Speaker 1: PMS is a hormone imbalance. If I tell you, Roddy
Speaker 1: that I have had no PMS for twenty years, I
Speaker 1: just like to share that with people because I want
Speaker 1: you to know that that's possible.
Speaker 2: Right. Today's guest is the creator of the cycle sinking method.
Speaker 2: Alisa Vissi is a pioneer in female biohacking, a functional nutritionist,
Speaker 2: and the founder of flow Living, a platform that helps
Speaker 2: women balance hormones naturally.
Speaker 1: You know, we go to the doctor saying I don't
Speaker 1: feel right with my cycle. Usually we're prescribe birth control
Speaker 1: pills which don't fix what is wrong, and we are
Speaker 1: aging our ovaries so much faster than we realize because
Speaker 1: we are not taking care of our cycle phases. We're
Speaker 1: putting in too many toxins. We're creating a lot of inflammation,
Speaker 1: and it's absolutely messing with ovarian function. Starting to align
Speaker 1: your self care with your cycle phases really does work.
Speaker 1: Just here living the experiment of what happens when you
Speaker 1: support the female hormonal ecosystem for a long time.
Speaker 3: Rather than going against it, you get a lot.
Speaker 1: Of return on your investment, is what I can say.
Speaker 1: From the front line.
Speaker 2: I'm RADI Wukiah and on my podcast A Really Good Cry,
Speaker 2: we embrace the messy and the beautiful, providing a space
Speaker 2: for raw, unfiltered conversations that celebrate vulnerability and allow you
Speaker 2: to tune in to learn, connect and find comfort together.
Speaker 3: Alisa, it is so great to have you here.
Speaker 2: On A Really Good Cry. Thank you so much for
Speaker 2: being here. I'm so happy to be here. Honestly, it's
Speaker 2: been years in the making. It really has been. I
Speaker 2: was just telling Alisa that we're reminiscing about the time
Speaker 2: that I actually reached out to her because I read
Speaker 2: in the Flow what about a good few years ago,
Speaker 2: maybe twenty twenty three or twenty twenty two, and I
Speaker 2: reached out to her on DMS and I was like,
Speaker 2: I love you so much.
Speaker 3: This book has changed my life, and it really had.
Speaker 2: So I know at the time you weren't able to
Speaker 2: come here because you had a baby, any baby born,
Speaker 2: and you're.
Speaker 3: Really prioritizing that.
Speaker 2: But I'm so glad that we get to have this
Speaker 2: conversation for other people to experience, because I think more
Speaker 2: than ever, this is the time that it's so needed
Speaker 2: for women.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's always needed, but I you know,
Speaker 1: I'm thrilled to be here, and it's so fun whenever
Speaker 1: we get together to talk about these things. I think
Speaker 1: everybody is up leveled when women are given permission to
Speaker 1: learn about their bodies.
Speaker 3: So true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and honestly, that's really what this podcast is about.
Speaker 2: I want to stop by talking about In the Flood,
Speaker 2: which is a book that made the term cycle sinking
Speaker 2: go absolutely viral because you came up with it. I
Speaker 2: want to talk about what cycle sinking is and why
Speaker 2: is it so important for women to know about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I created the method because I was researching,
Speaker 1: like what are we missing? Why are so many women
Speaker 1: suffering with all of these different things versus men? Like
Speaker 1: why why are women having more hormonal problems compared to men?
Speaker 1: And I uncovered a second biological clock in the female
Speaker 1: body called the Infreedian rhythm. And you know, we know
Speaker 1: about our circadian clock. It governs our sleep wake cycles,
Speaker 1: but it also governs a lot more nuanced things in
Speaker 1: the body and the in freedom rhythm. Yes, it gives
Speaker 1: us sort of the timing on our ovulation and menstruation,
Speaker 1: but it also impacts our metabolic system, our stress response system,
Speaker 1: our immune system, and our brain so it just was
Speaker 1: a very logical thing, just like we have a method
Speaker 1: of caring for our circadian rhythm. We don't think of
Speaker 1: it that way, but our sleep routine is our method
Speaker 1: for circadian rhythm support, right. We needed a method to
Speaker 1: support this in Fredian rhythm because the fact that we
Speaker 1: didn't know we had one and we were not catering
Speaker 1: to it was creating a lot of dysregulation in these
Speaker 1: other systems of the body, which is the answer to
Speaker 1: why are so many women compared to men suffering with
Speaker 1: hormonal imbalances because we're dysregulating this Infredian rhythm. So I
Speaker 1: looked at the four phases of the menstrual cycle, which
Speaker 1: each have their own unique hormone ratio, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to map out a diet, fitness, and lifestyle program that
Speaker 1: would really optimize each of those hormone ratios so that
Speaker 1: we could sort of experience a symptom free journey throughout
Speaker 1: the month, because that is really how we're designed to feel.
Speaker 2: I feel like when you were saying we forgot that,
Speaker 2: we don't even didn't realize that this system existed. I
Speaker 2: was thinking about like women back in the days, who
Speaker 2: you know, lived without phones and lived without busy environments
Speaker 2: where they were traveling. In all of this, I imagine
Speaker 2: it was very easy for a woman way back when
Speaker 2: to actually live according to their rhythm, because that's all
Speaker 2: they were really taught to tune into. Like there wasn't
Speaker 2: tuning into other things around them. It was tuning into
Speaker 2: the body. And we're going to wake up when the sunrises,
Speaker 2: we're going to go to sleep when the moon comes out.
Speaker 2: And it must have been such an easy way because
Speaker 2: it was so in tune with nature to also be
Speaker 2: in tune with their own body. But somehow that kind
Speaker 2: of message has been lost the more and more things
Speaker 2: that were introduced into our lives.
Speaker 1: Well, it's interesting because if we look at the origin
Speaker 1: of the word menstruation, it comes from either the Latin
Speaker 1: or the Greek for measure, the unit of measure, and
Speaker 1: so this idea of measuring time is so tied with
Speaker 1: lunar phases and the female cycle from you know, ancient cultures.
Speaker 1: So yes, I do think that there was a period
Speaker 1: of history in which women were much more in tune
Speaker 1: with the rhythm of their bodies. But absolutely industrialization has
Speaker 1: sort of interrupted that the experience, and so many of
Speaker 1: us don't have a good visceral sense of which phase
Speaker 1: of the cycle we're in. We know when we're bleeding,
Speaker 1: but most women feel like surprised by well, you know,
Speaker 1: where am I, and like, oh, my period's coming. It
Speaker 1: feels always like an unknown always.
Speaker 3: Yeah, even if you.
Speaker 2: Know it's coming, Like even if I know the date's
Speaker 2: coming up, I don't know what's happened. Something's happening to
Speaker 2: me and I'm like, oh, yeah, it comes. And so
Speaker 2: the only part you're really aware of is when you
Speaker 2: actually mentioned when you actually on your period, like when
Speaker 2: you actually get the symptoms.
Speaker 1: But when you really start to practice the cycle sinking method,
Speaker 1: you really get to a place where you feel distinctly
Speaker 1: each of the phases and their subtle nuances of the energy.
Speaker 1: And it's very cool, you.
Speaker 2: Know, it's beautiful. Yeah, it is so beautiful to experience it.
Speaker 2: What are some of the signs and symptoms of people
Speaker 2: when they all hormonally imbalance for women? And how would
Speaker 2: someone start to recognize it and realize that there's something
Speaker 2: a bit off with them.
Speaker 1: And maybe to take action. Yes, I mean PMS. We
Speaker 1: normalize that as something that you know to expect during
Speaker 1: the month. But really, PMS is a hormone imbalance. It
Speaker 1: is the It's an inverted ratio of estrogen and progesterone
Speaker 1: in the luteal phase, and that is why PMS exists.
Speaker 1: If you have the proper balance of those two hormones,
Speaker 1: you have no symptoms. If I tell you, Roddy that
Speaker 1: I have had no PMS for twenty years, I mean,
Speaker 1: I just like to share that with people because I
Speaker 1: want you to know that that's possible.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And it's not like I'm doing anything special outside of
Speaker 1: this method, right. I don't take any special herbs or
Speaker 1: you know, I'm a lessers more kind of girl when
Speaker 1: it comes to health. So it's really really interesting. And
Speaker 1: we actually just concluded a three month i ORB approved
Speaker 1: clinical trial on the cycle sinking method, which is a
Speaker 1: big deal. And the preliminary resulting that we're analyzing the
Speaker 1: data formally right now, we're incredible. I mean, women in
Speaker 1: the first thirty days had an eighty percent reduction in
Speaker 1: their PMS symptom burden and severity, and that only improved
Speaker 1: over the three months that we were doing the intervention.
Speaker 1: It's really exciting because you know, we go to the
Speaker 1: doctor saying I don't feel right with my cycle, and
Speaker 1: usually we're prescribe birth control pills, which don't fix what
Speaker 1: is wrong. In fact, they also shut off your Infredian
Speaker 1: rhythm and stop ovulation, which is a huge theft from
Speaker 1: your future self, your postmenopausal self, because every ovulation you
Speaker 1: have today puts let's say bucks in your health bank
Speaker 1: account postmenopausely for your brain, your bone, and your heart. Right,
Speaker 1: so every ovulation is cardio osteo and or protective today
Speaker 1: but also for those decades that you will be no
Speaker 1: longer ovulating postmenopausala. Yeah, so you want to be you
Speaker 1: want to have a healthy cycle. It's it's your health
Speaker 1: insurance for the future, but it's also your current health insurance.
Speaker 1: And in twenty seventeen, the American College of Obstetrics and
Speaker 1: Gynecologists decreed that your cycle should be considered a fifth
Speaker 1: vital sign, like the other things we take in the
Speaker 1: emergency room, like your temperature and your blood pressure. So
Speaker 1: we do have to look at things like PMS as
Speaker 1: a big red flag, like you have something the equivalent
Speaker 1: of having a fever. You want to take action around that.
Speaker 1: You don't want to joke about it. You don't want
Speaker 1: to like downplay it. I am here to validate that
Speaker 1: if you're feeling like something is off, it's off, and
Speaker 1: to encourage you and give you hope that actually starting
Speaker 1: to align your self care with your cycle phases really
Speaker 1: does work.
Speaker 3: It so does.
