Preparing For The 3 'Spring Seasons' of Women's Health

In this blog, we are going to cover how you can best prepare yourself—and your daughters—for these important times of hormonal change and growth.

Women's Hormonal Journey

Hormones can be confusing—especially female hormones!

Male's hormones operate on a 24-hour cycle and are essentially the same each and every day. But for menstruating females, hormones operate on a (roughly) 28-day cycle and essentially change each of the 4 weeks of you cycle. Of course, this also changes as a prepubescent, pregnant and menopausal women too! 

To help visualise this, here is the full hormone picture—a snapshot of your unique dance of key sex hormones throughout key life stages:

Preparation can be incredibly helpful to make easing into these times of transitions more comfortable. Here's what you need to know moving into each of our Spring seasons:

Preparing for Puberty

Traditionally, puberty would occur at around age 14 or 15, when a girl would get her first menses. Today we are seeing girls as young as 9 have their first period.

On top of this, more and more young women are experiencing painful or incredibly heavy periods. All of these issues are a signal of a significant hormone imbalance known as oestrogen dominance. 

How to Prepare Your Daughters For Puberty 

The approach to help restore hormone balance to our daughters is two-tiered:

1. Limiting exposure to environmental toxins

Environmental toxins are hiding in a lot of places around our home. Many of them you might not even be aware of! Here's 10 easy swaps you can start making now.

Environmental toxins also includes pesticides on fruit and veggies. Organic can be a hard cost for many families,  so check out this handy Clean 15 and the Dirty Dozen Guide to help you make these choices.

2. Eat real, whole foods

Ultimately it can be next to impossible to make our kids to something if they’re determined not too.... but we can help make eating real food fun and delicious! 

Girls in particular come under enough pressure from the media to look and act a certain way, so rather than focusing on 'healthy' foods try we try to create delicious dinner options that are colourful and filled with veggies.

Here are some of our favourite recipes:

• Kimchi Pancakes
• Lettuce Cup Burgers with Veggie Chips Recipe
• Chocolate Omelette
• Amber's Gluten-Free Banana Bread Recipe

We have plenty more where these came from, check out the BePure Recipes for more inspiration.

Preparing for Pregnancy

When it comes to fertility and conception, having a healthy ovulatory cycle means your body can produce adequate amounts of progesterone and oestrogen—both are essential for a healthy conception. 

As it takes an egg 100 days to mature before it is released, ideally we need 3 - 12 months to properly nourish our bodies prior to conceiving.

How to Prepare For Pregnancy

If you are wanting to make babies now or in the future, nutrition is highly important as pregnancy requires a huge amount of your body's energy and depletes its resources, including vitamins and minerals. This goes for men and women! After all, it takes two to tango, and the health of both parents prior to, and at the moment of conception is key.

There are key vitamins and minerals that can support your body into balance and try making our Fertility Buckwheat Crepes with Organic Eggs and Salmon Recipe 

BePure Mum's One also helps support you in the lead up to pregnancy.

If you have painful, very heavy periods or they are very irregular, testing your hormones can be a quick way to find out what's going on. Our sister company, Eve offers easy, at-home testing.

Preparing for Perimenopause

The transition to menopause is known as perimenopause.

This is the lead up during which your sex hormones start to slowly go 'offline' and period frequency will decrease. However, this isn't a linear line and many women will experience surges of oestrogen along the way. 

How to Prepare For Perimenopause

Perimenopause can be thought of as 'reverse puberty' and preparing for both can be similar.

Because of the extra toxic load from environmental toxins and processed or non-organic foods, plus the stressors of modern day life, it's important to give our bodies extra nutritional support to keep our hormones in balance.

The best way to do this is to nourish your hormonal systems with any missing nutrients, so your body can run with optimal health. We designed the BePure Perimenopause Support Pack especially for this reason.

BePure CycleCalm helps support natural progesterone levels (our calming hormone) to counterbalance oestrogen fluctuations and reducing oestrogen dominance for healthy, balanced hormones and an easier transition.

We know we are going to be popular for saying this but, alcohol can cause hot flashes so if this is you, reducing alcohol during this time will be helpful. Coffee can also cause feelings of anxiety, so if this is you, try switching your order to a matcha or turmeric latte instead. 

Have an ongoing hormone health concern?

If you feel you are experiencing serious concerns with hormone imbalance, menstrual, fertility or menopause issues, it could also be of interest to visit our BePure Clinic in Auckland Central for extra support. We also see clients nationwide and in Australia via Zoom.