this is where it starts.

TERESA: Yes, they're so great for estrogen metabolism. And with these supplements, we can just, like you'd said, take them up to a therapeutic level that we might not be able to get through getting food alone.

LEAH: Right.

TERESA: So that last supplement that I use in that trio of that protocol, it's called Calcium D-Glucarate, and I just want to be clear that this is not a calcium supplement. It's a common misunderstanding This is a D-Glucarate supplement and it helps to support the estrogen detoxification process by inhibiting an enzyme called beta-glucuronidase, which can otherwise allow estrogen to be reabsorbed into the body from the intestines.

We don't want this to happen. We want it to move out from the intestines. So Calcium D-Glucarate ensures that excess estrogen is efficiently flushed out of the body via your bowel movements. Working together, this is a comprehensive supplement protocol to support your body's natural estrogen detoxification system.

LEAH: I'm so glad you explained all of that and even broke it down again. Like, we're kind of looking at things from the level of the liver. So that's the Estro I-3-C and the sulforaphane. But then, like, that's where the gut health comes into play with the Calcium D-Glucarate.

And why one of the big things we work on a lot with women too is can we have consistent, regular, frequent enough bowel movements so that the toxins and those extra hormones and all the things that we want to get out of our body don't just sit there for too long and cause problems. So we want to work on the constipation or just regular elimination piece of things.

TERESA: Yeah. And I just want to note, and probably our listeners know this, but some people don't know being regular means having a bowel movement every single day. It's not like, oh, this is normal for me, or this is, this, it might be common, but this is not a normal bodily process. And we can do so many things to support that so that we can get you more regular.

LEAH: Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. And then those supplements that you mentioned, Teresa, this would be a place where I would tell someone like, why don't you make an appointment with somebody, one of the dietitians here and just have a second set of eyes, ears, a second brain working on this process to just have somebody walk that path with you. Cause you do want to know what you're looking for to troubleshoot things. So like doing that protocol is so helpful for so many women. And yet, like, I'd still say like, have somebody walking that path with you.

Recap

So let's just tie things up with a bow for our listeners today, because I feel like we've had to bounce around from three different conditions today, so let's just put a bow on it, and we talked about three of the common conditions we see in clinic related to the menstrual cycle.

So the first that we talked about was endometriosis. And really with that one, we focused on how food and certain nutrients can be key players in reducing chronic inflammation that comes along with endometriosis.

Then we talked about polycystic ovary syndrome, or PCOS. And with PCOS, we talked about how crucial working with blood sugar and insulin resistance, working on that piece of the puzzle, like how important that is. We do this using real food, a combo of protein, carb, fat. And eating every, like, three to four to five hours or so throughout the day.

Then we rounded things off talking about PMS and how we can support a better balance between progesterone and estrogen to help reduce and even eliminate, for some people, those pesky or even debilitating hormonal symptoms.

TERESA: Yeah, and I just want to point out that while we talked about reducing inflammation with endometriosis, that doesn't mean reducing inflammation won't also be helpful for PCOS and PMS. The same thing goes for blood sugar regulation and supporting the body's detox pathways.

Really, all the strategies we talked about for each condition can cross over and be applied to those other conditions.

There's no wrong way to start on a journey to better your hormone health when you look at it through the lens of real food first, but if you're struggling with what changes to make first, or looking for help with a roadmap on where to go next, that's what we're here for. Give us a call or drop us a message to get your questions answered. You can connect with us via phone at 651-699-3438, or visit our website, which is weightandwellness.com.

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LEAH: Our goal at Nutritional Weight & Wellness is to provide each and every person with practical real life solutions for everyday health through eating real food. It's a simple yet powerful message. Eating real food is life changing. Thank you all for listening. Make it a great day.