Minerals and Hormones: Balancing Your Cycle Naturally (Episode 535)

Full Transcript: Episode 535

Lisa: This is the Fertility Friday Podcast, episode number 535.

In today’s episode, I’m sharing my interview with Leah Brueggemann and we delve into the role of minerals in balancing hormones. Before we jump in, let me tell you a little bit about Leah. Leah Brueggemann is a Functional Diagnostic Nutritional Practitioner and NLP practitioner specializing in hormone balance for women. She combines functional lab testing and brain rewiring with nutrition and lifestyle shifts to help women finally get to the root of their issues. Leah has helped hundreds of women personally get painless periods, stabilize their moods, get pregnant, and lose weight. She started her podcast, Balancing Hormones Naturally, three years ago to help give women actionable steps they can take to improve their health and hormones. And without further ado, let’s go ahead and jump into today’s episode.

I’m excited to be here today with Leah Brueggemann. Welcome to the show.

Leah: Thank you so much for having me on.

Lisa: Well, I’m glad that you’re here. And I would love to start by allowing you to share a little bit about yourself so that you can introduce yourself to the listeners. So tell us a little bit about you, what you do, and of course what got you into the work that you’re doing now.

Leah: Yeah. So I am a mom, and I am a mom literally because I was able to balance my hormones out, because my hormone journey started multiple years ago now when I graduated college. I was diagnosed with fibroadenomas, which are benign breast tumors, and when the doctor told me that, I had to Google it. I was like, what are fibroadenomas? And so that is what kickstarted me into looking into my health journey. So I actually went to college for music. I got my bachelor’s in piano and voice, and all this time, like all through college, I had debilitating painful periods — like the highest dose of Motrin that you could take on your period, and I would still be throwing up. Multiple times, like couldn’t go, couldn’t go to work, couldn’t do anything on my period. I’m just like curled up on the couch, but I thought that was normal.

So when I first got my period, I remember going into my mom’s room and laying on her bed and being like, this is horrific. I was like, it hurts so bad. And she goes, yeah, that just prepares you for child labor. I was like, great. So this is my unforeseeable future — these horrible period cramps. And when I was in high school, I didn’t want to tell anybody that I had period cramps. So I would just be like, I’m sick, and my mom would have to come get me because I couldn’t function, but I wouldn’t say it’s period cramps because I thought that was embarrassing — which is funny because now I talk about periods all the time, but we had to come full circle.

Fibroadenomas, though, were the thing that pushed me over the edge to look more into my hormones, because period cramps I thought were normal. Fibroadenomas — the only option they gave me was to have them surgically removed, and most of the time they come back. So I was self-employed. I’m like, I’m going to have this really expensive surgery just to have them come back. So I personally decided to not do that. And that’s what dove me into — I started going to the naturopaths, the functional doctors, running the labs, doing all the things. And while I think that functional medicine is amazing, I think that sometimes we need to remember to take that holistic view of our health. And my practitioners got a little bit too narrowly focused into like, oh, it’s heavy metals, or oh, it’s just you don’t detox well, or oh, it’s you have estrogen dominance, oh you have MTHFR gene mutation — these are the things that are causing these issues. My fibroadenomas didn’t budge. My painful periods were still there. My cycles were still super irregular.

After about three or four years of this, I was actually engaged to get married, and I started tracking my cycle. Isn’t it weird that it took all of these years of going to these doctors and never once did they ask me if I tracked my cycle? Like never once were they like, oh, when are you ovulating? How long is your luteal phase? Like none of these questions. It was just, you know, dive right into some testing, and that was the issue. So I started tracking my cycle and I was like, I’m not ovulating. Like where’s that temp spike? I was like, I am not ovulating. And then on the rare times that I did ovulate, my luteal phase was eight days. And so I’m doing the math and I’m like, so I want to have kids, eight-day luteal phase — I’m like, I don’t think those two are going to work out very well together. Like I’m not going to have enough progesterone. This is not going to work out well.

So that’s when I went back to school. I went back to hit the books. I went back to studying, I went back to reading. I was like, what can I learn from women who are in this field and what they have to say? And I went back to become an FDN. And flash forward, I was able to get rid of my fibroadenomas, regulate my cycles, get completely painless periods, and I bumped up that luteal phase to 12 days, and I’ve had two healthy pregnancies.

