Why Zinc Is My Favorite Supplement for Period Health
Looking for a simple solution for period problems? Before you reach for a women’s supplement like chaste tree or natural progesterone, consider the humble mineral zinc.
Zinc is an important nutrient for women’s health and is effective treatment for acne, PCOS, period pain, and many other periods problems. The Secret Powers of Ovulation (It’s Not Just for Making a Baby)
Ovarian hormones estrogen and progesterone are beneficial for health. That means natural ovulatory menstrual cycles are beneficial for health because ovulation is how women make hormones.
Does that surprise you? Men make testosterone every day, so you might think women do something similar, but we don’t. Instead, women make hormones as a surge of estradiol leading up to ovulation and an even bigger surge of progesterone after ovulation.
What Dairy Does to Periods
More than twenty years ago I discovered something: When I stopped having dairy, I stopped having period pain.
Since then, I’ve worked with thousands of patients who have had the same result. For many women (not all), stopping dairy can dramatically improve period pain, heavy periods, endometriosis, acne, and PMS.
Are You Eating Enough to Get a Period?
Lost your period? You might just need to eat more. A lot more. Losing your period to under-eating is called hypothalamic amenorrhea and is common, especially in women under thirty.
Hypothalamic amenorrhea is sometimes misdiagnosed as polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) because both hypothalamic amenorrhea and PCOS can present with “polycystic ovaries” on a pelvic ultrasound exam.
5 Benefits of Taurine for Women’s Health
Taurine is one of my favorite supplements for perimenopause, menopause, sleep, mood, insulin resistance, and migraine prevention.
It’s a sulfur-containing amino acid that is unique in that it is not used to build proteins but instead plays an essential role as a free amino acid in many aspects of physiology including the healthy functioning of the immune and nervous systems. Taurine so important and widespread that it accounts for up to 0.1% of body weight.
4 Types of PCOS (a Flowchart)
To treat PCOS, you need to know what’s driving it. In other words, you need to know the different types of PCOS.
You could have insulin-resistant PCOS, post-pill PCOS (which is temporary), inflammatory PCOS, or the far less common adrenal PCOS.