A Woman’s Secret Weapon To Hormone Health: Seed Cycling
Dealing with hormone imbalances can be life-altering.
PMS symptoms making you irritable and uncomfortable all day long?
Maybe you’re trying to regulate your cycle after not having a normal period in years…
Are hot flashes and night sweats due to menopause leaving you searching for relief?
You’re not alone. Thousands of women are suffering from hormone imbalances.
Luckily, we’ve got a natural remedy to get you back on track.
In this guide, we’ll explain what seed cycling is, how it can help balance your hormones, and how to seed cycle in less than thirty seconds every day.
Table of Contents
What Is Seed Cycling?
How Does Seed Cycling work?
How Can Seed Cycling Benefit Women’s Health? Balance Your Hormones Naturally
Menstruation
Seed Cycling For Fertility
Seed Cycling for Acne
Seed Cycling Results
Moon Chocolate: Seed Cycling With Chocolate
Types Of Seed Cycling Chocolate We Offer
What Is Seed Cycling?
Seed cycling is the practice of eating a variety of edible seeds in order to maintain a hormonal balance whether they have a menstrual cycle or not— specifically during two phases:
The follicular phase
The luteal phase
Seed cycling can be beneficial to women’s’ health in several ways, the practice can:
Balance hormones — progesterone and estrogen
Boost fertility
Ease symptoms of menopause
Stimulate menstruation
Reduce PMS symptoms
And more.
H3: Understanding Your Cycle
To truly get a grasp on how seed cycling works, you have to understand your menstrual cycle and the phases your body goes through, including the:
Follicular
Ovulation
Luteal
A woman’s cycle lasts an average of 28 days — but can last anywhere from 21 to 30 days. During those days, your body goes through three phases.
Follicular Phase of Menstruation
The first fourteen days of your cycle are known as the follicular phase.
During this time, your estrogen levels start at their lowest, start to rise, and become dominant by the last few days of this phase.
During this phase, your brain sends your body the signal to start producing follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH). This hormone stimulates your ovaries, telling them it’s time to start to prepare several small sacs called follicles.
Each of these follicles contains an immature egg.
Typically, one follicle begins to mature, while the rest of the follicles are absorbed back into your body. As the follicle matures, your body begins to produce more estrogen.
The rise in estrogen is your body’s way of preparing to provide a fertilized egg with all the nutrients it will need by stimulating the thickening of the uterine lining.
As your body reaches the end of the follicular phase, your body also has a rise in testosterone production — yes, women produce testosterone, too.
(This is typically what causes the rise in libido in women before they ovulate.)
Ovulation Phase of Menstruation
Then ovulation occurs.
During ovulation, a mature egg travels throughout the ovaries through the fallopian tubes and into your uterus. This period of time is when sperm can fertilize your egg.
If the egg is not fertilized within a very short window of time, it reabsorbs into your body.
After ovulation, the follicle turns into what’s known as a corpus luteum — a mass of cells that produces the hormones estrogen and progesterone.
These hormones keep the lining of your uterus strong and thick in preparation for a fertilized egg.
What happens after ovulation? That depends if your body has a fertilized egg or not.
Luteal Phase of Menstruation
If the egg is fertilized, your levels of progesterone will continue to be produced in order to support your pregnancy.
If fertilization does not occur the corpus luteum breaks down roughly ten days after you ovulate — resulting in a drop of estrogen and progesterone levels.
The drastic drop in hormone levels is what’s to blame for symptoms occurring before your period, like:
headaches
bloating
mood swings
appetite changes
fatigue
acne
nausea
muscle pain
abdominal cramps
At the end of the luteal phase, your period begins — the drop in hormones is what tells your body it’s time to menstruate.
How Does Seed Cycling Work?
Now that we’re clear on how menstruation works, let’s dive into how seed cycling works, and how you can benefit from the process.
Seed cycling involves eating certain types of seeds like:
Pumpkin
Flax
Chia
Sesame
Sunflower
Etc.
In order to regulate the levels of progesterone, estrogen, testosterone, and other hormones that your body produces.
Seeds contain polyphenols called lignans and phytoestrogens, which are dietary estrogens that occur naturally in plants. When you eat lignans, your gut bacteria turns them into enterolignan, enterodiol, and enterolactone, which have an estrogenic effect.
These then bind to the estrogen receptors in your body producing an estrogen-like, or an estrogen-blocking, effect.
Typically, seed cycling involves a tablespoon of raw, ground seeds every day.
During the follicular phase of menstruation (or the first fourteen days of the month for those who no longer menstruate) you should eat a specific mix of seeds every day.
Then, after ovulation, during the luteal phase, or the following fourteen days of the month, you’ll eat one tablespoon a day of another mix of seeds.
How Can Seed Cycling Benefit Women’s Health? Balance Your Hormones Naturally
Historically, there are several ways women who have tried seed cycling may have and still can reap the benefits — especially when it comes to their hormones.
