Hormones & Periods

Flo Living is all about helping you understand what is going on with your menstrual cycle and getting back on track.

The Best Detox for Women

Quick fixes don’t work, though we all wish they would. If you’ve been following FLO Living for a while (or even for a short time), you know I advocate for making good choices every day, creating sustainable lifestyle habits that last for the long term, and living in line with your infradian rhythm, or the innate 28-day hormone cycle that controls six key areas of the body, all year long. It’s an evidence based, results-driven perspective and it really works.

That said, I do recommend doing the right kind of detox — emphasis on the words “right kind” — periodically. A detox that focuses on replenishing the nutrients and minerals your body needs while reducing the amount of nutritional clutter that comes into your body (think sugar, caffeine, and the pesticides and herbicides found on conventional produce) can kickstart hormonal healing and accelerate the disappearance of period problems like heavy or irregular periods, fatigue, acne, moodiness, brain fog, bloating, weight gain, and weight loss resistance. What makes a detox healthy and supportive (versus depleting and destabilizing)? When should you detox? How can you detox safely?

In this post, I give you everything you need to know about doing a safe, hormone-supportive detox. And I share the detailed 4-Day Detox plan that I designed specifically to help you balance your hormones and erase period problems.If you’ve tried detox protocols in the past and they haven’t worked, this post is for you.

How Do You Know If You Need to Detox?

A healthy, hormone-supportive detox isn’t a daily lifestyle. It’s a short, thoughtful, nourishing protocol that you can follow a couple times a year to help rebalance your hormones ease pesky period problems. How can you tell when you’d benefit from doing a hormone supportive detox? Here are some clues your body might be giving you:

  • You feel sluggish and tired most days, even after getting a good night’s sleep
  • You have trouble concentrating
  • You feel irritable and moody most days
  • Your body feels heavy, weighed down
  • You feel bloated most days
  • Your PMS is worse than usual
  • You’re breaking out regularly
  • You’re having increased food cravings
  • You’ve been relying on caffeine to jumpstart each day
  • You’ve been relying on alcohol to come down at night
  • You’ve gained some weight and it just won’t seem to come back off

If you can identify with the symptoms on this list, your hormones need some TLC and one of the best ways to start that process is with a detox. But not just any detox! A healthy, healing detox is NOT a crash diet, juice cleanse, or fast. If you want to feel energized, refreshed, boosted in body and spirit, as well as lose a few pounds and get glowing skin, you need a detox that nourishes and supports you, not deprives you.

Why Is Doing a Detox Important?

Modern life is hard on hormones. Here are just some of the things we are exposed to everyday that interfere with optimal hormone balance and contribute to unpleasant symptoms like fatigue, acne, depression, anxiety, brain fog, mood swings, weight gain, weight loss resistance, and period problems, like severe PMS, heavy or irregular periods, bloating, and menstrual migraines:

  • Environmental toxins (household cleaning products, body care products, lawn chemicals)
  • The pesticides and herbicides on conventional food
  • Sugar/high-glycemic foods
  • Gluten
  • Caffeine
  • Alcohol
  • Not eating enough phytonutrient-rich foods
  • Chronic stress
  • Sleep deprivation

What is the Best Detox Protocol for Women?

The best detox for people with female physiology in their reproductive years is a detox that helps balance hormones, replenish missing nutrients and minerals, support the liver, and facilitate the elimination of toxins — all while allowing you to feel nourished and satisfied. Fasts, juice cleanses, and starvation diets do more damage to hormones than good!I’ve designed a simple, powerfully effective detox that accomplishes all of this. My 4-Day Hormone Detox has you eating fresh, nourishing food for 3 meals a day, plus snacks. You won’t feel hungry, hangry, or deprived. You will prep food and then you will be eating frequently throughout the day, instead of watching the clock for your next juice.

Many women have told me that the 4-Dday Hormone Detox is not something they live through but something they actually look forward to!Women who have done this cleanse have lost 10 lbs, cleared up stubborn acne, improved their energy, sharpened their thinking, solved period problems, and boosted their moods.I created this cleanse using the principles of functional nutrition and my deep understanding of hormonal biochemistry. Every meal combines foods that help support the liver and that help restore and sustain the delicate endocrine (hormone) system.

What’s more, the detox is designed to stabilize blood sugar, regulate your adrenal system, improve estrogen elimination, and engage your healing feminine energy. The protocol will also increase the micronutrients you need to manufacture the right amounts of these hormones and to signal to them to do their jobs at the right times for you.

What to Expect During and After the Detox?

The 4-Day Hormone Detox is designed to boost your energy, ease period problems, clear your skin, and improve your mood. It also resets your relationship with food, getting you back into healthy balance.More specifically, here is some of what you can expect:

Skin Benefits

The main environmental triggers of adult acne are dairy, caffeine, sugar (and high-glycemic foods, and gluten, and these are all eliminated during the 4-Day Detox. You’ll also increase the amount of skin-clearing, hormone-supportive nutrients in your diet, especially omega-3 fatty acids and B vitamins. These micronutrients also support your liver, which is responsible for clearing excess estrogen from your system. When the liver is sluggish, excess estrogen builds up and contributes to breakouts.

Menstrual Health Benefits

Because the Detox is designed to balance your hormones, you will notice an improvement in period problems, like PMS, cramps, bloating, and heavy or irregular periods.

Mood Benefits

If you’ve been experiencing anxiety, low mood, depression, or just a sluggishness and demotivation, then the 4-Day Detox can help. One root cause of mood swings and hormone instability is imbalanced blood sugar. The Detox is designed to balance blood sugar. Many women experience their worst moods (or mood swings) the week before their period, and this is fueled by high estrogen/low progesterone, which the Detox also helps correct by supporting the liver (to eliminate excess estrogen) and boosting B vitamin stores (which helps with progesterone production).

Body Composition Benefits

Bloating can get better during the detox. You’re might also  lose a few pounds, too. That’s because balanced blood sugar correlates with lower levels of insulin — and lower insulin is correlated with less fat stored around the waistline. (Insulin is an important and necessary hormone in the body, but too much of it in the body — which happens when blood sugar is high or chronically unstable — is associated with the storage of unwanted body fat.)

Emotional Benefits

During the detox, you’ll be journaling on specific topics that will expand your perspective, increase your sense of confidence and calm, and support you in connecting with your feminine energy and creativity. You’ll be having a conversation with yourself and your body that you can use to make positive changes in your life. The Detox is also designed to shift your relationship with food, encouraging you to actually engage with and enjoy what you eat.If your body and mind need a boost, I highly recommend the 4-day Hormone Detox. It is nourishing, restorative, and easy — no deprivation or punishing rules — so it can be rolled out when you need it to help you get back on track. WHEN is the optimal time to do a detox? You should do a detox during your follicular and ovulation phases only. Due to infradian changes, your metabolism is slower in the first half of your cycle and requires less calories, so you can tolerate the cleanse most easily then. Learn more about the infradian effect on metabolism here.

What Happens After You Finish the 4-Day Hormone Detox

After the 4-Dday Hormone Detox, it’s important to take small but effective steps everyday to keep toxins out of your system. You’ll want to maintain the good work you did during the targeted detox to keep your hormones healthy all year round.I recommend eating a nutrient-dense diet, full of good fats, greens, high-fiber foods, and high-quality proteins. Your liver needs the nutrients from those foods to process the excess hormones and toxins and eliminate them from your body. Specifically, the liver breaks down and eliminates toxins in four phases:

Phase 1: The liver breaks down toxins into smaller components by using nutrients from food such as glutathione, B vitamins, and C vitamins. These smaller components are called free radicals and they are more toxic once they’re broken down, so it’s critical to flush them from the body ASAP.

Phase 2: These free radicals are combined with the selenium and amino acids in the liver – again, sourced from your food – and they become harmless and water-soluble through the process.

Phase 3: Then these water-soluble molecules bind to fiber — yes, the very same fiber you get in food! — and are escorted out of the body.

Phase 4: Toxins are eliminated via your skin, your lymphatic system, and bowel movements.This is one of the reasons why food is such a core component of the FLO Protocol, and why living in line with your infradian rhythm depends so heavily on the foods you eat (and don’t eat). Optimal liver function also helps promote healthy weight maintenance and weight loss.  In short, your liver needs MORE nutrients, not less, to do its job effectively. To supply your liver with a steady stream of hormone-supportive nutrients and promote detox everyday, give the following foods a starring role in your daily diet all year round:

  • Gutathione-heavy vegetables like avocados, carrots, broccoli, spinach, apples, asparagus and melon. Add two additional servings a day
  • Selenium-rich foods like as oats, eggs, and Brazil nuts.
  • Fiber-rich foods like nuts, seeds, lentils and peas. Add flaxseeds to your breakfast eggs and lunch salad.

You can also speed up the elimination process and get those toxins out your body fast with a couple of simple lifestyle hacks.

  • Sweat – encourage your lymphatic system to get in on the game of releasing toxins by giving it a gentle movement massage. Workout in a way that makes you sweat, whether that’s a home dance workout or a hatha yoga class.
  • Soak – draw yourself a bath full of epsom salts, the ancient and highly effective way to detox via your body’s largest organ – your skin.

In addition, I recommend all people with female physiology in their reproductive years take targeted, hormone-supportive supplements that insure your liver gets all the nutrients it needs to do its elimination work. Even when we eat the cleanest diet, there are factors beyond our control (like the nutrient-depleted soil our food is grown in) that make it difficult to get all the nutrients we need from food. The five formulations in Balance by FLO Living provide the essential micronutrient support that you need to balance your hormones. Think of them as your personal “insurance policy” against endocrine disruptors like stress, coffee, environmental toxins, lack of sleep, and plain-old modern life.

You no longer have to waste money on low-quality supplements or supplements that don’t target your unique hormonal profile. I’ve formulated all the essential supplements you need to heal your hormones with the highest quality ingredients. The Balance by FLO Living supplement kit is thoroughly researched, rigorously tested, and perfectly suited to meet your needs. Always remember that once you have the right information about how your body really works, you can start making health choices that finally start to work for you. You can do this – the science of your body is on your side!

Balance Supplements

I designed my Balance Supplements specifically to help women address these key deficiencies, balance their hormones, and reclaim their energy.You don’t need to feel listless and exhausted for 1-2 weeks every month. You can reclaim your energy in as little as one 28-day hormone cycle. BALANCE by FLO Living is the FIRST supplement kit for happier periods that supports balancing your hormones. Balance Supplements include five formulations that provide essential micronutrients to balance your hormones. Think of them as your personal “insurance policy” against environmental factors that are (knowingly or unknowingly) zapping your energy every month. Balance Supplements can help you have more energy within a few weeks!

Cycle Syncing with Herbs & Supplements

PMS stinks. You shouldn’t have to spend one week each month with pain, bloating, acne, brain fog, and fatigue. You shouldn’t lose so much time to feeling crummy. You don’t deserve all those weeks of lost productivity and being less present and engaged in your life. If PMS and period problems are part of your life, you’re being robbed! You can reclaim your health and your life. How? By using food, supplements and lifestyle to address the root causes of period pain and PMS.At Flo Living, we believe all women should have access to easy, affordable reproductive care.

For over 15 years we’ve helped thousands of women around the world balance their hormones and reclaim their health with nutrition, supplements and lifestyle. Our proven protocol is backed by science and research to help you achieve real results.Sure, you can try spot treating your period problems with ibuprofen. But spot treating doesn’t work, which — let’s face it— you already knew. If spot treating worked, you’d take an ibuprofen or Midol and feel all-the-way better. Your fatigue would disappear. Your acne would clear right up. You would feel healthy and well all month long. Have you ever taken ibuprofen and felt truly alive and symptom-free?

Simply put, spot treating PMS doesn’t work. In fact, it can make the underlying issues that cause PMS and period problems worse. Why? Two reasons:

  1. Spot treatments pave over symptoms instead of treating the root causes. You may get temporary relief from popping an ibuprofen, but the hormone imbalances that cause your symptoms go untreated and ignored — and, often, they get worse.
  2. Spot treating means taking supplements ONLY when you have symptoms, and by the time you have symptoms your system is already out of balance. The hormone imbalances, nutrient deficiencies, and system-wide asymmetry that is causing you to feel miserable is already well established, and spot treating can’t fix that.

But you CAN erase period problems and PMS. You don’t have to suffer every month.I used to have terrible PMS, but now I have healthy, regular periods. I only know my period is coming when my period tracking app tells me it’s coming. This is a complete turnaround from when I was younger. My PMS left me on the sofa, curled up with a hot water bottle, and desperately trying to hide my acne and bloating.

What’s the secret to easing PMS and having happier periods every month? It’s supporting your hormones during each phase of your 28-day hormone cycle, not just taking a pill when symptoms crop up. Having a better period means doing the OPPOSITE of spot treating: The secret is using specific herbs and supplements in every phase of your monthly cycle to address root causes BEFORE they become pesky, unwanted symptoms.  

The Benefits of Cycle Syncing with Herbs & Supplements

When you choose the right foods, adaptogens, and herbs at the right time during your cycle, you will ease PMS symptoms AND you will do so much more. You’ll experience:

  • Consistent, clear mental focus every day of the month
  • Consistent energy levels every day of the month
  • Clear skin all month long
  • No bloating or cramping the week before your period
  • Steadier mood without dramatic mood swings

The first step to successfully synchronizing your food, supplement, and lifestyle choices with your 28-day hormone cycle — and freeing yourself from PMS and problem periods — is understanding your hormone cycle, which is governed by the infradian rhythm, and supporting your body in key ways during each phase of the cycle.

Support Your Body’s Second Cycle: The Infradian Rhythm

Menstruating women experience two biological cycles:

  1. THE CIRCADIAN RHYTHM is the 24-hour biological cycle that people of all genders experience. It governs the sleep-wake cycle and energy fluctuations each day.
  2. THE INFRADIAN RHYTHM is the 28-day hormonal cycle. It’s experienced by people with female physiology during their reproductive years. The infradian rhythm has four phases, and each one requires specific herb and micronutrient support to balance hormones and keep symptoms at bay.

The infradian rhythm, also known as the body’s ‘second clock’, affects six different body systems:

  1. Brain
  2. Metabolism
  3. Immune system
  4. Microbiome
  5. Stress response system
  6. Reproductive system

How much of a difference does the infradian rhythm make on these six systems?

  • The infradian rhythm creates a 25% change in your brain chemistry over the course of each month, which means you will have different levels of focus, and different areas of strength, during the course of each month. When you plan your schedule in accordance with your infradian rhythm, you can be more productive with less stress.
  • Metabolism speeds up and slows down across the infradian rhythm, requiring changes in when and what you eat, and how you work out.
  • Cortisol levels go up during certain phases of your infradian cycle, so without proper support and care during those phases you may experience more stress and inflammation, and your workouts (depending on what type of workouts you do) may be counterproductive.
  • Your skin changes throughout the course of your infradian rhythm, meaning you will benefit from different skin care routines at different times of the month
  • As your hormones fluctuate during the infradian rhythm, your body requires different herb and supplement support to help you system stay balanced. Targeted herbs also help your body detox, and keeps your whole body nourished.

The infradian rhythm has four distinct phases. Your body and brain change significantly in each phase, as your reproductive hormones fluctuate:

  • Phase 1: Follicular (the 7 to 10 days after your period)
  • Phase 2: Ovulatory (the to 4 days in the middle of your cycle)
  • Phase 3: Luteal (the 10 to 14 days between ovulation and your period)
  • Phase 4: Menstrual (the 3 to 7 days of your period)

The Best Herbs & Supplements for Each Phase of Your Infradian Rhythm

Since your hormones are changing each week, and you have different symptoms from those hormonal ratios each phase, it makes sense for you to use supplements in a targeted way for each phase to ease symptoms and smooth out your cycle.  I designed the FLO Living Cycle Syncing Supplements to give you the targeted support you need for a symptom-free cycle. These supplements give you the herbal and micronutrient infrastructure you need  to address the root causes of period problems and erase symptoms like PMS, bloating, acne, mood swings, low energy, and fatigue.   And you simply take the one for the phase you’re in - period.

#1: CoQ10 for the FOLLICULAR PHASE

Right after your period ends, you can feel fatigued and less focused. You need to create deep energy from within your cells.  CoQ10 is an antioxidant that supports healthy energy levels, protects our cells against oxidative stress, and may even help reverse some of the damage caused by free radicals. (That is a fancy way of saying that it helps slow down aging). CoQ10 helps support balanced blood sugar, which is essential for maintaining healthy hormones, and it helps promote good ovarian response and egg health. CoQ10 is important for protecting your fertility now and in the future.

#2: DIM for the OVULATORY PHASE

It’s very common for excess estrogen during this phase can trigger ovarian pain and acne. Your body needs help to break down estrogen faster. DIM is a powerful natural compound found in cruciferous vegetables like broccoli and Brussel sprouts, and it helps your body clear out used-up estrogen. Studies show that DIM helps support healthy estrogen levels. Balanced estrogen levels are key for clear skin all month long and healthy weight maintenance. Helping the body detox estrogen efficiently and effectively also helps reduce PMS symptoms like cramps and bloating.

#3: Chromium and cinnamon for the LUTEAL PHASE

Metabolism is naturally higher during the luteal phase of the cycle. But most of us don’t eat enough calories because we’ve been taught to believe that we should eat the same calories daily (turns out that’s only good for the guys). Our ability to burn calories goes up — but so do our food cravings. During this phase, it’s critical to maintain balanced blood sugar, so taking a supplement that supports blood sugar stability can be really helpful during this phase. Research shows that consuming cinnamon is associated with significant decreases in fasting blood glucose, and chromium has been shown to help with insulin sensitivity and better carbohydrate metabolism.

#4: Quercetin and Nettles for the MENSTRUAL PHASE

During the menstrual phase of your cycle, your uterus needs support to reduce inflammation and soothe cramps. That’s why I chose quercetin and nettles for this supplement. Both help reduce oxidative stress and inflammation. Nettles are rich in vitamins A and C, as well as iron and calcium, which helps replenish nutrients during your bleed. Quercetin supports healthy immune system function which is slightly suppressed during this phase and a healthy inflammatory response. I’ve been researching the best herb and supplement strategies for menstruating women for the past 20 years, and I designed these powerful, supportive supplements using my deep well of knowledge. If you suffer from PMS and other period problems, I invite you to try the FLO Living Cycle Syncing Supplements. They are specifically designed to support your unique female physiology and address the root causes of period problems and PMS. Unlike spot treatments like ibuprofen, the FLO Living Cycle Syncing Supplements help you optimize your hormones during each phase of your cycle so you can find lasting relief. You deserve better than the temporary, partially effective, and sometimes dangerous spot treatments on the market. Each formula in the FLO Living Cycle Syncing Supplement kit has been scientifically developed using therapeutic-grade herbs, and we guarantee NO fillers and NO impurities. It’s a myth that PMS is part of life, and that cramps, bloating, and other symptoms are just part of having a period. Period problems AREN’T inevitable. You can use your knowledge of the infradian rhythm to address the root causes of PMS and period pain and transform your monthly cycle into one that is symptom free. You deserve to feel better!At Flo Living, we are building a future where it’s easy and simple to get targeted support for your hormonal symptoms from your first period to your last. With the right support, women in their reproductive years can ease their symptoms, live with less pain, and look and feel their best — which is what every woman deserves.

NOTE: We use the words “woman” and “women” and she/her pronouns throughout these posts for ease of writing, but the principles and advice apply to any person, regardless of gender identity, who was born with female physiology. At the same time, if you are a person born with male physiology and you identify as non-binary or you are transitioning to identify as female, using a cyclical support system can help you feel more in sync with your female energy.

The Cycle Syncing® Supplement Kit

Targeted Nutraceuticals to help you optimize each phase of your cycle

Since your hormones change each phase of your cycle and you have different symptoms from those hormonal ratios each phase, you need targeted supplements for each phase to ease those specific symptoms during that phase.This kit will help relieve your period symptoms so you can stay energized and focused all month long.

Which Book Should You Read?

I love how social media is connecting us as women in a historic way. I love sharing everything I’ve learned over the past 15 years about female biochemistry, functional nutrition, endocrinology, and neuropsychology AND I love hearing from you. Specifically, I love your questions!Recently, I’ve been getting asked one question in particular: “Hey Alisa, I want to read your new book. Should I start with your first book WomanCode? Or should I start with your new book In the FLo?My answer is: Yes, and yes. 😊In all seriousness, I’m honored and thrilled when women read my books. I am on a mission to help move the conversation and the care forward for women for their hormones. I believe we deserve to feel better and I want that for you.These are some of the things that are possible:

  • Your period problems may improve, or you may notice your periods become problem-free
  • You may experience less PMS, or you may notice that your PMS improves so much that you don’t notice symptoms
  • If your period has been missing or irregular, your period may come back or you may experience more regular periods
  • Your skin may clear up.
  • Your mood may improve.
  • Your energy might improve.
  • You might experience more presence and joy in your life
  • Yoy might notice you are more productive at work (while putting in less effort — a win-win!)
  • You might notice that your sleep is more restorative and/or that your fall asleep easier
  • Your sex drive may improve.
  • Your anxiety may go down.

I built FLO Living as a virtual online health center to help women solve their hormonal symptoms, and that is what my team and I do 24/7 everyday of the year. We offer a variety of programs and resources, from free guides and detox protocols to individual coaching sessions and targeted hormone-balancing supplements.   Why?  Because women deserve more from their hormonal healthcare.  It’s time to finally feel better in our bodies.I invite people with period problems to start wherever they feel most comfortable. For some, it might be a membership in one of our Cycle Syncing™ programs. For others, it might be doing some deep reading — and for that I recommend my books. You can start with either one — or both! Here is a guide to each book to help you choose the best starting place for you.

IF YOU HAVE A MENSTRUAL CONDITION:

Start with my book WomanCode: Perfect Your Cycle Amplify Your Fertility, Supercharge Your Sex Drive, and Become a Power Source if…

  • You suffer from missing or irregular periods or other period problems like PCOS, Fibroids, Endometriosis, bloating, acne, PMS, severe cramps, heavy bleeding, or menstrual migraines.
  • You’ve been led to believe that Western medicine is the only option you have for healing your hormones
  • You’ve tried a bunch of Rxs, like prescription acne medication and hormonal birth control and they haven’t worked — or they’ve made your hormone problems worse.
  • You feel off — like you’re weighed down, lacking energy, lacking vitality, stuck — and you want to feel better.
  • You want to learn about functional nutrition, exercise timing, and healthy detox

Why I wrote WomanCode

I wrote WomanCode to tell my story. When I was younger, I struggled with PCOS. I weighed 200 lbs. My face, chest, and back were covered in cystic acne. I got my period twice a year. I was exhausted, depressed, and couldn’t concentrate or think clearly. And that wasn’t the worst of it, according to my doctors. I was told that as I aged, I would suffer from obesity, infertility, diabetes, and possibly cancer and heart disease. They could give me drugs, my doctor said, but it would only help with symptoms — maybe — and it would never cure me. I refused to accept this.

I knew there had to be a different way. I dove into the research and discovered that food was the most powerful drug I could use to balance my hormones and ease my symptoms. I also discovered the importance of eating and living in a cyclical pattern, or shifting what I eat and how I exercise and organize my calendar in line with my hormonal shifts throughout the month.

When I figured out the cyclical piece of the puzzle, everything fell into place. I got my period. I lost 50 pounds. My cystic acne went away. My brain fog disappeared. I had energy and less anxiety. I wrote WomanCode to tell this story and, most importantly, to share everything I learned about hormonal healing with you. Whether you have PCOS, another clinical hormonal imbalance, or chronic period problems like PMS, cramps, heavy bleeding, bloating or acne, you can use the same strategy I used to heal and remain symptom-free for the last 15 years.