Speaker 2: I used to when I was younger, have ready a
Speaker 2: back paired crops the top where you just want to
Speaker 2: the first day or e n two you're just like
Speaker 2: wrapped up in a ball, you know, water bottle in
Speaker 2: your stomach and kind of not being able to do anything.
Speaker 2: And then when I started studying Ibada, and then after
Speaker 2: I read your book, the subtle changes that I made
Speaker 2: and the difference that I felt I could do everything
Speaker 2: that I normally would do to a lesser degree and
Speaker 2: some time, but at the time just to protect myself.
Speaker 2: But if I want to go through my day, do
Speaker 2: my work, get cook do all the things that I
Speaker 2: normally do, I can easily do it and I don't
Speaker 2: have crumps and I don't feel like the whole world
Speaker 2: is ending around me. And it stabilized my mood so
Speaker 2: much more. And it's You're right, It's such simple shifts,
Speaker 2: and I would love to get into.
Speaker 3: The cycle and how different phase is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would love to go through each phase in detail,
Speaker 2: if that's okay. Yeah, I would love to discuss what
Speaker 2: that looks like.
Speaker 1: I just want to share that. A number of women
Speaker 1: when we were wrapping up the last study session, they said,
Speaker 1: you know, now, what am I going to do? I
Speaker 1: don't have like all these symptoms letting me know when
Speaker 1: my period's going to start. I don't have the breast
Speaker 1: ten anymore. I don't have the acne or the mood swing,
Speaker 1: so like I have to actually track so that I
Speaker 1: know which day of my period's going to start because
Speaker 1: I'm not getting any physical suffering as the sign like
Speaker 1: it's about to carry. And I was like, well, that's
Speaker 1: a good we call that a good problem to have. Yeah. Actually,
Speaker 1: so that's what I want for every woman is to
Speaker 1: just where you feel like your experience, where you feel
Speaker 1: good every day of the cycle. There is no better
Speaker 1: cycle phase than I love them all, like it's like
Speaker 1: having four different children, Like you wouldn't love one more
Speaker 1: than the other. They're all beautiful and they have different
Speaker 1: you know, energies and properties, and they're different and beautiful
Speaker 1: in each way.
Speaker 3: When did you stop practicing cycle sinking.
Speaker 1: Gosh, I think, well, I'm definitely the person on the
Speaker 1: planet who's been doing it the longest I started probably now,
Speaker 1: I would say fifteen years ago I started evolving the practice,
Speaker 1: so it's been a while, and I absolutely credit this
Speaker 1: consistent practice over the past fifteen years to be one
Speaker 1: of the main reasons why now at forty eight half,
Speaker 1: I'm still ovulating, I'm still menstruating regularly. I'm not on
Speaker 1: any HRT, I'm not on any peptides, I'm not on
Speaker 1: anything yet. I may do those things in the future
Speaker 1: as needed, but I'm interested in playing the long game
Speaker 1: of how can I use basic biological systems support which
Speaker 1: cycle sinking really is a great example of that. How
Speaker 1: can I use that to extend the functionality of my ovaries. Remember,
Speaker 1: the ovaries are the first organ in the body to age,
Speaker 1: and we are aging our ovaries so much faster than
Speaker 1: we realize because we are not taking care of our
Speaker 1: cycle phases. We're putting in too many toxins, We're creating
Speaker 1: a lot of inflammation, and it's absolutely messing with ovarian function.
Speaker 1: And so that's why you have girls at six and
Speaker 1: a half who are going through puberty at six and
Speaker 1: a half. You have girls in their twenties who are
Speaker 1: doubled over in cramps, with major menstrual problems. You have
Speaker 1: women in their thirties who cannot get pregnant. And you
Speaker 1: have women in their late thirties early forties who are
Speaker 1: showing stage two perimenopause symptoms meaning irregular cycles, hot flashes,
Speaker 1: night sweats, major mood disruption, and really just advancing through
Speaker 1: this process of ovarian aging so much faster. And I'm
Speaker 1: just here living the experiment of what happens when you
Speaker 1: support the female hormonal ecosystem for a long time.
Speaker 3: Rather than going against it.
Speaker 1: You get a lot of return on your investment, is
Speaker 1: what I can say from the front lines, because I'm
Speaker 1: feeling really good and I think that's available to more
Speaker 1: of us. Should we start the process as soon as
Speaker 1: you know about it.
Speaker 2: Yes, we absolutely should tell us what it entails, please, so.
Speaker 3: In phase one?
Speaker 1: Yes, So I actually like to consider phase one, you know,
Speaker 1: the first phase of the cycle, the follicular phase, because
Speaker 1: doesn't menstruation feel like the completion of the journey.
Speaker 3: It really does.
Speaker 1: So even and people get tripped up on this, You're like, well,
Speaker 1: but day one is day one of the bleed when
Speaker 1: you're counting for fertility, and that's fine. You can still
Speaker 1: count day one as the bleed day one for let's say,
Speaker 1: approximating ovulation, if you're using that counting method. Although now
Speaker 1: in the world of you know, biometric devices, why guess,
Speaker 1: like use a device so that you know exactly when
Speaker 1: you're ovulating, whether that be basal body temperature tracking or
Speaker 1: your analysis that you can do at home, or a
Speaker 1: ring or a watch. I mean, there's just so many
Speaker 1: cool ways now, Like, there's no excuse not to know
Speaker 1: when you're ovulating in which phase you're in. But I
Speaker 1: think from an energetic perspective, the way you relate to
Speaker 1: your cycle, I'd love for us to reevaluate what we
Speaker 1: consider the first phase, which is the follicular phase, the
Speaker 1: beginning when all the eggs are developing on the ovary
Speaker 1: and you're feeling like your estrogen's kind of coming back
Speaker 1: online and you're interested again in starting again. Just like
Speaker 1: your overy is starting again, you also are interested in
Speaker 1: re engaging with life again in a fresh way. So
Speaker 1: then from a let's say metabolic perspective, we actually have
Speaker 1: a slowing down of our metabolism in this first half
Speaker 1: of the cycle, so we can we are more efficient
Speaker 1: calorically speaking, you can eat a little bit less, but
Speaker 1: you still going to feel really good from a blood
Speaker 1: sugar perspective, and our cortisol levels at rest are lower,
Speaker 1: so that's what's happening. And ovulation, of course, we have
Speaker 1: sort of this wonderful ovulatory surge of estrogen and FSH
Speaker 1: and LH which stimulates the verbal and social centers of
Speaker 1: the brain, making us very social and all of that.
Speaker 1: And then we move into the second half of the cycle,
Speaker 1: the luteal phase and the menstrual phase. This is when
Speaker 1: metabolism speeds up and we need two hundred and seventy
Speaker 1: nine more calories per day, and this is when progestrone
Speaker 1: shows up to the party. The luteal phase is my
Speaker 1: favorite phase. Oh okay, it's my favorite phase. It's the
Speaker 1: longest phase of the cycle, and when we think about
Speaker 1: just the concept of manifesting, it's also really beautifully baked
Speaker 1: into the menstrual cycle. This is the phase of the
Speaker 1: cycle where you do things right. You don't just idate
Speaker 1: and speak about it and talk about it with people.
Speaker 1: You get to work right. And I love that it's
Speaker 1: the longest phase of the cycle because when you think
Speaker 1: about the arc of manifesting anything, right, you ideate it
Speaker 1: in the follicular phase, you speak it into existence in
Speaker 1: the ovulatory phase. Then you do things in alignment with
Speaker 1: that vision in the luteal phase, and then you evaluate
Speaker 1: and like you know, celebrate in the menstrual phase. Right.
Speaker 1: So it's the longest phase, and it should be a
Speaker 1: phase where you feel calm and focused if you have
Speaker 1: adequate levels of progestrum resting CORESOL levels are a little
Speaker 1: higher at this time, so that's going to affect how
Speaker 1: we eat and how we exercise, which I'll go through
Speaker 1: in a second. Then menstruation is a beautiful phase as well,
Speaker 1: not to be discarded because we're bleeding. No. In fact,
Speaker 1: the right and left hemispheres of the brain are communicating
Speaker 1: the most across the corpus colosum. So this is when
Speaker 1: you can really evaluate the facts and your feelings about
Speaker 1: any situation and just decide what you want to do
Speaker 1: right the next cycle. Right, because follicular phase is coming
Speaker 1: back up, you want to start planning, like what are
Speaker 1: you doing with your major life buckets? Right, So that's
Speaker 1: what's happening, let's say ten thousand foot view. How do
Speaker 1: you care for each of these phases? In the first
Speaker 1: half of the cycle, we eat, you know, there's obviously
Speaker 1: the food chart from chapter four of the book is famous.
Speaker 1: Everybody's meming it, and there's so many Instagram posts. Everybody's
Speaker 1: done such a great job like putting their spin on it.
Speaker 1: I love it. But to get the correct one, please
Speaker 1: reference the book or the app, because there's now it's
Speaker 1: like a game of telephone. I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people are excited about cycle sinking, and they're maybe misrepresenting
Speaker 1: it a little bit. So just make sure you get
Speaker 1: the right information. In the first half, you're going to
Speaker 1: be eating lighter foods, You're going to be focusing on
Speaker 1: gut health. You're going to be you know, you can
Speaker 1: do a little bit of extended fasting in the morning,
Speaker 1: not much past fourteen or fifteen hours, meaning from dinner
Speaker 1: to breakfast. And then from an exercise perspective, you can
Speaker 1: go really aggressively with your cardio and your hit workouts
Speaker 1: in this phase second half of the cycle. As I said,
Speaker 1: since metabolism speeds up, why does it speed up because
Speaker 1: you're three D printing a little organ, the endometrium. Right,
Speaker 1: you're manufacturing this tissue out of the food that you're eating,
Speaker 1: and it takes more effort on your body's part to
Speaker 1: do that, so you need more calories. This is why
Speaker 1: stabilizing your blood sugar is critical for progesterone production. We're
Speaker 1: very very tightly titrated to glucose and cortisol and progesterone,
Speaker 1: so you really do want to watch that in the
Speaker 1: luteal phase, which is why you'll see the food recommendations
Speaker 1: here are much more substantive. So if you're the smoothie
Speaker 1: salad girl, you're going to feel really comfortable in the
Speaker 1: first half of the cycle. But in the second half,
Speaker 1: I want you to get more comfortable with your macro self, right,
Speaker 1: because you want to build like a nice bowl of grains,
Speaker 1: root vegetables, legomes, cook leafy greens and proteins and fats.
