Episode 310: Ways to Naturally Increase Progesterone
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Progesterone has always been an unsung hero in our eyes, but now it’s getting its time in the sun - which is a good thing! Progesterone is super important for mood regulation, brain clarity, and thyroid health. That being said, it’s a very common hormone imbalance and the conventional solution is to treat with synthetic Progestin. At Team FN, we start with a root cause approach. Today we’re going to talk about WHY low progesterone is so common, how to identify if you have it, and what you can do about it.
In this episode:
The key role that your internal & external environments play in hormone balance [2:50]
Important questions to ask yourself when starting to rebalance hormones [18:30]
Signs & symptoms of low progesterone [30:06]
Reasons why your progesterone might be low [32:39]
Diet & nutrition considerations for low progesterone and overall hormone health [35:28]
Can you increase progesterone levels with supplements? [40:32]
Resources mentioned:
Funk’tional Nutrition Collective
Functional C.A.R.E. Method™ 1:1 Services
Your Hormone Revival™ (Only available within the Funk’tional Nutrition Collective)
Carb Compatibility Project™ (Available for free within the Funk’tional Nutrition Collective)
Body Intentions Breakthrough™ (Available for free within the Funk’tional Nutrition Collective)
Eat to Achieve™ (Available for free within the Funk’tional Nutrition Collective)
Qualia Mind (get $100 off and an extra 15% off your first purchase with code FUNK)
Organifi supplement powder (save 20% on your order with code FUNK)
LMNT Electrolyte Replenishing powder (Use code FUNK get a free sample pack with any drink mix purchase!)
Ned Natural Remedies (get 15% off your order with code FUNK)
Learn more about Hormones & Functional Nutrition
Related episodes:
242: Hormones & Your Brain Chemistry
292: The Power of Bioidentical Hormones — Are They Right for You?
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I'm Erin Holt, and this is the Funk'tional Nutrition Podcast, where we lean into intuitive, functional medicine. We look at how diet, our environment, our emotions, and our beliefs all affect our physical health. This podcast is your full bodied, well rounded resource. I've got over a decade of clinical experience, and because of that, I've got a major bone to pick with diet culture and the conventional healthcare model. They're both failing so many of us. But functional medicine isn't the panacea that it's made out to be either. We've got some work to do, and that's why creating a new model is my life's work. I believe in the ripple effect.
Erin Holt [00:00:39]:
So I founded the Funk'tional Nutrition Academy, a school and mentorship for practitioners who want to do the same. This show is for you. If you're looking for new ways of thinking about your health and you're ready to be an active participant in your own healing. Please keep in mind this podcast is created for educational purposes only and should never be used as a replacement for medical diagnosis or treatment. I would love for you to follow the show, rate, review, and share because you never know whose life you might change. And of course, keep coming back for more. Hello, friends. Welcome back. We took last week off just because there's a lot of things going on.
Erin Holt [00:01:17]:
I was in Florida for a couple of weeks and we are. Today, as I'm recording, is the last day of FNA enrollment and we are opening. The cart to Manifest Your Wealth and IMPACT is open. Tomorrow I have a speaking gig, so there's just a lot of things happening. So I missed you last week, but it was also a welcome respite. Today we're going to talk about hormones, ways to naturally increase progesterone specifically, but this conversation is for sure going to expand beyond just progesterone. I don't really love playing whack a mole with hormones or really anything in the body, meaning like, okay, if this hormone is low, we're going to give you this one thing to raise it, because that's not how the body works. That's not how hormones work.
Erin Holt [00:02:01]:
I think of hormones working together like a symphony, so we always have to bear that in mind anytime we're talking about any one hormone in particular or just hormones in general. I posted something on Instagram at the point of view, hearing this, it will be. Last week, I posted something on Instagram and it was basically a call for questions. So I received a lot of very specific questions about hormones, and I'm thinking that we'll probably end up doing more of a hormone series, because to answer everybody's questions in one episode, I mean, do you want to listen to, like, a five and a half hour episode? Probably not. One of the overarching themes that I heard through the questions is a little bit of overwhelm. Like, where do I get started? There's so much information. What's right, what's wrong? Or I have this, like, really complex issue. What do I do about it? So there's just a little bit of confusion, a little bit of overwhelm.