IF YOU ARE BETWEEN THE AGES OF 18 AND 45

Start with my book In the Flo: Unlock Your Hormonal Advantage and Revolutionize Your Life if…

  • You want to deepen your understanding of your female biochemistry and your infradian rhythm, or the innate 28-day hormone cycle that regulates six key systems of the body
  • You eat a healthy diet, but you don’t seem to be getting results or what used to work for you has stopped working
  • You maintain a rigorous exercise routine but you don’t see results
  • You feel rushed, anxious, or exhausted much of the time
  • You feel like you aren’t as productive at work as you could be (despite putting in a LOT of effort)
  • Your libido has disappeared
  • You want to have more energy
  • You want to improve your interpersonal relationship
  • You want to have a healthier period
  • You want to biohack like a woman

Why I wrote In the Flo

I wrote In the Flo to introduce people with female biochemistry to the infradian rhythm. The infradian rhythm is an internal timekeeper, much like the 24-hour circadian rhythm, that is linked to the menstrual cycle. Here is just some of what the infradian rhythm does in the body:

  • The infradian rhythm creates a 25% change in your brain chemistry over the course of the month
  • Your metabolism speeds up and slows down predictably across the month and that you need to change what you eat and the intensity of your workouts each week in order to optimize your metabolism
  • Your cortisol levels are higher in one part of your infradian cycle, so pushing yourself through an intense workout bumps up cortisol levels even further, adding to your stress and inflammation, disrupting your hormones, and making you feel anxious and unfocused
  • People with female biochemistry need more sleep than men because we have a more complex brain and it needs 20 minutes longer to clean itself and reset for the cognitive day
  • People with female physiology tend to need less in the way of extreme self-care practices because we have more efficient biology.

One of my most significant discoveries over the past 15 years has been that women in their reproductive years have cyclical needs — and those needs shift as your hormones shift throughout your infradian rhythm. Our bodies and brains are different during each phase of our cycle, so our food, exercise, and self-care should be different each week, too. If you’ve been living in a ‘same-thing-everyday’ way, you’re not alone. There is a widespread cultural belief that we are supposed to repeat the same rituals every 24 hours — have the same morning routine, for example, or exercise the same way each week. But this insistence on doing the same thing day-in and day-out caters to the male hormonal biological rhythm.

Men follow the same predictable pattern everyday: the 24-hour circadian clock and only the 24-hour circadian clock. People with female physiology have two clocks, the circadian rhythm and the infradian rhythm.In the Flo is all about the infradian rhythm — understanding it, living in line with it, and optimizing your self care, including your food, exercise, and time management, to leverage your unique strengths during each phase of your infradian rhythm.If you want to heal your hormones, erase period problems, and get more out of your health — and your life — read In the Flo.

Both books complement each other and you will gain that much more by reading both. But if one appeals to you more than another at this moment, start there. You can also have me read to you with the audio books.  And if books aren't your cup of tea, that’s a-okay. Check out one of our other programs, memberships, or resources. If you are suffering from period problems or hormone imbalances, we can help.

My new book In the Flo will help you achieve all this — and more

If you’re ready to harness the power of your unique female biochemistry to look and feel your best, grab a copy of In the Flo and get to look, feel, and perform your best.

Where to go from here?

In The FLO Reviews

Cia⭑⭑⭑⭑⭑

"If you are a human with a womb cycle you need to read this! This book has changed my life completely, for the better. Did you know that you can only get pregnant 5-7 days out of the entire month!? This book taught me more about my female body than any health class ever has... I am so so so grateful!"

Kristen Dwyer ⭑⭑⭑⭑⭑

"This book is blowing my mind. Amazing, science backed information and already helping my body so much. This book should be a mandatory reading in high school!"

Jessie ⭑⭑⭑⭑⭑

"Total game changer in life, work, relationships and health. I love how the book is broken up into sections so that you can focus on different aspects from health to motherhood to sex, relationships, and more."

8 Proven Ways to Regulate Your Period

Period problems take many shapes. Here are some of the most common:

Heavy periods
Light periods
Missing periods
Irregular or unpredictable periods
Severe PMS
Weight gain and/or weight loss resistance
Bloating
Fatigue
Moodiness
Acne

No matter how period problems show up for you, they disrupt your quality of life. And they point to an underlying hormone imbalance—one that can be addressed with food and lifestyle strategies. 

That’s right. There are specific, scientifically-backed strategies that will bring your hormones into harmony and erase your symptoms. You can think of it as a form of biohacking. Biohacking is the practice of using food, lifestyle, exercise, and targeted supplementation to enhance health, and you might have noticed that a lot of the people who are talking about biohacking are men. And that’s just fine… for men! Women can biohack, too, but we need strategies designed for our unique female physiology. 

Today, I’ve gathered up the best strategies for women who want to optimize their hormone health, and their overall health. Here’s what I recommend:

Proven Strategies to Erase Period Problems

If you take the following steps, you will notice an improvement in your symptoms within three to six months. (If you don’t feel better, consult a trusted healthcare practitioner to rule out a clinical condition. 

Healing Strategy #1: Practice The Cycle Syncing Method™ with food

Eating to ease period problems requires aligning your weekly meal plans with your 28-day cycle. Women have unique nutritional and energetic needs during each week of the month—unlike men, who can thrive by eating more or less the same way everyday—and you will look and feel your best when you match the vegetables, meats, plant proteins, fruits, and legumes you eat to your shifting hormonal needs. Think of it this way: as your hormones change, so does your menu!

If the idea of switching up what you eat each week feels challenging, start with my 4-Week Flo Food Challenge. And if you’re scratching your head (and maybe freaking out a little) because you don’t know what your hormones do or when, don’t panic! Use the MyFLO app to track your cycle and start eating cyclically.

Healing Strategy #2: Practice The Cycle Syncing Method™ with movement

To really optimize your hormonal health, you need to shift your workouts to fit your cycle in much the same way as you do your diet. Your body is primed for different kinds of activity across your cycle, just as its looking for different kinds of nutrition through each of the four phases. Ready to get started? Learn what type of exercise is right for each phase of your cycle here.  

Healing Strategy #3: Detox the RIGHT way

If you suffer from hormone imbalances and period problems, it can be tempting to do an extreme detox. The severe restrictions and big promises (Lose 20 pounds overnight! Eliminate all the toxins from your body!) sound like a relief after suffering with hormone-related symptoms for so long. But deprivation plans and strict detoxes backfire for the vast majority of women. Severe calorie restrictions tax our already overburdened adrenal and endocrine systems—and make our hormone problems worse.

Don’t get me wrong: a detox can help, but it must be the right kind of detox, one that focuses on clearing the body of excess estrogen. Excess estrogen in the body (relative to progesterone) contributes to everything from severe PMS to PCOS.

If you want to detox estrogen, don’t do a juice fast or a cleanse. Do a gentle detox that supports the body’s elimination process by giving it all the nutrients it needs. If you want even more support in doing a safe, nourishing detox, I designed a 4-day Hormone Detox to kickstart your hormonal healing.

Healing Strategy #4: Be very careful with intermittent fasting (if you do it at all)

Most studies on fasting have been done on men and/or have shown mixed results for women. One study found that intermittent fasting helped improve insulin sensitivity in men, but women didn’t get the same benefit. (Good insulin sensitivity is essential for balanced hormones.) At the same time, the study showed that women’s ability to tolerate glucose actually got worse during intermittent fasting. Other research shows that fasting can have a negative effect on cortisol, insulin, estrogen, and progesterone— all the major hormonal players in your body!

Studies suggest that intermittent fasting can be very helpful for women (and men) with compromised cellular health (individuals with cancer and/or those going through chemotherapy), but for women in generally good health who are working to balance hormones and heal hormone-related symptoms, I don’t recommend fasting.

Healing Strategy #5: Don’t default to the ketogenic diet

The ketogenic diet, which is a high fat-low carbohydrate diet, is all the rage these days, but research suggests that it can mess with thyroid function— and thyroid health is absolutely essential for healthy hormone balance. Here’s where this biohack becomes sex specific: thyroid problems disproportionately affect women. It’s estimated that one in five women have a thyroid issue, and many of those cases are undiagnosed. If you’re trying to bring your hormones into balance, your best bet is to eat in line with your cycle—and leave the ketogenic diet for individuals with other health issues.

Healing Strategy #6: Ditch coffee

Upgraded coffee can work well for those who are efficient metabolizers of caffeine, but if you have period problems chances are more than good that you are not an efficient metabolizer.  In my experience, caffeine is a no-go for women who want to optimize hormone health.

Caffeine can increase the development of benign breast disease. For women with PCOS, fibroids, endometriosis, ovarian cysts, and fibrocystic breasts, caffeine is a guaranteed way to make more cysts. Plus, caffeine mucks up hormone health in other ways, too. If you’re trying to solve your period problems, it helps to break this habit.

Healing Strategy #7: Ditch sugar

Sugar is bad for hormone health and bad for overall health. Say goodbye to sugary and high-glycemic foods and stick to high-fiber, high-phytonutrient whole foods that are rich in healthy proteins, fats, and complex carbs. 

Healing Strategy #8: Supplement like a girl

Women have unique micronutrient needs, and we can’t expect optimal hormonal health—or optimal overall health—when we follow blanket supplement prescriptions. We need supplements tailored to our unique female physiology. Specifically:

While every woman should be supplementing with B vitamins, if you’re suffering from hormone imbalances, you’ll need to be extra aware of your intake. Research suggests that intake of vitamins like thiamine (B1) is inversely related to endometriosis. Another important type of B vitamin, folic acid, is known to be important in managing PCOS.

Magnesium is a must for women with hormone imbalances since it improves insulin sensitivity, which has widespread implications for the entire hormone system. And if you’ve ever suffered from hot flashes (whether you’re menopausal or not even close) magnesium has been shown to significantly reduce the symptoms.

If you’re suffering with fibroids or any hormone-related health condition, vitamin D is an absolute must. A study funded by the National Institutes of Health found that supplementing with vitamin D reduced the size of uterine fibroids. This may be especially essential for African American women since they’re 3-4 times more likely to develop fibroids and 10 times more likely to be deficient in vitamin D than white women. More generally, vitamin D acts like a master hormone in the body, which is what makes it so critical for all women with hormone imbalances.

Probiotics are a must: one study found that in just 12 weeks, probiotics helped significantly reduced endometriosis pain. I designed my FLO Balance supplements with women’s unique micronutrient needs in mind. They contain everything you need to supplement strategically for optimal hormonal health.

Always remember that once you have the right information about how your body really works, you can start making health choices that finally start to work for you! You can do this – the science of your body is on your side!

Is Your Period Healthy?

How do you know if your hormones are healthy? The answer is in your 5th vital sign – your period.

The color of your flow, frequency of your period, and symptoms you have each month can tell you a lot about your health. There are 5 different V-SIGN TYPES, and knowing which one you have will help you get healthy now and prevent disease in the future.

Click here to take The V-SIGN TYPE™ Quiz NOW

A Functional Medicine Approach to Endometriosis

If you or a loved one suffers from endometriosis, you don’t need me to tell you how painful and debilitating the condition can be, and that conventional medical interventions for endometriosis are limited—and far from ideal. The condition involves inflammation, estrogen excess, and an abnormal immune response—but one of the things science doesn’t know about endometriosis is the best way to treat it.

To date, Western medicine’s best tools for dealing with endometriosis are non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), like ibuprofen, or surgery. Both strategies are for pain control; neither one addresses the root causes of the condition. But no woman with endometriosis needs to live without hope. Lifestyle strategies for reducing inflammation, strengthening the immune system, supporting the liver, and balancing hormones can make a huge difference in reducing symptoms and improving quality of life.

What is Endometriosis?

It is a painful, sometimes debilitating condition that affects as many as one in 15 percent of women ages 15 to 44 in the United States. Endometriosis occurs when endometrial tissue, which is normally found in the uterus, grows in places outside the uterus—places where it shouldn’t be. Most of the time this misplaced endometrial tissue lands on the ovaries or fallopian tubes or, painfully, on the abdomen. Because endometrial tissue responds to the same hormonal shifts that trigger the menstrual cycle, the pain associated with endometriosis will follow the same 28-day cycle as your period.

Astonishingly, and tragically, many women with endometriosis aren’t diagnosed right away. The average delay in diagnosis is almost seven years. Seven years! This means many women suffer with terrible, sometimes crippling, endometriosis-related pain for the better part of a decade, thinking that it is just severe period problems.Endometriosis can happen to any menstruating women. But why the condition strikes some women and not others is not entirely clear. Some women may be genetically predisposed. Three other factors fuel endometriosis:

1. A faulty immune system response

In women with endometriosis, the immune system fails to destroy the endometrial tissue that lands outside the uterus.

2. Excess estrogen in the body

Unfortunately, and simply by virtue of the world we live in today, excess estrogen in women (and many men) is more the norm than the exception. This overload of estrogen can fuel endometriosis in some women

3. Inflammation

Inflammation, like estrogen excess, is driven by lifestyle. What we eat and the toxins we are exposed to (and how well our bodies can detox them) drive inflammation and fuel endometriosis.While you can’t control your genetics, you can reduce inflammation in your body, help your liver flush out excess estrogen, and support your immune system with the nutrition, targeted supplementation, and lifestyle.In the next several sections, I outline my favorite strategies for easing the symptoms of endometriosis. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

The Best Foods for Endometriosis

Think of food as your best weapon in the fight against the painful symptoms of endometriosis. When it comes to hormone conditions like PCOS, fibroids, and endo, food is medicine. I’ve broken down the list of foods I recommend into four important categories (1) immune-boosting foods, (2) detox-support foods, (3) liver-support foods, and (4) healthy protein sources (for healing).[/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width="1/2"][vc_column_text]

Foods to help boost immune function

These foods will help boost immune function:

  • Carrots
  • Garlic
  • Ginger
  • Dark leafy greens
  • Leeks
  • Mushrooms
  • Beans, peas & lentils
  • Green tea
  • Rooibos tea
  • Yogurt with live cultures and other fermented foods like kim chi and sauerkraut
  • Rhubarb
  • Berries
  • Seeds (like flax, chia, and pumpkin)

Food for Healthy Protein

I recommend these healthy protein sources:

  • Salmon
  • Beans
  • Chicken or turkey

Note:You can maximize your benefit by emphasizing these foods.

Fiber-Rich Food for Hormone Detox

I recommend these fiber-rich foods for helping your body detox excess hormones:

  • Beans, peas and legumes
  • Brown rice
  • Quinoa
  • Low-glycemic fruits, like berries; citrus fruits; apples
  • Vegetables, especially dark leafy greens like kale; cruciferous vegetables, broccoli, and cauliflower; carrots and beets
  • Oatmeal
  • Whole grains (but NOT wheat or rye; it is important to avoid gluten)

Foods for Liver Support

I recommend these foods for liver support. The liver is the body’s main organ of detoxification and it plays a central role in helping the body detox from excess estrogen:

  • Artichokes
  • Beets
  • Burdock
  • Cabbage
  • Carrots
  • Kale
  • Lemon & Lime
  • Dandelion & mustard greens
  • Watercress

The Worst Foods for Endometriosis

As with any health-supportive diet, it’s as much about what you take out of your body as what you put in. If you have endometriosis, you’ll want to cut out or dramatically reduce the following foods:

Alcohol

Alcohol Is immunosuppressive and hard on the liver.

Caffeine

Some research has linked the intake of caffeine with endometriosis. Play it safe and avoid caffeinated beverages.

Refined and highly processed carbs

This includes pasta, white bread, candy, cookies, and other baked goods. These foods are inflammatory and high-glycemic, hence bad for any inflammatory condition, including endometriosis.

Dairy

Dairy is inflammatory and skim options are high-glycemic. Avoid all dairy if you have endometriosis, opting instead for coconut yogurt and kefir, and delicious non-dairy creamers made from nuts and seeds.

Fried foods and fast foods

Most fried foods and almost all fast food is prepared in unhealthy, inflammation-promoting cooking oils.

Red meat

Studies have linked red meat consumption to increased risk of endometriosis.

Sugar

Foods with a high-glycemic-index drive up inflammation, suppress the immune system and offer no phytonutrient support. If dark leafy greens are the win-win-win food of hormonal healing (because they address inflammation, immune function, and have fiber), sugar is the lose-lose-lose because it helps with none of those things — and actively interferes with your efforts to heal.

Processed foods with additives and preservatives

These foods introduce chemicals into the body that it neither needs or wants — and that it has to work very hard to detox from. Don’t force your body to use up precious resources getting rid of avoidable preservatives (when it could spend that time processing and eliminating estrogen). [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

The Best Supplements for Endometriosis

Food comes first when fighting endometriosis (or any hormonal imbalance). But using targeted, high-quality supplements is a close second. Here are the supplements I recommend for women with endometriosis:

Milk thistle

This herb contains the antioxidant silymarin, which helps repair the cells in the liver and protects liver cells from damage. It is also anti-inflammatory.

Evening primrose oil

Studies suggest that Evening primrose oil offers powerful support for a variety of hormonal imbalances related to female reproductive hormones. Evening primrose oil may help with pain management in endometriosis.

Vitamin B6

Vitamin B6 helps balance excess estrogen by boosting progesterone production in the body. B6 is also liver supportive.

Probiotics

A healthy microbiome is essential for the management of endometriosis. That’s because there is a colony of bacteria in the gut that helps process and eliminate excess estrogen from the body, according to research. It’s called the estrobolome and you can support by taking a high-quality probiotic.

DIM

Diindolylmethane supports the body in eliminating excess estrogen. DIM is derived from cruciferous vegetables like cauliflower and broccoli and it metabolizes estrogen into smaller components that are more easily assimilated and removed by the body.

The Emotional Aspects of Endometriosis

Research into the mind-body connection is gaining ground in mainstream science, no longer relegated to “alternative” medicine. We are coming to understand – in a deeper and more detailed way – how thoughts and feelings can directly impact our physical health and well-being. We are seeing the empirical evidence mounting when it comes to how physical symptoms can manifest in connection to emotions. This is a concept I think we all understand instinctively and often relate to in our own lives. It’s good to see the science supporting a shared experience.

When a woman comes to me at FLO Living with endometriosis I explain that endometriosis is a complex condition that needs a comprehensive strategy for management, tackling the ecosystem of the microbiome, liver health, inflammation in the body, and excess estrogen. For women with endometriosis it’s vital that we work together to prevent symptoms as soon as possible, and shifts in diet, adding supplements, and removing certain triggers can be very effective, very quickly.I also work with women to explore the emotional components of endometriosis.

Addressing the emotional aspect of health issues like ovarian cysts, endometriosis, fibroids, and PCOS can be an important part of the healing process. While these problems and their symptoms create their own emotions in women — depression, anxiety, stress, worry, to name a few — they can also be connected to existing emotions and experiences. A closer look at the emotional aspects of endometriosis (or other hormone condition) won’t solve the symptoms, but understanding the emotional components can lead to more compassion for ourselves, for other women, and an individual and collective recovery.

This is something I see often with the women I work with through FLO Living, we will be in the process of working on her health issue from a functional medicine standpoint and eventually we’ll organically reach a point of discussing her life, her past experiences, her feelings about herself, and about the things that have happened to her. It’s not all that surprising, it’s intimate work, and when women work with women outside of the doctor’s office, there’s a tendency for the mind-body connection to come up in a way that you might not see happening elsewhere.

The Feminist Mind-Body Connection

Think about your female reproductive organs — uterus, ovaries, a vagina — acting as a “low heart” and as such holding many of your unconscious, deeper emotions that the “high heart” is not yet ready to process. The emotions are held here, only to be released once a person has processed the source of these held feelings.

There’s actually a deeply feminist history to the mind-body connection and how it relates to the female experience. A student of psychologist Carl Jung, Marion Woodman, developed a concept of “feminine psychology.” Her work details how unconsciously held emotions, feelings, and thoughts can affect the female body. It’s important to note that as science progresses we are seeing more and more empirical evidence to support and back up this perspective. Woodman investigated how women feel about their bodies. Many of us are brought up to be fearful and distrustful of our bodies, and she believed this has a significant impact on our health. She believed that the unprocessed trauma experienced by many women – as the result of individually experienced acts of abuse and violence, and as the result of cultural oppression – could manifest itself in physical symptoms, especially those relating specifically to female biology.

Endometriosis: Time to Prioritize Your Needs?

One theory about the emotional component of endometriosis is that it may reflect — if even symbolically — a physical manifestation of putting others needs before your own. The uterus, by design, exists to put another person’s needs first. The material of the womb, the endometrium, is the first maternal embrace an embryo receives. So it has been interpreted by some that when endometrial tissue grows outside the womb, it is the body’s attempt to mother a woman who isn’t mothering herself, who isn’t putting her own needs first.

By creating a symptom you have no choice but to pay attention to, you must, necessarily, put your own needs first — and set aside that outward (overly) mothering behavior that leaves you feeling depleted. It’s wonderful to care for others and support them in their lives, but when we do it in such a way that puts our own needs last on the list we can become depleted. We might feel frustrated, angry, resentful, or just plain stressed and exhausted by the practical requirements of living that life. The expectations put on all women to be the care-providers, to put others first always, to do the “emotional labor” of supporting those around them can be oppressive.

Does this resonate with you? Do you ever feel like you’re keeping everyone else happy, stable, and cared-for, but that you’re not attending to your own needs and desires? Do you long for someone to take care of you? There’s a burning desire there for self-nurturance as well as connection with other women and community-centered support.These pressures can come out in the body and manifest as symptoms.

The emotional theory of endometriosis is by no means the sole root cause of the disease, but it’s an element that I have seen over and over again in my work with women at FLO Living. As I’ve said before, this has nothing to do with your personal choices in your life, and everything to do with the position of women in society, and how we are conditioned to organize our lives and act towards ourselves.  Your uterus is offering you a gift, an opportunity to reflect on your patterns and revise them for not only better health, but a happier life.  

Your 13-Step Guide to Addressing Endometriosis with Lifestyle & Diet

You can work to reduce inflammation, balance hormones, and support your immune system with food and lifestyle in a systematic way. Here’s my step-by-step guide for helping ease endometriosis symptoms. You’ll see some of the key pieces of advice that I outlined above, fleshed out with even more essential lifestyle strategies for curbing the symptoms of endometriosis:

Step 1

Start by limiting—and eventually eliminating—exposure to toxic forms of estrogen found in household cleaners, cosmetics, and bathroom products. Go through your house with a fine tooth comb and:

  • Replace cosmetic and body care products with natural alternatives, this includes, soap, shampoo, hair styling products, deodorant, lotions, cosmetics, and perfumes
  • Replace standard laundry soap with green alternatives. You can now find many clean alternatives on the shelves of big box stores, sitting side by side with the old (toxic) standbys. Clean alternatives are comparable in price and work just as well. You can opt for unscented products or products that have been scented with natural fragrance.
  • Replace household cleaning products with clean alternatives. You can buy effective products at almost all big box stores or you can make your own, which is cheaper and healthier. The main ingredients in most DIY cleaning products are vinegar and baking soda.
  • Take off your shoes at the door (and ask your guests to do the same). A lot of pesticides and other hormone-disrupting chemicals are tracked in on the bottom of shoes. Stopping those chemicals in their tracks is a great way to protect yourself.

Step 2

Just say no to pesticides and other chemicals in your food. Shop organic exclusively if you can. If you are on a budget, avoid the dirty dozen (or buy them organic) and feel okay about buying the clean 15 even when not organic.

Step 3

Emphasize dark leafy greens, cruciferous vegetables, low-glycemic fruits like berries and other high-fiber foods to support gut health and help your liver carry out important detox functions. The liver is responsible for breaking down and eliminating excess estrogen, and cruciferous vegetables directly support that detox process.

Step 4

Eat more healthy fats like those found in olive oil, coconut oil, and avocados. Healthy fats help support healthy hormone ratios in the body.

Step 5

Emphasize lean animal protein over other kinds of meat. They are less inflammatory.

Step 6

Limit red meat. Studies have linked red meat consumption with increased risk for endometriosis.

Step 7

Help kick your immune system into high gear with immune-supportive foods like carrots, kale, cabbage, broccoli, beets, artichokes, lemons, onions, garlic, and leeks.

Step 8

Limit sugar. Sugar fuels inflammation.

Step 9

Use targeted herbal support to further support liver detox and speed up estrogen metabolism. Think milk thistle, flax seeds, DIM, and dandelion root.

Step 10

Take evening primrose oil to decrease inflammation.

Step 11

Reduce or eliminate dairy, wheat, alcohol, and caffeine to improve your immune response.

Step 12

Take a probiotic to rebalance gut flora and support estrogen metabolism.

Step 13

Use Vitex and a B6 supplement daily to balance out excess estrogen.If you’re reading this article because your friend, sister, or family member is struggling with this condition, share this article with her. Too many women believe the myth that endometriosis has to ruin your life every month.

