Which Hormone Pattern Is Actually Yours? Thyroid, Cycle, Perimenopause, or PCOS

You've probably already self-diagnosed. Thyroid on Monday. Perimenopause by Wednesday. Adrenal fatigue on Friday, right after the Reel that described your exact 2 a.m. wake-up. And you're still stuck.

In this episode, Kacey walks through the four hormone patterns she sees over and over in the high-functioning women she works with — the thyroid-adrenal tangle, cycle and luteal chaos, perimenopause knocking early, and the post-pill / insulin-PCOS pattern — plus the most honest answer of all: most women are running a stack of all four.

She names why the internet can't tell you which one is actually running your life, why isolated fixes haven't worked, and what actually looking at the picture in labs makes possible. Plus: exactly what a lab package with her looks like, and how to figure out where you land right now.

Ready to figure out your pattern? Head to Instagram @simplyhealthywellness and comment or DM the word HQUIZ — the four-pattern quiz will come straight to your DMs. Then reply with your letter (or "it's a mix") and tell Kacey what you got.

Ready to stop guessing entirely? DM the word FMLABS and Kacey will help you figure out which lab combo makes sense for your specific situation.

This week's Kick Rocks: the birth-control-as-hammer and SSRI-as-first-line crowds.

New episodes weekly. Follow the show.

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Transcript

[00:03] Kacey K: This is simply Healthy Hormones, the podcast for women whose body stopped cooperating after 35 hormone help, minus the bullshit. I'm Casey Cain, integrative health practitioner, holistic nutritionist, and the person you call when your labs are normal but you're not.

[00:17] With multiple certifications in integrative health nutrition and a master's in psychology, I help high functioning women figure out what's actually going on in their bodies, and then I trust them to do something with it.

[00:27] No restrictive rules, no supplement spirals, no taking your coffee away.

[00:32] The real science of what's happening to you, explained like you're the smart, capable, grown ass woman you actually are. I'm glad you're here.

[00:43] Hello,

[00:44] welcome to episode four.

[00:46] Quick heads up before we get into today's episode. Stay until the end. I'm introducing a new segment to the show today called Kick Rocks, and it's a good one. You'll see what I mean, if you don't already know what I'm talking about.

[00:58] All right, let's do this.

[01:00] I want you to picture your last month.

[01:04] Somewhere in that month, you probably had a moment,

[01:07] maybe more than one, where you got hit with a symptom that made you go, okay, that's not normal. Like the 2am Wake up. That one's fun, right? Staring at the ceiling, having a party and wishing that your brain would just shut off.

[01:21] Or the brain fog where you lost your words in the middle of a meeting.

[01:25] Or the angry mood that showed up out of nowhere and made you almost throat punch your boss or your husband.

[01:32] How about the cycle? Doing something it didn't used to do, like bleeding for 14 days with only a 14 day break in between.

[01:39] Or my favorite, the energy crash at 3pm that no amount of caffeine can touch.

[01:45] Like what in the fresh hell, right?

[01:50] And then you did what every smart, capable woman does when her body starts doing something weird. You went to the Internet, you watched a reel that described your symptom in vivid detail and told you it was your thyroid convincing.

[02:04] So on Monday, you were pretty sure it was your thyroid.

[02:07] Then Wednesday, you watched a different reel that described the same symptom and told you it was perimenopause.

[02:14] Also convincing.

[02:15] Then Friday,

[02:16] you found a podcast episode that told you told you it was actually your adrenals.

[02:22] And by Sunday, you had ordered three supplements, tried to cancel two of them because a fourth person told you they were bullshit. And you are now more confused than when you started.

[02:32] If you've been in that loop or are in that loop, congratulations, you're in the same boat as millions of other women. I hate it for us.

[02:40] And you're extremely stuck.

[02:42] And today we're going to talk about why.

[02:45] So let's settle in.

[02:46] Here's the problem with with hormone self diagnosis. And it's not that you're not smart enough to figure it out. It's not that you haven't done enough research.

[02:55] It's that the Internet is architecturally incapable of telling you which pattern is actually running your life. Because your hormones don't run in isolation. Something that I mentioned a little bit on the last episode.

[03:08] Your thyroid, your adrenals, your cycle, your insulin, your gut, your minerals,

[03:13] they're all pulling on the same rope.

[03:16] That's why your symptoms overlap. That's why every reel sounds a little bit right. Every podcast episode sounds a little bit right.