And I just started talking about periods because when I got diagnosed with fibroadenomas, I had to Google it. I had never heard of a fibroadenoma before. And everyone I knew, their periods were fine. They didn’t have painful periods. And so I started talking about this. I was like, did you know I used to be throwing up for my period and now you can have a painless one? Like I’m not cursed. Like it’s not just something that you’re born with or without. This actually is a possible process. And that is how I started helping women. Like it literally just came out of me talking about periods and just learning to work with our hormones and not against them. I feel like sometimes we get so into trying to manipulate our individual hormones instead of really working in flow with our body. And so that is how I started doing what I’m doing.

And then the next added layer I had is after I had my first son, I was doing all of the things, but I was still tired. And okay, he didn’t sleep very well, so that might have been part of it. And that is when I was introduced to minerals. And minerals were such a game changer for me because I felt like I was eating right, I was balancing my blood sugar, I was getting all the nutrients into my food, I was doing my best to get the most sleep that I could with how little of a sleeper he was. And then you’re depleted from all these minerals from breastfeeding and from pregnancy and I didn’t know that. All I knew was I’m tired.

And so I was introduced to the world of minerals through an amazing practitioner, and she had done a hair tissue mineral analysis on me. She’s like, well, no wonder you’re tired. You’re depleted in all these minerals that your adrenals need to function. And I’m like, oh, that makes sense. And my body temp was really low still. And I knew that that was a sign, like a red flag for my thyroid, but my thyroid numbers were fine — like they were within optimal range — but my minerals that actually pertain to your cells utilizing the thyroid hormone, those were off. And so that opened up this whole new world for me. I was like, what are minerals? This is like the next step to just supercharge my health and to feel so much better.

And so I had to learn about minerals and I’ve been studying minerals for about three years now and it has been such a game changer for my clients and for me and my family. Because minerals are the spark plugs to your hormones. And so if we can go farther upstream and fix the minerals, the hormones fall in place and it makes your life so much easier.

Lisa: Well, that’s great. I mean, thank you for taking us through that. It was really — I really enjoyed hearing your journey. There’s a lot of parts of that that I want to pull out. I feel like one of the things that you said was really interesting to me. You said that you were going to these different functional practitioners and of course they were supporting you in different ways, but it sounds like it didn’t all kind of come together until you added the charting piece. Of course I’ve been talking about charting for a really long time. And I often say to my practitioners in the practitioner program and in general that when I think about working with women and supporting them in their hormone health, I can’t imagine doing it without the cycle, because the cycle at least for me and in my practice is central. And it’s a really great way to track how someone’s doing. So you can’t be under the misunderstanding that someone’s totally fine if they have an eight-day luteal phase or if they’re not ovulating. Like these things are not separate. They’re all combined.

So I thought that was really interesting. Maybe share a little bit — kind of going back to, because you said that you spent three years kind of working on this — so now based on what you know now, maybe just go back into that in a little bit more detail. Like what was missing? Like how did these practitioners miss the mark?

Leah: Yeah. I do think that sometimes in the functional world, everything can kind of become a nail and you’re the hammer if that’s your specific specialty. And so whenever I would go to these different doctors, some of them it was heavy metals are the root of all issues, and so that’s what they were looking for in me. And it’s like, well, you don’t really have a ton of them, so what do we do? And then in other ones it’s like just detox is the root of all issues — well you have MTHFR so you don’t detox estrogen well, so that’s the reason why you have these issues. And so I think sometimes it got too hyperfocused on one specific thing. And while I think that all of the specific things they all work on were great, it was almost like I needed to work with all of them maybe at the same time to have everybody work on their angle.

Why they didn’t ask about my cycle I do not know. I wish I could go back and ask them. At the same time though, I didn’t understand cycle tracking either. So I didn’t even know that they were missing out on asking me a question. Like they would ask when my last period was — that was always a good question — and sometimes it would be like, well, 90 days ago. And they would just go, oh, that’s weird. I’m like, yeah, I know.

