Ep. 151: Naturally Increasing Progesterone, with Courtney Warday, RD
Caitlin:
Welcome to the Woven Well Podcast. I'm your host, Caitlin Estes. I'm a certified fertility care practitioner with a master of divinity degree. Each episode will cover a topic that helps educate and empower you and your fertility while honoring the deep connection your fertility has with your faith. Let's get started.
Caitlin:
Welcome back to the Woven Well Podcast. When you're talking about natural fertility topics, reproductive hormones are incredibly important. We need to know when these hormones are present and how we can tell if they're strong or maybe if they need some support. Now, one of our favorite hormones around here is progesterone. This hormone occurs after the ovulation of the egg, and it helps prepare the lining of the uterus for pregnancy, but it does so much more than that too. So I'll be sure to link to a previous episode that really dives in much deeper to progesterone. But the thing is, when our progesterone is low, we feel it. It affects so many things. It affects how we feel, how we process things, what our body does, even maybe what we crave to eat. So are there any ways for us to naturally increase this progesterone production if it's deficient? Is there anything that we can do on our own to live a life that encourages healthy progesterone levels? Well, to talk about that, I've invited Courtney Warday. Courtney is a fertility and hormone-focused registered dietitian, and the owner of Abide With Me Nutrition. She uses her knowledge and personal experience walking through infertility to help spiritually driven women balance their hormones naturally and get and stay pregnant. Courtney, welcome to the show.
Courtney Warday:
Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to chat with you today.
Caitlin:
This is a topic that is so important and I am really excited to hear what you have to offer, and I know the clients and the listeners are too. But first, I'd love to hear a little bit about yourself, what you do for listeners who don't know you yet.
Courtney Warday:
Yeah. So I am Courtney Warday, and me and my husband have been married for eight years. We actually started our fertility journey learning that we, that I had low progesterone by charting Creighton. And then when we did start supplementing, we ended up conceiving our oldest, her name is Elizabeth. We call her Ellie. She is seven. And then when we went to try to conceive again. It just wasn't so easy. And we ended up going through two years of secondary infertility. Before conceiving our little Christmas miracle. She was born just two days, three days before Christmas, Clare, and she is now three. And then we also after that we conceived pretty easily a little miracle Faustina, but she was only with us for 18 weeks through pregnancy. And we ended up losing her for no known reasons.
Courtney Warday:
And so that really opened my eyes as well to not only getting pregnant, but staying pregnant. And then we also have our little rainbow baby John, who is now 15, 16 months actually. So, we a hundred percent understand intimately all the facets of fertility. And I felt through all this, before we conceived Clare, it was just really on my heart to stay home with our daughter, Ellie. And we ended up, I ended up just feeling a call to start this ministry and business to help other women because I felt very overwhelmed. I was diagnosed with PCOS and had a surgery to remove endometriosis in that, in secondary and fertility journey. And so I was thinking if I'm overwhelmed, how is everyone else feeling? All these women just feeling alone and not sure what the next steps are, maybe sometimes not getting guidance from their doctors that they desire. So that is why I started Abide with Me nutrition and I've loved every second of it.
Caitlin:
Well, those personal stories can influence our work so much and just give us a passion for helping women. So I love that that's a part of your particular journey. So I, I know you value progesterone just as much as we do. We care a lot about it. So I'm curious to hear why you focus on it so much and why you find it to be so valuable for your clients.
Courtney Warday:
Well, in one sense, I, like you said, there's so many women who have low progesterone, and there's so many different reasons why it's important. Obviously, if we don't have enough progesterone, then our body's not going to be able to sustain a pregnancy. So if, you know, if fertility is a goal, then that's obviously a really important reason. But like you were saying as well, just for our overall health, you know, a lot of PMS symptoms are because of low progesterone. And so in order to, you know, sleep well in our luteal phase, have proper mood and our luteal phase, like you were talking about even food and energy and some of these different things, even just to thrive in our life, it's, it's definitely a really important thing to be focusing on and thinking about.
Caitlin:
Yeah, I completely agree with you. Every single woman is benefited by healthy progesterone levels. It really does not matter what her reproductive goals are. If she's trying to get pregnant, yes. If she's single and in college and just wants to feel her best, whatever progesterone is her friend. If we have healthy levels of it. So your approach is a little bit different than a physician or an OBGYN, they would probably recommend supplementing progesterone. And as long as it's a bioidentical form of progesterone given at the correct time in the cycle, there's not really specifically anything wrong with that. But it's not always the best option for each woman. Or we may want to have our own ways to naturally increase progesterone so we don't have to be on supplemented bioidentical progesterone the rest of our lives. So I cannot wait to hear. I'm so curious, in your experience, are there things that we can do to naturally improve progesterone levels?
