What are my periods telling me?
Painful, heavy, absent or unpredictable periods aren’t normal. They’re your body telling you something deeper than just ‘hormonal imbalance’. Find out your pattern below.
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Sound familiar?
- You’ve cancelled things because of your period and then felt upset and angry about it
- Painkillers every four hours is just part of the week now
- The bloating starts a week out and none of your clothes feel like yours any more
- You’re crying at things you don’t normally and your fuse is extra short
- You’ve had the bloods, the scan, and everything “looks fine”, or you’ve been given a label, some pills and sent on your way with no real explanation
- You’ve been prescribed an oral contraceptive or a hormone to stop your symptoms, but nobody told you why you have them in the first place
- You’ve decided this is how you’re built and there is nothing you can do about it
Understand what's driving your specific symptom
Pick the one that sounds most like you. Every answer gets read three ways.
What's actually happening What you've been told about themWhy are my periods so painful?
A cramp is your uterus contracting hard and not letting go. Whether anything structural is behind it is a separate question, and it's the first one worth answering.
happens anyway
needs magnesium, zinc, vitamin D
The squeeze is free. Letting go is the part that costs you, and it is the part that fails first.
Medically
The first question is whether this is primary pain, driven by prostaglandins with nothing structural behind it, or secondary to endometriosis, adenomyosis or fibroids. Pain that starts days before bleeding, pain with sex, or pain that keeps worsening points to secondary and deserves a scan. Even if something does show up on a scan, you may need medical assistance for the short term, and it is always important to look at what is driving the diagnosis. That is where you look functionally.
Functionally
Look inside your cell. Common patterns behind it are high calcium to magnesium, low zinc and high copper contributing to high oestrogen that feeds heavy bleeding and inflammation, and low vitamin D and omega-3 allowing prostaglandins to run wild. In some cases heavy metals create stress on the body and are stored in your organs.
Energetically
Pain that demands you stop. In a body trained to push through, it often escalates until it can't be ignored. It isn't punishing you. It may be asking for attention, or rest, or permission to feel something.
Underneath all three, the same thing. A body that is talking to you. A period is natural every month. When there are symptoms affecting your life, you need to stop and listen.
Why are my periods so heavy?
Heavy bleeding is usually oestrogen building a thick lining with too little progesterone to balance it. Cycles that don’t ovulate make no progesterone at all. But don’t stop there, look the level deeper than hormones.
Nobody notices this one starting. It just gets slightly worse every year.
Medically
A scan looks for fibroids, adenomyosis and polyps. Thyroid gets checked too, because both an underactive and an overactive thyroid cause heavy bleeding. In younger women a bleeding disorder like von Willebrand is worth ruling out. Medication can be useful when the blood loss is life threatening and too demanding on your iron levels. Don’t stop there. Use medication to stop the bleeding, then investigate what is causing it. It is not just normal, and it does not always require a hysterectomy.
Functionally
Losing iron every month is one problem. Using it is another. Women on repeat infusions whose ferritin keeps falling often have a copper and zinc imbalance, so the iron goes in and never gets used. And what is underneath the heavy periods to begin with? What drives heaviness is oestrogen, but what drives that? Chronic stress shifts your hormones into this pattern. Mineral imbalances like zinc and manganese change how iron, progesterone and oestrogen behave. Thyroid function slows, which slows the liver, and oestrogen builds. To find your pattern, you need to look inside your cells.
Energetically
The body shedding what it couldn't hold. Heavy cycles often turn up in women who have been pouring out for years with little coming back in. Iron running low is the more literal version of the same thing.
Every one of those comes back to resources. Building a lining, clearing the hormones that built it, replacing what you lose. Heavy bleeding is what happens when the account is overdrawn.
Why does my mood crash before my period?
You aren't meant to feel the same across the month. The second half of your cycle is built for threat detection, not accommodation, and it's when you have the least margin.
Oestrogen is highest, and the body’s main focus is getting ready to potentially fall pregnant.
Progesterone is higher, and everything shifts to protect the safety and security of a potential mum and pregnancy. Even if you are not pregnant.
Those hormonal changes move your mood. When it is severe, that is a sign of something else: inside the body, a cellular or hormonal imbalance, or outside it, a life that does not feel safe. Listen to the whispers of your body.
