Speaker 1: I'm t T and I'm Zakiyah and this is Dope Labs.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Dope Labs, a weekly podcast that mixes hardcore
Speaker 1: science with pop culture and a healthy dose of friendship.
Speaker 2: Okay, t T.
Speaker 1: Think back, how many times have you heard somebody say, Oh,
Speaker 1: she's probably just on her period?
Speaker 2: Like that explains everything.
Speaker 3: Too many times? And I hate it. I really hate it, because, yeah, periods.
Speaker 3: People use periods as an excuse for every mood, every craving,
Speaker 3: and every decision. And folks say things like, oh, a
Speaker 3: woman shouldn't be president because she has the nuclear codes
Speaker 3: and she was star war and all.
Speaker 2: These things like that. It's very annoying to me. Hey
Speaker 2: not on my watch.
Speaker 1: What's wild about all of that is that a lot
Speaker 1: of people never really learned the full picture.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I think probably middle school is when we get the basics.
Speaker 1: You know, bleeding cramps, paths, and champs. That's it, that's it, period.
Speaker 1: But what we don't learn is how cycles affect your
Speaker 1: energy and your focus and even sometimes the way your
Speaker 1: brain works.
Speaker 3: I mean, so, whether you have a cycle, or you
Speaker 3: know someone that does, or just want to understand the
Speaker 3: science behind it all, this episode is for you.
Speaker 2: So let's jump into the recitation. What do we know?
Speaker 1: Well, I know that most people with the uterus have periods,
Speaker 1: and I don't care what you say, periods.
Speaker 2: Yes, amen, amen, amen.
Speaker 1: And we know that there's a cycle that is about
Speaker 1: a month and that our hormone levels fluctuate. We also
Speaker 1: know that a lot of people don't know what's going
Speaker 1: on at the chemical level or molecular lesson.
Speaker 2: This is with I am people. I have no clue. Okay, well,
Speaker 2: then what do we want to know?
Speaker 1: I want to know a lot of things. I want
Speaker 1: to know one why it's so hard for folks to
Speaker 1: talk about periods. You would think that with so many
Speaker 1: people who have periods every single month, that this would
Speaker 1: be something that we would all feel comfortable with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but we still had in tampons. That's the problem.
Speaker 2: And I don't know why.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like one end of the extreme or
Speaker 1: the other we don't talk about periods at all, or
Speaker 1: people like free bleeding, let it be all over your pants.
Speaker 2: No, I think there's something. Okay, there is a middle ground.
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, I want to see more there, more clustering there.
Speaker 3: I want to know the hormones that are at play
Speaker 3: the key. I know you know bodily things are your wheelhouse,
Speaker 3: but we've talked about it, so I won't say I
Speaker 3: don't understand at all, because you have trained me up, friend,
Speaker 3: But I just want to understand more about the fluctuations
Speaker 3: and like how all of this works.
Speaker 1: And I think even just knowing generally what the hormones
Speaker 1: are doesn't answer the question about how they are regulated
Speaker 1: and how that's linked to like PMS and other menstrual conditions.
Speaker 2: So I I want to know.
Speaker 3: See all of those puzzle pieces together, yes, and I
Speaker 3: want to know if there's anything that we can do
Speaker 3: to have these periods go go easy on us, go.
Speaker 2: Is sinking? Where's the deal? So we don't have any
Speaker 2: more of that, let's jump into the recitation.
Speaker 1: We brought in doctor Sarah Hill. She's a researcher who
Speaker 1: spent years studying the science of periods and hormones, and
Speaker 1: she's here to give us the real story.
Speaker 4: I'm doctor Sarah Hill, and I'm a research psychologist and
Speaker 4: author of This is Your Brain on birth control and
Speaker 4: my new book, The Period Brain.
Speaker 3: I loved the way the books started, and so that's
Speaker 3: where I want our conversation is start with addressing the
Speaker 3: elephant in the room and asking you, why does talking
Speaker 3: about our periods make us so uncomfortable.
Speaker 4: I think that for a really long time, women were
Speaker 4: made to feel like lesser, like sort of inferior versions
Speaker 4: of men because we have hormone cycle. And so I
Speaker 4: think it makes everybody get a little bit queasy if
Speaker 4: we start talking too much about the way that women's
Speaker 4: hormones can affect the way that they experience the world,
Speaker 4: just because it feels like something that could be used
Speaker 4: against us.
Speaker 5: And you know, and there's and I understand that fear.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's like, this is a history of women, right,
Speaker 4: It's like anytime we talk about anything that makes us
Speaker 4: different from men, that can be turned on its head.
Speaker 4: But the truth of the matter is that there's no
Speaker 4: truth to that being a sign of weakness or problematic.