Courtney Warday:
Yes. This is a good question. So, like I said, in my own journey, I was very low in progesterone. When I was first got married and we were charting and in my, throughout my first pregnancy, I was supplementing progesterone. And then in my other pregnancies, I have not had the supplement progesterone. And even through stressful times, now my progesterone is optimal. And I do believe that that is via diet and lifestyle, things that I've implemented that I've learned. And I think one of the biggest things that sometimes people aren't going to want to hear but is stress. Stress. I was so stressed in my, I was in my dietary internship during my pregnancy, you know, just getting married, good stress, all good things, but a lot of stress. And so, the metabolite, the ol that is needed to create cortisol and to create progesterone. And so our body is going to, if our body is in a stressed out state, then our body is going to choose survival with cortisol to help our body just survive over reproduction every time. And so that is one of the biggest things we can do besides making sure that we're ovulating because if we're not ovulating, we're not going to be producing progesterone. So that would be the first thing is are we ovulating, which you would be able to help determine.
Caitlin:
Certainly, certainly. And yes, I just want to say I totally agree with you on the stress aspect. Every single one of my clients, we talk about the effects of stress and even, like you said, even happy stress. So we often think that stress is only something that makes us feel overwhelmed or it's sad or it's hard. No, sometimes it's your best friend's wedding. Sometimes It's, you are a teacher and you're getting out of your routine for the summer. You're excited about summer break, but it's a different routine and everything's changing and your kids are at home. So it can be all sorts of sources of stress that can make you feel like that. Sorry, just wanted to add that in.
Courtney Warday:
Yeah, it's very true. I'm very big on that with knowing that stress is not always necessarily bad, and how can we help our body through that stress? So even though I am, you know, have stress in my life. I have learned how to help my body through that stress, where my cycles are still normal. And so there were periods of time in our infertility where I was very, very stressed out and I wasn't consistently ovulating. And so I think that we can't, that has to be a big thing that we talk about, even though it's not always everyone's favorite thing to talk about and going along with stress, like even just getting good, prioritizing good sleep, that can not only help our body to rejuvenate overnight, help our body through some of that stress as well.
Courtney Warday:
I know when I don't sleep well, I am extra anxious or stressed out as well. So by prioritizing that sleep, that's really big as well. And I think when we're looking at progesterone too, it's, our hormones are like a symphony. You know, we can't just focus on only progesterone. We have to think about hormones in general. We have to think about, what's our estrogen doing? How can we help? Maybe we have low progesterone, but maybe we have really high estrogen and we need to kind of help lower that as well. And so it's kind of like the symphony. So I, I, when I'm focusing on progesterone, I'm also looking at just how are we nourishing our body in general for hormones? And one of the biggest things that people don't really think about is healthy fats. How cholesterol is needed to produce hormones and allow our hormones to work effectively in the body.
Courtney Warday:
And so if we're not getting healthy fats throughout our day, and a lot of probably your clients grew up in the low fat cur, you know, era. So maybe sometimes people think if I'm increasing my fat, then I'm going to like gain weight and I'm going to, you know, or I'm going to get fat. But really we need those healthy fats and looking at healthy fats in a different perspective of, no, this is helping nourish my hormones is something really important to think about. And so getting those throughout the day are going to be really important. And then there are certain nutrients as well, that are going to help impact your hormones in general. One being magnesium, zinc is big. B-6 can be helpful too, even with just the corpus luteum, which is like you were saying, which, what is, what produces the progesterone in the body, what I say zinc, B-6 magnesium, just even in fiber, if you know that you are struggling with estrogen being high, even reducing that fiber can really help as well. And avoiding toxins, as well. Like if, as much as possible reducing endocrine disruptors can just help your hormones in general. because they mimic or they'll block receptor sites to allow hormones to work properly. And then even if, you know, you have a, like a thyroid dysfunction or you know, helping, you know, nourish your thyroid can also help your progesterone. because there's a little bit of a connection there too. So those are some big things.
