Dr. Carrie Jones explains how chronic stress hormones shut down sex hormone production. High cortisol pushes your body into fight-or-flight mode, suppressing estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone, which worsens PMS, irregular periods, and fertility problems. The damage spreads to blood sugar, insulin, and thyroid function too.
When cortisol is chronically high, reproduction is not the priority. And even though a lot of women at this age are not looking for reproduction, the body doesn't know any better. And so it's like, why would I make estrogen? Why would I make progesterone? Why would I make testosterone? Right now, you need to fight the tiger, and that's the priority. So we get this pivot in high cortisol states of, oh, we're not going to make those sex hormones right now. We're going to focus on the stress state that's happening. And so women will say, my PMS is worse, my periods are irregular, my perimenopause symptoms are bad, my periods are heavy. You know, they suddenly get all these things or they're trying to get pregnant. They'll be like, I'm really struggling to get pregnant. I bet it's age. I'm like, I don't know if it's age or if it's the fact that your body's focused on this chronic high cortisol state. And not only sex hormones. High cortisol can affect, as I said, blood sugar and insulin and thyroid, and the list goes on.
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