How Stress Affects Your Cycle
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How Stress Affects Your Cycle
Did you know that one of the biggest influences on your menstrual cycle is stress? The experience of stress isn’t just psychological – there are very real chemical and hormonal changes that can affect the delicate balance of a menstrual cycle.
Elevated stress can contribute to menstrual irregularities including:
· Longer or shorter periods
· Heavier or lighter periods
· Painful periods
· More symptoms (PMS) in the leadup to your period
But how does stress affect your cycle, and what can you do to counteract it? Let’s take a closer look at the relationship between your sex hormones and stress hormones.
What is stress?
First up, we need to understand what stress is. When people talk about stress, it’s usually in reference to psychologically stressful situations. But there are also physical sources of stress that contribute to the stress on your body as well.
Some of the sources of stress you might come across include:
· Being under pressure at work or school
· Making big life changes e.g. changing job or moving interstate
· Traumatic situations such as death, divorce or losing your job
· An imbalanced diet
· Lack of exercise
· Poor sleep
· Chronic conditions including PCOS, chronic fatigue syndrome, autoimmune disease and chronic pain
· Nutrient deficiencies such as low iron
· Environmental pollutants such as petrol fumes
As you can see, most of us are exposed to at least one form of stress on a daily basis! But everyone is different when it comes to how much stress they can be under before it begins to affect their physical and mental health. Your genes, your mindset and your current health can influence how much of a toll chronic stress can take.
How stress hormones influence your sex hormones
Now that we know what stress is, what does this have to do with your cycle? This comes down to a relationship between the hormones you produce under stress and your sex hormones.
When you are stressed, you produce stress hormones such as cortisol and corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH). These hormones can suppress the production of hormones such as:
· Gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH)
· Luteinising hormone (LH)
· Oestrogen
· Progesterone
This can lead to a variety of cycle disruptions including irregular ovulation, no ovulation, and even loss of your period.
Research also links stress and its impact on sex hormones with painful periods, premenstrual syndrome (PMS) and premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD).
Stress & your cycle during the pandemic
Over the past two years, everyone has been subjected to an additional stressor – the pandemic. Even if you weren’t directly impacted by lockdowns or outbreaks in your area, the constant headlines and social media posts about it may have contributed to your stress load and added to any underlying anxiety. So it make sense that this additional stress could contribute to cycle irregularities.
One early study has confirmed a link between pandemic-related stress and menstrual cycles. Over half of the people they surveyed experienced changes in their cycles after March 2020. Those who experienced higher levels of stress were more likely to experience heavier bleeding and longer periods.
So if you have noticed your cycle has changed significantly over the past 2 years, stress is likely a big factor in why.
How to manage your stress naturally
Now that you know why stress affects your cycle, how can you reduce that impact? The key is to manage your stress – but of course, that can be easier said that done! Let’s look at some simple, actionable ways to cope with stress and support your hormone balance at the same time.
Choose nutrient-dense foods
What you eat can play a huge role in your experience of stress. But by focusing on eating mostly wholefoods, you provide your body with the vitamins and minerals that it needs to cope with stress effectively.
Make sure that the basis of your diet includes:
· Fruit
· Vegetables
· Nuts
· Seeds
· Beans and legumes
· Wholegrains such as oats, brown rice and quinoa
· Eggs
· Fish and seafood
· Fresh meat and poultry
· Herbs and spices
Nutrient-dense foods also tend to be higher in fibre and protein, which help to keep your blood sugar levels steady.
Does your sweet tooth sabotage your healthy eating habits? Grab yourself a copy of my Low Sugar Sweet Treats ebook here.
Get moving regularly
There is nothing quite like physical activity for relieving stress. Whether you like to run, hit the gym, stretch it out or swim in the ocean, exercise is a great way to reduce your stress and anxiety.
Cardio and strength training both help with stress, so for the biggest bang for your buck, I recommend including a bit of both into your weekly routine.
However, you do want to make sure that you include rest days and aren’t doing high-intensity exercise every day of the week. Otherwise, it can have the opposite effect and add to your stress levels.
Prioritise a good night of sleep
If you tend to go to bed late and get up early because you have so much to do, you might be sabotaging your ability to cope with stress. Sleep is one of our most powerful weapons against the effects of stress.
While you sleep, your body flushes waste out of your brain, which is critical if you want a nervous system that can handle stress! It’s also when the body does the majority of its repairs to tissues that may have become damaged or stressed throughout the day. Think of it as your body’s way of rebooting all of its systems.
If you struggle to get to sleep or stay asleep, I’ve got 6 ways to improve your sleep right here.
Get clear on your goals and values
This might seem like a strange addition, but bear with me. A huge contributor to why people, and particularly women, are under stress is because they try to do it all alone. This can include saying yes to things they should really be saying no to, or doing something because they saw ‘that girl’ doing it on Tik Tok or Instagram.
To truly regain your power over stress, you need to be able to identify which tasks are helping you to move towards your goals, and which tasks are distractions or irrelevant to what you want in your life.
Make sure that your choices are aligned with your goals, your values, and your long-term vision of what you want from life.
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Hey there, I’m Rachel!
NUTRITIONIST, PERSONAL TRAINER, WELLNESS COACH
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While we make every effort to make sure the information in this website is accurate and informative, the information does not take the place of medical advice.