How Stress Affects Your Period
When it comes to an irregular period, managing stress will take precedence over producing our sex hormones. Our body's stress response places negative effects on our hormones which leads to imbalances. In order to have a regular menstrual cycle, your hormones need to be balanced and released at the correct time each cycle. A missed period, heavy bleeding, excess cramps, and anovulation are all signs something is wrong with your hormones and it may be caused by stress. A lot of the symptoms associated with stress and your period is due to the impact of stress on ovulation, affecting progesterone production, and resulting in estrogen dominance.
Stress can affect an individual cycle and result in a late period, but it can also be chronic and have more long-term effects.
Here are 10 ways stress can affect your period:
1. Delay Ovulation
Delayed ovulation is one of the reasons on how stress affects your period. The nutrient building blocks that usually go to progesterone (what we produce after we ovulate, that is IF we are ovulating) can get shuttled to build cortisol, our stress hormone. Stress also causes a delay in ovulation because research has found that cortisol can disrupt the luteinizing hormone (LH) surge. This surge typically occurs right before ovulation, which provides reasoning for how stress affects your period.
Additionally, our sympathetic nervous system, which increases our stress response, can delay ovulation as a protective mechanism. Ovulation takes energy to release the egg, prepare for pregnancy, and if fertilization doesn’t occur, menstruation. If the body is under stress, cortisol is released and the sympathetic nervous system is activated because your body is perceiving a threat and wants to conserve energy for defense instead of preparing for reproduction.
2. Impact Progesterone
Another reason for how stress affects your period is that cortisol impacts progesterone. Progesterone is our pregnancy promoting hormone, and if it is low or not produced enough due to estrogen dominance, this can lead to delayed ovulation. As mentioned, when we are stressed, the body doesn’t prioritize the development of progesterone because those building blocks can be used to create cortisol instead.
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3. Missing Period
Missing your period is another outcome of how stress affects your period. Missing your period is due to anovulation, no ovulation, because the body is not preparing for reproduction the endometrial lining will not build-up, and an egg will not be released. Missing your period over more than one month can be due to chronic stress and this may lead to amenorrhea.
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4. Spotting
Spotting is another outcome of how stress affects your period. Spotting throughout your cycle can happen if we do not have enough progesterone. Progesterone’s job is to maintain the integrity of the lining. Stressed induced low progesterone can occur and we develop spotting during the cycle.
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5. Anxiety
Anxiety is typically the result of cortisol imbalances and excess stress. Anxiety causes activation to excitatory mood chemicals like GABA. GABA is our natural calming mood chemical. Progesterone is like an anti-anxiety hormone due to its effect on GABA, because it helps maintain levels. So anxiety can be one of the outcomes for how stress affects your period because low progesterone can cause anxiety. To maintain a good stress response that functions normally, we need adequate B vitamins, but we also burn through these quicker when we’re stressed.
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6. Late Period
A late period actually means delayed ovulation - a true period will always follow about 12-16 days after ovulation. As mentioned prior, delayed ovulation is caused by stress-induced low progesterone, and this is why a late period is an outcome of how stress affects your period.
7. Gut Issues
The gut is composed of a wide diversity of bacteria that help us digest food and eliminate toxins. Stress can contribute to gut distress as cortisol slows this digestion process, and decreasing absorption of nutrients that help contribute to stable hormone production. Estrogen is eliminated through the gut, and if stress causes this digestion to slow down, estrogen can recirculate in the body. When estrogen recirculates this can limit progesterone production because of estrogen dominance. As progesterone is limited this can decrease ovulation and cause missed periods. This is why gut issues are an outcome for how stress affects your period.
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8. Breakouts
Breakouts are another outcome of how stress affects your period. If you’re getting breakouts specifically before your period, this can be due to estrogen dominance. Hormonal acne is caused by the activity of androgen hormones over stimulating the sebaceous glands in your skin which produce oil. Balanced estrogen is found to be beneficial for inhibiting these androgens from stimulating these glands, and can have regulatory effects on the genes that function in negative acne production. When estrogen is dominant you can develop overly dry skin, which causes inflammation, irritation and the sebaceous glands will respond by producing more oil to compensate.
If you have breakouts all the time throughout your cycle, this can be caused by the gut issues mentioned earlier, because you have higher estrogen levels due to failure to excrete excess estrogen.
If you have breakouts around ovulation specifically, then this can be due to elevated testosterone levels. During ovulation, we have the highest peak of testosterone compared to all the other cyclical phases throughout the month. Testosterone can be excessively produced due to blood sugar imbalances causing increased blood insulin levels. As all hormones are connected, increased cortisol can lead to increased insulin, leading to increased testosterone.
9. Cramps
Cramps are uterine contractions that women typically experience during PMS or premenstrual syndrome which occurs at the end of the luteal phase. These cramps can be due to imbalances in estrogen dominance but more specifically, prostaglandins. Prostaglandin is a hormone that controls the uterine smooth muscle and inevitably, contractions. Prostaglandin responds to inflammation which can be caused by cortisol. Easing these cramps can be done by taking omega 3 supplements or by consuming more fish and seeds. This is why cramps are an outcome of how stress affects your period.
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10. Headaches
Headaches can be a symptom of stress, but also can happen due to a sudden drop in hormones during the luteal phase, leading to estrogen dominance. Through passive diffusion, estrogen can cross the blood-brain barrier very easily, so this causes the brain levels of estrogen to reflect the levels within the rest of the body’s circulation. When levels of estrogen are high in circulation in the body, this causes an increase of estrogen in the brain and a low level of progesterone. The high levels of estrogen and low levels of progesterone are what can cause cyclic headaches. Hormone imbalances linked to stress can also be proof of how stress affects your period because a study showed that stress is the cause of 70% of individuals struggling with migraines.
