Stress + Your Menstrual Cycle

When stress feels like an obstacle to your hormonal health, spending time outdoors offers a truly stress-free solution. Just don’t forget to return the gift.

Learning that stress affects your menstrual cycle is no walk in the park. It can feel understandably frustrating when we as women and menstruators have very legitimate reasons to be stressed. But the good news is that a walk in the park can actually help–and it’s maybe the only stress-reducing solution we’ve found that doesn’t make us more stressed. As you spend time outdoors, you’ll also discover how to support our planet’s health to reciprocate the well-being nature provides to you.

The sources of our stress

Being a human on earth has always been a challenge, but trying to navigate a climate crisis and systems that don’t provide safety or care for all of us hasn’t made life easier. As women and menstruators, we often experience additional stressors our male-bodied counterparts don’t, like pay inequity, greater caregiving responsibilities, and not having our reproductive rights–and bodily autonomy–guaranteed. 

There’s a biological difference too: menstruators are more sensitive to stressors during their luteal phase. So even if outside stressors remain the same, it doesn’t take as much to trigger the release of cortisol and other stress hormones during that phase of your menstrual cycle.¹

The Stress + Menstrual Cycle Connection

If you’ve ever had an atypical period after an intense experience of stress, you already know that your menstrual cycle can be affected by stress.

But did you know this is because your stress hormones and sex hormones are interdependent? It’s true, and it’s evidence of our bodies’ innate intelligence. 

Our bodies know how much of a hormone to make–and when to make it–based on feedback loops in the body. When we’re under stress, our bodies increase the production of the stress hormone cortisol. This higher level of cortisol interrupts the body’s hormonal feedback loops that regulate ovulation.² 

In times of true danger, this is crucial: cortisol ramps up to help the body respond to the threat and the ovulatory cycle takes a backseat as the body gets the memo that it’s not an ideal time for pregnancy.

But when we experience chronic stress, routinely high levels of cortisol can lead to menstrual cycle difficulties that worsen over time. While this can look like skipped or irregular periods, spotting or heavier bleeds, the root cause is skipped or irregular ovulation. And no ovulation means the body can’t produce the necessary levels of sex hormones, like estrogen and progesterone, that are critical for a healthy menstrual cycle and our overall health.

This is why addressing stress is one of the most important steps you can take to support your menstrual cycle.

Get outside for your hormonal health

While there are lots of ways to reduce stress, we’ve found going outside to be the easiest, most pleasurable and *free* way to reduce stress and ultimately support your menstrual cycle.

Nature–as you’ve likely experienced–has known stress-reducing effects. In a 2019 study, researchers found that spending time in nature resulted in a significant drop in levels of the stress hormone cortisol. And that’s just one of the many physical and mental health benefits of time in nature, which also include improved mood, increased immunity, greater problem-solving abilities, and sense of belonging.

When you don’t feel you can set down what’s causing your stress or don’t even remember what not being stressed feels like, go outside. Walk in a park. Put your hands and feet in dirt. Touch a tree. Watch the ocean waves. Nap in the grass. And if you have to, bring your source of stress with you, whether that’s work phone calls or a kid who won’t sleep. (Just stay there for at least 20-30 minutes or aim for 2 hours total each week for maximum benefit.)

Returning the gift

Just like the interdependence between your sex and stress hormones, your well-being is interdependent with our planet’s well-being.

When we spend more time in nature, we have the opportunity to develop a greater relationship with the natural world around us and learn how to support its health as it supports ours.

In her book Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer writes, “One of our responsibilities as human people is to find ways to enter into reciprocity with the more-than-human world. We can do it through gratitude, through ceremony, through land stewardship, science, art, and in everyday acts of practical reverence.” 

So as you spend more time outside to receive the healing benefits of nature, you might take with you this question: what could you do to reciprocate the gift? What could you do to “sustain the ones who sustain us”, as Kimmerer describes the more-than-human world? 

There’s no single answer. But there is a mutually regenerative cycle that is set in motion when we partner with nature for our menstrual cycle health and reciprocate the care we receive.

And if you’re not sure how to answer this question, a great place to start is to simply ask the natural world what it needs the next time you’re outside. 

Notes:

¹ See Chapter 3 of Alisa Vitti’s book, In the Flo.

² Nicole Jardim walks you through these hormonal feedback loops in her excellent post, How Stress Affects Your Menstrual Cycle.

Photo Credit: Maria Orlova

Disclaimers:

The above article contains affiliate links. If you purchase one of the books we link to, Sister Seasons may receive a commission at no extra cost to you. We appreciate your support!

This post is intended for educational and entertainment purposes only. None of the information provided should be construed as medical advice. If you have concerns related to your menstrual cycle, please consult a licensed health care provider.