What Foods To Take During Menstruation To Regulate The Hormonal Cycle?
If there is something that influences our menstruation, it is undoubtedly food. Beyond what to eat when you have your period, it is important to pay attention to your diet throughout the menstrual cycle.
There is a much more important purpose to the when we consider making a “meal plan” or a “diet” that simply lose body fat, have a body “fitness” or toned or just eat foods to have the need.
An eating plan should really be focused on your life in general, which helps you improve all the processes of the body such as your energy, quality of sleep, concentration, quality of the skin, and your hormones in general. These are part of an endless number of processes in our body and if you manage to understand the connection you will make them work in your favor and you will be able to potentiate any objective related to your health and thus be able to reverse and prevent diseases.
Table of Contents
Why is it important to watch your diet during menstruation?
Food is life and can act as a healing medicine to support, naturally harmonize hormones, and activate processes or it can act as a highly addictive and inflammatory drug. Either way, we already know by now that what we consume influences not only the physiological and metabolic changes but also the hormonal changes that we present month after month, which is detrimental to the quality of our health in order to treat and reverse diseases.
Diet influences practically everything and depending on the quantity and quality of macronutrients and micronutrients that you are providing to your body, your body will begin to respond with positive results in your menstrual health. There are foods that promote menstruation, but also others that do just the opposite.
How does diet influence menstruation?
The woman’s body moves through four phases each month (menstrual, follicular, ovulatory, and luteal) and with the correct foods, you can take your health to another level, consuming foods that benefit your cycle and promote your menstruation. As you may know, there is no exact rule of what to eat when you have your period, but each vegetable, fruit, legume, nut, and seed offers us a variety of unique vitamins and minerals that can help our body flow with less. symptoms and a lot of energy.
How to regulate hormones during menstruation?
Menstruation reflects the state of your health, if you have bad habits your cycle will express it with irregularities and not very pleasant symptoms such as colic, fatigue, anxiety, among others. If you have good habits and a diet for proper menstruation, practically your cycle will appear regularly and asymptomatic.
Usually, menstrual discomfort and symptoms are due to the loss of progesterone or excess estrogen.
These hormones are produced by the ovaries and both are in balance, and the alteration of this balance can have a negative effect on the health of women and even during the luteal phase where our progesterone decreases and estrogen increases.
Functional foods or supplements can, therefore, help in balancing such hormones:
Foods to increase progesterone
Increase your intake of foods high in magnesium such as nuts, seeds, and dark leafy vegetables, and increase your intake of foods high in vitamin B6 such as tuna, chickpeas, salmon, chicken, nuts and legumes, whole grains, etc.
Foods to lower excess estrogen
Increase the intake of phytoestrogens from legumes, grains, and vegetables. Phytoestrogens block estrogen receptors and accelerate estrogen metabolism.
Habits to lower excess estrogen and increase progesterone
Reduce or eliminate alcohol consumption, regenerate your gut microbiome (good bacteria in the intestines), avoid chemicals such as plastics, mercury, and pesticides, smoking, environmental toxins, reduce inflammatory foods such as sugar, wheat, dairy, reduce stress, and increase physical activity.
What foods to take during menstruation:
During this phase, we focus on anti-inflammatory foods, which help us regulate the cycle by remineralizing and replenishing nutrients that are low in this menstrual phase. All three macronutrients (protein, carbohydrate, and fat) and micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) are needed to convince your hypothalamus that you are sufficiently nourished by turning off your hunger hormones (leptin and ghrelin). This is very important to be able to ovulate and menstruate regularly.
Protein
It is essential during menstruation due to its supply of amino acids that help repair and maintains your hormones, muscles, organs, nervous system, and immune system.
Some examples would be:
- Whitefish
- Salmon
- Egg
- Soybeans and legumes
Complex carbohydrates
These good quality carbohydrates are a source of energy that promotes estrogen metabolism, stimulates the activation of the thyroid hormone, and calms the nervous system, avoiding excess cortisol.
- Brown or wild rice
- Quinoa
- Potato or sweet potato
- Gluten-free oats
- Vegetables
Healthy fats
Your hormones love healthy fats, they benefit in regulating hormones like estrogens and progesterone. In addition to having anti-inflammatory power.
