#992 - Dr Sarah Hill - The Period Brain: How Hormones Change Women’s Behaviour

Modern Wisdom

Chris Williamson

Society & Culture, Health & Fitness

4.7 • 4.6K Ratings

🗓️ 11 September 2025

⏱️ 100 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dr Sarah Hill is a professor at TCU, a research psychologist, expert in women’s hormones and brain science, and an author. Each month, women experience hormonal changes that go far beyond the clichés of PMS. These shifts can influence mood, stress response, and even how women relate to others. So how can recognizing these patterns make it easier for both men and women to navigate relationships when things don’t feel normal? Expect to learn why hormones play such a role in psychological function, what actually happens to women during their time of the month and what a PMS brain is, if women understand what their cycle does to them, what men can learn about women’s hormonal cycles and how birth control changes the brain, if oral contraceptives could be the biggest unexamined mental health experiment currently playing out, if PMS is actually a design feature rather than a flaw, and much more… Sponsors: See me on tour in America: ⁠https://chriswilliamson.live⁠ See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get a Free Sample Pack of LMNT’s most popular Flavours with your first purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom Get the brand new Whoop 5.0 and your first month for free at https://join.whoop.com/modernwisdom Get 5 Free Travel Packs, Free Liquid Vitamin D, and more from AG1 at https://ag1.info/modernwisdom Timestamps: (0:00) Introducing the Menstrual Cycle (5:30) What Women Experience During Their Cycle (20:29) The Ovulatory Shift Hypothesis: Researching the Cycle (44:05) How Do Men and Women Differ Hormonally? (56:27) How Does the Pill Effect Women on Their Cycle? (01:05:58) Does Female Hormone Suppression Effect Male Hormone Levels? (01:11:31) Are Career-Driven Women Going to Burn Out Faster Than Women Listening to Their Cycle? (01:17:50) Biological Sex is So Important in Research (01:22:56) Is Feminism Making Women Feel Insufficient? (01:27:26) Why are Periods So Understudied? (01:35:50) Find Out More About Sarah Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: https://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: https://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: https://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Two books on the vagina. Congratulations.
0:03.9	I think it's a little bit more complex than that.
0:06.3	I think it's a little more complex than that.
0:07.7	But thank you.
0:08.9	Why this one?
0:10.7	Well, you know, actually, you know, it was the biologists in me that kind of led me to this one.
0:16.4	So the first book was really more about my, I ended up in a rabbit hole because of my personal
0:21.2	experiences with the pill. And this one, I ended up in a rabbit hole because I couldn't
0:26.1	understand why women feel so terrible during the last two weeks of their cycle. You know,
0:32.1	and from an evolutionary perspective, like it doesn't make a lot of sense for women, like, to all have a disorder,
0:39.6	right? It just doesn't make any sense because generally, if there's some sort of a trait and it's
0:43.7	causing problems, it'll get selected out of the population. And there's been all this really
0:47.5	wonderful work that's been done in our field looking at, you know, the impact of estrogen and how
0:52.7	when estrogen is high and rising across the cycle,
0:55.6	that it does all of these really amazing functional things within the human, you know,
1:00.4	within women's brains and then with their behavior and everything else. But like,
1:05.1	there's nothing like that about what goes on in the second half of the cycle. Instead, it just
1:08.9	seems like women feel terrible. And so I was trying to understand why that is. So, like, what is the deep evolutionary wisdom
1:16.2	behind self-loathing? You know, that tends to go on during the second half of the cycle.
1:22.6	And, you know, so, like, why does it happen? And is it supposed to to and is there some way that we can all feel
1:28.5	better? So it was really sort of an evolutionary puzzle for me that I wanted to solve.
1:33.3	Like crazy to think that that's for some, maybe even most women, 50% of their life.
	...

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