Medically
Severe premenstrual mood change has a name, PMDD, and it's a real diagnosis. It's confirmed by tracking symptoms across two cycles, not by a single blood test. If your lows ever turn into thoughts of harming yourself, that needs help now, not next cycle. In Australia, Lifeline is 13 11 14, any hour. That help is mental support and biological support both. Some people find help with antidepressants or hormones. Consider speaking with your doctor. Then, when you have space, look at your functional and energetic health below.
Functionally
It isn't simply low progesterone. In PMDD the brain responds abnormally to allopregnanolone, progesterone's calming metabolite, which is why some women feel worse on progesterone rather than better. Insulin sensitivity also drops that week, so blood sugar swings hit harder.
Energetically
The luteal phase often reveals what the follicular phase suppressed. Three weeks of being fine can be three weeks of accommodating, and the week you fall apart can be the week the truth gets through. Listen to the wisdom that comes through at every stage of your cycle. The luteal phase isn't for snap decisions, it's for the wisdom that lands, often when your bleed comes. Pay attention to the pattern across your months, not one week of it.
The week itself isn't the problem. It's the week your reserves get tested, and what surfaces is whatever your cells were already short of.
Why am I bloated and exhausted before my period?
There are two kinds, and they are not the same problem. One arrives with your cycle. One never leaves.
Low stomach acid. Food not being broken down. Chronic stress pulling blood away from digestion. This one is not your hormones, and it does not settle on its own.
Progesterone relaxes the gut and slows everything down, and the uterus grows a little. Normal, to a point. Not normal when it takes a fortnight off you every month.
Which one you have changes where to look. All month is a digestion question. Only the second half is a hormone question.
Medically
Bloating that comes and goes with your cycle is usually hormonal. Bloating that is persistent and doesn't shift needs proper investigation, and in any woman over 40 that includes ruling out ovarian causes. It is one of the only symptoms ovarian cancer gives. If you are noticing blood in your stool, pain during sex, or a feeling of fullness in your lower abdomen that doesn't go away, see your medical doctor. Regardless of your age.
Functionally
Slowed motility plus fermentation is the usual picture: bacterial overgrowth, dysbiosis, or too little stomach acid. The exhaustion is real work too. Building a lining and then losing blood both cost iron and energy.
Energetically
The gut holds what hasn't been digested, literally and otherwise. Chronic low-grade stress shunts blood away from digestion, and a body that never quite feels safe never fully lets go.
Both of those are a cost. Your body is doing expensive work on limited supply, and telling you so in the two ways it has.
Why is my period different every month?
Your cycle is one of the first things your body gives up when it's under pressure, so it shifts early, often before you notice anything else.
Your cycle is among the first things to go, not because it is broken, but because it is the most expensive optional thing you do.
Medically
Irregular cycles can point to PCOS, thyroid problems, high prolactin, hypothalamic amenorrhoea or perimenopause. A full thyroid panel matters here, not just TSH. Missing periods for three months or more needs looking at properly.
Functionally
Three things usually explain it: blood sugar, the stress axis and thyroid. Chronic cortisol quietly suppresses the signal that triggers ovulation, and that is the most missed cause in women who look like they're coping.
Energetically
Your body isn't broken. It's choosing survival over reproduction, which is wisdom rather than malfunction. The question worth sitting with is what it thinks it's protecting you from.
A cycle is your body's opinion on whether it can afford one. When it moves around, it's telling you the resources aren't there yet.
Why are my blood tests normal when my periods aren't?
Normal and well are two different questions, and a standard panel only answers the first one.
you are here, and officially fine
Normal range is a wide band drawn around the whole population. The bottom of it is still normal. Normal means not sick. It does not mean well.
Medically
Normal on a blood test means you don't need medication or surgery. It says nothing about what your symptoms are telling you. You can support yourself now, before your body needs either.
Functionally
Normal range is a wide band drawn around the whole population, and the bottom of it is still normal. A TSH of 3.2 alongside symptoms is not fine. Most panels also run TSH alone, which misses a great deal.
Energetically
Being told you're fine when you don't feel fine teaches you to stop trusting your own read. That cost is real and nobody counts it.