Caitlin:
Yeah. We're all, we're interconnected, you know, mind, body, spirit, but also within the body, all the different organs and systems are working together. So it makes sense that the thyroid would play a role and, you know, like all the different areas that we need to be prioritizing. I love that you described the hormones as a symphony. So you need all of them, not just one. And the importance of each one of those. I definitely, definitely agreed there. Now you said that we need healthy fats the other day. On Instagram, I was given a reel. You know, the algorithm sends me different things, and because of what I do, they're usually fertility or nutrition related, you know, that come up there. I don't do anything in nutrition, but I talk a lot with other people about it, and the reel that I saw was a woman eating a stick of butter saying the importance of fats. And I thought, now I don't know. So you tell me, Courtney, what are good sources of fats that we should be prioritizing?
Courtney Warday:
Yeah, that's a good question. I definitely think that, I mean, when it comes to a butter source, like obviously I would, I'm always very big on like getting it as close as possible to the natural, like how it was created. Yeah. So butter is going to be, I would say that a good grass-fed butter is going to be healthy. Now eating a stick of butter, obviously we want to look at our portions. But I would definitely a hundred percent say that's a healthy fat source over like margarine, you know, or something over plant butter or something like that. But yeah, things like avocados or avocado oil, things like even like coconut or olive oil. Olives are going to be good sources, nut butters, nuts, things like that. So really just trying to stay away from those inflammatory type, processed vegetable oils. Yeah. Things like that that are going to be not doing a lot of nutrition or adding a lot of nourishment to your body. Yeah.
Caitlin:
And trying to steer clear of things that are inflammatory or are endocrine disruptors like you mentioned earlier. That can feel very, very daunting. But I just want to remind listeners that it's about starting small. So if this is the first time that you're hearing about this or you are just diving into learning more about all of that and you don't even know where to begin, you pick one thing. And I know that with my clients, and I'm sure with yours too, Courtney, I talk about this with them at one of our first initial sessions and we don't talk about every single thing on earth that could be a hormone disruptor
Courtney Warday:
It's overwhelming,
Caitlin:
We talk about very specific things that where they could start and make a difference. And usually those are things that make a difference on their Creighton charting. So we make sure to go there first because you see the results and knowing that there are results on the other end. Because what keeps us motivated and excited to try these things out so that we can see results. So when you start making these changes to prioritize progesterone production, what kind of results can women expect to see?
Courtney Warday:
It's definitely different for every woman, obviously. And what's going on in, I do want to mention that there could be some type of corpus luteum dysfunction going on. And if that's the case, there are some things you can do to nourish the corpus luteum, but like there could be something underlying. So I'm not going to just say, yeah, if you incorporate healthy fats or something, you're going to see all these changes right away. But I think it's kind of little changes over time do make a big difference. And so I think some of the first things that they may, you know, people might start to see are just reduction in some of these PMS symptoms. You know, if you're starting to sleep better during your luteal phase or your mood starts to be a little more stable or your energy or things like that, those are some things that you might notice.
Courtney Warday:
Obviously if you get your levels checked at post peak plus seven, you may notice a difference slowly there too. But I think just some of those symptoms that we talked about at the beginning with those PMS symptoms, you might notice some of those things change. And even just incorporating healthy fats and, and balancing blood sugar and things like that, which are also going to be beneficial. You will could notice, just energy changes, feeling fuller, longer, less hanger, you know, some of those things by even just incorporating healthy fats and allowing more satiety to your meals could notice a difference there too.
Caitlin:
And this is why I think working with someone like yourself who is a registered dietitian is so worth it because, and I tell this to my clients too, you're not working with me forever. You're working with me for a short amount of time to learn tools and skills that you can use the rest of your reproductive life. So the same is true for your work. You make these initial changes, you improve the hormones, and then those are improved the rest of your reproductive life. So, I think it's exciting to think about seeing the changes in how women can feel better. So thank you so much for spending the time and coming on the show and sharing about this with us, Courtney.
Courtney Warday:
Absolutely. It was my pleasure to share some of my knowledge with you guys.
Caitlin:
Listeners, I hope you learn just as much as I did. I find it so interesting everything that Courtney has to share about natural ways that we can improve progesterone because progesterone is so important and it's so common to be deficient in it. I mean, PMS, how many of us deal with that? So if you'd like to learn more about Courtney and what she does, I'll make sure to have her contact information in the show notes for you. And if you're not sure whether your progesterone is low or not, then I'd love to recommend our free cycle checklist on our website. It gives you a very practical overview of your cycle, including what to look for related to progesterone. We hope you join us next week for more great information on all things natural fertility. But until then, thanks for listening. As we continue to explore together what it means to be woven well.