Why your nervous system might be sabotaging your hormones (and how to reset it naturally)

If you’ve been eating well, moving your body, taking your supplements and still feeling bloated, wired, exhausted or emotionally reactive, I want to gently suggest something that most women overlook. It may not be your diet, it may not even be your hormones, it might be your nervous system.

Over the past few years, especially working with women in their late thirties and forties, I’ve noticed something that rarely gets spoken about in conventional conversations around hormone imbalance, perimenopause symptoms or gut health. Many of us are living in a low-grade state of fight-or-flight and calling it normal.

We’ve normalised being switched on all the time, we’ve normalised pushing through, we’ve normalised the afternoon slump, the 3am wake-up, the bloating that appears by dinner, the weight that settles around the middle and refuses to budge.

What we haven’t normalised is rest, safety and nervous system regulation.

And without those, hormonal balance becomes almost impossible.

The link between stress and hormone imbalance in women over 35

Your nervous system has two primary modes: sympathetic, which is your fight-or-flight state, and parasympathetic, which is your rest-and-digest state. When you feel safe, digestion flows, hormones regulate, inflammation reduces and sleep deepens. When your body perceives stress, whether physical, emotional or biochemical, survival takes priority.

Cortisol rises, progesterone often falls, thyroid conversion can slow, insulin becomes less efficient and digestion is deprioritised. Your body does not care about fat loss, glowing skin or balanced moods when it thinks you are under threat – it cares about keeping you alive.

This is why chronic stress, even subtle stress, can contribute to common symptoms women search for online every day: perimenopause bloating, anxiety for no reason, weight gain after 40, insomnia, painful periods, brain fog and sugar cravings.

It is not weakness, it is physiology.

The gut and nervous system connection most women miss

Your gut and your brain are in constant communication through what is known as the gut-brain axis and when your nervous system is dysregulated, digestion is one of the first systems affected.

Blood flow shifts away from the digestive tract, stomach acid production can decrease, enzyme output reduces and gut motility becomes unpredictable. Some women experience constipation, others urgency and many experience bloating that seems disproportionate to what they have eaten (this use to be me all the time!).

You can follow a clean diet, avoid processed foods and take all the right supplements, but if your body is not in a state of safety, it will struggle to absorb nutrients properly.

This is why gut health and nervous system regulation must be addressed together, especially during perimenopause when hormonal resilience naturally shifts.

Why perimenopause amplifies stress

In your late thirties and forties, progesterone begins to decline before estrogen does. Progesterone has a calming effect on the nervous system. When it drops and stress remains high, cortisol often becomes more dominant. This combination can manifest as increased anxiety, sleep disturbances, heavier cycles, bloating and mood changes. Many women interpret this as losing their ability to cope, when in reality it is a shift in hormonal buffering capacity combined with modern stress load.

This is why strategies that may have worked in your twenties, like pushing through fatigue or skipping meals, often backfire in your forties.

Signs your nervous system may be dysregulated

You might notice you feel wired but exhausted, struggle to switch off at night, wake between 2 and 4am, feel reactive or short-tempered, experience increased bloating under stress, crave carbohydrates in the afternoon or find that your weight has plateaued despite effort.

How to reset your nervous system naturally

The good news is that your nervous system is adaptable and you can retrain it, but consistency is key. Start with blood sugar stability, so eating adequate protein at each meal, including healthy fats and avoiding large refined carbohydrate spikes reduces cortisol fluctuations. A warm, protein-rich breakfast can be particularly supportive during perimenopause, as it signals safety to the body early in the day.

Support digestion intentionally with warm meals, cooked vegetables and fermented foods as they can be gentler on the gut than large raw salads, particularly if bloating is present. When digestion improves, inflammation often decreases and hormonal balance follows.

Prioritise light exposure – morning sunlight within the first half hour of waking helps regulate your cortisol rhythm and improves sleep quality at night.

Practice deliberate breathwork – slow, controlled breathing with longer exhales stimulates the vagus nerve and shifts you into parasympathetic mode. Five minutes can make a measurable difference.

Sleep earlier rather than later, the hours before midnight are disproportionately restorative for hormonal repair.

Finally, support your microbiome daily, as the bacteria in your gut influence neurotransmitter production, immune balance and inflammation levels. When your gut lining is supported and beneficial bacteria are nourished, your stress response becomes more resilient. This is one of the reasons I am so consistent with For Her. It provides live, fermented whole-food probiotics and prebiotics that work with my body rather than against it.

Healing is not about doing more

Most women assume they need to add more: more supplements, more workouts, more restriction but often what is needed is less stimulation and more regulation.

When your nervous system feels safe, digestion improves and when digestion improves, hormones stabilise. When hormones stabilise, mood, weight and sleep follow. Healing in your forties is not about fighting your body, it is about partnering with it.

Free download: Nervous system reset guide for women 35+

I have created a simple one-page printable guide that outlines daily habits to support nervous system balance, improve digestion and stabilise hormones naturally.

It includes:

– A morning rhythm reset
– Blood sugar balancing reminders
– Gut-supportive habits
– Evening wind-down cues
– Simple breathwork instructions

You can download it free when you join my For Her weekly newsletter at the top of the page.

When your nervous system is supported, everything else becomes easier.