Erin Holt [00:02:50]:
And so I thought the best place to start is with the foundational things that have to be in place in order to have hormone health, because no matter what your specific condition, a lot of this stuff will come back to this. And when we're talking about low progesterone, which is a very, very, very common thing that we see, all of this needs to be done and needs to be understood before we can just raise progesterone levels. But this also applies to other hormones as well. When we're talking about hormones, one concept that you will hear me talk a lot about is safety, especially in relation to progesterone. When I mean safety, I'm talking about both our internal environments and also our external environments. So I think this is a really good place to start. Before we get into the nitty gritty of progesterone, we got to start with safety. So when I'm talking about internal environment, this is, like, what's going on inside the body.
Erin Holt [00:03:48]:
So are you eating an appropriate amount of fuel? Are you eating an appropriate amount of nutrients? Like, is your body actually nourished? The body needs to be nourished in order to feel safe. So is it actually nourished? Are you eating a lot of processed foods? Maybe you are calorically okay, but nutritionally, like, defunct. So does the body feel safe? Does it feel nourished? Does it feel supported by way of nutrition? Blood sugar regulation also has to come into this conversation as well. Toxin exposure. One of the things that our fat has the ability to do is to sequester toxins and keep it away from our vital organs. And so a lot of folks will come to us and be like, I have weight loss resistance. Therefore, I have hormone imbalance. And it's like, yes, all of this can kind of cluster together.
Erin Holt [00:04:36]:
We got a question like this on Instagram. Why can't I lose weight? We have to look at your toxin load, because if you gain weight out of nowhere or if you're dealing with weight loss resistance, toxin exposure might be part of the overall puzzle. And also, just as an aside, this is one of the reasons if somebody has super fast and dramatic weight loss, they can feel poorly because there's a rush of toxins that like, move into the body and can make you kind of sick and unwell. Also with super rapid weight loss, you're losing a lot of muscle mass and it's rarely sustainable. So for all of these reasons, it's not something that I recommend. I digress. So, internal environment, it's like, how are you feeling yourself? How are you being fed? Are you, you know, are there toxins within the body? All of these things can create an environment that doesn't register as safe to your brain and then therefore your hormone production. But internal environment can also be our thoughts in our beliefs.
Erin Holt [00:05:35]:
Episode 242, Hormones and Your Brain Chemistry is one of the top most downloaded episodes we've ever had. So I go into a lot more detail about it there. But essentially the thesis of that episode is your thoughts can create changes in your brain which communicates to the rest of your body. Hormones, including stress hormones, including neurotransmitters, including sex hormones, are made in response to what the brain tells the adrenals and the ovaries to do so. If the brain perpetually perceives stress and or a lack of safety, it will continue to ring the alarm bells and set off the stress cascade, which is going to influence all of your hormones. So we hear a lot about the mind body connection. So that's part of what I'm speaking into right now. What I think is interesting is Candace Pert, instead of writing this out as mind hyphen body, she actually coined the term body mind and wrote it out as one word, because in her research, she found that it actually is one in the same.
Erin Holt [00:06:39]:
The mind and the body are so intimately connected, we cannot extract one from the other. So when we're talking about internal environments creating, creating safety, are your thoughts, are your beliefs creating a safe environment in your body, or are the thoughts that you're thinking always putting you in an active fight or flight stress response? So internal environment, we need to feel safe. External environments, we need to feel safe too. And so external environments can look like your home. You know, if there's mold exposure, if there are toxins in your home, cleaning products, scented laundry detergent, dryer sheets, scented candles, glade plugins, all of these create an unsafe environment for your body. And I know that's dramatic, but it's true. And if you have any of these products in your home and you're worried about hormone imbalance, this is where you have to start because it is the low hanging fruit.
Erin Holt [00:07:38]:
It is so easy to remove these. It costs you $0. It actually costs you less money. So this is the place to start. Start. All of these products that I just mentioned are all found in the average home, which is part of the reason why I say modern world is antibody air freshener. So we went, I told you we were in Florida. We walk into our Airbnb.
