Episode 86: Honoring Our Cycles, Period Positivity, & How Our Nervous Systems Affect Our Hormones with Adele Wimsett

In this episode with women’s health practitioner Adele Wimsett, we…

  • talk about women as cyclical beings and why our cycles are our superpower
  • discuss ways to honor our cycles through lifestyle shifts
  • discuss the gender bias against women that is present in the medical industry
  • talk briefly about that gender bias as Lindsey shares her own experience with Pelvic Congestion Syndrome
  • discuss the link between the nervous system and endocrine system
  • share how we are teaching our daughters to feel powerful and free in their own cycles and how this is healing generational trauma
  • talk about menstruation stigma
  • share ways mothers and daughters can connect through their cycles

This Episode’s Guest

Adele is a Women’s Health Practitioner & Cyclical Living Expert. Having co-authored the book Essential Feminine Wisdom, she is passionate about educating women & girls on how to harness the power of their cyclical nature. From menarche to menopause, Adele bridges the woo & the science, supporting women to balance their hormones naturally and is passionate about speaking on all things menstrual education!

ANNOUNCEMENT:

I’m teaching Nervous System 101 on Tuesday, September 13, 2022, at 6pm CDT.

If you’re listening before August 30, 2022, join the WAITLIST for Nervous System 101

If you’re listening after August 30, 2022, get your NSYS101 ticket here.

Email support@lindseylockett.com for financial assistance.

Links

Transcript

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the show. So glad you’re here. I have a longer episode in store for you today. And so I’m not going to do a big intro. Like I normally might give you a big life update or anything like that. We’re just going to jump straight into this episode. This episode is about honoring our cycles.

Being more period positive and how our nervous systems affect our hormones and something that I am extremely passionate about in my own life is. Removing the stigma and the trauma around ministration and helping women understand their bodies better. And to not pathologize, um, when things start going wrong with our cycles and really learn how to listen to what’s happening with our cycles as a way that our bodies are communicating to us, that something isn’t working.

And women, I feel have the super power of our cycles. We have something that men don’t have, and that is the ability to tap into our energy, our intuition, our body’s wisdom. The cycles of newness and death. Um, like the way that our bodies change hormonally every month, it truly is a superpower. But unfortunately we live in a society that.

That has pathologized women’s cycles and has preferred to keep women’s cycles. Out of conversation out of, um, you know, public. Uh, like not, not letting it be public, right? Like we’re supposed to hide it. We’re supposed to not talk about it. Or at least that’s how that’s how I grew up was we don’t talk about our periods, especially in front of boys and men. That’s just not appropriate.

Um, I totally disagree. So. I was super excited to meet a Dell. Well, who’s my guest for the podcast today. She was actually an attendee of my nervous system. 1 0 1 workshop. And then she went on to do my nervous system hygiene group program. And we got acquainted inside the group program. And I learned the work that she does with women and balancing their hormones and helping women connect to the wisdom of their cycles and the wisdom of their bodies. And I was just like, you were the perfect person to come on the podcast and have a conversation about this.

So we’re covering a wide range of topics in this episode, anything from how we honor our cycles and kind of what that looks like for us personally, we’re also talking about. Period positivity and how we are raising our daughters to have a different experience of ministration than what we’ve had. And we do a deep dive into our nervous systems and the effects that our nervous systems have on our hormones.

And sort of the feedback. Uh, loop that is created between. Nervous system and hormones. That can cause some really uncomfortable, painful, debilitating. Symptoms sometimes. Um, and then I’m also mentioning for the kind of the first time on the podcast. I’m sharing a little bit about pelvic congestion syndrome.

This is something that I think I should do an episode about in the future. That’s like solely focused on this, um, because it’s something that I’ve been through in my own journey. And so I talk about it briefly. And this podcast episode, because Adele and I touch on the gender bias that is present in the medical system and how women are often dismissed. Um, you know, this has been happening for hundreds of years where women are being labeled as like hysterical.

Um, when really we are just, our bodies are misunderstood and men don’t understand our bodies and women then don’t understand our bodies and it just perpetuates misinformation and stigma and disconnection from our bodies and not honoring our cycles and all of that. So. It’s an interesting episode and it’s a longer one. So I will sign off here and we’ll dive into today’s show.

Thank you for being here and, oh, I guess one last thing. Um, I am teaching nervous system 1 0 1. So I should have mentioned that earlier. I am teaching nervous system 1 0 1 on Tuesday, September 13th, at 6:00 PM. Central on zoom. Tickets are going to go on sale this Tuesday, August 30th. So, if you’re listening to the podcast before August 30th and you are interested in attending this workshop, I highly recommend that you join the waitlist because the waitlist will get an email first. And so that way you don’t have to rely on seeing my stories on Instagram. Um, lately the algorithm has really been kicking my ass.

I’m not really sure what’s going on, but my posts aren’t getting any reach. Um, I’m not getting nearly the engagement that I normally get and I’m losing followers right. And left. And I honestly don’t know why. So I would just encourage you to not rely on Instagram, to show you the information about this workshop that I may post in the feed or in my stories.

Because right now, my account, I don’t know if it’s shadow bander or what’s happening, but. If you don’t want to miss getting a ticket, I highly recommend that you joined the wait list and you can do that@lindseylocket.com. Forward slash waitlist 1 0 1. If you were listening to this episode after August 30th, then you can go ahead and get your ticket and you can get tickets@lindseylocket.com forward slash insists 1 0 1. So let’s like a college class, N S Y S 1 0 1 for nervous system 1 0 1.

I’ll have a link below in the show notes. So you don’t have to type that into your phone. You can just click on it. Um, tickets are 55 bucks. And if that’s too much for you, please reach out and ask for financial assistance. We do offer financial aid to anyone and everyone who reaches out. No questions asked.

And if you want supply If you want financial support, you can just email support@lindsaylocket.com. And my amazing. Uh, customer support and tech support person. Who’s also my husband, David, we’ll get you hooked up with a special discount code to save you some money on the cost of your ticket. And in this workshop, if you’ve never taken it before, but you’ve heard me talk about on the show or if you’re brand new to nervous system stuff.

Either way, this workshop is I really deep dive into information about the autonomic nervous system. What it is, what it does, how it works, what it looks like and feels like when it’s not functioning properly. Um, the role that trauma plays on the nervous system, as well as the brain. I talk about brain inflammation.