Speaker 1: A really well balanced macroplate is really going to be
Speaker 1: the thing that keeps you energized and keeping you away
Speaker 1: from any of that like PMS, you know, craving attack,
Speaker 1: hang the yeah, all that stuff that's your body trying
Speaker 1: to save you from yourself. When you wake up at
Speaker 1: the bottom of a bag of crisps and you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm back right after you've gone into a Grellin trance.
Speaker 1: That's all you are. You're in a neurotransmitter trance based
Speaker 1: on Grellin. Grellen has taken over. Your blood sugar has
Speaker 1: become so dysregulated that your brain is like, we got
Speaker 1: to help this person out. She doesn't know how to
Speaker 1: feed herself today, so we're going to give her an
Speaker 1: overwhelming craving to get blood glucose levels up. And that's
Speaker 1: why we have this type of sort of irrational craving
Speaker 1: during a uteal phase. It's just because we're mismanaging blood sugger.
Speaker 1: How might you be mismanaging your blood sugar in this phase?
Speaker 1: Continuing to fast in the morning, right, you need to
Speaker 1: eat within thirty minutes upon waking, and substantial substantially in
Speaker 1: the luteal phase, so thirty grams of protein, about thirty
Speaker 1: to forty grams of carbohydrates, twelve to fifteen grams of fat.
Speaker 1: You really want to actually measure your macros to keep
Speaker 1: your blood sugar balance. And if you don't have a
Speaker 1: good handle on that, I would use a CGM a
Speaker 1: continuous glucose monitor for the first one cycle, just so
Speaker 1: you can see how your body is responding to all
Speaker 1: these different food changes. That was one of our fun
Speaker 1: findings in the study as well. We had everybody wear
Speaker 1: a CGM and they were most women were really shocked
Speaker 1: at how, you know, there's resistance to eating. We as
Speaker 1: women have a lot of resistance to nourishing ourselves, and
Speaker 1: so there's fear about feeding our bodies. And I said, great,
Speaker 1: we're just going to put the dogma aside. You're going
Speaker 1: to eat these things and you're you're going to see
Speaker 1: the data in the CGM if your blood sugar is
Speaker 1: happy with this or not. And everybody was like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, I can't believe that this is what my
Speaker 1: body needs and how good I feel. So that's really
Speaker 1: important too, to just help us break free of the
Speaker 1: sort of conditioning we've received. Let's not under appreciate the
Speaker 1: fact that because we've been left out of all of
Speaker 1: this medical fitness and nutrition research, we've been fed a
Speaker 1: narrative for many, many decades that has been based on
Speaker 1: the assumption that we are just smaller versions of men
Speaker 1: that require maybe fewer calories and more cardio to compensate
Speaker 1: for our mysterious you know, female metabolism, which is just
Speaker 1: utter unscientific nonsense and so, but that has left a
Speaker 1: lasting behavioral impression on our relationship with food and nourishing ourselves.
Speaker 1: The best thing I can tell you from all of
Speaker 1: this research that I've done is that actually, compared to men,
Speaker 1: women thrive when we eat more and more frequently from
Speaker 1: a hormonal perspective. So like you know, don't do too
Speaker 1: much fasting until you're closer to menopause. And really, I
Speaker 1: mean I eat every three hours. I'm closer to menopause.
Speaker 1: I eat every three hours to keep my blood sugar
Speaker 1: stable and to keep my metabolism really as at its
Speaker 1: optimum place.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: The more you restrict, the slower your metabolism performs, and
Speaker 1: that throws off progesterone production. And we want to preserve
Speaker 1: progesterone production as much as we can, and there's a
Speaker 1: really direct line between that and blood sugar management. So
Speaker 1: that's why you're eating differently throughout the cycle. Then, of
Speaker 1: course during menstruation you have all of this blood loss,
Speaker 1: and studies show that we lose specific minerals or more
Speaker 1: mineral envitamin deficient in specific measurable ways in the menstrual phase.
Speaker 1: So the foods that I selected for that phase really
Speaker 1: help re nourish those missing nutrients. So you're going to
Speaker 1: be having things that are a little bit more warming, stews,
Speaker 1: meat basting, seaweeds, things that are really rich in these
Speaker 1: types of nutrients. And then when you're doing this consistent
Speaker 1: you know, phase over a phase, you just feel really good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, And then you couple in the workout, so
Speaker 1: you do the cardio in the first half and then
Speaker 1: you do more zone to kind of cardio in the
Speaker 1: second half. Let me set the record straight because I
Speaker 1: know there's a lot of again people having conversations on
Speaker 1: social media. You can strength train in every phase of
Speaker 1: the cycle, right I do? You should? You can. You
Speaker 1: may be recovering from a lot of hormonal imbalance where
Speaker 1: you feel a lot of fatigue in the second half
Speaker 1: of the cycle, where you don't feel like you have
Speaker 1: the energy to strength train until you get yourself back
Speaker 1: to a state of homeostasis from a hormonal perspective, and
Speaker 1: that's okay, So don't push yourself. But when you are
Speaker 1: in the flow with your cycle, you can strength train
Speaker 1: every day of the cycle. And there's so much advantageous,
Speaker 1: you know, benefits to doing that from a blood sugar
Speaker 1: perspective and a mitochondrial ovarian perspective. So I would definitely
Speaker 1: encourage people to do that too.
Speaker 2: I remember when I'm I was really struggling with the
Speaker 2: certain parts of my certain parts of my cycle where
Speaker 2: I was working up really intensely, like so intensely, actually
Speaker 2: not more intensely than I normally would, But when I
Speaker 2: was doing it during the phase before my menstruation, I
Speaker 2: noticed there was a significant difference in how much I
Speaker 2: was able to bounce back. So I was really going hard,
Speaker 2: and no matter what I ate after my workout, no
Speaker 2: matter how much I tried to replenish, my body was
Speaker 2: just feeling flat out. And then it would affect the
Speaker 2: rest of the phases and I almost like it felt
Speaker 2: like I'd got into a deficit that I couldn't get
Speaker 2: back from. And so I would do my lower back
Speaker 2: would end up hurting more. I do the same ways
Speaker 2: that I would normally do, you know a couple of
Speaker 2: weeks before, but my lower back would go out, my
Speaker 2: body would feel weaker. I'd come back, I'd have my
Speaker 2: potein shake, I'd do all this stuff, and I'd be like, oh,
Speaker 2: I feel so like my head feels heavy. Don't feel
Speaker 2: like I'm just not replenishing. And when I started realizing
Speaker 2: that I had to it wasn't that I stopped working
Speaker 2: out during that phase, but I had to go at
Speaker 2: a lower intensity during that time. And what a difference
Speaker 2: it made to actually then catching up with energy for
Speaker 2: the rest of the phases when the phase that I thought,
Speaker 2: you know, just off to my menstruation is what I
Speaker 2: usually would feel like the best, and I'd have so
Speaker 2: much energy and it will be incredible. But it was
Speaker 2: like I was catching up because I put myself so
Speaker 2: flat out during the phase where I was supposed to
Speaker 2: be having a little bit more rest, and instead of
Speaker 2: doing that, I was pushing through. So I was kind
Speaker 2: of borrowing energy from the other phases.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a great example of I think what
Speaker 1: we're doing in general as women, which is where, you know,
Speaker 1: because we are more comfortable with the practices of self
Speaker 1: care from the first half of the cycle, we try
Speaker 1: to maintain those in the second half, which are a
Speaker 1: mismatch for what our cycle phases need. In the ludial,
Speaker 1: in the menstrual phase, and we're putting a drain on
Speaker 1: our system. So we kind of are creating a big
Speaker 1: leaky bucket from a micronutrient perspective and energy perspective, and
Speaker 1: that puts us in deficit, not just with our blood sugar,
Speaker 1: our cortisol, our progesterone, our mood. And it's a vicious cycle.
Speaker 1: So I want you to get into like a delicious
Speaker 1: cycle where you are nourishing yourself properly and then you're
Speaker 1: exercising in a way that is sustainable for you. I
Speaker 1: will say oftentimes in the luteal phase, just specifically to
Speaker 1: that your little practice, just to maybe tweak your practice.
Speaker 1: It oftentimes women work out in a fasted state I do,
Speaker 1: which is a big no noe. So if you work
Speaker 1: out in a fasted state, especially in the luteal phase,
Speaker 1: when your metabolism is faster and resting cortisol is higher,
Speaker 1: now you are putting your body in a very vulnerable
Speaker 1: position because you're putting yourself into hypoglycemic reaction.
Speaker 3: That's exactly what I used to face, and then that can.
Speaker 1: Take hours, if not days to recover from, depending on
Speaker 1: how sensitive you are. So you were just having a
Speaker 1: very bad hypoglycemic reaction in the luteal phase because you're
Speaker 1: mismanaging your blood sugar, which is the whole purpose of
Speaker 1: the dietary part of the intervention of cycle sinking is
Speaker 1: to protect against blood sugar mismanagement, which we when you
Speaker 1: do that, it's very hard to maintain hormonal balance.
Speaker 2: What do you think these days are the biggest red
Speaker 2: flags you're seeing women day? Like the top three things
Speaker 2: that are literally ruining a woman's hormontal health.
Speaker 1: I mean, fast at anything, fasted workouts, fast like extended
Speaker 1: fasting definitely not a good thing from a hormonal perspective.
Speaker 1: Caffeine on an empty stomach really problematic from a cortisol
Speaker 1: perspective and a blood sugar perspective. And then I would
Speaker 1: say too much blue light exposure at night that really
Speaker 1: disrupts melatonin production. And melatonin is so connected to our
Speaker 1: ovulation potential, and when we don't make enough of that,
Speaker 1: we age the ovary really quickly, so we can really
Speaker 1: put an end to ovulation much sooner than we should.
