Painful Periods Are Not O.K.

Welcome to the SYNC Your Life podcast episode #8! On this podcast, we will be diving into all things women’s hormones to help you learn how to live in alignment with your female physiology. Too many women are living with their check engine lights flashing. You know you feel “off” but no matter what you do, you can’t seem to have the energy, or lose the weight, or feel your best. This podcast exists to shed light on the important topic of healthy hormones and cycle syncing, to help you gain maximum energy in your life. 

In today’s episode, we’re talking about the fact that the majority of women deal with painful periods at some point in their lives. So much so that they often are debilitated from working, socializing, and living their normal lives. We talk about various natural supplements such as magnesium and zinc, and techniques to help relieve menstrual pain, including Maya Abdominal Massage. If you’re someone dealing with painful periods, or know someone who is, you do not have to suffer or rely on OTC meds for relief. This episode is intended to offer alternative solutions and insight!

Note: I am not a Dr., so the methods mentioned in this podcast are not intended to be diagnoses or treatments. You should always consult with your integrative medicine practitioner about all personal health matters.

If you feel like something is “off” with your hormones, check out the FREE hormone imbalance quiz at sync.jennyswisher.com. 

To learn more about the SYNC Digital Course, check out jennyswisher.com. 

Let’s be friends outside of the podcast! Send me a message or schedule a call so I can get to know you better. You can reach out at https://jennyswisher.com/contact-2/.

Enjoy the show!

Episode Webpage: jennyswisher.com/podcast 

0:05
Welcome to the SYNC Your Life Podcast. I’m your host, Jenny Swisher, certified personal trainer, nutritionist, hormone health expert and girl mom, I believe all women should be able to understand how our bodies are designed to feel. And I teach you how to sync your lifestyle to your cycle to reach maximum energy. You deserve to feel your best and this podcast is going to teach you how. Let’s dive in!

0:34
This podcast is sponsored by the SYNC Digital Course, to take the free hormone imbalance quiz to see what your symptoms could mean about your health. Visit sync.jennyswisher.com That’s sync s y n c dot jennyswisher.com.

0:57
Hi, friends, welcome to today’s episode of the SYNC Your Life Podcast. Today, it’s going to be just me talking to you guys about a subject that is near and dear to my heart, something that has definitely affected me in my life, really even the quality of my life. And what I’m finding is really something that a lot of women deal with a lot more women deal with this, then probably willing to admit, I meet a lot of friends now that I’m speaking a lot about hormone health. I have a lot of people reach out to me a lot of women who say, so how can I? How can I really prevent or improve my painful periods? I think most women listening would agree that periods are not something that we talk about in conversation, we might mention that we’ve started our period, but we don’t talk in detail about maybe some struggles that we’re having. And it’s actually pretty darn common, especially nowadays for women to be struggling with painful periods or heavy periods. So I wanted to just take some time today to really just express to you that painful periods are not okay. There are so many things that you can be doing from a holistic perspective, to really combat period pain. And today we’re gonna dive into what those options are for you, we’re also going to really explain like, where’s this pain coming from? What is potentially going on to cause this pain for you. And you know, what, what can you do to really improve your quality of life, because if you’re anything like me in my 20s, and even in my early 30s, I would actually schedule my life around my period, like when we would plan a vacation, I would make sure we were not going on vacation when I was on my period, because I would inevitably spend a couple of days literally curled up in a ball with a heating pad and lots of ibuprofen, just trying to push through those first couple days of bleeding. And my husband can attest that it was no way to live. I mean, we literally would schedule, social outings and stuff around my period. And I know I’m not alone, I know that someone listening to this is nodding their head, and they’re thinking, oh my gosh, she’s talking about me, because I have to do the same thing because of my periods. So I want to help you as best I can. Obviously, I’m all about educating you when it comes to hormone health, and really helping you navigate it for yourself and do things outside of traditional pharmaceutical methods to try to alleviate your pain. So let’s go ahead and dive in.

3:20
So first of all, let’s talk a little bit about, you know, painful periods. In general, it’s estimated that 15% of women have their lives disrupted in some way because of such painful periods. And a total of 80% of women will suffer from painful periods in their lifetime. This is also a really interesting stat here, over 50% of women will have severe moderate to severe cramping in the first 48 hours of their period. So in other words, most of us, the majority of us are actually pretty darn miserable for a couple of days of the month. So why is this happening? Well, first of all, of course, I have to give you my little disclaimer, I am not a doctor, so I cannot diagnose or prescribe anything to you. So nothing in this podcast is intended to take the place of your doctor, you should always you know be working with your your practitioner on anything specific to you. There are also unique situations where women are dealing with maybe endometriosis or PCOS or other conditions that are causing them to have these painful periods. And in those particular cases, you know, again, working with your practitioner is going to be the best plan of attack. But for the average woman who’s just having this cramping, and they’re not really sure why or where it’s coming from, maybe you’re living on ibuprofen each month, or plan… like I said, planning your life around your your period, I want to see if I can help as many of you as I can with just some sort of basic knowledge about where this pain is coming from and what to do about it. So let’s talk about the pain itself.

