5 Simple Ways to Support Your Nervous System
I talk about the nervous system a lot.
Probably enough that if you’ve been around for a while, you’re like, “Yes Leah, we get it.” 😂
But there’s a reason I keep coming back to it.
Your nervous system is involved in so much of how you feel day to day. Stress, sleep, digestion, energy, mood, cravings, focus, and even how well you recover from workouts can all be influenced by whether your body feels relatively safe and regulated or like it’s constantly running from a tiger.
And unfortunately, modern life gives us a lot of tiny “tigers.”
Emails. Deadlines. Traffic. Notifications. Under-eating. Overtraining. Poor sleep. Financial stress. Relationship stress. Never actually sitting down.
You do not need to become a completely calm person who meditates for two hours a day (but that would be kind of fun).
But there are some things you can do to give your nervous system a little more support.
1. Breathe on Purpose
Yes, you are already breathing.
But there’s a difference between shallow, stressed breathing all day and intentionally slowing your breath down for a few minutes.
Research on slow, controlled breathing has found that it can increase heart rate variability, which is often used as a marker of parasympathetic, or “rest-and-digest,” activity. In other words, slowing your breathing can help shift your body away from constant high-alert mode and toward a calmer physiological state. PubMed
Try inhaling slowly through your nose, letting your belly expand, and making your exhale a little longer than your inhale.
Nothing fancy.
Just enough to remind your body that it can come down a notch.
2. Prioritize Quality Sleep
I know this is not groundbreaking advice. But sleep affects almost everything.
When you’re under-slept, your stress response tends to feel louder, cravings can increase, energy drops, and normal life can suddenly feel much harder than it should.
There’s actual physiology behind that. Sleep restriction has been associated with changes in cortisol, glucose tolerance, insulin sensitivity, and appetite-regulating hormones like ghrelin and leptin. In plain English: poor sleep can make you feel hungrier, more stressed, and less metabolically steady. PubMed
A consistent bedtime, dimming lights at night, getting off your phone earlier, and keeping your room cool and dark can all help.
And if you’re waking up constantly or never feeling rested, that’s worth paying attention to too.
3. Get Outside
There is something about going outside that can completely change how your body feels. Natural light is one of the strongest environmental cues for your circadian rhythm, and research consistently shows that the timing of light exposure matters. Brighter light earlier in the day can help shift sleep timing earlier, while brighter evening light can push sleep later. PubMed Central (PMC)
So yes, sitting outside with your coffee actually counts for something.
Walking can help too. A systematic review found that post-meal activity, including walking, can reduce post-meal glucose excursions compared with staying inactive. That’s one more reason a short walk can be useful for both blood sugar and how your body feels overall. PubMed Central (PMC)
You do not need to go on a three-hour hike.
Sit outside with your coffee. Walk around the block. Stand in the sun for a few minutes.
It still counts.
4. Nourish Your Body
Your nervous system does not exist separately from food.
If you’re skipping meals, running on caffeine, under-eating, or constantly riding a blood sugar roller coaster, that can feel like stress to the body too.
Balanced meals with enough protein, carbohydrates, healthy fats, and fiber can help create more stability.
And sometimes the most regulating thing you can do is simply eat lunch before you get to the point where you’re shaky, angry, and ready to fight someone over a snack.
5. Do More of What Feels Good
This sounds almost too obvious, but a lot of adults are really bad at it. We spend so much time doing what we have to do that we forget to do things that actually feel enjoyable.
Listen to music. Sit in the sun. Call someone you love. Cook something because you want to. Take a bath. Read. Dance in your kitchen. Go somewhere beautiful.
Pleasure, connection, and rest are not extras. They matter too.
The Goal Is Not to Never Feel Stressed
Stress is part of life. The goal is not to eliminate it completely.
It’s to help your body move out of stress more easily instead of living there all day, every day. Small things, done consistently, can make a real difference. Sometimes supporting your health looks like a supplement or a workout.
And sometimes it looks like eating lunch, taking a walk, getting some daylight, breathing slowly for a few minutes, and going to bed.
Signs Your Hormones Might Be Out of Balance
Sometimes your body is trying to get your attention long before you realize it.
Maybe your period suddenly feels harder than it used to. Maybe you’re exhausted all the time, craving sugar every afternoon, waking up in the middle of the night, or feeling like your mood changes completely depending on where you are in your cycle. And because so many of these things are common, women are often told they’re simply normal.