Microglial activation. Um, so that’s kind of the top down stuff that I like to talk about. I talk about the different traumatize ups. I distill poly bagel theory down into language that is really easily understood. Um, and. We also talk about things like how, uh, our PR, what we believe is our personality is actually a collection of adaptive behaviors that we’ve learned to survive. And that those things might not actually be serving a purpose anymore.

We talk a lot about awareness in this workshop. And I also give you a few tips and tools on how to shift your nervous system out of say like a fight state or a free state. Um, and then at the end of the workshop, I open up and invite attendees to join my group program, nervous system hygiene. Which is a phenomenal.

Four week program that teaches you how to, um, practice nervous system tools in a way that you create a daily nervous system hygiene practice. So it’s like you take care of your teeth every day by brushing and flossing so that you don’t get cavities and plaque buildup and gum disease and all of that.

And I propose that we learned to take care of our nervous systems and the same way. And so I call it nervous system hygiene. And this is a really fun group program. It’s four weeks of video lessons that are sent to you every Monday. And then every Thursday, anyone who’s able to can meet on zoom for a 90 minute group coaching call.

And these group calls are so, so powerful. Um, this past week in particular is one of the most. Incredible spaces that I’ve ever held for a group. And it was really beautiful to watch the community and the connection and everybody’s learning and mirroring everyone else. And it’s really beautiful. So if you attend nervous system 1 0 1 or buy a ticket for nervous system 1 0 1, I am going to give you a 40% discount on the cost of the nervous system hygiene group program.

So there are massive benefits. Four. Getting your ticket to nervous system 1 0 1. Even if you can’t make it to the live workshop. You are going to get the replay with your ticket purchase so you can watch it later. And even if you can’t make it to the live workshop, you can still join nervous system hygiene afterwards at the 40% off price. So I’m going to put a link for nervous system hygiene down at the bottom as well, so that you can read about that program.

Program and start thinking about and feeling into if that’s something that would serve you and benefit you at this time in your life. But yeah, head to the show notes below and check out. The nervous system 1 0 1 workshop. Add yourself to the wait list. Get your ticket if you’re listening to this after august 30th and checkout nervous system hygiene so that if you come to the workshop you know what i’m talking about and you’re ready to make a move if it resonates with you So now for real this time i am going to turn it over to this podcast recording with adele wimsatt. And thank you so much for being here

 

So my guest today is Adele whisk and she is a women’s health practitioner and cyclical living expert having co-authored the book essential, feminine wisdom. She is passionate about educating women and girls on how to harness the power of their cyclical nature from men a to menopause Adele bridges, the woo, and the science supporting women to balance their hormones naturally, and is passionate about speaking on all things, menstrual education, Adele, welcome to the podcast.

Hey, thank you for having me. I’m really excited to be here with you. Uh, me too. So why don’t you just start by telling us how you got into this work of being someone who loves to talk about menstruation and women’s cycle. Yeah, it’s not your usual kind of career path at school, is it so often people say to me, how did you get into this?

Why are you talking about vaginas and periods everywhere? So, um, I mean, my background was in safeguarding. So I spent, I had a 20 year career working in youth justice where I specialized in female offending and it was quite heavy environment. So I spent a lot of time in prisons, police stations, courts, I’d always sort of been drawn to the healing arts, um, And trained in quite a lot of them was really interested in women’s health, generally as a hobby.

And, you know, I thought I was doing all the things, right. You know, I was doing my green smoothies. I was doing my internet fasting. I was doing the key, you know, no carbs, all this stuff, cuz that was what was touted as the thing to do. And I was in quite a senior role and my period vanished, which took me quite a long time to actually realize.

And at the time I was like brilliant, one less thing to worry about, but I didn’t realize then what a massive health warning that was to me. And it was actually an indicator that I was on the edge of burnout. I was in a senior role with really, really intense expectations and responsibilities. I had a baby, I had.

Um, toddler, you know, keeping life warning. I was that typical kind of personality. I’ve got this, I can do this, you know, always high achiever. And I was on my knees. I’m like, I’m doing all the stuff, you know, I’m doing all these things. So I took the decision to leave that completely and set up just a holistic practice for women so that I could, I’ve always been a massive nerd, really into academic research to spend the time to deep dive into.

What was happening for women? Why were there so many women on the edge of burnout, exhaustion, anxiety, insomnia, all these things that we are normalizing in our culture. They’re not just because something is common does not make it normal, right? So this is where we’re and what, what I found enraged, my inner feminist, you know, this huge gender bias that exists in medical and fitness and health across the industry about what works.

And basically 99% of the staff we are told about what works is based on what works for men. So we get treated as little men and we are not, we have a completely different hormonal system. Our endocrine system is completely different to men’s and this is what I think is causing lots of problems. So as soon as I found this out, I was on my soapbox, shouting it to anyone that would hear and creating a way to work with women that is evidence based and works for women’s bodies are not.

So that was my journey. Oh, I love it. So, um, you mentioned the gender bias thing and it’s in the medical industry, the fitness industry, the wellness industry, uh, the fashion industry, like it’s, it’s everywhere. Right? So I have my own story that I would like to share. Um, and I’d be interested. You’re probably just going to be outraged, but I would be interested if you had any other perspectives.

So, um, in early 2019, when I was at the end of my rope and I was like on months of insomnia and anxiety, panic attacks all the time, definitely having suicidal thoughts. Um, I was having this weird pelvic pain. And, um, my period journey is like a whole nother story, but I had worked very hard up until this point on my hormones and my period.

And like, until this relapse or this, um, insomnia anxiety experience started, I had really healthy periods. I felt like, like low PMs, not clots when I was bleeding. Um, my main PMs symptom was like breast tenderness and, um, you know, like irritability, not wanting to be touched, not wanting to be around people for the few days before my period, but it was nothing like crazy.

So then in January of 2019, I’m having this mystery pelvic pain and the way that the pain moved around, I couldn’t tell if it was reproductive, if it was digestive, if it was in my kidneys, like, I couldn’t tell what the pain was because of the way it was moving. So finally, I received a diagnosis of pelvic congestion syndrome.

Have you ever heard of that? No. Okay. So it’s very interesting. So they discovered it by accident. Actually, they were doing a CT scan of my kidneys to see if I had kidney stone, cuz I was having a lot of pain in my left side, lower back. So I didn’t have a kidney stone. Um, well I didn’t have one that I was passing.

I do have a kidney stone in my left kidney, but it’s like been sitting there for a long time and it doesn’t seem to be moving, but anyway, um, they were like, you have, uh, enlarged para uterine veins indicative of pelvic congestion syndrome. And so of course I’m like you I’m gonna go research the shit out of this.