Speaker 4: So even though all of us have been led to
Speaker 4: believe that the fact that women have two primary sex hormones,
Speaker 4: estrogen and progesterone instead of one like testosterone, that there's
Speaker 4: something wrong with that, right, and that that means that
Speaker 4: you're flaky and you can't be depended on because you know,
Speaker 4: you're just whimsical and capricious. That's just simply not true.
Speaker 4: It's like our hormones cycle, and so they're cyclical, but
Speaker 4: they're not unpredictable. And one thing that I always tell
Speaker 4: people is like, if you tell me a woman's age,
Speaker 4: and you tell me I made the first day of
Speaker 4: her last menstrual cycle, I can tell you with an
Speaker 4: alarming degree of certainty what's happening with her sex hormones, right,
Speaker 4: And the same isn't true for men because men's hormone,
Speaker 4: their primary sex hormone, testosterone, is actually a little bit capricious,
Speaker 4: and it responds to anything like if a man sees
Speaker 4: a beautiful woman, his testosterone goes up. If he loses
Speaker 4: an argument with a friend, or he loses a competition,
Speaker 4: his testosterone goes down. If his favorite sports team wins.
Speaker 5: It goes up.
Speaker 4: If his favorite sports team loses, it goes down. And
Speaker 4: there's even been research showing that men's testosterone changes if
Speaker 4: they see a gun, right, So if men see a gun,
Speaker 4: their tesosterone goes up. I mean, so it's like, whose
Speaker 4: hormone is flighty and capricious?
Speaker 5: Now?
Speaker 4: And so I think that there's a tendency to get
Speaker 4: a little uncomfortable about these things. But I think that
Speaker 4: we need to stop stigmatizing these conversations because so many
Speaker 4: women aren't ever taught anything about what they're you know,
Speaker 4: they're like, oh, okay, you can get a period, and
Speaker 4: you know, here's some you know, menstrual products, and then
Speaker 4: it's just like right, you know, that's the end of
Speaker 4: the conversation. But there's no larger conversation about, Okay, like
Speaker 4: why is it that we have these cycles? What do
Speaker 4: the changes in hormones do in terms of changing the
Speaker 4: way that we think and feel, experience the world our
Speaker 4: sexual desire or appetites or calorie needs, Like we're not
Speaker 4: taught at any of that. Like I had to get
Speaker 4: a PhD To learn that stuff, you know, and it
Speaker 4: was just crazy. You know, you shouldn't have to go
Speaker 4: to grad school to learn your body.
Speaker 1: Doctor Hill, I want to pause and just stop for
Speaker 1: a moment to talk about that complexity right now. What
Speaker 1: you just said is recyclical, and that's been used against
Speaker 1: us in mainstream media and in conversation around women, because
Speaker 1: when I was thinking about it as you were talking,
Speaker 1: everything we rely on is cyclical, the day and night
Speaker 1: cyclical cyclical, all the calendar cyclical.
Speaker 5: Okay, also cyclical.
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, that's not reacting, like right, So I'm just saying,
Speaker 1: let's all pay attention and reading is fundamental when we
Speaker 1: think about the complexity in how the sexes are different.
Speaker 1: I think in science and research, sometimes that's been flatten
Speaker 1: and like people don't look at those differences. I want
Speaker 1: you to talk a little bit about how different industries,
Speaker 1: particularly the medical industry, feed into that or why they
Speaker 1: may even want it to be that way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there is this tendency and people kind of talk
Speaker 4: about it with medicine. You know, you hear about this
Speaker 4: term like bikini medicine, which is just this idea that
Speaker 4: doctors assume that men and women are essentially interchangeable except
Speaker 4: for the parts of the body that can be covered
Speaker 4: by a bikini. Right, And so it's this idea that
Speaker 4: women's hearts and men's hearts are the same, women's lungs
Speaker 4: and men's lungs are the same, women's brains and men's
Speaker 4: brains are the same, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 4: But there's a growing body of research in all of
Speaker 4: these different fields of science that support the idea that
Speaker 4: this is not true, right, and that there's sex differentiation
Speaker 4: in everything is you know, even these little tiny details
Speaker 4: of our body, like the way that our bodies like
Speaker 4: to deal with bacteria.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: Women's immune systems tend to deal with bacterial threats using
Speaker 4: ones of mechanisms. Men's bodies tend to deal with bacterial
Speaker 4: threats using a different set of mechanisms, right. And the
Speaker 4: reason that this is the case is just that women's
Speaker 4: bodies are wired for pregnancy and reproduction. And this is
Speaker 4: true whether we want to have babies or not. It's
Speaker 4: like our bodies were built for that. And what that
Speaker 4: means is that our body had to come up with
Speaker 4: a whole bunch of workarounds from everything from our circulatory
Speaker 4: system tor metabolism to our immune system to be able
Speaker 4: to support another human being living inside of our body,
Speaker 4: you know, alien type form, you know, where it's like
Speaker 4: we had to our body had to figure out what
Speaker 4: to do with all that, and that's created for all
Speaker 4: of these different systems workarounds that they've had to do.
