For a lot of women, the hardest part of a painful period isn’t only the pain itself, it’s that you can’t trust your body enough to plan your life around it. You don’t know whether you’ll be able to go to work, see friends, eat a meal without reacting to it, or get a decent night’s sleep. And the days leading up to your period fill you with dread because you know you may soon be bedridden, in severe pain, and dealing with digestive symptoms that feel more like the flu than menstruation.
For one of my clients, this wasn’t hypothetical–this was her monthly reality.
At 28, she had never had a period she considered normal. She was dealing with chronic inflammation, severe digestive symptoms, dizziness, blood sugar fluctuations, insomnia, and a body that seemed to react to almost everything, and every month her period brought all of it to a head. She wanted to feel well enough to work, support herself financially, build a stable relationship, and eventually become a mother, but instead she felt increasingly helpless in her own body and unsure whether she could count on herself to function from one day to the next. After a year of working together, her cycles were more manageable than they had ever been in her life, she was working and paying her own bills, and she had started rebuilding her social life and her confidence in what her future could look like.
That change didn’t come from trying to force her hormones into balance, though. It came from understanding what her body had been struggling with and rebuilding the basics of nourishment, energy, and stress regulation first, and here is how we approached it.
Before: Years of Restrictive Eating and Increasingly Severe Symptoms
My client had spent much of her life trying to find the right way to eat and live. Influenced by spiritually driven dietary philosophies from her teens onward, she followed restrictive diets for most of her twenties, including several years as a vegan and a full year eating only fruit.
She was doing what she believed was best for her health, but over time, combined with an unsustainable pace of life and chronic stress, her symptoms kept multiplying. Her list of tolerable foods shrank as she developed intense digestive reactions to more and more of them, and she dealt with dizziness, blood sugar swings, poor sleep, and symptoms that resembled histamine intolerance and mast cell activation. She was also using cannabis and cacao to manage her stress, mood, and energy, which had become familiar ways of coping but made it harder for her to tell what was helping, what was making things worse, and what her body actually needed.
Her periods were where it all converged. In the days before bleeding and through the first several days of it, her symptoms were severe enough that she could barely function: the cramps were excruciating, her digestion got worse, and she felt as sick as if she were coming down with the flu.
She was so anxious about the pain that she sometimes took high doses of ibuprofen before her period even started, then kept taking it throughout, and afterward she had to manage the stomach irritation and digestive problems the ibuprofen added. By the time she recovered from one period she was already bracing for the next, and the symptoms weren’t limited to a few days a month, since she was dealing with them all month long and menstruation was simply when they were at their worst.
The effects reached well beyond her physical symptoms.
She wanted to become a mother someday, to contribute financially, and to build a future with her partner, but she didn’t feel confident she could hold down a job when her symptoms were so unpredictable. Her partner was supporting her financially while managing his own health challenges, their relationship was under strain, and questions about their future were harder to answer when she couldn’t picture handling everyday life, let alone parenthood. She was withdrawing from friends because it was hard to make plans without knowing how she’d feel, and over time she lost trust in herself, feeling like her body was working against her and worrying that she was simply too sensitive to ever feel better. By the time we started working together she had tried so many things that she wasn’t sure anything would help, and what she needed wasn’t another restrictive diet, another list of foods to avoid, or another strategy for surviving her period.
She needed a way to understand her body, nourish it more consistently, and begin building a life that wasn’t organized around her symptoms.
The Turning Point: We looked at the Whole Picture Instead of Just the Period
She’d followed my work for months before her partner offered to pay for coaching because he could see how much she was suffering.
She accepted, though she had real doubts: she worried she was too sensitive, that she’d already tried too many approaches, and that she wouldn’t be able to follow through on whatever we identified. I understood those concerns, because when you’ve felt unwell for years it’s hard to believe things can change, and when you’ve leaned on certain habits or substances to cope, it takes time to recognize your patterns and understand what your body is communicating.
I didn’t want to hand her another rigid protocol that left her feeling like she’d failed if she couldn’t follow it perfectly, so we started by looking at her nutritional history, symptoms, stressors, relationship with food, sleep, and overall capacity to recover, and we focused on replenishing her before asking anything more of her body.
Three Ways We Supported Her
First and foremost, we rebuilt her nourishment and looked at her mineral patterns.