Speaker 1: So those three things alone, so I mean, I would say,
Speaker 1: eat your breakfast within an hour of waking. Wait until
Speaker 1: in fact, study just came out about that if you
Speaker 1: believe the idea that having that cup of coffee or
Speaker 1: green tea or something on an empty stomach first thing
Speaker 1: in the morning is what's giving you that jolt, it's
Speaker 1: actually not that. It's that within that first thirty minutes,
Speaker 1: your body is offloading melatonin and so what you're you're
Speaker 1: like coming out of the sleep mode, right, So you're
Speaker 1: naturally and your cortisol's onboarding, so you're naturally kind of
Speaker 1: waking up. It has nothing to do with the caffeine.
Speaker 1: The caffeine. Putting it in too early can actually prevent
Speaker 1: that process from happening properly, keeping you more groggy and
Speaker 1: then messing with your blood sugar and cortisol. Right, So
Speaker 1: it's best if you're going to do it, to wait
Speaker 1: one hour. So I always say eat your breakfast within
Speaker 1: that first hour to boost your energy from a blood
Speaker 1: sugar perspective, and then have your caffeine after the meal,
Speaker 1: which is how every other culture has caffeine. Yeah, after
Speaker 1: a meal, So we should just adopt that logic. It's
Speaker 1: good for us. And then from the perspective of the
Speaker 1: evening routine, you know, make sure you put your phones
Speaker 1: your screens on, like red light, you know, whatever, the
Speaker 1: anti blue light, there's always like an app you can
Speaker 1: download or wear blue light blocking glasses after a certain hour,
Speaker 1: you know, at least by eight o'clock.
Speaker 3: So then you know with the intimate and fasting because
Speaker 3: obviously they wreck.
Speaker 2: There's been so many people that have shared that having
Speaker 2: a minimum of like a fourteen fifteen hour to allow
Speaker 2: your body to detox and to get the benefits of
Speaker 2: intimate and fasting, that having that block of fourteen or
Speaker 2: fifteen hours is what's really important.
Speaker 3: So would you.
Speaker 2: Say that that's not necessarily accurate for a woman or
Speaker 2: is it very dependent on what type of woman you are.
Speaker 1: So you can do that. Ex So, the Golden fast
Speaker 1: is a twelve to thirteen hour fast between dinner and breakfast,
Speaker 1: So that means like seven pm, you're having your last
Speaker 1: bite of food and you would have your next spite
Speaker 1: of food until sometime between seven or eight am. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's great. In the first half of the cycle, you
Speaker 1: might be able to push that another hour, so that
Speaker 1: could be that fourteen hour window right in the luteal phase.
Speaker 1: Definitely not keep it to twelve and you will see
Speaker 1: the impact and the benefits of doing that there's more
Speaker 1: harm in delaying replenishing your glucose levels in the luteal
Speaker 1: phase than there is any benefit from fasting. And then
Speaker 1: obviously the research that's been done on intermittent fasting has
Speaker 1: been done on men and postmenopausal women, which shows huge benefits.
Speaker 1: When I am postmenopausal, I will be intermittent fasting. I
Speaker 1: will be extending my fasting. I think we'll see. I
Speaker 1: have actually taken up a very serious strength training practice
Speaker 1: over the past fourteen months, so I am bodybuilding five
Speaker 1: days a week, and I actually don't think that there's
Speaker 1: a place for the fasting in my current routine because
Speaker 1: I have to prefuel my muscles with adequate levels of
Speaker 1: glucose before I train, and I'm training very heavy. I mean,
Speaker 1: my hip thrust is two hundred pounds. Yeah, squat is
Speaker 1: a grid pound squad, you know, like my bench press
Speaker 1: is seventy pounds. I'm lifting really heavy and so you
Speaker 1: need to fuel for that. So again, you know, we
Speaker 1: shouldn't be so afraid of nourishment. Now, fasting has a place,
Speaker 1: especially when you're recovering from let's say some sort of
Speaker 1: intense infection like limes disease or there's a lot of
Speaker 1: reasons where fasting can be a very big help to
Speaker 1: the body because the constant introduction of food can be
Speaker 1: a drain when immune system is overburdened. But for the
Speaker 1: everyday woman who is just dealing with PMS, if we
Speaker 1: really are talking about getting a handled on that, we
Speaker 1: have to approach and support our master regulating hormones. In
Speaker 1: order for you to change your sex hormone output estrogen progesterone,
Speaker 1: you have to work on the master regulating hormone support
Speaker 1: of glucose, insulin, and cortisol. Right. So that's why we
Speaker 1: change diet and exercise, because then we change those inputs,
Speaker 1: we get better sex hormone outputs. That's the key.
Speaker 2: Would the intimated fasting also be applied to if someone
Speaker 2: was trying to lose weight with women who are trying
Speaker 2: to lose weight or achieve weight loss in their workout program,
Speaker 2: would what you're saying apply to them also?
Speaker 1: It would apply because the studies around intermittent fasting that
Speaker 1: I do think have some merit, or for women with
Speaker 1: PCOS which I used to have and I used to
Speaker 1: be two hundred and ten pounds covered in face, chest
Speaker 1: and back and sistic acne, and I did not menstraight
Speaker 1: from the age of twelve to twenty two, so you know,
Speaker 1: I understand weight issues. That being said, I've never used
Speaker 1: intermittent fasting as a tool for my weight management, and
Speaker 1: I've kept off a significant amount of weight for a
Speaker 1: long time. But there is some emerging research that shows
Speaker 1: that for women with pcos, there's some value in doing
Speaker 1: some extended fasting to help at least get them started
Speaker 1: where they could get to a place where they have
Speaker 1: better metabolic flexibility. Because women with pcos have a lot
Speaker 1: of insulin resistance on the level of the cell, overburdening
Speaker 1: the body with glucose is the problem. So intermittent fasting
Speaker 1: isn't the thing there. It's just a mechanism that reduces
Speaker 1: overall daily glucose load and that benefits the cell from
Speaker 1: a woman who has this insulin resistance. For women who
Speaker 1: are trying to lose weight, in fact, delaying nutrition and
Speaker 1: going long periods of time without eating, let's say we
Speaker 1: do that the most between lunch and dinner. It slows
Speaker 1: down your metabolism. So, for example, in the past fourteen months,
Speaker 1: and I didn't think I had any weight to lose,
Speaker 1: I've lost twenty five pounds strength training and eating more,
Speaker 1: more free and more. You know, I was already nourishing
Speaker 1: myself a lot, but I started, you know, at midlife.
Speaker 1: I thought, let me just see what other new experiments
Speaker 1: I can do. And that's really been the thing. So
Speaker 1: I think again, we have this whole like narrative that
Speaker 1: is not based on actual data that we feel really
Speaker 1: comfortable with, Like, yes, we feel, we feel now. Listen,
Speaker 1: a calorie deficit if you're going to lose weight is important.
Speaker 1: It's an important part of weight loss. But that does
Speaker 1: not eat. That does not have to involve going many,
Speaker 1: many hours of the day without eating. You can be
Speaker 1: in a calorie deficit and eat every three hours because
Speaker 1: the goal is even in a calorie deficit, you still
Speaker 1: have to stabilize your blood sugar Otherwise you're going to
Speaker 1: be hypoglycemic. You're going to be craving things, You're going
Speaker 1: to be throwing off your lept in response. It's going
Speaker 1: to just it's a vicious cycle.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then you know when people get their hormones tested,
Speaker 2: are the you know the targets or you know the
Speaker 2: ranges that they give when you're testing your hormones, are
Speaker 2: they based on the right demographic in terms of when
Speaker 2: they are getting tested. If your hormones are showing normal,
Speaker 2: but you're still showing up with symptoms that there's irregular,
Speaker 2: like there's hormone irregulation.
Speaker 1: What.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would just love to touch on that because
Speaker 2: sometimes they can be it's so.
Speaker 1: Frustrating, right, yeah. Yeah. So the problem fundamentally with blood
Speaker 1: analysis is that it's just this one crystallized moment in
Speaker 1: time whenever you take the blood draw. That moment, that
Speaker 1: minute of your cycle is what the data is going
Speaker 1: to show. Yes, yeah, it's I think in the light
Speaker 1: of all the new options that women have. You know,
Speaker 1: for example, Mirror Health has a wonderful at home your
Speaker 1: analysis device where you can be tracking your estrogen and
Speaker 1: progesterone metabolites every single day. Oh wow, so you can
Speaker 1: every single day of your cycle know how many how
Speaker 1: much estrogen progester on your body has made that day,
Speaker 1: and then you can get that picture for a whole month.
Speaker 1: That is much more valuable information to have. You understand,
Speaker 1: are you in general having the right flow of these
Speaker 1: hormonal ratios in each phase of the cycle as opposed
Speaker 1: to just a blood draw Now, the other thing that
Speaker 1: I think is valuable too about having more consistent testing
Speaker 1: if you're concerned, is that you're absolutely right. You can
Speaker 1: go and get a blood test and you can be
Speaker 1: in normal range for that minute of that day of
Speaker 1: your cycle, and then you have this frustrating conversation with
Speaker 1: your provider where you're like, there's nothing wrong with your labs.
Speaker 1: Everything is normal, and you're like, but I feel bad,
Speaker 1: and then there's this sort of opportunity for gas lighting
Speaker 1: to happen, and this sort of again, this cultural narrative
Speaker 1: of like it's in your head because it's not on
Speaker 1: the labs is perpetuated. And I think it's because the
Speaker 1: tool of this blood test does not match the thirty
Speaker 1: twenty eight to thirty two to day experience of a
Speaker 1: dynamic hormone pattern that is changing in real time day
Speaker 1: over day. How can a blood test be sufficient to
Speaker 1: really get a full picture of what could be going on? Right? So,
Speaker 1: I think if you have concerns, do something that's a
Speaker 1: little bit more comprehensive, so that you can see more
Speaker 1: data and you can see that it's not in your
Speaker 1: head because it's not.
Speaker 2: So. Urine analysis is a better way of someone going.
Speaker 1: There's many, there's many, there's that there's you know, you
Speaker 1: can wear even HRV levels in things like rings and watches.
Speaker 1: They're able to sort of be mapped now onto menstrual
Speaker 1: cycle pattern. So there's many, many biometric devices that are
Speaker 1: available to us. It is a really exciting, i would say,
Speaker 1: historic feminist time because of femtech and some of these
Speaker 1: biohacking devices that have been evolved. Even simple things like
Speaker 1: having an access to a continuous glucose monitor, what a
Speaker 1: powerful tool in managing your hormonal reality because if you're
Speaker 1: not you know, and I wrote about this in my
Speaker 1: first book, Woman Code, it's the first step of the
Speaker 1: flow protocol that I used in my practice for years
Speaker 1: before I opened, before I started the first femtech company
Speaker 1: in the US in twenty twelve, which is flow living.