[03:24] That's why nothing you've tried has fully worked. You're not chasing one problem,

[03:30] you're chasing a system.

[03:31] Like I mentioned in my last episode.

[03:33] But here's the useful thing. Even though it's usually a system issue,

[03:39] there are almost always dominant patterns that show up first. One or two threads that are pulling harder than the others.

[03:46] And knowing which one is loudest for you right now is actually really useful because it tells you where to start.

[03:54] It tells you which rope to pull first.

[03:57] And it stops the Google spiral or the Reddit threads. Right? Because those are not always the best places to be. Those rabbit holes, man.

[04:06] So today I want to walk you through the four patterns I see over and over again in the high functioning women I work with. As we go see if you recognize yourself.

[04:15] Some of you are going to hear one and go, oh, that's me. That's exactly me.

[04:21] Some of you are going to hear all four and go, wait,

[04:24] that's me too.

[04:26] Both responses are correct and I'll explain why in a minute. Let's get into them.

[04:31] The first pattern, the thyroid adrenal tangle. This one is you. If your energy is flat and heavy, hold all day, but then wired at night,

[04:40] caffeine doesn't touch the tired in the morning, and something won't let you fall asleep at 11pm Even though you've been running on fumes since noon. Or you fall asleep and then you wake up at 2am for no reason and can't get back down.

[04:53] Your mood is flat and foggy. Not sad exactly, just off. Hard to describe, but not feeling like yourself.

[05:02] Your skin is dry, your hair is thinning, your nails are brittle. You. You're carrying extra weight around your midsection that no amount of eating clean.

[05:11] I kind of hate that phrase, but I know it's familiar. Or working out is touching.

[05:16] And you've been to your doctor who has told you some version of your TSH is normal. End of conversation.

[05:23] That's the thyroid adrenal tangle. Your thyroid and your adrenals are so exhausted and so tangled up in each other's signaling that they're barely holding the line.

[05:33] But you're not sick enough by any standard. Lab sick quotes.

[05:38] Your TSH is in the quote normal range, which is a range so wide you could drive a truck through it.

[05:45] Seriously,

[05:46] Your cortisol is doing something weird, but nobody ever tested it in the right way because a one time cortisol test isn't going to tell you shit. And you've been slowly falling apart for years while being told that you're fine.

[05:58] If that's you, you are not tired because you're not doing enough. You are tired because your body is missing raw materials and rhythm and no amount of grinding it out is going to fix that.

[06:07] Okay, Pattern number two, the cycle and luteal chaos. The second pattern,

[06:13] this one is you. If your life is actually pretty good, three weeks out of the month, two weeks out of the month, you feel reasonably like yourself.

[06:21] Your energy is decent, your mood is fairly stable, you can hold a life together.

[06:26] And then the week, week and a half before your period arrives,

[06:30] you become an entirely different person.

[06:33] Rage or tears or bloating so bad your clothes don't fit, or breakouts that show up on schedule,

[06:41] or an anxiety that's disproportionate to what's actually going on in your life. And gone the second your period starts.

[06:47] Your PMS has evolved from an inconvenience to a major life disruption. It is affecting your work, your marriage, your relationships with your kids. And when you brought it up to your doctor, you were told, that's just pms.

[07:01] Welcome to being a woman.

[07:03] That's cycle and luteal chaos. Your estrogen and progesterone are out of sync, the ratio between them is off, and your body is trying to run a completely different chemistry the week before your period without the resources to do it smoothly.

[07:18] This is not a personality flawless. This is not just how you are. You are not just a raging bitch. It is not a willpower problem.

[07:25] It is a pattern. And patterns can be worked with.

[07:28] So if this is you, you are not just moody,

[07:31] your body is telling you something specific on a schedule. And the schedule itself is a clue with this 1. The third pattern, perimenopause possibly knocking early.

[07:41] This one is you. If your symptoms feel new, things have shifted in the last one to three years,

[07:48] something has changed. You're waking up hot at night with your heart pounding. There's a new kind of anxiety you never used to have. And it doesn't feel situational, it feels like internal, like chemical.

[08:01] Your body just forcing the anxiety.

[08:04] Your brain fog is scaring you a little. You're losing words in meetings, you're gaining weight in places you didn't used to,

[08:10] and you haven't changed anything.

[08:13] Your cycle is getting shorter or more unpredictable, or a little bit of both.

[08:18] You might be 38, you might be 41, you might be 43. You went to your doctor and were told some version of you're too young for perimenopause. Or maybe it is perimenopause and there's nothing we can do about it.

