Episode # 192: Why Modern Life Is So Hard on Women’s Hormones

The way most of us are living right now—the pace, the stimulation, the conveniences, the constant connectedness—is historically brand new for our physiology. We are the first generation that has lived this way. I want you to sit with that for a moment and think of all the ways your life is different right now than maybe it even was when you were a kid, and definitely when your parents were kids.

Our hormones, which were designed for a very different kind of environment, are doing their very best to adapt. But that adaptation comes at a cost. And for women with PCOS, that cost often shows up in ways that feel really personal and really frustrating.

So, in today’s episode, we’re going to be talking about why modern life is so hard on women’s hormones and what we can do about it, because that’s the important part, right? What can we actually do without becoming afraid of everything around us, while still being able to live in the modern world, use conveniences, connect with people the way we do, and live the way the people around us live, while at the same time carving out a little bit of a bubble where we can actually care for and nourish our hormones?

That’s going to require us to first understand where and how our modern life is impacting us. So let’s dive in.

Welcome back to the PCOS Repair Podcast. Hi, I’m Ashlene, and if you’re new here, this is a podcast where we talk about all things PCOS, the new name PMOS, and health in a way that is both honest and grounded. I do not buy into the fear, marketing, and propaganda that come around different health topics. No fearmongering, no crazy marketing promises or fear tactics—just real, thoughtful, science-simplified conversations that are actionable and help you understand what’s actually happening in your body and what will genuinely help your PCOS.

Today’s episode is one that I think is a really important conversation because one of the most painful and persistent beliefs I see when I work with women with PCOS is the belief that our symptoms are somehow our fault.

And while how we create the environment we live in has a huge impact on our hormones, this goes far beyond being more disciplined, more consistent, or more motivated in the way we think we need to be when we listen to health advice.

So, in this episode, I want to offer a completely different frame of mind for how we look at this, because the environment that most of us are living in right now places an enormous amount of physiological load on the female body.

Understanding this is not about making excuses. It’s about context, and context changes everything.

When we start to understand the things we just take for granted and have going on within our lives, and then begin to understand how they’re impacting us, we realize that a lot of it isn’t even necessary. As we begin to understand this, we can make tremendous changes to our health fairly simply.

Let me paint a picture for you. This picture is not going to apply to everybody perfectly, obviously, but go with me here. Let’s paint a picture of what daily life looks like for the average woman right now.

You wake up, and within minutes you’re looking at your phone, probably because your phone is also your alarm. News notifications, text messages that came in after you went to bed, social media notifications, emails—and your nervous system is already processing an enormous amount of information before you have even gotten out of bed.

You eat breakfast quickly, or maybe skip breakfast, perhaps while scrolling, getting your kids ready, or thinking about your to-do list for the day. You have a commute or some reason you need to get out of the house. You walk about ten steps to your office, your car, or wherever it is you’re going in the morning, and then you sit for most of the day.

You have dozens of decisions to make. You stare at screens all day. You manage other people’s emotions and needs alongside your own. You eat meals that are often convenient and calorie-dense without having a lot of actual nutrition in them.

Then you wind down in the evening by watching Netflix or scrolling social media, and afterward, you try to go to sleep in a body that has been stimulated almost constantly since the moment you woke up.

We are the first generation of women living in this type of environment.

And so much of it is amazing. We have a high level of connection to the people around us and to the world as a whole, but it comes with the cost of constant stimulation.

I want to be clear here: I’m not saying that we need to be afraid of modern life, and I’m not saying that any of this is bad. But it’s important to recognize that we live in this modern world, and we get to enjoy it. We don’t just need to enjoy it—we get to enjoy it.

There are many wonderful innovations and wonderful things at our fingertips. If we can use them in a healthy way, they can be beautiful.

But we also have to pioneer how to use these things responsibly and how to set up our environment responsibly, because we’re the first ones paving this trail, if you will.

Our physiology has not caught up with this kind of technology, and it’s not going to for a long time. Our physiology evolves very slowly, and there’s a big gap between our modern environment and the environment our bodies adapted to over thousands of years.

