Hormones Don’t Take the Summer Off
- LaReine Chabut
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
There is a version of summer we’re sold — golden light, effortless mornings, the sense that everything, including our bodies, should simply ease up for a few months. But your hormones don’t read the calendar. They don’t take a season off, and neither do the systems they regulate: energy, sleep, mood, focus, metabolism, temperature control, and how well we recover from stress.
In conversations with our hormone expert Dr. Shamsah Amersi, we return to this point again and again. The hormonal story doesn’t pause just because the days get longer.
Summer simply adds new variables to an already complex equation. Heat and dehydration can intensify headaches or dizziness. Later nights unravel sleep rhythms we’d only just settled into (read our summer sleep blog). You might assume you’re not sleeping because the room is too warm, when hot flashes, stress hormones, or shifting estrogen and progesterone are quietly part of the picture. You might blame the vacation food for feeling sluggish, when thyroid function, iron levels, or simply inconsistent nutrition deserve a closer look.
Travel reshuffles digestion, meals, movement, and medication timing. And a fuller social calendar often means less protein, fewer balanced meals, and more blood sugar swings than we’d admit to.
For women in perimenopause — or any season of hormonal transition — these disruptions rarely stay small. They tend to amplify whatever was already there.
Know When to Ask for Testing
If something feels persistent, do not just push through.
Ask your provider whether a full hormone panel, thyroid panel, or other labs make sense for your symptoms and stage of life. Knowledge gives you options — and moms deserve more than guesswork when it comes to their health.
Bonus Tip from Dr. Amersi
Dr. Amersi also recommends the Designs for Health Women’s line of supplements to help support women’s wellness and hormone balance.
Supplements should always be personal to your needs, lifestyle, and health history, so it is best to work with a trusted provider when deciding what is right for you.
The Bottom Line is hormones are not something to fear or ignore. They are one of the most important ways your body communicates with you.
During summertime, the goal is not to control every routine or avoid every disruption. The goal is to understand your body well enough to support it with confidence.
A little hydration, consistent sleep, nourishing food, movement, stress recovery, and symptom awareness can go a long way.
This summer, let knowledge be part of your wellness routine.
Nutrition Can Quietly Slip
Ilana Muhlstein, the registered dietitian our community turns to again and again, has a philosophy worth repeating every summer: eating well was never about eating as little as possible. It’s about giving your body enough of what it actually needs — protein, fiber, hydration, color, and consistency. See our latest Motivation Monday on this topic Motivation Monday
That consistency is the first thing to go in summer. Breakfast becomes coffee. Lunch becomes whatever is available. Water gets replaced by another iced something, and by four o’clock you’re shaky, irritable, exhausted, and reaching for whatever’s fastest.
One imperfect day isn’t the issue. The real concern is when under-fueling becomes the default rhythm — and we mistake the consequences for a lack of motivation. Willpower was never designed to compensate for chronic depletion, and it won’t start now.
Pay Attention to Patterns, Not One Bad Day
A meaningful check-in with yourself doesn’t have to be dramatic. Ask the quieter questions:
- Are you tired even after a full night of sleep?
- Is the brain fog thick enough to interfere with work or conversation?
- Do you feel dizzy when you stand up?
- Have your cycles changed?
- Are you unusually anxious, weak, short-tempered, or oddly disconnected from yourself?
- Do the symptoms actually improve when you rest, hydrate, and eat consistently — or do they persist regardless?
Writing these answers down for a week or two tells you more than memory ever will. Track sleep, meals, hydration, cycle changes, stress, medications, travel, and symptoms as they happen. This isn’t about self-diagnosing. It’s about walking into your next appointment with something more useful to say than, “I don’t know, I just feel off. You should be your own advocate at this point moms…after all you did this for your kids and loved ons. Now do it for you!
Slowing Down Is Not Falling Behind
Sometimes the healthiest move is the one that interrupts the momentum. Saying a polite “no” to a plan. Eating an actual meal. Going to bed earlier. Asking for help. Finally booking the appointment you’ve been postponing for a month — or three.
Requesting the bloodwork. Naming the hormonal changes out loud. Reviewing your medications. Telling your doctor, plainly, that how you feel is affecting your life.
Summer has a way of making exhaustion look normal. Motherhood has a way of making self-neglect look responsible. Neither one means you have to keep ignoring what your body is telling you.
Your body isn’t trying to ruin the season. It may simply be asking for support, nourishment, recovery, or answers. Listening to it isn’t overreacting — it’s one of the most practical, most grown-up forms of self-care there is.
Take care of YOU this summer Mama and see you next week!
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