[08:30] Do you want some birth control? Because that's the answer to everything.

[08:33] That is what perimenopause looks like in a lot of women right now. And it starts years before the cycle changes dramatically.

[08:41] But it is not normal just because it's common.

[08:46] Perimenopause is not one moment. It is a transition that can last a decade. And I firmly believe you don't have to suffer through it. Even if your hormones are shifting as early as 38,

[08:59] and it is showing up earlier for a lot of women, which we can debate the reasons for, that's another episode for another day. But the reality is the response that you're too young is not clinically accurate, and it is being told to millions of women right now.

[09:14] So if this is you, you're not imagining it. You're not too young for your hormones to potentially be shifting in that direction. And there is a lot to do about it so you do not have to be miserable for the next decade.

[09:25] This is not a stage of life to just endure. The fourth pattern post pill or insulin PMOS signals. This one is you. If your cycle either never really came back after you came off the pill, or or any other form of birth control,

[09:41] or has been unpredictable since you were a teenager, you're carrying weight around your midsection as well, and it's stubborn in a very specific way.

[09:50] You have sugar cravings that feel almost neurochemical, like you cannot willpower your way out of them.

[09:57] You've got some skin stuff going on too, maybe some new hair growth on your chin or jawline that you do not love, because who wants that? That. And when you go to your doctor,

[10:09] they told you Some version of your body's just adjusting. Either if it's post birth control or let's put you back on the pill.

[10:16] Or have you thought about Spironolactone sp? I. I don't know how to pronounce that one. But you'll know if you're in this pattern. You know what exactly I'm talking about.

[10:26] I'm not going to pretend that I can pronounce these ridiculous medications.

[10:29] So that's the post pill insulin PMOs pattern.

[10:34] You don't only have to be post pill, but it says happen a lot post birth control. It can also happen in someone who's never on birth control, but has this insulin PMOS pattern.

[10:43] Your insulin is running too high, which is signaling your ovaries to overproduce testosterone, which is giving you the cycle chaos. And the skin and the hair and the cravings.

[10:52] This is one of the most common patterns I see in women who came off birth control expecting things to bounce back. It is well understood,

[11:00] it is very workable, and it is absolutely not a life sentence. If this is you. The pill probably only only made this worse because it does deplete nutrients and it does suppress hormones.

[11:12] And it didn't actually fix anything. It masked something that was there and coming off now has really exposed it. That's not the same as being broken. That's your body finally getting to tell you now what was always going on underneath.

[11:27] Now, here's the part I really want you to hear.

[11:29] If you listen to all four of those and you heard yourself in more than one,

[11:34] that is the most honest and most common result.

[11:37] It is the answer I see far more often than any single clean pattern.

[11:43] Most women I work with are not running one hormone problem, they're running a stack. Their thyroid is stressed and their cortisol is dysregulated and their cycle is chaotic and their insulin is drifting up all at the same time, all feeding each other.

[11:57] And that is exactly why the isolated fixes haven't worked. Your hormones are messengers. There really is no point in figuring out which one started the whole mess. But once one hormone system starts to go out of whack, it's going to communicate with the other ones, which is why the mixed bag is really the most popular pattern I see.

[12:18] There is no single supplement,

[12:20] no single elimination diet, no single protocol that addresses a whole system pulling in four different directions at once.

[12:27] And honestly, these are just the major hormone groups. There are so many other hormones in our body that can be affected by this. It's not a Physiology problem. You cannot fix a stack with a single lever.

[12:38] You have to know what's in the stack and you have to pull the levers in the right order.

[12:43] Which is where we get to the actual question.

[12:47] The reason the Internet is useless at this even really smart, well intentioned content, don't get me wrong, I'm doing this on the Internet as well, is because a reel cannot look at your thyroid conversion, a podcast episode cannot look at your cortisol rhythm, a supplement recommendation cannot see your mineral status,

[13:06] your gut, your estrogen metabolism,

[13:09] every piece of hormone content on the Internet is written for the average of a category.

[13:15] You are not the average of a category. Most women aren't.

[13:18] You are a specific woman with a specific body and a specific stack.

[13:23] So when women ask me, how do I figure out which one is me? The honest first step is just to get clearer about which pattern is loudest for you right now.

[13:33] Not to diagnose yourself,

[13:34] just to stop chasing all four at once.

