Balancing Hormones Naturally

If you’ve been told you have low progesterone, your first question is probably how to raise it. About 90% of the women in my DMs are asking some version of this. In this episode, Leah walks through the symptoms, why progesterone drops in the first place, and five things you can start doing today.

In this episode:

• The symptoms of low progesterone, including brown spotting, painful or heavy periods, PMS, anxiety, and digestive issues before your period.
• Why “brown spotting is just old blood” is the wrong place to stop asking questions, and why your cycle is considered your fifth vital sign.
• Why symptoms are a gift, and what happens to them (and the cost of fixing them) when they get ignored.
• Why your body will always prioritize cortisol over progesterone, and what that means when you’re living in fight or flight.
• What regulating your nervous system actually means (it’s not a bubble bath), and how to check in with your body and shift your state in two to three minutes.
• The supplements and foods that support progesterone, including vitamin C, vitamin E, vitamin B6, magnesium, and potassium rich foods.
• How seed cycling works, which seeds to use in each phase, and why grinding them fresh matters.
• Why eating enough food, especially good fats, matters for hormone production, and what your body does when it thinks it’s in a famine
• How food sensitivities, gut health, and toxic burden tie into progesterone.
• Why progesterone cream isn’t the answer for everyone, and the stories of clients who lengthened their luteal phase and carried a successful pregnancy by finding the root cause.
• How to sleep in complete darkness and why it’s the easiest hack on the list.
• When to test progesterone (5 to 7 days after ovulation) and why you have to track ovulation first.
• Why this episode is for women who are ovulating, and what to look at if you aren’t.

Pick one thing from this episode, start today, and report back on how it goes.

Leah’s Favorite Things: https://www.leahbrueggemann.com/favorites

I’m Leah Brueggemann, a Functional Diagnostic Nutritional® Practitioner and Hormone Health Coach, helping you balance your hormones in effective and realistic ways so you can live a healthier, happier life. Through the Balance Hormones Naturally podcast, you’ll discover why your cycle is so important to your everyday health and how you can use nutrition to help support the rise and fall of your hormones and finally feel truly amazing.

Let’s connect:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/balancinghormonesnaturally/
Personal Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leah_brueg/
Website: https://www.leahbrueggemann.com/
Email: [email protected]

You’ve been told to cut calories, do more cardio, and crunch your way to a flat stomach. None of that is going to work. Belly fat is a hormone problem, not a willpower problem, and until you understand what’s actually driving it, nothing is going to change.

In this episode:

- Why belly fat is different from every other type of fat, what makes it the most dangerous, and why you can’t spot reduce it with exercise.

- The three hormonal drivers behind belly fat, estrogen that isn’t detoxing well, cortisol imbalance, and insulin resistance.

- Why women need more sleep than men and what a bad night is actually doing to your cortisol, your cravings, and your insulin the next day.

- The client who lost 12 inches by focusing on cortisol and adrenal support, not cardio and restriction.

- Why your fasting insulin is the number to watch years before glucose or A1C starts to move, and what optimal actually looks like.

- The drainage pathway check, sweat, pee, poop, and breath, and why none of your detox efforts work if these aren’t open.

- The soluble fiber foods that help your body detox estrogen, including carrots, chia seeds, oranges, and sprouts.

- The supplement that mops up LPS toxins in the gut and supports your mucosal lining at the same time.

- Why manually balancing blood sugar supports your sleep, your cortisol, and your estrogen detoxification all at once.

- The circadian fast that helps clear insulin overnight without starving yourself.

- Why stevia and monk fruit still matter during your fasting window when you have insulin resistance.

- Apple cider vinegar before meals, how much, how diluted, and exactly why it helps.

- The two supplements Leah reaches for with insulin resistance, myo-inositol and maitake mushroom, and the data behind them.

- The app that locks Leah off her phone at 9pm every single night and why she credits it for better sleep.

- EFT tapping shown to reduce cortisol by 43%, and how to use it as a sleep ritual.

This is not a five day fix. But if you do these things consistently, you will see belly fat start to move, and it will stay gone.

Leah’s Favorite Things: https://www.leahbrueggemann.com/favorites

I’m Leah Brueggemann, a Functional Diagnostic Nutritional® Practitioner and Hormone Health Coach, helping you balance your hormones in effective and realistic ways so you can live a healthier, happier life. Through the Balance Hormones Naturally podcast, you’ll discover why your cycle is so important to your everyday health and how you can use nutrition to help support the rise and fall of your hormones and finally feel truly amazing.