The Ovulatory Phase: Support Your Body with The Cycle Syncing Method®

This is the second blog post in a 4-part series on The Cycle Syncing Method®: micronutrient and botanical support for the four phases of the infradian rhythm, or hormonal cycle.At Flo Living, our goal is to help women balance their hormones and resolve period problems with food, supplements, and lifestyle changes. We take a functional nutrition and systems medicine approach to achieving optimal hormone health. The first step for any woman* in balancing her hormones is learning about the 28-day hormone cycle, which is governed by a special biological rhythm called the infradian rhythm.

The infradian rhythm plays a vital role in female health and wellness. Knowing what your body needs during each phase of  your cycle is key not only to hormonal healing but to your health overall. To get more familiar with the infradian rhythm, see the first post in this series or check out my new book In the Flo. This is the second blog post in our four-part series on micronutrient and botanical support to help better support the infradian rhythm. In this post, we will explore supplement needs during the ovulatory phase.

The 4 Phases of the Infradian Rhythm

The infradian rhythm tracks with the menstrual cycle and has four distinct phases. They are:

  1. The follicular phase
  2. The ovulatory phase
  3. The luteal phase
  4. The menstrual phase

For women in their reproductive years, the key to optimal health is to eat, move, and supplement in ways that support each phase of the infradian rhythm. Our bodies require different types of self care during each phase.The ovulatory phase occurs for 3 to 4 days in the middle of your cycle, when your body produces an egg and releases it into the fallopian tube. To learn more about micronutrient needs in the first phase of the cycle (the follicular phase), click here. To learn more about micronutrient support for the ovulatory phase, keep reading!

Meet the Ovulatory Phase

When: The 3 to 4 days in the middle of your cycle, right after the follicular phase (which lasts for 7 to 10 days) and before the luteal phase (which is the phase just before your period).What’s happening in your body:

  • Estrogen surges and luteinizing hormone (LH) arrives on the scene to spark the release of an egg
  • The lining of the uterus gets thicker
  • Testosterone surges and then quickly goes back down

What’s happening in your brain:The hormone shifts during this phase activate the verbal and social areas of the brain. You’re apt to feel your most social and communicative during this phase, and it is a good time to plan conversations with friends and significant others.

Food, Exercise, and Lifestyle Strategies for the Ovulatory Phase

Achieving optimal hormone health and easing period problems like PMS, cramps, bloating, acne, heavy or irregular periods and missing periods requires a multipronged approach that includes food, movement, and lifestyle strategies implemented in a cyclical way. I encourage women to eat in a cyclical pattern, exercise in line with their cycle, and plan their schedules with their infradian rhythm in mind.

During the ovulatory phase, specifically, your testosterone is high and you will have more energy, so you can go all out with your workouts. This is a great time for high-intensity interval training and bodyweight circuits. However, if you have issues breaking down estrogen in your liver and gut, you may experience ovarian pain or acne.  Eating cruciferous vegetables during this time helps flush excess estrogen from your body. It’s also important to prioritize fiber from whole foods during this time, which will help keep excess hormones moving toward the exit!Supplements are important, too. I recommend key micronutrients for every woman in her reproductive years; These should be taken daily. I also recommend taking phase-specific supplements to further support and optimize hormone health during each phase. For phase-based support during the ovulatory phase, I recommend a supplement to help with estrogen metabolism.

Key Supplement for the Ovulatory Phase

DIM stands for 3,3′-diindolylmethane, and it is a powerful health-promoting compound derived from cruciferous vegetables. One of its key functions in the body is to help moderate and enhance estrogen metabolism. In other words, it helps the body efficiently process and eliminate used-up estrogen, which is important during the ovulatory phase when estrogen is high. Estrogen dominance is a condition in which levels of estrogen are high relative to the amount of progesterone in the body, and it is one of the most common conditions in women with hormone imbalances and period problems.

The liver is the body’s main organ of elimination and it processes and eliminates excess estrogen. DIM helps the liver do its job more effectively, which helps prevent estrogen dominance and related symptoms like acne, PMS, and heavy or irregular periods. Research also suggests that DIM may help protect against certain estrogen-fuelled cancers. DIM is found in cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, kale, collard greens, Brussels sprouts, and rutabaga, and prioritizing these foods in the diet is profoundly good for hormone health and overall health. DIM can be taken as a supplement as well, and it may be especially beneficial to take as a  supplement during ovulation, when the liver is working hard to eliminate the high volume of estrogen produced during this time. Like all the phase-based supplements I recommend, there is no wrong time to take DIM, but you may get the most benefit by taking it during the three or four days in the middle of your cycle when ovulation occurs.

I created The Cycle Syncing Ⓡ Supplement Kit to help women feel energized, calm, focused and pain-free throughout each phase of their cycle. Taking these targeted supplements can help reduce or eliminate the need for ibuprofen for pain and cramps, acne medications for cyclical breakouts, birth control pills for regular periods, and caffeine for an energy boost — all of which only mask symptoms anyway. The Flo Living Cycle Syncing Ⓡ Supplements helps you exactly when and how your body needs it during each distinct phase of your cycle.  Since your hormones change each phase, it makes sense to change the way you target certain supplements each phase too.I carefully curated the key nutrients you need to help you look and feel your best throughout your cycle. And you simply take the one for the phase you’re in - period.At FloLiving, we are building a future where it’s easy and simple to get targeted support for your hormonal symptoms from your first period to your last. With the right support, women in their reproductive years can ease their symptoms, live with less pain, and look and feel their best — which is what every woman deserves.

*We use the words “woman” and “women” and she/her pronouns throughout these posts for ease of writing, but the principles and advice apply to any person, regardless of gender identity, who was born with female physiology. At the same time, if you are a person born with male physiology and you identify as non-binary or you are transitioning to identify as female, using a cyclical support system can help you feel more in sync with your female energy.

Your Guide to The Cycle Syncing® Method

In the past 10 years there’s been an explosion in online wellness content — new diet protocols, new fitness programs, new ‘extreme’ bio-hacks like cryotherapy and infrared saunas — but women’s hormone and autoimmune conditions have jumped nearly 50% in that same time period.

What’s going on with women's health?

I needed to figure out why wellness protocols are everywhere, but women are sicker than ever before. So I dove into the research and it led me to two answers:

  • First, that women are being left out of most medical research.
  • Second, people with female physiology have a second biological rhythm that impacts the performance of six key systems of your body, and it has a name — the infradian rhythm.

Meet your Infradian Rhythm (your secondary clock!)

In my book In the FLO, I’m introducing the wellness world to the infradian rhythm, which is one of two internal timekeepers experienced by people with female biochemistry.

The infradian rhythm powerfully affects six different systems of the body — brain, metabolism, immune system, microbiome, stress response system and reproductive system — and women benefit when they eat, exercise, and work in ways that support their infradian rhythm, as opposed to following diet, fitness, and work trends that disrupt it.

It’s precisely because so many women try to follow the ‘same-thing-everyday’ plans that work for men that 50% of women are suffering with hormonal imbalances. Men don’t suffer them at the same rate.  

You’ve probably heard of the circadian clock, or the 24-hour biological rhythm that is inherent to all of us, men and women, old and young. This internal timekeeper directs many of the body’s internal processes, from when we get our deepest sleep (around 2:00am) and when we’re at our most alert (around 10:00am), to when we’re the most coordinated (2:30pm) and when we have the fastest reaction time (3:30pm).

The circadian clock also helps regulate our body temperature and metabolism. Men's testosterone production is organized around the circadian rhythm (and so is the vast majority of fitness and nutrition research and advice; more on that below.) But people who menstruate also follow the infradian rhythm, which is linked to the menstrual cycle. And when you understand your infradian rhythm and how it informs your unique female biochemistry, you can become calmer, happier, and healthier, as well as more productive at work and more satisfied in your relationships. Your hormones will stay balanced and you can live symptom-free.

How does your cycle affect your body and brain?

Did you know...?

  • The infradian rhythm creates a 25% change in your brain chemistry over the course of the month
  • Your metabolism speeds up and slows down predictably across the month and you need to change what you eat and the intensity of your workouts each week in order to optimize your metabolism
  • Your cortisol levels are higher in one part of your infradian cycle, so pushing yourself through an intense workout bumps up cortisol levels even further, adding to your stress and inflammation, disrupting your hormones, and making you feel anxious and unfocused
  • People with female biochemistry need more sleep than men because we have a more complex brain, and it needs 20 minutes longer to clean itself and reset for the cognitive day
  • People with female physiology tend to need less in the way of extreme self-care practices because we have more efficient biology

As this list shows, your body and brain change significantly throughout the course of a month. Specifically, we move through four distinct phases within the course of 28-days. They are:

  • Phase 1: Follicular (the 7 to 10 days after your period)
  • Phase 2: Ovulatory (the 4 days in the middle of your cycle)
  • Phase 3: Luteal (the 10 to 14 days between ovulation and your period)
  • Phase 4: Menstrual (the 3 to 7 days of your period)

During each of these four phases, you experience normal hormonal fluctuations that influence your body temperature, skin elasticity, sleep cycle, energy, emotions, and cognitive function. What’s more, your 28-day cycle (infradian rhythm) works in close concert with your 24-hour cycle. A dysregulated infradian rhythm will mess with your circadian cycle—and a wonky circadian cycle will negatively influence your infradian cycle. In this way, using phase-based self-care not only supports your month-long hormone cycle, but also your 24-hour sleep-wake cycle. This makes practicing The Cycle Syncing® Method even more powerful in promoting hormone health and overall health.

Why doing the same thing everyday disrupts your infradian rhythm and hurts your hormones

Our bodies and brains are different during each phase of our cycle, so our food, exercise, and self-care should be different each week, too. If you’ve been living in a ‘same-thing-everyday’ way, you’re not alone. There is a widespread cultural belief that we are supposed to repeat the same rituals every 24 hours — have the same morning routine, for example, or exercise the same way each week. But this insistence on doing the same thing day-in and day-out caters to the male hormonal biological rhythm. Men follow the same predictable pattern everyday: the 24-hour circadian clock and only the 24-hour circadian clock.

People with female biochemistry have shifting hormones and shifting needs all month long. This manifests in a lot of different ways, but you can get a good sense of what I mean if we look at one specific example.

Take exercise. During your follicular and ovulatory phase, your metabolism is SLOWER and cortisol levels are LOWER. As such, you need fewer calories during these two phases, and when you couple that lower caloric intake with cardio and HIIT workouts—30 minutes is sufficient, but you can go longer if you are healthy— it creates a metabolic situation in which you use your glucose stores for energy, fat burning, and building more lean muscle without disrupting blood sugar or increasing cortisol, which would trigger inflammation and fat gain—the exact opposite of what you want to happen. You don't have to avoid any specific workouts during this phase, but the ones that will net you the results are cardio and HIIT.

During the luteal and menstrual phase, your metabolism is FASTER and cortisol levels are HIGHER. So you’ll need MORE overall calories each day (around 250 extra calories), and when you eat carbs they must be complex carbs to keep blood sugar levels stable. If you don’t increase your calories during this time, it will interfere with hormone balance and trigger fat storage. What’s more, because cortisol levels are higher, you need to limit workouts to 30 minutes only and stick to simple strength training, pilates, or yoga without a high intensity cardio component.

Why isn’t Cycle Syncing® and the Infradian Rhythm widespread knowledge?

Historically, medical research has deprioritized women’s health issues and/or not included women in medical research. Why? Precisely because of our unique 28-day hormone cycle.

When putting together clinical trials, many researchers have decided it is simply too complicated to include women as subjects because our monthly hormone cycle is too complicated. It’s hard to control for all the hormonal shifts women go through every 28-days, so instead of trying to account for those fluctuations, researchers have just left women out and focused on men, whose predictable 24-hour circadian cycles do not vary from day to day.

Another reason? When women go to the doctor, women’s concerns about their health are often dismissed as psychological. Women are told that their symptoms are in their head, or that they are imagining their pain, or that they’re overly concerned about their physical well-being.

Studies back-up this theory: one report found that almost half of those who went on to be diagnosed with an autoimmune condition (the majority of people who experience autoimmune conditions are women) were originally told that they were too worried about their health. This is all to say that when medical professionals have the chance to explore women’s symptoms in more detail and understand the root cause of their symptoms, they often don’t.

Medicine doesn’t know a lot about women’s health, explains author Maya Dusenbery in the book Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick, and it doesn’t pay serious attention to their symptoms. There is a gender bias in medicine and if you have experienced period problems like acne, bloating, cramps, heavy or irregular periods, missing periods, PMS or other hormone-related symptoms and have not been helped by traditional interventions, you know this firsthand. But you can break the cycle of symptoms, and look and feel your best, when you ditch the idea that you are supposed to live the same way everyday and start living in sync with your cycle.

The Cycle Syncing® Method 101

Once I uncovered all of this about the infradian rhythm and our specific needs, it was clear that we needed a diet, fitness and lifestyle program that would help us support our biological rhythm.  This is why I created The Cycle Syncing® Method. Practicing The Cycle Syncing® Method is easy. It starts with deepening your familiarity with your 28-day hormone cycle—something you can do with the MyFlo app—and then tailoring your food, movement, supplements, and lifestyle choices to your unique strengths, weaknesses, and needs during each phase of your cycle.

That might sound daunting, but it’s not. Before long, you will develop an intuitive sense of how your body feels during each phase of your cycle and what it needs to maintain hormone balance. You will begin to naturally shift your food, movement, and schedule as your hormones fluctuate. With time, making phase-based self-care choices will be second nature. What type of phase-based choices am I talking about? Here’s a closer look at the different ways The Cycle Syncing® Method is used in practice:

Food

Do you have certain cravings during different weeks of the month? Do you feel hungrier at different stages of your cycle? If so, you already have an embodied sense of your shifting needs each month. Practicing The Cycle Syncing® Method with food starts by choosing specific foods that will support optimal hormone balance in each phase. I go into more detail here, and I do a deep dive in my book In the Flo, which is packed with biohacking advice and meal plans.

Supplements

Sometimes, even if you’re eating perfectly, supplements are necessary to deepen your phase-based self-care plan, erase your period problems, and feel your best. If you are deficient in any of the five essential micronutrients required for hormone health, you will never fully resolve symptoms like acne, bloating, PMS, cramps, menstrual migraines, missing or irregular periods, or cyclical fatigue and moodiness.

Exercise

Planning your workouts in sync with your cycle will allow you to achieve your fitness goals with less effort. It also makes your workouts easier because you are not trying to do a workout that is ill-matched for your hormones during a specific time. Using The Cycle Syncing® Method for exercise is a win-win.

Productivity  

Let me be clear, and the research confirms, you as a woman can do ANYTHING, ANYTIME. The research also shows that as hormones stimulate the brain in different ways throughout the month, you are more interested and more naturally at ease with certain tasks at different times of the month. The same is true of men of course, their brains are stimulated over the course of one day and they do arrange their work to be optimally productive. So when we plan our schedules accordingly— scheduling important meetings or interviews when we are primed for communication—we may find even more success, and more importantly, experience less overall stress on our bodies.

Sex Drive

Sixty percent of women are sexually unsatisfied because we don't understand how our infradian rhythm affects our sexual desire and changes our requirements for physical stimulation in each phase. Once you get the right key, the ignition will work every time and you don't ever have to think something's wrong with you again.

Relationships

Nurturing a healthy, balanced relationship takes work, and using your infradian rhythm to organize the activities you might want to do with your partner can be a helpful way to bring in a wider variety of experiences. From trying new things, to going out with friends, to romantic date nights, to Netflix and chill nights at home — timing these according to your biological rhythm increases pleasure, positive connection, and decreases stress!

Motherhood

You can use your infradian rhythm to organize your approach to motherhood, too. With your cycle as your guide, you can plan to do the things that matter most to you as a parent, at times of the month when your interest in those activities is highest and when you will naturally be your best at those things. By planning out your parent-child time in this way, you will prevent burnout, be less susceptible to the cult of perfectionism around motherhood, and create more quality time with your children.

Simply put, The Cycle Syncing® Method can help you:

  • Get more time back in your day to take care of yourself
  • Stop dieting every day of your life and getting little or no results
  • Accomplish everything on your to-do list without feeling overwhelmed and burned out
  • Have a more satisfying relationship and sex life without the drama and frustration
  • Maximize the right workouts for your energy levels, so you have energy to spare
  • Spring out of bed in the morning and maintain your energy throughout the day

My book In the Flo will help you achieve all this — and more

If you’re ready to harness the power of your unique female biochemistry to look and feel your best, grab a copy of In the Flo and get to look, feel, and perform your best.

5 Uses for Coconut Oil that will Benefit Your Hormonal Balance

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As spring fast approaches us, I wanted to share a fun and functional list with you that will come in handy as you start to detox this season, and beyond!Coconut oil is one of my favorite gifts from Mama Nature – anti-bacterial, anti-viral, blood-sugar-balancing, and detoxifying – and if you haven’t yet, I think you’ll fall in love with it too after reading this.Coconut oil isn’t just great for your skin and hair, it can also help you to heal your thyroid, lose weight, have more energy, and fix your periods. It only takes two to three tablespoons per day for coconut oil to have these wondrous effects on your health.Coconut oil is the ultimate “good fat” as it contains medium chain triglycerides or fatty acids that are hormonal health warriors. Over the years, we’ve all been educated to fear oils and see them as fattening and unhealthy. Well, some are – like vegetable oils, canola, safflower – but coconut oil is actually completely unique and has many health benefits.

The health benefits of coconut oil

  • Hormone balancing – the fatty acids in coconut oil actually help the hormones get to where they want and need to go in the body, and so support the creation, processing and elimination of estrogen and progesterone, leading to hormonal balance.
  • Weight loss-promotingstudies show that coconut oil increases the metabolism and prevents hunger, allowing for successful weight loss.
  • Thyroid-supportive – coconut oil has the ability to transform cholesterol into pregnenolone, which is one of the essential building blocks for thyroid hormone-creation. When you add more coconut oil to your diet, you’re increasing the saturated fats made up primarily of medium-chain fatty acids that aren’t found in many other oils. These medium-chain fatty acids increase metabolism and promote weight loss, which is a big part of your healthy thyroid function. In addition, coconut oil can increase basal body temperatures, which is super important for women with low thyroid function.
  • Gut-healing – coconut oil repairs gut tissue and encourages the growth of good bacteria in the gut. Like breast milk, coconut oil is powerfully antimicrobial and antibacterial. The high levels of lauric acid in coconut oil protects against infection from viruses, bacteria, yeast, parasites and fungi. Lauric acid inactivates harmful microbes in your gut that can lead to hormonal imbalance.

So, now you know how great coconut oil is for your health, how do you get more of it? I have some ideas for easy, simple ways to add coconut oil to your every day life.

5 ways to eat more coconut oil

  1. Stir a tablespoon into your favorite hot drink.
  2. Add it into kale-based or date-based smoothies (or mix all three!).
  3. Use it to cook your eggs and greens in the morning – it takes away that bitter taste of collards or spinach.
  4. Substitute butter for coconut oil when baking breads and desserts, or spread on gluten free toast.
  5. Just take a tablespoon straight from the jar when you’re short on time, like you might with a nut butter.

I keep three jars in my house - one in the kitchen, one in the bathroom, and one in my daughter’s room! Coconut oil is so versatile.

4 other uses for coconut oil

  1. As a moisturizer. Ditch the store-bought moisturizers that are usually loaded with hormone-disrupting chemicals, and swap them for coconut oil. Not only does it provide lasting moisture to your skin, but it’s antibacterial properties can help fight acne and other skin conditions.
  2. As a mouthwash. More specifically called an “oil pull,” 1 teaspoon full of coconut oil can be swished through your mouth for 5 to 20 minutes and it will literally pull away the plaque and bacteria in your mouth. This is obviously great news for your oral health, but did you know that our oral health also has a huge effect on our heart health and hormonal health? It’s true. In fact, gum disease can add on an extra 2 months for the time it takes to get pregnant, according to Australian research in 2011.
  3. As an eye make-up remover. Instead of spending top dollar for pricing eye-makeup removers that most likely contain harmful chemicals, let coconut oil take care of it for you! Using a tissue or pad of cotton, wipe coconut oil across your raccoon eyes or other old makeup at the end of the day and watch it clear away everything fast!
  4. As a natural deodorant. Yet another way to avoid harmful chemicals from skin care products! Skip the anti-perspirants and roll on something that is effective and not harmful to your hormones. Coconut oil is an ingredient in quite a few natural deodorants, and you can also make up your own potion – either use it plain or mix it together in one of these DIY recipes.

The best coconut oil to use

If you’re like me, you also care deeply about the quality of the food you eat. That means organic, non-GMO food, which unfortunately usually mean high price tags and giant weekly grocery bills. Coconut oil can be expensive, especially if you want it to be organic, ethically-sourced and of the virgin variety, which is important for the quality and taste, but it also means it will definitely have all the health benefits promised in this post.That’s why I can’t stop sharing Thrive Market - a online site that makes healthy living a whole lot easier and more affordable than ever (becoming a member costs less than $5 a month!). Think Whole Foods products at Costco prices, with the convenience of Amazon. Thrive is not only cheaper than upscale markets like Whole Foods, but it often matches or even beats prices at discount online retailers like Amazon and Vitacost.I’ve partnered with Thrive Market to bring you a great deal. You’ll get a free jar of the best brand of Coconut Oil that I use at home, as well as a month’s free trial and 15% off your next order. Always remember, that once you have the right information about how your body really works, you can start making health choices that finally start to work for you! You can do this – the science of your body is on your side!To your FLO,Alisa

Do You Know the Easiest Way to Fix Your Period Symptoms?

You don’t need to keep suffering with annoying symptoms that drain your energy for 1-2 weeks every single month. In fact, you can start having a better period as soon as your next period.MyFLO is the first-ever functional medicine period tracker that ALSO helps you fix your symptoms. MyFLO will help you understand why you have symptoms and what to do to improve them with food. It will also teach you how to Cycle Sync™ the 5 main areas of your life: food, exercise, work, relationships, and sex.Have a Better Period with MyFLOWhen you follow MyFLO’s weekly recommendations, you’ll get rid of frustrating symptoms and learn how to optimize your energy to be more productive and have better relationships.Click here to get MyFLO for iPhoneClick here to get MyFLO for Android

The Best Food and Supplements for PMS

We grow into womanhood believing that PMS is an inevitable part of being female. Then so many of us experience it, we believe that must be true. We just accept that once a month for a few days, a week — or even longer — we feel crabby, angry, low, anxious, lacking in confidence, frustrated, as well as bloated, ravenously hungry, craving sugar, and covered in acne.

But PMS is not normal. Menstruating women are not destined to suffer before their period. You know what else? The solution isn’t drugs. The Pill may seem to help, but it only masks symptoms — all while the root causes of PMS continue to simmer under the surface. It’s the same story with over-the-counter anti-inflammatories and painkillers, like ibuprofen. These drugs mask the pain.

They don’t treat the deeper root causes.It’s a myth that women have to suffer every month, and it’s a myth that drugs address the deeper hormone imbalances that contribute to premenstrual syndrome and period pain.So what causes PMS? What helps erase the symptoms? Here is everything you need to know about PMS and natural strategies for easing premenstrual symptoms.

What is PMS?

PMS stands for premenstrual syndrome, but it can strike anytime after ovulation, which occurs in the middle of your 28-day cycle, also known as the infradian rhythm, and the start of your period. The time between ovulation and the start of your period is known as the luteal phase.PMS refers to a group of physical, psychological, and emotional symptoms that menstruating women experience during the luteal phase. Symptoms include:

  • Acne
  • Bloating/retaining fluid
  • Breast tenderness
  • Food cravings and/or increased appetite
  • Mood swings
  • Feeling irritable, cranky, and/or depressed
  • Fatigue
  • Headaches and/or migraines
  • Difficulty concentrating
  • Low back pain
  • Cramps

What causes PMS?

Experts believe PMS is triggered (in part) by cyclical changes in sex hormones each month. And while it is true that our sex hormones naturally shift in a cyclical pattern each month, problems crop up only when our hormones are out of balance — when, for example, we have too much estrogen in our bodies relative to progesterone (a condition known as estrogen dominance), or when we have too little progesterone overall. In other words, monthly hormone shifts are normal and expected. They happen! But they are not the root cause of the problem.

The root cause of the problem is when we have more or less estrogen and progesterone than we need. As our bodies move through the 28-day hormone cycle in this hormonally imbalanced environment, that is when we experience symptoms.If you address the underlying hormone imbalance with food and lifestyle, you can erase the symptoms of PMS.