[13:38] I actually built a quiz for this. It's a simple one. I get this question all the time and I didn't see any great. One resource to start pointing you a simple resource to start pointing you in the right direction.

[13:50] Ten questions, four possible patterns, plus the it's a mixed result,

[13:55] which many of you will probably get. It's one of the most common ones. Like I said before,

[14:00] it's not a diagnosis. A quiz cannot give you a diagnosis. Okay, hear me on that one. And anybody else selling you one that does is full of shit, to be honest.

[14:10] What it will do though is give you a starting point that isn't Google, a well informed, science backed starting point.

[14:18] I'll tell you which pattern is most likely running the loudest right now and it'll give you the first thing worth actually investigating. So you can pick your pattern and then go, okay, that's what's screaming for me right now.

[14:29] That's what I need to know more about.

[14:32] I'll tell you how to get it at the end of this episode. So hold that thought.

[14:36] But,

[14:37] and this is important,

[14:38] even the quiz is a starting point, not an answer. Because here's the thing, even if you're pretty sure you're a pattern A or a pattern C or a mixed stack, the actual clinical picture underneath is different for every woman.

[14:53] Two women who both look like pattern A on the outside can have completely different reasons why they got there.

[15:00] One is a thyroid conversion problem driven by a liver overload.1 is a mineral crash from years of undereating. One has gut pathogens Stealing all the raw materials. The surface pattern can look the same.

[15:14] The rope you pull first may look completely different, depending on what's going on underneath.

[15:20] That's what functional medicine labs are actually for. Not to confirm what you already suspect,

[15:26] to show you the specific picture underneath. So we know which rope to pull first,

[15:31] in what order, with what tools,

[15:34] because the order does matter enormously. There's a lot of people out there who are yelling about their specific thing. I talked about this in my last episode, and each person is not wrong, like I said last time.

[15:45] But there is an order of operations that can either make this journey really long for you or much faster. If you go after the wrong thing first, you can waste six months feeling terrible for no reason.

[16:00] The functional labs that I run are not the ones your primary care doctor runs. They're very different. Your doctor is running a am I dying?

[16:09] Range of tests,

[16:11] and I'm running functional ranges built on what actually thriving bodies look like.

[16:16] And I'm looking at systems. Your standard blood work does not touch minerals. Cellular energy, gut function, full hormone metabolism, including how your body is processing estrogen cortisol across the day.

[16:30] Not just one snapshot. The picture really is completely different. And it's why I love these labs so much and got certified to be able to analyze them properly. And I'm always learning more about them.

[16:42] So let me tell you what this actually looks like when we work together. In case you're wondering, my standard lab package is what I call a three lab combo. It's an htma, which is a hair tissue mineral analysis,

[16:54] which shows me your mineral status, your heavy metals, and a huge amount about your stress physiology, your thyroid function at the cellular level, and how well your body is regulating blood sugar.

[17:05] I also include an oat, which is an organic acids test.

[17:09] This is a urine test that gives me your mitochondrial function, your neurotransmitters, gut markers for bacteria and yeast, your detox pathways, and specific nutrient deficiencies at the cellular level. And I add a full sex adrenal and thy hormone panel test, which gives me not just your hormone levels, but how your body is metabolizing them,

[17:31] plus your cortisol rhythm across the day.

[17:34] So those three together.

[17:36] I know I just said a lot of nerdy things,

[17:39] but basically what I'm saying is those three tests together give me an extraordinarily complete picture of what's actually going on in your body. Not one snapshot which. Blood work can be great for certain things,

[17:52] but when it comes to looking at these things, blood work really fails. Here because it is just one snapshot and it is just what is floating and active in your blood at that time.

[18:01] Not a complete picture of what your body is actually doing. Which is why I like these other tests that use things like hair and urine and saliva where we get a more active look of what is going on in your body, the whole system.

[18:15] Sometimes, based on what you tell me in our first conversation, I'll swap something in or out.

[18:20] If I think mold might be part of the story because that I am seeing a lot more, or if there's a strong signal for something like H. Pylori or parasites, we might add a stool test or swap something out in there.

[18:31] I customize the combo to the person, not the other way around. But those first three are really my ideal package for most women.

[18:39] The whole package is 90 days with me. That includes a full intake, chat support with me and my client platform the whole time,

[18:47] a complete analysis across all your labs, a written holistic care plan built specifically for you based on your results,

[18:54] a results review call to walk through what we found and what we're doing, and a 30 day follow up call after you've started implementing your plan.

