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Speaker 1: Welcome to Get Connected with Nina del Rio, a weekly

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Speaker 1: conversation about fitness, health and happenings in our community on

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Speaker 1: one oh six point seven light FM.

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Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to Get Connected. So, although experiences vary

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Speaker 2: from women to women from month to month, we can

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Speaker 2: probably all agree that we feel pretty crummy in the

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Speaker 2: weeks leading up to the start of our periods. But

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Speaker 2: why is that and is it actually necessary? Our guest

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Speaker 2: is doctor Sarah E. Hill, Research psychologist, professor, leading advocate

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Speaker 2: for women's health. She's the author of The Period Brain,

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Speaker 2: The New Science of Why We PMS and How to

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Speaker 2: Fix It. Doctor Sarah Hill, thank you for being on

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Speaker 2: Get Connected.

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Speaker 3: Thank you so much for having me.

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Speaker 2: So research finds the vast majority of women all over

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Speaker 2: the world, seventy five to ninety percent women of reproductive

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Speaker 2: age have PMS. We will get into why that is, certainly,

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Speaker 2: but it almost seems like the very basic question of

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Speaker 2: whether or not it is necessary is new, as if

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Speaker 2: women suffering just happens. The question in a way feels

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Speaker 2: revolutionary and it kind of kind of shouldn't.

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Speaker 3: I think, Yeah, it's really interesting because when you look

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Speaker 3: at women's experiences across the cycle as you noted, research

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Speaker 3: find somewhere between like seventy and ninety percent of women

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Speaker 3: feel kind of terrible during this time, and it's not

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Speaker 3: something anybody is really thought to ever question, And that

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Speaker 3: alone is, as noted, unusual. I think that if men experienced,

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Speaker 3: you know, half that roughly half their reproductive lives feeling

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Speaker 3: not their best, I think that there'd be you know,

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Speaker 3: foundations entire you know, entire industries like dedicated to try

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Speaker 3: to understand this. And so as a biologist, because my

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Speaker 3: background originally was in biology, you know, I was like,

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Speaker 3: why is it that so many women have this thing

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Speaker 3: that most of us consider like a disorder? Right? Is

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Speaker 3: there is there any wisdom in what our body is doing?

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Speaker 3: What are the experiences that women have? And you know,

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Speaker 3: are the things that we can be doing differently that

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Speaker 3: might make us feel better than we do currently?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, you just mention, you know, it does exist. Research

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Speaker 2: shows that non human mammals have some sort of pms, rats, baboons.

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Speaker 2: So the biological purpose, what is the biological purpose perhaps.

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Speaker 3: To understand why it is that so many women feel

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Speaker 3: bad the last two weeks of the cycle. I think

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Speaker 3: that we first just really need to understand the menstrual cycle,

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Speaker 3: and this is something that we all learned about in

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Speaker 3: high school health class. But the thing that we don't

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Speaker 3: really know is that most of us aren't generally taught,

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Speaker 3: is that for a woman, reproduction requires two distinct sets

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Speaker 3: of activities. The first are about things like mate attraction

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Speaker 3: and sexual intercourse, which of course is what is necessary

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Speaker 3: the first set of ingredients that are necessary for reproduction

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Speaker 3: to occur, and the second set of activities are implantation

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Speaker 3: of an embryo and pregnancy. And the reason that women

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Speaker 3: have cycles at all is because women's bodies have to

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Speaker 3: cycle between these two distinct sets of activities in order

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Speaker 3: to reproduce. And so the first two weeks of the

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Speaker 3: menstrual cycle, which a menstrual cycle, starts on the day

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Speaker 3: you get your period, so that is day one of

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Speaker 3: your cycle. And on that day, your hormone levels are

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Speaker 3: really low, and this low hormone level tells your brain

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Speaker 3: to start stimulating your ovaries to release an egg. And

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Speaker 3: during this time, estrogen is high in rising, and during

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Speaker 3: this time, women tend to feel more sexually desirable, they

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Speaker 3: tend to have more sex, they are more interested in

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Speaker 3: looking for partners they become more easily distracted by things

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Speaker 3: related to mating, and women tend to have more sex.