Common? Yes. Something you always have to ignore? Not necessarily.
Your hormones affect so much more than your period. They’re connected to energy, sleep, appetite, mood, digestion, metabolism, reproduction, and the way your body responds to stress. And one important thing to remember is that having one of these symptoms does not automatically mean you have a “hormone imbalance.” Symptoms can have a lot of different causes. But they can give you useful information about what may be happening in your body and whether something deserves a closer look.
So if you’ve been feeling “off,” here are a few things I would pay attention to.
Your Period Feels Miserable Every Month
Cramping, bloating, headaches, breast tenderness, irritability, feeling emotional, and wanting to cancel your entire life before your period are incredibly common. But common does not automatically mean optimal.
Estrogen and progesterone naturally rise and fall throughout the menstrual cycle, and those shifts can influence things like mood, appetite, sleep, and how you feel physically. Some fluctuation is completely normal. But if your symptoms are intense, getting worse, or regularly interfering with your ability to live your life, I wouldn’t just assume that suffering through it every month is your only option.
Your cycle gives you information about what is happening in your body. It is worth listening to it.
Your Energy Is All Over the Place
If you wake up tired, rely on caffeine to get through the morning, crash in the afternoon, and then somehow get a second wind at night, your body may be asking for more support.
Energy issues can be connected to blood sugar, sleep, stress, thyroid function, iron and other nutrient levels, how much you are eating, and a long list of other factors. Thyroid hormones in particular play an important role in regulating metabolism and energy production, which is one reason persistent fatigue deserves a bigger-picture look rather than simply blaming yourself for being tired.
This is one of the reasons I don’t love isolating one hormone and making it responsible for everything. Your body is a system, and energy is often one of the places we can see that most clearly.
You Have Intense Sugar or Carb Cravings
Wanting chocolate before your period does not mean you have no willpower.
Your appetite can genuinely shift throughout your cycle. Research has found that food and energy intake can be higher during the luteal phase, the time after ovulation and before your period, compared with earlier in the cycle. So if you suddenly feel hungrier the week before your period, that is not necessarily something you invented in your head.
Blood sugar can play into this too. If you regularly feel like you need sugar to function, particularly in the afternoon or evening, I would start by looking at what you ate earlier in the day. Did you have breakfast? Was there enough protein at lunch? Did you eat enough food overall? Were your meals actually satisfying?
Sometimes cravings are not a discipline problem. Sometimes your body is just hungry.
Your Sleep Is a Mess
Maybe you fall asleep easily but wake up at 2 or 3 a.m. Maybe you’re exhausted all day and then suddenly wide awake when it’s time for bed. Or maybe you technically sleep eight hours but still wake up feeling like you barely slept at all.
Sleep and hormones have a very close relationship, and it goes both ways. Hormonal changes can affect sleep, while inadequate or disrupted sleep can affect appetite regulation, insulin sensitivity, stress hormones, and how your body handles glucose the following day.
That means a few nights of crappy sleep don’t always stay contained to nighttime. They can show up the next day as stronger cravings, lower energy, more irritability, and feeling much less resilient to stress.
It becomes a loop pretty quickly.
Your Mood Feels Different Depending on the Week
One week you feel social, productive, confident, and ready to take on the world. The next week, everyone is annoying and you would like to be left alone with snacks.
Some variation throughout the menstrual cycle is completely normal because estrogen and progesterone naturally change throughout the month. Those hormones also interact with systems in the brain involved in mood and neurotransmitter activity, which is part of why many women notice emotional changes at particular points in their cycle.
But there is a difference between noticing that you feel a little more inward before your period and experiencing mood changes that feel extreme, overwhelming, or disruptive.
This is where tracking your cycle can be incredibly useful. You start to see patterns instead of feeling like your emotions are appearing out of nowhere.
You’re Constantly Bloated
A little fluctuation throughout your cycle is normal. Feeling painfully bloated all the time is something I would pay attention to.
Digestion and hormones are very connected, but bloating can also have plenty of non-hormonal causes. Stress, constipation, food sensitivities, gut health, meal patterns, and where you are in your cycle can all affect how your stomach feels.
Again, this is why I don’t love looking at symptoms in isolation. Your body is one connected system, and sometimes the symptom showing up in one place has roots somewhere completely different.
Your Period Is Irregular or Has Changed
Cycles can shift because of stress, travel, illness, age, changes in eating or exercise, and plenty of other factors. But if your period suddenly becomes very irregular, disappears, gets dramatically heavier, or changes significantly from what is normal for you, it is worth investigating.