Erin Holt [00:07:59]:
Some of you guys might remember this story. Three years ago, we rented an Airbnb and I walked in after driving from New Hampshire to Florida. We walk in at night. I was exhausted and I just crossed the threshold of the door. I sniffed and I was like, oh my God, you have to be kidding me. There were air fresheners plugged in all over the house. Luckily, it changed our approach to Airbnb. So now whenever we rent them, we just email the owner ahead of time and we ask if they use any scented products.
Erin Holt [00:08:28]:
What I forgot to do or what I didn't realize I also had to do is ask if they use scented dryer sheets. Because in this Airbnb, we asked if they used, you know, air fresheners or scented products. They said no, but they use freaking Gain dryer sheets, which is like the worst of the worst of the worst of the worst. Dryer sheets are some of the gnarliest, most toxic things you have in your house. Not hyperbole. This is not fear mongering. This is just facts, baby. Get them out.
Erin Holt [00:08:56]:
All of these things can contribute to poor indoor air quality. The stuff you're breathing into your body all day, all night. 100% of housed dust samples contained phthalates. Phthalates are known endocrine disruptors. That means they scramble up your hormones. And scented products are a main contributor of these phthalates. Of these endocrine disruptors in our home, phthalates are linked to not just hormone imbalance, but fat loss resistance, insulin resistance, type two diabetes, asthma, fertility and reproductive issues, breast cancer. So these are a really, really big deal.
Erin Holt [00:09:38]:
Some people have fragrant sensitivities. I'm one of them. I just feel, I get headaches. I feel super gross. Some people don't have the sensitivity. They're not aware of it. But even if you're not sensitive to it, these are still impacting you negatively and creating an environment that is not safe for your body. Another question to ask yourself, where do you not feel safe physically in your home? So this can be very extreme.
Erin Holt [00:10:05]:
This can be domestic abuse. This could be living with alcoholic or substance abuse. Being a child of an alcoholic parent or caretaker, you can actually carry feelings of lack of safety in your body into adulthood. So these would be some things to really look at head on, because if there is no safety, if you do not feel safe, that's going to influence our entire hormone production. And it might also be something seemingly innocuous. So something that you might not even consciously realize is causing you to feel unsafe. I'll use an example of my mother in law, who's a love, and I love her, and she's wonderful. And when Hattie was little, my daughter was little, she would come to the house every single Monday, would help out so I could work, and every single Sunday night, I would get really, really, really stressed out, like, almost to the point of, like, panic.
Erin Holt [00:11:02]:
And I had to really think about what was going on. And one of the things that my mother in law would do, she would clean and reorganize my house. She would bring things in, she would put decorations up. And in doing so, when she was here, I felt like my home wasn't mine, it didn't belong to me, and it sort of lost its feeling of safety. So something you have to understand about me in order for this to make sense is we moved around so much when I was a kid. This house that I live in now is the longest I've ever lived in one house, nine years. And I have put a lot into making this home feel like a safe space for me to exist, which was not always available to me.
Erin Holt [00:11:44]:
When I was younger, my body didn't feel like a safe space. My environments didn't feel like a safe space. So I put a lot of care into making this home feel like a safe space. And when I felt like I wasn't the one in charge, that ripped away feelings of safety, which caused a lot of stress. So, again, it could be something that you're not even consciously aware of. But is there anything in your home that is triggering feelings of lack of safety within your body? You know, a lot of this stuff can be happening at the level of the subconscious mind, but what's happening at the level of the subconscious mind does influence the physical body as well.
Erin Holt [00:15:03]:
And I just want to pause here. I've got a lot more to say, but I just want to pause here. Temperature check. How we doing out there? I realize that this is where things can start to feel really overwhelming. I acknowledge that my goal here today with this podcast in my work in general, is not to overwhelm, but to tell you the truth. And the truth is the solution to low progesterone is rarely found in a Vitex bottle. It is auditing your life and being willing and able and resourced enough to do the courageous work of identifying what in your life is antibody.
Erin Holt [00:15:45]:
What in your life is anti safety. And can you be radically honest with yourself? Can you start to make changes on those things? And, yeah, you can absolutely use some Vitex in the morning for some support. We'll talk about that later. But this is the real work. And y'all know I am obsessed with root cause. It's why I got into this work in the first place. And so when we are looking at, like, the true root cause, we have to go this deep. This is the work.
