How to Increase Progesterone Naturally
If you've ever felt the discomfort of PMS symptoms like cramps, bloating, mood swings, anxiety, or headaches, it's likely that you've encountered low progesterone, high estrogen, or both simultaneously.
But here’s the scoop: these symptoms aren't just random annoyances; they're signals from your body that something's amiss with your hormones. And one hormone that’s often at the center of hormone imbalances is low progesterone. Think of progesterone as your body's natural harmony keeper, influencing everything from fertility and healthy periods to weight regulation and feeling calm.
However, many women need to intentionally support progesterone levels, and that's where I come in. I specialize in decoding the language of hormones and uncovering natural strategies to maintain their balance.
Below, we'll delve into this balancing hormone, exploring signs of low progesterone and natural ways to increase progesterone.
What is progesterone and what does it do?
While estrogen typically takes the spotlight in conversations about balancing hormones, progesterone is often the secret to resolving the PMS symptoms and painful periods that leave women feeling so unwell.
Progesterone is most known for its role in conception and maintaining a healthy pregnancy, and while it’s essential to fertility, progesterone's influence extends far beyond reproduction. It has profound effects on various aspects of our health and well-being, from banishing PMS to boosting energy and metabolism. Now, let's take a closer look at the benefits of progesterone!
Maintains healthy menstrual cycles
Reduces anxiety and stress (it’s known as the “calming hormone”!)
Reduces PMS
Supports healthy periods
Lightens periods
Keeps estrogen levels in check
Improves metabolism / helps maintain a healthy weight
Boosts energy
Supports a strong libido
Maintains a healthy pregnancy
Supports clear skin and healthy hair
Builds bone and muscle
Improves cognitive function
Regulates the immune system
Reduces the risk of cancer
As you can see, having enough progesterone is a big deal! You need it to feel good in your body physically, mentally and emotionally. And it’s not just about how you feel now but your long term health as well.
How do you make progesterone?
The only way you can make progesterone is if you ovulate.
Why? Because during ovulation, a dominant ovarian follicle ruptures and releases a mature egg. That ruptured follicle then undergoes a transformation, becoming a temporary gland known as the corpus luteum. It is within this gland (and only this gland) that progesterone is produced.
However, ovulation alone does not guarantee optimal progesterone levels. Read on!
To ensure adequate progesterone production, you need a healthy corpus luteum, which will be reflected in the length of your luteal phase. The luteal phase, named after the corpus luteum, is the time between ovulation and the first day of your period. When the corpus luteum produces healthy levels of progesterone, the luteal phase lasts between 11 and 16 days — our target range!
The length of the luteal phase provides valuable insight into progesterone levels because once progesterone falls, it triggers your uterine lining to shed, which is when your period comes. So if you have a short luteal phase, you know you’re not making enough progesterone.
If there is low progesterone or estrogen dominance, the luteal phase is when PMS shows up, so it can be the hardest part of a women’s cycle.
How do you know if you’re ovulating?
Confirming ovulation can be done at home!
You do so by tracking your basal body temperature (BBT). When you observe a rise in temperature of 0.5° Fahrenheit (0.3 Celsius) for at least three consecutive days, then ovulation is confirmed. The day that you ovulated will be the start of that rise.
With a healthy corpus luteum, your temperature will stay elevated for 11 to 16 days between ovulation and the start of your period.
If you do not see a rise in temperature then you did not ovulate. This is called an anovulatory cycle. When this happens, you don’t make any progesterone.
What causes low progesterone?
An anovulatory cycle, which results in a cycle where no progesterone is made.
A short luteal phase (less than 11 days) which will result in a cycle where inadequate levels of progesterone is made.
The top two contributors to anovulatory cycles and short luteal phases is poor diet and elevated stress, with diet being #1.
What are the signs of low progesterone?
These are the most common signs and symptoms of low progesterone:
PMS / PMDD
Anxiety, irritability and/or mood swings
Heavy periods
Painful periods (menstrual cramps or headaches)
Bloating / water retention
Swollen / tender breasts
Insomnia or sleep issues
Fatigue
Spotting or premenstrual bleeding
Short cycles or irregular cycles
Missed period(s)
Low libido
Difficulty getting pregnant or staying pregnant
Weight gain or difficulty losing weight
How does hormonal birth control affect progesterone?
The pill, vaginal ring, and injection all prevent ovulation, thereby disrupting the body’s natural ability to produce progesterone.
So if you're using any of these forms of birth control, your body won't be able to produce progesterone. That’s a big deal!
Now with hormonal IUDs, these don’t completely suppress ovulation but they do contribute to hormone imbalances and can have other side effects like hair loss, acne, anxiety and weight gain.
It's also important to note that synthetic progesterone in birth control differs significantly from the progesterone naturally produced by your body and unfortunately doesn’t provide the same benefits. For instance, progestin (a synthetic progesterone) may increase anxiety, whereas the progesterone your body produces reduces anxiety.
If you're currently using birth control, I typically don't recommend sudden discontinuation…
When a client expresses a desire to come off birth control, I assist them in supporting their body beforehand to alleviate potential post-pill symptoms such as acne, hair loss, anxiety, and amenorrhea. If you're considering discontinuing birth control or simply want to explore this topic further, let's connect and discuss it.
Tips to Increase Progesterone Naturally
Now that you understand why progesterone is so important and how it can help alleviate many of the symptoms women experience (such as PMS, painful periods, weight gain and mood issues!), let’s delve into natural ways to increase progesterone.