Speaker 4: And part of the sort of legacy of all of
Speaker 4: that is that you get sex differentiation in all of
Speaker 4: these different types of systems. And unfortunately this is inconvenient
Speaker 4: for science, right because scientists would like to just be
Speaker 4: able to collect data on a handful of people, right,
Speaker 4: Men a little bit, some men's and women no different
Speaker 4: and not have to worry about testing for sex different right,
Speaker 4: because that means that they have to if they're going
Speaker 4: to test for sex differences, they have to collect twice
Speaker 4: as much data. And then with women, because they have
Speaker 4: cycling hormones, they've got to deal with that. I think
Speaker 4: it was like nineteen ninety three when the National Institutes
Speaker 4: of Health required science researchers to include women in biomedical research.
Speaker 4: And the way that researchers handled that wasn't by this
Speaker 4: is wonderful opportunity to learn about women. Like let's collect
Speaker 4: data on equal numbers of men and women and look
Speaker 4: for sex differentiation. And since women have these cycling hormones,
Speaker 4: let's measure them at different cycle phases to see whether
Speaker 4: they respond to treatment differently depending on what's going on
Speaker 4: with their hormones. No, Instead, what scientists said, like, oh, shoot, okay,
Speaker 4: we have to include women in research, and they've got
Speaker 4: these pesky hormones that cycle. So here's an idea. Let's
Speaker 4: just include some women in our research, right, not enough
Speaker 4: to actually test for sex differences. And for studying humans,
Speaker 4: let's only study them when hormones are really low, so
Speaker 4: in the early phases of the menstrual cycle. So that
Speaker 4: way we don't have to worry about their hormones interfering
Speaker 4: with the results.
Speaker 2: Which is so crazy, because it's crazy, it's.
Speaker 5: Crazy, I know, it's so a few days.
Speaker 4: So they study women in this period of five days,
Speaker 4: you know, and in non human animals. At anytime there's
Speaker 4: a like a medical intervention that's new, like a new
Speaker 4: drug or a new therapy or new treatment, it always
Speaker 4: has to go through this pre clinical process first, where
Speaker 4: it's tested usually on mice and rats. And the way
Speaker 4: that they do this pre clinical work to include females,
Speaker 4: what they do to manage their hormonal variation is that
Speaker 4: they just pull their ovaries out, and so they're testing
Speaker 4: on females with no sex hormones. And so they're like,
Speaker 4: look at us, we're including females and research without recognizing
Speaker 4: the fact that women are inherently hormonal, right, It's like
Speaker 4: we are, like our hormones are part of who we are,
Speaker 4: and as a hormone cycle that changes the way that
Speaker 4: every thing acts in the body, and then then just
Speaker 4: ignoring it, removing that is the source of things.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 4: So it allows us to include women as research subjects
Speaker 4: in science, but it doesn't teach us anything about women
Speaker 4: because we're studying them in this.
Speaker 5: Little tiny corner of their.
Speaker 4: Cycle when hormones are low, and we know very little
Speaker 4: about them when they're in states when hormones are high.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about hormones because that is that is the
Speaker 3: piaced resistance, and this whole thing is our hormones. Can
Speaker 3: you explain the period cycle from start to finish because
Speaker 3: I feel like I just learned what the lutele phase
Speaker 3: was like six months ago on TikTok, right, and somebody
Speaker 3: told me about it, and I was like, do we
Speaker 3: all have that?
Speaker 5: Yeah? That's so funny, Like is it a just.
Speaker 3: I was like, I've never heard of this, So can
Speaker 3: you tell us what's happening hormonally through those different stages
Speaker 3: and talk about estrogen versus progestion.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, absolutely the menstrual cycle, Like the day you get
Speaker 4: your period is the first day of your cycle, and
Speaker 4: when you get your period, hormone levels are at their
Speaker 4: lowest in the cycle. So even though women are oftentimes
Speaker 4: given a hard time about being.
Speaker 5: Hormonal, you know when they're on their period.
Speaker 4: This is actually when we release hormonal and when the
Speaker 4: brain notices that hormone levels are low, it will stimulate
Speaker 4: the ovaries through the pituitary land. So it'll tell the
Speaker 4: pituitary gland, stimulate the ovaries and let's start some egg development,
Speaker 4: because it knows that if hormone levels are low, it
Speaker 4: means that they're not pregnant and it's time to start
Speaker 4: maturing egg follicles, so that way they can prepare for ovulation.
