In this kickoff episode of a very informative three-part mini series, I pulls back the curtain on your hormonal symphony—the key players behind your cravings, fatigue, breakouts, mood swings, and more. If you’ve ever said, “I feel broken, like nothing works for me anymore,” this episode is your first step toward understanding that you're not broken—you're biologically out of sync. I introduce the key hormones like estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, insulin, cortisol, and thyroid hormones through a relatable dinner party analogy that makes these complex processes feel simple, even empowering. You’ll also learn the differences between the three types of estrogen—estradiol, estrone, and estriol—and how these can shift with PCOS, insulin resistance, or different stages of life. This is the foundation you wish you were taught in health class.
In this episode, you'll learn:
💡 Why you’re not crazy or broken—and how hormones could be the root of your symptoms
🍷 The "hormonal dinner party" analogy that brings estrogen, insulin, and cortisol to life
🧬 The 3 types of estrogen (estradiol, estrone, estriol) and what they mean for PCOS and your symptoms
⚖️ How hormone imbalances create a domino effect—like raising testosterone, skipping ovulation, and triggering inflammation
🧠 The connection between insulin, stress, and symptoms like hair loss, acne, and fatigue
❤️ Why understanding your hormones is the key to self-compassion and healing
🎧 Tune in if you’ve ever thought:
📣 Next Up:
In Part 2, I will dive into what happens when this hormonal dinner party turns into chaos—and how those imbalances actually show up in your daily life. Think mood swings, weight gain, irregular cycles, and more.
✨If this episode helped connect the dots, hit subscribe and leave a quick review—it means the world. And don’t forget: your body isn’t broken. It’s just been asking for support in a language no one taught you to understand—until now.
(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 - 4:34) 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. If you are one of the women who has said something like, I feel crazy, I feel broken, nothing I do works for me anymore. First of all, you're not crazy and you're not broken. And there is a reason why things feel so off. Today, I'm kicking off a three-part mini series to help you understand the root cause of those feelings, your hormones. This first episode is going to lay the groundwork. Who are these hormones? What do they do? And why do they matter so much when working together as a team, or as I like to call them, your hormonal symphony? So to start us off, I want you to think back to high school biology. Remember sitting there with the diagrams of the reproductive system or the endocrine system, trying to memorize words like estrogen, progesterone, insulin? Maybe you did that, but did anybody ever really explain how these things affect your day-to-day life as a woman? They probably didn't tell you why your cravings change throughout your cycle, or why you're exhausted one week and maybe full of energy the next, why your skin breaks out, your weight fluctuates, or maybe why you're crying over another insurance commercial. So that's the problem. Women are given almost no education about how their bodies actually function beyond, here's how not to get pregnant and expect PMS symptoms. But hormones are not just about fertility or periods. They shape so, so much of how you show up in your life. And this could be physically, emotionally, mentally, and when you understand them, you can stop blaming yourself. So let's meet the players and break down the major hormones that run the show. If you like to think about, you know, a scenario here, I like to think of them, imagine them as characters at a dinner party. Everyone has a role and when they're balanced, the evening goes great, nice and smooth. But when one person starts maybe drinking too much or talking about politics, the whole vibe just shifts. So let's start off by with estrogen, talk about estrogen. This is like your hostess. She's in charge of keeping things flowing. She's the one making sure the music's on, the candles are lit, the mood is just right. So in other words, estrogen helps regulate your menstrual cycle, keeping your bones strong, your skin glowing, and your brain nice and sharp. But what happens when you have too much estrogen? She can get overbearing, low bloating, mood swings, heavy periods, breast tenderness. Too little of estrogen could lead to brain fog, hot flashes, vaginal dryness, and increased risk of osteoporosis or brittle bones. Next up is progesterone. This is the chill friend who helps everyone calm down after too many cocktails. She promotes relaxation, helps you sleep, supports a healthy pregnancy, and balances estrogen's more fiery energy. So when progesterone is low, which is common if you're not ovulating regularly, which can happen with PCOS, you might feel anxious, might have trouble sleeping, and your cycles can get just completely unpredictable. The next one is testosterone. So think of testosterone as the confident friend who brings energy, drive, and passion to the table, but knows her limits. Because yes, ladies, this is a male hormone, but we do have this male hormone in our bodies, and it does play a role in the balance of everything as well.
(4:34 - 5:45) In the right amount, testosterone helps with muscle tone, sex drive, mood, and motivation, but too much, which again, one of the markers of PCOS, she starts dominating conversation. And this can look like acne, unwanted facial hair, maybe hair loss on your head, and cycle disruptions. Next one is insulin. So this is technically not a sex hormone, but she's always in the background refilling everyone's drinks, which means keeping blood sugar steady. This is definitely still a big one to talk about. Insulin can provide energy, and if she's overworked, thanks to too much sugar, stress, or inflammation, then she might start shouting and disrupting the party. High insulin can lead to weight gain, especially around the abdomen, fatigue, cravings, and triggers those high testosterone levels that we often see with PCOS. Cortisol. So cortisol is a stressed out friend who's maybe glued to their phone, checking their emails, worrying about deadlines, just distracted the whole time while she's at this dinner party.
(5:45 - 6:04) But she's necessary because we do need cortisol, because we need that stress response in order to survive. But when she's in overdrive all the time, she throws everyone else off. So that chronically high cortisol messes with sleep, mood, blood sugar, and even thyroid function.