What Causes Painful Periods?

4:46
So it’s known that the pain from your period is actually coming from too many prostaglandins. They don’t know researchers and scientists don’t know why necessarily some women have more prostaglandins than others. But typically the women who have have too many or an excess prostaglandins are the ones who are suffering from more period pain. What are prostaglandins? Well, prostaglandins are chemicals hormones that your uterus makes. And they actually will trigger your uterus to contract to tighten and relax, which is what’s happening when you are excreting the lining of your uterus. So a lot of women will start to experience this type of pain, this sort of like pulsating pain a day or two before their period or, and I know in my case, typically when the period begins, like as soon as bleeding begins, some women, the pain can last for several days. And for other women, it’s really just intense for the first 24 to 48 hours. So I think it’s really interesting, right that, of course, ibuprofen typically will help or naproxen or these other over the counter methods, because the intention of those types of NSAIDs are to calm prostaglandins. So I think it just proves the point that prostaglandins are sort of the bad guy here. And that’s what that’s where the pain is coming from. So I want to talk to you guys specifically about some things that I do, and that I have been doing now for the past several years that have really drastically improved my quality of life. And I’ve learned about most of these things from highly renowned experts, experts like Sara Gottfried, MD, Lara, Bryden, Stacey Sims, and several other hormone health experts.

6:28
So the first thing that I want to mention is your diet. Of course, as a nutritionist myself, I can tell you that your diet plays such a vital role in basically everything about your life, right, your energy levels, your sleep, obviously, what we eat makes up the cells of our body. So it is so important. So the first thing I would recommend to you, or if you’re listening to this, and you’re thinking specifically about your friend or your daughter, please share this episode, so they can hear this information as well. But, you know, if you’re suffering from painful periods, let’s do a little bit of sort of a, you know, a deep dive into your diet, like what exactly are you eating each day that could possibly be inflammatory to you and to your system? For a lot of women that looks like dairy, it looks like gluten, it looks like refined sugar, right. So while each woman is unique, those are probably the three most common inflammatory foods that I see women consuming. And a lot of times when they eliminate them completely, they start to see improvement, not just again, not just with their sleep, or their belly fat, but also with their period pain. So step number one is definitely going to be, you know, to really assess your diet, what changes could you make what what common inflammatory foods could you remove from your diet, to see if that’s playing a role for you. And by the way, removing those foods from your diet is more than just doing it for a few days, you are going to have to do it for at least a cycle or two or three, before you might start to see an improvement in that.

8:01
Also important at least in for me, myself, and I and for all of my clients that I advocate to in my course. Magnesium is a powerful, powerful supplement, not only does it offer relaxation, it’s sort of known as a relaxation supplement. It’s also known to really aid the body especially during that week of PMS, when our sleep is up and down and rocky, and when our period pain starts and our bloating starts, magnesium can really rescue hormones in in that way they can actually, a lot of us I think I’ve mentioned this before on the podcast, but if I haven’t, you know most of us human beings are deficient in magnesium. And so by, you know, we just simply aren’t getting enough magnesium in our foods because magnesium has been depleted in our soils. And so magnesium is is known for muscle nerve function, blood glucose control, blood pressure regulation, energy production glycolysis so many biochemical reactions in the body, that when we’re not getting enough in our diet, we can actually start to see these types of inflammatory responses occur. So adding magnesium into your evening routine, consuming it, you know, an hour or so before bedtime, can really help with headaches, PMS symptoms, bloating, cramping, all this stuff that we’re talking about today. So there are different types of magnesium. That’s something that you guys can investigate on your own with your practitioner. I know I personally take magnesium glycinate I had been prescribed magnesium oxide by a neurologist years ago, but I actually didn’t respond well to it. It kind of messed with my digestive system and was not a fun experience. And so when my when my primary practitioner switched me to magnesium glycinate which is very readily available over the counter most whole food grocers. It was a game changer for me better sleep, less PMS. But you know, improved headaches, especially in that week before my period, and improved period pain. So magnesium is huge as well.

