You don't have "PMS", you have a progesterone deficiency.

Here's what you can do about it.

Aug 09, 2024

Hey friends.

I’m writing this in response to a post I shared to my instagram feed the other day (A Brief List Of Important Things Nobody Told Me About My Menstrual Cycle - read the original post here).

Number #5 on that list was that nobody told me all the classic symptoms of so-called “PMS” were the result of too much oestrogen, and not enough counterbalancing progesterone - meaning that if I learned to stimulate progesterone production, it would soothe (or entirely eliminate) my menstrual pain.

I got a fair few comments and messages asking about how to stimulate progesterone production, and what it all means for our experience of premenstruum and menstruation.

Let’s talk about it.

Oestrogen, Progesterone, and Cyclical Bodies…

If you have a menstrual cycle, your body is not “consistent” on a day-to-day basis.

Your body emulates a breath throughout the course of your cycle - a distinct inhale, and a distinct exhale.

The inhale half of our cycles is oestrogen dominant.

The exhale half of our bodies is progesterone dominant.

(For more detail on the hormonal dance throughout the five seasons in your cycle - read Your Inner Seasons. It’s a little ebook I wrote a while back that goes into all this in much more depth. Click here to download it - it costs zero dollars.)

Our bodies love oestrogen - but only in just the right amount. Too much oestrogen, particularly during the luteal phase (the exhale half of our cycles) - and our bodies have a very strong reaction.

Too much oestrogen in the luteal phase without enough progesterone to mitigate it leads to…

extreme and often debilitating cramping in the uterus
breast tenderness to the point of pain
lower back pain
constipation
stabbing pains in the birth canal and cervix
headaches
anxiety
depression
spotting
extremely heavy periods
insomnia

This list of symptoms will be all too familiar to anyone who’s experienced so-called “PMS” - which is to say, the vast majority of menstruating people.

Let’s get something very clear at the outset here -

The fact that we as a culture don’t call progesterone deficiency by it’s name - and instead refer to this cluster of symptoms as “PMS” - is bullshit.

The lack of comprehensive education we receive around what having a menstrual cycle means is dangerous.

Calling it “PMS” (premenstrual syndrome) turns our cyclical suffering into a mystery - and just part of the deal of having a menstrual cycle.

“PMS” doesn’t have a real cause - aside from you literally just being premenstrual.

“PMS” makes our pain into the default, leaving us to shrug our shoulders and say “well, of course I’m in pain. I’m premenstrual. It’s to be expected”.

“PMS” needs no further investigation.

Oh, you’re experiencing one or more of the above symptoms each month? Are you premenstrual when it happens? Then it’s premenstrual syndrome. Bad luck, it’s just the way it is.

Calling this pain Progesterone Deficiency, or Oestrogen Dominance, points to the actual CAUSE. It gives us some agency over how we navigate it.

But, if we all collectively referred to these kinds of pain as Progesterone Deficiency, and were actually taught how to prioritise our cyclical health and soothe our suffering - it would mean a down-to-the-roots reformation of the way our society is structured.

Because as we’re about to get into, colonial capitalist patriarchy simply isn’t compatible with menstruating bodies.

For us to really understand how to mitigate our oestrogen and support our bodies in producing progesterone, we have to totally disentangle ourselves from the linear, exponential-growth-obsessed, addicted-to-productivity, hustle-and-grind-centric values of our culture.

Yea. Not gonna happen. Not on a large scale anyway.

So, we keep calling it PMS, we keep not educating menstruating people on how their bodies work, we keep making our pain the default, or worse, our fault.

It’s fucking bullshit, and I’m chronically angry about this.

Get angry with me.

The Nitty Gritties - AKA: Tangible Stuff You Can Do To Support Your Body In Sufficient Progesterone Production…

Aside from mitigating the oestrogen our bodies are producing (which again - is the root cause of a lot of our premenstrual and menstrual pain), progesterone has many more vital functions in menstruating bodies.

It aids in repairing muscle and bone tissue, it regulates our sleep, it stabilises our moods, settles the nervous system, promotes healthy brain development and function, just to name a few.

Basically, whether or not you’re actively suffering in your experience of menstruating right now, prioritising solid progesterone production is always a good idea.

Here are some ways you can actively support your body in producing that sweet sweet progesterone…

1. Supporting Regular Ovulation.

Progesterone is predominantly produced by the corpus luteum - a gland formed out of the (now ruptured) egg immediately after ovulation.

(Real quick - your body literally makes itself a whole new gland every cycle. Pretty cool.)

If you’re not ovulating, you’re not making corpus luteums = much less progesterone.

Anovulatory cycles (cycles where ovulation doesn’t happen for whatever reason) are common and normal, here and there. Nothing to worry about.

But if you’re chronically not ovulating - that’s another story.