(6:05 - 6:32) So speaking of thyroid function, this is like you have thyroid hormones, particularly kind of talking here about T3, T4. This is like the event planner making sure the timing, temperature, energy of the party is just right, because your thyroid does regulate all of that. Your metabolism, your energy production, digestion, just to name a few things, but also does a lot more.
(6:32 - 7:19) So when she's sluggish, which is hypothyroidism, everything feels slow, your mood, your energy, your weight loss efforts. And then when she's overworked, like in hyperthyroidism, you can have increased heart rate. You can actually have a weight loss despite having an increased appetite, maybe some anxiety, tremors, sensitivities to heat. And this can all lead to serious complications down the road, such as more serious heart problems, brittle bones, and even vision issues. Now, I do want to circle back and expand a little bit on estrogen because this hormone often gets talked about like it's just one single thing, but estrogen is actually a family of hormones. And there are three primary types of estrogen in the female body.
(7:19 - 8:22) Each one plays a slightly different role depending on the phase of life that you're in. So estradiol is the most dominant and active form of estrogen in women during their reproductive years. This is the one we talk about most often when we're discussing things like menstrual cycles and fertility and mood regulation. It's produced primarily by the ovaries and responsible for a lot of the classic female traits, which would be breast development, the distribution of fat, maintaining healthy bones, and keeping the vaginal tissues healthy and elastic. And when we think about PMS symptoms, maybe heavy periods or issues with ovulation, estradiol is usually the estrogen in the spotlight in a lot of those cases. It's also the one that's most sensitive to things like stress, insulin resistance, and inflammation, which is why for women with PCOS, we often see patterns of either estrogen dominance or estrogen deficiency as part of the bigger hormone puzzle.
(8:25 - 9:21) Another primary one of the estrogen family is estrone. And this is kind of like the backup singer of the estrogens. It's the primary form of estrogen after menopause, and it's produced mostly in fat tissue, not the ovaries like estradiol is. So this is why body fat can have such an impact on hormone balance in women, more so post-menopause. But estrone isn't as potent as estradiol, but it is still active and it can convert into other types of estrogen as needed. But too much estrone, especially in combination with insulin resistance or chronic inflammation, can contribute to things like increased cancer risk, that stubborn weight gain and metabolic issues, like I've talked about on many other episodes, like insulin resistance.
(9:21 - 14:12) So for women with PCOS who are carrying extra weight or dealing with insulin resistance, estrone can sometimes stay elevated, even if estradiol looks normal, and that can confuse the picture when it comes to symptoms. The third one to talk about is estriol, and this is the gentlest of the estrogens, and it's most abundant during pregnancy. It helps maintain the health of the uterus, supports fetal development, and keeps the vaginal and urinary tissues supple. So outside of pregnancy, estriol levels are typically quite low, but interestingly enough, estriol is sometimes used therapeutically in low doses to help with vaginal dryness, urinary issues, and even skin health in postmenopausal women because of how gentle and tissue protective it is. So why does this matter? I am telling you this because when we talk about hormone imbalances, especially in something like PCOS, it's not enough to just say, oh, your estrogen is high or your estrogen is low. We need to know which estrogen and in what context. So for example, you might have low estradiol, which makes you feel fatigued, affects your mood, messes with ovulation, but still have higher levels of estrone because of insulin resistance or weight gain. So that's a totally different picture than someone with uniformly low estrogens across the board. And if you're perimenopausal or postmenopausal, the balance between these three types shifts again. Estrone becomes more dominant, estradiol declines and estriol remains low unless you're pregnant or using certain therapies. So without making this more confusing, the big takeaway here is that estrogen isn't just one hormone. It's a family of hormones and understanding the differences and how they shift over time is key to really grasping what's happening in your body. Let's now kind of shift. I kind of gave you the background, just some basics about those top important hormones going on that play bigger roles in our body, but let's talk about how they all work together. So now imagine this dinner party turns into a murder mystery dinner party and everyone's input in solving the case affects if and how this mystery is solved. So for example, if insulin is overactive, that will raise testosterone. And what does high testosterone do? It disrupts ovulation. No ovulation means low progesterone, low progesterone leaves estrogen unchecked and high estrogen increases inflammation and insulin resistance. So you can see how this just turns into this vicious cycle, kind of like a hormonal soap opera going on. And this is why so many women with PCOS feel like they're chasing symptoms. They might be gaining weight, but also feel exhausted. They're breaking out, but also losing hair. You might be anxious, but can't sleep. It's not just one hormone. Unfortunately, it's a lot of times a chain reaction of several of them. And that's why healing has to be about the whole system and not just, you know, taking birth control and metformin and calling it a day. I'm going to stop there. That was a lot, but remember, this is just part one of this three part mini series that I'm doing. So hopefully you're starting to see your body in a new light just by, you know, maybe this is revisiting some stuff that you've learned in the past. Maybe this is completely new to you. And that's why I didn't want to go too in depth with anything, but this isn't about being broken or having bad genes. It's about understanding all the players at this dinner party inside you and learning how to support each section so they can play in harmony together. Again, in the next episode, I'm going to talk about what happens when this dinner party turns into absolute chaos, and we'll dive into the signs of hormone, hormone imbalance, why PCOS is often misunderstood and how these imbalances show up in your daily life. So until then, take a moment today to think, thank your body for the work it's doing. It really is a beautiful thing. And a lot of times you might just not be listening to what it's telling you. So even if it's feeling like things are not working well, just take a moment to thank yourself because healing truly does start with compassion. 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.