So I basically like went home and started researching everything that I could find on pelvic congestion syndrome. So essentially what it is is varicose veins inside the pelvis. So like my ovarian veins and my operator and ental veins, um, you know, the way that veins work is they pump blood back up towards the heart.

And so whenever you’re standing or sitting up those veins are having to work against gravity to push blood back towards the heart. And we have these little valves in the veins. And so when the valves open the blood squirts up, yeah. And then the valves close and that prevents the, the blood from falling back down into the vein.

But in pelvic congestion syndrome, those little valves are not working anymore. And so the blood is trying to get back uping to the heart, but then it falls back down and it extends the veins. It makes the veins grow larger. The blood is pooling in the veins. Um, and the telltale sign that. You’re dealing with pelvic congestion is when you have pain and symptoms throughout the day, but then you lay down at night and you feel better and you get up in the morning and you’re like almost better.

And you’re like, oh, it must have just been something I ate or it’s my period or whatever. But then as you go on throughout the day, the symptoms come back and it’s just like back and forth, back and forth. So it’s very, very frustrating. Um, so I actually, uh, traveled to London in the summer of 2019 because the world’s leading, um, researcher and clinic, uh, for pelvic congestion syndrome is called the Whitely clinic and it’s in London.

And so my research took me there to get treatment. And it turns out that I had to have five of my pelvic veins embolized because once those valves and those veins are broken, mm-hmm, , there’s, there’s nothing you can do at that point. Like there’s no repairing the valves, you actually have to kill the vein.

And so they do that by placing embolization coils inside the vein, and then the vein gets like pissed off and it. Um, SC roses around the coil and it just forms scar tissue. So like now the veins are still there, but they don’t have blood in them anymore. They have coils in them and they’re like scar tissue in my body now.

Um, and that’s the only way to treat it ever since I started learning about pelvic congestion, the thing that kept coming up for me as well was on all these forums and places. Women were like my insurance company won’t pay for me to be treated. My insurance company won’t pay for me to be treated.

They’re telling me that pelvic congestion isn’t real, um, that it’s, uh, a myth that it doesn’t exist like, and so they won’t pay for it to be treated, but pelvic congestion syndrome can occur in men as well. But in men, their goads are on the outside of their body. In their scrotum. Our goads is women are on the insides of our bodies.

And so insurance companies use this reasoning that because you couldn’t see the vein from the outside, that it wasn’t a real condition. And so they won’t pay for people to be treated for it. Thankfully, I didn’t have insurance and I, I know people are like, what do you mean? You’re thankful that you don’t have insurance.

I recognize that that’s a privilege, but when you are paying for everything yourself, you have a lot more say and a lot more control over what treatment you get. And so I didn’t have to jump through the insurance company hoops, like I just self paid and went to London, myself, and paid for it myself, and actually saved money over, getting treated in the us.

That’s neither here nor there. My point is, is. Uh, the gender bias in the medical industry is this exists for women’s healthcare as well because in a man, if they have pelvic congestion syndrome, that vein, you can actually see a bulging varicose vein on the scrotum. And so you go to the doctor’s office and of course the doctor, who’s probably a male and his like white coat or whatever is like, holy shit, oh my God, you’re testicles.

You have these bulging veins. Isn’t that terrible. We’ve gotta get you treated and insurance will pay for it. But then for women, because you can’t just look at our ovaries and see that there’s this bulging vein, the insurance company’s like, Nope, that’s not what it is. And so women are not being treated because their insurance companies won’t pay for this, but for the exact same condition in men, they’re able to get treated and I’ve done some activism around this and I’ve like spoken to various groups and helped advocate for people.

And I think slowly we’re getting somewhere, but. It just pisses me off. So I just wanted to share my story of that with you to echo that there is gender bias in the medical industry. , it’s huge. And the thing is it’s so normalized. Most people go no there isn’t. We’re so desensitized to it. The women that I work with that have waited decades for diagnosis that are told, let listen, it’s not normal to have pain when you have a period.

Okay. It might be common, but it’s not normal. Okay? It’s not normal to have heavy bleeds in this way. It’s not normal to have big clots, all this stuff. It’s not normal to have PMT. This stuff is not normal, but if you go to most general practitioners, they’ll. You know, well, you can go on the pill if you want, you know, you know, I’m not even gonna get on that band track but you know, like not this, this desensitization to women’s issues.

I actually had a client recently who was told by Hamel GP. Who’s got every single P C O S symptom without a doubt was told, well, what, what do you wanna know for there’s nothing we can do about it. What. I mean, why are we having these conversations now? You know, because if it was a man’s body, yeah. It would probably be responded to even lab rats are male, you know, everything we’re testing medication on has a male physiology, unless generally it’s a contraceptive we’re testing.

Yeah. You know, we, women are fertil for 24 hours a month. That’s it manifest every single second of every single day. Yeah. And here we are, you know, there is this huge gender bias and what is so frustrating is that so many well-meaning health practitioners out there will come across a piece of evidence or some, a really great health outcome.

For example, let’s choose the keto diet where you completely eradicate carbs from your diet. OK, I’ll go, oh my gosh, this is amazing. Take care. Flood Instagram, whether tell all their clients, this is what they need to be doing. It’s awful for women. It stops you ovulating. Mm-hmm , you know, we need these macronutrients.

Our brain has this second sensor that men’s doesn’t this second sensor picks up. Whether it’s safe to ovulate, whether the body has all these macronutrients to ovulate. And if you take away carbohydrates, the body goes shit. We’re in starvation mode. Don’t ovulate. I mean, it’s a great way to protect us from an evolutionary perspective, but it’s really shit health advice.

And because it’s based on men, And what works for men. You know, it’s the same with intermittent fasting, you know, taxing eat for as little time as you can. The brain thinks for starving, it stops us ovulating. So our body doesn’t produce these hormones and hormones do so many more things to the body. Then just make us ovulate or have a period.

They affect our mood, our emotional regulation, our skin elasticity, our digestive process. I’ve got microbiome that affects everything. It has. They have hundreds and hundreds of roles and. We kind of go, oh, that’s fine. You know, I’ll just shut it down with a pill. I don’t need that. Or, you know, I can take this.

It doesn’t matter if I ovulate, if I’m having a period, the menstrual cycle is our fifth vital sign. I was absolutely gonna bring that up. I was gonna say, tell me about our menstrual cycle as the fifth vital sign for women. Yeah. Every single time you go for an assessment with a practitioner, a health practitioner, you should be being asked about how healthy your period is.