Erin Holt [00:16:17]:
This is the needle mover. This is the stuff. So anyway, other things to look at. Relationships, where do you not feel safe physically in relationships? Where do you not feel safe to be the fullest expression of yourself in relationships? I had a friend who said, well, I can't tell my husband that I meditate. He would make fun of me. They are no longer married because that is a red flag if you can't be who you really are. The fullest expression of yourself in relationships, that is not a relationship. That's sending signals of safety to your brain and to your body.
Erin Holt [00:16:57]:
Health is wholeness, and wholeness requires self expression. It's very hard to find true healing when we are editing out aspects of ourselves. So evaluate in what relationships do you feel you need to edit out aspects of yourself? Because that is not a safety signal to the body. Work environments, kind of the same deal there. Are there work relationships? Are there toxin exposures in the workplace? So we want to think about, again, internal environment, but then also external environment. Where are their signals of lack of safety from either of those two? And since we are talking about hormones, I want to answer a question that came in. Somebody just recently started listening to the podcast, and they're going back in the archives, which I love because there's so much good information since the beginning of the show. And she said, I listened to the podcast, and I keep hearing you mention YHR.
Erin Holt [00:17:53]:
What is that? So Your Hormone Revival is YHR? It's a three month hormone rebalancing program that I've run for, I think, close to five years now. And recently we merged it into the Funk'tional Nutrition Collective. And part of the reason for that is because everything I'm talking about here can take some time. And I know that that's not what people want to hear when they're trying to balance their hormones. They're just like, give me the secret sauce. But as I've said before, there really is no reset button for hormones. There's no easy button for hormones. Three months is a really great start.
Erin Holt [00:18:30]:
But if you want to take a real root cause with hormones, it takes time to organize your life and to learn to build new habits towards robust hormone production. And one of the things that I really love about the Collective and why I integrated Your Hormone Revival as part of the Funk'tional Nutrition Collective, is because the Collective creates a space in your life to actually change your habit. One of the things that I ask myself when I'm working on any new goal or any new intention, I'll ask myself, what does my new dream need from me? So if this is on my heart to do, what does this new dream require from me? What does it need from me? And we can ask ourselves the same question, what is my new healthy body need from me? And so, with the Collective, like I said, we've essentially created a space for you to find those answers, to implement those answers, and to create that new, healthy, fully expressed version of yourself and everything that I'm going to talk about today. You can walk away from today's episode with a lot of stuff to implement, but we also have solutions for that in the Collective. Cleaning up your diet, detoxification, balancing your blood sugar, estrogen, detox, drainage, and detox for the whole body. There's a lot of mindset work to create positive downstream effects on the rest of the body and your hormones. And we also have practitioner touch points. I know that Instagram, TikTok, social media can be such a confusing place to navigate, because one day you hear one thing, the next day you hear another thing.
Erin Holt [00:20:06]:
And so you have the ability in the Collective to ask practice practitioners questions. We can help you unpack lab values. We can discuss strategies and interventions. We can clarify confusion, you know, which is the stuff you can't do on Instagram. Most practitioners are very busy running their practices. They're not in their DM's, being able to answer individualized health related questions. We just really can't do that. So once a month, there is a practitioner.
Erin Holt [00:20:31]:
Ask me anything. Once a month, we have a mind body medicine class. So that's yoga. That's nervous system regulation. That is meditation. And then I also teach exclusive workshops within the Collective as well. And it officially reopens May 20. I know a lot of you guys have been asking about it, so now I have an actual date to share with you.
Erin Holt [00:20:53]:
May 20, we will reopen. So my goal, my role here, just in my work in general, is to continuously remind you that your body is always trying to heal itself and it has the capacity to do so. We just need to figure out the ways we're interrupting that process. So in the Collective, we have time together to really help you unpack that, especially with your hormone health. If you go through Your Hormone Revival with the support of the Collective, you are going to be on the fast track to rebalancing your hormones for sure. So, speaking of hormones, progesterone. Progesterone used to be an unsung hero. Like I remember back in the day of this podcast, I used to refer to progesterone as an unsung hero.