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Speaker 3: They smell sexier, they look sexier, they sound sexier, the

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Speaker 3: whole list goes on. And all of these changes happen

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Speaker 3: when estrogen is high in rising because this is the

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Speaker 3: time when sex can lead to conception. And then after

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Speaker 3: that our bodies have to switch gears right and after

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Speaker 3: the egg is released sex, you know, twenty four hours

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Speaker 3: after the egg is released, sex can no longer lead

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Speaker 3: to conception. And during this time, the body has to

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Speaker 3: reorganize itself into being in a state that is optimized

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Speaker 3: for mate attraction and sex to a version of itself

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Speaker 3: that is optimized for implantation and pregnancy. And so, you know,

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Speaker 3: we tend to, you know, not really talk too much

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Speaker 3: about like what is it exactly that progesterone, this second

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Speaker 3: sex hormone that our bodies release and copious amounts during

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Speaker 3: the last two weeks of our cycle, Like what is

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Speaker 3: that actually doing?

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Speaker 2: Well?

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Speaker 3: The thing it's doing is trying to get your body

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Speaker 3: all ready to go in case of pregnancy. And even

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Speaker 3: though this doesn't sound like something that should require a

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Speaker 3: whole lot of you know, to do biologically, it actually does.

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Speaker 3: And just to give you some examples of some of

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Speaker 3: the things that progesterone does in the body to help

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Speaker 3: coordinate and promote a successful implantation of an embryo and pregnancy,

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Speaker 3: things like suppressing the immune system and shifting it from

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Speaker 3: a pro inflammatory state into an anti inflammatory state. And

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Speaker 3: this is something that would allow an embryo to be

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Speaker 3: able to implant without getting attacked by the immune system. Right,

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Speaker 3: a woman's energy needs increase by about seven to eleven percent,

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Speaker 3: meaning that women need more calories in the second half

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Speaker 3: of the cycle than they do in the first because

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Speaker 3: your basal metabolic rate increases because of all of the

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Speaker 3: increased effort that the body has to undergo in order

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Speaker 3: to prepare the endometrial layer and make all of the

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Speaker 3: other physiological changes that help to support a successful pregnancy.

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Speaker 3: We also get a down regulation in our sort of

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Speaker 3: outward facing motivation to be outwardly social because that's energetically

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Speaker 3: costly and we tend to be, you know, sort of

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Speaker 3: directing our energy inward, and this is something that can

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Speaker 3: help conserve energy at times when energy is at a premium,

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Speaker 3: or body temperature goes up, or sexual desire decreases. I mean,

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Speaker 3: there's all kinds of changes that help to promote this

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Speaker 3: pregnancy state. And I'm going to let you ask a question.

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Speaker 2: Well, there's in there I want to unpack. I want

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Speaker 2: to break a few things down. But let's remind everybody

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Speaker 2: who we're speaking with. It's doctor Sarah Hill. She's the

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Speaker 2: author of The Period Brain, the New Signs of Why

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Speaker 2: we PMS and how to fix it. You're listening to

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Speaker 2: get connected on one oh six point seven light FM.

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Speaker 2: I'm Miana del Rio. I actually got a bit of

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Speaker 2: a laugh in the beginning of the book because we're

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Speaker 2: talking about women have two phases, where governed our sexual

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Speaker 2: lives by two specific hormones, estrogen and progesterone. But men

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Speaker 2: they just have the one. They just have the one purpose.

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Speaker 2: So in a way, we're sort of like we are,

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Speaker 2: you know, two different creatures governed by two completely different things,

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Speaker 2: and that's what creates a lot of the disconnect.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think you know a lot of one

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Speaker 3: of the reasons that women feel bad in the last

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Speaker 3: two weeks of the cycle is that all of us

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Speaker 3: have been given a sort of one size fits all

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Speaker 3: like set of ideas about what it means to be human,

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Speaker 3: and that just doesn't work for women. It's like, we

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Speaker 3: do cycle between these two hormones, and as we cycle

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Speaker 3: between these two hormones, it changes what our body is doing,

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Speaker 3: it changes what our brain is doing, and so we cycle, right.

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Speaker 3: And this again is because our body has to do

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Speaker 3: two distinct sets of activities to reproduce, and so we

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Speaker 3: do cycle between, you know, a version of ourself that's

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Speaker 3: optimized for attraction and sex and then a version of

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Speaker 3: ourself that's optimized for implantation and pregnancy. And when we

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Speaker 3: try to misapply these rules that have been created for men, right,

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Speaker 3: things like you need the same number of calories every day,

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Speaker 3: you need the same amount of exercise, and the same

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Speaker 3: type of exercise every week. You need, you know, the

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Speaker 3: same amount of sleep. Your recovery should be the same

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Speaker 3: every day, and it just doesn't work that way for us. Like,

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Speaker 3: if you are a female, your body is going to

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Speaker 3: be cycling and as a result of that cycling, you're

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Speaker 3: going to experience changes. And when as soon as you

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Speaker 3: start to acknowledge that and understand that, you know it's

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Speaker 3: a possibility that the way that you take care of

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Speaker 3: yourself and the way that you understand yourself is cyclical.