Let’s connect:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/balancinghormonesnaturally/
Personal Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leah_brueg/
Website: https://www.leahbrueggemann.com/
Email: [email protected]

You can eat perfectly, take all the right supplements, and still feel like your hormones are a mess. If you’re not sleeping, nothing else is going to work the way it should. Here’s exactly why, and what to actually do about it.

In this episode:

• Why sleep and hormones aren’t separate conversations, they’re the same conversation.

• The cortisol and progesterone connection, why poor sleep steals from your keep calm carry on hormone and then makes sleep even harder.

• How estrogen regulates REM sleep and why perimenopause, menopause, and postpartum hit so hard at night.

• The hunger and fullness hormones that get completely thrown off when you don’t sleep well, and why you’re not weak for craving sugar 
  after a bad night.

• Why your thyroid mineral gets depleted by stress and poor sleep, and how that loops back into weight.

• The melatonin fact nobody talks about, most of it is made in your gut, not your brain.

• Why you cannot out supplement a sleep problem.

• The four hour window between dinner and sleep, why it matters and what to do if you’re always hungry before bed.

• The screen habits that are wrecking your middle of the night sleep without you realizing it.

• The iPhone red screen hack, blue light glasses, and the sticky red paper on the Kindle.

• Why what you do in the morning is equally as important as what you do at night, and the two minute outdoor habit that resets your circadian rhythm.

• The brain dump routine that gets everything out of your head so you stop lying awake with a mental to do list.

• Leah’s full six minute nighttime habit stack, acupressure mat, legs up the wall, near infrared light, and a visualization exercise.

• The foods that actually help your body produce melatonin, including tart cherry and pistachios.

• The supplements worth considering for sleep, magnesium glycinate, reishi, valerian, and CBD.

You don’t have to spend a lot of money to sleep better. But you do have to stop skipping the basics.

Leah’s Favorite Things: https://www.leahbrueggemann.com/favorites

I’m Leah Brueggemann, a Functional Diagnostic Nutritional® Practitioner and Hormone Health Coach, helping you balance your hormones in effective and realistic ways so you can live a healthier, happier life. Through the Balance Hormones Naturally podcast, you’ll discover why your cycle is so important to your everyday health and how you can use nutrition to help support the rise and fall of your hormones and finally feel truly amazing.

Let’s connect:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/balancinghormonesnaturally/
Personal Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leah_brueg/
Website: https://www.leahbrueggemann.com/
Email: [email protected]

The healing journey doesn’t have a finish line. And sometimes the hardest part isn’t the protocol, it’s what happens in your head when things don’t go the way you planned. Leah shares the full story of how she got here, from fibroadenomas and painful irregular cycles to minerals, mold, and becoming an NLP practitioner.

In this episode:

• Why Leah’s healing journey started with a golf ball sized lump and a breast cancer family history on both sides.

• The years of going in circles with functional doctors, naturopaths, and specialists who each had one answer that never quite fit.

• What actually worked after six months of implementing the right foundations, regulated cycles, raised progesterone, painless periods, and a positive pregnancy test.

• Why discovering minerals postpartum was the missing puzzle piece that made her fibroadenomas completely disappear.

• The mold in the basement, the joint pain at 30, and how it knocked her labs sideways even as a practitioner who knew exactly what was happening.

• Why she sent her own labs to another practitioner instead of reading them herself, and what that taught her about staying objective in your own health.

• The note her husband left her that made her cry in the shower and gave her the next step she needed.

• How the mold experience led her directly to becoming an NLP practitioner and why she brought it into the Hormone Reset Program.

• Why telling yourself “I am healed, I am amazing” doesn’t work and what actually rewires the subconscious.

• The small daily shifts that make the big changes, noticing the good, not letting a bad day mean anything, and treating feedback as just feedback.

• Why nothing is an emergency and how that one reframe changes everything about how you show up for your kids, your business, and your health.

• Why you need someone else to hold the bird’s eye view for you, because even practitioners get lost in their own weeds.

You don’t have to figure everything out. You just have to take the next best step.

Leah’s Favorite Things: https://www.leahbrueggemann.com/favorites

I’m Leah Brueggemann, a Functional Diagnostic Nutritional® Practitioner and Hormone Health Coach, helping you balance your hormones in effective and realistic ways so you can live a healthier, happier life. Through the Balance Hormones Naturally podcast, you’ll discover why your cycle is so important to your everyday health and how you can use nutrition to help support the rise and fall of your hormones and finally feel truly amazing.

