Learning how to use your pulse and temp for hormone insights is a great FREE way to understand what’s going on inside your body. As women in this culture, we’ve lost the innate ability to recognize what our bodies are telling us. These two simple markers can change your hormones, fertility and overall health. Remember, just because you have common symptoms, doesn’t mean they’re normal. And if your doctor tells you you’re crazy.. fire them!

What Your Pulse Tells You

Our pulse is a generalized marker for what’s going on with our metabolism. If you’re on my email list, you know that the metabolism is everything. If you aren’t hop on right here!

Your heart pumps blood to get both oxygen and nutrients to our cells, that’s what your pulse is doing. A low pulse rate isn’t a picture of health – by the way – that’s a misleading idea that comes from painting extreme athletes as the picture of health.

Anyways, as you will learn with temperature below, low readings of both pulse and temp are a sign of conservation. The body doesn’t feel like it has enough and is going into “get prepared for famine” mode. This stress that pushes our bodies into this mode leads to raised levels of hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. High stress hormone levels will shoot our pulse up to get as many nutrients to our cells as possible because our body feels like it’s running out of time. Makes sense. Remember, what comes up will come down. Eventually, your hormones will reach burn out and put you at that low pulse rate you may be experiencing.

Healthy pulse rates means we have a healthy metabolism. Our body doesn’t feel the need to rush and we can just chill and relax.

What Your Temp Tells You

A high temperature tells us that our bodies are strong and ready to take on the day. High basal body temperatures are associated with a:

• strong immune system
• faster digestion
• better assimilation of nutrients
• lower inflammation
• efficient elimination of toxins
• faster transit time (poop)
• optimal fertility
• optimal thyroid levels and function

Whereas, lower body temperature is associated with:

• obesity
• more frequent illness from a bogged down immune system)
• sluggish bowels leading to bacterial overgrowth
• malnutrition from poor assimilation of nutrients
• inflammation
• infertility
• sluggish metabolism
• sluggish thyroid i.e. hypothyroid
• digestive issues
• estrogen dominance

What happens to bears in the winter? They go into hibernation. During hibernation their body temperatures drop drastically to CONSERVE. Low body temperature is our bodies way of conserving any energy we have in our bodies. Hell weight gain and infertility issues.

Here’s a question for you: are your feet and hands always cold?

How to Track Your Pulse

It really is super simple to track your pulse. You can do it manually or you can order an oximeter. Either way, you can get an accurate reading of what is going on in your body, with your thyroid and with your hormones by regularly tracking your pulse.

Here’s what you need to do:

1. take your pulse – first thing – upon waking (don’t move around, get up, have water, pee, etc.)
2. find your pulse on your wrist, neck, wherever and hold your fingers there until you can consistently feel it
   1. some women have a hard time finding theirs due to a week pulse ** indicator #1 that your metabolism may be sluggish **
3. 3. set a timer for 60 seconds and count how many pulses you feel in that 60 seconds
4. write it down in your pulse tracking journal

If you’re doing it with an oximeter, just put the oximeter on your finger and let it work its magic. Consistency is key here. Make sure you do this every single morning whether you’re home, on vacation or out of routine. This is a sneak peak right into your health!

How to Track Your Temperature

Just like pulse tracking, tracking your temperature is simple. All you’ll need is a basal body thermometer and a notebook. You can also use a basal body device like this one. It takes you temp, stores it internally in the device and is designed specifically for fertility tracking.

Whichever route you decide to take, here’s what you do:

1. first thing upon waking, take your temperature (armpit and under the tongue combined give the best reading but if you have to choose one, do it orally under the tongue)
2. do not move, stir around, pee, drink water, etc. it needs to be immediately upon waking up
3. place the thermometer under your tongue and let the reading begin
4. once done, write down your temperature

Stick with this every morning and make it a regular part of your morning routine. In my course Bare Naked Hormones, we dive into the other times of day you can use temp to give you an inside look at which foods your body isn’t loving, if your body is filled with stress hormones, workouts it doesn’t like, etc.

Enroll now!

Using Your Pulse and Temp for Hormone Insights

Now that you’ve been using your pulse and temp for hormone understanding, we can dive into how these numbers play a role in your hormone health. I like to take my clients’ data after one month of tracking and assess that. That’s a long enough time for me to really understand and paint a picture of what’s going on in their bodies.

Since we learned above that pulse and temps give us an overall look at our metabolic state, we can understand how these numbers play a role in our health. Remember, our metabolism is everything and if we have a sluggish metabolism, we have sluggish everything. Wonky thyroid levels, imbalanced hormone levels and some fertility issues. Below, we’ll learn all about common pairings i.e. high temp, low pulse and what they could mean.

Common Pulse and Temp Pairings + What They Could Mean

Commonly – in my clients – I will see a combination of high pulse + high temp. This usually indicates a body under active stress. Another indicator of this is high pulse and normal temp.

Then, there’s a chronically stress-depleted body with a sluggish metabolism and that is a combo of low pulse and low temp or low pulse and normal temp.

Then what I used to have was high pulse + low temp which showed me that my body was under some pretty intense stress that was pushing down my thyroid function.

Low pulse is often see in those with hypothyroid and the opposite for those with hyperthyroid. The cold hands and feet question I asked above, comes into play here. Slower pulse rate = diminished blood flow = cold extremities. Most women with hypothyroid also have hypoglycemia, BTW.

When our pulse is lower, this means thyroid is not functioning optimally. Why? Because our heart (a muscle) requires our thyroid to allow for contraction/relaxation. So, more ease with pulse shows that the thyroid is a-okay with the situation and it’s not stressed out.

I break this whole process down – in great detail – in my course Bare Naked Hormones that’s available!

Optimal Numbers to Support Women’s Hormones

The optimal basal body temperature is 97.8 degrees F and that should rise to 98.6 F by the end of the day. This means after we’ve eaten meals, worked out, etc. we should be at or slightly above 98.6 degrees F. This is indicative of a well-working metabolism and proper response to different foods we consume throughout the day.

For pulse, the best pulse range is between 75-85. So, babe, that 57 pulse rate when you wake up in the morning is not good. We need to aim to get that pulse up if it’s too low and down if it’s too high. Too large of fluctuations also indicate something is going awry with your metabolism be it food, stress, toxins, etc.

Then, there are times we can have normal pulse rates due to elevated epinephrine to compensate for hypoglycemia (another blood sugar issue).

So, what’s your combo? Have you tried tracking these markers before?