Lisa: I feel like the reason that people aren’t trained in this — cycle tracking feels like it should be so intuitive, and when we learn about it it’s very personal and it does feel like something we should all just know and we should have just been born equipped with all this information. But it’s its own modality. So I feel like twofold — one, they’re not learning about it, and maybe the practitioners themselves don’t necessarily have their cycles dialed in. Because when you just track your own cycle, you have your own cycle, you kind of think that whatever you experience is normal. And so you could have a cycle that has issues but you’ve just convinced yourself that that’s normal.

Leah: That’s true. And I also think that a lot of women’s health practitioners overestimate their knowledge of that area. To answer the question of why didn’t they ask, the easiest answer would be because they weren’t trained in it. And I think that’s also where the mythical test your hormones on cycle day 19 to 21 comes from. Now that my cycles are regular, I ovulate pretty much on the dot on cycle day 17. So even if I did that, I’m still going to get low progesterone because it’s not even the correct testing window for me. And back when my cycles were irregular and we weren’t tracking, I was testing in the wrong phase. And so they’re like, you have chronically low progesterone. It’s like, well, duh, we tested before I even ovulated. So yes, I did have low progesterone, but the solution there was just go on a progesterone cream — let’s just go on this supplementation — instead of why are we not ovulating? Why is this progesterone low? Why is your luteal phase so short? And those were all my questions when I started tracking.

I actually reached out to one of my friends who I knew tracked her cycle, and I was like, what are your temps? And she’s like, oh, they’re like 97.9 or something before ovulation. I’m like, mine are below 97 — they’re like 96. She goes, oh, maybe you just have a low body temp. I’m like, really, okay. That’s kind of the level before you jump in, because you kind of assume that whatever you’re seeing is normal. Like, hey, I’m Leah and I just have a lower temperature than everybody else.

Lisa: And I’m always like, wait a minute — no. If we were talking about bears in a zoo or something, we all know that there’s a normal for them. But somehow with humans we always think like, oh no, this is just me and I’m different.

I wanted to ask you about your period pain, because obviously you struggled with that for a really long time. What was it that finally helped?

Leah: My period cramps — I mean, bless my mom’s heart, she sort of was accurate. With my first kid, I ended up laboring without an epidural and I was dilated past 6 cm before my period cramps touched the labor pain. So she was right in that sense. I was like, wow, these are just like period cramps.

I honestly think part of it was I wasn’t even paying attention to the period cramp pain in terms of something I could get rid of. I just literally thought this is normal. I mean, I remember walking with a heating pad strapped to my waist — that’s how I would function the first couple days of my period, or I’d be laying on the couch with a blanket or in the bathroom on the floor.

I think a lot of times when they put you on all of these diets to help fix these issues, you’re eliminating so many food groups that sometimes you’re unconsciously balancing your blood sugar because you’re eliminating gluten, eliminating grains which are higher glycemic. So you end up naturally kind of falling into that category, but that wasn’t sustainable for me. All it did was give me eating issues because it was so restrictive.

And so when I started putting these pieces together, I’m like, okay, blood sugar balance makes a lot of sense to me. Blood sugar, glucose, insulin — that seems to be affecting all the other hormones. And I was always tired in the mid-afternoon. I would get the wired but tired. I would wake up and be tired. If I ate a ton of even potatoes or rice, I’m like, oh, I got hit by a bus, I need to go take a nap. And so instead of eliminating food groups, I learned to manually balance my blood sugar. I used a CGM and also just paid attention to how I felt. And that helped so much with inflammation and it helped so much with my energy — that was a night and day difference.

Because if you’re constantly on this blood sugar roller coaster, that’s affecting your insulin, which is going to be affecting your ovulation. And then when we have this roller coaster going on, you’re moody, you get hangry, you don’t have energy — like how are you even going to implement the rest of your things when you feel like you’re barely making it through the day? So blood sugar balance was one of my key cornerstones that made such a big difference for me in lowering inflammation. And it wasn’t restrictive. It’s like I can continue this for the rest of my life because if you want to eat a food, great, just pair it with something so that you’re not going to sharply spike your blood sugar.

