The number of women that join the club to improve their gut health is hefty, and nine times out of ten, they also struggle with menstrual cycle irregularity, period pain, acne, anxiety, resistance to weight loss, sleeplessness, and more. And the thing is, your gut is affected by what lives on your plate (food, exercise, etc.) and what’s off your plate (lifestyle, joy, spirituality, relationships, etc.) and… vice versa. So, the gut-brain connection is strong in both directions, and, in turn, so is the gut-hormone connection. 18% of the global population suffers from deteriorating gut health and a shocking majority of respondents were women, twice as likely to experience discomfort as men. Aside from experiencing more, frequent, GI discomfort, women of menstrual cycle age also experience vast fluctuations of symptoms across their cycles.
How Your Cycle Impacts Your Gut
Gut health is dependent on so many factors, but, if you’re a person with a period, hormones are pretty high on the list. We depend on healthy gut function for adequate detox of excess hormones as well as production of others. In the club, detox is often synonymous with poop and if you aren’t pooping you aren’t detoxing.
A lot of women share that they’ll go days at a time without pooping and for us, that’s a red flag usually accompanied by menstrual irregularity, PMS, anxiety, and more. All because your body isn’t getting rid of the excess.
And then, in a vicious cycle, as estrogen drops leading up to your bleed, you can experience delays in motility, or how fast your poo moves. Where the excess can be stuck, your symptoms can rise, and we never get back to baseline. Generally speaking, the times when you’ll experience the most intense changes in regard to your gut will be in the premenstrual or luteal phase.
Then your period comes and BOOM, the flood gates open. This is due to a rise in prostaglandins which can be extremely intensified with high estrogen and inflammation. These same prostaglandins are causing the muscular contractions (cramps) that help to shed your uterine lining and if everything isn’t in perfect balance they will work overtime and impact digestion.
So What Do You Do for Better Period Poops?
As with everything, track your cycle and take it phase by phase. Make note at the end of each day, how your bowel movements were and what symptoms you experienced. Noting what you ate can make the awareness that much higher.
Then, try these:
Increase cruciferous vegetables and fermented foods in the follicular phase
Breathe and pause before meals
Try to avoid alcohol and inflammatory foods (processed sugars, refined oils) the week leading up to your period
Align movement with each phase of your cycle
Find a quality probiotic to include daily
The Bottom Line
Period poops aren’t a forever thing. With some mindful consideration of what’s happening on and off your plate, they can improve in just one cycle!
To find out how you can optimize your cycle for better digestion, let's chat in a free health coaching session!
CITATIONS
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Mayer EA, Nance K, Chen S. The Gut-Brain Axis. Annu Rev Med. 2022 Jan 27;73:439-453. doi: 10.1146/annurev-med-042320-014032. Epub 2021 Oct 20. PMID: 34669431.
Sanders KM. Role of prostaglandins in regulating gastric motility. Am J Physiol. 1984 Aug;247(2 Pt 1):G117-26. doi: 10.1152/ajpgi.1984.247.2.G117. PMID: 6589963.
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