04/09/2026
I’ve had so many conversations about this lately - with clients, friends, and in my DMs - that I knew I needed to put everything I’ve been thinking into one place.
This is a bit of a deep dive, so save it if you need to come back to it.
This is genuinely just a small snapshot from the last few weeks. If you’ve sent me something similar, this post is for you (and you’re clearly not alone)
I don’t think this is a coincidence, and I don’t think it’s “just genetics” either. Here’s what I think is actually going on.
1 - Hormone complexity. Our bodies run on a ~28 day hormonal pattern that male bodies simply don’t have to navigate.
These hormones influence our energy, immunity, metabolism, insulin, inflammation, mood, recovery, sleep, gut health and more.
We’ve been taught to ignore the small signs that our hormones are out of balance - PMS, painful periods, irregular periods, absent periods - we’re told they’re just part of being a woman.
When we ignore these quieter signals for a long duration, they don’t just go away - they come back louder, later.
2 - Research bias. So much of the health advice we’ve inherited - nutrition guidelines, supplement dosing, even fitness programming - was built on data that didn’t include us at all.
We’re still catching up, and it shows.
3 - Long term birth control pill use. If you came off the pill in your late 20s or 30s and suddenly got a diagnosis that felt like it came out of nowhere, I’d bet it probably didn’t. It was likely there the whole time, just quietly masked for years.
4 - Higher estrogen levels, which are protective but also sensitive. Estrogen and the gut are strongly linked.
This is a big part of why I talk about gut health so much, even in conversations that start out being about hormones.
They’re way more connected than most people realize, and you can’t really fix one without the other.
5 - Cysts. Endo. Fibroids. PCOS.
The uterus and ovaries are in constant hormonal conversation with the brain, gut, thyroid, and metabolism - so they’re often the first place the body shows something else is off.
6 - Toxin exposure. Genuinely go check your bathroom shelf when you’re done reading this, and look at the ingredient list of the products you use every day.
7 - Toxin storage. We store toxins in our fat cells. Women naturally have more fat cells than men.
8 - Mental load and diet culture. Women are expected to do a lot, all while society has always screamed at us to look a certain way, age gracefully, eat less, exercise more, stay lean.
Your body doesn’t know the difference between real stress and perceived stress, so naturally these expectations increase our cortisol levels.