You know, is it 25 to 35 days each month? Does it last between like three to seven days? Is it like, you know, you’re not, it’s not the pain isn’t stopping you doing anything. You shouldn’t be having nausea. You know, these awful symptoms that come with PMT that affect severely affect our quality of life.

This is an indicator that there is a hormone imbalance. And so much of it is easily addressed with the right information, but it’s just simply not available and not given. So I’m changing that. Gonna make sure women have access to this information cause we don’t need to suffer. We’re suffering unnecessarily.

And I have this vision of a world where women feel fucking amazing where women wake up, they sleep well. They’re energized. They’re mood is balanced. They’re well rested. And that ripple effect of nourishing relationships, you know, a fulfilling, satisfying life, a calm, nervous system. Imagine a world full of women like that.

And if women are in the states that we’ve got into as a result of how we are living and yet we’re still achieving what we’re achieving, imagine what we could do if we all felt really good. Yeah. We, we could take over . Yeah, exactly. That’s what I don’t want us to. They totally our flaws and we don’t, they sing, they sing

Yeah, fuck. Yeah. So, um, I’m really glad you brought up the period as the fifth vital sign. If our listeners don’t know about that, you can Google, um, like menstrual cycle as the fifth vital sign. And it’s just as important as. All your other vital signs. Um, especially if you are a woman and you have a womb and you are living in a woman’s body.

Um, so you mentioned just, yeah, go ahead. Just something else I wanted to pick up on your story that you shared, how, you know, this medical gas lighting, how many women, you know, it takes a lot of courage. Usually by the time a woman’s got to the place where she’s gonna go to a GP and say, first of all, does she even know the names of her body parts?

How shameful and embarrassed does she feel to even name them, you know, and have got to that place, say, look, you know, I’m experiencing this. And then potentially sadly we’re in a case where the majority gas lights were was not, you know, I, your bloods have come back. Everything’s fine. Yeah. You know, I, I think every single one of my clients has that.

Yeah. You know, There’s nothing wrong with you. And it’s like, okay, so this feeds, this inner dialogue it’s in our heads. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And they know that insurance, what we dealing with, like mythical fairy tales. If we can’t see it, it doesn’t exist. What, yeah. What the hell is that bonkers is what it is just insane.

Yeah. And, and encountering that and encountering like, um, for example, the, so the type of doctor that treats pelvic congestion syndrome was called an interventional radiologist. So, um, but interestingly, so I was diagnosed with pelvic congestion syndrome in the ER, because I’d had a, a pelvic, um, cat scan and then I was, they were like, you need to see your gynecologist.

So I made the appointment with the gynecologist and the gynecologist is like, I don’t really see people with pelvic congestion syndrome. Um, but you just need to come to me to get the referral to the interventional radiologist. So like the emergency room couldn’t even refer me straight to the interventional radiologist.

I had to like go through the gynecologist first, who could do nothing and then give me this other referral. So then I go to this interventional radiologist, um, in a town about 75 miles for me, which is where, like the major like hospital complexes are that are closest to me and interventional radiologists, don’t just treat pelvic congestion.

They do anything that like under x-ray they have to insert catheters or like balloons or, you know, whatever they’re inserting they do at under x-ray. And so, um, so I went to him and I, as a researcher, like was armed with folders full of studies and questions and a notebook with notes and like all this kind of stuff.

And I mean, I swear to God, I knew more about pelvic congestion syndrome than this interventional radiologist did. And so one of my questions was how many pelvic vein embolizations do you do per year? And he was like, uh, three or four maybe. And so I just was like, I, I continued to answer my questions. I heard the guy out.

Um, and then I left and I immediately texted my husband and I was like, I don’t feel good about this. I don’t feel good about this guy. Like, and you know, and what other field of medicine is a doctor doing three or four procedures a year considered like, okay. You know, like you don’t wanna get away my womb.

Yeah. You don’t wanna go to a brain surgeon who only does three brain surgeries a year. You don’t wanna go to a heart surgeon who only does four heart surgeries a year. Right? Like you wanna go to somebody who has so much experience who’s doing this day in and day out. And that’s what ended me up in, in London because the doctor, the interventional radiologist who did my pelvic vein embolization does like 500 a year mm-hmm

So it’s. You know, more experience and I just felt better and they weren’t invalidating, you know, they weren’t like, oh, here we’re, we’re just gonna give you the birth control pill, or we’re gonna give you a prescription for Gabapentin, um, or, you know, another treatment. This is again, the shit way that women’s bodies are treated.

So there’s like forums on Facebook for pelvic congestion syndrome and women from all over the world who have had their uterus and ovaries removed because doctors have said the only way to treat pelvic congestion is with a total hysterectomy. Now, these doctors are clearly uninformed because pelvic congestion syndrome has nothing to do with the uter and ovaries yeah.

Is a vein condition. Yeah. So if you remove the organs, but leave the veins, you still have a problem, but now you’ve made women in fertile. You’ve taken away their menstrual cycle and put them in early and put them into menopause. Right. At at, I mean, some of these women are like 25, 30 years old. Right. So you’ve taken away former.

Oh my God. Oh my God. Yeah. So you’re absolutely right. And I mean, we’ve gone on and on about the gender bias, but like it’s something we’re clearly really passion and it’s, so, yeah. And it’s so important. Like it’s so beautiful hearing how empowered you were to go in and advocate for yourself. But most women, by the time they get into these places, particularly with hormone imbalances, where there might be brain fog, exhaustion, you’re not sleeping, you’ve got anxiety, all these things that are symptomatic of a hormone imbalance.

They haven’t got the energy or, you know, the time to research something and it’s like, oh my God, just to get here has been hard. And now, I mean, Todd, there’s nothing wrong with me that this is normal, you know, it’s huge bullshit. But anyway, we could talk about that all day. Hey . Yeah. Well, and speaking of medical gas, lighting, like my story with birth control, I was put on birth control pill at 15 and I was not sexually active, but I had horrific periods as a teenager.

Like the worst cramps you could possibly imagine. I could soak like a super plus plus plus tampon in like two hours. So like changing tampons, constantly leaking and bleeding through terrible cramps, um, passing. Um, I also had ovarian CYS and I had a, a couple of ruptures of ovarian CYS that like rendered me basically like bedridden for two days.