Erin Holt [00:21:35]:
And. And the good news is that in recent years, at least in the functional alternative health space, we've kind of given it its dues. Like more people understand how important progesterone is. It's important for brain health clarity in thinking how many women are struggling with brain fog. You know, progesterone, healthy progesterone levels can really help with clear thought. Mood regulation, progesterone is anti anxiety. It's really important for thyroid health, it's important for sleep. It's anti inflammatory.
Erin Holt [00:22:04]:
Am I singing its praises well enough. It's just like good for everything. We love progesterone. Now, if you go to your doctor and they test progesterone, well, there's a whole host of issues with that. I'm not going to get into hormone testing just for the sake of time, but we have some episodes on that, and I'll link them up in the show notes for you. Or actually Cameryn will. What up, Cameryn? She does all the linking. But if you are lab low conventionally, the kind of go to strategy for that is to treat low progesterone with synthetic progestin, which is not the same thing as progesterone in your body.
Erin Holt [00:22:46]:
On episode 292, we talked about bioidentical hormones, and that would be a great episode to go revisit, to listen to. If you're curious about HRT or bioidentical HRT, quite a few people had questions about that. So that would be a really great episode to explore. And in regards to should, if I'm low in progesterone, should I immediately start bioidentical hormones? I think it depends. Here's my hot take. Based on what we've seen in practice, I would try everything I'm talking about in this episode. First, my goal would be to address more of the root cause approach. And this is more of a conversation for menstruating women.
Erin Holt [00:23:36]:
Versus post menopausal. Okay. It's not in my eyes, it's not so much about identifying, oh, progesterone is low. It's more asking, why is progesterone low in the first place? And so what we commonly see is dysregulated HPA axis, ongoing stress and cortisol dysregulation, and really having to restore safety. The body has to feel safe to support progesterone, period. So we need to look at lifestyle, food, and supplement support. And I would try these things first. This is something that we have seen in YHR and Your Hormone Revival.
Erin Holt [00:24:18]:
These strategies can work really, really well. So I typically encourage folks to start here rather than just jumping right into replacing hormones we tried to self regulate before replacing. Um, so that would be my suggestion. And if you're more in the perimenopause menopause phase, you're still going to get a lot of benefit out of doing these things. Like, look, if you are in unsafe environment, there's no amount of HRT that is going to remove the unsafe environment. Like, we still have to do the work, we still have to clean up your diet, we still have to remove toxins, we still have to support detoxification. So make sure you're laying the groundwork with all these things that I'm talking about in today's episode and in next week's episode, because we're going to get more into the nitty gritty of nutrition for hormones as well. So progesterone is a steroid, reproductive hormone that's produced by a temporary gland called the corpus luteum.
Erin Holt [00:25:14]:
And this happens after ovulation. So premenopause, you're producing progesterone with the corpus luteum. If you are pregnant, you are producing progesterone through the placenta. And after menopause, the adrenals can produce some progesterone, but you're not making gobs and gobs and gobs of it, like when you are still menstruating or still ovulating. Side note, this is one of the reasons that I really, really advocate for perimenopausal women and post menopausal women to support their overall adrenal function, their overall stress. I mean, it's just, it's just something we got to do if we want good health and to feel good.
Erin Holt [00:28:00]:
So progesterone is pro gestation. It is essential for pregnancy. Its main role is to prepare the body for pregnancy. So around day 20 ish of your cycle. Of course, all of our cycles are a little different, but around day 20 ish, progesterone spikes so it can maintain the lining of the uterus to support pregnancy.
Erin Holt [00:28:23]:
And if you get pregnant, it will stay high. But if you do not get pregnant, progesterone will drop, and it usually drops around day 28 ish, and that causes the uterine lining to break down, which is menstruation. So that's what's happening every single month in your body. Healthy progesterone levels calms the nervous system. So I really think of progesterone as just like a calming, soothing balm on the whole body. It calms the nervous system, and it just makes it overall easier to cope with stress. You become a little bit more resilient. Progesterone converts to a neurosteroid called allopregnellone, which has a very calming effect.
Erin Holt [00:29:07]:
It acts like gaba in your brain. It promotes relaxation, it promotes sleep. Progesterone is a natural antidepressant. It's a natural anti anxiety. It's a natural mood stabilizer. It reduces PM's symptoms. So somebody with outrageous PM's symptoms, we, of course, want to be looking at progesterone levels. Progesterone also counterbalances estrogen.
