“It Is Just Her Hormones” Is Used to Dismiss Something Real

By Tina Chagoury, Clinical Dietitian · 5 min read · 2026-10-05

The phrase gets used to end a conversation. The underlying biology deserves a serious one.

When a woman is irritable, someone says her hormones are playing up. It is used to close a conversation rather than open one.

Here is the frustrating thing. The statement is broadly accurate. Our hormones genuinely are affecting our mood, constantly. The problem is that it is deployed as mockery rather than as information.

Why this became a joke

There is a great deal of dismissal of this subject, on social media and off it. It gets treated as trivial, and it gets used to invalidate whatever a woman is actually saying.

It is not trivial at all.

Men have hormonal changes too, and the comparison does not hold

Men experience hormonal and mood variation. That is true and worth acknowledging.

But you cannot compare the two directly, and here is why.

Our changes are daily, weekly, monthly and lifelong. A man's hormonal profile is comparatively steady across a day and across a month.

A woman's is not. When you have your period, your body, how you digest food, how you metabolise it and how you respond to exercise are all different from when you are ovulating. It genuinely varies, and it varies on a cycle, and then it varies again across decades.

The sensitivity difference

Here is the comparison I use in clinic.

A man can sleep badly, eat poorly all day, drink three coffees, work under high pressure, and it will barely affect his hormones or his recovery. He sleeps, wakes, and continues.

Women have a considerably higher sensitivity to changes in their environment. A single night of poor sleep is enough to disrupt the whole system.

That is not fragility. It is a more finely tuned system with more variables in it.

Which mood changes deserve attention

Not everything is hormonal, and not everything hormonal is serious. The distinctions that matter:

Cyclical and predictable. Mood changes that track your cycle reliably are hormonal, and they respond well to blood sugar stability, sleep and reducing the inflammatory load.

New, worsening and not cyclical. New anxiety, irritability that does not lift, or a persistent low mood in your late thirties or forties is often perimenopause, and it deserves proper assessment rather than being explained away.

Persistent, and affecting your life. This is not a nutrition question. It is a medical one, and it deserves proper mental health support. Nutrition can contribute. It does not substitute.

What genuinely improves hormonal mood symptoms

• Blood sugar stability. Unstable glucose produces mood swings directly, and worsens premenstrual symptoms considerably. This is the highest yield change.
• Sleep, at consistent times, which regulates cortisol.
• Adequate food. Undereating destabilises mood on its own.
• Correcting deficiencies, particularly iron, vitamin D and B12, all of which affect mood and all of which are common.
• Movement, and specifically resistance training.

The thing I want to say plainly

If you have noticed that you no longer feel like yourself, that you snap at small things, that you cannot tolerate noise or demands the way you used to, you are not imagining it and you are not being dramatic.

There is a physiological explanation, it is testable, and it responds to intervention. That is a far more useful conversation than a joke about hormones.

This article is nutrition education, not medical advice. Persistent low mood or anxiety should be discussed with your doctor.

Tina Chagoury is a licensed clinical dietitian specialising in women's hormonal health, and the creator of the Hormone Reset Method™. Learn more and start here.