Yeah. While it like resolved, I mean like horrible stuff and. Bless my mother, she didn’t know, like my mother has her own menstrual trauma. And like back in the, in the late nineties, like that’s what you did, right? Mm-hmm because there wasn’t information, like there is now mm-hmm . Um, so I don’t blame my mom at all, but she took me to the OB GYN and the OB GYN is like, well, with these symptoms, you probably have endometriosis or the beginnings of endometriosis.

And the only thing we can do for you so that you can have children in the future is put you on the pill. And so of course, as a 15 year old with my uninformed mother and I’m uninformed myself, this doctor, and a white coat who has a medical degree and like letters behind her name is telling me that this is what I need to do in order to have children one day.

So of course I’m like, okay, I’ll do it. You know? And I did. And thankfully my experience with birth control was as soon as I got off birth control, I was able to get pregnant right away. Um, but I know that’s not the experience for a lot of women. Birth control renders a lot of women in fertile. I mean, the thing is with birth control, it’s such a controversial topic.

I mean, we were kids in the nineties, right. They were just pumped out like smart it’s here. Go God. There’s no question. Oh, thank you very much. Okay. But I think now there’s a lot more awareness. The younger women that I’m working with are being a much more challenging around it. Like, I don’t want that shit in my body.

Yeah. Um, and I think, but unfortunately for the most practitioners, there are some incredible doctors who are stepping out of the conventional medicine kind of blinkered approach and training in lifestyle and functional medicine that are offering incredible services to, with particularly around women’s health, but standard kind of process are that doctor is exactly right there.

Isn’t anything generally available for what, in the big bracket of women’s health. Um, other than Contra hormonal contraceptives, synthetic hormones or psychiatric medication like antidepressants. And those are like really all they’ve got available to them. That is it, you know, and yet, so much could be changed to improve women’s symptoms by understanding what is going on in the body and taking this lifestyle approach for some women, those hormones, and that medication is, you know, an absolute savior.

That’s what, you know, that’s what they have. But there is so much these things can’t be done in isolation is my personal view. And I think we need there’s so much that can be improved. Um, Through lifestyle through having that full assessment and understanding, well, can you talk about some improvements that people can make through lifestyle for their cycle?

Oh my gosh. There’s so much. So look, I think the understanding that how to do this is to really remember, first of all, women are cyclical. Men are linear. Okay. So every single month women go through this cycl, the cyclical process of our hormones, Ebo, ebbing, and flowing men’s hormones. Do exactly the same thing from birth to death.

Right? Pretty much they slightly decline, but on a day to day basis, nothing is changing. Okay. Whereas for us, it’s changing every single day. The levels of different hormones that we have in our body are fluctuating and changing. And when you think back to me saying these, that it affects everything yet, we’re expected to show up in the same way every single day.

Okay. The same thing, every single day approach is depleting us. It’s making us sick, doing the same kind of X. Size of regimes eating the same kind of way, do the same kind of socializing, still working in the same way, going, going, going, going, going, men can last a lot longer that way than women can because we have this natural draw to slow down, you know, and that is why so many women find their late new till like, like that PMT stage.

So challenging because we are still pushing through we’re going at a hundred miles an hour still and not slowing down our body’s screaming at us to stop and slow down. And that shows up in these symptoms, you know, that’s one of the reasons. So, first of all, I think it’s to honor the fact that we cycle, you know, track your cycle.

If you are not naturally cycling because you are pregnant or you are on the pill or something you can track with the moon, you know, and on my website, I’ve got a video that explains how to do this in a free tracker. You can download and start to look at your unique rhythm and patterns and start to see, oh my gosh, I feel really horny at that time, over the month.

And actually the other time month, literally leaving on my own, you know? And then once you start to gather this data, you can start to apply it to your diary and. Everything starts to change. Okay. So just understanding this cycle, this isn’t woooooo, this isn’t hippy dippy BS. It works. It’s scientifically proven wherever we flow.

So depending where our hormones are, we can match to our energy in our life. And if we can’t completely do that, we can learn to buffer it, you know, to see you’ve gotta go and do a presentation at work when you are premenstrual. Make sure either side of that, you’ve got buffered downtime on your own.

You’re not going up partying that evening afterwards, you know, really honoring how you want to. And then where, where it comes to looking at the hormones themselves. We have to think hormones, aren’t all created equal. Okay. Hormones come in a hierarchy and the queen B is cortisol our stress hormone, right?

So when as most of us are pumping out cortisol all the time, just because everything is pinging and dinging and demanding our attention CORs always only supposed to come out as I’m sure your listeners are really familiar with when the bear’s about to eat us. And then it goes away. Again, really, you know, it’s involved enough of 24 hours CA rhythm, but largely it’s, it’s just meant to save our lives, but its out all the time and when it’s saving our lives, it plays this amazing role at kind of shutting down a lot of our body systems so that we survive.

We don’t need to digest our food. As we’re running away from the bear. We don’t need to get pregnant as we’re running away from the bear. So it shuts down our libido. It affects our thyroid function. It slows all this stuff down until we’re away from the danger in our modern lifestyles. We’re never getting away from the danger.

And so this cortisol is kind of going into overdrive and shutting all these other hormones down. So it prevents insulin insulin, which is a hormone that supports our blood sugar regulation from working properly. Cuz the cortisol is like, no honey, you are not putting that energy into the cells. I need it in the blood to run, but that’s fine if it’s for a few minutes, but when it’s all day, every day you start to get fatigued.

You’re not metabolizing your food properly. You’re not getting that energy because insulin insulin isn’t allowed to work properly. So then our brain’s going, oh my God, I’m in danger. Grab the carbs, grab something sweet because I need this energy. And it’s all just sitting in the blood until the body then starts to go as its backup system.

I’ve got too much sugar in my blood, stick it on the stomach as adipose tissue. It’s fast, stick it there. We need to get it outta the blood. And then what does adipose tissue produce estrogen? So then we start to get into affecting estro dominance. So we get into this real mess. What we’re doing is sat at our desk, typing away.

You know, there’s this kind of like, you know, we sat in front of Netflix eating a chocolate bar, not realizing that there’s this massive stress response going on in the body where the hormones aren’t even, you know, able to work. And so when CORs always out sit Sheline is out. You could like progesterone, Rin, testosterone, melatonin.

These are all right at the bottom. So if these ones at the top aren’t working properly, the others have kind of got no hope. And then we go, well, have we got so much infertility? Well, because women aren’t ovulating, you know, because we’re under so much stress and we’re not living sick key and we’re on the keto diet and we’re intimate and fasting.