There are loads of reasons why our bodies won’t ovulate on any given cycle - from moving house, a bad breakup, poor sleep, not enough nutrition, chronic stress, carrying the weight of existential grief and despair brought on by cataclysmic climate collapse and live-streamed genocide - just to name a few.

Basically, our primal instincts are very, very smart.

If for any reason your body is feeling unstable, or like your basic needs are going unmet - you’ll probably skip ovulation that cycle.

Supporting regular ovulation in a nutshell is remembering that before anything else, you’re not a machine, you’re a mammal - and your mammalian needs have to be met.

This means getting enough sleep, eating enough foods (DON’T SKIP BREAKFAST - particularly during your luteal phase. Your body interprets this as food scarcity - and will go into threat response about it), cuddling safe people, limiting blue light exposure where you can at bedtime, building safe community where you feel unconditionally welcome (and therefore, unthreatened and protected), actively championing a world where you and all your kin are safe (on a primal and physiological level, our bodies really do respond to our activism), resting when you need to rest, letting yourself feel and metabolise all your emotions.

Note: you won’t do it perfectly. Nobody will. There are huge privilege pieces at play here (we’ll get into that in a minute) - but just five percent is enough. What would it look like in your life for you to be meeting your mammalian needs just five percent more?

2. Nervous system regulation - completing the stress response cycle.

Cool fact about menstruating bodies: when we go into threat response (fight/flight), it’s not just adrenaline and cortisol our bodies are releasing.

They’re also releasing trace amounts of oestrogen too.

Which means that chronic, long term stress - without any space to be felt or integrated - leads to waaaaaaay more oestrogen in our bodies than they like.

(Ever get loads of free-floating existential anxiety coming up to your period, probably accompanied by cramping, breast tenderness, or back pain? Yea. This is why.)

We live in a time where the internet abounds with so many glorious resources on somatic experiencing and completing the stress response cycle, so I won’t go into it too much here, other than to say -

It all comes down to unconditionally allowing your body to feel the sensations it’s feeling, without shame, repression, guilt, or efforts to numb or “fix”.

Feel the SENSATION of stress, anxiety, anger, grief.

Not the thoughts, the sensation.

For example: “anxiety” is not “everything’s fucked, I’m running out of time, we’re fucked, we’re not gonna make it, what am I supposed to do in the face of all this”.

Those are thoughts. That’s what your brain does to translate the sensations you’re feeling.

The sensations might be tightness or fluttering in your chest, clenching in your stomach, cold extremities, head spins, tension in your shoulders.

Give yourself permission to feel the sensations (keep coming back to your body when your brain tries to take over your attention with it’s narration).

When you want to move, move. Twitch, run, jump, punch shit. Your body knows how to move that adrenaline.

If you want to speak, speak. Bellow, howl, growl, grunt, groan. Let it all move. As you’re letting yourself really feel - and your body moves through its threat response, the excess oestrogen will be metabolised along with the adrenaline and cortisol.

3. Re-conceptualise your understanding of time.

Easy peasy, right?

Ha. Kidding.

This is where the decolonisation bit comes in.

Inside of colonial capitalist patriarchy, we have a linear understanding of time.

Life feels like moving along in forward-momentum-ish direction, exponentially growing and expanding.

We live in an exponential-growth culture. Meaning that you should be “more” of whateverthefuck now, than you were yesterday, last week, last year, etc.

(For evidence at the fallacy of the exponential growth mentality of colonial capitalism - look to literally any aspect of our society and planet. We’re on the brink of irreparable ecosystem collapse, while the rich get richer off the blood of those the state has deemed unworthy of subjectivity and personhood. We cannot sustain exponential growth. We never could.)

Inside of this exponential-growth culture, “resting” is going to feel like “stopping”.

Like you’re moving along the forward-momentum-facing line, and you get tired, and suddenly you need to stop moving, while life continues on without you - ever moving forward and growing exponentially - while you fall behind.

This understanding of “rest” is not sustainable, and your body will fight you tooth and nail on it.

Reconceptualising time is what will allow our bodies to properly rest and rejuvenate the way they need to (which stimulates progesterone production MASSIVELY).

You are NOT going along in a constant stream of forward momentum, moving along linearly and growing exponentially. You do not need to “stop” as life goes on without you.

You are moving CYCLICALLY. Like a breath. Inhale, upward, growth, expansion… exhale, downward, decay, contraction.

Let go of the coloniser’s indoctrination of your experience of time. It’s not linear. You’re not ever falling behind, because you were never moving forward to begin with.

Orient instead towards Nature’s experience of time - cyclical, ever in tandem, ever breathing.

During your luteal phase, you are not “stopping”. You’re not even really “resting”, per se.

You’re contracting.

This will take a while to integrate - but trust me, this is IT.

Integrating cyclical consciousness and moving out of a colonial capitalist understanding of time dissolves worth-is-productivity conditioning, it does away with the need for exponential growth, it resolves the anxiety about falling behind or missing out.