Erin Holt [00:29:29]:
So it really works with and balances out estrogen levels. It's kind of like a yin yang situation. Progesterone thins the uterine lining while estrogen thickens the uterine lining. When progesterone is low, estrogen can have excessive effects. They really work in balance with one another. Remember that symphony that I talked about at the start of the show? So this is where we can start to see signs of estrogen dominance. Even if estrogens are not high, we can still see symptoms and signs of estrogen dominance just because progesterone is too low to counterbalance the effects of estrogen. So let's talk about some signs and symptoms of progesterone deficiency or low progesterone.
Erin Holt [00:30:11]:
And there can be a lot of overlap between these signs and signs of estrogen dominance for the reasons that I just talked about. So, so some symptoms of low progesterone, anxiety, irregular periods. This can include spotting. So normally we should start our period with kind of like bright red blood. But if you just have spotting for the first few days of your cycle or of your menstruation, then that can indicate low progesterone. Hair loss. PM's symptoms, like I mentioned before, including cramps, acne. Cramps, is because, like, estrogen is a, is a growth hormone, it's a builder. And so it, estrogen has the power to kind of like intensify everything that you're experiencing in your period. This is kind of the way that I see it in my head.
Erin Holt [00:30:58]:
So estrogen can kind of intensify it and then progesterone can kind of like, cool, like allow you to cool out. But if there's not enough progesterone to allow that, like, cool out factor, then things can get really intense. So you can see super cramping, wicked mood swings, heavy bleeds, blood clots in the blood and things like that, just really intense PMS. And sometimes that's a high estrogen issue. Sometimes that's a low progesterone issue. Sometimes it's a combination of both. We can see acne and skin issues with low progesterone, low sex drive, low libido, mood swings, mood instability, just kind of all over the place. Depression, chronic pain. Remember, everything just kind of calms down.
Erin Holt [00:31:42]:
Chronic pain is a symptom that the nervous system is constantly hyperactivated. It's in a hypervigilant, high alert state all the time. And so progesterone can kind of help to calm things down. Brain fog. We mentioned that earlier, progesterone is a diuretic. So if we have low progesterone, we can see water and fluid retention. We can see more bloating, especially during the luteal phase or the premenstruation phase. We can see swelling throughout the body, blood pressure issues.
Erin Holt [00:32:13]:
So if you're experiencing any of these on the regular, it might be a low progesterone issue. Migraines and headaches, we can see with low progesterone. And of course, with low progesterone, there is a higher risk for miscarriage. Because progesterone is pro gestation, it is supportive of healthy pregnancies. Now, let's get into reasons for low progesterone. Why? The big one is an anovulatory cycle. You didn't ovulate. We need to ovulate in order to produce heaps of progesterone.
Erin Holt [00:32:48]:
In order for the body to ovulate, it must feel safe. So if you have no progesterone, super low progesterone, you're not ovulating. That means the body did not feel safe to ovulate. Ovulation is one of the first things the body lets go of if it doesn't feel safe, because if it doesn't feel safe, your body's smart. It's not gonna try to usher in a child into an unsafe environment. So that's kind of what's going on biologically. So the question always becomes, if your body's not ovulating, what can we do to support ovulation to get the body feeling safe? Short luteal phase can also cause low progesterone and then stress. The production of progesterone is stimulated by the pituitary gland in your brain.
Erin Holt [00:33:33]:
Remember that brain hormone connection that I mentioned at the start of the show? If the pituitary gets a little off kilter, a little off balance, when it's constantly being stimulated by a stress response that can influence progesterone production. Cortisol production can suppress LH luteinizing hormone, and that will lower progesterone as well. So stress is a big one. I'm kind of getting into a little bit of the nitty gritty, but just know stress is something that can contribute to low progesterone. One thing that we often say here at the Funk'tional Nutritionist is you have to be an active participant in your own healing. So I say that on the podcast, I say that in Manifest Your Health, I say that in the Collective, and we say that to our one on one clients, you have to be an active participant in your own healing. We can't do the healing for you. We can help you, we can guide you, we can lead you, we can inform you, but we can't do the active healing work for you. That is up to you in your body.
