Optimizing Female Health, Hormones, Mood & Performance
Panel – Biohacking Women
I share the message of healing and empowering oneself and finding true purpose in life. My biggest passion is transformation and living in alignment with and following the heart, as is fulfilling our highest potential.
Inka Immonen guides people’s mind to different places with yoga, meditation, nutrition and biohacking. Her passion and expertise lies in psychology, neuroscience, and the mind/body interaction. Since 2016, she has been working at the Biohacker Center creating scientific content about biohacking and how to optimise brain health, energy, psychological wellbeing and memory with the help of biohacking, neuroscience and positive psychology.
Emilia Vuorisalmi is a Medical Doctor on a mission to increase health and wellbeing with the power of love in it’s all forms. Her first book “High on Love” was a national bestseller and currently Vuorisalmi is helping people to create their individual recipe for sustainable love by holistically balancing the key love hormones. The sustainable love system will help you to find your true self and enjoy the benefits of a happy relationship where ever you are in life.
While we see many basic health behaviors to apply to both genders, there are still fundamental differences in how female and male body and mind works. The monthly fluctuating cycle of female hormones, societal expectancies, female-specific aspects in regards to mood and sleep, and specific nutritional needs for women play a big role in health optimization for women. This conversation helps you to gain a deeper understanding of your feminine biology and psychology and encourages conversation on biohacking for women, which is equally interesting to men who want to understand gender differences.
We should consider cyclicity as our superpower. For us women, it’s about when we do it rather than how we do it. Once we start listening to the messages our body is sending, we can enhance our productivity, creativity, and mood.
Summary
- Historically, medical research excluded women; however, unique biological differences in disease risk, sleep, and nutrition necessitate female-specific health optimization and biohacking.
- View the menstrual cycle as a superpower by syncing daily activities with hormonal shifts to optimize creativity, productivity, and emotional well-being throughout the month.
- Adjust training and diet by phase: use the follicular phase for high-intensity exercise and carbs, while prioritizing rest, low-impact movement, and anti-inflammatory foods during the luteal phase.
- Listen to the body’s signals instead of ignoring PMS, which can indicate overstress or imbalance. Use biohacks like glucose monitoring and targeted nutrients to maintain hormonal health.
- Track cycle data via wearables to improve self-knowledge, and prioritize social connections with other women to boost oxytocin and efficiently reduce cortisol levels.
Article
Biohacking For Women: Optimizing Health, Hormones And Performance
At Biohacker Summit 2019 Helsinki, A Panel Argued That Women’s Health Had Been Misread For Decades And That The Menstrual Cycle Was Not A Liability But A Blueprint
For years, the dominant language of optimization has been written in a male voice. Train harder. Fast longer. Push through. Ignore fluctuation. At the Biohacker Summit 2019 Helsinki, held in Helsinki, Finland, on 1 November 2019, the panel *Biohacking Women* offered a corrective that was at once scientific, practical and quietly radical: women, they argued, should stop treating hormonal variation as an inconvenience and start using it as intelligence.
The session, titled *Optimizing Female Health, Hormones, Mood & Performance*, brought together Inka Immonen, who has worked at the Biohacker Center producing scientific content on brain health, energy and psychological wellbeing, and physician Emilia Vuorisalmi, known for her work on love hormones and sustainable wellbeing. Their message was clear. Female health could not be optimized by borrowing protocols built for men and merely shrinking them to fit.
Historically, women were excluded from clinical trials, in part because fluctuating hormones were seen as a complication to study design. The result was a long scientific blind spot, one with consequences that reached from sleep and stress to disease risk and nutrition. Inka Immonen opened with precisely that point, grounding the conversation in the reality that sex differences were not marginal details but central variables in human health.
The Cycle As Superpower, Not Burden
If there was one idea that shaped the discussion, it was this: cyclicity is not weakness. It is information.
Vuorisalmi distilled the point with unusual force. “We should consider the cyclicity as our superpower,” she said, arguing that for women, the key question was often not simply what to do, but when to do it.
That shift in emphasis carried profound implications. The menstrual cycle, in this account, was not a monthly obstacle to be managed with gritted teeth. It was a changing inner climate, capable of shaping creativity, resilience, recovery, appetite, sociability and performance. To work with it was to recover a form of embodied literacy that modern life often strips away.
Sarah, the panel’s nurse and health coach, pushed the point inward, toward a practice of attention. “Start the day by tuning in to your emotions, your body, and your heart,” she said. “Come down from the mind into the body and get in tune with your own nature so you can really feel what you need and align with that.”
This was not presented as mysticism, nor as an argument against data. It was instead a plea to reconnect subjective experience with physiological reality. Wearables, sleep metrics and cycle-tracking apps all had their place, the panel agreed. But the ultimate aim was not dependence on devices. It was self-knowledge.
What PMS Might Be Trying To Say
One of the more striking interventions of the session was the refusal to normalize suffering simply because it was common.
Vuorisalmi challenged the casual assumption that PMS should be accepted as an inevitable feature of womanhood. If symptoms repeatedly emerged each month, she suggested, they should be read as signals rather than dismissed as fate. Stress, hormonal imbalance, inadequate recovery, nutritional issues and other forms of physiological burden might all be involved.
That reframing changed the emotional tenor of the subject. Instead of enduring discomfort as the price of being female, women were invited to ask what their symptoms were communicating.
The body, the panel suggested, is rarely silent. More often, it is ignored.
The Follicular Phase, Ovulation And The Logic Of Timing
What emerged over the course of the discussion was a remarkably coherent philosophy of timing.