Speaker 4: And the ovaries then will start maturing egg follicles. And
Speaker 4: as these follicles begin to develop, they actually start releasing estrogen,
Speaker 4: and so this is one of the primary ways that
Speaker 4: the female body produces estrogen or estrodile from egg development.
Speaker 4: So after a few days of these egg follicles starting
Speaker 4: to mature, one will take over. It becomes it's known
Speaker 4: as the dominant follicle, which ever one is like growing
Speaker 4: the fastest and most robust. It's sort of the chosen one,
Speaker 4: and then it continues to grow. The others dissolve back
Speaker 4: into the body. And this is going to be the
Speaker 4: egg that's going to be released at ovulation. Right now,
Speaker 4: this egg is maturing and maturing and maturing. Estrogen levels
Speaker 4: are rising and rising and rising, and then you're getting
Speaker 4: to the period of ovulation. And ovulation is of course
Speaker 4: when an egg is released, and during this time estrogen
Speaker 4: levels are super high. So estrogen levels peak and you ovulate,
Speaker 4: and the period about five days prior to ovulation and
Speaker 4: then within twenty four hours of ovulation itself, this is
Speaker 4: the period in the cycle that's known as the fertile window,
Speaker 4: and this is when sex can lead to conception. And
Speaker 4: so this is a time when women's bodies are very
Speaker 4: much oriented towards all things attraction and sex. Right, so,
Speaker 4: estrogen we can think about these first fourteen days of
Speaker 4: the cycle as being all about getting all of the
Speaker 4: pieces in place for sex to lead to conception. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's all oriented toward attraction and sex. And so women
Speaker 4: tend to feel sexier in this estrogenic phase of the cycle.
Speaker 4: They tend to have more sex, they sound sexier, they
Speaker 4: smell sexier, they move sexier. They're better able to discriminate
Speaker 4: between high and low quality mates because their sensory neurons
Speaker 4: are super sensitive to these fine tune differences between men.
Speaker 3: Okay, so the first day of your period is day one,
Speaker 3: and your hormones are at their lowest. Then your body
Speaker 3: starts prepping for possible pregnancy, whether you want it or not,
Speaker 3: and things start to get a little sexy. That's the
Speaker 3: first fourteen days. What about the rest of the month.
Speaker 4: Now, that empty egg follicle actually becomes a temporary endocrine
Speaker 4: structure that lasts about two weeks, and it releases women's
Speaker 4: second primary sex hormone, which is progesterone. This is that
Speaker 4: luteal phase, right, that so few people know about. And
Speaker 4: this is the last two weeks of your cycle before
Speaker 4: your next period begins, And this is your body is
Speaker 4: actually shifting during this time from a state where you
Speaker 4: were optimized for sex and attraction, and it's shifting you
Speaker 4: into a state that is optimized for implantation of an
Speaker 4: embryo and pregnancy.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: And so these are two totally different sets of activities.
Speaker 4: The things that your body needs to do to attract
Speaker 4: a mate are very different than the things that your
Speaker 4: body needs to do to maintain a pregnancy. And that's
Speaker 4: why we have two primary sex hormones instead of one
Speaker 4: is that our bodies have to do two things to reproduce,
Speaker 4: and the result of these hormonal changes there again, they're
Speaker 4: sort of orienting you toward this goal that has to
Speaker 4: do with the reproductive process. And so it's generally instead
Speaker 4: of being a time when women experience increase sexual desire
Speaker 4: and they're feeling really sexy, instead women feel not sexy.
Speaker 4: Their libido tends to decrease, and any sex they have
Speaker 4: is less about and that they desire tends to be
Speaker 4: less about a need to like scratch a sexual itch,
Speaker 4: and tends to be more about like the need to connect.
Speaker 4: So the meaning of sex changes because this is a
Speaker 4: period in the cycle when sex cannot lead to conception.
Speaker 4: I mean, you can't get pregnant from sex you have
Speaker 4: during the last two weeks of the cycle, and so
Speaker 4: it serves a totally different function during that time than
Speaker 4: it does during the first. And it's also a time
Speaker 4: when our because our body is remodeling itself and getting
Speaker 4: ready for the possibility of pregnancy, our metabolism increases, our
Speaker 4: calorie needs increase during the second two weeks of the cycle,
Speaker 4: and of course we aren't ever told about that, and
Speaker 4: so women feel really hungry. No, no, So we feel
Speaker 4: hungry and then we're like, why am I so hungry?