We’re actually living in an environment that is a significant driver of why PCOS is on the rise.

Modern culture and the way we live are major factors in why PCOS is increasing in numbers and increasing in ways that don’t even look like the old forms of PCOS.

I think that’s also where a lot of the confusion comes in. The original PCOS diagnosis had a very specific look, and we’re seeing that begin to change. It’s questionable whether most women diagnosed with PCOS or showing signs of PCOS actually have that original diagnosis or whether they have something more like a cousin of it.

The truth is that this doesn’t actually matter in the practicality of what’s going on with our root causes and what our body needs from us.

So let’s start by talking about food and nutrition, because it’s one of the most significant and, in a way, least discussed areas in which modern life has affected our hormone health.

Throughout most of human history, food was not abundant. It wasn’t always available, and specifically, it wasn’t engineered for pleasure and convenience the way it is today.

Our physiology developed in an environment where food required effort to obtain. It required seasonal availability. It varied from season to season, and it was often available in less calorie-dense options, less volume, and with less taste and variety.

The way that affected us was that we had different modes of eating throughout the year. We had different levels of abundance. There were times of the year when we could fill ourselves up, and then there were leaner months when we were a little bit hungry.

In addition, the food was fairly bland, and there wasn’t a lot of variety. There’s only so much of a certain item you can eat.

When you have so many things available to you throughout the day, our bodies start to expect this variety and these very rich flavors and experiences when it comes to what we’re eating.

Our insulin response, our hunger hormones, and our blood sugar regulation systems were all designed for that past environment, not for an environment where we have hyperpalatable, calorie-dense, blood-sugar-spiking food available 24 hours a day with almost zero effort on our part.

We can have it delivered anywhere. There are 24-hour drive-throughs where we can access food. Our refrigerators, pantries, and grocery stores are stocked to the brim with food of all different types, flavors, and varieties at our fingertips.

This is not about moral judgment of food choices. It’s a physiological observation about a change that has occurred over the last couple of decades.

Our female hormones were not designed to live in this type of food environment.

So keep in mind that this has nothing to do with good foods or bad foods. It has more to do with understanding what this means and how we can begin making intentional choices about how we feed ourselves without feeling like the problem is a personal failing.

It’s an environmental mismatch.

And once we understand those mismatches, we can begin to navigate them.

Another major mismatch between our biology and modern life is movement.

Our bodies were designed to move throughout the day—not necessarily through structured exercise, but through constant low-level movement. Walking, carrying, bending, reaching, squatting, gathering food, caring for children, and working with our hands. Those movements were simply part of daily life.

Today, many of us sit for eight to ten hours a day. Then we try to make up for it by squeezing in a 45-minute workout. Exercise is incredibly beneficial, and I absolutely encourage it. But it’s important to recognize that exercise and movement are not the same thing.

Movement is what our bodies were designed to do all day long. Exercise is something we intentionally schedule. Both matter, but they serve different purposes.

Our muscles are one of the biggest regulators of insulin sensitivity. Every time we move, we’re sending signals throughout our body that improve blood sugar regulation, circulation, lymphatic drainage, energy production, and hormone signaling.

When we spend most of our day sitting and then expect one workout to completely undo that, we’re asking our bodies to function in a way they weren’t designed to.

Again, this isn’t about guilt. It’s about awareness.

Sometimes the biggest improvements don’t come from adding another intense workout. They come from adding more movement throughout the day. Taking walking breaks. Standing while you work. Parking farther away. Going for an evening walk after dinner. Playing outside with your kids. Gardening. Cleaning the house. All of those little moments of movement matter.

The next piece is stress, and this one may be the biggest difference between the world our physiology developed in and the world we live in today.

Historically, stress was intense but temporary.

A predator showed up. There was danger. There was a famine. There was a storm. Your body mounted a stress response, dealt with the immediate threat, and then returned to baseline.

Today’s stress is completely different.

Most of us are living with low-grade stress almost constantly. Work deadlines. Financial concerns. Relationships. Parenting. Social media. Notifications. Constant comparison. News cycles. The feeling that we’re always behind.