Let’s connect:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/balancinghormonesnaturally/
Personal Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leah_brueg/
Website: https://www.leahbrueggemann.com/
Email: [email protected]

If you've ever wondered whether your anxiety is causing your hormone imbalance or your hormones are causing your anxiety, the answer is both. And once you understand the loop, you can finally start to break it.

In this episode:

• Why anxiety and hormonal imbalance aren't separate issues, they're a feedback loop, and you have to stop the cycle to fix either one.
• How chronic stress eventually tanks your cortisol even when you're still under the same amount of stress, and why your test comes back low when you expected high.
• Why your body will shut down ovulation when it doesn't feel safe, and how stress is directly connected to fertility.
• The digestion connection nobody talks about, why chronic stress is the reason you're bloated, constipated, or not fully eliminating, and how that loops back into hormones.
• The progesterone piece, why stress and anxiety steal from your keep calm carry on hormone and make everything worse.
• Why identifying as an anxious person is creating an expectation loop your body keeps proving correct.
• The difference between "I am anxious" and "I'm experiencing anxiety right now," and why the wording actually matters for your hormones.
• How your brain wires itself based on repetition and emotional experience, and what that means for PMS, PMDD, and mood.
• The regulatory sandwich, a simple before-and-after tool for moments that trigger your nervous system.
• Why five minutes of breathwork twice a week isn't going to cut it, and how to actually habit stack nervous system regulation into your day.
• Why you literally cannot feel calm without enough magnesium and potassium, it's a physical fact.
• What brain rewiring inside the Hormone Reset Program actually looks like, and why supplements alone will never be enough.

Your body isn't broken. It's protecting you based on old patterns. But you can change that, starting today.

Leah's Favorite Things: https://www.leahbrueggemann.com/favorites

I'm Leah Brueggemann, a Functional Diagnostic Nutritional® Practitioner and Hormone Health Coach, helping you balance your hormones in effective and realistic ways so you can live a healthier, happier life. Through the Balance Hormones Naturally podcast, you'll discover why your cycle is so important to your everyday health and how you can use nutrition to help support the rise and fall of your hormones and finally feel truly amazing.

Let's connect:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/balancinghormonesnaturally/
Personal Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leah_brueg/
Website: https://www.leahbrueggemann.com/
Email: [email protected]

This one is just you and me. No guest, no protocol, no checklist, just an honest conversation about what it actually looks like to keep going when life gets heavy. Because 2026 has been a year, and I think a lot of you are in a similar season.

In this episode:

• Why Leah is sharing this, not for sympathy, but to model what adapting actually looks like in real life.
• The grief button analogy that reframes how we think about loss and why time doesn't heal the way we think it does.
• Why ignoring your emotions and plowing forward isn't healing, and what she did instead.
• The specific things she pulled back on during this season and why that was the right call.
• How she supported her adrenals when stress was high, and the catnip bitters she reached for when things felt really unsettled.
• Why she put away all self-development books and just read fiction, and why that was the right move.
• The gardening hobby that became her low-stakes, low-pressure nervous system reset.
• How joy became a non-negotiable, singing with the kids, playing piano, making cottage cheese chocolate protein balls.
• Why communication with your spouse about what you actually need matters more in hard seasons than in easy ones.
• The levels system, and why having a lot of level one days is not failure, it's just where you are.
• What it looks like to still be moving forward even when forward feels slow and small.

You don't have to be okay all the time. You just have to keep moving. Even if it's smaller and slower than you'd like.

Use code LEAH to save 15% at Eversio Wellness here

Leah's Favorite Things: https://www.leahbrueggemann.com/favorites

I'm Leah Brueggemann, a Functional Diagnostic Nutritional® Practitioner and Hormone Health Coach, helping you balance your hormones in effective and realistic ways so you can live a healthier, happier life. Through the Balance Hormones Naturally podcast, you'll discover why your cycle is so important to your everyday health and how you can use nutrition to help support the rise and fall of your hormones and finally feel truly amazing.

Let's connect:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/balancinghormonesnaturally/
Personal Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leah_brueg/
Website: https://www.leahbrueggemann.com/
Email: [email protected]

If you're trying to get pregnant, thinking about getting pregnant, or stuck in that dreaded two-week wait wondering if there's anything else you should be doing, this episode is for you. Most women wait until something's wrong to start looking for answers. This is your permission to start looking now.

In this episode:

- Why your cycle is one of the most powerful diagnostic tools you have, and how to start reading it.

- What a short luteal phase is actually telling you about your progesterone and why it matters for fertility.

- The spotting-before-your-period sign thatmost women ignore and what it means.

