There's a question many women with chronic pelvic pain, endometriosis, or PCOS eventually ask: Does what I eat have anything to do with how I feel?
It's a reasonable question. And a complicated one. The internet tends to answer it in one of two ways: either food has almost nothing to do with it, or there's a magic diet just waiting to save you. Neither is true.
We sat down with Margaux Crickx, a nutritional therapist and aromatherapist who specialises in hormonal and pelvic health, to find a more honest answer that doesn't leave you without anything useful to hold on to.
Inflammation is real, but it's not the whole story
Margaux is quick to put things in context. "Many of the pains women experience are linked to inflammatory mechanisms," she explains. "But inflammation doesn't happen in a vacuum."
Diet is one piece of a larger picture that includes stress levels, sleep quality, hormonal balance, and even the conditions in which we eat. Ultra-processed foods, refined sugars, a poor balance of fatty acids… These can all feed low-grade, chronic inflammation. But so can a demanding job, a restless night, or an anxious morning routine.
The problem, she notes, is that research hasn't always caught up with women's realities. Historically, many nutritional guidelines were developed from studies conducted primarily on men. The specific ways that hormonal fluctuations interact with inflammation, with gut health, with pain perception, these are still being mapped. Women have often been told to follow advice that was never really designed with their bodies in mind.
"Anti-inflammatory eating" isn't a diet. It's a direction.
The term anti-inflammatory diet gets thrown around constantly, and Margaux is cautious about it. "It's a simplification," she says. "Food can support or limit certain inflammatory processes but there's no miracle protocol."
That said, some things consistently show up in the research as worth paying attention to. Alcohol, tobacco, refined sugars, excessive red meat, and heavily processed products are among the usual suspects. For some people (defintely not everyone) gluten or dairy can also be triggers.
But Margaux is equally interested in something less often discussed: how you eat, not just what you eat. The context of a meal matters. Eating quickly while stressed, without chewing properly, while scrolling through your phone, it changes how your body processes food. Pleasure, calm, and presence at the table are part of the equation, not soft extras.
And rigidity, she warns, can backfire. "An overly restrictive diet generates stress and guilt. That's inflammatory in itself." Women who try to follow a perfectly 'clean' diet often end up developing an anxious relationship with food that causes more harm than the foods they were trying to avoid.
Eating for your cycle: why your nutritional needs aren't static
One of the most practical and under-discussed ideas in Margaux's approach is that what your body needs from food isn't the same every day of the month. Your nutritional needs shift across the phases of your cycle, in sync with your hormonal landscape.
It's a concept that makes intuitive sense once you sit with it. Your body is in a genuinely different hormonal state during your follicular phase than it is during your luteal phase. Your inflammation sensitivity, your energy levels, your nutrient needs, they all shift.
During the luteal phase in particular, the two weeks after ovulation, leading up to your period, the body becomes more vulnerable. Oestrogen fluctuations during this window can deplete magnesium, which plays an important role in limiting muscle spasms and contractions. This is part of why menstrual cramps can feel so much more intense for some women.
Omega-3 fatty acids can also be particularly helpful during this phase, helping to modulate the inflammatory response that drives much of the pain. And those sugar cravings that arrive reliably in the days before menstruation? Margaux doesn't demonise them. "They're often a genuine energy signal from the body," she says. Understanding them as information rather than a failure of willpower changes the whole conversation.
On supplements: useful, but not the first step
Supplements are often where people want to start. They're concrete, purchasable, and feel like action. Margaux gently reorders the priorities.
"The first step is improving how you eat. The second is lifestyle. Supplements come third, if needed at all."
When they are appropriate, she emphasises that not all supplements are equivalent. The form matters, the dosage matters, and so does the timing. Magnesium and omega-3s are frequently relevant for menstrual pain. Zinc is often considered in the context of PCOS. Lactoferrin shows up in some protocols for endometriosis. But this is precisely why professional guidance makes a difference, not to gatekeep, but because an ill-chosen or poorly timed supplement simply won't help, and may complicate things further.
Personalised nutrition: the shift that actually matters
If there's a single thread running through everything Margaux shares, it's that personalisation matters more than any specific protocol. What your body needs from food isn't determined by a generic "women's health" template. It's shaped by your age, your lifestyle, your energy, your emotional state, and your specific problem.
A luteal phase nutrition approach that works for one woman may be completely wrong for another. This is why Margaux favours small, sustainable changes over radical transformations. "Protocols are useful," she says, "but they always need to be adapted to the person and to what they're actually living."
Her practical advice leans toward the undramatic: don't compare yourself to others. Protect your mental health. Reduce stress where you realistically can. Respect your energy limits. Stay well hydrated. Get enough protein, especially in the morning. And make changes gradually: small shifts you can actually sustain carry far more value than sweeping reforms that collapse after two weeks.
What this is really about
At the end of our conversation, Margaux returns to something broader. Women, she says, deserve to be listened to more. The management of female pain should be less standardised. Protocols are useful, but they need to be adapted to the person in front of you, not applied uniformly.
She also calls for better education around hormonal health. Not so women can become their own doctors, but so they can understand their bodies well enough to ask better questions, notice meaningful patterns, and feel less alone with what they're experiencing.
Because so often, the problem isn't just the pain. It's being told, for years, that it's normal.