These are examples of healthy fats:
- Natural dried fruits
- Extra virgin olive oil
- Avocado
- Olives
What foods to eat during each phase of the menstrual cycle?
Our menstrual cycle is divided into 4 different phases, which is why it is important not only to take care of the diet to promote menstruation but also throughout each of the phases.
Here are the key food groups during each phase :
Cycle day 1-14
Starting on the first day of your period, your diet should focus on complex carbohydrates and increase the consumption of healthy fats near the follicular phase (around day 14).
In addition, you can support your cycle to promote ovulation by consuming flax seeds (rich in phytoestrogens) and pumpkin (help prepare the production of progesterone) during the first fortnight.
Day 15-28 cycle
From ovulation (approximately towards the middle of your cycle) the foods that favor menstruation would be those that help us raise progesterone. For this, it is essential to make a moderate consumption of healthy fats and increase the consumption of carbohydrates during the luteal phase (premenstrual).
In addition, you can support your diet to promote menstruation by consuming sesame seeds (they modulate estrogen levels) and sunflower seeds (rich in selenium which helps eliminate excess hormones) during the second fortnight.
What foods to avoid during menstruation?
Sugar
Sugar is known to be of those foods that have a negative influence on your menstruation as it is a metabolic disruptor and can also be inflammatory.
- Refreshments
- Candy, chocolate bars, desserts
- Sweetened yogurts
- Cereals
- Honey, dates, syrups, fruit juice
Sugar causes tissue damage and leads to resistance to insulin (a hormone that takes blood sugar and converts it into energy). Too much insulin creates inflammation and causes weight gain, diabetes, and heart disease. It also impairs ovulation.
Alcohol
A major disruptor of metabolism and an inflammatory substance is alcohol. Therefore, it directly affects the reduction of estrogen which can increase the risk of contracting breast cancer, cause insulin resistance, damage the intestinal microbiota, preventing proper detoxification and absorption of nutrients.
Normally alcohol is mixed with soda or fruit juice which has a double effect because you are adding sugar and alcohol.
Gluten
Although gluten affects people with celiac disease, it can also affect if your intestinal microbiome is not in its optimal state, which is called non-celiac gluten sensitivity. In addition, it can general premenstrual migraines and endometriosis.
Gluten is present in oats (cross-contamination), wheat, barley, rye, and spelled.
Dairy products
These foods are digestive disruptive and highly inflammatory. My recommendation is to eliminate them from the diet and replace them with good quality plant alternatives.
The problem is in lactose (for people with intolerance) and casein protein. Both substances generate too much histamine which is detrimental at the hormonal level, so the ideal would be to reduce histamine to considerably improve PMS, colic, and heavy flows.
Eating habits
I recommend listening to your body. In an ideal diet for menstruation, we must always take care of the portions of processed foods or eliminate them and also respect the consumption of foods of animal origin, carbohydrates, and fats, increasing the consumption of anti-inflammatory vegetables, legumes, seeds, and fruits, trying to base your diet in plants.
Satiety is very important, and you will feel this as long as you include the 3 macro nutrients in your food. Basing our dishes on vegetables and abundant proteins and carbohydrates and moderate fats, this will help you eliminate cravings during the day. Avoiding cravings is essential to regulate our hormones and promote menstruation.
And please, do not be rigid with what you eat, listen to your body, and base yourself on real foods that nourish and benefit every cell of your body. I invite you to be flexible and happy when you eat, as long as you choose real, unprocessed foods you can be flexible and at the same time not punish yourself too much if you fall for some unhealthy food, simply remember that you must return to the correct path, while you accustom your body to receive real food, your body will reject sugars, cravings and it will become easier for you to choose what benefits you and fight with what harms you.
Anxiety and menstruation
Anxiety usually comes in the luteal phase, the premenstrual stage, and the first 2-3 days of menstruation when PMS or PMS symptoms begin, mood swings, irritability, anxiety, bloating, breast tenderness, painful cramps, food cravings or headaches before menstruation, usually due to loss of progesterone or excess estrogen.
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Bio- Samdeesh is the owner of Divine Life Science, Divine Life Science is a pharmaceutical company that produces a herbal uterine tonic for women’s health.
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