Your brain, ovaries, and reproductive hormones are constantly communicating with each other. That system can be influenced by things like stress, illness, energy availability, thyroid function, age, and other health conditions. In other words, your menstrual cycle is not happening in its own little bubble.
You do not have to obsess over every single day of your cycle, but knowing what is normal for you can make it much easier to recognize when something changes.
Your Libido Has Disappeared
Libido is influenced by a lot more than sex hormones.
Stress, exhaustion, relationship dynamics, medications, sleep, body image, mental health, and whether your body has enough energy available can all affect desire. So if your libido has disappeared, I wouldn’t immediately decide something is “wrong” with you or assume there must be one hormone to blame.
I would get curious about what else is happening in your body and your life.
Are you exhausted? Are you stressed all the time? Are you sleeping? Eating enough? Do you feel connected to your body? Are there medications or relationship factors involved?
Sometimes libido is one more piece of information in a much bigger picture.
So, Does This Mean Your Hormones Are “Broken”?
No.
And I actually really dislike the idea that every symptom means your hormones are broken.
Symptoms are information. They are clues that can help you understand where your body may need more support.
That support might look like stabilizing your blood sugar, eating enough, prioritizing sleep, managing stress, moving your body, addressing nutrient deficiencies, or talking with your healthcare provider about something that deserves a deeper look.
The goal is not to become obsessed with every symptom or convince yourself that every bad day is a hormonal emergency.
The goal is to understand your body well enough that you can recognize patterns, ask better questions, and respond to what it may be telling you.
That’s exactly what I teach inside Hormone Harmony, how blood sugar, nutrition, stress, movement, sleep, and your cycle all connect so you can stop guessing and start understanding what your body actually needs.
Let’s talk about that little bottle of Progessence Plus.
Because if you’ve been around the wellness world for more than five minutes, you’ve probably heard:
“It has wild yam, and wild yam helps your body make progesterone.”
Wellllll, not exactly.
And this is where it gets interesting.
First: wild yam is NOT literally progesterone.
Wild yam contains a plant compound called diosgenin. And yes, diosgenin can be used to make progesterone.
BUT that conversion typically happens in a lab.
Your body does not appear to have its own tiny pharmaceutical factory saying, “Oh! Wild yam! Let me whip up some progesterone real quick.” (usually)
Research using wild yam cream by itself has not shown a meaningful increase in women’s progesterone levels.
But Progessence Plus is different.
Look at the ingredient list and you’ll see:
USP-grade progesterone (from wild yam extract)
Read that again.
It doesn't just contain wild yam and hope your body figures out what to do with it.
It contains actual progesterone.
The wild yam is used as a starting material to manufacture the progesterone. By the time it’s in that little bottle, your body isn't being asked to turn wild yam into progesterone.
That job has already been done.
So can progesterone be absorbed through your skin?
Researchers have studied topical progesterone, and there is evidence that progesterone can be absorbed through the skin.
But because hormones apparently LOVE making everything complicated, measuring that absorption isn't always straightforward. Blood, saliva and capillary measurements don't necessarily tell exactly the same story.
Translation?
Hormones are complicated little divas that we love so much!
And that's also why I'm not going to tell you that X number of drops will raise your progesterone by X amount. We don't have evidence that allows me to make that promise (however I will say that over the years of being around essential oils and using this one myself, women have mentioned that they have seen their usage of this raise their progesterone to levels that help your body run optimally)
Now THIS is where Hormone Harmony comes in.
I don't want you blindly throwing things at your hormones because somebody on Instagram told you progesterone was the answer to every problem you've had since 2007 (but maybe it is?🤣)
But let’s go back, your body gives you clues.
Your cycle. Your sleep. Your energy. Your cravings. Your mood. Your stress. Your digestion.
Clues and more clues.
Progesterone can be an important part of the hormone conversation but it isn't the *entire* hormone conversation.
And Progessence Plus isn't magical wild yam juice that somehow convinces your ovaries to start pumping out progesterone.
It contains USP-grade progesterone manufactured using wild yam as its source material.
That distinction matters.
Because Hormone Harmony isn't about hormone perfection or another 47-step wellness routine (but wouldn’t it be kind of fun if we had time for that?!).
It's about becoming a woman who understands her body a little better than she did yesterday.
Come join us in Hormone Harmony!
