Cold plunges won't mess with your hormones directly, but excessive stress from them can disrupt your cycle. During your follicular phase, rising estrogen gives you better heat tolerance. In your luteal phase, dial back the intensity to avoid extra stress on your body.
How would you recommend our women approach cold exposure to gain the best benefits and still honor their cycles and hormones?
It's actually a myth that cold exposure directly influences our hormonal balance and it can disrupt our menstrual cycle. The truth is, is actually that excessive stress can disrupt the menstrual cycle. And excessive stress means as well excessive cold exposure. So if some woman would do everyday cold exposure and then will notice something about the menstrual cycle, they are doing something that that is excessively. What is important to understand is our menstrual cycle and to understand as well where they are and where to do a little bit more and where to do a little bit less. We can divide the menstrual cycle roughly in 2 phases, that is the follicular phase and the luteal phase. In the follicular phase, the hormone estrogen rises, rises, rises, and estrogen gives us a great mood and great energy feeling. So in that sense, we can endure a bit more cold exposure. What estrogen also does is it works on our So it dissipates heat faster. So we can handle the cold better in this space.
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