Your cycle and your body, what is actually happening to your joints and muscles
Nicola Tik
If your joints feel more sensitive at certain points in the month, or the same activity feels harder one week than the next, there is a real physiological reason for that. This article explains why pain sensitivity changes across your menstrual cycle and what is driving those shifts.
Most people think of pain tolerance as something relatively constant, a baseline that stays broadly the same from day to day. In reality, the threshold at which your nervous system registers discomfort shifts with your hormone levels, and those levels change significantly across your cycle.
Oestrogen has a moderating effect on pain sensitivity. When it is high, the nervous system tends to be less reactive and discomfort is easier to manage. When it drops, that buffer reduces and the same level of pressure, load, or tension in a joint or muscle can feel noticeably more prominent.
In the days leading up to your period, both oestrogen and progesterone drop to their lowest point in the cycle. For many people this is when joints feel most reactive, muscles feel most tender, and everyday discomfort that would normally pass unnoticed becomes harder to ignore.
This is not a sign that something has changed structurally in your joints or muscles. It is a temporary shift in how your nervous system is processing sensation, driven by the hormonal environment. The discomfort is real, but the underlying tissue is the same as it was the week before.
When your period begins, the body releases chemicals called prostaglandins to help the uterus contract and shed its lining. Prostaglandins are also pro-inflammatory, meaning they increase sensitivity to pain more broadly, not just in the abdomen.
This is why the first day or two of a period can bring discomfort that extends well beyond the pelvis. Lower back achiness, hip heaviness, and legs that feel more tender than usual are all common experiences during this window, and prostaglandins are a significant part of why.
Because pain sensitivity shifts with hormone levels, the same walk, workout, or period of sitting at a desk can feel genuinely different depending on where you are in your cycle. This is not inconsistency or a low pain threshold. It is your nervous system responding to a different hormonal environment.
Research confirms that pain thresholds are measurably lower in the late luteal phase, the days before your period, compared to the follicular phase when oestrogen is rising. The difference is real and documented, not a perception or attitude towards pain.
Understanding this pattern does not change what you do so much as how you interpret what you feel. On days when discomfort feels heightened, it is worth asking where you are in your cycle before assuming something is wrong or that your condition has worsened. Context matters.
It can also help to be a little gentler with yourself during the late luteal and menstrual phases, not by stopping activity, but by adjusting the intensity or duration to match what your body is ready for. Movement still helps during these phases. It just tends to work better when it meets your body where it is rather than where it was last week.
Your VIDA pain check-in is a useful way to track how your symptoms shift across the month, helping you build a clearer picture of your own cycle over time.