Back-to-school season is here, and even if you’re not the one heading back to the classroom, chances are your routine is about to change.
Earlier mornings. Packed schedules. Practices, appointments, lunches, work, and approximately 47 things you’re supposed to remember before walking out the door.
And usually? Taking care of yourself gets pushed straight to the bottom of that list.
But supporting **women’s hormone health** doesn’t require a complicated routine. In fact, when life gets busy, getting back to a few simple foundations can make a big difference in how supported you feel.
1. Stop Skipping Breakfast
Coffee is not breakfast. (I know, I wish it counted too.)
Starting your day with a balanced breakfast that includes **protein, healthy fats, fiber, and carbohydrates** can help support steady energy and blood sugar throughout your morning.
Think eggs and toast, Greek yogurt with berries and granola, or overnight oats with added protein.
2. Prep Components, Not Perfect Meals
You don’t need five beautifully portioned containers waiting in your refrigerator.
Cook a few proteins, wash and chop produce, make a batch of rice or potatoes, and have easy snacks available. Having basic ingredients ready makes balanced meals much easier when Tuesday night inevitably gets chaotic.
3. Protect Your Sleep Routine
When schedules get packed, sleep is often the first thing we sacrifice.
But consistent, quality sleep supports your body’s stress response, energy, appetite regulation, and overall **hormone health**.
Even something as simple as going to bed around the same time each night can be a good place to start.
4. Make Movement Easier
You don’t need an hour-long workout every day.
Take a 10-minute walk after dinner. Stretch while the kids are getting ready. Lift weights a few times a week. Choose movement that realistically fits into your current season instead of creating another thing you feel like you’re failing at.
5. Give Yourself Something to Eat Before You’re Starving
Busy days make it easy to accidentally go hours without eating, only to hit the afternoon completely exhausted and ravenous.
Keep simple, protein-rich snacks available so you have something to grab between meals.
Your Hormone-Supporting Routine Can Be Simple
As you head into a busier season, you don’t need to completely reinvent your wellness routine.
Start with the foundations: balanced meals, enough protein, consistent sleep, regular movement, and realistic stress support.**
Small habits you can actually maintain will always be more useful than a “perfect” routine you abandon by October.
Want to better understand what your body needs throughout the month? Grab my free Cycle Syncing Guide and learn how to support yourself through each phase of your menstrual cycle.
If you've been struggling with energy crashes, intense cravings, mood swings, or feeling hungry all the time, your hormones might not be the only thing asking for attention.
One of the biggest foundations of hormone health is something many women overlook: **blood sugar balance**.
When your blood sugar is constantly rising and falling throughout the day, your body has to work overtime to keep everything stable. Those frequent spikes and crashes can affect cortisol, insulin, and other hormones that influence your energy, metabolism, mood, and overall well-being.
The good news? Supporting healthy blood sugar doesn't require perfection or cutting out all of your favorite foods.
It starts with creating meals that help your body feel nourished and supported.
One of the easiest ways to do this is by building balanced meals that include:
* A quality source of protein
* Healthy fats
* Fiber-rich carbohydrates
* Plenty of colorful fruits and vegetables
This combination helps slow digestion, keeps you feeling fuller for longer, and provides a steadier release of energy throughout the day.
Skipping meals, surviving on coffee until lunch, or grabbing sugary snacks when you're exhausted can all lead to bigger blood sugar swings. While these habits are incredibly common—especially for busy women—they can leave you feeling tired, irritable, and constantly reaching for your next energy boost.
Instead of focusing on restriction, focus on consistency.
Aim to eat regular meals throughout the day, include protein with every meal, stay hydrated, and avoid going long periods without eating if possible. Small, sustainable habits often make a much bigger difference than extreme diets ever will.
It's also important to remember that stress plays a role here too. When your body is under constant stress, cortisol levels can rise, making it even harder to keep blood sugar stable. That's why supporting your nervous system through quality sleep, movement you enjoy, and moments of rest is just as important as what's on your plate.
Hormone health is never about finding one magic supplement or following the latest wellness trend.
It's about giving your body consistent signals that it's safe, nourished, and supported.
When you begin supporting your blood sugar with simple daily habits, many women notice steadier energy, fewer cravings, improved focus, and a more balanced relationship with food.
If you're ready to learn how to work with your hormones instead of against them, grab my free Cycle Syncing Guide. You'll discover simple ways to nourish your body throughout each phase of your cycle so you can feel your best—without restrictive rules or complicated routines.