- Why cervical mucus is not a dirty word, it's a fertility sign, and here's what to look for.

- The PMS, bloating, mood swings, and breast tenderness symptoms that are red flags, not just part of being a woman.

- What to do nutritionally if you're coming off birth control before trying to conceive.

- Why Leah always starts with minerals, and the hair tissue mineral analysis that changed one client's 50-60 day cycles into a regular ovulating cycle.

- The full thyroid panel you actually need (not just TSH) and the optimal ranges your doctor probably isn't looking for.

- Fasting insulin, glucose, and A1C, the numbers that matter for fertility and what optimal actually looks like.

- Whether a GI map makes sense right now and the timing consideration nobody talks about.

- Why supporting your liver and detox pathways before pregnancy is one of the most important things you can do.

- The nervous system piece, and why your adrenal health is something you literally pass on to your baby.

- The candle analogy that reframes what filling your cup actually means.

Your body is giving you clues every single cycle. This episode teaches you how to read them.

Use code LEAH to save 15% at Eversio Wellness here.
Use code LEAH to save 15% at Paleo Valley here.

Leah's Favorite Things: https://www.leahbrueggemann.com/favorites

I'm Leah Brueggemann, a Functional Diagnostic Nutritional® Practitioner and Hormone Health Coach, helping you balance your hormones in effective and realistic ways so you can live a healthier, happier life. Through the Balance Hormones Naturally podcast, you'll discover why your cycle is so important to your everyday health and how you can use nutrition to help support the rise and fall of your hormones and finally feel truly amazing.

Let's connect:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/balancinghormonesnaturally/
Personal Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leah_brueg/
Website: https://www.leahbrueggemann.com/
Email: [email protected]

Use code LEAH to save 15% at Eversio Wellness here 

Nobody tells you that becoming a mom doesn't just change your schedule, it changes everything you thought you knew about yourself. Cassie is a Master NLP Practitioner and Registered Dietitian, and she came on to have the conversation a lot of moms are quietly struggling through but not saying out loud. This one hit close to home for both of us.

In this episode:

• Why losing your independence after baby isn't a personal failure, and what it actually means to find it again.
• The specific challenge of going from hyper-independent to completely dependent on someone else's schedule, sleep, and help.
• Why stepping back and letting your husband figure it out is one of the hardest and most important things you can do.
• The dial metaphor: why your definition of a successful day has to change based on how much sleep you got, whether the baby is sick, and what season you're actually in.
• Why the hardest part of motherhood isn't the sleepless nights, it's the stories you tell yourself about what they mean.
• How to communicate what you're making something mean before you spend three days stewing over it.
• The difference between choosing your current season and feeling stuck in it.
• What it actually looks like to catch a negative pattern before it spirals, and the three ways Cassie redirects when she notices she's in her own way.
• Why asking for help doesn't make you a bad mom, a bad wife, or a weak woman, and how to start believing that.
• The inner dialogue check: are these your words, or are they your mom's words?.
• Why you can have reasons or you can have results, and how to stop hiding behind your reasons.
• How Cassie helps women who have been the backbone of their families finally start prioritizing themselves.

If you're in a season where you feel like you've lost yourself a little, this episode is your permission slip to find your way back.

Find Cassy:
Instagram: @antisettlecoach

Use code LEAH to save 15% at Eversio Wellness here

Leah's Favorite Things: https://www.leahbrueggemann.com/favorites

I'm Leah Brueggemann, a Functional Diagnostic Nutritional® Practitioner and Hormone Health Coach, helping you balance your hormones in effective and realistic ways so you can live a healthier, happier life. Through the Balance Hormones Naturally podcast, you'll discover why your cycle is so important to your everyday health and how you can use nutrition to help support the rise and fall of your hormones and finally feel truly amazing.

Let's connect:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/balancinghormonesnaturally/
Personal Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leah_brueg/
Website: https://www.leahbrueggemann.com/
Email: [email protected]

Use code LEAH to save 15% at Eversio Wellness here 

You're not weak. You're not lacking willpower. Your cravings are actually telling you something, and once you understand what they're saying, everything changes. If you've ever stood in your kitchen at 9pm unable to stop thinking about chocolate, this episode is for you.