10:08
Another supplement worth mentioning so this is number three, right step one is take a look at your diet. Step two possibly incorporate magnesium as a supplement, before bedtime. Number three is zinc. I had so many people tell me about zinc. And I read about it multiple times before I started to add it into my supplement regimen. But it has been an absolute game changer. Laura Briden in particular has a couple of blog articles about this. And she talks about this in her book Period Repair Manual. But zinc has actually been found in one in particular one very powerful clinical trial to work as well as the pill for period pain. So it works by reducing inflammation reduces those prostaglandins. And it really helps sort of even immune modulate the treatment for endometriosis. So for people dealing with endometriosis, or PCOS or irregular periods, zinc has been proven to really help you in particular. So let’s see here. Zinc is also effective for acne, it’s helps to maintain collagen and tissue health to relieve vaginal dryness of menopause and perimenopause. It is also known when it’s combined with iodine and Selenium to improve the synthesis and activation of thyroid hormone, which can of course play a role with any sort of hair loss you might be experiencing or anything like that. So the thing that I love most about zinc is as soon as I started to incorporate it into my regimen, I started to notice how less how much less cramping I was having, like I told you before, I would spend the first 24 to 48 hours of my period with a heating pad or a hot water bottle, lots of ibuprofen. And when I started consuming zinc on a daily basis, my cramping alleviated itself at least 50% I did not have to use nearly as much ibuprofen I didn’t I was not down and out. So it has been a complete game changer for me as well. So those will be my top three tips. But there are other things that you can do as well as it pertains to, to this sort of thing.

12:05
So first of all, hang with me here, I know, sometimes I can kind of talk about holistic avenues that may be a little bit foreign, and that you haven’t heard about. But I want you to kind of open your mind to these types of things and really see if any of these things could play a role for you and be helpful for you. So one thing that my holistic practitioner had recommended for me was, it’s called uterine manipulation. So there are really very few people who are certified in this and I will make sure to put in my show notes. Exactly. You know what the credentials are to look for. But there are, I think it’s a it’s actually like a Mexican thing comes straight from Mexico, Mexico, medicine and Mexico, that there are these people who can become certified in it. And they can actually use castor oils and different types of things to massage the belly, and to massage the uterus into alignment. So if you think about like chiropractic for alignment of your bones, this is sort of the same concept only it would be alignment of your uterus and of your female parts. And when my practitioner told me about this, I thought she was crazy. I was like, Yeah, that sounds completely crazy. I’m not doing it. And she said, No, actually, I want you to try it, I had to travel an hour and a half to find this person who did it. And it was a little bit of an odd experience. I mean, I’m not someone who really enjoys massages in general. So it was a little bit uncomfortable to have somebody massage my belly. But she told me something. And I and I remember thinking like, gosh, this is starting to add up, she told me that my left ovary was kind of tucked behind my colon. And that my my parts were a little bit twisted in my lower abdomen. And it was funny that she had said that because when we were going through our fertility treatments years ago, the fertility specialist would bring me in to check for ovulation every so often. And when they would do an ultrasound, the technician would always have trouble and the doctor even mentioned how hard it was to locate and visualize my left ovary on ultrasound because it was kind of tucked and hidden. So when I had this manipulation done to hear this woman say the exact same thing, I was like clearly there’s a connection here. And so I say this to tell you that it may not be easy to find in your area, but it’s certainly worth looking into because if if your parts have sort of gotten out of alignment for whatever reason, this is this could be a definite game changer for you to kind of just situate everything and see if you have improvement with that pain.

13:21
And then last but not least, there are now just recently some supplements that are being sold in stores that you can easily find for example, Target is now carrying my favorite supplement for menstrual pain relief, which is called Semaine Health. It is a plant based menstrual relief capsule. So there is no you know, there’s no quote unquote drugs in it. No pharmaceuticals, no, not even over the Counter painkillers. So it’s actually comprised of ashwagandha, which we know is a potent adrenal health herbs. It’s let’s see, what else does it have boswellia curcumin, green tea, which is actually caffeine free, it’s a caffeine free version of green tea, magnesium, quercetin, resveratrol, vitamin d3 and other ingredients as well. So it says here right on the box nine plant extracts and minerals that help your body respond to inflammation and lessen cramps, reduce bloating, lower stress, relax, tense muscles and increase energy without caffeine. So I had heard about this product, and I held on to it for a while. And then when I was having one particular very intense, painful period, I decided to start using it and I am telling you, it was game changing again, it reduced the amount of ibuprofen that I had to take and was a complete game changer for me. And I plan to use it again in the future when needed. So check that out. It’s called Semaine Health. I’ll have it linked up in the show notes, s-e-m-a-i-n-e, you can find it at Target, you could probably even find it other places, I’m not sure. But that’s where I get mine.