And we’re basically did everything that shuts our system down and then going, I don’t understand, you know, what’s happening. So we need to understand the hormones within a hierarchy. And that’s where the work that you offer is so important because the nervous system and the hormone system are inextricably linked.

Absolutely. So I’m just like snapping my fingers and like yeah, just nodding. Um, people can’t see that, but yeah. So let’s talk about the connection between the nervous system and the endocrine system. Let’s talk about that. So the they’re like they’re what their HQ is the hypothalamus, right? It’s like the control center in our brain.

The that’s where all our like end queen system is kind of managed our hormone system and our nervous system. So when our nervous system is dysregulated, it’s sending messages to the hormone system to respond, you know, how we feel. So when the hypothalamus is perceiving a threat, which our brain hasn’t evolved to decipher between the white noise of our never ending to do list and an actual, real danger, it’s just thinking we’re in danger.

It’s sending this message to the body, to pump out the hormones, to save our lives. And so when that one’s out of balance, for example, Um, if the, you know, the way that the hormones are affecting, the, the nervous system would be like, I just explained around insulin, you know, if the hormones that, that insulin isn’t working properly.

So the nervous system perceives that as a threat and creates a stress response. So they just work there in partnership. They have to be regulated. Anything you can do to soothe your nervous system will support your hormone health. They they’re like they’re sisters. They work together. Does that make sense?

It makes total sense. Yes. And I wanna just echo, um, so I used to be a health coach. I’m a certified health coach. I can talk. All day, every day about diets and healing diets and gut health and supplements and all the things. And I got outside of that paradigm. Whenever I realized that I was giving people a bunch of recommendations for supplements and having them restrict diets and all of that, to try to help with symptoms.

But we were never like going upstream to the nervous system, which the autonomic nervous system controls everything in our body that’s AU automatic, right? Like that’s where the word autonomic comes from is from automatic. So it controls our heart rate, our respiration, our hormone production, our digestion, our elimination, um, our sleep cycles, our blood pressure, blood sugar, like all of those things are being controlled by the autonomic nervous system.

But yet you go to. The gynecologist for the reproductive issue. And you go to the immunologist for the autoimmune issue and you go to the cardiologist for the heart issue and you go to the GI doctor for the gastrointestinal issue, but none of those practitioners are like comparing notes with each other and going, Hey, the symptoms that she’s experiencing in her gut and the symptoms she’s experiencing in her cycle and the symptoms she’s experiencing with her sleep and the symptoms she’s experiencing with her immune system, all of those are connected together through the autonomic nervous system.

And so anything that we do to support our nervous systems has this natural trickle down effect, and it automatically supports the rest of our bodies. Um, So I wanted to say that. And then the other thing that came up for me is even though I don’t do health coaching anymore, I’m really thankful that I have that background because I’ve had a few clients come to me and they’re experiencing really bad anxiety.

And anytime someone is experiencing anxiety, I always always ask them, how are you eating? How often are you eating? How much are you eating? And every single time so far, um, I’m either dealing with a woman who’s intermittent fasting, or I’m dealing with a woman who isn’t consciously intermittent fasting, but she.

Skipping breakfast because yeah, she’s too busy or she’s getting kids out the door in the morning for school or whatever. Um, or just a woman who’s like not meeting her body’s hunger cues. So like she feels hunger, but she doesn’t go eat because she’s busy or she’s trying to finish something up or whatever.

And so they have that like blood sugar imbalance. Right. And so the cortisol is like elevated in the morning to the point that they’re feeling really anxious in the morning and having those morning panic attacks and like waking up in a panic. And it’s not because they have an anxiety disorder it’s because their nervous system is in threat mode.

Because their body is like, I’m starving. Like I need food and I’m not getting enough food. So what you’re saying is exactly right. It pumps up cortisol, cortisol affects insulin, both are fat storage, hormones, mm-hmm . And then we start putting on the weight and, you know, but if we’re not actually meeting those needs for food, then our nervous system is always gonna be on alert because it perceives that we are starving, that there is a famine and we need to pack on the pounds and hold them there because that’s, what’s gonna sustain us through this famine.

Exactly. And what do you, you know, what do most women do when they wake up in the morning? Oh my God. I feel knackered. I’m a bit shaking. I’m gonna have a cup of coffee on an empty stomach. Oh yeah. Caffeine that cortisol that, oh my gosh. Shooting up. That’s like, oh my gosh. Shall we then like, we just.

Feeding this cortisol adrenaline, adrenal gowns are like pushing out, getting this cortisol, going and going, going the best way to bring cortisol down is to eat something really nourishing, you know, within an hour of waking up. Yeah. Get up, hydrate yourself with something that, having something like an adrenal cocktail, which is just some salt, you know, quarter tea spin of he OLS squeeze a lemon in it will nourish your adrenals and then eat something within an hour.

Women don’t eat enough. You know, we’ve I have like a 1200 egg, like 500 calories a day. What I’d be eating my own arm off on that. You know, we have to have really good nourishing food, the proteins, the good fat, you know, get good facts. Don’t be fat. Doesn’t make you fat. No eat the good fat nourish your body.

Lots of green veggies. Really. You know, your cortisol will go down because your body’s getting all the stuff it needs. If we strip it right back, it all makes sense. It doesn’t have to be complicated. Just eat three times a day. Some good food. Yeah. You know, protein, carbs and fat every meal, like yeah. Um, yeah, totally.

You will do wonders for yourself and yeah, just balancing that circadian rhythm, you know, men and women have this 24 hour circadian rhythm that is dependent on, as you say, cortisol and melatonin, their sister, hormones, women have this second in a timekeeper, the INFR rhythm, which is our monthly cycle. And if that’s Ciad rhythm that 24-hour rhythm is out, it’s gonna massively affect the INFR rhythm.

You know, they, they work together. So one way, you know, if your cycle is out your just because your cycle, your menstrual cycle is showing issues, it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with your reproductive organs. And this is what we’re talking about. It being a vital sign, you know, is it a vital sign or what does that mean?

It means. How your cycle is, is an indicator of your overall health. It doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with your womb or your Aries. It’s saying to you, listen, there is something wrong. It could be something to do with your thyroid. It could be a blood sugar imbalance. It could be trauma. You know, trauma has a huge impact on our cycle.

And yet we would never link the two necessarily. Right. You know, your gynecologist definitely. Isn’t gonna link that won. No, no. And if you said it, you’d probably get a funny look, but I work with women whose cycle has just gone or completely over patient and they’ve experienced trauma. . Yeah. So is there, listen to her, she listen to her while she whispers, before she starts screaming at you.

