Ok so you learned how hormones influence PMS in the last post, but what about the other factors?
As you might remember, hormones are not bad! We are just trying to balance them.
Inflammation is also important to address in all hormonal and PMS concerns. It is a big one in pain.
Inflammatory mediators are produced by your immune system and the purpose is to fight off infections. But chronic inflammation can happen when we have way too many of these ‘pro-inflammatory’ mediators, without resolution. These signals can impede other hormones, and in themselves directly cause pain.
How do you decrease inflammation?
By avoiding triggers that over-activate the immune system such as food sensitivities or allergens. And by avoiding external sources of inflammation such as sugar, smoking, alcohol, trans-fats and environmental toxins.
Histamine can be another trigger for certain people, especially around ovulation or in cases of estrogen dominance. High estrogen stimulates histamine and vice versa.
Stress is also inflammatory in nature, which is one of the reasons we work so hard to manage stress (or the reaction to stress) when there is hormonal and PMS concerns.
An individualized approach to inflammation should be taken for each person. Depending on your immune system and your unique picture certain elements may be more important than others. But getting on an anti-inflammatory diet helps the majority of people.
If you address inflammation and work on the hormone balancing addressed in the previous post, you should be feeling pretty good.
The third step is to look at individual nutrients or protocols for any pesky symptoms that don’t resolve.