Every month, your brain sends a hormone signal telling your ovaries to mature and release an egg. Two things commonly get in the way. First, the ovary can struggle to receive that signal properly myo-inositol is the messenger that carries it inside the cell, and pairing it with D-chiro-inositol at the 40:1 ratio found naturally in the body helps that message land. Second, high insulin from unsteady blood sugar interferes with the whole conversation upstream; chromium helps your cells take in glucose more efficiently, which keeps insulin from running high enough to disrupt things. Folate supports the pathway your body uses to make serotonin, which is part of why mood can shift so much across the month.

When you eat, insulin's job is to move glucose out of your blood and into your cells. Insulin resistance means insulin is showing up and knocking, but your cells aren't opening the door properly so your body makes more and more insulin to compensate. Woman+ works on this from two angles. Chromium helps at the receptor, improving how well your cells respond to insulin arriving and helping bring glucose transporters to the cell surface. Inositol works one step further in it's converted into the internal messengers that switch on glucose metabolism after insulin has bound. Because they act at different points, they complement rather than duplicate each other. This is the mechanism behind inositol's measured effects on fasting insulin in clinical trials.

An egg has to complete a demanding final maturation step before it can be fertilised, and that step takes an enormous burst of cellular energy. Eggs are unusually packed with mitochondria for exactly this reason. CoQ10 is a core part of how mitochondria generate energy it carries electrons through the chain that produces ATP, and it also acts as an antioxidant, reducing the oxidative wear that builds up over time. Zinc plays a different but equally specific role: it holds the egg in a paused state until the right moment, and a rise in zinc is what allows it to complete maturation. Without enough, eggs can either mature too early or fail to finish. The 40:1 inositol ratio matters here too it mirrors what's found in healthy ovarian fluid.

When insulin runs chronically high, it does two things at once: it signals the ovaries to produce more androgens like testosterone, and it lowers SHBG, the protein that binds androgens and keeps them inactive. So you get more testosterone being made, and more of it circulating freely. By supporting insulin sensitivity, inositol and chromium address that upstream driver instead of working around it. Selenium supports the same balance from a different direction your thyroid produces hormone in an inactive form, and selenium powers the enzymes that convert it into the active version your body can use. Because thyroid signalling underpins so much of your wider hormonal picture, that conversion matters more than it gets credit for.

When insulin sits high, your body is in storage mode it holds onto fat and holds off on breaking it down, which is why metabolism can feel stuck even when nothing about your habits has changed. Chromium helps direct glucose uptake toward muscle rather than fat tissue, and inositol restores the internal signalling that lets insulin do its job at lower levels; between them, circulating insulin comes down, which removes one of the main hormonal barriers sitting in the way of fat being mobilised. Selenium contributes separately, because active thyroid hormone is the main regulator of your resting metabolic rate through its effect on mitochondria and heat production meaning poor thyroid conversion can slow your metabolism independently, even once insulin sensitivity has improved.

Skin renews itself constantly, and zinc is a required cofactor for many of the enzymes doing that work including collagen production and the turnover of skin cells. There's a hormonal route too: zinc supports healthy ovulatory signalling and progesterone output in the ovary, and more balanced progesterone alongside less androgen excess is associated with clearer skin. Selenium adds a protective layer through glutathione peroxidase, one of your body's main antioxidant enzyme systems, which neutralises the reactive molecules that would otherwise accelerate damage to skin and hair follicle cells.

Cortisol is supposed to rise when something stressful happens and then switch off once it passes and zinc is part of what does the switching off. It regulates the negative-feedback loop that tells your body the stressor is over, and when zinc is low that feedback is blunted, so cortisol runs higher for longer than it should. Zinc also supports GABA signalling, the brain's main calming system. Insulin drives the puffiness from a separate direction: it tells your kidneys to hold onto sodium, and insulin resistance activates the hormonal cascade that reinforces that retention so fluid builds up regardless of how carefully you're eating. By supporting insulin sensitivity, the inositol and chromium in Woman+ ease that retention at its source. Myo-inositol adds a third layer as the backbone of a second-messenger system your neurons use for calm signalling, which is why higher-dose inositol has been studied for anxiety.

Folate is a required ingredient in the methylation cycle, the process your body uses to produce the universal methyl donor behind serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine. When folate is inadequate, that cycle slows, homocysteine builds up, and neurotransmitter production is affected which is why folate has been studied as an addition to conventional mood treatment, and why supplementing it can restore serotonin markers. There's a second, more everyday layer: glucose that spikes and crashes drives irritability, low mood and energy dips entirely on its own, so the steadier blood sugar from inositol and chromium smooths out volatility that has nothing to do with neurotransmitters at all.