16:10
Okay, last but not least, so we’ve talked about your diet, we’ve talked about supplements like magnet like magnesium and zinc. And this over the counter health based or plant based menstrual pill relief with Semaine. We’ve talked about lots of different ways that you can, you know, possibly even manipulate the uterus and manipulate from a sort of chiropractic massage perspective, to get relief. The last thing that I want to mention, which I’ve mentioned before on previous podcasts, and you guys will get to hear more from me about this because I’m such an advocate for it that I think that you should probably look into as well is the concept of bio identical hormone replacement therapy. And before you just tuned me out and say, Oh, no, that sounds like something for a woman who’s had a hysterectomy or that sounds like something for a woman who’s menopausal. Please continue listening because I started BioIdentical Hormone Replacement progesterone cream in when I was 22 years old, actually, in my early 20s, in my late 30s, now I am still using that cream. And I’m telling you, it has been the number one lifesaver for me, it is what I attribute my headache relief to, and so much more. So don’t ditch it until you get tested and see if maybe it’s something that you need. So you know, let’s talk briefly about what that could look like for you. So first of all, I advocate and I teach in my course that the first step for every woman who’s feeling off or who’s having painful periods or migraine headaches, is going to be to find a functional medicine practitioner, you can do that by going to ifm.org. And you can actually search integrated functional medicine practitioners near you by zip code. Once you find the right doctor for you, it’s important that you go to them and you ask them for testing. And you’re going to know that they are someone who knows what they’re doing when it comes to hormones if they recommend saliva or urine testing over bloodwork. So just know that there’s lots of different options with that this is all stuff that I teach in my course, if you’re interested in more details, you can check out my course via my website jennyswisher.com. But once you’re once you’re doing that testing, pay special attention to your sex hormones. And what I mean by that is, if you have the right doctor, they’re going to know to not just look at your individual levels of each hormone, they’re also going to know to look at the ratios, specifically the ratio between progesterone and estrogen. When you listen to my podcast, my previous podcast episode about my story, you heard me talk about how my particular issue is estrogen dominance, which means I have higher estrogen than I do progesterone, which means I have a large ratio, a wide gap, which is what triggers my migraines. And it’s probably also been playing a role in my period pain. When you don’t have enough progesterone when your body’s not producing enough progesterone, you don’t have anything supporting that uterine lining, to get your body to, you know, to have less painful periods. So for me in particular, especially here in the last four to five years, as I have increased my dose of progesterone as I age. To combat that estrogen dominance, I’m starting to see relief in my menstrual cycles, I’m starting to see drastic relief in the period pain, and I can’t help but think that that increase in progesterone is helping tremendously. So again, if your body is deficient in progesterone like mine, and it might not be but you know, testing will help you determine that and your functional medicine doctor will help you determine that. If it is at play for you. It can be such a game changer to get on a plant based cream and really support your body in the way that’s needed.

19:48
So all of these different things are options that unfortunately are not talked about in modern medicine. For the most part, women especially girls in their teenage years when they’re really suffering with periods pain which is so common, they go to their OBGYN and they’re prescribed the birth control pill, they’re prescribed something that will just simply cover up any underlying deficiencies or issues, as opposed to really getting to the root cause and using natural supplements and natural vitamins and tweaking the diet and things like that, to get relief and to really feel your best. So you guys know, I am all about feeling your best, I am all about equipping you with the knowledge to to, you know, to really investigate this for yourself and to navigate your own journey and to not have to rely on pharmaceuticals or the birth control pill or modern or modern medicine to to get your relief regardless of what it is you’re struggling with. So if you feel like maybe you’re off if you feel like your hormones could be a little bit of your issue as far as energy levels, headaches, cramping, sleep, whatever the case is, I highly encourage you to check out my free hormone imbalance quiz. You can find that at sink, Jenny swisher.com That is sync.jennyswisher.com. It’s a free hormone imbalance quiz, it will actually send the results right to your inbox to see to tell you exactly what you could be dealing with potentially as it pertains to hormones.

21:16
So start there, if you’re not sure, I’m happy to be a resource for you. I’m happy to connect with you outside of the podcast, check the show notes for ways to do that. But for today, my friends I just wanted to educate you and teach you all these different options that exist that maybe you don’t know about to help you with period pain because painful periods are simply not okay. We don’t have to suffer through them. We don’t have to think that there are no options. And ladies, let’s start talking about this stuff. This should not be stuff that we keep undercover all of us have periods FYI women have periods and it’s okay to talk about. So until next time, my friends I hope this has been a value to you. Share it with your friends rate and review the podcast make sure you click Subscribe and I’ll see you next time!

22:09
Thanks for listening to this episode of the SYNC Your Life Podcast. I hope you found value from today’s episode. If you did, please share it out to your friends or leave a review. Remember your cycles are your superpower and by aligning with them you can live your life with all the energy you need to be a mom, Wife, Daughter and friend to those you love. Until next time!