One of our first tools was hair tissue mineral analysis (HTMA), which we interpreted alongside her health history and symptoms. HTMA gave us one additional lens for exploring her mineral patterns and forming questions about her nutritional status, but it isn’t a stand-alone diagnosis, and it was only one input into our initial approach. We also built a nutrition protocol aimed at increasing her intake of bioavailable carbohydrates and protein while reducing unnecessary digestive strain, with the goal of making nourishment more accessible and consistent instead of handing her a growing list of rules.
We paid close attention to how she responded to different foods: she noticed that relying on fruit as her main carbohydrate wasn’t working for her, while more substantial sources like white rice and potatoes felt more supportive, and we saw that high-histamine foods seemed to coincide with some of her worst symptoms, so we explored an individualized way of managing those while still prioritizing adequate nutrition.
The point wasn’t to create another permanent list of forbidden foods but to understand her individual responses without letting food fear dictate her whole life. We also looked at mineral replenishment in relation to her sleep, muscle cramps, and general sense of wellbeing, and one of the first important shifts was moving from asking what she needed to eliminate to asking what her body needed to receive. As her food intake became more consistent and her nutritional status was supported, she noticed improvements in her sleep, mood, and energy, which gave us something stable to build on.
We worked with her actual energy instead of just pushing through with more bandaids.
Another major part of our work involved cannabis and cacao, which she had used to manage her mood and energy swings. I don’t believe in demanding that someone give up a coping strategy just because it has become disruptive, since these habits usually develop for understandable reasons, and before asking anyone to change them I want to know what purpose they serve and what support might make a different choice possible. In her case, she wanted to stop using both. Once she did, she went through a hard adjustment period: without the stimulation and relief she’d gotten used to, her energy dropped sharply, she had less capacity to do things, and she became more aware of how depleted she really was. That phase was difficult, but it also let us see what was happening without those influences, and we kept focusing on nourishment, mineral replenishment, rest, and realistic expectations for her energy rather than pushing her back to the pace she’d kept before.
Over time her energy and periods improved, and she got better at recognizing how her choices, symptoms, and daily experiences connected, which rebuilt her sense of agency, because instead of feeling at the mercy of her body she was developing a clearer picture of how to care for herself.
We used new information to refine the plan. As we continued, we added information from her health history and lab testing, including hormone testing, a GI-MAP stool test, and a repeat HTMA, and we treated these as pieces of a broader picture rather than explanations for everything she was experiencing. Her mineral patterns had changed and our interpretation of her overall metabolic picture shifted with them, so we kept adapting her support to where she was at each stage. Just as important was her lived experience: whether she was sleeping better, having fewer energy crashes, tolerating a wider variety of foods, finding her periods more manageable, and doing more of what mattered to her. The goal was never to reach a particular lab pattern at the expense of how she actually felt, but to build a more sustainable foundation for everyday life.
Her recovery wasn’t linear, and we didn’t expect it to be. After years of restrictive eating, digestive distress, and severe menstrual symptoms her gut health still needed attention, but she was starting to feel that her body could change and that she could take part in that change without fighting herself constantly.
After: What Changed Over a Year of Working Together
The most meaningful changes weren’t limited to her menstrual cycle; they showed up in her relationship with food, her confidence, her ability to work, and the future she could begin to imagine.
Within the first several months of focusing on replenishment and daily habits, she was having easier periods than at any point since she started menstruating at 14, and over the year her cycles became more manageable until, by her own account, they had normalized. She still used some ibuprofen for pain, but far less than before, and she no longer experienced each period as the same overwhelming ordeal that had dominated her life for years, which meant less anticipatory anxiety, less disruption, and more room to take part in everyday life.
Her relationship with food changed too.
She had been afraid of reacting to meals and the list of foods she felt comfortable eating had become very short, but through our work she learned which foods she generally tolerated well and how her eating patterns affected her day to day. She came to see that nourishment wasn’t only about eating what she thought was spiritually or philosophically ideal but also about responding to her body’s practical needs, and she grew more confident making informed choices, observing her responses, and adjusting without treating every symptom as proof that her body was broken.
This didn’t mean every digestive symptom went away, and her gut health remained an ongoing focus, but she was no longer approaching food with the same sense of helplessness.
