In this powerful second episode of a three-part series, I pull back the curtain on what happens when all the hormonal guests at the dinner party go rogue. From irregular periods and stubborn weight to skin struggles, mood swings, and chronic fatigue—I unpack how seemingly “random” symptoms are often connected and rooted in deeper hormonal imbalances. Using PCOS as a roadmap, I'll explain how insulin resistance, high cortisol, low progesterone, and estrogen dominance work together to disrupt your body’s natural balance. I'll also shine a light on why so many women feel dismissed or misdiagnosed in the conventional medical system, and why healing often starts with education and advocacy. If you've ever been told “everything looks normal” but you feel anything but, this episode is for you.
In this episode, we cover:
🚨 The real signs of hormonal imbalance (spoiler: it’s not just about your period)
💡 Why PCOS is a prime example of hormone chaos and what drives it
🔄 The vicious cycle between insulin, testosterone, cortisol, and estrogen
🧠 Why conventional doctors often miss the big picture
🩺 How fragmented care leads to fragmented answers
🌱 The importance of connecting the dots—and how functional and integrative health coaching can help
👣 A preview of what’s coming next: real, practical steps to restore hormonal harmony
🔗 Related Episodes:
Episode 13: Your Hormonal Dinner Party (And Why It's Not Going Well)
Insulin Resistance Series – Episodes 1-3
💬 Let’s Keep the Conversation Going:
If this episode resonated with you, share it with a friend who needs to hear it. And don't forget to leave a review—it helps more women find real answers.
🎧 Subscribe + Review:
Subscribe to PCOS Unfiltered on your favorite platform and leave a review if today’s episode gave you clarity or comfort. You deserve to feel empowered in your healing journey. 💜
0:02 - 0:25) Welcome to PCOS Unfiltered, Nourish, Heal, Thrive, the place where real talk meets real healing. I'm Lindsay, health coach, nurse, mindful eating advocate, and fellow health warrior. Each week, we're diving deep into the truth about PCOS, from nutrition and mindful habits to emotional healing and everything in between, all without the filters, the fads, or the shame.
(0:25 - 4:56) If you're ready to nourish your body, heal from the inside out, and finally thrive, you're in the right place. Let's get started. Welcome back. Today, we are diving deep into what happens when your hormones, those key players that we met in the last episode, stop working together and start causing chaos. If you have not yet listened to episode one, I encourage you to go back and give it a listen. It's like getting the cast list before watching the movie. Today, we're going to talk about what happens when the plot thickens, because the truth is hormonal imbalance doesn't show up as one single symptom. It's a domino effect, unfortunately, and a lot of women, especially women with PCOS, are gaslit into thinking it's all in their heads. Spoiler alert, it is not in your head. It's in your hormones. Let's talk symptoms. Here's what I hear almost every day from women that I work with and talk with. Maybe you've said something to this effect as well. My periods are all over the place, sometimes nothing for months, sometimes heavy and miserable. Maybe you say something like, I can't lose weight no matter what I do, and it's mostly around my belly. My skin hasn't been this bad since high school. I have hair where I don't want it and none where I do. I'm tired all the time, even when I sleep. I'm anxious, moody. I cry over the smallest things. I crave carbs constantly and get shaky if I don't eat. These are not random. These are not separate issues. These are the signs that your hormones are out of sync. And yet, how often are we told it's normal? It's aging. It's stress. It's in your head. Or my very personal favorite, least favorite I should say, is we'll just keep an eye on things for now. And when it gets worse, we can do something. No, it's in your biochemistry. Using PCOS as a prime example, because it gives us a really clear picture of what happens when the hormonal symphony goes rogue. At the core of a lot of PCOS is insulin resistance. Again, not everybody, but we're going to use this as an example, because I do think this is a driver for a lot of PCOS cases. And as you might remember from my previous episodes, I even did a three-part series on insulin resistance when I launched this podcast. So feel free to revisit that. But insulin is the hormone trying to keep your blood sugar stable. And so when your cells stop listening to insulin, your body just keeps making more of it, which leads to higher insulin levels. And then what does that do? It triggers your ovaries to pump out more testosterone. More testosterone leads to acne, hair growth in places you don't want, hair loss on your head, and then also irregular or missed periods because ovulation is getting disrupted. And those are all the criteria basically for signs or for being diagnosed with PCOS. So when you're not ovulating, guess what you're not making? If you listen to episode one, progesterone and without progesterone to balance estrogen, you end up with what we call estrogen dominance. And that can lead to bloating, breast tenderness, mood swings, sometimes heavy or prolonged bleeding. In the meantime, cortisol, your stress hormone is usually running high because trying to function in a body like that feels way too exhausting. And that high cortisol just makes insulin resistance worse. And it just keeps going from there. It's a vicious cycle. The longer it goes on, the harder it can feel to break out of it. So while PCOS is the focus here, there are some hormone imbalances show that show up in a lot of different conditions that I, I just want to touch on endometriosis, for example, because some of these might overlap with PCOS as well, but endometriosis, which is driven by estrogen dominance and inflammation, maybe hypothyroidism, which slows everything down, including your energy or metabolism, your periods, your digestion, and then also adrenal dysfunction, which is caused by that chronic stress, keeping cortisol elevated for way too long.
(4:57 - 5:13) And sometimes women have multiple of these issues at once. Like I mentioned, there might be some overlap there. And so it can easily get diagnosed because you can see how some of the symptoms, you know, can be common throughout these different, these different conditions.
(5:13 - 6:24) I do want to say, as I have said before, that I think there is a time and place for conventional medicine. I was, you know, I was in the healthcare system myself. I was a nurse for many, many years. And just with this podcast, I empower you to, to, you know, just take what your doctor is telling you one step further and become equipped with your own knowledge and whether that's, you know, I'm kind of giving you some basic stuff here, but you can easily dive deeper into many other things. And so, yeah, just, just learn more about what could actually be happening in your body so that you can also ask the right questions and be prepared when you do go to see your doctor. So that being said, have you ever been told everything looks normal? Unfortunately, most doctors are not trained to look at patterns. They are trained to treat symptoms. And a lot of times those symptoms in their heads happen in isolation. If you think about it, you go to your primary care doctor, maybe you say you have some skin thing going on, acne, whatever, what do they do? They send you to the dermatologist, you have irregular periods.
(6:25 - 8:12) So you go to a gynecologist, you get put on birth control fatigue. Maybe you see a rheumatologist, maybe you get a thyroid test only TSH probably because a lot of times that's unfortunately all that's ordered. And that's just one tiny piece, but, but you kind of get my point here. You're seeing all these specialists along with your primary care and in doing that, because modern medicine today is so specialized, they are not talking to each other. So they're not able to look at the big picture and they're not trained to just connect the dots between insulin and cortisol and thyroid and reproductive hormones. So this is where you might need to come in and do some, some more research on your own and use all the resources that you have to help understand some of this more yourself. It's also why, you know, functional medicine coaches like me, integrative health, we all exist because we help you see that big picture that your body's been trying to tell you and show you. That's pretty much it for today. So next time we are moving from problems to solutions, and we're going to talk about how to start restoring harmony to this hormonal mess, not with quick fixes, but with real strategies to nourish your body back to balance. Um, thanks again for hanging out with me today and I'll see you next time. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of PCOS Unfiltered. If today's episode spoke to you, be sure to subscribe so you don't miss a thing. And if you loved it, a quick review would mean the world to me. Remember healing is a journey, not a destination, and you deserve to feel empowered every step of the way. Until next time, nourish your body, heal your heart, and thrive like the boss you are.