How to ride out your periodic hormonal shifts

I’ve had very few health issues in my 33 years. Not that my life is perfect, but I try very hard to maintain health and wellness by eating right, exercising, drinking water, and using essential oils. I’ve always been focused on taking good care of my temple and sensitive to getting enough sleep, and not drinking too much or eating too much sugar. I literally HATE feeling less than amazing, which is what I strive for and it’s the reason I even work at all, so I can help other people feel as amazing as they’re supposed to.

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In the past couple of months, I’m feeling older and having weird issues. My knee hurts, my skin is changing (hello adult acne!), and I’m moodier. Mind you, I was nursing and pregnant for six years previous, so any problem I ever had I chalked up to being pregnant or postpartum. Now I actually have to deal with my problems and periods, because there’s a good chance our family is complete. Because of all my pregnancies and nursing, I only had a few periods in between kids. So now, I’m back to regular periods … or are they regular? They’re off, which is another change I’m experiencing. I believe all of this is normal for someone my age after having four kids in five years. It’s just an adjustment period, a wave in life.

I believe that 99 percent of our health-related problems are initially caused by stress. So when I began seeing some acne on my chin and I noticed a swollen finger, especially during ovulation and menstrual rotations, I started to do some re-evaluating. That was after I thought a good, very expensive HydraFacial could solve all my problems. Nope. A good reminder that those problems are always internal. I’m still glad I had the facial because the girl who peeled and cleaned my skin had some very logical explanations for my new facial blemishes. She said it’s probably partly stress, but she also reminded me that every few years women experience major hormone shifts. This made sense to me.

These were my symptoms:

1. Unusual moodiness
2. Occasional hives. I get these every time I launch a major project for my business. It’s become a part of my routine. These also come with chest tightening and shortness of breath. Anxiety/stress anyone? For some reason, I believe I’m exempt from stress because I’ve been so blessed. So, since I believe it, it’s true, right? Wrong. I’m now learning how to say no, delegate, and decompress with tears! This is the kind of stress that messes with hormones.
3. Acne on chin and jaw. This shocked me! I’ve never had this issue before and have believed that acne is 90 percent related to diet.
4. Swollen fingers. One finger oddly swelling during ovulation and menstruation. It’s not as painful as it is just annoying and bothersome.
5. Joint pain in knee. More swelling for unknown reasons.
6. Fluctuating days in cycle. Since I was 12, I was an every-28-days girl, which made it very easy to get pregnant and now to avoid pregnancy. But since February, I’m all over the map from 25 to 33 days. This is absurd for me.

Bottom line is that nobody is exempt from pain, suffering, and stress no matter how hard you try. I live my life as healthy as possible, but what I’ve learned through this experience is that sometimes you just have to ride out the wave. The more we worry about it, the worse it is. Now, I’m at the end of the wave and my symptoms have improved quite a bit, but this experience helped me grow in faith, wisdom and so much understanding!

If you’re in a major hormone shift or noticing strange changes in your body, it’s a really good idea to speak to someone in the health field — more specifically, a natural health provider. They can teach you more about how diet can help improve symptoms and what supplements to take for which symptoms rather than prescribing medicine that may mask the symptoms or cause other symptoms. Our bodies were built to fight through these kinds of things and readjust, but, it’s not always as quick as we’d like. These changes are hard and tiring and sometimes down right discouraging, but you will get through it.