That's the space between. Tests look for damage, and they are retrospective. Your symptoms are telling you what works for your body and what doesn't. They are wisdom. Different questions, different answers.
Are painful periods genetic?
Family history tells you where to look. It doesn't tell you it can't change.
One of these five is genetic. The other four are yours, and all four can change.
Medically
Endometriosis and fibroids do cluster in families, and that history tells your doctor where to look first. It's a reason to investigate properly, not a verdict.
Functionally
You also inherited her kitchen, her stress, her mineral status and her gut bacteria. Shared conditions produce shared symptoms without a single gene doing the work.
Energetically
And you inherited what she believed about periods. “We just get bad ones in this family” gets passed down as reliably as anything in the DNA.
What gets inherited is a starting point, not an ending. Your body still needs what it needs, and that part is yours to give it.
Does the pill fix period problems?
The pill can absolutely stop the pain, and for some women it may be the right call. But it works by switching the cycle off. It doesn't fix the cause.
One of these moves. The other one waits.
Medically
It's a real medical tool and it helps a lot of women. The issue isn't the pill. It's how rarely anyone investigates first, or supports her properly before, during and after.
Functionally
The conversation between brain and ovaries takes years of natural cycling to mature, and the pill pauses it. It also depletes B6, B12, folate, magnesium, zinc and CoQ10, and those don't refill on their own.
Energetically
Turning the volume down on a body that's asking for something is a real decision. Fine made on purpose. Much less fine made for you at fifteen, for symptoms nobody ever looked into.
Whatever your cells were short of before is still short after. The pill quiets the message. It doesn't restock the shelf.
Nobody has looked inside your cells
Your symptoms are your cells telling you they're short of something.
A blood test reads what's travelling around in your blood. That's what it's built for and it does it well. It was never designed to look inside the cell, which is where your body actually builds hormones, makes energy and settles inflammation.
So the thing driving your symptoms can be sitting inside your cells while every test you've had comes back clean. Nothing was missed. Nobody looked there, because that isn't what those tests do.
A hair test reads what actually made it inside the cell, across three months. That's where your pattern is.
What is circulating in your blood
This morning, one moment
Finding disease, and it is very good at it
Yes. That is its job.
What’s inside your cells
The last three months, the whole season
Finding what is running short before it has a name
No. It is a screening tool, not a diagnostic test.
They answer different questions. One is not better than the other, and you want both.
And the pattern is the point. Not another list of things it might be. The specific combination that's yours, because that's the bit that tells you what to actually do.
A hair test is a screening tool, not a diagnostic test. It doesn't diagnose endometriosis, adenomyosis or PCOS, and it doesn't replace your doctor. It shows the layer nobody has looked at. Female Fundamentals practitioners are trained to listen to your body differently, by looking at the pattern underneath your symptoms.
Get started →A hair tissue mineral analysis plus two 1:1 appointments with a Female Fundamentals practitioner. Details on the next page.
Dr Anthea Todd
Dr. Anthea Todd, D.C. founded Female Fundamentals™ after observing her female patients’ struggles in the complex healthcare system. Her mission is to simplify and add fun to female healthcare.
With a background in chiropractic, a dual master’s in women’s health medicine and reproductive medicine, and expertise in functional medicine, functional neurology, cardiometabolic health, gastrointestinal health, immune-hormonal health, bioenergetics, and neuro-emotional technique, she’s reshaping women’s health.
Her goal is to empower women and professionals to see their bodies as the solution, not the problem, emphasising that the magic we seek is within. Author of the best-selling What’s My Body Telling Me?
Most approaches make you pick a lane. Medical, or functional, or energetic. Female Fundamentals is the first to read all three together. Helping you use the body, not bias, to listen to what your symptoms are telling you that you need.
Other Fundamentals
Your body isn't the problem
When you have reached a medical dead end, this is where you come. A practitioner who knows where to look.
Get started →A hair tissue mineral analysis plus two 1:1 appointments with a Female Fundamentals practitioner. Details on the next page.
Written by Dr Anthea Todd, author of What's My Body Telling Me?
Educational information only. It does not diagnose, treat or cure any condition, and it does not replace advice from your doctor.