Speaker 4: And then we develop this bad relationship with ourselves where
Speaker 4: we think that we have no self control because you know,
Speaker 4: look at me, and you know eating all my sons
Speaker 4: Halloween candy and just a hypothetical example gives me, James,
Speaker 4: it's me, it was me. And as we have these
Speaker 4: changes where our calorie needs increase, our respiration rate increases,
Speaker 4: our heart rate increases, we become more sensitive to threat detection.
Speaker 4: So any sign that there might be something wrong with
Speaker 4: the relationship that we have, either with our extended village
Speaker 4: or with our partners become more noticeable and salient to us,
Speaker 4: because again, we're all about trying to protect ourselves and
Speaker 4: protect the possibility of an embryo, and so we're vulnerable
Speaker 4: to threats, and our the threat detection areas of our
Speaker 4: brain become more interconnected with other areas of our brain
Speaker 4: and make it more aware of threats. We tend to
Speaker 4: be more inward facing. We don't want as much stimulation
Speaker 4: because our body is doing a lot of work and
Speaker 4: it's metabolically expensive. We're sleepier, and so there's this whole shift.
Speaker 4: You know, this whole shift is our bodies preparing for
Speaker 4: the possibility of implantation and pregnancy. And the reason that
Speaker 4: so many women feel so terrible during the last two
Speaker 4: weeks of the cycle is because a we're never told
Speaker 4: about any of this, right, so we have no idea
Speaker 4: what's going on, and it's like, I just feel really sensitive,
Speaker 4: and then we blow up at our partner, right because
Speaker 4: we're feeling like everything is a problem because it seems
Speaker 4: like a threat because we're not told, like, hey, your
Speaker 4: brain is literally more interconnected with the threat areas, and
Speaker 4: just so you know, you'd be alarm bells might be
Speaker 4: sounding more easily than they do in different parts of
Speaker 4: the cycle, and having awareness of that is like so
Speaker 4: helpful in terms of communicating within a relationship.
Speaker 2: We've been grading ourselves against the wrong rubric.
Speaker 5: You said it perfectly, and.
Speaker 1: So then we're constantly like, why am I failing? Why
Speaker 1: am I failing? I'm curious if you could talk a
Speaker 1: little bit more about when there are differences in how
Speaker 1: your cycle and hormones behave, particularly like with PCOS.
Speaker 4: If you're somebody who has things like PCOS, it means
Speaker 4: so generally women with pcos have high levels of androgens,
Speaker 4: so they have higher levels of testosterone than women who
Speaker 4: do not, and this can interfere with the obvia and so
Speaker 4: if you're not ovulating again, ovulation is the primary way
Speaker 4: that our body produces hormones, and so that generally can
Speaker 4: lead to erratic hormonal patterns. And so, for example, some
Speaker 4: women with PCOS, their body will start to stimulate egg
Speaker 4: follicles like preparing, and I think that's part of how
Speaker 4: the name PCOS right, it's the polycystic ovarian, So it's
Speaker 4: like you're creating these little egg follicles that are starting
Speaker 4: to simulate. Nothing ever, really in these contexts comes out
Speaker 4: to fruition, and so you get estrogen. But then because
Speaker 4: an egg never matures and is released, you don't get progesterone.
Speaker 4: And having an imbalance of your hormones in this way
Speaker 4: can lead people to feel kind of awful because even
Speaker 4: though estrogen is a lot of fun and short little
Speaker 4: bursts and it makes women feel sexy and alive and yes,
Speaker 4: Lara Bryden, who's a naturopathic doctor, she described it best
Speaker 4: where she said, it's like that eccentric friend of yours
Speaker 4: who's like so much fun for like two days or
Speaker 4: like a week, but then afterward you're just like, enough.
Speaker 2: Yes, we don't want to keep the party going, we
Speaker 2: need to take a nap.
Speaker 5: It's like that's enough.
Speaker 3: No, I don't want to watch the sun rise. No,
Speaker 3: I don't want to lay in the grass. Can we please?
Speaker 1: That's because I asked TT to stay up late and
Speaker 1: watch the sun rise so we couldn't see it.
Speaker 2: Oh there was a building glow.
Speaker 5: No. No, oh, my gosh, that's so funny.
Speaker 3: You touched on PMS a little bit, which you know
Speaker 3: occurs in the two weeks before we start our period.
Speaker 3: But not all PMS is created equal. I feel like,
Speaker 3: as I age, it's agent Okay, my PMS is.
Speaker 2: An old, older, angry lady.