And then the other thing in terms of period pain was honestly bringing up that progesterone. So I had to figure out what was causing my estrogen to be so high. For me, it was taking a look at my entire life and where was the estrogen causing the issue. So I was starting to look at my hair products, my cleaning products, the things that are literally in my house — candles out the window, artificial fragrance out the window. I have curly hair — curly hair products, man, they just dump artificial fragrance in there. And I was using those so often. Your skincare, my makeup, my cleaning supplies. I had always been so hyperfocused on like the food I’m putting into my body, and that is important, but also that environmental aspect is equally important because your skin — you are taking in all of these chemicals.

And so I’m sitting here going, like, I’m not eating any foods that would affect my estrogen, I’m getting my cruciferous veggies in, I’m getting all my soluble fiber in, I’m getting all these foods in to support my liver — what’s going on? But I just turned a blind eye. I’m like, don’t take my hair products, don’t touch my makeup. So that was another really big shift for me — to actually do all of the environmental things. My pads, my tampons — all of those needed to be changed. And then I figured out I had very specific food sensitivities. Conventional dairy — I should say, because raw dairy was always fine — conventional dairy would actually really impact my ovulation. I found out that when I would be having dairy, my body would just be like, we’re not ovulating. It’s not going to happen. Same thing with stress.

And so it was really dialing in the things that were impacting my ovulation — my blood sugar, the endocrine disruptors, the stress, the conventional dairy — and when I was able to really get that fine-tuned to my body and I was regularly ovulating, I started to notice a difference. Because then my luteal phase started to lengthen because my progesterone was coming up, we didn’t have so much inflammation. And then obviously when you’re regularly ovulating and by taking out endocrine disruptors you’re supporting egg quality, so of course I’m going to be having a stronger corpus luteum. So it was bit by bit by bit.

And I literally remember my first painless period because my husband was like, do you want to go to the zoo? And it was supposed to be the weekend of my period. I’m like, well, my period’s supposed to show up and I don’t really think I can go to the zoo on my period. He goes, okay, well it’s the only time we can do that, it’d be really fun, we should try it. And so I’m like, okay, I’m going to buckle up, we can do this. And the entire day, like every hour, I would look at my husband like — I don’t have period cramps. I was like, I keep waiting for them to hit. I keep waiting for the next shoe to drop. And I had no period cramps the entire day. I was like, what is this? This is a whole new world. So it wasn’t overnight. It took quite a few cycles to get there, but it was the step by step by step of really just slowly shifting those hormones.

Lisa: And can I ask you a question? Because you had kids in the middle — did you find that your periods were any different after you had your first child?

Leah: So my painful periods did not come back. I hit painless periods before my first kid. And then my first period back was like eight months postpartum and they were really heavy. And so that was kind of a little worrisome, but that was easily fixed with minerals — that just ended up being a copper imbalance. And so when all of that got figured out, they went right back to normal. No cramps after having kids. Every once in a while when I’ll start my period, you get that like warming sensation in your abdomen and I kind of go, that’s what I always got before I got the period cramp. So I’m always like, I remember that feeling, but thankfully it’s just the warming sensation now.

Lisa: Well, that’s amazing that you were able to do this. I have found that I have to specifically ask about period pain because for many of us — myself included — period pain came with the deal. Primary dysmenorrhea in my case. So it was the first period, it was painful, from then it was always just a thing that would happen every time. And it doesn’t really come to mind for a lot of women that it could be different. And even when I have clients where the period pain is severe, they’re not necessarily disclosing that unless I’m asking — which I always ask — but they wouldn’t necessarily tell me if I didn’t ask. And it’s often not one of their top priorities because I think in their mind they’ve already figured out how to manage it.

Leah: Yeah. And I think it’s really important to just do your due diligence. Ask for referrals, talk to some of their clients, learn what their specialty is, what do they specifically help women with. And then the results — have you had clients with extreme pain that have seen improvements? Because I work with a lot of endo clients, and a lot of endo clients who went to the ER because of how severe their period pain was. And it’s never one thing. We do reduce inflammation, we do all of that, but then there’s other modalities that I always have to bring in with endo — one of those is typically like pelvic floor therapy, specific therapists that work on uterine placement and blood flow to the uterus and the ovaries.

Because it’s never one thing. And I think that’s hard when it comes to these situations. But to really get over that hump and get that quality of pain down, especially with endo, there are a few modalities that you need to bring in. And also, even if you feel like you have tried everything, you may just need to dial in with something that’s very specific to you — and that is typically the biggest game changer.