You will still be cycling through the four phases of your menstrual cycle — as you should be! — but without all the symptoms you experienced before. Experts also believe that nutrient deficiencies play a role in PMS symptoms. Research has shown a connection between low levels of vitamin D, calcium, and magnesium and PMS symptoms. Studies also suggest that supplementing with magnesium and vitamin B6 can make a significant difference in the severity of PMS.

Why the Pill Make PMS worse

Women with severe PMS are sometimes prescribed hormonal birth control to help ease symptoms. The pill stops ovulation and that can lead to reduced symptoms throughout one’s cycle. But not ovulating causes its own problems. Research has shown that consistent ovulation protects women’s long term health, especially when it comes to avoiding issues like osteoporosis, heart disease, heart attacks, and breast cancer (all top killers of women). Hormonal birth control (except, sometimes, the hormonal IUD) suppresses ovulation.

Suppressing ovulation for years, decades even, has long term consequences, even if ovulation returns shortly after you come off the medication. Exposure to synthetic hormones plus a lack of exposure to the body’s own hormone cycles, is the root cause. In short: ovulation is important — and not just for when you want to conceive.

The pill poses other problems, too. It’s been shown to disturb the microbiome, increase inflammation, and drain the body of essential micronutrients, among other things.Finally, the pill paves over the root causes of hormone imbalance without directly addressing root causes. That means that whenever you come off the pill, your symptoms are likely to come roaring back, often worse than before.

Lifestyle factors that make PMS worse

Modern life brings together a perfect storm of factors that undermine hormone balance and make PMS worse. Here are some of the habits and lifestyle factors that conspire to throw your hormones out of alignment:

1. Stress

We live in a society that places a high value on always being busy. If you ask someone how they’re doing or what’s new and they reply, “I’ve been SO busy,” it often sounds as much like a point of pride as it does a complaint. But we need to reverse our stance on stress. Research shows that the higher the level of our perceived stress, the worse our PMS—and that stress reduction techniques might be effective non-pharmaceutical interventions for easing PMS. So grab your yoga mat, download that meditation app, or make more time for the leisure activity that relaxes you.

2. Inflammation

Inflammation is a system-wide response to injury or stress, and it can be brought on by a large number of environmental factors, from eating unhealthy foods and being too sedentary to using toxic health and body care products. Prostaglandins are hormone-like substances that control the body’s inflammatory response and experts believe they can trigger many of the symptoms of PMS. (Prostaglandin overproduction is why some women get relief by taking NSAIDs like ibuprofen. NSAIDs block the synthesis of prostaglandins.)

3. Eating too much sugar

Sugar is one of the most inflammatory foods you can eat — and more inflammation means more PMS (see #2, above). Cutting down on sugar is a must when you’re trying to tame PMS.

4. Smoking

Smoking is bad for overall health, of course, including hormone balance. Women who smoke are twice as likely to develop PMS. Just say no to cigarettes.

5. Drinking coffee

Coffee fuels prostaglandin production, and increases the risk of cysts, fibroids, and period pain. Coffee also depletes the body of key hormone-balancing nutrients like magnesium.

6. Carrying HIDDEN weight

When I say this, I’m not talking about overweight and obesity per se. While being overweight is associated with a greater risk of PMS, the real problem is how ‘fat’ you are on the inside, which is not reflected in how much you weigh. You can be skinny on the outside and overweight on the inside — this is known in medical literature as being a “medically obese, normal-weight individual,” though a lot of practitioners refer this condition as being “skinny fat” — so you can’t just look in the mirror or step on the scale to know what’s happening on the inside. Your PMS might be telling you to address internal obesity.

7. You’re not living in sync with your cycle.

You’ve probably read about the importance of the 24-hour circadian cycle—how important it is to get high-quality, consecutive hours of sleep during the night, for example, and to get some safe sun exposure during the day, etc. But you probably haven’t heard about the importance of living in sync with your 28-day cycle—and, for women, that cycle is just as important to tend to as the circadian cycle. Research shows that our 28-day menstrual cycle affects our brain function, emotions, mood, sensory processing, appetite, and even our perception of pain. If you’re not supporting your body’s unique hormonal needs during each of the four phases of the 28-day cycle, you won’t have healthy, pain-free periods.

How to Erase PMS symptoms: Lifestyle Strategies for PMS

You can take a multi-pronged approach to ease the symptoms of PMS. Here are some of my top food, supplement, and lifestyle strategies. Let’s start with lifestyle. Here’s how to arrange your environment to help defeat PMS:

1. Stomp out inflammation.

Eat low inflammatory foods, like cruciferous vegetables, pastured eggs and pastured animal proteins, and nuts and seeds. Reduce the amount of sugar you eat or eliminate it altogether. A high-sugar diet drives up the production of advanced-glycation end products, which contribute to inflammation. Two foods that have been shown to help specifically with prostaglandin reduction are pomegranate and small, oily fish that contain high levels of inflammation-fighting omega-3 fatty acids.

2. Make “organic” and “clean” the main part of your life.

When you’re standing in the grocery aisle or at the makeup counter and the clean products and organic foods are more expensive than the conventional option, it can be easy to make the wallet-friendly choice. But what you need to keep in mind in these moments is the true cost of the choice you’re making. The toxins in these foods and products come into direct contact with the body and alter endocrine function, making period problems like PMS worse. You may save at check-out, but you are ultimately paying with your health. Eat organic and clean whenever possible.

3. Give up coffee.

This piece of advice is self-explanatory and, after the first week of withdrawal, not nearly as hard as you think. Within a month you won’t even miss it. Skip caffeinated tea, too. In case you’re tempted to skip tip #3, allow me to repeat myself: no more caffeine!

4. Improve your health from the inside out.  

You might look lean in the mirror, but if you don’t exercise (hence, you don’t have much lean muscle mass), and if you eat a high-sugar diet and/or you don’t have enough phytonutrient-rich vegetables on your plate, you might have the bloodwork profile of someone with overweight or obesity—and being overweight or obese is strongly correlated with PMS. When you start correcting what’s going on internally, you can see a reduction in symptoms.

5. Find what relaxes you… and make it a regular part of your life.

In the medical literature, high levels of stress are associated with more severe PMS. The time for stress reduction is now, not when you finish this big project or after that big presentation. Because guess what? When you finish those things there will just be more to do. The time is now. Your health depends on it.

6. Start Cycle Syncing

All of the biohacks I just mentioned will only get you so far if you don’t start to live in accordance with your cycle. Eating and exercising for each week-long phase of your 28-day cycle is the foundation of feeling better and having a symptom-free period. For too long, we’ve been living the same way day in and day out. This works for men, but not for women. Syncing your cycle will not only fix your period problems, it will help you find more happiness, energy, and success in life. Simply put, tending to your 28-day cycle is as important as tending to your 24-hour circadian cycle. If the idea of syncing with your cycle is new to you, I have an app and a treasure trove of articles on the blog to help you get started.

How to Tame PMS-Related Food Cravings

Before I get to my recommended list of foods for PMS, I want to tackle a very important topic: food cravings.Many of the women I’ve worked with over the years have struggled to maintain their otherwise healthy eating habits when they’re in their premenstrual or luteal phase. It’s then that their resolve is weakest. I get it – the intense cravings that PMS brings can derail the best of us.I help women address the root causes of cravings. I also know it’s important to have healthy alternatives on hand when cravings strike! Here are the most common food cravings during the luteal phase, along with healthy alternatives that won’t make your hormone imbalances worse.

PMS food craving #1: Coffee

A coffee habit can be a sign of  imbalanced cortisol (the body’s stress hormone) and not having enough internal oomph to get through the day. You’re searching for a quick hit of energy that you can’t generate on your own. What’s the alternative? Try kukicha tea, which has a nutty, non-herbal flavor profile as it’s made from roasting the twigs that grow right below tea leaves. Kukicha still contains some caffeine, but not enough to negatively impact your health. Mixing kukicha with Oatstraw and Holy Basil tea will help support your adrenals and bring them back in balance.

PMS food craving #2: Chocolate

Chocolate cravings can signal a magnesium deficiency. It may also indicate an overgrowth of bad bacteria and yeast in your gut, which makes you crave sugar. Taking a high-quality magnesium supplement can help curb sugar cravings. So can taking a high-quality probiotic.What’s the alternative? The great news here is that chocolate is a superfood and I eat a little chocolate most days myself, BUT it’s all about what kind of chocolate you have. Chocolate with dairy and sugar is a no-go, but good quality, organic, dark chocolate with minimal or, even better, no sugar or dairy is a healthy, hormone-supportive choice. Try adding raw cacao powder to smoothies or sprinkling on fruit salad, or try a high-quality dark chocolate bar. One of my favorite brands is Endangered Species.

PMS food craving #3: Pasta

When only white carbs will do – be that a big pile of spaghetti or a loaf of white bread – it’s usually blood sugar instability and/or a vitamin B deficiency that’s causing your cravings. Skipping meals, or eating too little or too sporadically throughout the day, can lead to blood sugar imbalances. So can eating meals high in simple carbs — simple carbs beget more carbs!What’s the alternative? You can break the cycle of blood sugar imbalance with meals that are high in healthy protein, healthy fat, and complex carbs from whole food sources. You will get a steady release of energy from a well-balanced meal and you won’t find yourself craving a candy bar 45 minutes after dinner. The takeaway? Don’t eat carbs in isolation (and don’t eat too many, if any, simple carbs, like those found in white bread or pasta). Instead, focus on integrating some  carbs into each meal. And try to eat regularly, before you get so hungry that you will eat anything in front of you. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure! Taking a high-quality vitamin B supplement can also help.

PMS food craving #4: Soda

If you find yourself craving soda, your blood sugar might be off and you need to re-set with whole-food-based meals that have enough healthy fat and healthy protein to stabilize your blood sugar. You might also be dehydrated. Soda contains salt (along with a bunch of sugar), and that salty-sweet combo gives soda the allure of a hydrating beverage while actually dehydrating you (the salt makes you thirsty all over again).What’s the alternative? Increasing electrolytes is a great way to combat dehydration. Try coconut water, which has a sweet and salty flavor, or plain carbonated water with a touch of 100-percent fruit juice mixed in. The classic choice — a big glass of water (!) — is a great option, too.

PMS food craving #5: Steak

If you find yourself craving red meat, you may have an iron deficiency. And if the only thing that will satisfy you during your luteal phase is a big, juicy steak, go ahead! If it is grass-fed, organic meat, there is nothing wrong with that. If you’re open to what meat you eat, the healthier choice is organic, grass-fed bison or lamb. If you don’t eat red meat, you might need to supplement with iron.What’s the alternative? Take liquid chlorophyll. It’s only one molecule different from hemoglobin and it is high in magnesium, which helps erase the symptoms of PMS.

The Best Foods for PMS

What specific foods can help ease the symptoms of PMS? Here are my favorites:

Chickpeas

Chickpeas are a great source of magnesium. They also contain vitamin B6. Both of these compounds, especially when taken together, help reduce symptoms of PMS.

Kale, broccoli, cauliflower, and other dark leafy greens

All brassica vegetables contain indole-3 carbinol, which helps the liver metabolize excess estrogen and prevent estrogen dominance (which is a common hormone imbalance that gives rise to a bunch of period problems, including PMS).

Coconut yogurt

Coconut yogurt contains probiotics in the form of live cultures (which helps the gut metabolize estrogen and keep hormones balanced) and it is rich in healthy fats, which help keep blood sugar stable.

Sweet potatoes

Sweet potatoes are naturally sweet and can help satisfy your sweet cravings. The vitamin A in sweet potatoes supports the liver as it metabolizes excess estrogen.

Bone broth

Bone broth can be a good source of magnesium and calcium, both of which can help alleviate the symptoms of PMS.

The Best Natural Supplements to Prevent PMS

You can’t spot treat PMS. You have to address the root causes to get rid of it. In order for your body to produce adequate amounts of the right hormones at the right times, you need several key micronutrients:

Magnesium

Research suggests that magnesium helps alleviate symptoms of PMS, including weight gain, breast tenderness, and bloating. Magnesium is also great for promoting relaxation, reducing anxiety and stress, and encouraging good sleep. A high-quality magnesium supplement makes a great addition to your PMS-fighting arsenal.

Vitamin B6

Supplementing with up to 100mg/day of vitamin B6 is likely to help treat premenstrual symptoms, and premenstrual depression, according to research.

Omega 3 fatty acids and vitamin D3

Both of these nutrients help promote hormone balance. Vitamin D deficiency has been associated with reproductive hormone imbalances in both men and women. Omega-3s help protect against anxiety and depression and may help reduce cramps.

Vitamin E

Vitamin helps reduce breast premenstrual breast tenderness, according to research. (So does vitamin B6!).

Alpha Lipoic Acid (ALA)

ALA offers powerful antioxidant support for the liver as it works to metabolize excess estrogen — remember: too much estrogen relative to progesterone can trigger PMS symptoms — and also supports stable blood sugar.

Calcium

Calcium supplements have been shown to help with mood swings during the luteal phase.Taking targeted, high-quality supplements can fast track your hormonal healing. I created the Balance by FLO Living supplement kit to give you the essential micronutrient support you need to have a symptom-free cycle. With Balance by FLO Living, you can start feeling better in just one month.

Additional Natural Supplement Support to Prevent PMS

I recommend that women who are experiencing PMS start with the micronutrients I outlined above. These are essential micronutrients you need to support your endocrine system and erase symptoms. But if you incorporate these micronutrients and still experience PMS and other problems, I recommend specific herbs. In most cases, you will only need the micronutrients (and not the herbs), but if you do opt for herbs, remember that these are powerful compounds. Use them only in specific situations and always consult a trusted healthcare practitioner on dosage and timing.

Vitex

Vitex supports the production of progesterone and luteinizing hormone — both of which are necessary for your body to ovulate, for regular menstrual cycles, and for you to avoid symptoms of hormonal imbalance like PMS. Vitex is well-researched and It is an effective and often successful natural treatment for cycle-related problems. But I believe that should be used as a short-term, not a long term, solution. Vitex alone will not address the root causes of PMS and other period problems.

Dong Quai

This herb has muscle-relaxing effects and helps relieve pre-period cramps and aches. Important note! This powerful supplement should not be used during pregnancy, breastfeeding, or if you have a family history of female cancers.

Evening Primrose Oil

Evening primrose oil can help with cramps, aches and pains, and headaches in the luteal phase.Always remember that once you have the right information about how your body really works, you can start making health choices that finally start to work for you. You can do this – the science of your body is on your side.

Balance Supplements

I designed my Balance Supplements specifically to help women address these key deficiencies, balance their hormones, and reclaim their energy.You don’t need to feel listless and exhausted for 1-2 weeks every month. You can reclaim your energy in as little as one 28-day hormone cycle. BALANCE by FLO Living is the FIRST supplement kit for happier periods that supports balancing your hormones. Balance Supplements include five formulations that provide essential micronutrients to balance your hormones. Think of them as your personal “insurance policy” against environmental factors that are (knowingly or unknowingly) zapping your energy every month. Balance Supplements can help you have more energy within a few weeks!

The Menstrual Phase: Support Your Body with The Cycle Syncing Method®

This is the fourth blog post in a 4-part series on The Cycle Syncing Method®: micronutrient and botanical support for the four phases of the infradian rhythm, or hormonal cycle.At Flo Living, our goal is to help women balance their hormones and resolve period problems with food, supplements, and lifestyle changes. We take a functional nutrition and systems medicine approach to achieving optimal hormone health. The first step for any woman* in balancing her hormones is learning about the 28-day hormone cycle, which is governed by a special biological rhythm called the infradian rhythm. The infradian rhythm plays a vital role in female health and wellness. Knowing what your body needs during each phase of your cycle is key not only to hormonal healing but to your health overall.To learn more about the infradian rhythm, you can check out the in-depth post I wrote on the infradian rhythm here, and more about The Cycle Syncing Method® here. For a deep dive, grab a copy of my new book In The Flo, which is all about the unique rhythms of our 28-day hormone cycle, The Cycle Syncing Method®, and the specific supports we can offer our bodies during each phase.

This is the fourth blog post in our four-part series on micronutrient and botanical support to help better support the infradian rhythm. To read In this post, we will explore supplement needs during the menstrual phase of the 28-day hormone cycle.

The 4-Phases of the Infradian Rhythm

The infradian rhythm tracks with the menstrual cycle and has four distinct phases. They are:

  1. The follicular phase
  2. The ovulatory phase
  3. The luteal phase
  4. The menstrual phase

For women in their reproductive years, the key to optimal health is to eat, move, and supplement in ways that support each phase of the infradian rhythm. Our bodies require different types of self care during each phase.The menstrual phase is the 3 to 7 days during your bleed. You can learn more about micronutrient needs in the first phase (follicular) of your cycle here, the second phase (ovulatory) here, and the third phase (luteal) here. In today’s post, we’re going to do a deep dive on micronutrient support for the menstrual phase.

Meet the Menstrual Phase

When: The 3 to 7 days during your bleed.What’s happening in your body:

  • The corpus luteum gets reabsorbed by the body
  • Progesterone levels decline
  • Your uterus sheds the thick endometrial lining that it has built up in the luteal phase
  • Estrogen hits its lowest point just before your bleed

What’s happening in your brain:The left (analytical) and right (feeling) hemispheres of your brain communicate the most during this time, which means it's a great time to integrate how you feel about situations in your life and make decisions about how to proceed. This is an ideal time to reflect and journal. Food, Exercise, and Lifestyle Strategies for the Menstrual Phase

To achieve optimal hormone health and to ease period problems like PMS, cramps, bloating, acne, heavy or irregular periods and missing periods, it requires a multipronged approach that includes food, movement, and lifestyle strategies implemented in a cyclical way. I encourage women to eat in a cyclical pattern, exercise in line with their cycle, and plan their schedules with their infradian rhythm in mind. During the menstrual phase, specifically, your hormone levels are at their lowest, so it’s important to eat adequate calories and focus on restorative workouts. Keep your workouts relaxed, even if you’re not feeling discomfort. It’s a time to take things slowly and prioritize rest. Gentle walking or very light yoga is perfect during this phase. Make sure to get plenty of protein and healthy fat during your bleed, which will help with hormone production. (Your hormones are at their lowest levels during this phase.) Foods that help keep up your iron, like red meat and kidney beans, are helpful now, too. Adding in some seafood or mineral-rich seaweed helps replenish mineral levels in your body.Supplements are important, too. I recommend key micronutrients for every woman in her reproductive years—supplements that are important to take daily. I also recommend taking phase-specific supplements to further support and optimize hormone health during each phase. For phase-based support during the menstrual phase, I recommend taking a combination to help ease cramps and boost immune function.

Key Supplements for the Menstrual Phase

Quercetin is a powerful antioxidant that is good for hormone health and overall health. Studies show it helps reduce cramps and it may inhibit growth of endometrial tissue for people with endometriosis. An extensive body of research shows that quercetin has antidiabetic, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, antimicrobial, anti-Alzheimer’s, antiarthritic, cardiovascular, and wound-healing properties. It may also help protect against certain types of cancer. According to research, quercetin helps modulate inflammation and regulate blood sugar, two factors that are essential for balanced hormones and a healthy cycle. And studies suggest it may help reduce symptoms of PCOS. Quercetin is a type of plant compound known as a phytoestrogen, and studies suggest that it may help protect and support the ovaries from oxidative stress. As a phytoestrogen, quercetin may mimic some of the same actions as estrogen in the body, which is one reason to consider taking quercetin during your period, when estrogen levels are at their lowest levels all month. Quercetin and other antioxidants may also help prevent urinary tract infections, according to some research. I recommend taking quercetin during the menstrual phase to support healthy estrogen levels and keep inflammation levels low. Nettles help replenish magnesium in the body, which may help reduce PMS and other symptoms. Nettles may also help with heavy flow, and they are a good source of iron, which can help build up the blood after during and after menstruation. Taking these targeted supplements can help reduce or eliminate the need for ibuprofen for pain and cramps, acne medications for cyclical breakouts, birth control pills for regular periods, and caffeine for an energy boost — all of which only mask symptoms anyway. The Flo Living Cycle Syncing Ⓡ Supplements helps you exactly when and how your body needs it during each distinct phase of your cycle.  Since your hormones change each phase, it makes sense to change the way you target certain supplements each phase too.I carefully curated the key nutrients you need to help you look and feel your best throughout your cycle. And you simply take the one for the phase you’re in - period.At FloLiving, we are building a future where it’s easy and simple to get targeted support for your hormonal symptoms from your first period to your last. With the right support, women in their reproductive years can ease their symptoms, live with less pain, and look and feel their best — which is what every woman deserves.

*We use the words “woman” and “women” and she/her pronouns throughout these posts for ease of writing, but the principles and advice apply to any person, regardless of gender identity, who was born with female physiology. At the same time, if you are a person born with male physiology and you identify as non-binary or you are transitioning to identify as female, using a cyclical support system can help you feel more in sync with your female energy.

The Cycle Syncing® Supplement Kit

Targeted Nutraceuticals to help you optimize each phase of your cycle

Since your hormones change each phase of your cycle and you have different symptoms from those hormonal ratios each phase, you need targeted supplements for each phase to ease those specific symptoms during that phase.This kit will help relieve your period symptoms so you can stay energized and focused all month long.\

The Luteal Phase: Support Your Body with The Cycle Syncing Method®

This is the third blog post in a 4-part series on The Cycle Syncing Method®: micronutrient and botanical support for the four phases of the infradian rhythm, or hormonal cycle. At Flo Living, our goal is to help women balance their hormones and resolve period problems with food, supplements, and lifestyle changes. We take a functional nutrition and systems medicine approach to achieving optimal hormone health. The first step for any woman* in balancing her hormones is learning about the 28-day hormone cycle, which is governed by a special biological rhythm called the infradian rhythm. The infradian rhythm plays a vital role in female health and wellness. Knowing what your body needs during each phase of your cycle is key not only to hormonal healing but to your health overall. To learn more about the infradian rhythm, you can check out the in-depth post I wrote on the infradian rhythm here, and more about The Cycle Syncing Method® here. For a deep dive, grab a copy of my new book In The Flo, which is all about the unique rhythms of our 28-day hormone cycle, The Cycle Syncing Method®, and the specific supports we can offer our bodies during each phase.This is the third blog post in our four-part series on micronutrient and botanical support to help better support the infradian rhythm. In this post, we will explore supplement needs during the luteal phase of the 28-day hormone cycle.

The 4-Phases of the Infradian Rhythm

The infradian rhythm tracks with the menstrual cycle and has four distinct phases. They are:

  1. The follicular phase
  2. The ovulatory phase
  3. The luteal phase
  4. The menstrual phase

For women in their reproductive years, the key to optimal health is to eat, move, and supplement in ways that support each phase of the infradian rhythm. Our bodies require different types of self care during each phase.The luteal phase is the 10 to 14 days after ovulation and before your period. You can learn more about micronutrient needs in the first phase (follicular) of your cycle here and in the second phase (ovulatory) here. In today’s post, we’re going to do a deep dive on micronutrient support for the luteal phase.

Meet the Luteal Phase

When: The 10 to 14 days after ovulation and before your bleed.What’s happening in your body:

  • Estrogen levels continue to rise and the uterine lining continues to thicken
  • Progesterone levels start to rise
  • Toward the end of the luteal phase, estrogen, testosterone, and progesterone peak and then begin to drop, hitting their lowest levels just before your period.
  • PMS during this phase is caused by too much estrogen in the body relative to progesterone, or estrogen dominance
  • Metabolism speeds up

What’s happening in your brain:

Hormone levels during this phase prime your brain to be good at focusing on details and wrapping up projects. Toward the end of this phase, as your hormone levels plummet, you will have less energy and feel more inclined to focus inward rather than on socializing.

Food, Exercise, and Lifestyle Strategies for the Ovulatory Phase

To achieve optimal hormone health and to ease period problems like PMS, cramps, bloating, acne, heavy or irregular periods and missing periods, it requires a multipronged approach that includes food, movement, and lifestyle strategies implemented in a cyclical way. I encourage women to eat in a cyclical pattern, exercise in line with their cycle, and plan their schedules with their infradian rhythm in mind.