Our bodies don’t necessarily distinguish between those stressors and physical danger.

Cortisol responds to perceived stress.

That’s an important distinction.

Your body doesn’t ask whether something should be stressful. It simply asks whether it perceives that it is.

That means poor sleep can be stressful.

Skipping meals can be stressful.

Overexercising can be stressful.

Calorie restriction can be stressful.

Inflammation can be stressful.

Blood sugar instability can be stressful.

Emotional stress can be stressful.

They all add together.

This is one of the reasons why women with PCOS often feel like they’re doing everything right but still aren’t seeing progress. They may be eating healthier than ever, working out harder than ever, restricting more than ever, but the overall stress load on the body is actually increasing rather than decreasing.

Your body isn’t trying to work against you.

It’s responding appropriately to the environment it believes it’s living in.

Another piece of modern life that we rarely think about is our constant exposure to comparison.

For most of human history, people compared themselves to maybe a few dozen women in their village or community.

Today, we compare ourselves to thousands.

We compare our bodies.

Our homes.

Our parenting.

Our careers.

Our meals.

Our vacations.

Our workouts.

Our productivity.

Our skin.

Our aging.

Everything.

Social media has given us incredible opportunities to connect and learn from one another. I think there are so many beautiful things about it.

But it also creates a level of comparison that our nervous systems were never designed to process.

When we constantly feel like we’re behind or not enough, even subconsciously, our stress response increases.

That emotional load matters.

It doesn’t just affect our mindset. It affects our physiology.

Then we add in sleep.

Artificial lighting has dramatically changed the way we experience day and night.

Our bodies evolved with sunlight during the day and darkness at night.

Now we have bright overhead lights, computer screens, televisions, and phones keeping our brains stimulated well into the evening.

Melatonin isn’t just a sleep hormone.

It’s also involved in reproductive health, antioxidant protection, and ovarian function.

When our sleep quality suffers, so do many of the systems involved in PCOS.

Again, this doesn’t mean you have to throw away your phone or live by candlelight.

It simply means understanding that these inputs matter.

Small changes—dimming the lights in the evening, limiting screen time before bed, getting outside into natural sunlight first thing in the morning—can have a much bigger impact than most people realize because they’re helping restore the signals your body was originally designed to receive.

So what do we actually do with all of this?

I don’t want you walking away from this episode feeling overwhelmed.

I don’t want you thinking that modern life is the enemy or that you have to become perfect.

That’s not the point.

The point is awareness.

When we understand where our environment is working against our physiology, we can begin making small, intentional changes that help our bodies feel safe again.

Maybe that’s prioritizing protein at breakfast.

Maybe it’s taking a ten-minute walk after dinner.

Maybe it’s getting outside for five minutes in the morning.

Maybe it’s creating a better bedtime routine.

Maybe it’s putting your phone down for thirty minutes before bed.

None of these things are dramatic.

But together, they create an environment that better matches what your physiology is asking for.

That’s really what PCOS healing is.

It’s not about perfection.

It’s not about fear.

It’s not about avoiding every modern convenience.

It’s about learning to work with your body instead of constantly asking it to adapt to an environment that keeps pushing it further away from balance.

As we wrap up today’s episode, I hope this gives you a little bit more compassion for yourself.

If you’ve been feeling like you’re failing, you’re probably not.

You’re living in an environment that asks an awful lot of your physiology every single day.

The good news is that your body is incredibly adaptable.

When you begin giving it the signals it has been asking for—more nourishment, better recovery, balanced movement, quality sleep, blood sugar stability, and a calmer nervous system—it responds.

Not overnight.

Not perfectly.

But consistently.

Those small choices, repeated over time, create an environment where your hormones can begin functioning the way they were designed to.

If you enjoyed today’s episode, I hope you’ll hit that subscribe button so you’re notified each week when a new episode becomes available.

And if today’s episode gave you a new perspective, I’d love to hear from you. Come find me over on Instagram @nourishedtohealthy and let me know what stood out to you.

Until next time, bye for now.