Lisa: I know this is a big topic but I think we can kind of touch on it as we draw to a close today. It sounds like one of the things that you were struggling with after you had your babies was cellular hypothyroidism. If you look at women postpartum, we’re at the greatest risk of nutrient deficiencies in all areas because you’ve just grown a human. And I always talk about what I call the bank account analogy — if you were to picture your nutrient reserves as a bank account, when you are pregnant and breastfeeding, the only thing that’s happening is withdrawals. Most of us don’t go into pregnancy nutrient replete. Of course, Lily and I are hoping to change that with our new book Real Food for Fertility — we’re trying to get as many women as possible going into pregnancy really nutrient replete. But most of us don’t necessarily go into pregnancy at the best possible scenario, and then you grow a human being, which requires more nutrients than I think any other activity you can imagine.

Also, women postpartum, in addition to all those nutrient deficiencies, are at a greater risk of issues with their thyroid. And I think a large part of that is because of those nutritional requirements — your nutritional requirements for vitamin A, iodine, vitamin D, zinc, selenium — all of these specific nutrients that support thyroid function increase just so significantly. And then there you are trying to raise a little baby, and most of us are unaware.

So maybe share with us a little bit about how that experience informed you — like what some of those key minerals were that you found you were deficient in and how you overcame that.

Leah: Yeah. So mineral testing — there’s multiple ways that you can do mineral testing. One of the ways that I really like to do it is through the hair, so hair tissue mineral analysis, because a lot of minerals don’t actually store in the blood. Like magnesium — only 1% is stored in the blood. And so I’ll have a lot of women who present with a lot of symptoms of magnesium deficiency, but they’re like, actually I had that tested by my doctor and he says I’m fine. Like, well, only 1% is stored there, so not going to be an accurate measurement for your magnesium levels. So that is why I do like hair tissue mineral analysis. The other reason is that blood is always trying to stay at homeostasis. So it pulls and pushes minerals in and out of the tissue to try and do that, so we can actually see things ahead of time in the hair before they even make it to the blood. So you can be looking at your hair mineral levels more as a preventative standpoint.

So when I first ran my hair tissue mineral analysis, one of the minerals that I was utterly depleted in was potassium. And one of potassium’s jobs is to sensitize your cell to the thyroid hormone. Now I don’t recommend you all go supplement with potassium — that’s like always test, always test. But something that was really important and big for me was making sure I was getting in enough potassium-rich foods a day — I mean like 4,500 milligrams of potassium-rich foods a day — because potassium is also your stress mineral. And so when you’re raising a little human, you are not sleeping really well, so you’re stressed. So that’s depleting your potassium. And then when my potassium’s depleted, it makes you more susceptible to stress. And I was just in this fun little roller coaster.

But potassium was one of my key culprits, and potassium is also one of the minerals that your adrenals need. So I was just getting hit, not in a great way, on both ends. And potassium is also one of the cofactors for magnesium absorption.

Now, magnesium is your relaxation mineral, and it is used in over 500 different enzyme reactions in your body. So it plays a really big role, including supporting blood sugar management, lowering inflammation, and stress. And a lot of women will have symptoms of low magnesium and not realize that maybe they’re just not taking enough magnesium, or maybe they don’t have the cofactors like boron or potassium on board. So a lot of symptoms of low magnesium are PMS, symptoms of hypothyroidism, noise sensitivity, constipation, restless leg. And oftentimes it’s like, well, I’m taking a magnesium supplement. But again, what are we absorbing? What form of magnesium are you taking? Are you taking enough based on your levels? Do you have the other minerals on board that support the absorption of magnesium? So it’s really like a whole big kettle of fish. You need to make sure all your fish are in a row, because it’s not just individual mineral levels.

If your magnesium level is fine but you’re still having those symptoms, you have to look at the patterns. What are other minerals doing that maybe impact magnesium absorption? For me, especially with being really tired and dealing with cellular hypothyroidism, all of those symptoms went away when I was able to fix my adrenal and thyroid ratios with my minerals. That was bringing up my potassium levels, helping absorption of calcium, getting that sodium and potassium balanced. And it’s like, okay, now I have energy again. Now my temps are coming up. Oh, there’s my regular ovulation again.