Speaker 1: That you know, if you are not managing your blood sugar,
Speaker 1: you have no shot in helping yourself from a hormonal perspective.
Speaker 1: It's so germane to your endocrine function. It's table stakes.
Speaker 1: You can't. You can't out supplement or out biohack. Having
Speaker 1: a poor diet, yeah, you just cannot. And eighty percent
Speaker 1: of what gets you well is dietary.
Speaker 2: So true, are there any like your top three foods
Speaker 2: that are supportive for women's hormones and health?
Speaker 1: I mean protein because we synthesize hormones from amino acids,
Speaker 1: So let's not I know protein's a hot topic right
Speaker 1: now because everybody wants to have your protein, and I'm
Speaker 1: here for that. I do eat a lot of protein myself,
Speaker 1: but especially as I'm aging, more protein helps me make
Speaker 1: more hormone and I'm interested in playing the game of
Speaker 1: how can my bod how can I help my body
Speaker 1: make more endogenous which means internally produced hormones for longer? Yes,
Speaker 1: you know why not? We can play any experiment we want.
Speaker 3: Why not do that?
Speaker 1: So more protein is helping me do that. But even
Speaker 1: when you're younger, if you're having hormone imbalances, you can't
Speaker 1: get pregnant. You know, protein is a really important thing
Speaker 1: to look at. How much protein are you eating? And
Speaker 1: you should actually do that, not just from an opinion perspective,
Speaker 1: but you should calculate via actual macronutrient amount of protein
Speaker 1: that you should be having. We don't have to guess anymore.
Speaker 1: Which is I think the thing that I love to
Speaker 1: share with women. This is not about what do we
Speaker 1: think it should be. We can know we can track
Speaker 1: our hormones, we can measure our macros, we can measure
Speaker 1: our blood sugar. We can measure these things and we
Speaker 1: can actually see things change. It's so excited. I mean,
Speaker 1: this has not ever been possible before. It's very exciting.
Speaker 1: Every woman should feel so empowered to take her cycle
Speaker 1: management into her own hands and feel like she can
Speaker 1: be successful because that is absolutely possible. So protein is
Speaker 1: the first one.
Speaker 2: How much protein do you recommend pergram body wave?
Speaker 1: I mean there's a standard calculation, so I stick with this.
Speaker 1: That okay with that one, and then you know, I
Speaker 1: would say after protein, the second thing that I think
Speaker 1: is really important from a food perspective for women would
Speaker 1: be healthy fats. You just also need those because hormones
Speaker 1: are stabilized in a lipid ring, so you need to
Speaker 1: make sure you're having healthy fats. It also helps with
Speaker 1: just hormone production prevention. I mean, you got to have
Speaker 1: the right fats and the BISO, stay away from like
Speaker 1: processed seed oils and eat more good, healthy fats. But
Speaker 1: the third one is definitely one I don't think you've
Speaker 1: heard before, and one that I just think is utterly fascinating.
Speaker 1: So orange foods are really valuable for the ovaries because
Speaker 1: it turns out that the ovaries have fourteen different beta
Speaker 1: carotene receptor sites. Oh wow, So root vegetables, organ meats
Speaker 1: all contain high levels of beta carotene vitamin A that
Speaker 1: the ovaries need to store in there in their tissue
Speaker 1: to function, just like we we know right, Oh yes,
Speaker 1: my thyroid needs to store iodine and selenium, so we
Speaker 1: know to consume those things to give our thyroid the
Speaker 1: things it needs to do to have to make hormones.
Speaker 1: But your ovaries need beta carotene. So that's why, especially
Speaker 1: in the luteal phase, you want to be eating your
Speaker 1: root vegetables because your ovaries love that. So that's another
Speaker 1: food that I think. I eat sweet potatoes every day,
Speaker 1: depending on what carrots in the first half of my cycle,
Speaker 1: sweet potatoes at the second half, for sure.
Speaker 2: What about three foods or how many foods that you
Speaker 2: think are unknown to women that are actually affecting the
Speaker 2: home and health in a negative way, disrupting the homeleone.
Speaker 1: Unknown to it. That's an interesting question. I mean, well,
Speaker 1: I think stevia is one that is is under discussed.
Speaker 1: So historically the stevia plant was used as a light
Speaker 1: form of contraception. There is some in certain traditional cultures
Speaker 1: there's some endocrine effect and impact from that plant that's interesting.
Speaker 1: So it's in a lot of different things. So monk
Speaker 1: fruit is a really good alternative that does not have that.
Speaker 1: And also I noticed too that stevia's sweetness is so
Speaker 1: intense that it can generate more of a salt craving
Speaker 1: that then kicks off another sugar craving. So in Chinese medicine,
Speaker 1: when we look at the yin and young principles of food,
Speaker 1: yin foods are very sweet things, and young foods are
Speaker 1: more salty things, right, heavier, oily, fatty or saltier things.
Speaker 1: So if you're having something that's very very yin, even
Speaker 1: if it's just the taste of like something extremely sweet,
Speaker 1: you're going to naturally crave something more salty to get
Speaker 1: back to a sense of balance. And so you can
Speaker 1: really be like sea sawing all day, like you have
Speaker 1: your super stevia sweetened tea, and then you're like, I
Speaker 1: need salty crackers, and then you just don't feel like
Speaker 1: you're in control. Whereas monk fruit. I don't feel like
Speaker 1: we have that same reaction.
Speaker 3: That's so interesting. I didn't know that about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then if you're trying to conceive, you know,
Speaker 1: I would definitely go light on the stevia. So that's
Speaker 1: definitely one. I would say from a cramp perspective, the
Speaker 1: Omega six oils that fats, they really jack up the
Speaker 1: production of prostaglandin that controls uterine contraction, so makes you
Speaker 1: have more painful cramps. Oh no, So you want to
Speaker 1: just really avoid those types of things, and you want
Speaker 1: to you know, choose your healthier fats, avocado, allive oil,
Speaker 1: those things that actually increases the production of PG one
Speaker 1: and three, which causes more uterine relaxation, so you can
Speaker 1: expel the endometrium with less effort, which is how it's designed.
Speaker 1: You're not designed to be in any pain during the month.
Speaker 1: So that's the second one. That's an unusual one of
Speaker 1: a third one because you qualify it.
Speaker 2: Does something you just I feel like sometimes, I mean
Speaker 2: from even my experience of my friends, they don't really
Speaker 2: even think about the food that eating and how it
Speaker 2: affects the homones.
Speaker 3: So it doesn't even have to be.
Speaker 2: Something that people find extremely unexpected. But you know, even
Speaker 2: things like dairy, like does dairy affect your homones in
Speaker 2: a positive or negative way?
Speaker 1: I would say, I'm not so hung up on dairy.
Speaker 1: The only thing I love to suggest is if you
Speaker 1: have any sort of digestive or immune issues, like, try
Speaker 1: to choose a two based dairy because it's going to
Speaker 1: be more compatible with our intestinal system. But the one
Speaker 1: thing that I would say that you could reconsider for
Speaker 1: sure that we know has an impact on hormones is
Speaker 1: way based protein.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I've been hearing way.
Speaker 1: Protein absolutely impacts insulin levels and pancreatic function and is
Speaker 1: really problematic if you have any issues with acne or
Speaker 1: pcos or anything sort of with cycle irregularities. I would
Speaker 1: definitely not choose way based proteins. I don't use any
Speaker 1: protein powders myself outside of collagen, but I tried a
Speaker 1: bunch of them and I found them to be so
Speaker 1: challenging from a digestive perspective that it just really started
Speaker 1: to make sense to use more whole foods. So that's
Speaker 1: what I do.
Speaker 2: One thing I find people always on the fence about
Speaker 2: soya products. I don't know whether you've had much research
Speaker 2: in that, but I feel it went from one way
Speaker 2: of saying it can give men boobs to you know
Speaker 2: now saying actually, you have to consume an extreme large
Speaker 2: amount for it to even have any kind of effect
Speaker 2: on your hormone.
Speaker 1: So well, I did do an experiment on my boyfriend
Speaker 1: in my twenties with with tofu and soy based products,
Speaker 1: and I said, okay, for just a month, right, You're
Speaker 1: just gonna eat you know, soy for the protein. And
Speaker 1: I can, from an anecdotal perspective, can absolutely attest to
Speaker 1: the fact that that impacted his sex drive for sure.
Speaker 3: Interesting, but he.
Speaker 1: Was eating a large amount of it. Now, for women,
Speaker 1: it is really about the quantity and the quality. So
Speaker 1: back in twenty thirteen, I went on the Doctor Oz
Speaker 1: Show and it was actually the first person to go
Speaker 1: on national television to simulate the colors of menstrual blood
Speaker 1: to talk about what the different colors of your bleed
Speaker 1: needs or hormones. But we also took a he had
Speaker 1: this super cool prop made for me. We dissected a
Speaker 1: soybean and we looked at the good parts of the
Speaker 1: soy and then the parts that were problematic, and it
Speaker 1: was very fun. So I've been talking about this for
Speaker 1: a long time. For women, it's quantity and quality. There
Speaker 1: is protective aspects to soy. Phytoestrogens act as a selective
Speaker 1: estrogen receptor modulator. So that's great because instead of you
Speaker 1: having the dirty estrogen that your body produces impacting your cells,
Speaker 1: the phytoestrogens from the soy. This is also true of
Speaker 1: flax can adhere to those serm receptor sites on the
Speaker 1: cell and prevent that interaction between the cell and those
Speaker 1: dirty estrogens. Now you have to eat whole soy products,
Speaker 1: so like nato etemamee right hempe fermented soy really really good.