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Speaker 3: It really makes things a whole lot better.

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Speaker 2: I think it's also a great reminder that your hormones

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Speaker 2: don't just affect you from the waist down. Right. This

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Speaker 2: is true in your reproductive years, This is true in perimenopause,

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Speaker 2: is true in menopause, if you want to talk about that, right, Yes,

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Speaker 2: the hormones affect so much of what's going on with

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Speaker 2: your behavior in general.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, you are your hormones, and that's something

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Speaker 3: you know. We tend to think about our hormones only

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Speaker 3: affecting us from the waist down, or we think of

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Speaker 3: them as something that happens to us. But I mean

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Speaker 3: they're a core part of what our brain uses to

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Speaker 3: create the experience of being the person we are. And

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Speaker 3: so as they change, both across the cycle and across

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Speaker 3: the lifespan. As you noted, when you know, are going

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Speaker 3: through puberty or going through perimenopause and into menopause, you

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Speaker 3: become a different version of yourself. Like women were made

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Speaker 3: to evolve, right, we shift. We're an unfolding picture. And

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Speaker 3: I think that as soon as we wrap our arms

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Speaker 3: around that and are given language to understand what our

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Speaker 3: body is doing, and also understand, like, start to learn

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Speaker 3: to trust our bodies, because I think a lot of

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Speaker 3: women have this idea that their body is the enemy,

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Speaker 3: and I hear that from so many people, and a

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Speaker 3: lot of it is because they're following the rules that

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Speaker 3: they were told that they need to follow in order

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Speaker 3: to live well and have you know, optimal health. But

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Speaker 3: a lot of those rules were created for men, and

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Speaker 3: the result is if you're following those rules and you

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Speaker 3: feel like, gosh, you know, I'm so hungry, and why

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Speaker 3: can't I you know, why can't I get myself to

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Speaker 3: stop having these food cravings? You know, if you're not

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Speaker 3: eating enough in the luteal phase, the last two weeks

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Speaker 3: of the cycle, when your calorie needs go up, you're

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Speaker 3: going to have food cravings. You know, your body is

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Speaker 3: preparing for the possibility of pregnancy and you're not eating enough.

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Speaker 3: And so as soon as we start to learn to

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Speaker 3: trust our bodies right and believe what our bodies are

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Speaker 3: telling us and really listen to that, I think it

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Speaker 3: can fundamentally, in addition to making us feel better and

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Speaker 3: eliminate some of the symptoms of PMS, I think it

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Speaker 3: can also allow us to develop a positive relationship for

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Speaker 3: us with ourselves and for a lot of us, let's

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Speaker 3: be the first time that we've ever been given permission

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Speaker 3: right to do that.

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Speaker 2: Well. One of the things that you do in the

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Speaker 2: book is help reinterpret. Obviously there's a biological method to

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Speaker 2: the madness. You've mentioned food cravings. I want to talk

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Speaker 2: about one of the things you touched on too, is

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Speaker 2: about exercise. So the two phases, they're not equivalent when

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Speaker 2: it comes to what we need for exercise, how we

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Speaker 2: our bodies metabolize the things that we're doing at that time.

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Speaker 2: Can you talk about the connection between say, strength training

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Speaker 2: and the luteal phase.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, So there's research that finds where they randomly assign

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Speaker 3: people to engage in strength training activities that that's either

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Speaker 3: heavy loaded with the strength training when estrogen is the

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Speaker 3: dominant hormone, which is in the first two weeks of

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Speaker 3: the cycle, or they have them heavy loading on strength

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Speaker 3: training during the luteal phase when progesterone is the dominant

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Speaker 3: sex hormone. And they have the women doing the exact

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Speaker 3: same number of lifting sessions over the course of a month,

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Speaker 3: and they followed them for three months and what they

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Speaker 3: found is that women who are doing most of their

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Speaker 3: heavy lifting in the estrogenic follicular phase that during the

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Speaker 3: first two weeks of the cycle, they gained significantly more

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Speaker 3: muscle strength than did the women who were doing their

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Speaker 3: heavy lifting in the luteal phase in response to progesterone.