That’s fucking right. I say that all the time, when we start listening to our bodies, when they whisper, they don’t have to scream. And the thing is, we ha we keep going and going and going. And how many women are crash landing into premenopause. Yeah, because you think, you know, you think of that 24 hour Acadian rhythm, right.

We mess with that through jet lag say, or when our babies don’t sleep or whatever it is, we mess with our Acadian rhythm for one day. How shit do you feel? Yeah. You feel horrible and have to recover. Now you think of your INFR rhythm. How many women have ignored their monthly cycle for months, years, decades.

And then we get to per and our body is amazing. It’s kept us going. It’s kept us going. And then it gets to premenopause it’s like, oh, out lady, like, no, no more. I’ve kept you going have those symptoms, you know? Yeah. And it’s like, oh my gosh, what fresh hell is this? Because menopausal symptoms are.

Lifestyle related. And we know this because women all around the world experience it differently. Some cultures dunno what you’re talking about. They’re like, what, what is this? Whereas other countries, they experience like pain in their shoulders, women in the Western world, particularly America and the UK have the worst.

Menopause symptoms. And that is lifestyle related because we’ve lived like this. We are a generation of women who are the most educated who have worked and raised for, you know, our stress levels continuously on a daily basis, a, a huge peak. And as you can hear from how we’ve been speaking, this has had a massive chronic effect on the health of our hormones.

And then we hit this wall in like our early to mid forties and go, what is this? What does happened to me? yeah. And we can’t continue. And then we go, there’s something wrong with me. There’s something wrong, me. I’m going mad. I’m going crazy. I can’t, I keep forgetting everything. I’m not sleeping. I’m really snapping at my family, blah, blah.

There’s something wrong with me’s not your hormones are completely exhausted. Your nervous system is probably completely wired. You’ve got lifestyle has got adapt to the season of the life that you are. As a, as a woman, we have to listen to what is going on. Hormonal. Hear her and lifestyle. We can’t. Do in our forties, what we were doing in our twenties and expect to feel the same.

We just can’t. Yeah. Hey, gimme one second to go to the restroom really fast. Yeah, I’ll be right back. This is so great.

Okay, thank you. um, honey. Yeah. So, um, I, I love everything that you just said. It, it aligns so much with like my own personal experience. Um, and we kind of alluded to this earlier about the, you know, I, I don’t wanna blame like patriarchy and capitalism for everything, but I do see that like, because of the combination of patriarchy and capitalism, there is this expectation that women can do everything that men can do.

Women can work and, and raise kids and have educations and all of that, just like men can. And I’m not like I’m not gonna be the kind of feminist that’s like, no, actually we can’t do that, but I am kind of the kind of feminist that’s like, But why would you want to, because you’re going to pay for it with your health later.

Like yes, you can be educated and have a career and raise children and be successful and be all of that. But if it’s just going to deplete you, then why would you want to. And I, I recognize that might be a very anti-feminist thing to say no, for me, I firmly call myself a feminist. Okay. My great granny trained herself to parliament as part of the SRO movement.

And she lives on through me. I am. Feminist to every cell in my body. Okay. However, I think what happened, and this is just my opinion was we saw this wave of feminism that did amazing things for us in terms of opportunities, having choice over our body as to when we got pregnant. But to do that, we had to step into our masculine.

Yes. The way we were had to be seen to be successful was to act like men. And that has been at the, a cost. I think that has been a huge cost, but it’s pushed us forward in terms of choice and freedoms. But I think it’s created, as you say, other issues for us, we’ve had to choose our heart. And I think also for many people, many women and families, they’re in financial situations where it’s just not a choice anymore.

They need two working parents. And what hard do we choose? And I think. It’s what, whereas women stepped into this masculine arena of professional world and, you know, being able to choose whether we have kids impacting our lives, what didn’t go was the domestic responsibility. Women held all of that as well.

So men didn’t step into the more feminine, traditionally feminine roles. We just held it all. So when you look at the overburden that women have men and women now both have a work responsibility. And, um, just say Dr. Libby Weaver talks, um, about this as well, but men and women have, um, this work responsibility and.

Women. That’s kind of generally where it stops. Okay. Then women tend to still hold domestic duty. Although, you know, that is hopefully changing and that’s stepping up more. But the other three things that women still tend to largely hold are the invisible load. So all the shit that just gets done that no one sees to make life happen.

The mental load, where does everyone need to be today? What needs to happen? What needs to be packed? What da, da, what needs to be done and the emotional load. How is everybody? There’s a child having a tan tantrum and I’m meltdown. I’ve gotta deal with this before I get out the door. So what we see in many heterosexual couples.

Largely still. And I run a lot of women’s circles and hold a lot of space for women. And this is a theme that I experience. It might not be everybody’s that those in heterosexual couples, the partner kind of the male partner kind of gets up in the morning, has his breakfast go see a laid out and off to work.

And the, the women’s morning is like a military operation to get out the job before they even get to work. Okay. This is what we tend to see. That is huge. And that is every day with no break. What impact is that on our nervous system and our hormonal health? Yeah. And what impact is that? Having? We cannot do it all and the way to then switch off I can, I know what I should be doing.

I know I should be going to the yoga class. I know I should be doing my breath work. I know I should be doing X, Y, and Z, but actually all I’ve got the capacity for is to pour a glass of wine, eat bar chocolate in front of the TV. Yeah, because that could tired because it’s, it’s me to like, almost have permission to go.

I can’t do it. Mm-hmm and I don’t want to, I don’t want to, I don’t want to be, I either wanna be an amazing career woman or like be at home mom or find some way to make it work, like to do both is gonna have an impact. And if there is a woman listening to this is like, well, I’m doing both and I’m doing it amazingly.

I take my hat off to you and I salute you. Yes. Because if you please call in and let us know how you’re doing it . Yeah, because I yet to meet a woman who has that. And I think something that we don’t acknowledge is sometimes I said to my husband, without me knowing it, the minute I met you, I gave up my career because it was not sustainable for me to stay in that role as a mother of two small children and still feel well, it was not an option available to me.

And I thought I knew a lot about health and I looked after myself and all the shoulds. Right. It wasn’t available to me, but it’s made, he’s still doing the same thing. Yeah. You know that, and that was a choice I unconsciously made. yeah, that’s powerful. I didn’t even have a language in my, my vocabulary until probably 2017, I would say.