Speaker 1: But then when we get into like the more processed
Speaker 1: soy products, TOFU is kind of neutral. Then we get
Speaker 1: into like the soy milks and the soy protein powders
Speaker 1: and all the sort of like hydrolyzed soy proteins, that's
Speaker 1: when it becomes too much and problematic. So you definitely
Speaker 1: want to use there's absolutely a place for soy products
Speaker 1: if you're sensitive to them. Listen to that. You may
Speaker 1: find that it's also stage of life. I find that
Speaker 1: women in their forties and fifties really love incorporating soy
Speaker 1: products as it has an estrogenic support to it, and
Speaker 1: women who are suffering with a lot of symptoms in
Speaker 1: their twenties and thirties might not find it as useful
Speaker 1: for them. But you have to feel out your reaction
Speaker 1: to food. Everyone's bioindividual, so there is no blanket statement
Speaker 1: about which foods are the right foods, like there's no
Speaker 1: perfect daily diet, which is why the cycle sinking method
Speaker 1: is a and not a diet, right. It's about you
Speaker 1: have to take the what is universally true about our
Speaker 1: cycle health and our hormone ratios and our endocrine system functions,
Speaker 1: and then you have to apply the method to your
Speaker 1: unique female ecosystem and you have to feel intuitively, how
Speaker 1: does this feel to me? Because we're all a little
Speaker 1: bit different, and that's exactly what I want every woman
Speaker 1: to be doing. Don't get stuck into a dogmatic relationship
Speaker 1: with cycle thinking. This is not the point of that either,
Speaker 1: make it your own.
Speaker 3: What about?
Speaker 2: I want to ask you about supplements or hubs that
Speaker 2: you recommend women specifically take and if they should change
Speaker 2: throughout the cycle.
Speaker 1: So I formulated supplements back in twenty seventeen because I
Speaker 1: was really frustrated about, you know, the fact that we
Speaker 1: just didn't have formulations that were really supportive to our hormones.
Speaker 1: So yes, there are some table stakes things that the
Speaker 1: endocrine system loves, so that I put in my balance
Speaker 1: formulations which you can find on Flow Living. But those
Speaker 1: are things like you need B vitamins. You need vitamin
Speaker 1: B six to help with progesterone production, you need magnesium.
Speaker 1: Magnesium is so critical for every aspect of our health,
Speaker 1: so I prefer magnesium glyconate. We need omega three fatty acids.
Speaker 1: Why because it reduces inflammation on the level of the ovary,
Speaker 1: promoting ovulation. It helps with mitochondrial health, which protects ovary health.
Speaker 1: So I think omega threes are really really critical. Vitamin
Speaker 1: D three, I mean D three is we call it
Speaker 1: a vitamin, but it functions like a hormone in the body.
Speaker 1: So that's just so essential for us to be having.
Speaker 1: K one and K two are really good as well,
Speaker 1: because it helps your body absorb more calcium from the
Speaker 1: foods that you're eating. Studies show that taking supplemental calcium
Speaker 1: is kind of not very helpful, but taking on the
Speaker 1: cofactors that help your body make calcium from your dietary sources,
Speaker 1: more bioavailable D three, K one, and K two really
Speaker 1: really a good thing. Plus K one and K two
Speaker 1: are helpful with reduce using cramps and probiotics because if
Speaker 1: your gut is not functioning, your estrobolom is not able
Speaker 1: to metabolize estrogen inside the intestinal tract, which is then
Speaker 1: a problem because then you'll recirculate that estrogen. So those
Speaker 1: are like the basics. Then if you get into some
Speaker 1: more specific things like if you have PCOS, or if
Speaker 1: you have heavy bleeding or fibroids, or if your perimenopausal
Speaker 1: you're trying to conceive, then there are specific supplements that
Speaker 1: I recommend, which I formulated as well, that you can
Speaker 1: go and look on the site and you can even
Speaker 1: take a little evaluation and see which supplements are right
Speaker 1: for you as far as in each phase of the cycle.
Speaker 1: That is also something that you can use supplementally strategically,
Speaker 1: different supplements through each phase. So things that I like
Speaker 1: are Let's the way that I formulated the cycle sinking
Speaker 1: supplements was looking at what are the kind of core
Speaker 1: vulnerabilities of each phase. So in the filicular phase, our
Speaker 1: core vulnerability if we aren't you know, managing it from
Speaker 1: a cycle sinking perspective exactly perfectly. You could be a
Speaker 1: little more fatigued, right, you just come off your bleed.
Speaker 1: You could be a little low energy. So I like
Speaker 1: to use coenzyme Q ten in this phase to naturally
Speaker 1: boost cellular vitality, right, which are going to boost mitochondrial
Speaker 1: energy in this phase. In the ovulatory phase, the vulnerability
Speaker 1: is xtrogen overload. So if you have any breakouts during
Speaker 1: ovulation breast tenderness during ovulation, this is a sign that
Speaker 1: you're not metabolizing estrogen efficiently during ovulation, So you want
Speaker 1: to use a couple of things like sulforaphane dim These
Speaker 1: types of things really help the body metabolize estrogen better.
Speaker 1: In the luteal phase, the core vulnerability is blood sugar
Speaker 1: lows hypoglycemia, So I like using some simple things like
Speaker 1: cinnamon chromium procolinate that really help keep our blood sugar
Speaker 1: more stable. And then the menstrual phase, I would say
Speaker 1: is the sort of histamine and cramping, and I really
Speaker 1: love nettle extract for that nice so that you'll find
Speaker 1: in the cycle sinking supplements. Also on flow living dot Com.
Speaker 3: Is a chocolate.
Speaker 2: Any of the supplements that we could use throught what
Speaker 2: phase can we use chocolate?
Speaker 1: Chocolate? I eat chocolate every I eat cocow every day.
Speaker 1: Every day is a day for cocow gets a super food.
Speaker 1: It's and it's especially important as you go through life,
Speaker 1: especially in midlife, because cardiovascular health is more of a
Speaker 1: thing to pay attention to in midlife. As estrogen levels
Speaker 1: naturally decline, we have more risk of cardiovascular impact. Yes,
Speaker 1: cocou is very cardiovascular protective. It's a longevity food that's
Speaker 1: not a supplement. That's a super food. Get it girl
Speaker 1: every day.
Speaker 3: Yes, okay, adult chocolate every single day.
Speaker 2: A woman in her thirties comes to you and says,
Speaker 2: I want my fertility to be the best it's ever been.
Speaker 3: What do I do I'm in my thirties.
Speaker 1: I mean start cycle thinking immediately, you know, if you're
Speaker 1: on birth control, get off of synthetic birth control.
Speaker 3: Let give book about that.
Speaker 1: Okay, good, I was wondering. Yeah, okay, so start cycle
Speaker 1: seeking reconc or the mill. Get off of alcohol. I
Speaker 1: stop drinking two years before I first conceived, So I
Speaker 1: stopped drinking at thirty five. I haven't reintroduced it into
Speaker 1: my life since so it's been almost fifteen years with
Speaker 1: no alcohol. One of the best decisions I've ever made
Speaker 1: really reduces inflammaging. Right, So what we want to do
Speaker 1: when we think about getting in the best fertile thing,
Speaker 1: it's reduce inflammaging and like oversaturate yourself. From a nutrient perspective,
Speaker 1: you want to when your when your body gets this,
Speaker 1: when your brain and your ovaries kind of communicate like okay, uterus,
Speaker 1: you're free to go. You're free to proceed with an implantation, right,
Speaker 1: all systems are go. The way that that happens is
Speaker 1: that you are energetically macronutrient micronutrient. From a micronutrient perspective,
Speaker 1: ripe like a juicy peach. That's the visual I always
Speaker 1: give my clients. Yes, I still see private clients of
Speaker 1: ripe like a juice peach, right, ripe with nutrients. So
Speaker 1: you have to be eating robustly. In fact, I would
Speaker 1: say motherhood, the journey of motherhood really begins with the
Speaker 1: moment you desire to become a mother, because you must
Speaker 1: make a lot of changes to optimize your fertile ecosystem.
Speaker 1: The same way you would make those changes when you're pregnant,
Speaker 1: you would prioritize eating your best to have the healthiest baby,
Speaker 1: and the same if you were breastfeeding, you would be
Speaker 1: making those choices. So it's the same thing. You're starting
Speaker 1: your motherhood journey the moment you decide to be a mother,
Speaker 1: and so yes, you want to be eating really robustly
Speaker 1: whole foods, lots of plants, lots of protein, fats, all
Speaker 1: the things we talked about cycle sinking for your cycle phases.
Speaker 1: Taking good quality supplements is important. Yes, you know, you
Speaker 1: really want to reduce that inflammation. So I really love
Speaker 1: ncetyl cysteine for that. I love our alphaalapoic acid. These
Speaker 1: things are supplements that are known to help with ovarian
Speaker 1: function and lowering that inflammation. And you know, just again
Speaker 1: taking away some of the toxins that create that sort
Speaker 1: of stress response in the body that might make it
Speaker 1: a problem from a conception point of view.
Speaker 3: Yes, and we've talked about the pill. We mentioned it.
Speaker 3: I really want to go into it.
Speaker 2: Does taking the pill for years in your early life
Speaker 2: affect your fertility a later time?
Speaker 1: I mean, unfortunately, there's not a lot of research where
Speaker 1: I can come out and give you a definitive answer.
Speaker 1: What I can say is that I think it is.
Speaker 1: What we do know is that the pill depletes you
Speaker 1: of some of the key micronutrients that your body needs
Speaker 1: from an endocrine system perspective to be maximally fertile. So
Speaker 1: there we do need to at least appreciate that there's
Speaker 1: got to be some sort of recovery period where you
Speaker 1: have to take some supplementation, improve your diet to kind
Speaker 1: of recover from being exposed to that medication for a
Speaker 1: period of time so that you can give yourself the
Speaker 1: best chance. And that conversation is not really being had like, well, no,
Speaker 1: it's just wait till get your period back and everything
Speaker 1: should work. But then we have all of this idiopathic,
Speaker 1: no known cause infertility, which is not necessarily being caused
Speaker 1: by birth control. But I do think that the overloading
Speaker 1: of the female body with endocrine system disruptive toxins, the
Speaker 1: mismanagement of our blood shirt, it's like a conflagration of
Speaker 1: many things that are going wrong for women's hormones puts
Speaker 1: us at this position where it's harder for us to
Speaker 1: get pregnant, and it shouldn't be so hard, No, So
Speaker 1: I think that the pill is just one piece of
Speaker 1: that puzzle that can be you know, just something that's
Speaker 1: adding to that internal dysregulation when it does come time
Speaker 1: for you to be thinking about conception.