The follicular phase, when estrogen rises, was described as a season of expansion. Strength and power tend to peak more easily here, insulin sensitivity improves and pain tolerance may be higher. It is, in practical terms, a fertile period for both body and mind.
Sarah recommended leaning into strength training and more demanding physical work during this window. Vuorisalmi described it as the “spring” of the cycle, a time for novelty, learning and initiation. New dance choreography, new projects, new ideas: all sat naturally in this phase, she said, because the brain as well as the body appeared more primed for challenge and experimentation.
Then came ovulation, described less as a medical event than as a moment of heightened outward force. “Around ovulation, we are magnetic and creative,” Vuorisalmi said. “Use this peak energy to execute your ideas, meet people, and pitch your vision.”
It was an arresting phrase, not least because it translated endocrinology into social strategy. Professional confidence, persuasive ability and interpersonal ease were not imagined as static traits. They moved. They had rhythms. Women, the panel argued, could benefit from recognizing those rhythms and scheduling accordingly.
The Luteal Phase And The Discipline Of Restraint
If the first half of the cycle was framed as a period of build and expansion, the latter half demanded discernment.
As progesterone rises and the body shifts toward the luteal phase, the advice turned softer but no less rigorous. Reduce the intensity. Favour flow over force. Step back before the body forces the issue.
Vuorisalmi warned that overtraining during this period could worsen symptoms and amplify stress. The goal was not inactivity but intelligent adaptation: yoga rather than maximal output, recovery rather than relentless escalation. It was a rebuke to the culture of uniform performance, the idea that the strongest person is always the one who never slows down.
And then menstruation itself, a stage often discussed in whispers or annoyance, was recast as a biological invitation.
“During menstruation, naturally calm down and give more rest to your body,” Sarah said. “Taking it easy and not pushing yourself is the best way to honor your divine feminine and listen to the inner knowledge of what is good for you.”
The phrase may have landed differently with different listeners, but the physiological argument was straightforward. Rest was not failure. It was part of the cycle’s architecture. Long walks, gentle yoga, reflection and journaling were all offered as ways to work with the body rather than against it.
Food, Carbohydrates And The Female Metabolism
Nutrition, too, was treated as cyclical rather than fixed.
The panel resisted one-size-fits-all dogma, especially the tendency within biohacking circles to universalize extreme fasting or ketogenic diets. Sarah noted that women often do better when they account for changing insulin sensitivity across the cycle. In the follicular phase, when insulin sensitivity tends to improve, carbohydrates may be handled more effectively, especially around training.
For her own routine, she preferred eating carbohydrates after exercise or later in the day, a strategy she found supportive for energy stability and sleep. The point was not to prescribe a single ideal diet, but to insist that female metabolism is dynamic and should be treated that way.
Specific nutrients also entered the conversation. Vuorisalmi pointed to magnesium glycinate and methylated B-complex vitamins as broadly supportive, particularly for stress regulation and evening recovery. During menstruation, iron-rich foods, leafy greens and vitamin C were recommended to support blood loss and nutrient replenishment. Zinc, she noted, mattered for progesterone formation.
The broader principle was one of respect for biological timing. A woman’s needs were not identical on day three and day 21 of her cycle. Her food should not pretend otherwise.
Tracking The Body Without Losing The Body
For all the emphasis on intuition, this was still a biohacking panel, and data mattered.
The speakers highlighted sleep tracking, heart rate variability, cycle apps and blood glucose monitoring as useful tools in understanding what the body was doing beneath the surface. Inka Immonen mentioned cycle-tracking platforms such as Flo, while Sarah pointed to wearables like the Oura ring, which can reflect shifts in temperature and recovery through different phases of the cycle.
Vuorisalmi extended the conversation to hormone detoxification, noting that liver function, blood glucose stability, fiber intake and lymphatic support all played roles in clearing used estrogen metabolites. Dry brushing, sauna and movement that stimulated lymphatic flow were offered as simple, low-tech strategies with potentially meaningful effects.
Yet the panel repeatedly returned to the same caution: data should sharpen awareness, not replace it. Tracking worked best when it was paired with felt experience, when numbers and nervous system began to speak to one another.
Oxytocin, Friendship And The Biology Of Connection
Perhaps the most quietly revolutionary moment came when the conversation turned from supplements and metrics to friendship.
“Women recover from stress efficiently by socializing and meeting other women,” Vuorisalmi said. “Oxytocin flushes cortisol very rapidly, so spending time with friends is just as important for your health as eating well or practicing yoga.”
It was a reminder that health is not built only in solitude. Not only in cold plunges, meal plans or perfectly periodized workouts. It is also built in conversation, in laughter, in emotional safety, in the chemistry of belonging.
That claim, far from sentimental, sits squarely within physiology. Cortisol and oxytocin are not abstractions. They shape inflammation, mood, metabolic function and resilience. To frame social connection as a luxury is to misunderstand the body altogether.
A Different Attitude To Female Biology
By the close of the session, the panel’s argument had broadened beyond tactics into worldview.
“Change your attitude about the menstrual cycle and see it as an opportunity rather than something negative,” Vuorisalmi urged. “It is a gift that helps us connect with our nature and adjust our lives to find an optimal balance.”
This was, in the end, the deepest challenge posed by *Optimizing Female Health, Hormones, Mood & Performance* at the Biohacker Summit 2019 Helsinki. It was not merely that women should train differently, eat differently or track differently. It was that female biology should no longer be approached as a deviation from the default male body.
Instead, the panel proposed another model: one in which fluctuation was not dysfunction, rest was not laziness, emotion was not unreliability, and the cycle itself was a source of power.
In a culture still addicted to sameness, that sounded less like self-help than like dissent.
Part of Biohacker Summit 2019 Helsinki