Taming Mood Swings in Women

Taming Mood Swings in Women. Have you ever seen a woman going from calm and nurturing to anxious and angry or irritable? These types of mood swings in women are common and may be hormonal. Mood swings in women are especially common during puberty when young women are developing a rhythm to their cycles. They are also very common in perimenopause, which can occur 10 years prior to menopause.

Progesterone and Mood Swings in Women
Estrogen and progesterone balance each other. Estrogen is the hormone of energy however too much of it can lead to anger, anxiety, irritability, insomnia, impatience and mood swings in women. Progesterone is the hormone of peace and calm. A developing woman will have more than enough estrogen, however ovulation may not occur and without ovulation, a corpus luteum that produces progesterone is not made. This results in a hormone imbalance that causes mood swings in women leading to symptoms of estrogen dominance described above.

The same thing happens in perimenopause. Women are born with a set number of eggs. Several eggs may ripen each cycle and over the course of many years, they run out. During perimenopause, estrogen is still being produced, however, mood swings in women occur because not every cycle results in ovulation. Progesterone is not being produced to calm the excitatory effects of estrogen and mood swings in women can be difficult to control. Both these conditions are known as estrogen dominance.

Treatment for Mood Swings in Women with Estrogen Dominance

Lower estrogen
You can lower environmental estrogens by avoiding:

• BPA’s
• herbicides and pesticides
• hormone treated meat, dairy and poultry
• eliminating chemicals found in personal care products such as phthalates, parabens, sodium laurel sulfate and fragrance.

So don’t heat in plastic, check the environmental working group site www.ewg.org to find out which personal care products are free of these hormone disrupting chemicals and the produce that is known as the dirty dozen which have the most herbicides and pesticide. The chemicals on the dirty dozen can disrupt your hormones so buy these organic.

Removing excess estrogen and estrogen metabolites can be done with:

• Soluble fiber. Eat plenty of foods that are high is soluble fiber such as ground flax meal, berries, apples, pears, oat bran, and beans.
• Supplements such as calcium d glucarate will prevent reabsorption of estrogen if you test positive for the enzyme beta glucaronidase. This enzyme will make your body reabsorb the estrogen that it is trying to get rid of.

Raise progesterone

• During puberty and PMS taking chasteberry, an herbal extract can raise progesterone.  Fertility blend is a formula that has some good studies that showed benefits.
• During perimenopause and menopause taking bioidentical progesterone can be very calming by balancing estrogen

Other Causes of Mood Swings in Women

• Estrogen being too low
• Thyroid hormone being too high or low
• High sugar diet and/or blood sugar fluctuations
• Food sensitivities
• Lack of sleep
• Stress and cortisol fluctuations
• Depression

Mood swings in women can be due to a multitude of causes. Get a functional medicine evaluation to determine what the root cause of your mood swings are due to. Functional medicine does not treat the symptoms; it treats the cause. Choose a functional medicine doctor who is well versed in bioidentical hormone replacement therapy as well as a holistic and integrative approach to treatment.