Speaker 2: Is there anything about the pill that you think women
Speaker 2: from a young age should know that they're not told.
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, it's not a cure for your period problems.
Speaker 1: But like that, it's the thing we like. It's not
Speaker 1: fixing your pcos. It's not fixing your fibris, it's not
Speaker 1: curing your endometriy. It's not getting rid of any of
Speaker 1: these problems because it's not it's not addressing the root
Speaker 1: causes of why those problems have arisen in your body.
Speaker 1: It's just a really like band aid situation.
Speaker 2: And have you seen from obviously the years of clients
Speaker 2: that you've seen and the studies that have taken place,
Speaker 2: anything that a woman is put on the pill for,
Speaker 2: like the standard things like acne and pcos. Have you
Speaker 2: seen other means of being able to heal your body
Speaker 2: through it be successful as I wanted to get I
Speaker 2: just wanted to.
Speaker 1: Put it out.
Speaker 2: I fully agree, but I just think sometimes people will
Speaker 2: need to hear it because the amount of pressure and
Speaker 2: only choice given to women at such a young age,
Speaker 2: who like, oh god, I've got can I can't even
Speaker 2: leave the house. I don't even want to leave the
Speaker 2: house because of how I feel or how I look.
Speaker 1: Been there, I've been there. I mean it used to
Speaker 1: take me half and I remember the only thing that
Speaker 1: I that would cover the redness and the weltz well,
Speaker 1: I used to use Clinique under eye concealer as a foundation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, because no prescriptives under ie concealer as a foundation,
Speaker 1: because the regular foundation was not thick enough to cover
Speaker 1: and it would take me thirty minutes of what I
Speaker 1: would call spackling my acne. It was so painful and
Speaker 1: so humiliating to walk out of that. So I totally
Speaker 1: totally empathize with the situation that being said, how I
Speaker 1: cleared my skin was not with pharmaceuticals. Even topicals did
Speaker 1: not work. It really was only until I started healing
Speaker 1: my hormones that that things got better. But yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I think the reason why that is sort of the
Speaker 1: prevailing recommendation, like oh, just go on the pill, is
Speaker 1: because there's an assumption that we won't do the things
Speaker 1: that are needed. Yeah, right, you know, especially young teenage
Speaker 1: girls like, oh, well, they're just not going to do that.
Speaker 2: So let's an investment of energy time studying, like really
Speaker 2: understanding your body well.
Speaker 1: And I think, I actually think that the reason why
Speaker 1: we're set up for that, that's to me, by the
Speaker 1: time someone says to a woman, just go on the pill,
Speaker 1: that's the the baseball swing, the pitch of that was
Speaker 1: what you were educating, how you were taught about your
Speaker 1: cycle at puberty. So it's like a setup, right, It's
Speaker 1: like like this is going to be you know what
Speaker 1: it's going to be. Yeah, and I'm not gonna and
Speaker 1: you're not going to understand your cycle. It's gonna kind
Speaker 1: of be this mysterious thing.
Speaker 3: And that you dread, yeah, and you don't want to
Speaker 3: so and.
Speaker 1: So then when you start to have problems where you
Speaker 1: just feel like I just can't manage this and I
Speaker 1: don't even know what's going on and I don't understand
Speaker 1: my body and nobody understands women's bodies, and like this
Speaker 1: is a mess. Please somebody help me. And it's like
Speaker 1: take the pill. Right, It's like a perfect little psychological setup.
Speaker 3: I get rid of all the things that you don't
Speaker 3: even want in your life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, and who wouldn't say yes to that?
Speaker 1: So I think the the solution is multi fast. That did.
Speaker 1: But you know, I haven't almost eleven year old daughter
Speaker 1: at the time of this recording. Shoe will be eleven
Speaker 1: in two weeks. I dedicated this book to her, actually,
Speaker 1: and so one of the things that I started doing
Speaker 1: when she was you know eight, you know, I started
Speaker 1: talking to her about her cycle in different age appropriate ways.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like the blood and the pads and that's
Speaker 1: like I didn't ever that talk when she was but
Speaker 1: I said things like, you know, cause she would come
Speaker 1: in the bathroom and she'd be like, mom, what's going on? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like you have no privacy as a mom. Just FYI
Speaker 1: Like people just walk in. It's like starts when you're
Speaker 1: in labor, Like forget it. At some point I thought
Speaker 1: to myself, Okay, how am I going to do this?
Speaker 1: You know, because there's no modeling for any of us
Speaker 1: as moms, Like how do we empower our daughters to
Speaker 1: have a different trajectory than we had where like we
Speaker 1: weren't really given the right information. Said Okay, if she
Speaker 1: happens to stumble upon me changing a pad, should I
Speaker 1: try to hide that or should I just let her
Speaker 1: sort of see it and not make a big deal
Speaker 1: lot of it, and like, baby, we can have a discussion.
Speaker 1: So I obviously I went with plan B being the
Speaker 1: period queen. I thought maybe I should do that, and
Speaker 1: so we started having this conversation at eight, she's like,
Speaker 1: what is that. It's like, that's the nest, the nest
Speaker 1: that the baby could grow and cut, you know, an
Speaker 1: analogy that would be age appropriate. And then that turned
Speaker 1: into a well how does that happen? I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: you get you have this special biological clock that started
Speaker 1: at like nine. I started talking to her about her
Speaker 1: in Fredian rhythms, so I got her excited. Yeah, at
Speaker 1: nine years old, I said, you're going to go from
Speaker 1: feeling the same way every day to feeling a little
Speaker 1: different each week of a month. And that's a superpower.
Speaker 1: So still we're not talking about, you know, the bleeding
Speaker 1: and the pads and the tampons, And we still haven't
Speaker 1: had that conversation. And she's eleven. She's just starting her
Speaker 1: first signs of puberty, so right on time, and according
Speaker 1: to this, she should be getting her she should be
Speaker 1: getting her first bleed around the time I turned fifty,
Speaker 1: so it'll be like kind of a monumental celebration. And
Speaker 1: she knows that we're talking about going to be like
Speaker 1: this surprise, and I'm just really empowering her to be
Speaker 1: excited about it, about this big change that's going to
Speaker 1: happen as a source of empowerment and power for her.
Speaker 1: So there's nothing she could come in here and teach
Speaker 1: you about the Infredian rhythm, the four cycle phases, and
Speaker 1: what you need to do in each race. She is
Speaker 1: fully versed. She's not practicing it yet, but she knows
Speaker 1: that that's coming. Just prepared. And then the other thing
Speaker 1: that I do is I prepare her in the circadian
Speaker 1: ways to practice. You can't start at it like cold.
Speaker 1: So we do things like she looks at her bowel movements,
Speaker 1: not just what they look like, but what time is
Speaker 1: she having them? Should she be eating more vegetables, Should
Speaker 1: she be taking some more magnesium? Does she need more water?
Speaker 1: What's going on? She eats every three hours at school.
Speaker 1: I don't make her wait. I mean they have lunch
Speaker 1: at eleven thirty in the morning, and then she has
Speaker 1: field hockey practice after school. So I pack her a snack,
Speaker 1: that's two thirty she's eating. Yeah, and then she comes
Speaker 1: home and she eats, and you know, so I'm like,
Speaker 1: she's already learning about stabilizing her blood shirt and I
Speaker 1: use that language, you eat to keep your blood sugar stable.
Speaker 1: So I don't dumb down the science. And I would say,
Speaker 1: as a mom of a young girl, we could definitely
Speaker 1: lean way into giving them a lot more education and
Speaker 1: more scientific realities about how their bodies work. They can
Speaker 1: handle it beautifully. And what would it be like if
Speaker 1: an entire generation of young girls knew how to balance
Speaker 1: their blood sugar, knew how to eat for their cycle phases,
Speaker 1: had no period problems in their twenties. What would be
Speaker 1: unleashed onto this planet a lot of feminine power. I
Speaker 1: am here for that, So, you know, I do think
Speaker 1: we have to start earlier so that when we do
Speaker 1: get to the place where people are having these sort
Speaker 1: of hormonal crises and they go to the gynecologist and
Speaker 1: the and they will, you know, offer the pill. That's
Speaker 1: what you should expect. Is not nothing wrong with offering it.
Speaker 1: That a young girl who's been educated in this different
Speaker 1: way might say, I'm going to take some time and
Speaker 1: do something.
Speaker 3: Get back to you on that.
Speaker 1: I'll get back to you on that. That's all. That's
Speaker 1: I just wann't that breathing space.
Speaker 2: For people, the feeling of empowerment and feeling like your
Speaker 2: body is in your hands.
Speaker 1: You can take the pill if you need to, but
Speaker 1: you don't have to. You can, you don't have to.
Speaker 2: I remember when I change my mindset around dreading my period,
Speaker 2: and there was like this switch that I felt of like, wow,
Speaker 2: how grateful I am.
Speaker 3: That I get a period? Like how grateful?
Speaker 1: And I started I still celebrate every money.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I appreciate my body for it.
Speaker 2: I thank my body for it every time I even
Speaker 2: get like a hint of it in my tummy. I
Speaker 2: literally I give myself a huargain. I'm like, gosh, I
Speaker 2: am so grateful that my body does this. I'm so
Speaker 2: grateful that it's so regular. I'm so grateful that our
Speaker 2: body gets to experience this every single month. And I
Speaker 2: think even psychologically, if you are dreading something, if you're
Speaker 2: constantly telling your body, I don't want this, I don't
Speaker 2: want this, I don't want this, of course the experience
Speaker 2: isn't going to be great. Of course, your mind is
Speaker 2: telling your body how it wants to feel. You're saying
Speaker 2: you're gonna dread it, So, yeah, you'll dread it. And
Speaker 2: so I think having that shift of mindset as well,
Speaker 2: where you are just as we say to talk lovingly
Speaker 2: to our body, it's like, feel lovingly towards every process
Speaker 2: that happens in your body, and I think that will
Speaker 2: completely shift the way that it's your own interaction with yourself.
Speaker 2: It's like, how are you going to keep telling your
Speaker 2: body you don't want a process that is so natural
Speaker 2: to you? And then it just feels so different.
