kateandlisaAre Somber and Depressed Feelings Normal During PMS?
While it can be a common experience, it’s not something that you have to accept as normal and something you have to just live with. Mood swings, anxiety, depression and feeling low in your luteal phase are signals that should be questioned as to what is making you feel this way.
You are not alone in feeling and experiencing mood changes before your period. Somewhere between 85% and 95% of those who answer when I ask a group about this say they experience it 
sometimes.
While cycle-related symptoms and PMS are very common, it does not equal what is normal.
Ok, so why then does it feel like there’s not much we can do other than just deal with it? Probably because we are constantly being –
- Told we are just being “emotional”
- Being offered anti-depressants for cycle related symptoms
- Offered hormonal birth control to “fix” our hormones even if we are trying to conceive
Please remember – any symptom that is interfering with your day-to-day needs to be explored and getting to the root cause or reasons they are showing up.
The time after ovulation – the luteal phase – should be 10-18 days long. Often cyclical mood swings, anxiety, or depression occur in the luteal phase.
Why? Estrogen and progesterone peak after ovulation and if you are not pregnant that cycle, these hormones will drop. Often, a more drastic or sudden drop can cause more symptoms. Or a more chronic imbalance in estrogen or progesterone (estrogen dominance meaning estrogen is high compare to progesterone), which can look like:
- High estrogen, normal progesterone
- High estrogen, low progesterone
- Normal estrogen, low progesterone
- Normal estrogen, normal progesterone but low PG/E ratio
Poor estrogen metabolism can cause more symptoms.
Insulin sensitivity also reduces in the luteal phase making blood sugar balance even more or a crucial focus are in the cycle phase.
Some more root causes can be:
- Stress
- Gut issues
- Nutrient deficiencies
- Underlying infections
- Hormone-disrupting chemicals
- Under eating
- Over exercising
- Bad sleep
- Inflammation
- Past trauma
- Poor boundaries
- Over working
So you can see there are a lot of possible reasons for your luteal phase mood changes. Once you understand what is driving your luteal phase mood changes then you can create a healing plan that is personalized based on what is actually going on in your own body.
For some one on one support contact me here – lets get to your root causes and develop a plan of action today!