This is such a big piece when it comes to hormone balance, because one of the biggest changes I notice right away with women when we are supporting minerals is more energy. And if we can get more energy, we can do the rest of the things. And it’s hard sometimes when you are postpartum or you’re pregnant or you’re going through things because it’s like, I don’t even have energy to make my food, I don’t have energy to do the food prep, I don’t have energy to follow through with my protocol. But minerals can kind of be that missing piece, because when we get the energy back, we can do the things.

When it comes to iodine, you have iodine antagonists — if you think about all your iodine receptors in your body, they’re pretty much on every single cell. And our iodine antagonists — think about it with musical chairs. If they make it to the receptor first, then iodine has nowhere to go. And so oftentimes it’s sometimes as simple as let’s remove the antagonists from your life. Let’s get rid of the fluoride, the bromide, the chlorine — all of those things that are going to impact your absorption of iodine. And then your body can start to do its job.

I feel like a lot of what you do with minerals, and a lot of what I do with health in general, is just like — let’s get the stuff out of the way that’s impacting your body to do its job. Because our bodies are really, really smart. And they’re always trying to take care of us, they’re always trying to keep us alive. And oftentimes we go into these health issues so mad at our body — like you are making me sick every single month, I can’t get pregnant, I can’t do all these things. So frustrated. But we also need to flip that script of like, why is this happening? Our body’s primary purpose is to keep us alive. And so when we look at that and go, oh okay, this is happening because I actually have all of these other things going on that my body’s trying to keep me safe from. I think it can flip our perspective a little bit.

Lisa: Love that. I think it’s a really important perspective. And when we get all of these different facets of our health dialed in, it really makes a difference. For me, if we highlighted two important markers — not the only important things, but if your menstrual cycle is in line and you have great energy and you feel good — those could be two amazing barometers. Things could be better for all of us if everybody looked at those two things as a starting point.

So I’m glad that you’re able to bring all of that to light. Before we go today, I would love to give you an opportunity to share where people can learn about you and all the things.

Leah: Honestly, I just want women to get more in touch with their bodies. If you feel like something’s wrong, even if all your labs are showing normal — it’s okay to advocate for yourself. It’s okay to push back. It’s okay to go find somebody else to work with. It’s okay to keep looking. Because we do know our bodies best, and we are our best doctor in that sense. I am on all platforms but mainly Instagram — my handle is Leah, L-E-A-H, B-R-U-E-G-G. And I also have a podcast, Balancing Hormones Naturally, and Lisa is going to be on there too so you guys can come listen to that episode. We try to educate a lot on what you can be doing every single day to help support your hormones — like, what are your first steps? These are your first steps, this is where you can go from there. Because sometimes with all of the information circulating around it can be overwhelming. It’s like, okay, I could do this, this, this, this, and this — but what is my first step? We do cover a lot of them.

Lisa: Awesome. Well, we will make sure to link all of those places in the show notes page. I just want to thank you for being here. This was a great conversation. I’m excited to share it.

Leah: Thank you for having me on.

Lisa: Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it with a friend. You’ll find the show notes page for today’s episode over at fertilityfriday.com/535.

One of the things that struck me in our conversation is how important it is to establish strong foundations when we are looking to balance hormone health. I think many people come into the field hoping for a magic bullet — some magical drug or supplement or treatment plan that’s just going to solve everything for everybody. But what you find is that there’s a lot of individual differences. What works really, really well for some women doesn’t necessarily work in the same way for others. But in the midst of these differences, what you find is that there are certain key fundamental tenets that really help to set that stage for optimal hormone production. And when we’re able to support our clients in those ways — it’s similar to building a house. If the foundations aren’t strong, then it’s just not going to work. And these tenets really set the stage then for supporting your clients to achieve optimal health. And also they allow us to differentiate between situational issues that are related to lifestyle or other similar factors versus true, consistent, systematic health issues that are really underlying and causing the issue. So it really helps us to differentiate between the two.

And on that note, I hope that you have a wonderful week, weekend, whenever you’re tuning into the show. And of course, as always, until next time, be well and happy charting.