Here’s a few tips to keep your menstrual cycle symptoms from interfering with your daily life every month. Remember, making even subtle changes to your routine can make an incredible difference in your quality of life.

1. Consider Herbal Alternatives: Explore alternative therapies such as Chinese Herbs. Dang Gui, has been shown to help balance hormones naturally, effectively decreasing PMS symptoms such as mood swings, cramps, headaches, bloating, and breast tenderness. Dang Gui is known as the female Ginseng, therefore a very important herb. You can boil this herb raw and drink as a tea or purchase in tea bags or bulk. Either way drinking a cup of dang gui tea each day helps your body gradually balance out your hormones and alleviates both PMS during the month and reduces cramping during your cycle.

2. Movement with Intention: Take a brisk 45 minute walk every day or break it up into smaller segments of 15 minutes in the morning, at lunch and after dinner. If you already spend a fair amount of time during the day walking, count your steps with an odometer. Approximately 2000 steps is equivalent to one mile. Most importantly, move with the sake of intention. If you’re experiencing a high amount of stress, set an intention at the beginning of the walk to release that stress with each step you take. If walking isn’t your style, but biking or running is, do that instead. Simply do what you enjoy on a regular basis. Stress is a key factor in PMS so set your intention to release it daily.

3. Raw Nutrition: Ideally you want all of your food sources to be fresh as opposed to processed. Processed foods are stripped of most of their nutritional value by the time they reach your plate and are essentially digested as empty calories. If this seems overwhelming, start simply by regularly incorporating one new vegetable into your diet each week. Food should be our first medicine and vegetable have all the nutrients your body craves. Feed your body well and it will BE well.

4. Moving your own stuck emotions will help lighten your mood. Give yourself a mini massage with this Menstrual Massage Oil. It’s super fast and easy and you’ll feel a thousand times better once you spread a little around your abdomen. Take 4 ounces of organic or high quality Castor Oil or Almond Oil. Combine with 1/4 teaspoon lavender essential oil and 10 drops Clary Sage essential oil. Massage into your abdomen in a clockwise motion. Be sure to massage long enough until your abdomen feels warm. Lavendar’s aromatic fragrance helps purify the spirit. Research has confirmed it’s calming soothing effects on anxiety and even helping depression (I like a drop behind each ear lobe). Clary Sage oil’s therapeutic properties include antidepressant, antispasmodic, digestive and even helps regulate your hormones to ensure healthy ovaries and a healthy uterus.

5. Indulge: Slip between the sheets for a good night’s rest 30 minutes earlier than usual. At the end of the week this equals an additional 3.5 hours of sleep. Lack of sleep is one of the highest risk factors for poor health and therefore one of the most valuable things you could choose to indulge in. Getting enough sleep allows your body run smoothly and efficiently. Many hormone functions are produced or are timed to release during sleep or right before sleep. So any shortage will affect your monthly cycle in the long run.