Erin Holt [00:34:33]:
So a little bit of a tough love moment. If you are too busy to participate in your own care, if you're always stressed, if you're always maxed out with work, if you're always maxed out with your family, if you're always maxed out with your other commitments, if you're always go, go, go, go, going. If you're overwhelmed, if you're too busy to take a vacation, if you're too busy to eat lunch, there's not a whole lot we can do to help you create healthy progesterone levels. That's the work. That's the stuff that you have to really look at. If you're too busy to participate in your own care, you might be too busy to produce adequate hormones. And so there's nothing that we're going to be able to throw at you that's going to correct that. All right, so one of the strategies to help the body signal for ovulation, to help the body produce progesterone, is to reduce your overall stress.
Erin Holt [00:35:28]:
And sometimes the stressors are really obvious, and sometimes they are not. So if you skipped the first part of this episode, if you were like, I just want to hear about progesterone, I don't care about safety. I want you to go back and listen to the first part of the episode, because there is no progesterone without feelings of safety. There is no progesterone without feelings of safety. So go back and listen to that now with a new, fresh set of eyes, new, fresh set of understanding. Okay. And I touched upon the food thing. In regards to sending signals of safety to your brain, in your body, let's drill into that a little bit more.
Erin Holt [00:36:03]:
We need appropriate fuel. We need to be eating to our maintenance needs and we need consistent fuel. So what we can see is low progesterone associated with chronic constant dieting or under eating calories. If you're just not hitting your caloric requirements for a healthy body, if you've got low body fat, this can also be problematic for progesterone. We need to have a certain amount of body fat for ideal female hormone production. And, you know, I'll speak into this for a second. I've been doing this work for long enough where I have seen behind the curtain in some of the people that you are following on Instagram or TikTok or YouTube, the people that have the aesthetic that you want with, like, the ripped six pack abs, a lot of them have lost their cycle. And I know this.
Erin Holt [00:36:56]:
I'm not going to explain how I know this, but I just know this to be true. So just be mindful of where you're getting your health information. And are the people that are delivering it qualified to give it? And I don't just mean qualified through credentials, but qualified through embodiment. Because if somebody's teaching other women how to have, quote unquote, healthy hormones by undereating calories and overtraining, and they have lost their cycle, like, to me, to me, that's a problem. To me, that is out of integrity. So just understand that what you see on Instagram or on social media or other places isn't always true. I've said this before. The one time in my life where I had visible abs, I also did not have a period.
Erin Holt [00:37:38]:
So being under a certain percentage of body fat can definitely inhibit ovulation. If there's not enough fat to make sex hormones, we also have to be mindful of not over training, which can be another stressor to the body. Now, I think that sort of collectively, we are way under exercised. We are not moving our bodies nearly enough. So I don't want to create, like, a, you know, unnecessary anxiety about moving your body, but going for walks, yoga, strength training, working in the occasional HIIT, the occasional cardio, all of that is typically supportive of female hormone production. It's just when we over do it, if we're over exercising to the point where we're not recovering, we're not sleeping, if we're under fueling ourselves. Like, if you want to train hard, you have to eat hard, too, you know, and a lot of people are not doing it, especially with that dieting mentality. And that's going to interrupt or impact your hormone production. If you're skipping meals and cranking coffee, and, you know, like, that is a huge contributor to low progesterone and hormone imbalance.
Erin Holt [00:38:45]:
Speaking of balance, we need to see balanced meals. So making sure you're eating the macronutrients, the carbs, the proteins, the fat, and we can move around levers. That's what we do in the Carb Compatibility Project. That's a four week nutrition program. You get access to that in the Collective. So you can take yourself through that four week experiment to find out your kind of ideal macronutrient ratio. Some people do better with more carbs, some people do better with less carbs. And kind of figuring out where you fit in to that spectrum based on the, you know, the point of life that you're in can be really, really helpful for overall hormone production.