As her symptoms became more manageable, her social life reopened. Making plans had felt risky because she never knew whether she’d feel well enough to follow through, especially around her period, and that uncertainty had contributed to growing isolation. She began saying yes to more invitations and spending time with friends again, including around menstruation, because she felt more confident she could function throughout the month. That might sound minor if you’ve never had to plan your life around chronic symptoms, but when you’ve spent years feeling like your body decides what you’re allowed to do, being able to make plans and keep them is a significant change.
She also began supporting herself financially, which was one of the biggest practical shifts in her life!
As her energy and ability to function improved she started working consistently and eventually took on full-time work, and for the first time in years she was able to support herself: she paid for another round of coaching sessions with me herself, began paying her own rent, and took on more responsibility for managing her money. She had wanted that independence for a long time but couldn’t see how to get there with her symptoms, and her relationship felt more stable as she gained independence and was able to show up more consistently. The future she wanted, including marriage and motherhood, began to feel more within reach.
The deepest change was in how she began to see herself and her own agency.
For years she had interpreted her sensitivity and reactivity as evidence that she couldn’t cope with life and had come to expect her body to let her down, but as her health improved she began to understand that her symptoms weren’t a personal failing: there were patterns worth investigating, needs that deserved attention, and changes she could make to support herself. She grew more confident in her ability to notice what was happening, make decisions, and respond to her own needs.
She was still learning, her health wasn’t perfect, and there were still things we needed to work on, but she no longer felt powerless, which matters a great deal when you’re hoping to build a future that includes meaningful work, a supportive relationship, and possibly a child.
What This Story Taught Me About Supporting Women’s Health
When a woman has spent years dealing with painful periods, digestive problems, disrupted sleep, and unpredictable energy, it’s natural to focus on individual symptoms: stop the cramps, find the food trigger, fix the insomnia, get through the next cycle.
Those goals matter, but sometimes it helps to step back and ask what this woman needs in order to feel well enough to live the life she wants. For this client that meant looking beyond her period to her nutritional history, energy availability, relationship with food, stress patterns, and daily coping strategies. It meant recognizing that a highly sensitive person often needs a gentler, more individualized approach rather than a stricter set of rules, and respecting that habits like using cannabis or cacao can serve a purpose even when someone eventually decides they no longer want to rely on them.
The outcome of our work wasn’t simply a better menstrual cycle but more confidence, more independence, a renewed social life, and a stronger sense of possibility about her future.
I also want to be clear that painful or disabling periods are not something you should have to accept as normal. Severe menstrual pain and significant digestive symptoms deserve appropriate medical assessment, including evaluation for conditions such as endometriosis when indicated, and nutrition and stress support can complement medical care but can’t replace it. No two women’s bodies or circumstances are the same, and this client’s experience doesn’t guarantee the same outcome for anyone else.
What her story illustrates is the value of looking at the whole person instead of assuming one symptom tells us everything we need to know.
Could This Kind of Support Help You?
Maybe you recognize yourself in parts of her story and her symptoms.
You may have spent years trying different diets, supplements, or wellness practices and still not feel well, or your periods may leave you exhausted while your digestion stays unpredictable and your energy crashes make it hard to work and keep up relationships. You may be hoping to conceive someday, preparing for motherhood, or trying to replenish yourself after having a baby, or you may have gotten so used to pushing through symptoms that you’ve forgotten what it feels like to trust your own body.
You don’t need to arrive with everything figured out, with a perfect diet or an impeccable routine, or with the ability to follow every recommendation without difficulty, and you don’t need to prove you’re struggling enough to deserve support.
My approach combines individualized nutritional support, mineral assessment, broader lab interpretation where appropriate, and trauma-informed somatic and psycho-emotional coaching to explore how your physical health, stress, and everyday life relate to one another. Depending on your needs and goals, we can work together through one of my longer coaching containers, Nourishing the Mother or Nourishing Our Sanity, which include 12 sessions, ongoing WhatsApp support between sessions, HTMA analysis, individualized interpretation of relevant health information, and somatic embodiment and trauma-informed coaching when appropriate.
If you’d prefer a smaller first step, a single HTMA consultation lets us look at your mineral patterns, talk through your health history, and identify the questions worth investigating about your nutritional status and stress physiology, as a starting point for a broader conversation rather than a stand-alone diagnosis.
If her story resonates with you, I’d love for you to book a free chat with me, where we can talk about what you’re experiencing, what you’re hoping to change, and whether one of my coaching options feels like a good fit. You don’t have to organize your life around your symptoms indefinitely, and you don’t have to work out how to understand your body on your own.