During the luteal phase, specifically, your metabolism speeds up, and your resting cortisol levels are higher. You must eat more calories daily to maintain stable blood sugar, which helps balance insulin — a critical hormone that greatly affects the degree of PMS you will experience.  In addition, don’t engage in HIIT workouts during this time. Opt for gentler movement, like Pilates and other non-cardio strength training. How much PMS you have is totally in your control and directly related to how much or how little you support your infradian rhythm during this phase. Continue to emphasize cruciferous vegetables during this phase and add in some complex carbohydrates like those found in sweet potatoes, which are nutrient-dense.

Supplements are important, too. I recommend key micronutrients for every woman in her reproductive years—supplements that are important to take daily. I also recommend taking phase-specific supplements to further support and optimize hormone health during each phase. For phase-based support during the luteal phase, I recommend women take a blend to balance blood sugar.

Key Supplement for the Luteal Phase

The luteal phase is marked by a natural increase in metabolism, which means your body needs more calories. However, if you don’t get that caloric level dialed in, you will experience sugar cravings during this phase. To keep those cravings at bay, it’s important to emphasize complex carbs, like sweet potato and brown rice, during this phase. You’ll want to continue to eat natural sugars and complex carbs throughout the entire luteal phase, because they help boost neurochemicals like serotonin and dopamine to keep your mood stable. As your need for calories and complex carbs goes up in the luteal phase, it’s essential to keep your blood sugar stable — and that’s where chromium and cinnamon come in.

Cinnamon is associated with a statistically significant decrease in fasting glucose levels, according to research, and has the potential to reduce blood sugar after eating a meal. Cinnamon has also been shown to help reduce insulin resistance, which can happen when blood sugar levels remain too high for a long period of time and which is a precursor to other, more serious conditions.

Chromium is an essential mineral that helps regulate insulin activity in the body and enhance the metabolism of carbs, proteins, and fats. Studies show that chromium can help reduce insulin resistance, which sets the stage for clinical conditions like PCOS and gestational diabetes, and keep blood glucose stable. Keeping blood sugar stable throughout all the phases of the infradian rhythm is important for hormone balance and a symptom-free cycle, so I encourage women to pay special attention to blood sugar across their entire infradian by eating low-glycemic foods in a phase-based pattern. For extra support during the luteal phase, I recommend taking a high-quality chromium-cinnamon supplement. There is no harm in taking chromium and cinnamon at other times during the infradian rhythm, but it can be especially helpful when you are naturally eating more complex carbs and natural sugars.

Taking these targeted supplements can help reduce or eliminate the need for ibuprofen for pain and cramps, acne medications for cyclical breakouts, birth control pills for regular periods, and caffeine for an energy boost — all of which only mask symptoms anyway.The Flo Living Cycle Syncing Ⓡ Supplements helps you exactly when and how your body needs it during each distinct phase of your cycle.  Since your hormones change each phase, it makes sense to change the way you target certain supplements each phase too.I carefully curated the key nutrients you need to help you look and feel your best throughout your cycle. And you simply take the one for the phase you’re in - period.

At Flo Living, we are building a future where it’s easy and simple to get targeted support for your hormonal symptoms from your first period to your last. With the right support, women in their reproductive years can ease their symptoms, live with less pain, and look and feel their best — which is what every woman deserves.*

We use the words “woman” and “women” and she/her pronouns throughout these posts for ease of writing, but the principles and advice apply to any person, regardless of gender identity, who was born with female physiology. At the same time, if you are a person born with male physiology and you identify as non-binary or you are transitioning to identify as female, using a cyclical support system can help you feel more in sync with your feminine energy.

The Cycle Syncing® Supplement Kit

Targeted Nutraceuticals to help you optimize each phase of your cycle

Since your hormones change each phase of your cycle and you have different symptoms from those hormonal ratios each phase, you need targeted supplements for each phase to ease those specific symptoms during that phase.This kit will help relieve your period symptoms so you can stay energized and focused all month long.

Why Summer is the Best Time to Boost Your Fertility

If you’re ready for a baby, you’re in luck: the best time of year to boost your fertility is…right now.Summer is the ideal season for improving fertility and getting pregnant—and that’s not just folklore. The case for focusing on fertility during the summer months is backed by science.What makes summer so great for making babies? First, there’s more opportunity for your body to make vitamin D naturally (thanks to more sunshine), and vitamin D is the essential fertility nutrient. There’s also more opportunities to move in fertility-supportive ways during the summer. Plus, some of the key fertility-boosting foods are in season right now. There’s also the research that suggests that children conceived between June and August tend to weigh more at birth, and may have better health outcomes throughout their lives.Let’s dig into the science and see exactly why summer is so brilliant for boosting fertility.

The Science of Summer and Fertility

Here’s the case for boosting your fertility during the summer months:

  1. It’s easier to stock up on vitamin D. Vitamin D, which the skin synthesizes from sunlight,  is absolutely essential if you are trying to conceive. It’s important to patch up all micronutrient gaps, of course, but getting enough D is the most critical when it comes to fertility. 

Why?The reproductive tissue in both women and men have vitamin D receptors and vitamin D-metabolizing enzymes. Animal studies have shown that, when those receptors are blocked, the animals experience abnormal development of the testes, ovaries, and uterus.In women with PCOS, which is one of the leading causes of infertility, healthy levels of vitamin D are associated with significantly higher pregnancy rates and improvement in embryo quality. Research shows that women undergoing IVF are “significantly more likely” to get pregnant with higher vitamin D levels.A sufficient supply of vitamin D, either through sunlight or supplementation, when trying to conceive and during pregnancy is important for preventing health risks for both mother and baby. Adequate vitamin D during gestation “favorably impacts the epigenome of the fetus, and in turn, long term health.” The same researchers note that there’s “urgency based on emerging research to correct [vitamin D] deficiency and maintain optimal vitamin D status” during pre-conception, conception, and gestation.Get Enough Vitamin D: The most important source of vitamin D is the sun, which is synthesized in the body when skin is exposed to sunlight—and there is no better time to get out in the sun than summer. In fact, in most areas of the northern hemisphere, the sun’s rays aren’t bright enough during winter to trigger vitamin D synthesis.So I recommend getting 10 to 15 minutes of sun exposure (without sunscreen) each day during summer to boost and maintain vitamin D levels. If you’re worried about skin cancer, accelerated skin aging, and the benefits and dangers of sunscreen, I cover the topic in depth here.Even still, and for unknown reasons, many people are unable to make enough vitamin D in the summer to support overall health and fertility. For this reason, I recommend that women take a high-quality vitamin D supplement year round, in addition to getting outside for 10 to 15 minutes a day in the sunlight.

  1. Your immune system may be stronger in the summer. Robust immunity during the summer months may be a result of all that vitamin D, which helps modulate and support the immune system. The incidence of getting the flu goes down in the summer, too. Conception during flu season is correlated with shorter gestation time and that can have long-term consequences for babies. 

Boost your immunity: Make sure to maximize all your micronutrients, not just vitamin D; prioritize sleep; and take stress management seriously. All these factors influence immunity. What’s more, stress sends messages to the body that it is not an ideal time to get pregnant, so this is an especially important factor in boosting fertility.

  1. The summer months provide more opportunity for lymph-supportive exercise. With its long days and warm weather, summer provides more opportunity for almost all types of movement. I recommend low-impact, lymph system-supportive movement for women who want to boost fertility.

Get moving: Spending five to 10 minutes jumping on a mini trampoline is great. So is skipping down the street (which is great for getting vitamin D, too). Any gentle, circulation-improving movement will support fertility.

  1. Guacamole tastes better in the summer. Okay, okay. Guacamole tastes good all year round, but the ingredients are in season during summer, so they’re fresh, delicious, and cheap(er). But, wait, you might be wondering, what does guacamole have to do with fertility? The answer is in the avocado. Avocados contain the exact type of fat you want to eat when you’re trying to conceive (and even when you’re not). A diet high in healthy fats is essential for boosting fertility. 

Eat some avocado: Guac makes a great choice because the avocados are paired with other high-phytonutrients whole foods and inflammation-fighting herbs. But the truly important factor here is getting more avocados, so any way you eat them is just fine! Make a avocado-based tzatziki sauce to dip veggies in, eat mashed avocado on gluten-free toast, or cut an avocado in half, drizzle with salt and olive oil (which is also rich in the kind of fat you want to have) and it eat it with a spoon.

  1. It is cheaper and easier to make green green smoothies in summer. I recommend drinking green drinks year round, but these estrogen-balancing, liver-supporting drinks can be stuffed full of summer’s bountiful greens (which are cheaper because they are in season or, better yet, you can grow your own if you have a yard)—and they taste refreshing and cooling in the heat. A whole foods-based, primarily greens-filled smoothie supports fertility by helping eliminate used-up estrogen from the body and promoting healthy hormone balance.

Go green: One of the beautiful things about blending up a green drink is all the different variations you can make. Pull out your blender, grab some greens, and start mixing!

Fertility Challenges in the Summer

Summer IS the best season to boost fertility and get your body ready to conceive. But the season brings some fertility challenges, too.Sunscreen use goes up in the summer, as I mentioned, and many conventional sunscreens pose health risks to mother and baby. (For more on sunscreen safety, go here.) There’s also more exposure to herbicides and pesticides which end up on lawns, parks in suburban areas, and sprayed overhead, if you live in an agricultural area. The toxins in these products are especially hard on the body’s endocrine system, which regulates reproductive hormones.The summers also bring their fair share of heavy smog days. And the number of air quality alert (especially for us city dwellers) has gone up in recent years with the wildfires in Canada and out West. To protect yourself from these fertility-disrupting toxins and air particles, practice sun safety and avoid lawns and other garden areas that have been treated with chemicals. And when you return home, leave your shoes at the front door. Shoes come into contact with pesticides and herbicides that run off onto sidewalks or that linger in grassy spots, and when we wear our shoes at home, the chemicals get tracked through our house and leave us vulnerable to exposure.Pay attention to weather reports and air quality alerts and take precautions to avoid outdoor air on the heaviest smog days.Always remember that once you have the right information about how your body really works, you can start making health choices that finally start to work for you! You can do this – the science of your body is on your side!

What to Do When Acne Affects More Than the Skin

If you have acne, you don’t need me to tell you that breakouts affect more than your skin. Acne can bring emotional consequences, like low self-esteem, social anxiety, and depression.Now, a new study has confirmed what you already know: Researchers looked at close to 2 million people over the course of 15 years and found that having acne increases the risk of depression by 63 percent. The study also found that individuals with acne are more likely to be younger and female.It’s easy to understand the emotional fallout of acne. When you don’t feel confident in your skin—literally—you can experience a cascade of unwelcome symptoms and emotions, from anxiety and loneliness to diminished quality of life. But acne and depression are connected in more ways than one: they share many of the same root causes. Yes, the appearance of acne can have an emotional impact. But acne, like depression, can be a sign of underlying imbalances, including impaired gut health, inflammation, and hormone imbalances. Another connection? Both acne and depression are associated with taking the pill...which is often prescribed to “treat” acne. But there’s good news: You can help heal the underlying imbalances that fuel both acne and depression with lifestyle strategies and natural remedies. Here’s how.

Why Conventional Acne Treatments Make Acne Worse

Acne has multiple root causes. So does depression. Intriguingly, several of those root causes are the same. In some sense, this is old news. Over 70 years ago, two pioneering dermatologists proposed an overlap between anxiety, depression, and skin conditions like acne. They believed impaired gut health was a key factor in these conditions, and they dubbed the connection the gut-brain-skin axis. Contemporary research has proven these early experts right. Poor gut health is a factor in the development of both acne and depression. Other root factors, like inflammation and hormone imbalances, contribute to both conditions, too… And that is why topical acne creams don’t work. They don’t address the root causes. Same with going on the pill and taking antibiotics, These treatments only address the symptom (acne) and ignore the root causes. And, ultimately, these treatments make both conditions worse. Taking hormonal birth control (the pill) is a risk factor for developing depression. And while the pill may stop breakouts while you’re on it, your acne is likely to flare up with even more intensity when you stop taking it. That’s because the pill paves over symptoms, all while the root causes simmer under the surface. Many antibiotics are hard on the gut microbiome (because they wipe out the good and bad bugs in the gut)—and a less diverse microbiome is a risk factor for skin conditions and mental health conditions. To help ease acne, and to help support good mental health, it’s important to heal the root causes that fuel them both.

Root Causes of Acne

To heal the root causes of acne, it’s important first to understand them. It’s also helpful to know which root causes overlap with depression.

  1. Your detoxification system is sluggish. If you experience acne as part of your 28-day hormone cycle—for example, if you notice breakouts around ovulation (mid-cycle) and/or right before your period—it’s a sign that your body isn’t processing and eliminating excess hormones. Here’s what happens: during the second half of your cycle, estrogen and testosterone peak. If your detox system is congested and can’t get rid of these excess hormones quickly enough, estrogen builds up in your body (estrogen dominance) and causes problems (like skin inflammation). The extra testosterone sends signals to your sebaceous glands to produce more oil. Acne is the result.

Women are at greater risk for depression throughout their lifetimes than men, and research suggests that this may have to do with hormones. Neurotransmitters and hormones share several common pathways in areas of the brain associated with mood, and when hormones are imbalanced—or when women go through natural, hormone-shifting events (like giving birth or going through menopause)—it may affect these pathways and increase the risk of depression.

  1. Your microbiome is imbalanced. The gut microbiome influences the skin microbiome through the gut-skin axis, so if your gut flora is off balance, your skin can be thrown off balance, too. Gut flora also plays a role in inflammation and oxidative stress, factors that fuel both acne and depression. So addressing gut health is a top priority when you’re working to heal both the dermatological and emotional consequences of acne.
  2. You have a micronutrient deficiency. If you’re deficient in key micronutrients—like vitamin B, magnesium, and zinc—your skin health will suffer. Studies suggest that zinc is a promising alternative to conventional acne treatments. Other nutrients, like magnesium and vitamins B and C, promote optimal hormone balance. And omega-3 fatty acids help decrease inflammation, which fuels both acne and depression. If you’re deficient in any of these nutrients, that deficiency will be reflected in your skin. (Even if you’re getting enough essential micronutrients, if your gut microbiome is imbalanced, your body may not be able to absorb them. This makes addressing gut health even more important when it comes to easing acne.)
  3. You’re (unintentionally) eating pro-inflammatory foods. Inflammation is a root cause of acne and depression...and some foods promote inflammation. These foods include dairy, sugar, refined flour (baked goods), soy, gluten, caffeine, non-pastured and non-organic animal protein, and unhealthy fats (like the fats found in canola, sunflower, safflower, and vegetable oils). Foods that have been grown conventionally (non-organic foods) also contribute to inflammation.
  4. You live in an (unintentionally) inflammatory environment. Exposure to everyday toxins fuels inflammation...and you can be exposed to harmful, acne-promoting toxins almost everywhere you turn in your daily life. Hormone-disrupting and skin-damaging hormones hide in health and body care products, home cleaning products, lawn and garden chemicals, and furniture upholstery.
  5. You have a heavy, irregular, or otherwise problematic period. If you suffer period problems like bloating, PMS, severe cramps, heavy periods, irregular periods, or moodiness and irritability, it’s a sign that your reproductive hormones are imbalanced...and that those imbalances are playing a part in your skin issues.
  6. You’re sedentary. Sweating helps the body eliminate toxins and clear the skin. Not getting enough exercise can be one factor in persistent acne.

Natural Remedies for Curing Acne

Here’s how to address the root causes of acne and, in some cases, depression:Support your detoxification system. Your liver is one of the body’s main organs of detoxification (so is the skin, of course, which is one reason that sweating is so good for skin health!). The liver can’t do its job properly without support—and the best way to nourish your liver is by eating organic leafy greens and cruciferous vegetables, and by taking a high-quality liver-support supplement. I like supplements like turmeric and green tea extract for liver support. Nurture the good bugs in your gut. Ditch sugar, caffeine, dairy, and other inflammatory foods, which are hard on the microbiome. Take a high-quality probiotic and incorporate foods rich in good bacteria, like coconut yogurt and sauerkraut. Patch up micronutrient gaps. Your first goal here is to stop micronutrients from leaching out of your body. Coffee is one thing that speeds up the loss of micronutrients. So is over-excercise. I recommend giving up caffeine and bringing exercise back into balance. But stopping the leaks is only the first step. I recommend targeted supplements to replace lost nutrients and help balance your hormones. Supplements are absolutely essential if you have a history of taking the pill or drinking caffeine. Reduce inflammation. Give up or greatly cut down on pro-inflammatory foods. Focus on eating foods that reduce inflammation, including spices, cruciferous vegetables, and foods full of healthy fats, like avocados and pumpkin seeds. Try to eat organic (especially vegetables, fruit, and animal protein) whenever possible. Take a high-quality omega-3 supplement. Omega-3 fatty acids are powerful inflammation fighters. And make it a priority to avoid everyday chemicals that harm the body’s delicate hormone system. Practice The Cycle Syncing Method™. This might sound complicated, but it’s easy and intuitive. Practicing The Cycle Syncing Method™ simply means tuning into the rhythms of your 28-day hormone cycle and then eating, moving, and engaging in self-care that is the hormone-supportive during each phase of your cycle. The first step in the process is to track your cycle, which you can do with the MyFLO app. Get moving. Move your body in healthy, hormone-supportive ways...which can include getting your heart rate up by having sex!Always remember that once you have the right information about how your body really works, you can start making health choices that finally start to work for you! You can do this—the science of your body is on your side!

Safe Sunscreens for a Hormone-Healthy Summer

Are you suffering from sun-safety whiplash? It looks like this: You’re super woke about skin cancer (and accelerated skin aging) thanks to pretty much everyone ever telling you about the dangers of sun exposure. And they aren’t wrong. Studies suggest that most melanoma cases are caused, at least in part, by overexposure to sunlight. But lately you’ve heard rumors about the dangers of conventional sunscreens—that they are hard on the environment, that they mess with your endocrine system, that they might not protect against skin cancer as effectively as they should… and that, at the same time, they may have carcinogenic properties of their own. Oh, yeah, and some of the ingredients in conventional sunscreens may be neurotoxins. Then there’s the debate about sunscreen and low-levels of vitamin D. Some experts have suggested that the “always use sunscreen!” advice is preventing us from converting sunlight into vitamin D, which we need for optimal hormonal health, and especially for optimal fertility? It’s enough to make you want to hide out in a windowless room until science sorts it all out. But there are ways to have a fun day at the beach, get some vitamin D, and protect yourself against skin damage... without damaging your hormones. Here’s how to keep your skin AND your hormones happy while you navigate the sun safety conundrum.

The Trouble with Conventional Sunscreens

The active ingredients in most sunscreens have been linked to imbalanced hormones, premature birth, increased risk for breast, ovarian and prostate cancer, and disruption of normal endocrine function. One popular active ingredient, oxybenzone, has been shown to harm fish and damage coral reefs—in addition to human health—all while experts have raised serious doubts about the skin cancer-prevention benefits of sunscreen that contains oxybenzone.In high concentrations, ingredients like oxybenzone can have neurotoxic effects. While the concentrations of oxybenzone that have been studied and linked to health dangers are higher than what is normally found in human tissue or the environment, that’s hardly reassuring data. What’s more, the effects of repeated, long-term, and low-dose exposures to the chemicals in sunscreens haven’t been properly studied. We don’t know what using these products everyday, as we’re often instructed to do, will do to our bodies.Meanwhile, concerns have cropped up that sunscreens might not be as effective at protecting against skin cancer as once thought, and studies have shown that most sunscreen users don’t apply enough, reducing the product’s effectiveness to one quarter of what is promised on the bottle. So what’s a person to do? There are safer sunscreens on the market—and there are other ways to be sun safe, while still getting your vitamin D.

Get Your Vitamin D...While Protecting Your Skin

Exposure to sunlight prompts the body to make vitamin D, but sunscreen effectively stops this process. So many experts recommend five to 10 minutes of sunscreen-free sun exposure everyday. This can help you make vitamin D naturally, but I recommend avoiding the brightest hours (from 11:00am-ish to 3:00pm-ish) when you’re skipping sunscreen. And if you’re worried about accelerated skin aging, leave your legs or arms exposed for 10 to 15 minutes instead of your face and neck.

But many of us live in climates where—even if you go outside for a few minutes each day without sunscreen—the sun’s rays aren’t direct enough in winter to trigger vitamin D synthesis. If you live anywhere north of, say, Missouri, the sunlight is too indirect during the winter months for our bodies to make this important vitamin, which acts like a master hormone in the body. From roughly October to April, we’re cut off from our main source of vitamin D. And there’s worse news: Even direct sunshine all year round isn’t a guarantee. Studies suggest that populations who live close to the equator, where the sun is high in the sky 365 days a year, also don’t make enough vitamin D. For complicated and largely unknown reasons, vitamin D deficiency is a global phenomenon.For this reason, I recommend that women take a high-quality vitamin D supplement. Vitamin D is important for hormone balance, fertility, mood, energy, and so much more. If vitamin D is low, as it is for so many of us, it can nearly impossible to move the needle on period and fertility problems and other symptoms.

The Safest Sunscreens

If you want to protect your hormones from the endocrine-disrupting chemicals in certain sunscreens, you have a marvelous ally on your side: the Environmental Working Group (EWG).EWG is a non-partisan, non-profit organization dedicated to protecting human health and the environment. The group conducts research and disseminates information on an array of commercially available products, from shampoos to lipstick to—yes—sunscreens. (In fact, I recommend that women run ALL their health and beauty products through the EWG’s fantastic Skin Deep database, which catalogues the health and safety of just about every product on the market.)Every year, the EWG publishes a guide to sunscreens. You can check out the 2019 Sunscreen Guide here. The Guide allows you to search sunscreens by brand (so you can check on the safety of products you already own); look up the safest-ranking products; and get information about potentially dangerous ingredients.

Meanwhile, here is some of my top sun safety advice, including a few of my favorite sunscreens:

Consider avoiding sunscreens with oxybenzone. Officially, there is “insufficient data” on the safety of oxybenzone, but concerns have been raised about endocrine disruption and systemic toxicity when it comes to this commonly used compound. (Oxybenzone is found in roughly two-thirds of commercially available sunscreens). I recommend skipping products that include oxybenzone until scientists know more. Why risk it when it comes to hormone health?

Higher SPF doesn’t always mean more sun protection. It’s tempting to grab a sunscreen with the highest SPF you can find, but research suggests that SPFs over 50 confer no more benefit than SPF 50 sunscreens. In fact, its been shown that very high SPF products can be more dangerous than lower SPF products because they confer a false sense of safety. People tend to think Oh, this is SPF 75! I don’t need to reapply all day! Or A little goes a long way!, when really these products function on par with SPF 50 products and have the same re-application instructions.

Remember physical barriers. It’s easy to forget that age-old things like sitting in the shade, wearing a hat and long sleeves, and planning around the sun’s peak hours act as natural—and 100-percent safe!—sun protection. Use these sun-safety strategies FIRST every time you’re headed outdoors.

My favorite sunscreens. There are many clean, mineral sunscreens on the market. Just be sure to read labels closely and opt for mineral sunscreens that use titanium dioxide and zinc oxide as active ingredients. Both titanium dioxide and zinc oxide are “generally recognized as safe and effective.” But before you buy, check a product’s safety on the EWG database.

Coola: This brand is mineral-based and has some excellent and versatile varieties, including beach and sport, baby, and a really silky tinted version for your face.

MyChelle: This brand also make a nice—and very clean—tinted face cream with SPF 50.

Supergoop! Makes a line of clean products for adults and kids.

Badger: These sunscreens can go on a touch thick, but they couldn’t be cleaner.

Can You Have It All? Yes. The Secret is in Your Hormones

Did you know your brain changes by 25% over the course of your cycle?Do you know when your metabolism naturally speeds up and slows down in your cycle?Do you know how to leverage your hormonal advantages to get more done with less stress?Did you know that all of the research done on fitness and nutrition is done on men?Did you know doing self care out of sync with your cycle gives your more period problems?Knowing all that… why would you eat, exercise, or create in the same way day after day, when you change week over week?Your body needs a health and lifestyle program that is tailored to your unique biological rhythms. That’s why I created The Cycle Syncing Method™ over a decade ago. I used it to put my period problems into remission. Today, it is the cornerstone of the Flo Protocol.The Cycle Syncing Method™ is all about living in line with your natural rhythms. The protocol is designed to leverage your strengths during each phase of your 28-day hormone cycle—and, when you put it into practice, it changes everything.

