Lara Briden - The Period Revolutionary
Leading the change to better periods and hormones
Nutritional advice for menstrual health including nutritional protocols for PCOS, endometriosis, PMDD, and perimenopause. Strategies include reducing sugar to reverse insulin resistance and supplementing magnesium to stabilize the nervous system.
Normal period pain or dysmenorrhea should be mild and respond to simple treatments like ibuprofen, zinc, or a dairy-free diet.
If period pain does not respond to simple treatments, it’s severe period pain, and could be a symptom of a condition such as endometriosis, adenomyosis, fibroids, infection, pelvic congestion syndrome, or pelvic floor tension.
Debilitating period pain is never normal.
The vagus nerve is a cranial nerve that activates the parasympathetic nervous system and increases levels of oxytocin and the calming neurotransmitter acetylcholine. Supporting the vagus nerve and thereby improving parasympathetic tone promotes relaxation, sleep, digestion, and healing.
Activating the parasympathetic nervous system dials down the sympathetic nervous system or fight-or-flight response. In that way, the vagus nerve acts as a built-in “stress-reset button.”
A vegan or exclusively plant-based diet can make periods lighter and less painful, which is good. Over time, however, an exclusively plant-based diet can cause irregular or heavy periods due to impaired ovulation and low progesterone.
The main problem with an exclusively plant-based diet is that it cannot provide an adequate supply of nutrients such as zinc, iodine, iron, vitamin A, and taurine.
Headaches, anxiety, insomnia, brain fog, hives, and nasal congestion. These are just a few of the symptoms of mast cell activation or high histamine.
Histamine symptoms are more common in women and often track with the menstrual cycle, occurring when estrogen is high at ovulation and about a week before the period.Â