The colonial capitalists are wrong. Time isn’t linear. The way we experience it and move through it isn’t linear.

It’s cyclical.

PS - years and years ago I got a stage 3 endometriosis diagnosis. It’s completely resolved now, to the point where there’s no evidence I ever had it. This is why.

4. Dietary ways to encourage progesterone production.

Okay, back to the mundane now.

This is the one you’ll find when you do a google, it’s the most boring, in my opinion it’s the least effective (ie won’t work on it’s own without all the rest), but still definitely worth mentioning.

Limit caffeine during your luteal phase - and honestly stimulants in general. Some studies have shown that more than two cups of coffee a day can up your oestrogen by 70%. After ovulation, switch to tea. (I’m a caffeine / nicotine FIEND. I resent this one so very much. Unfortunately though it is true.)
Chill out on the booze. Alcohol fucks with the way our bodies metabolise oestrogen, AND produce progesterone.
MAGNESIUM, MAGNESIUM, MAGNESIUM. It’s honestly hard to have too much, our bodies fucking love it. Dark chocolate, walnuts, brazil nuts, parsley, tofu, all great sources of the stuff. Gorge on it. Yum yum yum.
Zinc and vitamin B6. I’m vegan, so I get all my yummy zinc from legumes - but apparently eggs and salmon are high in it too.
Magnesium one more time because it’s that important. Honestly, chomping on a fucktonne of magnesium rich foods (as well as feeling all your feelings and decolonising your experience of time) will work wonders for menstrual pain.

There you have it! Progesterone stimulation 101.

A quick note here that even if you do all of the above PERFECTLY (you won’t, that’s okay, you’re a person not a machine, that’s the whole point here) - while you’ll definitely feel some relief straight away, it’ll be at least three to five whole cycles before anything starts resolving in a big way.

Our bodies move slowly.

Let them.

Give yourself grace.

On the extreme privilege and intersectionality of it all…

It needs to be said - what a fucking PRIVILEGE it is to be able to orient towards alignment with our cycles.

In a world so obsessed with and addicted to forward momentum and exponential growth - what a fucking privilege it is to be able to disentangle from that.

What a privilege it is to have access to magnesium rich foods, to have safe community where you are unconditionally held and protected, to have the space to properly process all the intensity you’re feeling, to actively align yourself and your life with the cyclical nature of time.

If you CAN do this, even in a small way, amazing. Please do it. Your body will thank you.

But our world is literally designed in such a way that means in general, we can’t.

A single mum on food stamps isn’t gonna be worried about how much zinc is in her food, and there’s no way in hell she’s gonna have the space to properly metabolise the stress she’s under.

She’s going to suffer, every cycle, forever (probably).

How can we talk about orienting towards Nature’s pace and a cyclical understanding of time when whole communities of people are being literally genocided?

Not just in Palestine, but in Congo, Sudan, and everywhere that colonial governments have stolen indigenous land and brutally subjugated indigenous people?

It seems insane.

So please remember - although we do always have at least some agency over how we relate to our own cycles…

…our world is literally designed in such a way that prohibits us from cyclical embodiment + awareness - on a global + systemic scale.

Not just designed this way, but actively dependent on it for its continued existence.

This is not an individual problem, it’s a societal and cultural one.

Let’s loop back to oestrogen real quick.

Oestrogen is our get-up-and-go hormone. It’s related closely with higher energy levels, dopamine receptivity, fertility (duh), and general extraverted-ness.

Progesterone is slower, gentler, subtler, more primal, and doesn’t really give a fuck about how much we’re “doing”.

In a colonial capitalist patriarchy, we’re socialised into constant productivity, constant forward moment, constant exponential growth - dominated by a constant feeling of urgency, hyper-individualism, competition, and hierarchy.

Our culture shames our luteal expression to the point where it pretends it doesn’t exist - socialising menstruating people into a kind of day-to-day “consistency” that sits completely at odds with how our literal physiology works.

WE ARE LITERALLY BEING SOCIALISED INTO LIVING IN WAYS THAT MAKE US - AND KEEP US - SICK.

With all this as our default, combined with the violently dehumanising indoctrination women + femmes get on all sides forever… is it any wonder so many of us are suffering from oestrogen dominance and progesterone deficiency?

I mean, doesn’t it just sound like colonial capitalism in a nutshell?

This is what I mean when I say - YOUR CYCLICAL PAIN IS NOT YOUR FAULT, IT’S NOT YOUR BODY’S FAULT, IT’S COLONIAL CAPITALIST PATRIARCHY’S FAULT.

Not just because of the lack of robust and comprehensive education, but also because of the ways we’ve been taught we’re allowed to exist.

Let your cycle awareness radicalise you.

Get angry about this.

And to you reading this who wants some specialised support in cultivating a new intimacy with your own cycle - click here to apply for 1-1 counselling work. I’d be delighted to sit in all of this with you.