How I Created The Cycle Syncing Method™

I created The Cycle Syncing Method™ to solve my own hormonal issues. I was suffering from a hormonal imbalance called Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, or PCOS. At my worst, I weighed 200 pounds, had severe cystic acne on my face, chest, and back, and I was deeply depressed. I had my period about three times a year. My health suffered profoundly. So did my quality of life.I visited many different experts (who ultimately put me on birth control pills and caused me even greater harm). On my own, I tried every lifestyle, eating, and exercise program you can imagine. Nothing worked. In many cases, I felt worse.If you’ve tried different eating protocols and lifestyle programs and you still have symptoms, maybe you can relate. You know how expensive and time consuming these programs are, and how much more discouraged you are when they fail.When I began to understand women’s unique hormone cycle and the power of hormonal timing, everything changed.I started eating, moving, and living in sync with my 28-day hormone cycle—giving my hormones what they needed when they needed it, instead of forcing my body to do the same thing day in and day out. My decision to engage in this type of phase-based self care transformed my life. Doctors had told me that my symptoms were irreversible, but now my skin cleared, my periods became regular, and I lost 60 pounds.Here’s what else I discovered: phase-based self care didn’t just change my body. It changed my life. I had better communication in my relationships. I was more productive (and happier) at work. My creativity went up and so did my sex drive. I was as busy as always, but suddenly it felt like I had more time for self care and relaxation.Once I understood the science of the female hormone cycle, I put my knowledge into practice—and it changed my life. I want the same thing for you.

What is The Cycle Syncing Method™?

Eating the same things, doing the same exercise, and planning the same activities day after day is a pattern that works for well for men, who have a different hormonal pattern than women. But adopting the same routine everyday pits women against the natural ebb and flow of their hormones. It works against our bodies—and it fuels symptoms.The Cycle Syncing Method™ is the practice of tailoring your food, movement, relationship, work, and lifestyle choices to your unique strengths, weaknesses, and needs during each phase of your 28-day hormone cycle.That might sound like a lot of adapting and changing, week after week. But once you start tracking your cycle and getting an embodied sense of what each phase looks and feels like in your body, the tweaks you’ll make will become intuitive.In fact, once you get the hang of The Cycle Syncing Method™, the practice feels so natural that you won’t believe there was a time when you didn’t engage in it.But I know getting started can feel daunting. I also know that ANY change we make in life is easier with support, guidance, and community.That’s why, this week, I’m opening the doors to Flo28, a monthly membership that gives you a tailored diet program for each phase of your cycle, weekly workouts for each phase of your cycle, and time management planners so you can schedule activities each week that play to your natural strengths. Flo28 takes you step-by-step through the small but powerful changes you can make to your nutrition, fitness, and time management that will revolutionize your life.If you’ve gone through the MonthlyFlo program, you’ve built a strong foundation for healing your hormones and improving your life—and Flo28 is the next step. If you haven’t done MonthlyFlo, you will still benefit significantly from Flo28.As part of Flo28, you’ll discover:

  • How to become stronger, fitter, and leaner by shifting to phase-based workouts
  • What to eat to support your brain and body during each phase
  • When you’re at your best for socializing and when to schedule your “me-time”
  • How to shift your work schedule to maximize your time and get more done
  • How to turn up the heat in your relationship and have better sex
  • How to be in your creative zone

...and as a member of Flo28, you’ll get:

  • Phase Specific Recipes: Know what to eat during each phase of your cycle with weekly recipes delivered each month
  • Workout of the Week: Stay energized and strong with exercise videos tailored to each phase of your cycle
  • Cycle Syncing® Scheduling Guide: A guide to plan your day, week, and month our according to your biological clock
  • Monthly Master Chats: Get advice directly from Alisa in exclusive monthly Q+A sessions and learn how to apply this to business, relationships, motherhood, and more
  • Supportive Community & Events: A Facebook group dedicated to learning how to Cycle Sync,™ daily posting guide, first access to in-person events, and opportunities to connect with other amazing women

If you suffer from any type of period problem—from bloating and acne to heavy or irregular periods and severe PMS—or you want to improve your fitness, relationships, work performance, or overall health, Flo28 is the program for you. I hope you will join me (and an amazing community of women!) to discover how much better your life can be when you understand the science of your hormones.And if you don’t want to wait to get started, go here to get a sneak peek of what it looks like to engage in phase-based self care in all aspects of your life—and what you can expect when you do.Always remember that once you have the right information about how your body really works, you can start making health choices that finally start to work for you! You can do this – the science of your body is on your side!

Monthly FLO: The Cycle Syncing System™

Put your period symptoms into remission. Discover how to live in your FLO and get it all done with embodied time management.MonthlyFLO is the first-ever woman-centric health system that syncs with your unique rhythm. It gives you the foundation for solving any hormonal issues you may have over your lifetime.Using the principles of functional nutrition, MonthlyFLO is a specially-sequenced food therapy program that recalibrates your endocrine function. Over three months, you will be guided step-by-step to make simple, cumulative food and lifestyle changes that balance your hormones naturally.

Click here to learn more about the life-changing Monthly FLO Program

PMS vs PMDD—What’s the Difference & What Can You Do About It

If you are one of the 5% of menstruating women who experience PMDD, which stands for premenstrual dysphoric disorder, you know the havoc it can wreak on relationships, work, school, and self-esteem. PMDD is not just disruptive, it’s disabling—and it can take over your life one week each month. Many women describe PMDD as a true Jekyll-and-Hyde situation. Like PMS, PMDD occurs the week before your period, but it is far more serious than PMS. Women with PMS and PMDD both experience mood changes like irritability, anxiety, and low mood. But for women with PMDD, those changes are more extreme. Women with PMDD experience one (or more) of the following symptoms:

  • Feelings of anger and anxiety that are so pronounced they negatively affect relationships with other people
  • Feelings of extreme despair and hopelessness, sometimes accompanied by thoughts of suicide
  • Panic attacks
  • Feeling out of control emotionally
  • Frequent uncontrollable crying
  • A complete lack of interest in daily activities and relationships
  • Intense mood swings
  • Extreme fatigue and lethargy

For women with PMDD, these emotional changes are accompanied by many of the same physical symptoms that come along with PMS, like breast tenderness, changes in appetite, and trouble sleeping. In short, PMDD is a condition that causes a great deal of suffering—and significantly diminishes quality of life.PMDD is harder to treat than PMS (which can be resolved with lifestyle and nutrition changes), but this disruptive hormonal condition can be improved with lifestyle, nutrition, and targeted support. I also recommend that women with PMDD consult with a trusted healthcare provider.

What Causes PMDD?

Experts don’t know exactly why some women experience PMDD, or this more severe form of PMS, but it may involve several factors: (1) these women may be hypersensitive to the normal hormonal fluctuations that happen during the 28-day menstrual cycle, (2) women with PMDD may have more severe underlying hormone imbalances, (3) women with PMDD may experience more dramatic shifts in serotonin levels than women with PMS (or women without any premenstrual symptoms) during the menstrual cycle, and (4) women with PMDD may have other risk factors that predispose them to develop PMDD, including chronic stress, overweight or obesity, a history of trauma or abuse, and existing mental health conditions such as diagnosed depression or anxiety.

Hormones and neurotransmitters share some of the same receptor sites in the brain (in areas that help regulate mood), so experts suspect that women who are uniquely sensitive to hormone changes may have more mood issues throughout their cycle (and during other reproductive events, like postpartum or during perimenopause and menopause). Researchers also know that the gut-brain-microbiome axis plays a role in the development of some mood and mental health issues. That’s why paying attention to nutrition—like reducing or eliminating sugar and eating low-inflammatory foods—can help women manage the symptoms of PMDD. And because factors like unremitting stress, depression and anxiety, and a history of trauma are risk factors for PMDD, stress reduction techniques, like meditation and mindful exercise, can also help.

Manage the Symptoms of PMDD

PMDD is harder to treat than PMS, but you can improve your symptoms with some simple food and lifestyle interventions. Here’s what I recommend:

Incorporate high-protein and complex-carbohydrate foods into your daily diet. Some preliminary research suggests that PMDD symptoms may be less severe when eating a high-tryptophan diet. Tryptophan is a precursor to serotonin and can be found in many healthy high-protein and complex-carbohydrate foods, including wild caught salmon, pastured poultry, grass-fed beef, whole grains like brown rice and quinoa, and legumes like beans and chickpeas. Chickpeas are a great source of vitamin B, which helps with progesterone production. Progesterone helps balance and reduce estrogen dominance, which is the most common hormone imbalance in women who have premenstrual symptoms.

Avoid inflammatory foods. The luteal phase (the time between ovulation and your period) is associated with increased production of inflammatory molecules in the body. (Indeed, several inflammatory conditions, like gingivitis and inflammatory bowel syndrome, are known to get worse during the premenstrual phase.) Similarly, inflammation is thought to play a role in the development of PMDD. So avoiding inflammatory foods can help. I recommend eliminating gluten, dairy, and refined sugar and refined flour from your diet. It’s also important to skip factory-raised meat (which is high in inflammation-promoting omega-6 fats, whereas pastured meats are higher in inflammation-fighting omega-3s). I also advise saying no to coffee and artificial sweeteners, which can aggravate anxiety issues and fuel inflammation.

Balance blood sugar. Balanced blood sugar is essential for easing any hormone-related condition, and it may be especially valuable for PMDD. That’s because imbalanced blood sugar and unstable insulin levels (insulin helps control blood sugar in the body) further fuel inflammation. Blood sugar imbalances can also mess with cortisol production. Cortisol is one of the body’s stress hormones and stress management is a key component of easing PMDD.

Adopt a smart supplement strategy. Some key supplements can help manage the symptoms of PMDD and/or the help address some of the risk factors associated with PMDD:

Omega-3sThese healthy fats have shown promise in treating some types of depression, and some research shows that omega-3s may confer a protective effect against anxiety disorders. While studies that look specifically at omega-3s and PMDD are lacking, research does show that omega-3s may reduce some of the psychiatric symptoms of PMS including depression, nervousness, anxiety, and lack of concentration (it can also reduce some of the physical symptoms of PMS like bloating, headache, and breast tenderness.) Even if omega-3s don’t help PMDD sufferers as much as PMS sufferers, these supplements seem to have a positive overall influence on mood—and they certainly aren’t harmful to take. I recommend them as a good overall support for mood and hormone balance.

Magnesium and vitamin B6. As with omega-3s, research on magnesium and B6 for  PMDD is lacking, but these important micronutrients, when taken in combination, can help reduce the severity of PMS. Because women with PMS and PMDD share some similar underlying hormone imbalances, it may help to take magnesium and vitamin B6.

Calcium. Calcium supplements may ease PMDD symptoms, according to research. I recommend 1200 milligrams a day, but always consult a licensed healthcare provider before starting any higher-dose supplement.

Chasteberry. Also known as Vitex, this herbal remedy has been shown to help with the physical symptoms of PMDD, including breast tenderness, bloating, and cramps. Check with a trusted healthcare practitioner before starting.

L-tryptophan. This supplement has shown promise in reducing the symptoms of PMDD. As always, consult a licensed practitioner before starting a new supplement.

Prioritize stress reduction and support good mental health. Existing diagnoses of depression and anxiety are more common in women with PMDD, so it’s important to tend your mental health as well as your hormonal health. To this end, I encourage women to engage in unapologetic self-care, find and do activities that bring them joy, practice meditation or other mindfulness practices, and seek out extra support, such as finding a therapist, when needed.

Practice The Cycle Syncing® Method. To address PMDD, it’s essential to understand the distinct phases of your 28-day cycle and tailor your food and movement to each phase. For example, PMDD strikes during the luteal phase, when inflammation is more pronounced and may play a more activating role in PMDD. So it is critical to support your metabolism during the luteal phase with the right foods at the right times. That will help stabilize blood sugar and support healthy hormone balance. Likewise, it’s important during the luteal phase to hit the exercise sweet spot—not too much and/or not too intense—to decrease the cortisol output that can exacerbate symptoms.

To put these strategies into place, you first need to know which phase of your cycle you’re at any given moment during the month—and to understand what type of self care matters the most during each phase. And that is precisely what practicing The Cycle Syncing® Method is all about. The Cycle Syncing® Membership teaches you to engage in the type of phase-based self care that helps ease symptoms of PMDD (and other period problems). The Cycle Syncing® Membership makes phase-based self care simple, manageable, and makes caring for your hormones second nature.

Always remember that once you have the right information about how your body really works, you can start making health choices that finally start to work for you! You can do this—the science of your body is on your side!

The Hormone-Burnout Connection

That exhausted, depleted, frazzled feeling you have every Friday night (or every night) after work)? Its burnout. And it’s a real, diagnosable condition.That’s according to the World Health Organization (WHO), who last month declared burnout a legitimate occupational phenomenon. Burnout is a result of “chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed,” said the organization, and it negatively influences one’s health.The condition is characterized by three things:

  1. Feeling depleted or exhausted
  2. Feeling cynical or negative about one's job, or feeling increased mental distance from one’s job
  3. Being less effective and productive on the job

This news will come as no surprise to anyone with a demanding job or other workplace stressors, like a difficult boss, unsupportive co-workers, an unhealthy work environment, a long commute, and/or the expectation of “being on” 24-hours a day. As the speed of work picks up, and as more of us work around-the-clock, burnout has become a way of life.But women have a key advantage when it comes to battling back against burnout. We can tap into the natural rhythms of our 28-day hormone cycle and use our natural strengths during each phase to work more efficiently, be more productive (without feeling overburdened), and find more satisfaction—and less stress—in our jobs.

The Hormone-Burnout Connection

The idea that your hormones could help you have an easier and less stressful experience at work might seem far-fetched, but I’m not making this up!Research shows that our hormone cycles have a direct influence on our mood, energy, creativity, and worldview. So when we plan our activities in accordance with the natural flow of our hormones, we can be top-performing, high-achieving women with energy left over at the end of the day—no to-do list app necessary. (Though we benefit greatly from knowing where we are in our cycle, which is what I designed the MyFLO app to help you do.)If, however, we ignore our hormonal patterns and force ourselves to work in a 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week time construct (one that works for men because of their more quotidian hormonal patterns), we’re more likely to experience burnout—and, as women, that chronic stress shows up in our our cycles, fertility, sex drive, and mood. In other words, working the same way, with the same rhythm, day in and day out makes period problems worse… and that prevents us from taking advantage of the solution, which depends on a healthy cycle!It’s a bit circuitous, I know, but that is exactly what it is: a vicious cycle. When we don’t practice The Cycle Syncing Method™, our hormones fall deeper into imbalance—and that makes it harder to use our cycle as a powerful tool for escaping burnout. As women, our strengths, desires, talents, and behavior shifts with our changing hormone patterns each month. Having female hormones does not mean you lose a week a month to PMS and your period. It just means that by noticing these shifts and then working with your hormones, you can make your hormones work for you.

Heal Workplace Stress By Learning To Work With Your Hormones

To harness the power of your hormones, first you need to know what your hormones are doing and when. That’s where the MyFLO app comes in. It allows you track your cycle and tune into which phase you’re in at any given time. Once you’re familiar with your cycle, you’re ready to practice The Cycle Syncing Method™, which is the method I developed for engaging in phase-based self-care. The Cycle Syncing Method™ involves working with food, movement, and time management to feel and perform your best (you can learn more about every aspect of the practice here), but for today I’m going to focus on how you can engage The Cycle Syncing Method™ specifically to battle workplace burnout.Here are the four phases of your 28-day hormone cycle and how you can harness your natural strengths during each one to perform better at work, while stressing less!Follicular Phase

  • When: The week after your period ends
  • What’s happening hormonally: Estrogen is on the rise
  • What to do: Set your intentions for the coming weeks, clarify your vision and purpose at work, organize what you want to accomplish next. Get moving on new projects. This is a time to really lay the groundwork for what comes next.

Ovulation Phase

  • When: Mid-cycle for 3–5 days
  • What’s happening hormonally: Estrogen is at its highest point
  • What to do: Share your intentions with colleagues, collaborate with like-minded folks, schedule meetings, connect with others, brainstorm to find solutions. This is a time to bring others on board with your vision and to work as a team.

Luteal/Premenstrual Phase

  • When: About 10–12 days before your period begins
  • What’s happening hormonally: Progesterone is at its highest point
  • What to do: This is your ‘get it done’ time! You are at your most organized during this phase and you love getting granular about the details. Make this phase all about accomplishing the activities and goals you outlined during your follicular phase.

Menstrual phase

  • When: The days when you are bleeding
  • What’s happening hormonally: All of your hormones are at a low point
  • What to do: Slow down, reflect on what’s happened over the last month, and practice gratitude for all the good things you’ve accomplished. Think back on any areas of your work life that feel less than optimal or that need more attention and use them as a starting point for setting intentions during your next follicular phase.

I guarantee that if you start to prioritize projects at work in line with your cycle, you will experience less stress and greater productivity. Burnout will no longer be a way of life. And if you really want to transform your work life, you’ll engage the other aspects of The Cycle Syncing Method™ in combination with the changes you make at work. This involves food, movement, supplements, and self-care. If you put all these changes into place, you will be unstoppable at work — and in life!Always remember that once you have the right information about how your body really works, you can start making health choices that finally start to work for you. You can do this—the science of your body is on your side!

COACH CONSULT

Get Actionable Advice in a FLO Coach ConsultationWe believe that no woman should suffer simply because she has a period. And we also know that it’s not always possible to get access to functional and holistic healthcare solutions — sometimes they’re too far away and most of the time they are way too expensive. That’s why we offer phone and Skype consultation sessions with our FLO coaches. In your consultation session, your coach will go over your health history and symptoms, get feedback on any health changes you’ve implemented from our resource library, review your hormone test analysis if applicable, and help you develop a plan of action to solve your symptoms.

[Book Your Session]

How to Self Pleasure (Your Health Depends on It!)

Ladies, It’s time to take masturbation into your own hands...literally!

Yep, that’s right, today we’re talking about how you give yourself self pleasure—and why that matters so much for your hormonal health.

Now you might be thinking, Alisa, c’mon! How much difference can masturbtion really make in solving my period problems?! I mean, I believe in supplements. I know nutrition matters, but how I self pleasure? I’m skeptical.

Well, get ready to become a true believer! Yes, food, lifestyle, and supplements all play a big role in hormonal health, but so does orgasm—specifically the slow-build orgasms you can have when you use your hands to get yourself off.

Let’s get this self-pleasure party started by looking at the research on orgasm. I’m not lying when I say that the science is solidly on your side when it comes to having more orgasms. After I lay out all the juicy science on the benefits of orgasm, I explain why using your hands for self pleasure—and skipping the vibrator—will net you even bigger health benefits.

The Benefits of Orgasm

Some of the studies cited below involved partnered sex, but they speak to the general health benefits of sexual activity and orgasm. (And in the next section, I’ll get into the specific benefits of manual masturbation.)

But Not All Orgasms Are Created Equal...

...and that’s why it matters how you give yourself pleasure.

Using vibrators to self-pleasure might seem like the easiest way to reach orgasm, but these powerful sex toys rob you of some of the benefits of orgasm. Sure, they can feel good and get the job done fast, but you will miss out on some major health benefits.

To understand why, it’s important to know the four stages of sexual response first identified by pioneering scientists Masters & Johnson in the 1960s. I outline them in detail in my book, WomanCode, and here’s a quick review:

Initial arousal: This is the excitement phase, lasting anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours. Sex organs become engorged with blood and glands in the vaginal walls secrete lubricating liquid to make you feel wet.

Plateau: This is a continuation of arousal, when tissues continue to swell and your breathing, heart rate, and blood pressure continue to rise.

Orgasm: At the moment of orgasm, vaginal lubrication increases, muscles in vaginal wall constrict, and overall pleasure increases. If you climax (which is not always a given), you’ll experience quick cycles of contractions in your pelvic floor muscles.

Resolution: After climax, your muscles relax and your body releases from its aroused state.When you use a vibrator, you skip most of the Plateau stage and move directly to climax. This means you’re also missing out on some of the most hormonally-healthy chemicals your body produces during this Plateau phase! So what exactly are you missing out on when you use a vibrator?

  1. You miss the benefits of nitric oxide and oxytocin. Using a vibrator forces your body to bypass a large part of the plateau and orgasm phases, which cuts down on your exposure to oxytocin and nitric oxide. These natural chemicals provide you with better immunity, improved cervical mucus, and regular ovulation patterns. They also have anti-aging benefits!
  2. You limit your orgasmic potential. Quick, vibrator-induced orgasms lengthen what we call the refractory period between orgasms. This means the sensitive nerve endings get fried by the strong vibrations, so you have to wait longer until you’re ready again for your next orgasm. Essentially, this means you can only have one orgasm at a time, maybe two if you’re lucky.
  3. You don’t get as much stress reduction. A big benefit of sex is stress relief, but when you skip the orgasmic plateau, your body doesn’t get a chance to fully flush the cortisol from your system. Cortisol is your main stress hormone, but it also plays a big role in blood sugar regulation and fat storage. That means the more cortisol in your body, the likelier you are to experience big blood sugar swings and store excess fat around your waist.

A better way to Self Pleasure

So, Alisa, what do I do without my vibrator?

So glad you asked!

First of all, be sure you’re setting aside at least 20 minutes for your self-pleasuring sessions. You need the gift of time to maximize your pleasure. What we see in pornography of instant climax is not based on any biological reality. You deserve not only to have great orgasms, but to take all the time you need to achieve them solo or with a partner.

To make this even easier, time your sessions during ovulation and the first half of the luteal phase to take advantage of your estrogen and testosterone peak for a pleasure boost.

Next, be sure to use lubricant – Aloe Cadabra and Sustain lube are my favorites. When you’re using your hands to get the party started, you’ll need to be lubricated, but you don’t want to put liquid plastics (silicone based lubes) on your lady parts.

Then take it slow, use your hands, and let them go wherever feels good. Think of your pleasure potential on a scale of 1-10, 10 being climax. Explore getting yourself to an 8 and hang out there for as long as you can to build all the nitric acid and oxytocin you can. It’s this phase that is the most health beneficial and the part that is typically bypassed when using vibrators.

I think you’ll be amazed at what happens to your orgasmic experience when you go au natural.

But, Alisa, Help! I Don’t Feel Like Getting Off At All—Even By Myself

So you want to get the health benefits of orgasm, but your sex drive has disappeared? Even solo, you just never feel in the mood?

You’re not alone. Sex drive can disappear at any age for any number of reasons: a stressful job, emotional stress, exhaustion (from taking care of a new baby or just from life), the onset of perimenopause, or taking the birth control pill (yes, the pill can zap your sex drive).

Restoring sex drive requires a multipronged approach, starting with nutrition and lifestyle. It’s also important to take stock of your relationships and the emotional aspects of low energy and low libido. But when your sex drive has disappeared completely, you need tools that will fasttrack your healing. Getting initial relief from symptoms will keep you motivated to make the other important self-care choices that will bring your sexy back.

Supplements are a brilliant way to kickstart your libido and start noticing changes fast. Here are the five you should have on hand to help get you in the mood:

  1. B Vitamins prevent the breakdown of too much dopamine and serotonin during stressful times, leaving enough for you to remain buoyant and energized.
  2. Zinc helps boost testosterone production — and testosterone boosts sex drive.
  3. Magnesium makes it harder for your testosterone to bind onto proteins and allows for more of it to remain “free” in your bloodstream...which is exactly how you want it to be for a higher sex drive. More free testosterone means more desire. Magnesium also combats anxiety and may help with mild depression.
  4. Omega-3 fatty acids help balance out your progesterone and estrogen levels, which in turn will increase dopamine—which will, in turn, help you produce more nitric oxide. This is absolutely essential for the dilation of blood vessels and tumescence that leads to bigger and better orgasms.
  5. Probiotics may not directly affect your sex hormones, but they do impact your mental health, which—as you already know—directly affects your sex drive. Studies have linked psychiatric disorders like depression to imbalanced gut bacteria and probiotics can help restore microbiome balance.