Speaker 3: You welcome it.
Speaker 2: You start to nourish your body differently, You start to
Speaker 2: realize what a gift it is, and as soon as
Speaker 2: you think of it in that way, you kind of
Speaker 2: start shifting and changing the way that you live to
Speaker 2: help it thrive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a beautiful relationship. I would say. The other
Speaker 1: gift of the cycle sinking method as a consistent practice,
Speaker 1: like a yoga practice, right you show up every day,
Speaker 1: you do your best, is that it's a direct way
Speaker 1: for you to start actively engaging your feminine energy. And
Speaker 1: this is something that I think we need to be
Speaker 1: talking more about as women, because our feminine energy is
Speaker 1: very restorative and healing. I'm actually someone who's been studying
Speaker 1: this for the past twenty five years, and you know,
Speaker 1: really looking at the molecular and biochemical basis of feminine
Speaker 1: energy in the body. It's not this like woo woo
Speaker 1: thing you have to dress in robes and like follow
Speaker 1: the lunar cycles. That's really fun. You can do that too,
Speaker 1: I'm totally down with that. But for most of us
Speaker 1: who are more type A women, right, we want things
Speaker 1: to be feeling like they're have some grounding, and feminine
Speaker 1: energy is a real thing inside of your body. We
Speaker 1: can look at it through the lens of our cycle phases, right,
Speaker 1: the ebbing and flowing of when we are nurturing others
Speaker 1: versus nurturing ourselves. That the fact that your cycle actually
Speaker 1: codifies a space and time for each of those activities
Speaker 1: should give us some role modeling of what it looks
Speaker 1: like to engage in feminine energy. Right, That there's a
Speaker 1: restoration period baked into our cycle as essential to fully
Speaker 1: expressing our feminine right is important that there is creative
Speaker 1: output but also restorative input. And this is important because
Speaker 1: you will not be cycling forever. Cycling is a finite,
Speaker 1: beautiful phase of your life, which is why every cycle
Speaker 1: should be celebrated. I every time I get my bleed,
Speaker 1: I put on a pretty robe, like a long like
Speaker 1: either a beautiful robe or like a long maxi dress.
Speaker 1: I have like a special period tea cup that I use.
Speaker 1: It does have the lunar phases on it, and I
Speaker 1: make certain herbal tea and I like really celebrate. I
Speaker 1: welcome it that day. But when we practice engaging from
Speaker 1: our feminine more, it really helps set us up for
Speaker 1: a much easier, eased perimenopausal transition because instead of going
Speaker 1: through your reproductive years burning yourself out, yeah, draining like
Speaker 1: we talked about earlier, that leaky bucket, constantly draining your micronutrients,
Speaker 1: your energy, your blood sugar, your progesterone. You by the
Speaker 1: time you hit forty five, you are crispy from an
Speaker 1: ovarian perspective.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: If you start practicing, not only will you get all
Speaker 1: the best and fits, let's say, from a health perspective,
Speaker 1: but when you start engaging and living more in alignment,
Speaker 1: in attunement with your feminine energy, you also prevent this
Speaker 1: burnout and you get to live into your midlife transition
Speaker 1: in a much better way, with more of your feminine energy,
Speaker 1: with less body resentment, with more excitement and optimism for
Speaker 1: this next chapter of your life. So I just want
Speaker 1: to encourage younger women to be looking at it not
Speaker 1: just as a biohacking practice for you as a female,
Speaker 1: which of course it is, but also because it's a
Speaker 1: very psychological healing process of reclaiming feminine energy in your life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you've touched on perimenopause, and I'd love to ask
Speaker 2: you that before we come to an end, because we've
Speaker 2: been going for a while and it's been such a
Speaker 2: wonderful conversation. Butmenopause and menopause for women who I find
Speaker 2: most women I know are dreading that phase of their life,
Speaker 2: and again that's probably something that we've been told rather
Speaker 2: than something that they actually should be dreading. What are
Speaker 2: some of the tips or recommendations that you give to
Speaker 2: someone going to perimenopoolse and then in menopoolse as well,
Speaker 2: what's something you want them to know?
Speaker 1: Well, perimenopause, you're still cycling, so keep cycle sinking. I
Speaker 1: would say this is the time to up your game
Speaker 1: on your circadian rhythm practices, so you know, make sure
Speaker 1: if you haven't ever used a CG like get that
Speaker 1: you may be more sensitive to glucose at this age
Speaker 1: because estrogen's declining, So you may not be able to
Speaker 1: eat as many carbohydrates in one meal as you used
Speaker 1: to when you were younger. And that's okay, that's normal.
Speaker 1: So you just need to kind of adjust for that
Speaker 1: instead of saying, well, I used to be able to
Speaker 1: do this, I wish I could go back to that. Yeah, yeah, sure, great,
Speaker 1: But reality is, here's where you're at, So make the
Speaker 1: adjustment in dosing of your carbohydrate macros. Sleep is a
Speaker 1: priority that melot protect your melatonin at all costs. I
Speaker 1: also recommend women starting to take melatonin after the age
Speaker 1: of thirty five. And there are numerous studies that talk
Speaker 1: about the importance of melatonin for women in terms of
Speaker 1: bone density protection, ovulation regulation, breast cancer protection. It's an
Speaker 1: essential In fact, it's the first hormone in the brain
Speaker 1: to downregulate. That's really what kicks off perimenopause is the
Speaker 1: lowering of melatonin production.
Speaker 2: And taking melatonin does that not then disrupt your sleep
Speaker 2: because a lot of people feel like they get such
Speaker 2: light sleep from taking melatonin.
Speaker 3: Is that not no.
Speaker 1: It's really about quality and dosing. And I know that
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of chatter in the male biohacking
Speaker 1: world about melatonin being like a no no, but that's
Speaker 1: really because of one small study that talked about the
Speaker 1: impact of melatonin on sperm production and sperm motility, which
Speaker 1: obviously has nothing to do with women. So there are
Speaker 1: many many I also publish a weekly newsletter on women's
Speaker 1: biohacking that you can subscribe to on my Instagram channel,
Speaker 1: and I did a whole expose on this whole topic
Speaker 1: because I was just so frustrated women are terrified of
Speaker 1: taking melatonin because of these conversations that are just again
Speaker 1: when women are left out of research, We get these
Speaker 1: top these little things like oh this is bad, Well,
Speaker 1: if you have testicles, it's bad. If you have overaries,
Speaker 1: it's a different conversation. And there are studies actually looking
Speaker 1: at the impact of melatonin supplementation on ovariant function.
Speaker 2: So it's definitely so through menopause, and then so they
Speaker 2: continue to take it off to they've moved through.
Speaker 1: Menipolos Absolutely such an important hormone, such an important supplement
Speaker 1: for women's health. I think an unsung hero of women's
Speaker 1: biohacking is melatonin strength training. You will have muscle wasting
Speaker 1: after thirty five, so get on those weights and not
Speaker 1: low weight, high rep, high weight, low rep heavy goals,
Speaker 1: heavy girls. Yes, And then, like I said, the sleep thing,
Speaker 1: blue light blocking. That's then one last thing for both
Speaker 1: perimenopause and postmenopause. And this is a topic that we
Speaker 1: don't get to talk a lot about, but really is
Speaker 1: so important because again, as our cycle hormones go away,
Speaker 1: we go back to a life of just our master
Speaker 1: regulating hormones. So insulin, cortisol, all those things you want
Speaker 1: to be managing melatonin, but oxytocin and nitric oxide are
Speaker 1: really important. These are the hormones that we make when
Speaker 1: we are in community, but also when we are in pleasure.
Speaker 1: So upping your self pleasuring practice is a really important
Speaker 1: thing to be doing in perimenopause. It actually promotes more
Speaker 1: regular ovulation, can extend your ovulation, slows down the rate
Speaker 1: of ovarian aging. I think getting very committed to a
Speaker 1: self pleasuring practice that you're using specifically to generate more oxytocin.
Speaker 1: It's like the inverse. You know, all the male biohackers
Speaker 1: are talking about retention, and that is valuable for them
Speaker 1: from a testosterone perspective, but for women it's the opposite.
Speaker 1: The longer you can stay in orgasmic plateau, not climax
Speaker 1: climax as the finish, but that phase before, the longer
Speaker 1: you can stay in that phase, the more oxytocin and
Speaker 1: nitric oxides you make. I've written about this in both
Speaker 1: of my books. I talk about it as often as
Speaker 1: I can, because, again, if people ask me what is
Speaker 1: the one biohack, I would take it into deserted island.
Speaker 1: I would say you just some loop, because that alone
Speaker 1: would help protect many of your body systems and really
Speaker 1: is a very important part of sailing through perimenopause and
Speaker 1: menopause that I don't think is getting enough discussion.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, thank you so much for this brilliant conversation.
Speaker 2: I feel like we covered so many different things that
Speaker 2: are really important for so many of the women in
Speaker 2: this community to hear, and I feel like it's never
Speaker 2: too late to make changes in your life ever. Listening
Speaker 2: to this immediately, thank you exactly, Thank you so much
Speaker 2: for being here. I'm so grateful for your book, so
Speaker 2: grateful for all your research and the amount that you've
Speaker 2: given back to this female community.
Speaker 3: It's so so needed, So thank you. You're welcome.
Speaker 1: I can I extend a little offer to your community
Speaker 1: for the app for the cycle sanking Oh yeah please? Okay,
Speaker 1: So if you're interested in cycle sinking and getting started,
Speaker 1: you're welcome to download the Myflow app. It has the
Speaker 1: same icon as the cover of the book, and you
Speaker 1: can get access to a free month of the cycle
Speaker 1: sinking feature by using the code rati.
Speaker 3: Amazing, I'm going done today.
Speaker 1: You know, make sure it has the circle icon and
Speaker 1: and it's just it's a great tool because it's the
Speaker 1: only official cycle sinking app created by me, and it
Speaker 1: has you know, you can type in what what ingredients
Speaker 1: you have in your pantry. It will give you customized recipes.
Speaker 1: There's workout videos to take you through. It'll help you
Speaker 1: sort of start planning your projects around your cycle phases.
Speaker 1: It's a really.
Speaker 2: Great help having a tool rather than having to figure
Speaker 2: all out yourself.
Speaker 3: Indeed, thank you so much.