Erin Holt [00:39:21]:
Low blood sugar is a stressor to the body, so it's very, very hard to balance hormones without stable blood sugar. But high blood sugar can also play a role, role in hormone imbalance and low progesterone. So we have to work on overall stabilization of blood sugar. If you have insulin resistance, we can see that pair with low progesterone. So we really want to work on overall insulin sensitivity. We want to work on overall blood sugar regulation. Low cholesterol, low fat diet, that can be another contributor. We need cholesterol to build out hormones.
Erin Holt [00:39:54]:
I understand cholesterol has been villainized. I did a whole podcast episode back in the day of why it really shouldn't be. But just understand you absolutely need cholesterol in order to build out your female sex hormones. I was going to get into more food specifics, and I'm looking at the clock and I'm like, oh, boy, we're running out of time. So maybe we just, next week we have. I was thinking about this, but I think it makes sense. We just have an entire show dedicated to food and nutrition for hormone health. So we'll really get into the nitty gritty, like the brass tacks of that for hormone health.
Erin Holt [00:40:32]:
So stay tuned. There's a couple of things in terms of supplement support that can be beneficial. Zinc can be helpful. Zinc increases the binding sites on the progesterone receptors to increase progesterone levels. Zinc also helps FSH follicle stimulating hormone to promote ovulation. So taking zinc might be a good option or just like ramping up zinc rich foods. This is why you see me housing oysters every chance that I get. Liver, if you can stand it.
Erin Holt [00:41:06]:
Beef, just good old fashioned grass fed red meat is a good form of zinc. Pumpkin seeds is another good one. Um, so that can, zinc can also be helpful for estrogen dominance. Zinc is just a very good mineral for overall hormone health. Magnesium. We just did a show on all about magnesium, so I won't spend too, too much time here, but that's really important for overall hormone health as well. Myo inositol is another one to consider that can be supportive of healthy ovulation.
Erin Holt [00:41:35]:
And so if you can support healthy ovulation, you can support healthy progesterone production as well. The dosing is anywhere between two to 4 grams a day, so that might be something to try out. Again, these recommendations are also in conjunction with all of the lifestyle factors as well, and the dietary factors as well. I mentioned Vitex earlier. Vitex is also called chaste tree berry, and that can be helpful for healthy progesterone levels. It helps the hypothalamus set the pace of the cycle. It's best used first thing in the morning. That's how we traditionally use it with our clients.
Erin Holt [00:42:17]:
It can help with luteinizing hormone pulses. It can promote ovulation through these things. So something to potentially try. Another thing that I've seen good success with is maca. And Maca really works on that HPA axis. It works on the brain down communication. And again, this would be a thing to trial for that self regulation instead of replacement. And then just supporting the adrenals in general is not a bad idea, you know, especially if you're under stress, if there's wonky cortisol levels.
Erin Holt [00:42:52]:
When I think of supporting the adrenals, I really think of evaluating where the stressors are coming into in our lives and then reducing those. But things like maca can also be helpful. Rhodiola. Any adaptogens can be supportive of a overall healthy stress response. Rhodiola balances cortisol output. It can be helpful for regulating menstrual cycles. I do like to leverage the use of adaptogenic herbs, and there's a lot of different ones. But when I'm talking about adaptogens, I also like to caution people like, don't just use this as like, extra gas in the gas tank.
Erin Holt [00:43:31]:
You. You really need to be working on everything else we talked about today, and then use the herbs as supportive. You know, herbs and adaptogens can't correct the imbalances in your life, but they can be really supportive of overall resiliency and feeling good in your body while you do make those big changes that are going to make the big impact to your hormones. So again, a little reminder, if you do need help with that, if you do need help with the big changes or the little changes or everything in between, the Collective will be open for enrollment on May 20. We would love to have you. You get access to all of our programs, including Eat to Achieve, the Carb Compatibility Project, Your Hormone Revival, Body Intentions Breakthrough. So I really love to see people go on this trajectory of changing their diet, balancing their blood sugar, and then really doing like the deep dive on hormone health. So we've got really wonderful education.
Erin Holt [00:44:28]:
We've got a lot of great frameworks for you to follow, and then we have the community and the practitioner support to boot. Hopefully this was helpful. I'll check you guys next week. Love you. Keep coming back for more. Bye. Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Funk'tional Nutrition podcast. If you got something from today's show, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, share with a friend, and keep coming back for more.
Erin Holt [00:44:56]:
Take care of you.
