A while ago I noticed that the week before my period, my… let’s call it reaction time… to stressful events (say, interacting with the kids) was tapering down from a solid 5-10 minutes of patience to, generously, 15 seconds.

As someone who’s never had any PMS symptoms, this was a major change.. and not a pleasant one!

I pride myself on being a pretty patient person, but since having children, my hormones have had a mind of their own, and that mind is apparently very angry.

While complaining about this years ago, a friend mentioned how much her doctor had helped her with similar symptoms. She told me she’d been monitoring her hormone levels for years with both saliva and blood panels, and supplementing with both over-the-counter vitamins as well as bio-identical hormones, and saw amazing results with fatigue, mood and physical health.

Why I Started Taking Bio-Identical Hormones

After doing both a blood and saliva panel, my doctor found that my cortisol level was low in the mornings, and my testosterone was starting to nosedive as well.

Since then she’s prescribed what she calls “baby doses” of certain compounded hormones, including a sublingual (goes beneath your tongue) tablet of testosterone, and a tiny dose of progesterone. Even though I wasn’t having trouble sleeping at night, she said the progesterone would help balance everything out.

What I didn’t realize before regularly monitoring my levels and talking with my doctor is that all of the hormones are connected—symbiotic in a way. You can’t adjust one hormone without addressing how it might potentially impact the others.

So even though your panels may show one specific hormone is down, it doesn’t mean that supplementing with that hormone alone will fix it. Sometimes adding another one in will boost it, instead. Make sense?

Because I’m not an expert on this and won’t do the explanation justice, I’m going to drop in some amazing episodes I’ve done on this very topic so you can deep dive and understand the interplay of hormones, your thyroid health, and more.

You, like me, may be surprised to learn that they are all connected in a very intricate way.Please—if you’re considering this, start here to get the basics of hormone health! Educate yourself with how it’s all connected, so you know the exact questions to ask your doctor.

That was about five years ago, and I’ve been monitoring my hormones through my doctor and taking bio-identical hormones since.

I won’t explain the benefits from a scientific perspective because 1) I’m not an expert and 2) I don’t want to be sued if you take this as medical advice (did I mention yet DO NOT TAKE THIS AS MEDICAL ADVICE?). But what I can tell you is how I feel this type of treatment has helped me in the five+ years I’ve done it, and why I personally believe that my experience with a D.O. (doctor of osteopathy) has been more holistic and personalized than care I’ve gotten from any other doctor.

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What I’ve Noticed Since Starting Bio-Identical Hormones

The week before my period is not as rage-inducing as it was starting to become

There is no doubt that I was a different human after having children not only in the obvious ways (boobs, exhaustion, feet growing a half a size), but also the less apparent ones, including the way that I was able to regulate—or not regulate—my moods during PMS.

Specifically, in the week right before my period, I started to have hair-trigger reactions to things that really never bothered me before. So for that first appointment with my doctor, this is what we decided to tackle first.

Since I’ve been taking my compounded hormones and supplements (we also do several over-the-counter vitamins), I’m noticeably slower to react in a stressful situation during the week before my period.

Very little afternoon fatigue

Exhaustion used to hit me like a freight train around 3pm. I can honestly say that I no longer deal with that.

Of course that’s not true 100% of the time—sometimes I still feel tired during the day—but it’s much less common than it used to be.

More AM energy

Not only do I experience less midday fatigue, but most of the time I also genuinely wake up feeling energized and ready to go, even on the mornings I get up at 5:20 for an AM workout.

My last panel showed that my morning cortisol was starting to dip again—due mainly to stress—so I’m working on some lifestyle changes so we can get those levels back up, and I can feel energetic from the get-go again. (I actually had noticed that I was feeling more tired in the mornings relative to what I usually felt, so this was the first thing that I brought up with my doctor at our last appointment. It’s crazy how aware you become of things when you start paying attention!)

Regular Cycles

I’ve always had regular cycles, so this wasn’t a change for me, but rather something that has stayed consistent. There’s no way to tell if I hadn’t been doing bio-identicals what would have changed or not changed with my cycle.

There have been maybe three months over the course of five years where it’s been early or late, but it always readjusts on the next cycle and goes back to clockwork.

Easy to Build Muscle

Again, this is one of those things where it’s hard to say if this treatment has directly helped, because I have no data in the absence of it. That being said, I’ve started to implement more weight and body-weight training over the past three years and have noticed that it’s easy for me to build muscle.

Science shows that improperly balanced muscles can hinder muscle growth, so this is one more reason I’ll likely continue with this for the near future.

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I’m looking to track down a doctor for an interview on this; would that interest you? Comment below and let me know any questions you might have!

In the meantime, thanks for reading!