Speaker 3: Now can you talk to us about pre menstrual syndrome
Speaker 3: or PMS.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so, PMS, it turns out, is really nothing more
Speaker 4: than a catch all category that has been created for
Speaker 4: experiences that women have in the luteal phase, some of
Speaker 4: which are very normal. Right, So for example, being hungry,
Speaker 4: you know, especially if you're not if you're being told, oh, well,
Speaker 4: you need to eat two thousand calories of the day
Speaker 4: without realizing that in the luteal phase, you might need
Speaker 4: twenty two hundred calories a day. So some of it
Speaker 4: is just things that we're experiencing because we've been given
Speaker 4: bad advice or as you said, Zakia loved the idea
Speaker 4: being graded on the wrong rubric. Some of it is
Speaker 4: those experiences. Others are things that are happening on purpose,
Speaker 4: but we haven't been given a language for so for example,
Speaker 4: having the downshift in libido, or having a downshift in energy,
Speaker 4: or having increased threat detection ability, so having what can
Speaker 4: turn into anxiety. So some of that stuff is stuff
Speaker 4: that's happening on purpose. Some of it is stuff that
Speaker 4: is going sideways because we're great at using the wrong
Speaker 4: rubric for our bodies and so we're creating disorder. And
Speaker 4: then some of it is actual problems that we're having
Speaker 4: because we're really sensitive to the hormonal changes.
Speaker 5: So PMS sort of run of the mill.
Speaker 4: PMS covers about everything, and in fact, there was a
Speaker 4: research review that was done talking about the symptoms of
Speaker 4: PMS and they noted that there's been more than eighty
Speaker 4: five different symptoms.
Speaker 2: Okay, if you're breathing, you have pmists.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well exactly, it's like it's like, I mean, the
Speaker 4: idea that these experiences that we have and the reason
Speaker 4: the second half of the cycle is the one that
Speaker 4: women get the hardest hit on in terms of these
Speaker 4: hormonal sensitivities is because the changes that happen in the
Speaker 4: second half of the cycle are just ginormous relative to
Speaker 4: what's going on in the first half. Progesterone actually rises
Speaker 4: and falls at levels that are ten times higher than
Speaker 4: that of estrogen, and so that takes a lot of
Speaker 4: dexterity on the part of the cells in our body
Speaker 4: to be able to quickly adapt, because the body is
Speaker 4: sensitive to sex hormones and as they change, they have
Speaker 4: to change what they're doing to adjust to Okay, is
Speaker 4: there a lot of hormone here or is there not
Speaker 4: a lot of hormone here? And so you'll have receptors
Speaker 4: of your cells up regulate and down regulate depending on
Speaker 4: how much there is. And unfortunately, we live in an
Speaker 4: environment where people don't have a lot of resilience to
Speaker 4: hormonal changes just because things like inflammation and stress and
Speaker 4: the inflammation that it tends to create also erode at
Speaker 4: our cellular plasticity, and this is stuff that can make
Speaker 4: our experiences across the cycle worse, right, And so we
Speaker 4: do tend to see that people who are in better
Speaker 4: health in general, so who do things like have a
Speaker 4: community of people that they can help rely on for
Speaker 4: stress management, who eat whole foods, get enough sunlight, get
Speaker 4: enough sleep, get regular exercise, they tend to have smoother
Speaker 4: experiences across the cycle than people who don't and who
Speaker 4: have more chronic inflammatory types of conditions, we tend to
Speaker 4: see worse PMS.
Speaker 1: Okay, so PMS is everything that happens when you have
Speaker 1: your period, got it, And this is function of our
Speaker 1: bodies reacting to the rising and following estrogen and progesterone.
Speaker 1: But what about pre mistral dyspork disorder or PMDD, because
Speaker 1: I've heard about that one too.
Speaker 4: PMDD it's kind of like you take all of that
Speaker 4: and then you imagine the worst, ugliest form of it.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: So PMDD is just it's a really heartbreaking condition. And
Speaker 4: it's heartbreaking because for many of these women, they go
Speaker 4: into the second half of the cycle and as progesterone
Speaker 4: levels are increasing, it's like they just start to feel
Speaker 4: just utterly hopeless. And so there's a tendency to have
Speaker 4: these extreme mood changes, and one of the defining characteristics
Speaker 4: of women who have pmdd is that many of them
Speaker 4: wish that they could just end their own life to
Speaker 4: make the suffering stop because they feel so awful. For
Speaker 4: many of these women, this goes on for the entire
Speaker 4: last two weeks of the cycle, and then they get
Speaker 4: their period and they feel better. But then as soon
Speaker 4: as you know they're feeling good again, they know what's coming,
Speaker 4: you know, they know what's going to happen again. In
Speaker 4: terms of the treatment options, and I'm sure that this
Speaker 4: is going to absolutely shock you, but there isn't a
Speaker 4: lot of research, and I know it's just shocking into
Speaker 4: like what the causes of PMDDR and like what different
Speaker 4: types of treatments are currently. The ones that doctors use
Speaker 4: most frequently are the birth control pill, because this of
Speaker 4: course prevents you from ovulating, and if you don't ovulate
Speaker 4: and don't have a cycle, then you're going to have
Speaker 4: these flatlined hormones. And if you're somebody who's really sensitive
Speaker 4: to hormonal changes, like women with pmdd R, then this
Speaker 4: can be helpful to them. Antidepressants are another one that
Speaker 4: are frequently given what we know less about is like
Speaker 4: what the root cause is of this deep sensitivity that
Speaker 4: would allow women to be able to find relief using
Speaker 4: something that to them would feel more natural. And there
Speaker 4: are some studies that have been done looking at cognitive
Speaker 4: behavioral therapy and it's actually found to be fairly affective
Speaker 4: in terms of helping minimize women's symptoms.
