In the latest episode of our IMAGE The Check-in podcast, nutritional therapists and co-founders of Gigi Supplements, Lisa Hughes and Jenny Hare, break down the science behind stress, sleep, and hormones,  and why tuning into our cycles can radically change how we feel, perform, and recover each month.

“Stress is a huge component of your menstrual cycle, and it’s massively under-acknowledged just how much stress really impacts the menstrual cycle,” explains Jenny. From cycle length and ovulation to digestion and energy, stress disrupts more than we realise.

How stress impacts your cycle

Many women might not realise that their menstrual cycle isn’t just four to five days of bleeding each month. “[I often ask] ‘How long is your menstrual cycle?’ And they say, ‘Oh, it’s five days.’ I say, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s your period. So, how long is it from day one of your period to when your next period starts? That’s the menstrual cycle’,” says Jenny. “There is this kind of understanding for the first time, that there might be more here that’s worth tracking.”

Tracking your cycle for even a couple of months can help you spot how stress is affecting you. “It changes every month. It’s not going to be the same, even for me, who has a 28-day cycle. And there’s so many things that influence that. Stress is a huge component,” she adds.

That stress isn’t just about obvious trauma. Lisa highlights how modern women often live in a chronic state of stress, sometimes without realising it. “Stress nowadays comes in so many different shapes and sizes… that email that comes through[after hours], or it’s rushing to get back home or into work. It’s the under-eating, the over-exercising. And I fell into that trap.”

Even healthy habits can backfire. “Intermittent fasting really, really peaked when I was doing a clinic. And I was looking at all of this amazing research on how it is extremely beneficial for the body, and it is really good for blood sugar management and all of these things. I was like, ‘Oh, my god, this is absolutely amazing.’ On the other hand, my menstrual cycle was so irregular. So my body was literally in stress. As Jenny mentioned, my digestive system wasn’t working well because, only when I clocked it, did I realise all this research had been done on men, so, of course, it wasn’t translating into my body the way it was for men. And once, I stopped that and completely changed the way I looked at it. It was night and day. Within one month, my period returned to normal. I was going from like, 45-plus day cycles, thinking I had PCOS, just trying to figure out what was going on,” she continued.

Stress doesn’t always have an immediate effect, either. Lisa explains that the impact of a stressful event might not show up in your cycle until months later. “Our eggs go through a maturation cycle, which is 90 days… so essentially, what we’re doing now we’re going to see in three months’ time in our menstrual cycle.”