The goal with seed cycling is to enhance or inhibit the production of hormones in your body — usually estrogen and progesterone based on what your body needs — to balance your hormone levels and relieve your symptoms caused by an imbalance.
What are the different ways seed cycling can be beneficial to your health?
Let’s take a look.
Menstruation
Seed cycling may help younger women who have periods that are:
Irregular
Long
Painful
Heavy
Because by balancing your hormones, your body may regulate your cycle. Think of seed cycling as taking a multivitamin for your menstruation cycle.
Seed Cycling For PMS
Seed cycling may help calm PMS symptoms by balancing estrogen levels, specifically by preventing estrogen dominance, which can be the cause of unpleasant, painful periods.
Seed Cycling For Menopause Just because you’ve stopped menstruating, doesn’t mean your body has stopped producing hormones. In fact, your body is likely still producing
Estrogen
Progesterone
And testosterone
Just in smaller amounts.
Seed cycling for menopause may help your body support the hormones it is still making. You can minimize the symptoms of menopause, by reducing:
Hot flashes
Night Sweats
Fatigue
Mood swings
Seed Cycling For Fertility
If you’re trying to get pregnant and have an irregular period, you likely already know that it is nearly impossible to track when you are ovulating.
Or you may not be ovulating at all.
Balancing your hormones by seed cycling may, in fact, improve your chances of conceiving, by creating a balance of hormones needed to help you:
Ovulate
Regulate your cycles
And maintain pregnancy
Seed Cycling For Acne
The primary cause of hormonal acne in women is likely hormone fluctuations that occur from your cycle.
In one interview, Dr. Neil Sadick of Sadick Dermatology stated that,
“The change of hormones during the menstrual cycle — like the steep drop of estrogen right before and during the period — allows testosterone and progesterone to predominate, which leads to excess sebum production and acne flares…”
Tackling hormonal acne with topical treatments is hard to do.
By balancing your hormones naturally, through nutrients found in seeds, you may be able to counteract the effects that testosterone flairs cause and prevent hormonal acne from occurring.
Seed Cycling Results: What Should You Expect
Good things come to those who wait…
Especially when it comes to balancing your hormones.
This process can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months for shifts to start occurring — but once it begins to work, you’ll question why you weren’t introduced to seed cycling sooner.
When you begin your seed cycling journey, we recommend that you keep a journal to track the progress you’ve seen.
Moon Chocolate: Seed Cycling With Chocolate
While you could load your cabinets with all sorts of seeds, attempt to grind them each morning, and gulp down at least a tablespoon every day…
We think there’s a better way.
It gets hard to remember which seed mixtures to eat each day, on top of having to take the time to grind up your seeds.
Eating spoonfuls of seeds every day doesn’t sound appealing. Mixing them in smoothies or yogurts could be an easy solution, but life is busy.
Instead, you could be getting all the same benefits by indulging in a piece of chocolate.
You read that right.
We’ve created a box full of hormone balancing chocolates, known as moon chocolates. This box includes 28 decadent chocolates filled with seeds and herbs to help balance your body's hormones.
And the best part? We can tailor your box to your body’s specific needs.
Our moon chocolate makes seed cycling easy and delicious.
Bliss Hormones — How Chocolate Benefits Your Body
As if balancing your hormones by eating a piece of chocolate isn’t enough of a reason to try moon chocolate, what if we told you that you could actually live a happier life by eating a piece of chocolate?
Did you know that when you eat chocolate, bliss hormones are activated in your brain?
Research proves that cocao, the main ingredient in chocolate, helps stimulate the brain to release endorphins.
And when you’re happy, you’re more likely to stick to a routine — like remembering to eat a piece of chocolate every day.
Not only can you keep your hormones balanced, and create a routine, but eating our chocolate may also help you sleep, and improve your quality of life.
Personalized Orders Tailored To Your Unique Needs
Portland Chocolate Laboratory has your happiness and health in mind.
We offer Moon Chocolate subscriptions to optimize your hormonal health and find a customized blend of herbs and seeds that benefit your body’s unique needs, all throughout your cycle.
Types of Seed Cycling Chocolate We Offer
Currently, Portland Chocolate Laboratory offers boxes of dark chocolate, because of its health benefits — as well as the lack of extra sugars and milk.
We know that not everyone loves dark chocolate and will eventually be offering seed cycling boxes of milk and white chocolate.
Are you ready to start living a more balanced, healthier life? Click here to order your box of moon chocolates today.
Our chocolatiers love dark chocolate for its amazing health benefits and rich flavors, and have lovingly created every moon box with the finest dark chocolate straight from the source.
If you’re a white or milk chocolate lover, don’t worry. We are working hard in the laboratory to bring you a moon box with that velvety smooth chocolate taste you prefer.