How to Protect Your Hormones on Vacation

Warmer weather is finally here and that means a couple things: longer days, more socializing, more sunshine (...and natural vitamin D (!), which is a great thing for hormones though you should still take a supplement), and more travel. It’s all exciting and energizing stuff. But the more you get out—and especially the more you travel—the harder it can be on your hormones. Why? When you travel, your sleep schedule tends to go sideways. Healthy eating can feel difficult, if not impossible, in airports and train stations. You might skip the key supplements you usually take and crossing time zones can mess up your internal clock. Exercise becomes an afterthought and hydration often goes out the window… at which point constipation can become the norm. And when your GI tract is backed up, excess estrogen gets stuck in our system and wreaks a bunch of havoc. All these shifts are hard on hormones. Actually, that’s an understatement. Sleep, food, supplements, hydration, exercise… these are THE things that keep your hormones working for you and not against you. When you have these lifestyle strategies locked down, you put an end to period problems like acne, bloating, PMS, severe cramps, heavy or irregular periods, hormonal migraines, and irritability and moodiness. But when you travel and your hormone-supportive strategies get thrown off track, you can feel rotten quickly...and who wants to be bloated, moody, and covered in zits on summer vacation?!For this week’s post, I’ve gathered my best strategies for staying in the FLO when you’re traveling. A few small tweaks can keep you feeling great when you’re on the move.Your Summer Travel Hormone Survival GuideFollow these steps and your hormone health doesn’t have to go out the window when you go on vacation. Step 1: Drink water. Travel is dehydrating, especially plane travel. No matter how you get around this summer, make sure you are drinking enough water or herbal tea. (Skip caffeinated tea, though. Say no to coffee, too. Caffeine is devastating for hormone health.)One of the best ways to stay hydrated is to bring a stainless steel water bottle with you on the road. Empty bottles will get through security at the airport and once you’re at your gate you can fill your bottle from a water fountain or with bottled water. A good guide for how much water to drink in any given day is half your bodyweight in ounces. So if you are 120 pounds, you’d want to drink 60 oz of water that day. You’ll want to aim for a bit more when you’re traveling.Step 2. Proactively protect your digestive system. One of the biggest things I hear women complain about when they travel is how their normally regular GI system comes to a screeching halt. Take action before you hit the road! I suggest starting a fiber supplement a few days before you leave and continuing it while you travel. You can find many healthy fiber supplements in single-serving packs that are easy to take on the go.The other must-have supplement when you travel is a probiotic. This will help with constipation and it will also keep your gut healthy as you encounter new foods. Even if your packing space is at a premium and you opt to leave some of your normal supplements at home, don’t skip these two. They are a travelers best friend when it comes to preventing symptoms and it is worth making room for them in your bags.Step 3: If you plan to engage in “vacation eating,” bring along digestive enzymes. Sometimes when you go to a new place, you want to engage in the local customs and eat foods you normally wouldn’t. Let’s say you avoid dairy religiously back home because of its negative effects on hormone health, but you are headed to Italy and want to try some of the country’s famed pizza. These one-time splurges are a treat emotionally and socially… but not so much physically. Your body is likely to have a negative reaction to foods you typically avoid. Digestive enzymes can help temper those negative effects. Step 4: Pack smart snacks. Airport and train station food is notoriously unhealthy. (So is most of the food available to you on road trips.) Avoid getting hungry on the move by packing snacks that keep blood sugar balanced. I like to pack hard-boiled eggs, dark chocolate (70-percent or higher), almonds (or other healthy nuts) and pumpkin seeds. Step 5: Safeguard your sleep. Travel messes with your internal clock. Even going short distances can leave you feeling wide awake at 11:00pm and dead tired at 11:00am. Bring magnesium with you to relax before night; an eye mask and ear plugs to block out distractions on planes and trains; and if you’re really worried about a disrupted internal clock (international travel), bring valerian root or melatonin to help with sleep in your new time zone. Step 6: Pack a “Just in Case” Case. It stinks to get sick on vacation. So it is worth making room in your luggage for some rescue remedies if you start feeling crummy. First, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, as they say, which is why I always bring along all-natural hand sanitizing wipes. They are good for hands and for wiping down oft-touched surfaces (like the touch screen TVs on planes). If you do start to feel a little off, make sure you have vitamin C and zinc. I recommend being liberal with the Vitamin C: 2,000 mg per day is ideal. Take 50 mgs of zinc each day to keep your immune system strong. Now, here’s to a healthy, happy summer filled with amazing adventures!Always remember: once you have the right information about how your body really works, you can start making health choices that finally start to work for you! You can do this – the science of your body is on your side.

Monthly FLO: The Cycle Syncing System™

Put your period symptoms into remission. Discover how to live in your FLO and get it all done with embodied time management.MonthlyFLO is the first-ever woman-centric health system that syncs with your unique rhythm. It gives you the foundation for solving any hormonal issues you may have over your lifetime.Using the principles of functional nutrition, MonthlyFLO is a specially-sequenced food therapy program that recalibrates your endocrine function. Over three months, you will be guided step-by-step to make simple, cumulative food and lifestyle changes that balance your hormones naturally.Click here to learn more about the life-changing Monthly FLO Program

The Hormone-Anxiety Connection (and How to Solve It)

Anxiety is real, and it is serious. It can show up in a variety of different ways—from excessive worry about life events like work, health, and family to obsessive thinking, severe social anxiety, or full-on panic attacks. And, for women, anxiety can show up at different times of the month.

Anxiety for women can actually be hormonal, and it often follows a distinct pattern within your 28-day menstrual cycle. If you notice that your anxiety gets worse the week before your period (luteal phase) or the week after period finishes (follicular phase), that means one thing: your hormones are a factor in your anxiety.

Now, anxiety has many root causes, including poor gut health, micronutrient deficiencies, and lifestyle factors like being sedentary or getting poor quality sleep—and that’s why anti-anxiety medication (which has been the only tool in the conventional psychiatric tool box for many years) has failed so many women. Medication paves over symptoms. It doesn’t treat root causes.

Happily, some psychiatrists and other experts are starting to treat the root causes of anxiety—including hormone imbalances— by using food, supplements, and lifestyle changes. And you can, too. If hormones are a root cause of your anxiety, you can make lifestyle changes that address your specific hormonal anxiety-type.

Are you ready to worry less and enjoy life more? Below are some top recommendations for women who experience ANY type of anxiety, with specific steps for easing hormonal anxiety.

How to Stop Anxiety

If you’re a woman who experiences anxiety, you’re not alone. Women are twice as likely as men to wrestle with anxiety and almost 25 percent of women—that’s one in four of us—were diagnosed with an anxiety disorder in the past year. Because anxiety has many root causes, it responds best to a multi-pronged approach. If your anxiety is severe and persists for a long time, you should consult a trusted healthcare practitioner. In the meantime, try the following anxiety reduction strategies:

Reduce inflammation to reduce anxiety. Research has shown a link between inflammation and anxiety. So when you take steps to lower your inflammation—which is good for your health in so many ways—you help fortify your body against anxiety. I recommend a couple key ways to lower inflammation:

  1. Take omega-3 fatty acids. These are the health-promoting fats found in high ratios in fish and some plant foods, like flax seeds, and they help lower inflammation. Eating nutrient-rich, omega-3-dense foods is important, but I recommend that all women take an omega-3 supplement because it can be difficult—if not impossible—to get healing amounts of this nutrient with diet alone. Also, many fish contain high levels of mercury and other toxins, so you don’t want to rely solely on fish for your omega-3s.
  2. Avoid toxins and other hormone-harming chemicals. Hormonal anxiety is driven by hormone imbalances—and one of the root causes of hormone imbalances is exposure to everyday toxins, like the gnarly chemicals found in conventional health and body care products, household cleaning products, air fresheners, fabric treatments, lawn chemicals and pesticides, and many other places. Avoid these chemicals as much as you can to protect yourself from hormone-driven anxiety.
  3. Support your body’s innate detox system. With so many chemicals in the environment, our bodies are working overtime to process and eliminate them—even when we assiduously avoid them in our homes and medicine cabinets. It’s a sad fact of modern life that our body’s detox system needs a little extra help to do its job well. I recommend plant-based antioxidants, like green tea extract and turmeric, to help your body detox.

Focus on gut health. Gut health is a factor in many mental health issues, including anxiety, so it’s important to support the microbiota that manufacture hormones like serotonin and dopamine. You can do this in a couple key ways:

  1. Fiber, fiber, fiber. The importance of fiber to the microbiome can’t be underestimated. The bugs in our gut thrive on healthy, whole-food sources of fiber. Emphasis leafy green vegetables, brassica vegetables like broccoli and cabbage, flax seeds, and high-fiber fruits like pears.
  2. Eat fermented foods. Naturally fermented foods (foods fermented without vinegar), like sauerkraut, kimchi, coconut yogurt, and fermented drinks like kvass, bring good bugs to your GI tract and promote an increased sense of calm.
  3. Take a probiotic. Fermented foods are great, but most of us need even more gut support. I recommend all women take a probiotic for hormone balance and emotional support. The idea of feeding your microbiome to heal anxiety might seemed far fetched, but the gut-brain axis is real. A core component of good mental health is good gut health!

Understand and address hormonal anxiety. If you experience hormone-related anxiety, you don’t need the research to tell you that your anxiety gets more severe during certain times of the month. But the data is there, if you want official confirmation. Studies show that fluctuations in female reproductive hormones influence the presence and severity of anxiety. Experts think this is one of the reasons that panic disorders are more prevalent in women than in men. So the first step in addressing hormonal anxiety is understanding your 28-day hormone cycle and adjusting your food, movement, and lifestyle to match your unique needs during each week of your cycle. I call this The Cycle Syncing Method™ and if this is brand new to you, you can learn more about it here. You can also start tracking your period with the MyFLO app. Once you’ve adopted The Cycle Syncing Method™, you’ll know where you are in your 28-day cycle week to week and you can track your moods and hormonal shifts even more closely. For now, you can think of your 28-day cycle as being divided into two parts: the first half and the second half. The first half is from right after your period ends to when you ovulate. The second half is from just after ovulation through your next period. Most women don’t experience anxiety (or increased anxiety) during ovulation. (If you’re not ovulating, it’s a different story and you should work to get your ovulation back on track.)

  • If you experience anxiety during the FIRST half of your cycle the cause is likely too much estrogen, which stimulates the brain to become antsy, edgy, and tense.

Natural remedy for anxiety in the first half of your cycle: Emphasize liver-loving foods and supplements during this time to help your body’s main detox organ process and eliminate excess estrogens from the body. Eat foods high in fiber and antioxidants, including cruciferous vegetables like broccoli and cauliflower, flax seeds or chia seeds, and low-glycemic, high-fiber fruits like pears. Get additional support with supplements like turmeric and green tea extract.

  • If you experience anxiety during the SECOND half of your cycle it could be a few factors: you might be sensitive to the drop in estrogen, but that should stabilize as progesterone increases during this phase. If you are deficient in progesterone, you might not experience that calming effect. You might also be experiencing blood sugar dips if you’re not eating enough slow-burning, whole-food carbohydrates during this phase. Finally, if you experience anxiety the day or two before your bleed begins, you may be responding to the drop in both progesterone and estrogen that happens at this time. When both hormones plummet, you may feel anxious.

Natural remedy for anxiety in the second half of your cycle: I recommend vitamin B6 to help increase your progesterone levels. B6 is vital for your body to create the corpus luteum that makes and releases all of your progesterone. I encourage all women to take a B-vitamin complex everyday, but you should also incorporate healthy, whole food sources of vitamin B6, including bananas, grass-fed beef, chicken, spinach, sweet potato, garlic, and salmon. If blood sugar is a root cause of your anxiety during this phase, try incorporating more slow-burning carbohydrates like sweet potatoes, brown rice, or quinoa.

  •  If you’re experiencing postpartum anxiety, you are not alone. Research suggests that postpartum anxiety is common and that it likely has multiple root causes, including the significant drop in estrogen and progesterone that follows childbirth. Another factor is the disrupted sleep schedule you experience when caring for a newborn.

Natural remedy for anxiety after giving birth: I recommend that new moms continue their prenatal supplement routine into (and well past) the 4th trimester. This will help give you the nourishment you need for breastfeeding. I also recommend that new moms take hormone-supportive supplements to patch up micronutrient deficiencies (micronutrient deficiencies can fuel anxiety) because pregnancy often depletes the body of key micronutrients.

  • If you’re experiencing anxiety related to PCOS or PMDD, you may need even more support to reduce anxiety. Both conditions can be uniquely challenging when it comes to anxiety.

Natural remedy for anxiety if you suffer from PCOS or PMDD: I encourage women with these conditions to take a concentrated, multipronged approach. Estrogen dominance is very likely a factor in your anxiety, so eating fiber-rich, nutrient-dense whole foods is key. I also recommend supplementing with liver-supportive nutrients, like selenium, green tea extract, and turmeric. The microbiome plays a key role in helping in eliminate excess estrogen, so supporting gut health with a high-quality probiotic is essential. Consider supplementing with calcium, which has been shown to help with mood disorders, including anxiety, during PMS. You will also want to eat foods that keep blood sugar balanced and use The Cycle Syncing Method™ to eat and exercise in sync with your cycle. Anxiety-proof your daily life. You can take other steps in your daily life to downsize anxiety:

  1. Keep blood sugar balanced. Balanced blood sugar is one of the biggest factors in balanced hormones and stable mood. You can use The Cycle Syncing Method™ to balance blood sugar. Learn more here.
  2. Ditch coffee. Caffeine makes your heart race and your head spin. It is literal fuel for anxiety. Just say no to coffee and caffeinated tea! (Plus, coffee is a nightmare for hormone balance.)
  3. Consider ditching the pill. While research on the link between hormonal birth control and mood and anxiety has been inconclusive over the past half century, enough research (and anecdotal evidence) has linked the pill with depression and other mood disorders. The pill has also been shown to deplete mood-supporting vitamins and minerals like vitamin B6, zinc, and magnesium.
  4. Take a magnesium supplement. Magnesium has a calming effect on the body, and having healthy magnesium levels in the body supports a healthy stress response.
  5. Strengthen your vagus nerve. Experts believe that the vagus nerve is how the brain communicates with the body, and how the body communicates with the brain. Studies suggest that strengthening your vagus nerve may help reduce anxiety. You can help tone this important nerve with singing and music and laughter!

Always remember that once you have the right information about how your body really works, you can start making health choices that finally start to work for you! You can do this – the science of your body is on your side!

If you’re a woman who experiences anxiety, you’re not alone. Is it hormonal?

How to Mother Yourself to Hormonal Health this Mother’s Day

Research of the mind-body connection is gaining ground in mainstream science, no longer relegated to “alternative” medicine. We now know, in a deeper and more detailed way, how thoughts and feelings can affect our physical health and well-being. This is a concept I think we all understand instinctively, and often relate to in our own lives, but it’s good to see the science support our shared experience.In previous posts, I’ve talked about how emotions can affect your menstrual cycle— how stress can delay or even suppress ovulation, as well as contribute to hormonal health issues such as PCOS and PMS.

I’ve talked at length about emotions and endometriosis, ovarian cysts, and uterine fibroids.  In today’s post, and in honor of Mother’s Day, I explore how we can mother ourselves better by attending to the emotional root causes of our hormonal issues. If you suffer from reproductive issues like endometriosis, PCOS, uterine fibroids, and ovarian cysts, it’s important to pay attention to nutrition and lifestyle, but you may find even more healing by engaging in tender, loving, and maternal emotional self-care.

Emotions and Reproductive Health: An Overview

While it’s critical to look at the root causes of hormone imbalances from a functional nutrition standpoint, you can support —and improve — your chances for long-term recovery by tending to the emotional root causes of hormonal conditions. That’s because there are neurological, endocrine, and immunological conversations at work in every one of us that reflect our emotional state. The emotional patterns behind ovarian cysts, fibroids, endometriosis, and other conditions are common to many women and represent a shared female experience. Understanding this aspect is an opportunity to have compassion for ourselves and for other women.Your female reproductive organs (uterus, ovaries, vagina) act as a “low heart” and hold many of the unconscious, deeper emotions that your “high heart” is not yet ready to process. The emotions are held here, only to be released once you’ve processed the source of these held feelings. This thinking has its origins in Jungian psychology. A student of Jung, Marion Woodman, developed the concept of “feminine psychology” and her work details how unconsciously held emotions, feelings, and thoughts can affect the female body. One element of Woodman’s work focuses on how women feel about their bodies. Many of us are brought up to be fearful and distrustful of our bodies, and she believed this has a significant impact on our health. She theorized that the unconscious trauma experienced by many women — as the result of individually experienced acts of abuse and violence and as the result of cultural oppression — can manifest itself in physical symptoms.

Your Emotions and Ovarian Cysts

Functional ovarian cysts are small fluid-filled sacs that grow on the ovaries, often cyclically and in connection with your hormonal shifts. There are two kinds of functional ovarian cysts: follicle cysts and corpus luteum cysts. Follicle cysts happen when the ovary follicle does not open to release an egg and instead stays closed. Corpus luteum cysts happen when the follicle releases an egg but then does not seal and close off afterwards. Functional ovarian cysts are very common. Many women have them at some point during their lives, but not all will have symptoms. It’s possible for a cyst to grow very large if left untreated and even burst, requiring immediate surgery. Ovarian cysts, especially those that are symptomatic and recurrent, may be a sign of unfulfilled creative expression. Energetically speaking, ovarian cysts tend to represent blocked creative desire or ideas that don’t fully blossom in one’s life. It’s important to remember, however, that this block has nothing to do with your personal choices and everything to do with the position of women in society and how we are conditioned to organize our lives. Many women put childcare and housework needs before their own or work always comes first. Making shifts in how we prioritize our own self care can be part of a broader protocol in addressing ovarian cysts. For an even deeper dive on the connection between emotions and ovarian cysts, click here.

Your Emotions and Uterine Fibroids

Uterine fibroids are benign uterine growths that can range in size from a pea to a melon. Symptoms can vary from none at all to heavy or painful periods, bleeding between periods, pain during intercourse, and lower back pain.Experts aren’t entirely sure what causes fibroids. What we do know is that fibroids are affected by our hormones, specifically that excess estrogen in the body seems to make them grow. Fibroids often decrease in size after menopause (when overall body estrogen is lower). So addressing excess estrogen in the body’s ecosystem can help. Stress and unprocessed anger may play a role in developing that toxic internal environment where problems like fibroids thrive. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) points to a connection between the emotional state and fibroid growth. In TCM, fibroids are linked to the energy of the Sacral Chakra or Second Chakra. Abuse, trauma, blocked creativity, and resentment can all act as chakra blocks. More and more research indicates how stress can impact our physical health.  Stress weakens the immune system and suppresses the overall optimal function of the body. An increase in cortisol, the stress hormone, causes an imbalance in progesterone – creating progesterone deficiency and estrogen dominance. If you have uterine fibroids, it’s important to address estrogen dominance, but investigating your relationship with stress and anger—and finding healthy outlets for their expression—can play a role in healing fibroids. This can mean managing daily stress levels, prioritizing self-care, and elevating the amount of pleasure in your life.To read more about uterine fibroids and emotions, click here.

Your Emotions and PCOS

The connection between PCOS and emotions goes back to your first period. For many women, their first period is traumatic and confusing (thanks to a culture that doesn’t celebrate menstruation). This initial subconscious response can twist itself into the (erroneous) belief that your female body is a burden. Many young girls with PCOS have erratic periods during their first years of menstruation and this can add to the feeling of burden and hormonal whiplash.Over time this disconnection from one’s body can transform into a negative self image and self-critical thinking. Negative self talk can have harmful effects on your hormonal health. This self-talk might be “I’m fat” or “I’m not pretty enough” or it might be “I’ll have PCOS forever” or “My body will never work like it’s supposed to.” When you say these things to yourself, your body hears—and takes you seriously. Your body reacts with a stress-response and this is how those words become obstacles to your body’s healing and recovery. What you think about your body shows up in your periods.With PCOS, as with every hormonal condition, diet and lifestyle changes are also essential components of treatment, including taking the right supplements, eating the right foods for PCOS, and avoiding foods that trigger symptoms. How women with PCOS feel about their bodies is just one factor, but it’s a factor that I think deserves attention.Stopping the pattern of self-criticism that drives many of us, and not just those of us who suffer with PCOS, was part of my personal process in managing my PCOS and putting it into remission, and it’s part of the process I help women through here at FLO Living.For an in-depth post I wrote specifically on the connection between PCOS and emotions, go here.

Your Emotions and Endometriosis

Endometriosis is a serious reproductive health issue with debilitating symptoms. When a woman comes to me at FLO Living with endometriosis I share guidance on dietary triggers for those symptoms and lifestyle changes that can ease symptoms. That’s not all. Endometriosis requires a comprehensive strategy for management, addressing the health of the microbiome, liver health, inflammation, and excess estrogen.For many women, the Emotion-Endometriosis connection is all about taking care of others more than taking care of yourself. Many women put partners, parents, siblings, or children first and that comes at the expense of our own health and well-being. And as the saying goes, “you can’t pour from an empty cup.” With endometriosis, the uterus seems to mirror this “put others first” behavior by having the material of the womb—the endometrium, or the first maternal embrace an embryo receives—grow outside of the womb in an attempt to mother the woman who isn’t mothering herself. When this causes painful symptoms, the thinking goes, a woman is forced to put her own needs first. The emotional root of endometriosis is by no means the only root cause of endometriosis, but it’s an element that I have found to be important in my work with endometriosis sufferers at FLO Living. As I’ve said before, this has nothing to do with your personal choices in your life, and everything to do with the position of women in society, and how we are conditioned to organize our lives and act towards ourselves.  Your uterus is offering you a gift, an opportunity to reflect on your patterns and revise them for not only better health, but a happier life. If you want to learn even more about the emotional root causes of endometriosis, click here.

Always remember, that once you have the right information about how your body really works, you can start making health choices that finally start to work for you! You can do this – the science of your body is on your side!

To you FLO,

Alisa

How to Tell If You Have a Caffeine Intolerance

Attention, Coffee Drinkers! Did you know that caffeine disrupts your hormones for a full 24 hours?

That’s not all. Caffeine stays in women’s bodies longer than men’s and it robs them of essential hormone-balancing nutrients and minerals. Studies link coffee consumption with infertility and poor gut health, which interferes with your body’s ability to detox excess (toxic) hormones.

Then there’s the link between caffeine consumption and cysts in your breasts and ovaries.

In other words, coffee is dangerous stuff if you suffer from hormone imbalances… and it can be dangerous stuff in general. That’s because many people can’t tolerate caffeine and don’t know it.

So that brings up two key questions: how can you tell if you have a hormone imbalance? And how can you tell if you have a caffeine intolerance?

Let’s start with signs of a hormone imbalance...

How to Tell if You Have a Hormone Imbalance

How do you know if your hormones could use a little TLC...and that caffeine might be something you should eliminate from your daily routine?

Here are some signs and symptoms of a hormone imbalance:

PMS

Severe period cramps

Bloating

Acne

Moodiness/depression

Anxiety

You have been steadily gaining weight for a few months or years

You can’t seem to lose weight even with a healthy diet and increased exercise

Chronic exhaustion/fatigue

Cyclical migraines

Sugar cravings

Breast or ovarian cysts

Low sex drive

Low energy

Endometriosis

PCOS

I encourage any woman who is experiencing one or more of these symptoms to ditch caffeine for good, especially if you don’t tolerate caffeine well…and research shows that only 10 percent of the population produces enough of the specific enzyme that helps breakdown and eliminate caffeine. That means 9 out of 10 of you reading this right now are caffeine intolerant, whether you suffer from hormone imbalances of not!

How to Tell If You Have a Caffeine Intolerance

As I just mentioned, caffeine intolerance is surprisingly common, but most of us think of ourselves as immune. Three cups of coffee each morning might affect my coworkers or my sister, but not me! I explain the genetics of caffeine intolerance—and why hormone imbalances and caffeine intolerance often go hand in hand—below, but first let’s take a look at the signs and symptoms of caffeine intolerance.

Almost everyone who drinks coffee or other caffeinated beverages will recognize that familiar pick-me-up feeling that caffeine brings. But if you experience any of the symptoms on the following list—symptoms that are often attributed to other conditions or physiological responses—you might be caffeine intolerant. Symptoms like:

Anxiety

Insomnia

Restlessness

Fatigue (yes, fatigue!)

High blood pressure

Poorly balanced blood sugar

Digestive distress

Feeling wired but tired

Racing heartbeat

In many cases, these symptoms are chalked up to other diagnoses, like adrenal fatigue or anxiety disorders, but the real culprit might be coffee OR the causes of your symptoms are multifactorial and coffee consumption is one of the factors.

