Women runners have a problem men don’t.<\/p>\n
Women have more and stronger hormone changes and that can affect how well you run and how hard you train.<\/p>\n
Estrogen is a hormone that is highly important to women.<\/p>\n
It helps women’s strength and is a key factor in endurance.<\/p>\n
Progesterone makes the need for oxygen greater because it stimulates breathing.<\/p>\n
This can make you feel more winded.<\/p>\n
Consequently, women who are in the estrogen phase of their menstrual cycle are going to be able to run longer and train harder than those in the progesterone phase.<\/p>\n
Likewise, a woman with higher estrogen is going to be able to compete a little better with others than those in the progesterone cycle.<\/p>\n
These aren’t the only two hormones that play a role in your training or running.<\/p>\n
There are many others like cortisol, endorphin and epinephrine that all contribute.<\/p>\n
However, these hormones aren’t unique to women as men have them too.<\/p>\n
Every woman should know when her hormones are off kilter.<\/p>\n
Some of the symptoms are irritability, fatigue, headaches, brain fog, food cravings, stomach cramps and,
\nnaturally, mood swings.<\/p>\n
You can control your imbalances for you to complete your run or to train better. Specifically, two things will help your hormones stay under control.<\/p>\n
Women love coffee because some have a hard time waking up after a fretful night with kids or staying up working on a project.<\/p>\n
However, caffeine is associated with PMS so it would be a good thing to reduce it.<\/p>\n
You don’t have to give it up completely. Just reduce your coffee indulges to one morning cup.<\/p>\n
There are women who love to run first thing in the morning but that may not be good for your hormone levels.<\/p>\n
Mornings are when cortisol levels are at their peak and running during that time can lead to a hormone imbalance.<\/p>\n
Experts say switching your run to the afternoon or evening may be a good move.<\/p>\n
Running is good for hormones as it stimulates endorphins and helps you breathe deeper and longer.<\/p>\n
It doesn’t have to be an either-or scenario to get your hormones under control.<\/p>\n
Running and a healthy diet can do wonders to your hormone levels and overall health.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Women runners have a problem men don’t. Women have more and stronger hormone changes and that can affect how well you run and how hard you train. Estrogen is a hormone that is highly important to women. It helps women’s strength and is a key factor in endurance. Progesterone makes the need for oxygen greater […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17592,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[706],"tags":[707,1544],"class_list":["post-17538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-running","tag-running","tag-women-runners"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17538\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}