Speaker 1: But that's just the emotional part of it, right, there's
Speaker 1: real physical pain. So we just interviewed a neuroscientist who
Speaker 1: studies pain, and a lot of what she said really
Speaker 1: overlaps nicely in ties with what you're telling us. And
Speaker 1: she talked about like the expectation of pain, so if
Speaker 1: you've had pain before, you know it might be coming again.
Speaker 1: So I can almost imagine PMDD as a part of
Speaker 1: like chronic pain, Like if you're having these really awful
Speaker 1: symptoms like clockwork, this is going to happen, and there
Speaker 1: aren't many like treatment options. I'm curious though, One thing
Speaker 1: that you said is there is this sensitivity to hormonal changes.
Speaker 1: And I understand evolutionarily that we are primed for reproduction.
Speaker 1: All species basically are, yes, but we've had some changes,
Speaker 1: and I'm curious about some of the environmental factors are
Speaker 1: some of these new things that are pushing us or
Speaker 1: playing on some of that sensitivity or making us more sensitive,
Speaker 1: And how we can kind of build some resilience to it.
Speaker 1: Is it possible?
Speaker 5: One hundred percent, It is possible.
Speaker 4: I think that just doing things that help increase your
Speaker 4: resilience to these changes, even if you have PMDD, it
Speaker 4: might not totally solve the problem, but it will definitely
Speaker 4: help take the edge off. And as you noted, there
Speaker 4: are a lot of these environmental mismatches that are responsible
Speaker 4: for the erosion in our cellular plasticity. And for example,
Speaker 4: eating processed foods is something that unfortunately is very much
Speaker 4: a mainstay culturally, and this increases inflammatory activity in the body,
Speaker 4: and it also erodes at the diversity of our gut bacteria.
Speaker 4: And all of these things help maintain our flexibility and
Speaker 4: our cellular plasticity and our resilience to hormonal changes. Even
Speaker 4: just like cleaning up your diet a little bit is helpful.
Speaker 4: Other changes you can make. One of my favorites, because
Speaker 4: it's so easy to do, is getting morning sunlight to
Speaker 4: help set your circadian rhythms. And so for me, because
Speaker 4: I'm somebody who's had bad sleep, and sleep plays a
Speaker 4: profound role in your ability to sort of manage inflammatory
Speaker 4: activity because getting not enough sleep is incredibly inflammatory in
Speaker 4: the body, and people don't really appreciate the role that
Speaker 4: it plays. Also understanding that stress management is like so huge.
Speaker 4: It's like that there's so many industries that would disappear
Speaker 4: if women actually prioritize themselves instead of other people.
Speaker 2: T T. You heard it.
Speaker 1: A couple of weeks ago, we say we were going
Speaker 1: to start doing our fifteen minute walks. I'm just saying,
Speaker 1: your cycle will thank me.
Speaker 5: I think that we need.
Speaker 4: Yes, you should have a morning cycle support ten minute
Speaker 4: walk club. I think that's awesome, and I mean honestly,
Speaker 4: and even though it's like ten that helps. I think
Speaker 4: that sometimes people are like, oh my gosh, like it
Speaker 4: feels overwhelming, you know what I mean, where they're like, oh,
Speaker 4: I've run a marathon and like lift weights ten times
Speaker 4: a week and mainline protein and it's really not that,
Speaker 4: you know, you don't need These little steps really make
Speaker 4: a difference.
Speaker 2: Atomic habits.
Speaker 4: Atomic habits exactly, habit stacking. I'm a huge fan.
Speaker 1: So really what I'm hearing is is all the roads
Speaker 1: lead back to education. Are you feeling hopeful that in
Speaker 1: school systems they'll be learning more about how bodies function,
Speaker 1: regardless of sex or gender.
Speaker 5: I sure hope.
Speaker 4: So imagine how much better the world would be, I mean,
Speaker 4: and for men too, right if we actually understood here's
Speaker 4: the foods that nourish your body, here's ways to help
Speaker 4: promote resilience to stress, here is how your hormones work.