Why Caffeine is SO BAD for Hormones

Here’s why caffeine is so problematic for women with hormone imbalances:

Caffeine Problem #1:

Caffeine may increase the risk of benign breast disease (BBD), and specifically a form of BBD called atypical hyperplasia, which is a marker of increased breast cancer risk. This is scary stuff! One in eight women will develop invasive breast cancer in her lifetime, so it is wise to take every step you can to protect yourself. Giving up caffeine is easy (and free!), and comes with a host of other benefits, like reducing anxiety and supporting better blood sugar balance.The good news? The same study suggests that taking multivitamin supplements can have a protective effect against developing BBD.

Caffeine Problem #2:

Caffeine consumption is linked to infertility. A woman is more likely to miscarry if she and/or her partner drink more than two caffeinated beverages per day in the weeks leading up to conception, according to research from the National Institutes of Health and Ohio State University. Women who consumed two caffeinated beverages every day during the first seven weeks of pregnancy were also more likely experience pregnancy loss.Studies suggest that caffeine consumption may delay pregnancy among fertile women. Male partners, beware! Some research suggests that caffeine consumption among wannabe dads may reduce the chances of conception. Men who drank two or more cups of coffee per day had only a one in five chance of conception through IVF. Caffeine increases cortisol levels, and high cortisol sends signals to the body that it is not an ideal time for conception. Finally, caffeine depletes the body of vital nutrients needed for ovulation and healthy fertility (including B vitamins and folate). If you hope to become a mom someday, you need optimal levels of five key micronutrients, which you will want to take in supplement form…and you won’t want to deplete them at the same time by drinking coffee! Don’t do the good work of getting your essential micronutrients and then shoot yourself in the foot by drinking caffeine.

Caffeine Problem #3:

If you struggle with hormone imbalances (and if you’re reading this right now, you or someone you love probably does), it can be sign that your body has a hard time metabolizing caffeine. Hormone imbalances might be a sign that you don’t process caffeine efficiently. That’s because the same process in the liver that helps metabolize caffeine is also involved in the metabolism of estrogen.Caffeine is broken down by the liver using the enzyme CYP1A2. Your ability to produce this enzyme is regulated by the CYP1A2 gene. If you have a mutation in this gene, it will affect how your liver breaks down and eliminates excess caffeine. You will also have a harder time processing and eliminating excess estrogen.Based on your gene variation, you’ll either make a lot of this enzyme (and be a successful caffeine swiller) or a little (and have a tough time with caffeine). Turns out only 10% of the population make a lot of this enzyme. That’s just one in 10 of us! So if you fall into the majority — if you’re one of the 9 out of 10 women who don’t process caffeine efficiently — you also, very likely, have a buildup of estrogen in your body. And estrogen dominance is what gives rise to a lot of the unpleasant period problems you experience.This is why getting off caffeine is such an important part of the FLO Protocol. Estrogen dominance gives rise to so many of the symptoms of hormone imbalance and you don’t want anything blocking your ability to detox estrogen.

Ready to Ditch Caffeine? Here’s How

Ready to say no to the hormone-damaging effects of caffeine, but afraid of withdrawal? Never fear! You can quit caffeine without symptoms—and without losing energy. If you follow these steps, you will feel great as you wean off caffeine and you’ll be much less likely to relapse.

  1. Start to wean off caffeine during the ovulation phase of your 28-day menstrual cycle, when you naturally have the most energy.
  2. Nourish your adrenals with adaptogens that help combat stress, like rhodiola, ashwagandha, and maca root powder.
  3. Use magnesium to replenish your mineral reserves, balance your mood, and combat headaches.
  4. Supplement with B vitamins. Make sure you’re getting B5 and B12 as part of your B complex.
  5. Rehydrate with coconut water that is rich in electrolytes.
  6. Do gentle exercise, like walks and yoga, but avoid heavy cardio in the week or two after stopping coffee.
  7. Eat a big, healthy breakfast every morning, which will give you fuel for the whole day.

Always remember, that once you have the right information about how your body really works, you can start making health choices that finally start to work for you! You can do this – the science of your body is on your side!

Recipes for a Hormone-Healthy Summer Dinner Party

The last days of summer are for savoring. Fall will be here before you know it (with its plugged-in, back-to-school energy), so it’s time to make the most of August. It’s a month for getting outside, hanging with friends, and making a dogged commitment to rest and (cyclical) self-care. Happily, summer eating doesn’t mean sacrificing your hormone health. Food is the foundation of optimal hormone balance, and what you eat (and don’t eat) can mean the difference between experiencing period problems — like PMS, heavy or irregular periods, severe cramps, bloating, acne, moodiness, fatigue, and migraines — and having a seamless, symptom-free period. So think of the last days of summer as the time when you can have your chocolate—and eat it, too!Here’s one of my favorite hormone-supportive summer meals. It’s great for dinner parties and backyard cookouts and provides a few days of leftover meals for maximum relaxation!Appetizer: Gluten-free bruschetta with chopped tomatoes, basil, and olive oilChop up your best heirloom tomatoes, place in a bowl, sprinkle with salt and drizzle with olive oil. Rip up some basil leaves in your hands and drop in the bowl, stir well with a fork and let sit while you toast the bread. Top toasts with tomato mixture and serve immediately. Save the remaining tomato mixture for leftover recipe below. Main course: Salmon en papillote on the grill “En papillote” refers to cooking something wrapped in parchment paper (or foil). Place individual portions of salmon on a sheet of parchment, top with 2 lemon slices, and 1 TB chopped parsley.Fold half the parchment over the fish so it touches the half under the fish and fold from one corner to the other until the parchment is completely sealed. Wrap the parchment in 2 sheets of foil to protect the parcel on the grill. Grill for 10-12 minutes.If you want to bake in the oven, omit the foil, bake at 400 degrees for 12 minutes. If you’re not a fan of salmon, use chicken or another cut of fish instead. Cooking it this way does two things: First, it keeps the steam in, ensuring moist salmon every time. Second, it protects the meat from charring on the grill, which creates carcinogenic chemicals.Side dish: Grilled corn on the cob with goat butter Soak the corn with the husks still on in a large pot of cold water for a minimum of 20 minutes before grilling so the husks don’t burn. Grill the corn in the husk to minimize the dangerous compounds generated by the grilling process. Will take about 15 minutes.Side dish: Sautéed Greens with garlicChop and steam any fresh greens you like with a pinch of salt in an inch of water in a shallow pan with the lid on. When the greens are wilted, add sliced garlic, shut the heat and drizzle with extra virgin olive oil. Find a local organic farm to get greens that are farm fresh and in season!Side dish: Zucchini Salad Lidia Bastianich, famed chef and author, changed my zucchini experience with her fail-proof technique.Add whole uncut zucchini into rapidly boiling water for 5 minutes. Remove from water and let cool.Slice it and dress with garlic, extra virgin olive oil, and minced parsley for the most refreshing cool summer salad. Dessert: Cherries and dark chocolateSummer desserts are the easiest with an abundance of fruits and berries in season. Choose a dark chocolate with at least 75-percent cacao content. Next day leftovers: LunchSalmon-salad sandwiches (instead of tuna) with fresh lettuce and basil on GF bread. (Use honey mustard instead of mayonnaise when mashing the salmon with a fork.) Served with crudite of cucumbers, bell peppers, baby carrots, cherry tomatoes.Next day leftovers: DinnerCut the corn off the cob, chop remaining leftover zucchini mix, and mix both together with leftover bruschetta topping. Serve on top of fresh greens. Top with a boiled egg and goat feta, if desired. Happy eating, and happy August! Always remember that once you have the right information about how your body really works, you can start making health choices that finally start to work for you. You can do this – the science of your body is on your side.

Is Your Period Healthy?

How do you know if your hormones are healthy? The answer is in your 5th vital sign – your period.The color of your flow, frequency of your period, and symptoms you have each month can tell you a lot about your health. There are 5 different V-SIGN TYPES, and knowing which one you have will help you get healthy now and prevent disease in the future.Click here to take The V-SIGN TYPE™ Quiz NOW

Natural Strategies for Successful IVF

If you want to get pregnant one day but, when the time comes, it doesn’t happen as easily as you hope, you’re not worried. There’s always IVF. Celebrities get pregnant all the time with the help of reproductive technology. And you’ve read about women in their50s (and older) who get pregnant. So while you’re hoping you’ll get pregnant the old fashioned way, it’s no sweat if you don’t, you think. IVF will work.

But IVF isn’t always a guarantee. The per-cycle success rate is only 20 to 35 percent — and that’s despite the enormous cost of the procedure. The average cost of one cycle of IVF is between $12,000 and $15,000 not including the cost of medication, which can cost another $3,000 to $5,000.Then there’s the toll that the IVF drugs, like Clomid, take on your health. This drug works like the Pill, but in reverse (forcing ovulation instead of suppressing it). And it can bring about a raft of deeply unpleasant short-term symptoms (diarrhea, vomiting, abnormal bleeding, headache, bloating, weight gain, breast tenderness and blurred vision) and long-term consequences (potential for increased risk of certain cancers). In other words, Clomid can be a valuable tool in helping you conceive, but it can send your body into a state of hormonal whiplash that lasts for months or years—whether or not you get pregnant. But don’t despair. If IVF is in your future, you can dramatically increase your chances of conceiving with a few simple lifestyle interventions. Here’s what you need to know.

How to Improve Your Chance of Conceiving on IVF

Your doctor might tell you the truth about the disappointing success rates with IVF. But your healthcare practitioner is less likely to tell you about simple strategies you can use to boost your chances of getting pregnant with IVF. Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health monitored the fat consumption of 147 women undergoing IVF treatment and discovered that those who ate the highest amounts of monounsaturated fat were 3.4 times more likely to have a child after IVF. They concluded that avocados contain the best kind of monounsaturated fat (and the least saturated fat, which was found to decrease the amount of “good eggs”).Another study, this time with 4,000 Danish women, found that women who drink five or more cups of coffee were 50 percent less likely to become pregnant with IVF.These studies reveal an important secret: dietary choices affect fertility. “Food is medicine” is a guiding principle of the FLO Protocol, and these studies support but we’ve been saying for the past 15 years!IVF shouldn’t be treated as a sure thing. You stand the best chance of conceiving when you take a proactive approach and support your body with lifestyle strategies during your fertility journey. And being proactive isn’t about going against your doctor’s advice. It’s about complementing their guidance with fertility-friendly choices you can make at home every day. You and your doctors can work as a team to improve your chances of getting pregnant.

Your Strategy for IVF Success

Here is my two-part strategy for getting pregnant with IVF:Strategy #1: Focus on Food. I mentioned the importance of avocados (and other healthy fats) above, and in previous posts I’ve shared the best fertility-boosting foods. But there is more you can do when it comes to what’s on your plate. I recommend preparing your body for pregnancy six months to a year before starting IVF. That might sound like a long time, but your hard work now will pay big dividends when the time comes to start the IVF process. Start by adopting The Cycle Syncing Method when choosing what you eat and when you eat it. Taking this step by itself will put you ahead of the game. Next, make it a priority to:

Reduce inflammation: During your follicular phase, eat sprouted and fermented foods to deliver as many bioavailable nutrients as possible to the ovaries.

Energize your eggs: During ovulation, eat raw fruits and vegetables to increase egg-boosting glutathione levels.Boost Progesterone: During the luteal phase, add in more root vegetables, like sweet potatoes, and leafy greens from the brassica family, like kale, to support your liver and detox estrogen efficiently. This helps your body maintain an optimal ratio of estrogen to progesterone for pregnancy and reduces the chance of miscarriage.Boost your mineral stores: Replenish your minerals during the menstrual phase by consuming sea vegetables, avocados, and/or some free-range animal protein to deeply nourish your endocrine system for the next cycle. Consider taking key hormone-supportive supplements during this time. Strategy #2: List to Your Body’s Internal Fertility Barometer. Your body can offer you clues about your fertility—that is, if you know what to look for. Make it a practice to track your menstrual cycle, your skin, your GI tract, and your vaginal microbiome. Track your cycle: Your monthly bleed can tell you a lot about your progesterone levels and how prepared you are to sustain a pregnancy through the critical first weeks. Look at the color, texture, and number of days of your period, and learn how to interpret what they mean by clicking here. Be sure to share this information with your doctor to get support in avoiding miscarriage. If tracking your period is brand new, my the MyFlo app, which makes tracking your cycle a cinch. Check your poop: If your GI tract needs some TLC, you will notice it in your bowel movements. Are you constipated? Do you always have diarrhea? Do you poop regularly but only a little bit at a time (it feels like you’re not getting it all out)? Or you might notice other signs of GI distress—chronic heartburn or bloating, for example. If you experience any of these things, focus on healing your gut with fermented foods, probiotics, and a high-fiber diet. A healthier gut will improve your ability to absorb key nutrients like vitamin D3 and omega-3 fatty acids, which are essential for balancing hormones.Check your skin: Your skin will give you hints about your liver health. If you’re breaking out a lot, your liver might not be detoxing estrogen effectively. If this is the case, prioritize eating green leafy vegetables and vegetables from the brassica family, both of which help support liver function. You might also consider taking a liver-support supplement. Don’t forget the vaginal microbiome: The gut isn’t the only area of the body with a microbiome. Your vagina has its own unique ecosystem, and the health of your vaginal ecosystem is important for fertility. Chronic bacterial overgrowth and STDs are linked to decreased fertility rates. Address chronic BV (bacterial vaginosis), UTIs, and yeast infections by following my guide to natural remedies. Then get checked for common STDs like HPV and chlamydia that can create a less than optimal environment for an embryo. Both are highly treatable, so don’t fret if you find something.Strategy #3: Maximize Your Micronutrients.Certain micronutrients are essential for getting pregnant. I recommend using targeted, hormone-supportive supplements to boost your chances of conceiving on IVF.B6. Vitamin B6 is critical for the development of the corpus luteum, the group of cells that’s produced in the ovary after the egg is released. The corpus luteum makes progesterone during the luteal phase of your cycle and during the early stages of pregnancy. A deficiency in vitamin B6—and, hence, a deficiency in progesterone—will have a profound effect on your reproductive health. Supplementing a B-vitamin-rich diet will help ensure a healthy balance of progesterone.Magnesium. Stress causes the body to jettison magnesium. So does eating sugar and drinking caffeine. Why does that matter? Magnesium helps with cortisol regulation, blood sugar balance, thyroid support, sleep, and—perhaps most importantly for fertility—hormone creation. Magnesium’s ability to support the creation of new hormones is especially helpful for women in perimenopause or women who have just come off the pill and want to conceive.D3. Ninety-three percent of women dealing with infertility are deficient in vitamin D3, and women with higher vitamin D3 levels are four times more likely to conceive via IVF than women with low levels. That’s because low levels of vitamin D3 have been linked with estrogen dominance, which is a common trigger for hormone symptoms and problems.Probiotics. A healthy gut is essential for conception because a specific community of gut flora called the estrobolome helps with the metabolization of estrogen. When you take medications, eat dairy, gluten, and foods covered in pesticides, you disrupt the gut’s bacterial balance and compromise your ability to eliminate excess estrogen—which can interfere with fertility. Zinc. Zinc deficiency is a very common issue for many women, and it can have a negative impact on your natural hormonal balance. That’s because zinc helps to boost your testosterone production and it blocks the enzyme responsible for turning testosterone into estrogen (again, staving off the possibility of estrogen dominance, which is so widely responsible for endocrine dysfunction and subsequent fertility issues).Always remember, that once you have the right information about how your body really works, you can start making health choices that finally start to work for you! You can do this – the science of your body is on your side!

COACH CONSULT

Get Actionable Advice in a FLO Coach ConsultationWe believe that no woman should suffer simply because she has a period. And we also know that it’s not always possible to get access to functional and holistic healthcare solutions — sometimes they’re too far away and most of the time they are way too expensive. That’s why we offer phone and Skype consultation sessions with our FLO coaches. In your consultation session, your coach will go over your health history and symptoms, get feedback on any health changes you’ve implemented from our resource library, review your hormone test analysis if applicable, and help you develop a plan of action to solve your symptoms.

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Hormone Help for Your Teenage Daughter

The teenage years can be a tricky time. Teens have to navigate newfound independence, more responsibility at school and at home, and, of course, surging hormones. The hormonal piece of teenage life almost always comes with a few bumps. As hormones like estrogen rush through the body for the first time, a breakout here or bout of big emotions will be normal.

But the teenage years don’t have to be a hormone roller coaster ride for young girls. Intense cramping, horrible PMS, severe breakouts, intense emotionality, and heavy or irregular periods do not have to be part of your teenager’s life—now or in the future. You can help your daughter feel better now AND help set her up for a lifetime of symptom-free periods.

Why a Lifetime of Healthy Periods Matters SO Much

The menstrual cycle is now declared as the “fifth vital sign” of health for teenage girls by the American Committee of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG).

That's right: a young woman’s 28-day hormone cycle is considered as important as heart rate and blood pressure—and clinicians are encouraged to use the menstrual symptoms as early warning signs of reproductive health issues like PCOS, thyroid disease, and endometriosis, which can be indicated by abnormally long cycles, excessive bleeding, or lack of periods entirely.

In the ACOG report, teenage girls are encouraged to track their periods and build awareness of their 28-day cycle.

So, here is our first tip for adults who want to help a teenager girl in their lives escape period problems: talk to your daughter about the importance of tracking her cycle so she knows if/when things go sideways with her hormones. This can be when a period comes late or is overly heavy, for example, or when symptoms like acne are worse than normal. With knowledge comes power. When young girls know their cycle, they can tell when their hormones are sneaking out of balance—and they can take steps to balance them.

A great way for girls to track their period is with our MyFlo app. The app will go with her wherever her phone goes….which, for most teenage girls, is everywhere! It’s easy to use and it will help teenagers with more than just tracking symptoms. The app can help girls and women (moms, this app is for YOU, too!). It helps you figure out why symptoms are occurring and what foods will help manage them. In addition, the MyFlo app will teach your daughter all about how to use her cycle to her advantage - a conversation she certainly will not be getting in school!  She’ll learn that it’s okay to be different each week, that it’s okay to change her activities based on her changing energy levels.  She’ll learn that she doesn’t have to force herself to be the same every day, which is at the root of a serious toxic condition of perfectionism, which has many iterations, like anxiety, disordered eating, and more.  Your daughter will learn their best weeks to be social, the best time to curl up at home and do something relaxing, the best ways to manage a busy schedule, and the best ways to move their body during each phase of their cycle.  It's both intuitive and empowering!

So the first place to start is a conversation about the importance of understanding and tracking your cycle.

How to Help Your Teen Have Healthy Hormones & Symptom-Free Periods

Helping teens have a healthy period—right now and for the rest of their lives—goes far beyond teaching them how to use a tampon or pad. If you’re a mom, aunt, sister, godmother, grandmother or loved one of a teenage girl, here are some of our suggestions:

Lead by example. It’s like that familiar airplane-safety schpeel: “Help yourself before you help others.” Your daughter will learn the most by watching what you do. Actions speak louder than words. So your best first step is to adopt The Cycle Syncing® Method when it comes to what you eat and how you exercise.  And if you haven’t yet addressed your own hormonal issues, let her know what your issues are, and that you are embarking on this exciting journey of hormonal recovery for yourself.  

As Michelle Obama said, “I think it's the worst thing that we do to each other as women, not share the truth about our bodies and how they work.”  

I couldn’t agree more! Talk about your period honestly and how not knowing about how to take care of it affected your life. The next generation doesn’t have to suffer if we help them.

Make education a priority. Menstrual education goes far beyond how to put in a tampon. Adult women need to support teens beyond the practicalities. My books, WomanCode and In the Flo dive deep on The Cycle Synching® Method. Another great resource for teens is the book Cycle Savvy by Toni Weschler (who wrote the comprehensive cycle-knowledge bible Taking Charge of Your Fertility).

Help teens avoid hormonal birth control as the first treatment for period problems. When young women experience period problems like heavy or irregular periods, severe acne, horrible cramps, and other PMS symptoms, many clinicians’ first instinct is to put them on the pill. But this ‘treatment,’ which is really a form of covering up the root causes of period problems instead of fixing underlying hormone imbalances, does a big disservice. If the teen in your life is dealing with reproductive health issues like those mentioned in the ACOG report, then consulting a doctor is an important part of getting her back on track. However, we must always question the prescription of hormonal birth control as it never treats the underlying health issue, but only masks the symptoms. Once your teen decides to come off, and this might be years down the line, she will discover that the health issue will return and possibly be worse than before.

If the teen in your life is dealing with very common problems like acne or PMS, then the pill is not the answer. While it can be tempting to reach for these drugs to put a stop to the problem, it’s important to know that doing so can set a young women up for a lifetime of side effects—including depression, low libido, anxiety, hair loss, cancer risk, and even life-threatening blood clots—and suppressed functioning of her endocrine, metabolic, and immune systems. Read up on the negative side effects of the pill and share those with your daughter. So many women who have suffered with synthetic birth control syndrome wished they had been told that negative side effects were even a possibility, that their future fertility might be affected, and that they had known there was a natural solution to their condition.

Talk to your teen about food. A main source of hormone imbalance in teenage girls is diet, with busy high schoolers eating sugary snacks on the run, indulging in late-night eating, skipping breakfast, and generally ignoring the food-hormone connection. Food is one of the most powerful levers we can pull to balance hormones and have better periods. If your teenage daughter is plagued by symptoms like acne and crippling PMS, shifting how she eats is key. Talk with your daughter about the food-hormone connection. Emphasize the importance of eating plentiful amounts of dark, leafy, greens (to support liver detox and the movement of excess hormones out of the body), eating foods rich in key hormone-supportive micronutrients, and eating enough (healthy) calories to support metabolic functions and optimal micronutrient levels. Talk about the dangers of too much processed sugar and how caffeine can sabotage hormone health.

Keep toxic chemicals away from developing bodies. The endocrine-disrupting chemicals found in many everyday products, from makeup and perfumes to household cleaners, are hormone disruptive for every women—but they can be especially hard on young bodies that are still developing. Make sure your daughter has access to clean makeup, safe deodorant, and non-toxic soap, lotions, and shampoos. Eliminate toxic household cleaners and other chemicals (like pesticides) for the health of the whole family.

Introduce your teen to the FLO Protocol. The FLO Protocol is all about engaging in phase-based self care and it is as applicable for teens as it is for adults. There is absolutely no reason that you and your daughter can’t adopt the FLO Protocol together.

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  • I feel more empowered to understand my body and heal my hormones. I no longer accept the patriarchal dismissal and confusion about the female cycle”

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Alisha A   /  46 years old

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Alisha A   /  46 years old

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Alisha A   /  46 years old

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Alisha A   /  46 years old

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Alisha A   /  46 years old

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Alisha A   /  46 years old

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Alisha A   /  46 years old

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  • “I got my period back after 15 years! Thank all of you for your support. I'm just so grateful!”

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  • “FLO Living has seriously changed my life. It gave me the courage and bravery to get off of birth control, and completely changed my outlook on health. I look and feel better than I ever have in my life”

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  • Detox estrogen

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  • Stabilize blood sugar

  • Reduce Androgens

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  • Boost progesterone production

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  • Replenish micronutrients

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  • Detox estrogen

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  • Detox chemical stress

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Alisha A   /  46 years old

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  • Stabilize blood sugar

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  • Targeted micronutrients to support ovulation

Alisha A   /  46 years old

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  • Micronutrients to boost egg quality

  • Reduce inflammation

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Alisha A   /  46 years old

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  • Implement Cycle Syncing ®

  • Detox chemical stress

  • Boost micronutrient levels

Alisha A   /  46 years old

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  • Manage blood sugar

  • Detox estrogen

  • Boost progesterone production

Alisha A   /  46 years old

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  • Stabilize blood sugar

  • Reduce stress

  • Boost energy

Alisha A   /  46 years old

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  • Cycle Syncing® Food & Workouts

  • Stabilize blood sugar

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Alisha A   /  46 years old

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  • Cycle Syncing® Food & Workouts

  • Boost progesterone production

  • Support estrogen elimination

Alisha A   /  46 years old

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  • Cycle Syncing® Food & Workouts

  • Micronutrients to boost egg quality

  • Reduce inflammation

Alisha A   /  46 years old

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  • Cycle Syncing® Food & Workouts

  • Boost progesterone production

  • Increase micronutrient levels