pre workouts and women's health
This blog post is for personal trainers who want to know how pre-workouts impact female client health so that they can better inform themselves and their clients. And this post, we are going to review number one, the ingredient in pre-workouts that impact women's hormones, the most two, how it impacts their hormones, three, three ways to match your pre-workout to your own or your client's cycle. And number four, two high quality pre-workout drinks that are safe for women's health that I recommend and have no affiliation to.
If you don't know me yet, Hey, my name's Omega.I'm the founder of the confident menstrual cycle coach academy. And this is one of my students, Daniella, who used to be totally dependent on caffeine, but, and like many of us, I was there too, but once she got it out of her life, she actually had more sustained energy and zero afternoon slumps, which I know a lot of us deal with. That's why we go with the pre-workout. So if you would like to learn more about the confident menstrual cycle coaching academy that I mentioned, you can click this link to fill out an application interview, or you can read until the end where I'll explain it just a little bit more.
All right. Without further ado, let's dive into the lesson today. The number one ingredients that most pre-workouts have that help people concentrate yet high for workouts and increase endorphins is not surprising. It's caffeine. Y'all caffeine is one of those ingredients that actually do more harm than good when it comes to long term hormonal health. And why is that? Of course I'll explain caffeine actually affects estrogen levels and hormone levels. Caffeine actually affects estrogen's overall levels, which can then impact PMs like mood changes, anxiety and cyclical depression. If we drink caffeine all month long, then in that two weeks before our period starts, that's the Lal phase. Usually when PMs starts, estrogen should be lower. And if we drink caffeine, it actually could be higher. And it tells the body high estrogen amounts tells the body that we don't have enough progesterone and progesterone is a rest and relax hormone.
The balance between estrogen and progesterone in the final weeks before our period is a huge indicator of whether or not we will have most of the premenstrual symptoms and get this caffeine uses the same liver enzyme that estrogen uses in order to be metabolized and excreted through the body. And this article from sleep at all tells us that women can actually have adverse health outcomes when it comes to drinking caffeine, yikes, say to break it to you and the adverse health outcomes that we're talking about, look like breast or uterine or ovarian cancers. So those are estrogen related cancers that are both genetic and environmental. If caffeine uses the same liver enzyme and as, as estrogen to be carried out of the body, this results in more estrogen in one's body over time.
The, so the two red flags that tell us that we need to help our female clients reduce their caffeine intake are number one, premenstrual symptoms like cramps, mood changes, anxiety and cyclical, depression, and two, if they have a family history of breast uterine or ovarian cancer, and you can do that in your initial health screening. Now, many people ask this question, is there a time in my cycle where drinking caffeine is, okay, everyone wants to get away with drinking caffeine. So I wanna dive into that too. Cuz caffeine can be fun sometimes, right? It is a drug y'all, it is a legal drug!!
Now we'll dive into when it is okay to drink caffeine, which I know all of y'all are interested in. So you or your clients might not be ready to like leave caffeine behind entirely and that's okay. We all need to take baby steps when it comes to making big changes, especially to our daily habits. So I have three sub strategies that you can use when working with caffeine specifically, some changes you can help your clients make is eating an actual meal with or before drinking their pre-workout or coffee in the morning.
So quick PSA putting butter and MCT oil in your coffee is not a meal. Okay? Note that having a meal before drinking coffee doesn't do anything to the liver enzymes that help detoxify estrogen or caffeine, but it does help stabilize blood sugar levels, which could help with that slump that sometimes occurs hours after having caffeine. So number two, strategy at certain times of the cycle, we could be more vulnerable to the detrimental effects of caffeine. Remember when I was saying that one, two weeks before our cycle, our body naturally clears estrogen. Well, this is the time of the cycle where caffeine actually can exacerbate those PMs symptoms. I listed that is cramps, anxiety, mood changes, breast tenderness and depression. Just, just a few, just a few fun symptoms that most of us deal with. At some point in our life. Some of you might feel like taking two weeks off of caffeine is a lot. So here is a solution and this is something that I teach in the confident menstrual cycle coaching academy. And it's a PMs reduction strategy and here's a little mini lesson. And again, if you wanna know more about the academy, you can click the application interview link in the description below, but here is your mini lesson.
If you or your clients get any PMs symptoms, make note of the cycle day that usually happens and count three to five days before that day. That's the day to start decreasing caffeine intake. So for instance, let's say that you have like a 30 day and you start getting anxiety around day 22 to 26. You'd reduce caffeine on day 17 or 19. So make that math equation for yourself and help your clients do the same. The method of taking away, potentially harmful substances or adding beneficial nutrients to combat PMs works to reduce PMs symptoms in general. And I have a whole playlist on reducing PMs symptoms and I'll link that in the description below. So you can watch that later.
And the third strategy is examining habits. And when they would actually benefit from a pre-workout and days that you actually don't need it. If you are training cyclically and lifting heavier in your ovulatory and follicular phase, those are the days that you might consider having a pre-workout and in the Lal phase, as you're decreasing the workout intensity, you would probably benefit from not having a pre-workout in the grand scheme of things. And if those terms, ovulatory, luteal are totally confusing to you. Watch this video, I'll link to it below too. So trust me, the less caffeine you have from a pre-workout or coffee or tea, the more pumped you're gonna be for your workouts when you actually do have that pre-workout or coffee or tea or whatever. So use this drug caffeine wisely.
In my research, I found two high quality pre-workouts that don't have caffeine that I don't have any affiliation to, but do have ingredients that give you energy for your workout. So let's review those two products and then they're key ingredients that give you the same muscle pump, the same amount of energy, the same recovery potential all without caffeine. The first one is transparent labs stem free. Pre-workout the first key ingredient that I like is the fermented branch chain amino acids. This article from amino vital says that fermented branch chain amino acids limits the movement of triptophan into the brain and the build up of serotonin there resulting in less central fatigue during exercise.
Another great ingredient in this product is beta alanine, which is actually an antioxidant. And then we have Huperzine A which studies suggest boost mental energy. The second pre-workout that is hormone safe is all no, which also helps increase nitric oxide and blood flow to the body with the first ingredient ingredient. El Citrulline. The second ingredient is glycer pump, which helps with hydration. And the other ingredient that I like is estrogen. And it's a combination of astragalus and Ginsing, which are both adaptogenic herbs that increase energy without increasing cortisol. But the estrogen website says that the product is really to promote gut health. So I'm a little confused, but the final ingredient is Huperzina Serrata, which is Huperzine A a and also increases cognitive abilities. So, so far we reviewed why pre-workouts aren't so good for hormone balance. How do cycle caffeine so that your clients have an easier cycle and get more benefit from their pre-workout and two high quality pre-workouts that are stimulant free. And if you want an assessment document, that'll help you and your clients determine where they are in their cycle and then help you track your client's workouts throughout their cycle. You can download my free assessment document, and that'll help you again, track your client's cycle and also apply workout to their cycle too.