— Eat Enough Calories —
A key cause of low progesterone is being under nourished, which can be due to not eating enough and / or not getting enough nutrients. Many of the women who come to work with me eat really beautiful healthy foods but they’re eating too little, skipping meals (hello fasting), and have an imbalance in their macronutrients and micronutrients, creating an undernourished body. This has a big impact because when you’re undernourished your body thinks there’s a famine. It doesn’t know you’re on a diet or fasting, it just knows there isn’t enough food / nutrients and from a biological standpoint, which isn’t a safe environment to bring a baby into the world. So the body wisely suppresses ovulation, which unfortunately results in no progesterone production.
What can also happen is that the body can be nourished enough to ovulate, but not nourished enough to form a healthy corpus luteum. The result is a corpus luteum that won’t be able to produce enough progesterone — so in this scenario you’re not so under nourished that you can’t ovulate, but you’re not nourished enough to make enough progesterone.
While I never have any of my clients count calories, know that most women need at least 2000 calories for a healthy menstrual cycle. Women have been told time and time again that they only need 1200 calories and this, combined with the idea that weight loss is about calories in calories out (this is false!) has contributed to many women significantly under eating.
— Increase Your Nutrient Levels —
Ovulation and the health of the corpus luteum relies on not only getting enough food but enough nutrients. Focus on increasing the nutrient density of your meals and incorporate foods rich in magnesium, zinc, selenium, vitamin D, vitamin B6 and vitamin C. While I do use supplements in my practice, I generally don’t recommend supplementing without the support of a practitioner. because you can cause more harm than good if you’re not supplementing properly.
– Balance Blood Sugar –
Blood sugar is so vitally important to health because it has a direct influence on your stress hormones, inflammation, metabolic function and reproductive hormones — which just about covers the main drivers of all body imbalances and chronic disease. But you know what the good news is? This also means balancing blood sugar is the secret to essentially all health goals, from hormone balance and reliving anxiety to weight loss.
One of the ways blood sugar influences hormones is by it’s impact on stress hormones. If blood sugar is dysregulated this drives stress hormones up, and stress is key contributor to short luteal phases and anovulatory cycles. Blood sugar highs and lows also result in elevated inflammatory cytokines, which disrupts your body’s ability to properly use hormones.
Spotting blood sugar issues: Now if you think blood sugar is just for unhealthy folk, think again bebe. One in three (!!) are pre-diabetic and I was prediabetic as a mostly raw vegan fitness instructor! If you’ve ever experienced that hangry feeling, you’re familiar with low blood sugar, and if you’ve ever wanted to take a siesta after a meal, you’re familiar with high blood sugar. Most people experience swings between the two.
What’s one thing you can do today for blood sugar? Incorporate protein, healthy fats and fiber at each meal.
Want to learn how to balance blood sugar?
Join my course BEGIN which teaches you everything you need to know about eating balanced meals and supporting blood sugar. And no, it’s not eating low glycemic foods or avoiding carbohydrates!
– Reduce Stress –
Stress is a key driver of low progesterone because it shortens the luteal phase and can stop ovulation entirely. This is why after a particularly stressful period of time, many women experience more anxiety and PMS during their luteal phase or their period comes early or late.
Mindfulness practices like yoga, meditation, breath work and taking a walk while being present, all help reduce stress and help you become more resilient to stress. Reducing physical stress is also important, such as eating enough, keeping blood sugar balanced, healing gut issues and getting enough sleep.
– Address Inflammation –
Inflammation disrupts how hormones are used in the body, making cells less sensitive to progesterone and thyroid hormones, while making them more sensitive to estrogen and testosterone. This can result in symptoms of low progesterone, estrogen dominance, a slow metabolism (low thyroid hormones) and androgen excess (high testosterone). Basically, inflammation makes a mess of hormones!
To reduce inflammation address underly inflammatory issues such as gluten sensitivity, dairy sensitivity, leaky gut, dysregulated blood sugar, insulin resistance and hypothyroidism.
– Address Thyroid Issues (Slow Metabolism) –
Your metabolic pace is set by your thyroid, a little butterfly gland a the base of your throat. If metabolism is slow, it leads to low progesterone because the thyroid hormone triiodothyronine (T3) is needed by the ovaries to release progesterone. On the flip side, progesterone stimulates the thyroid and if progesterone is low, it will slow down your metabolic rate. This can put you in a loop of low progesterone and a slow metabolism.
Early signs of low thyroid function are low energy, difficulty concentration / brain fog, weight gain or difficulty losing weight, heavy periods, dry skin, brittle hair, feeling cold, low mood and hard stools or constipation.
Thyroid function relies on proper nourishment and the health of various systems in the body, including the detoxification system, nervous system, and digestive system. I personally dealt with hypothyroidism (an underactive thyroid) years ago and managed to reverse it without medication—a possibility conventional doctors often overlook. Through dietary adjustments and stress reduction techniques, I was able to increase my metabolism and thyroid function.
If you're experiencing similar symptoms, seek out a practitioner who can support you. Testing is important, but also tricky because you can have perfect labs and still have all the symptoms of hypothyroidism if your body isn’t properly using the thyroid hormones. One possible reason for this is elevated inflammation, which can impair your cells' ability to utilize thyroid hormones.
Ready to reclaim your health and balance your hormones?
As a nutritionist and wellness coach specializing in hormone balance, I'm here to support you on your journey. Schedule a free consultation today and take the first step towards a happier, more balanced you!