Herb Me One More Time
By Dr. Beth Adler
The guide to balancing your hormones with herbs.
Do you have irregular periods, heavy periods, or pre-menstrual migraines? There is one herb that could help to regulate your hormones. Find out and how and why this herb might help.
Conventional Hormone Management
Many conventional doctors suggest using birth control to “regulate hormones”. However, the truth is it does not regulate hormones, it suppresses them so that you no longer have a natural menstrual or ovulation cycle.
Irregular Cycles and Heavy Periods
Irregular cycles and heavy periods could be due to two things. Estrogen dominance (excess estrogen levels) and low progesterone levels. Pre-menstrual migraines are likely because of low progesterone levels. A natural cycle has two different phases to it; a follicular phase (day 1 of cycle-first day of bleeding to the 14th day) when your estrogen levels are at the highest peak, and a luteal phase (day 16-28) when your progesterone levels are at the highest. There are categories of herbs that work together with progesterone to affect the pituitary gland and balance hormones.
Restoring Hormonal Balance
One of my favorite herbs to restore balance is called Chaste tree Berry (also known as Vitex agnes). Vitex is a progesterone agonist that helps to increase your progesterone levels, while synergistically bringing down excess estrogen levels. When trying to balance someone’s hormones, we use this herb in a diurnal rhythm by mimicking the natural ebb and flow of estradiol and progesterone levels, depending on what part of the cycle someone is in. It can take as little as 3 months to see improvement.
A slower, but still effective, food-based version of this is called seed cycling. A similar idea, where the patient consumes specific seeds during different parts of their cycle to regulate their hormones. These methods allow us to restore the hormonal balance, regulate irregular periods, decrease the flow amount, and minimize pre-menstrual migraines.
Please make an appointment with our team for further dosing instructions.