Do you get PMS?

Men don’t understand.

Relationships suffer.

Employers wonder why there’s so much sick leave on a cyclical basis.

Doctors can only offer “the pill”, antidepressants or a hysterectomy.

But the answer is easy: to understand how to rid yourself of PMS and all its symptoms, you must first understand why it happens.

Now, you no doubt learned about our work from the H. pylori website, and so you may not know that when I started working using functional medicine with my clients, the majority of my clients were women who had menstrual complaints.

I had great success helping ladies overcome their menstrual discomfort, and I know we can help you, too.

Central to beating PMS is an understand that it’s caused by sex hormone imbalances – especially the relationship between estrogen (often too high) and progesterone (usually too low).

BUT, it’s important know WHY the sex hormones go out of balance in the first place because they don’t just spontaneously combust and go haywire.

I have a mantra that I teach my clients, which is “Stress beats sex, every time”.

And this is where your gut comes into play.

The more stress your body is under, the more hormones it has to make to deal with that stress.

It literally steals sex hormones to make stress hormones.

Thus, as stress goes up, sex goes down.

You only need to look at the functions of the main sex hormones to see how an imbalance can wreak havoc on your body. According to Dr. John Lee, MD, progesterone effects:

Maintains secretory endometrium
Protects against breast fibrocysts
Helps use fat for energy
Natural diuretic
Natural anti-depressant & calms anxiety
Prevents cyclical migraines
Promotes normal sleep patterns
Facilitates thyroid hormone function
Helps normalize blood sugar levels
Normalizes blood clotting
Helps restores normal libido
Normalizes zinc and copper levels
Restores proper cell oxygen levels
Prevents endometrial cancer
Helps prevent breast cancer1
Decreased risk of prostate cancer
Stimulates new bone formation
Improves vascular tone
Prevents autoimmune diseases
Increases sensitivity of estrogen receptors
Necessary for survival of embryo
Precursor of corticosteroid biosynthesis
Prevents coronary artery spasm and
atherosclerotic plaque.
Sleepiness, depression
Digestive problems

Estrogen Effects:

Creates proliferative endometrium
Breast cell stimulation (fibrocystic breasts)
Increased body fat and weight gain
Salt and fluid retention
Depression, anxiety, and headaches
Cyclical migraines
Poor sleep patterns
Interferes with thyroid hormone function
Impairs blood sugar control
Increased risk of blood clots
Little or no libido effect
Loss of zinc and retention of copper
Reduced oxygen levels in all cells
Causes endometrial cancer
Increased risk of breast cancer
Increased risk of prostate cancer
Restrains bone loss
Reduces vascular tone (dilates blood vessels)
Triggers autoimmune diseases
Creates progesterone receptors
Relieves hot flashes
Prevents vaginal dryness & mucosal atrophy
Increases risk of gall bladder disease
Improves memory
Improves sleep disorders
Improves health of urinary tract
Relieves night sweats

Now, what is stress?

Well, stress can come from three places:

Outside stress (emotional) – the job, the boss, the kids, the workload, the finances, the fear, the jealousy, the guilt, the lack or excess of exercise, etc.

Outside stress (food & drugs) – gluten, processed food, soy, vegetable oils, alcohol and all medical drugs.

Inside stress – poor blood sugar balance, inflammation caused by bad foods, bad bugs, bad toxins, deficiencies in good nutrients such as proteins and antioxidants.

How your gut fits in

I’ve seen PMS improve or disappear in women when they simply changed their diets to remove “inflammatory” foods like gluten, soy and others.

I’ve also seen PMS improve or disappear in women when they found and removed bad bugs from their guts, and started digesting food properly.

Your gut is especially important because it acts as an interface with the outside world (water and food!).

When it’s working properly, it allows good stuff into your body and blocks bad stuff getting in.

But when there are too many bad foods, and lots of bad bugs casing inflammation in the gut, your body views the situation as being very stressful.

Thus, it increases its stress hormone production, and down-regulates its sex hormone production.

The resulting hormone imbalances, combined with nutritional deficiencies from a gut that’s not working properly, result in the list of menstrual symptoms listed so often by our female clients.

So the gut is absolutely central to achieving hormonal health, and a pain-free, symptom-free and healthy menstrual cycle.

I’ve always said, and continue to say, that the first steps in overcoming PMS and any other form of sexual dysfunction are to clean up your diet, and run a comprehensive stool test to assess:

• Whether you have proper levels of good bugs
• Whether you’re harboring bad bugs, and which ones
• Whether your immune system is healthy within the gut
• Whether you’re digesting your food properly

Of course, I’m biased, but even if you don’t have PMS, but you have other symptoms, I can’t see why anyone would NOT want to check their digestive health, given its supreme importance in overall health and disease prevention.

And don’t forget, a stool test is done in the privacy of your own home, you just send off a sample in the packaging provided.

What’s more, if it comes back ‘blank’ you get a full refund – so you have nothing to lose.

You can arrange a stool test, or find out more about them, here.

Best

Dave.