Your Hormones Work as a Team
Hey Ladies, our Female Hormone Bestie, is a capsule built around how hormone concerns actually show up in women. They rarely show up alone. Unbalanced blood sugar, a sluggish thyroid, chronic stress, suboptimal progesterone and poor estrogen clearance tend to overlap, and each one can push the others further off course.
Most female hormone products on the shelf target ONE of these concerns… as if women were that robotic. So we formulated Hey Ladies around the interplay between all five, with ingredients chosen for how they work in the body. Let's walk through each one, and why it earned its spot in the formula.
Blood Sugar: The Overlooked Hormone Influence
Healthy blood sugar is one of the biggest influences on hormone balance, and it's usually left out of this category entirely. When blood sugar runs high, your body releases more insulin to manage it, and insulin talks directly to your hormones. It signals the liver to make less SHBG (sex hormone binding globulin), the protein that keeps estrogen and testosterone in check, so more of those hormones float around unbound. Insulin also works alongside LH in the ovaries to ramp up androgen production.
That's why Hey Ladies includes dihydroberberine. It activates AMPK, an enzyme often called your cells' metabolic master switch, which supports insulin sensitivity, glucose uptake into cells and the conversion of fatty acids for fuel.
We chose dihydroberberine over standard berberine on purpose. Standard berberine is poorly absorbed, and your gut has to convert it into dihydroberberine before it can be taken up. Utilizing this specific ingredient leads to higher levels in the blood at a fraction of the amount, and it tends to be gentler on digestion.
Thyroid: The Engine Behind Your Cycle
Your thyroid and your sex hormones regulate each other constantly. Your ovaries carry thyroid hormone receptors, and T3, the active thyroid hormone, works alongside FSH to mature the follicle that releases an egg each cycle. Thyroid hormone also tells the liver how much SHBG to make, so when thyroid function dips, SHBG drops and more estrogen circulates unbound. A sluggish thyroid slows estrogen clearance through the liver as well.
There's a progesterone connection too. When thyroid output runs low, the brain releases more TRH to call for more. TRH also stimulates prolactin, and elevated prolactin suppresses LH, the hormone that triggers ovulation and the progesterone that follows it.
Hey Ladies supports the thyroid with a pairing that matters:
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Bladderwrack is a sea vegetable and natural source of iodine, the raw material your thyroid uses to build T4 and T3.
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Selenium (as selenomethionine) powers the deiodinase enzymes that convert T4 into active T3. It also fuels glutathione peroxidase, which protects the thyroid from the oxidative stress created while it makes hormones.
Iodine and selenium work as a team, which is why we always pair them. Your thyroid needs both to build its hormones and put them to work.
Progesterone: Supporting the Balance While Estrogen Clears
How you feel through your cycle often comes down to the balance between estrogen and progesterone more than either hormone on its own. Suboptimal progesterone often goes hand in hand with excess estrogen, because estrogen that isn't cleared well can disrupt the signaling between your brain and ovaries that drives ovulation. Since progesterone is made after ovulation by the corpus luteum, weaker ovulation means less progesterone in the second half of your cycle.
Until that excess estrogen clears, supporting progesterone is helpful, so Hey Ladies includes Vitex (chaste tree berry). Vitex works at the level of the pituitary gland, where its compounds bind dopamine receptors. That helps support healthy prolactin levels and healthy LH signaling, which supports a strong luteal phase and the progesterone the corpus luteum produces.
Vitex supports healthy progesterone levels while the rest of the formula works on estrogen clearance, so both sides of the balance get attention at the same time.
Estrogen Clearance: Supporting Every Step of the Exit
Your body is designed to use estrogen and then clear it out. That clearance happens in three stages, and Hey Ladies supports each one with gentler pathways.
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Phase I in the liver. Enzymes convert estrogen into hydroxylated forms called catechol estrogens. These are reactive, so the body needs to move them along quickly.
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Phase II in the liver. Catechol estrogens are neutralized through methylation and conjugation, which packages them for removal.
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Broccophane is a stabilized form of sulforaphane from broccoli sprouts. It activates Nrf2, the switch that turns on your body's phase II and antioxidant enzymes, including glutathione S-transferase.
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NAC (N-acetyl cysteine) is a building block of glutathione, your body's master antioxidant and one of the main compounds used to conjugate estrogen metabolites.
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The methylation trio (L-5-MTHF folate, methylcobalamin B12 and RGen-B's botanical B vitamins) plus Alpha-GPC as a source of choline supply the methyl groups the COMT enzyme uses to neutralize catechol estrogens. We use active forms of folate and B12 so your body can put them to work right away.
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Elimination through the gut. Packaged estrogen is sent to the gut to leave the body. Some gut bacteria make an enzyme called beta-glucuronidase that can unpack it, letting estrogen slip back into circulation. Calcium D-Glucarate supports healthy beta-glucuronidase activity, so used estrogen keeps moving out.
Why We Skipped DIM
DIM is the go-to estrogen ingredient in a lot of formulas. It works by pushing phase I estrogen metabolism, but it doesn't support phase II, which is how estrogen actually gets packaged to leave the body. Speeding up phase I without supporting phase II can leave more reactive catechol estrogens waiting in line.
DIM can also overshoot. It has anti-androgenic activity, which can contribute to low libido and low energy in women who aren't androgen dominant. For a daily formula, we wanted to support the clearance your body already does, at its own pace, from start to finish.
Stress: The System That Touches All the Others
Stress touches every system we've covered. When cortisol stays elevated:
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Blood sugar rises, because cortisol tells the liver to release more glucose for quick energy.
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Thyroid conversion slows, because cortisol dampens TSH and shifts T4 toward reverse T3, an inactive form, instead of active T3.
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Ovulation can be suppressed, because the brain dials down GnRH, the signal that starts the whole cycle, and progesterone drops along with it.
Because stress is so impactful to women's hormones, incorporating an ingredient for it was crucial. Tongkat Ali is our ingredient of choice because it's been shown to support healthy cortisol levels in people under stress. In a four-week study of moderately stressed adults, those taking Tongkat Ali had lower salivary cortisol along with improvements in tension and mood. Based on research, it appears to work through the HPA axis, your body's central stress-response system, with its active compounds called eurycomanones leading the way.
Keeping cortisol in a healthy range is going to be key to the rest of the formulation being able to function well.
The Whole Woman, in One Capsule
Every ingredient in Hey Ladies was chosen for how it works in your body and how it supports the other systems in the formula. Blood sugar, thyroid, progesterone, estrogen clearance and stress all get support together, the same way they interact inside you. And like every Bestie formula, Hey Ladies is made without silicon dioxide or other common flow agents.
That's why we call Hey Ladies the Female Hormone Bestie: she was formulated with the whole woman in mind, and every system that shapes her hormones gets support in one capsule. Your hormones are working hard for you every day, and now they have a bestie of their own.
We encourage women to work with a qualified practitioner as a health Bestie and all supplements should be discussed with them! We formulate based on biochemistry, biological interactions of active ingredients on biochemistry according to research. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.