Speaker 4: And so, I mean, it's just, you know, I really
Speaker 4: think that we need to revisit curricula in schools, and
Speaker 4: I think one of those things would be understanding our bodies,
Speaker 4: because it is completely absurd that I had to get
Speaker 4: a PhD to learn about my body. And I mean,
Speaker 4: it's also sort that so many women are having to
Speaker 4: do this on social media. It's like we're trusting social
Speaker 4: media to educate. We give the sexual education to our teenagers,
Speaker 4: and it's cuckoos.
Speaker 1: Like this person just did a dance, but they're gonna
Speaker 1: tell me that's so funny.
Speaker 4: I had to get a TikTok account because of course,
Speaker 4: you know, you have to be on social when you're
Speaker 4: a public figure. And my son was like, you, what
Speaker 4: are you going to do? Do a dance about birth control?
Speaker 2: Maybe are you going to dance with me? Asked the camera.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's a better question I should have had.
Speaker 4: That's that's the next question, be like, yeah, we need
Speaker 4: to create a birth control dance and I would.
Speaker 5: Love for you to choreograph.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: What is one thing other than getting your book that
Speaker 3: you think every person that has a period should know
Speaker 3: about their body?
Speaker 4: It would be learn who you are? Right, so, learn
Speaker 4: how your hormones affect who you are. Share it with
Speaker 4: a friend, Educate your partner. I think that there's so
Speaker 4: much especially in relationships, like it's romantic relationships, where there's
Speaker 4: so much ground for miscommunication just because and especially when
Speaker 4: talking about a heterosexual couple where you have a man
Speaker 4: and a woman and women has cycles and the man
Speaker 4: does out of cycles, and there's just each one assumes
Speaker 4: that the other one has a brain that works like
Speaker 4: their brain does, and being able to communicate about and
Speaker 4: actually have a language, because I think a lot of
Speaker 4: times women know there's something happening, they don't have a
Speaker 4: language to describe it, and so having a language to
Speaker 4: describe it, which is one of the big reasons that
Speaker 4: I wrote this book was I wanted women to understand
Speaker 4: how they work, and then also to have a language
Speaker 4: to describe it so that way they can have better
Speaker 4: communication with their partners. When I think that understanding your
Speaker 4: own body and being able to communicate that information to
Speaker 4: a partner is I think that it's like there's no
Speaker 4: greater form of intimacy.
Speaker 3: I love this episode and this book is so good.
Speaker 3: I learned so much every chapter. I was like, I
Speaker 3: was texting people like.
Speaker 2: Did you know? Did you know?
Speaker 3: And talking to Jimmy like, hey, did you know that
Speaker 3: this is this? Of course he don't know. Ment Okay,
Speaker 3: some of y'all don't know really anything. But I feel
Speaker 3: like this should be required reading for everyone, no matter
Speaker 3: your gender.
Speaker 2: You know. I think that's really true.
Speaker 1: And I think if you want to write any kind
Speaker 1: of book, any kind of thing with characters where it's
Speaker 1: like oh this, If you want to write anything about
Speaker 1: a period about anybody, read this verse. Okay, read this
Speaker 1: verse before you make your character sit on the couch
Speaker 1: eating ice cream and say she's so lonely and depressed
Speaker 1: but it's her period. I'm tired of that truck ty.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: We are out here existing and living and doing the
Speaker 3: things that we got to do, even on our periods,
Speaker 3: and yes, things are fluctuating, but things are fluctuating for everybody,
Speaker 3: no matter what your sex is, and for the male
Speaker 3: sex it seems like it's fluctuating.
Speaker 2: A lot more.
Speaker 3: And so we really need to be talking about y'all
Speaker 3: the way that y'all talk about us.
Speaker 2: OO want to run yeall into the ground book Man.
Speaker 3: You can find us on X and Instagram at Dope
Speaker 3: Labs podcast.
Speaker 2: Tt is on X and Instagram at d R Underscore T.
Speaker 3: S h O, and you can find Zakiya at Z
Speaker 3: said So.
Speaker 1: Dope Labs is a production of Lamanada Media. Our supervising
Speaker 1: producer is Keegan Zimma and our producer is Issara Acevez.
Speaker 1: Dope Labs is sound designed, edited and mixed by James Farber.
Speaker 1: Lamanada Media's Vice President of Partnerships and Production is Jackie Danziger.
Speaker 1: Executive producer from iHeart podcast is Katrina Norvil.
Speaker 2: Marketing lead is Alison Canter.
Speaker 1: Original music composed and produced by Takayasuzawa and Alex sugi Ura,
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Speaker 1: produced by us T T Show Dia and Zakiyah Wattie.
Speaker 3: Six two