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Speaker 3: And there's been other studies that have found similar patterns,

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Speaker 3: and it's believed to be because estrogen actually activates a

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Speaker 3: whole bunch of different types of pathways in the body

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Speaker 3: that help promote muscle synthesis and growth, whereas progesterone is

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Speaker 3: actually catabolic and so it actually likes to break tissue down.

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Speaker 3: And so this isn't to say that, you know, working

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Speaker 3: out in the luteal phase is not going to help

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Speaker 3: you with strength training. Instead, it's just you can potentially

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Speaker 3: get better gains by focusing more of your strength training

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Speaker 3: in the early phase of the cycle, right, so the

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Speaker 3: first two weeks of the cycle and then focusing more

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Speaker 3: on restorative and you know, sort of lower impact forms

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Speaker 3: of exercise in the luteal phase when progesterone is high.

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Speaker 3: Found in my own life that this has made a

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Speaker 3: big difference for me in terms of improving my strength gains.

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Speaker 3: And we've done some research with some of the researchers

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Speaker 3: at twenty eight Wellness, which is it's a cycle tracking

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Speaker 3: app that also gives exercise recommendations based on cycle phase,

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Speaker 3: and we found that with their users that the more

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Speaker 3: frequently they reported engaging in cycle based fitness, the better

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Speaker 3: they felt about their fitness returns, and the better fitness

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Speaker 3: returns they reported, and so, you know, there might be

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Speaker 3: something to this, and so the jury is still out.

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Speaker 3: This is sort of a new area of research. Is

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Speaker 3: just like looking at the extent to which cyclical variation

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Speaker 3: in you know, exercise activity might lead to cyclical variation

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Speaker 3: and outcomes. But in general, you know, many women find

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Speaker 3: that it also feels better to exercise this way. And

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Speaker 3: this is certainly the case for me because during the

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Speaker 3: luteal phase you do have a down regulation in your

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Speaker 3: sort of motivation to be doing energy exerting things. And

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Speaker 3: again this is because this is a phase in the

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Speaker 3: cycle that's really preparing the body for pregnancy, and that

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Speaker 3: means conserving energy and it means needing all of the

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Speaker 3: you know, different resources that it can hold on to

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Speaker 3: to be able to help to manage the proliferation of

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Speaker 3: the endometrial layer and get it ready for pregnancy.

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Speaker 2: There is so much more in the book. We only

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Speaker 2: have so many minutes with you, but just to briefly

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Speaker 2: wrap up, can you talk a bit about breaking the

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Speaker 2: cycle of the lack of knowledge the advantages that someone

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Speaker 2: might have and discovering this information as a younger woman,

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Speaker 2: as a girl, rather than at fifty.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, right, yeah. So, I think for a really

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Speaker 3: long time, women have been taught to ignore or kind

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Speaker 3: of deny the fact that their hormone cycle and that

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Speaker 3: these might have important, you know, implications for their brain

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Speaker 3: and their body. And we're going to embrace this and

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Speaker 3: understanding that this is a strength and not a weakness,

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Speaker 3: I think can really help women better understand themselves, have

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Speaker 3: a better language that they can use to explain to

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Speaker 3: themselves what's happening in their own bodies, and also to

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Speaker 3: be able to better communicate with their partners. And I

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Speaker 3: think that taking the time to learn about your hormones

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Speaker 3: and how your hormonal changes influence the way that you

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Speaker 3: you think and feel and experience the world really can

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Speaker 3: fundamentally change the nature of the relationship that we have

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Speaker 3: with ourselves. And that we have with other people.

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Speaker 2: It is a very readable book and really fascinating so far.

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Speaker 2: The period Brain by doctor Sarah E. Hill is the

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Speaker 2: new science of why we pms and how to fix it.

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Speaker 2: Doctor Sarah Hill, thank you for joining me on Get Connected.

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Speaker 3: Thank you so much for having me.

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Speaker 1: This has been Get Connected with Nina del Rio on

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Speaker 1: one IO six point seven light Fm. The views and

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Speaker 1: opinions of our guests do not necessarily reflect the views

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Speaker 1: downloads and podcasts at one O six seven lightfm dot com.

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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.