PMS/PMDD
Severe PMS and PMDD (premenstrual dysphoric disorder) are often dismissed as something to simply manage, when they're usually a sign of an underlying hormonal or nutritional pattern worth investigating. Oestrogen and progesterone balance, blood sugar regulation, and nutrient status, particularly magnesium, B6 and omega-3s, all play a genuine role in the severity of premenstrual symptoms.
Gut health and liver function are a significant, often overlooked, part of this picture. Oestrogen is broken down by the liver and then cleared from the body via the gut, and both steps need to work well for hormone levels to stay properly balanced across your cycle. A sluggish detoxification pathway or an imbalanced gut microbiome can mean oestrogen is reabsorbed rather than cleared, contributing to the kind of hormonal excess that drives PMS and PMDD symptoms.
As a fertility nutritionist working with a functional medicine approach, I test hormone patterns across the full cycle rather than relying on symptoms alone, and build a nutrition and supplement plan that supports the luteal phase specifically, where PMS and PMDD symptoms concentrate, alongside gut health and liver detoxification pathways.
