{"id":275156,"date":"2026-02-01T09:32:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T09:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/275156\/"},"modified":"2026-02-01T09:32:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T09:32:08","slug":"what-you-need-to-know-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/275156\/","title":{"rendered":"What you need to know"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the latest episode of our IMAGE The Check-in podcast<\/a>, nutritional therapists and co-founders of Gigi Supplements<\/a>, Lisa Hughes and Jenny Hare, break down the science behind stress, sleep, and hormones,\u00a0 and why tuning into our cycles can radically change how we feel, perform, and recover each month.<\/p>\n

\u201cStress is a huge component of your menstrual cycle, and it\u2019s massively under-acknowledged just how much stress really impacts the menstrual cycle,\u201d explains Jenny. From cycle length and ovulation to digestion and energy, stress disrupts more than we realise.<\/p>\n

How stress impacts your cycle<\/p>\n

Many women might not realise that their menstrual cycle isn\u2019t just four to five days of bleeding each month. \u201c[I often ask] \u2018How long is your menstrual cycle?\u2019 And they say, \u2018Oh, it\u2019s five days.\u2019 I say, \u2018Oh, yeah, that\u2019s your period. So, how long is it from day one of your period to when your next period starts? That\u2019s the menstrual cycle\u2019,\u201d says Jenny. \u201cThere is this kind of understanding for the first time, that there might be more here that\u2019s worth tracking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tracking your cycle for even a couple of months can help you spot how stress is affecting you. \u201cIt changes every month. It\u2019s not going to be the same, even for me, who has a 28-day cycle. And there\u2019s so many things that influence that. Stress is a huge component,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

That stress isn\u2019t just about obvious trauma. Lisa highlights how modern women often live in a chronic state of stress, sometimes without realising it. \u201cStress nowadays comes in so many different shapes and sizes\u2026 that email that comes through[after hours], or it\u2019s rushing to get back home or into work. It\u2019s the under-eating, the over-exercising. And I fell into that trap.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even healthy habits can backfire. \u201cIntermittent fasting really, really peaked when I was doing a clinic. And I was looking at all of this amazing research on how it is extremely beneficial for the body, and it is really good for blood sugar management and all of these things. I was like, \u2018Oh, my god, this is absolutely amazing.\u2019 On the other hand, my menstrual cycle was so irregular. So my body was literally in stress. As Jenny mentioned, my digestive system wasn\u2019t working well because, only when I clocked it, did I realise all this research had been done on men, so, of course, it wasn\u2019t translating into my body the way it was for men. And once, I stopped that and completely changed the way I looked at it. It was night and day. Within one month, my period returned to normal. I was going from like, 45-plus day cycles, thinking I had PCOS, just trying to figure out what was going on,\u201d she continued.<\/p>\n

Stress doesn\u2019t always have an immediate effect, either. Lisa explains that the impact of a stressful event might not show up in your cycle until months later. \u201cOur eggs go through a maturation cycle, which is 90 days\u2026 so essentially, what we\u2019re doing now we\u2019re going to see in three months\u2019 time in our menstrual cycle.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the latest episode of our IMAGE The Check-in podcast, nutritional therapists and co-founders of Gigi Supplements, Lisa…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275157,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[49280,98788,103,61,60,129963],"class_list":{"0":"post-275156","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-boots","9":"tag-boots-ireland","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-the-image-womens-health-clinic"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275156\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}