How Does Your Hypothalamus Affect Your Periods?

Does your hypothalamus affect your periods? And how can progesterone help irregular periods? Let’s talk about it. 

Periods do not always come exactly 28 days apart.

Normal cycles range from 24-35 days. But if your periods are not coming on a regular basis, you skip periods, periods are delayed, or any abnormal bleeding patterns, you may have irregular menstruation. 

What’s going on?

Your periods can be affected by stress, malnutrition, side effects from medications, smoking, excessive exercise, too low or too high body weight or hormonal imbalances.

Any of these physiological stressors can cause hypothalamic dysfunction leading to irregular menstruation. Low or high thyroid hormone levels and adrenal issues can affect your periods by affecting the hypothalamic-pituitary-ovarian axis. When that happens, you will not get periods on a regular basis or you may not get periods at all. In fact, there is a condition called hypothalamic amenorrhea which completely stops ovulation and menstruation. 

Irregular periods are usually a sign of anovulation or lack of regular ovulation.

If you don’t ovulate, you also don’t make enough progesterone. While your adrenals make about 5% of your progesterone, 95% comes from your ovaries but only if you ovulate. 

So what can you do?

Supporting your hypothalamus nutraceutically with Genesis Gold® will help to regulate your menstrual cycles usually within three to six months. When I first created Genesis Gold®, I had runners amenorrhea, which is a form of hypothalamic amenorrhea, meaning I ran so much and my body fat was so low that I did not have menstrual periods.

I used bioidentical estrogen and progesterone to have periods. After a few months of supporting my hypothalamus with Genesis Gold®, I had regular periods. 

If you’re not having regular periods, you may experience estrogen dominance from not producing enough progesterone.

So in addition to hypothalamus support with Genesis Gold®, I recommend using Gen-Pro which is a transdermal bio-identical progesterone in the second half of your cycle. Gen-Pro is same prescription strength progesterone, I have used with my patients for over 30 years

Typically, you would start it around the time of ovulation if you see spinbarkheidt, which is that sticky clear vaginal mucus that your cervix produces from high follicular estrogen production. Then use Gen-Pro for 10 to 14 days. 

If you’re amenorrheic, you can test to see if you’re making enough estrogen by taking a full two week course of progesterone twice a day. You should have a period within two to seven days of stopping progesterone. If so you’re making enough estrogen. If not, then taking hypothalamus support for a few months usually wakes your ovaries up so that you’re producing estrogen again. 

You may need to use Gen-Pro in the luteal phase to help regulate your menstrual cycles for a few months before weaning down.

If you have any questions please join us in our Hormone Reboot Training. 

Resources:

Hypothalamic Amenorrhea and the Long-Term Health Consequences; Chrisandra L. Shufelt, Semin Reproductive Medicine; 2017