TRAIN WITH FFS
Do you know your cycle? Coach Sinead talks about why it is so important to understand your hormones to work with your body, not against it.
I am not sure about you, but I spent a lot of my life disconnected from my body and my cycle.
I wondered why I felt fatigued at certain times and then was surprised when my period arrived. I got annoyed at myself for being tired or flat and resented my twin brother for not having to deal with a monthly bleed. I didn’t fully understand what hormones were doing what nor did I realise that they could be used to my advantage.
Our cycles are our fifth vital sign. Our bodies like to be in a state of balance and any sense of threat (lack of available food, high levels of stress, health issues, overtraining) can cause our cycles to go out of whack or stop altogether. We often push through the fatigue, think that we should do more, be better, etc. instead of listening to what our bodies are telling us and working with it to get the most out of ourselves, our health, and our training.
JOIN MY WORKSHOP : You can learn to track your cycle to understand your body better, improve performance and adapt your training and nutrition strategies to work with your body, not against it.
We have lots of different hormones circulating around our body, but for women our two main sex hormones are Oestrogen and Progesterone and they are produced by our ovaries.
In our cycles, we also have Gonadotropin Releasing Hormone (GnRH), Lutenising Hormone (LH) and Follicular Stimulating Hormone (FSH). These hormones, released from the hypothalamus and pituitary gland in the brain, work in conjunction with the ovarian hormones; this is known as the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Ovarian (HPO) axis. It is responsible for the regulation of our menstrual cycle.
Don’t worry if your head is spinning right now all you need to worry about is that your Menstrual Cycle is linked to the hormonal glands in your brain. This is important because the stress hormone Cortisol, is also linked to these two glands via the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal axis (HPA), , and you guessed it, this can have a knock-on-effect on your cycle.
Furthermore, cortisol uses the same building blocks as oestrogen and progesterone and can reduce the body’s ability to produce these hormones.
Source: Dr Nicole M Jardim https://www.instagram.com/nicolemjardim/
Hormones are complex things, but here is a quick overview of our two main sex hormones:
Oestrogen:
Progesterone:
DID YOU KNOW!? : Covid-19 is having a big impact on women’s menstrual cycles around the world. Dr. Jessica Piasecki in Nottingham Trent University is doing a study on the impact of Covid-19 via FitrWoman. Get involved and further science of female physiology!
Source: Fitrwoman https://www.instagram.com/fitrwoman/
There are a number of different cycles that you can have dependent on the type of contraception that you are on
Your menstrual cycle is a ‘monthly cycle’ of hormones that over the course of 28-36 days (this is highly dependent on the individual) stimulate ovulation and grow your uterine lining in preparation for a potential pregnancy (whether we want to get pregnant or not).
The Follicular Phase (Low Hormone Phase > Ovulation)
The Luteal Phase (Ovulation > Period or Menses)
DID YOU KNOW!? : You can use the hormones of your natural cycle to improve health and performance!
You can work with your cycle to adapt training and nutrition strategies and harness the power of your hormones….pretty amazing stuff.
There are a number of different oral contraceptive pills available but the premise of most pills is that you take a pill with synthetic hormones for three weeks and then have one week where you take a non-hormone pill or no pill at all.
The synthetic hormones stop ovulation (as well as change your cervical mucus) and therefore your bleed on the pill is a withdrawal bleed and not a period.
There is a monophasic type, which is where you take the same dose of hormone(s) for three weeks and then 1 week off. The triphasic pill is where the hormones in the pills change over the course of three weeks to mimic our body’s own rise and fall of hormones. There are also progestin-only pills.
Note: I am not a doctor or a health care provider, so I encourage you to learn more about what pill you are on in your own time.
Learn more :
DID YOU KNOW!? : You can use the hormones of your natural cycle to improve health and performance! Join me this Tuesday at 7pm to learn about how to work with your body not against it.
It is really important that we have periods, losing your period is normally a red flag that something is going on - either overtraining, underfueling, high levels of stress, a combination of these, or something else.
Hypothalamic Amenorrhea (HA) is the loss of your period due to insufficient oestrogen and it can be caused by :
All of the above can have an impact on our stress hormones as well as negatively impacting our Lutenising Hormone (which as you can see from above is really important for producing both oestrogen and progesterone).
This is also known as RED-S (relative energy deficiency in sport), and was formerly known as the Female Athlete Triad.
If you are experiencing period loss or irregular period, I would strongly recommend speaking to your GP to rule out any underlying conditions and then working with a coach, nutritionist, and/or therapist to
DID YOU KNOW!? : Studies have shown that 45%-65% of of recreational athletes (i.e. you and me) are at risk of low-energy-availability.
So as you can see, our hormones and our cycles are just these things that happen to us. They hold vital clues about our health, both physical and mental, so I would encourage you to learn more about your cycles and how to work with your body, not against it.
JOIN MY WORKSHOP : You can learn to track your cycle to understand your body better, improve performance and adapt your training and nutrition strategies to work with your body, not against it.
Follow me on Go with the Flow - Work with your body to learn more about your menstrual cycle and how to work with it, not against it.
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