[19:02] And I say all of that because if you're at the point where you're tired of guessing,

[19:06] genuinely actually tired of guessing, I want you to know what the alternative looks like. There is an alternative. There are other options. It's not just another supplement protocol. It's not another elimination diet.

[19:19] It's a real picture of what your body is doing and a real plan built for what your body needs that may include protocols and nutrition changes and things like that.

[19:27] I, I write all of that in there. But this way you'll know that that's actually what your body needs and have the confidence to move forward from there.

[19:36] So here's how to take a next step.

[19:39] Whichever one is right for you. Step one and this is free. This is the easy one. Head over to Instagram. I'm simply Healthy Wellness Comment the word H quiz one one word on my most recent post or DM me the word H quiz and my system will send you the four pattern quiz automatically right to your DMs.

[19:58] Take it. Figure out which pattern is loudest for you right now then. And this is the part I actually want.

[20:04] Please reply to me with your letter. I want to know what you got. And I'll tell you the first thing I'd actually look at based on what you're describing.

[20:11] Step two, if you're beyond that, you're ready to stop guessing. Entirely and see the real picture. DM me the word FM labs and we'll talk about which lab combo makes sense for your specific situation.

[20:24] Not everybody needs the same thing. That conversation starts in the DMs and moves to a call if we're a good fit to work together. Either way, Instagram is where the conversation is.

[20:32] I'm there every day. Come find me over there and let's talk.

[20:35] If this one landed, send it to a friend who's stuck in the self diagnosis loop. Get her to take that quiz. She is out there. She has 30 tabs open and she needs to hear that she's not alone, she's not crazy, and there is a pattern that she can identify for herself.

[20:50] Now, as promised, let's get to this week's Kick Rocks segment.

[20:55] Quick note. For anyone who's new here or doesn't follow me on Instagram, Kick Rocks is a thing I do on my story. Sometimes when I'm feeling spicy, which is pretty often,

[21:04] I usually say something to the effect of Good morning. Except to whichever practitioner or wellness influencer is being ridiculous. This week they can Kick Rocks and my audience voted that they wanted these in the podcast.

[21:18] So from now on, every episode is going to end with one of these. Some weeks they'll be mild, probably some weeks I'll be a little unhinged. We'll see. We'll see how it goes.

[21:27] So this week's Kick Rocks goes to the OB GYNs and general practitioners still handing out birth control like it's the only tool in the toolbox. And honestly, it's a really shitty one at that.

[21:37] I have lost track of how many women I've talked to who went to their doctor with cycle irregularity, brutal pms, acne, cramping, mood issues, or perimenopause symptoms and were handed a birth control prescription like it was the answer.

[21:51] It is not the answer. It is a mask. Hormonal birth control does not fix a single one of those problems or any of the patterns that we have just talked about.

[22:00] It suppresses your body's own hormone production and replaces the signal with a synthetic version, which can be a fine short term tool in certain situations, but it is not a treatment for the underlying pattern.

[22:12] Your cycle doesn't stop being a mess when you go on birth control. You just can't see it anymore and the second you come off, it's still there. And usually worse because birth control also throws off everything in your body when your hormones are not functioning properly and depletes your nutrients.

[22:28] And while I'm at it. A special dishonorable mention to every provider handing perimenopausal women an SSRI or antidepressant when they walk in describing a new kind of anxiety, brain fog, night sweats, and mood changes that are clearly hormonal.

[22:42] Mood medications have their place. Don't get me wrong, they are not the correct answer, though, for a woman whose estrogen is fluctuating and whose progesterone is tanking. That is a hormonal issue.

[22:52] It deserves a hormonal workup, not a psychiatric prescription slapped over the top of it because you don't have 20 minutes to actually take her seriously and understand the problem.

[23:02] Both categories of practitioner the birth control as a hammer crowd and the SSRI as first line crowd can kick rocks barefoot down a gravel driveway.

[23:13] That's the show. Thanks for being here. I'll see you next week.

[23:19] Thanks so much for hanging out with me today. If this episode did something for you, because let's be honest, it definitely did, the best thing you can do is follow the show so you never miss one and send it to a woman in your life who needs to hear this information.

[23:31] If you've got a minute, a review helps more women find this in a sea of wellness noise and come find me on Instagram. That's where I hang out between episodes and where you can tell me what you want me to nerd out about next.

[23:42] Until then, eat first, drink your coffee, and take care of yourself. I'll see you next time.