This article is for educational and general wellness purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. If you are noticing changes in your body or have questions about your health, please consult a knowledgeable healthcare provider.

Here's something the science keeps circling back to: hormones don't just affect what's happening from the neck down. The relationship between hormones and how we feel mentally and emotionally is a topic researchers continue to explore — and the findings are genuinely interesting.

One area of growing research interest is the brain itself. A review published in the scientific literature used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine how both estrogen and progesterone are associated with brain activity. The studies looked at both naturally occurring (endogenous) and supplemental (exogenous) hormones. Results suggested that both estrogen and progesterone are associated with activity in several brain regions, including the amygdala, anterior cingulate cortex, and inferior frontal gyrus — areas involved in emotion processing and cognition.

This is something many women in menopause will find unsurprising. So many of us have described shifts in our energy, mental clarity, and overall mood during this life stage — changes that don't always get the attention they deserve. Research like this is part of why the conversation about hormones and brain health is expanding beyond what was once a narrow clinical focus.

We're not here to tell you what hormones will or won't do for your brain — that's a conversation worth having with a healthcare provider you trust. What we can say is that the science is worth reading. Curious? The study is linked below.

Link: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25222701/