Mood Swings and Depression During PMS

Are 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!