In this episode:

• Why sugar cravings have nothing to do with willpower and everything to do with what's happening inside your body.
• The blood sugar roller coaster, what it actually looks like, why it keeps looping, and the sneaky foods that are spiking you without you realizing it.
• Why your smoothie, your fruit snack, and your adrenal cocktail might be working against your blood sugar without you knowing.
• The simple plate formula that will change how you feel if you actually do it accurately.
• Why your cravings are completely different in your luteal phase than the rest of your month, and what progesterone has to do with it.
• How cortisol spikes your blood sugar even when you haven't eaten anything, and why the 3pm crash and nighttime cravings are a stress response.
• What your specific craving is actually telling you, if it's salt, think adrenals; if it's specifically chocolate, think magnesium.
• Why parasites feed off serotonin at night and what to watch for if your cravings only show up after dark.
• Why just cutting sugar doesn't work, and what actually does.
• The craving reset: hormone plating, fixing your mineral base, and supporting your luteal phase.
• Why HMA testing can show blood sugar imbalances before they ever show up on a standard blood test.
• What emotional eating actually is at a biological level, and why it's not a character flaw.

Cravings aren't a weakness. They're clues. And once you know how to read them, you won't need willpower anymore.

Leah's Favorite Things: https://www.leahbrueggemann.com/favorites

I'm Leah Brueggemann, a Functional Diagnostic Nutritional® Practitioner and Hormone Health Coach, helping you balance your hormones in effective and realistic ways so you can live a healthier, happier life. Through the Balance Hormones Naturally podcast, you'll discover why your cycle is so important to your everyday health and how you can use nutrition to help support the rise and fall of your hormones and finally feel truly amazing.

Let's connect:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/balancinghormonesnaturally/
Personal Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leah_brueg/
Website: https://www.leahbrueggemann.com/
Email: [email protected]

Join the Reset Retreat: https://landing.leahbrueggemann.com/reset-retreat-oct26

Your doctor probably told you it's autoimmune, genetic, or idiopathic, which is just a fancy word for "we have no idea." But what if everything the medical industry has told you about Crohn's and colitis is wrong? Josh Dech is back, and this time he's bringing a published paper that flips the entire $40 billion bowel disease industry on its head.

In this episode:

• Why IBS is a garbage diagnosis and what doctors actually mean when they call something idiopathic
• The published paper that proves Crohn's and colitis have never met the criteria for autoimmune disease, and what's actually going on instead
• Why your genes didn't cause your bowel disease, and the difference between genetic susceptibility and genetic cause
• The six percent stat that will make your jaw drop: how the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand make up six percent of the global population but carry sixty percent of the world's bowel disease
• The three things that separate us from countries with five to twenty-five times less bowel disease: ultra-processed food, antibiotic usage, and glyphosate
• Why thirty-five to fifty percent of your gut bacteria die in the presence of glyphosate, and why testing for it is a waste of money if you live in the US
• Generational dysbiosis: how we've gone from Amazonian tribes with 1,600 unique gut bacteria species to people with bowel disease carrying as few as 100
• The dietary mistakes people with IBD make, including why bone broth might actually be making you worse
• The two diets with the most clinical data behind them for Crohn's and colitis, and why forty to sixty percent of pediatric patients reached remission in six to eight weeks
• What fecal transplants actually are, the three ways they're delivered, and why spending $30,000 on one might be completely useless if you don't fix your terrain first
• Why you could get paid $300 to $500 per donation if you have a healthy gut (yes, really)
• The nail in the foot analogy that perfectly explains what every GI doctor is doing wrong
• The simple order of operations Josh takes every client through,environments, food, drainage, testing, rebuild, and why skipping steps is why people don't get better
• Why taking gut lining support before addressing root cause is like trying to build a house while it's on fire
• The projection that by 2030, bowel disease will affect one in 100 people, a 25,000 to 50,000 percent increase from the 1950s

If you or someone you love has been told their Crohn's or colitis is just something they have to manage for life, this episode will change how you think about that. It is reversible. And it starts with understanding what actually caused it.

Find Josh Dech:
Podcast: Reversing Crohn's and Colitis Naturally / The Reversible Podcast
Website: gutsolution.ca
Social: @joshdech.health

Use code LEAH to save 15% at Eversio Wellness here

Leah's Favorite Things: https://www.leahbrueggemann.com/favorites

I'm Leah Brueggemann, a Functional Diagnostic Nutritional® Practitioner and Hormone Health Coach, helping you balance your hormones in effective and realistic ways so you can live a healthier, happier life. Through the Balance Hormones Naturally podcast, you'll discover why your cycle is so important to your everyday health and how you can use nutrition to help support the rise and fall of your hormones and finally feel truly amazing.

Let's connect:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/balancinghormonesnaturally/
Personal Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leah_brueg/
Website: https://www.leahbrueggemann.com/
Email: [email protected]