And I remember the day, um, my husband was working full time outside the home. He had a really successful career as the director of technology for an organic food company. Um, I had always homeschooled our kids. So I was home with the kids 24 7, doing all the domestic things, um, taking care of their educations, taking care of taking them to the pediatrician or the chiropractor, or, you know, all the appointments that it, it seems like, and I’m not dogging on dads here.

Okay. I’m not do on dads, but it seems like fathers rarely take their children to the doctor. Like that always seems to fall to the mother. You know, mothers are the ones going to parent teacher conferences. Mothers are the ones like helping out with school projects. And again, I’m not saying that dads don’t help, but what you are saying is true because my husband and I have had fights.

Over what you just said about, I’m still keeping track of everyone’s schedule in my head. I’m still trying to figure out who has to be, where at what time, and can I take them both and all of that, I’m still checking in on. Um, I call it, it’s like the emotional thermostat of my home of just like seeing where is, where is the emotional thermostat of my home?

Like, how is everyone’s emotional health? How are we connecting as a family? When was the last time we had family dinner? Like, what do we need to be talking to our kids about? Like, I’m the one who’s typically initiating all of that kind of stuff. So, yes. And I remember having this conversation with my husband, where I was like, look, I appreciate that you would get up and you go to work every day.

I appreciate that you bring home the majority of income for our family. I appreciate that so much. And also. You get to come home after work and you play with the kids and then you help get them to bed. And you’re always like fun daddy and the kids get that part of you. And that’s such a gift and I’m glad you’re giving it to them, but I don’t ever get to give my kids fun, mommy, because I’m exhausted all the time because I don’t get the break.

You come home from work and play with the kids and I’m still cleaning, cooking dinner, cleaning up the mess from dinner, planning, dinner tomorrow, keeping track of everyone’s schedules. Like, and that never stops for me. Like the only time that stops for me is when I’m sleeping. And as soon as I wake up the next morning, it starts all over again.

And like, he, he was just like, oh my God, I had no idea that that was what it was like for you. Oh, my God. I, you know what? I really wanna speak to something that you, that around how you presented that, because that is so many women’s real experiences and people are gonna listen to this and someone’s gonna be triggered somewhere listening to this.

And it’s gonna seem like there’s this man bashing, but, and this is why, because there is this response when women authentically share their experience, that is always someone who goes up in arms and goes, you’re attacking men. Yeah. You just, that is absolutely not what this is. No women need a safe space to share their truth without being shut down by somebody, accusing them of slagging men off.

That is not what it is. It’s having a really open and honest discussion about the imbalances that exist. Because if we don’t create a safe space to have these discussions, nothing’s gonna change, right. And women’s health and therefore our childrens mental and emotional wellbeing is being influenced by all of this stuff.

The more we just keep going and going, I said to my husband, do you go to work and say, my wife’s really good with the kids and around the house, I was like, how many women say that? How many women go, oh, I really, you know, he’s so good. But you know, we have to like preempt everything. My husband doesn’t do that about me.

Yeah. You know, because it’s just expected. That I’m good with the kids is expected. I’m good at home because I was born with a vagina. Yeah. You know, it’s that, what is we have to normalize that this is not about flagging men off. This is the patriarchal culture that we exist in that is broken. It’s not men, you know, it’s about having these conversations.

And we don’t like, for me, it’s about moving away from us having to feel like we have to apologize and fluff it up beforehand, going, I’m not saying this expressing our truth and saying, this is my experience. And I am entitled to share it and speak about it in a way without being attacked and being accused of something I’m not doing when I share my truth.

Does that make sense? Yeah, it makes total sense completely. Yeah. And you know, we were talking about gender imbalances earlier and you know, this will probably get me canceled. So just, I’m just gonna say that I’m expecting to be canceled over this, but, you know, I understand that. Traditional gender roles where like the man is the breadwinner and he goes out and he earns the paycheck and the woman stays home with the child and she takes care of the house and the cooking and all of that.

Like, I know that people roll their eyes a lot at that. And they’re like, we need to get out of that. Like that’s oppressive to women and you know, all this kind of stuff. And if, if you feel that way, that’s fine. That’s totally fine. But the more that I have come to honor myself and my body as a woman, my womb, my cycle, um, the way that my cycle, like the more I take care of myself, the more time I spend outside connecting to the earth, like the more my cycle is synced up with the moon and has been for years.

And the minute that that goes away, the my cycle timing gets thrown off. So I’m like fully in support of women who want to stay home and raise the babies and be homemakers and keepers of their homes and men who go out and earn the paycheck. Um, and if that’s not what you want, that’s fine. Like, I’m not saying that that has to be for everyone.

Again, somebody’s gonna get triggered. So I’m just like preemptively saying all that. But when you have a partner who can support you at home, who doesn’t just get off work and sit in front of the TV and turn the TV on and watch, you know, the football game all night while you’re still doing dinner and bath time and cleanup.

And all of that, like for me, having a helpful partner after I had this conversation with him and he realized the imbalance that was there. And he stepped up and he was like, you’re absolutely right. You’re right. It’s not fair that you have to do that. And I’m not saying that, like I still don’t mentally keep track of people’s schedules.

I do. I’m still generally the one with my pulse, my finger on the pulse of like the emotional health of our home. Um, that does still typically follow me. And I do still express my frustration to my husband about it. Um, because in a lot of ways, I’m like, I want you to do this too. I want you to care about this as much as I care about this.

Um, but I’m also so, so honored to like, I ha I lived the traditional traditional and air quotes, gender role of like being a stay at home mother home with my kids. And when my partner started stepping up and really taking some of that burden off of me when he got home, like it made me have more joy in being a mother and a wife and a keeper of the home.

And like, I never felt like. You know, oh, there’s all these successful women over here, but I’m just a mom. You know, it was never like that. I always knew that being a mother was the hardest job in the world. I always knew that raising my babies was gonna be like my life’s work, you know? Um, and I had no problems with that.

And I just wish that women knew that the more you understand about your body and the more you like sync up with your cycle and you respect it and you honor it, like your life falls into a rhythm where I personally have seen that my focus on my home becomes a blessing and not a burden when I am connected with my cycle and honoring my body mm-hmm and it’s only whenever I stop honoring my body.

And I start trying to live in that like masculine go, go, go mode all the time that I become resentful of my family, of my kids, of my husband. Mm-hmm so. Even having a better family life for me, a big piece of that is how I’m honoring my body and living in sync with the cycles of my body. That was like a very long and windy thing to say.

That was beautiful. And, and for me, I so much of what you’re saying there is about choice. So, you know, you choosing to step, you know, that role of actually I wanna be in the more traditional roles, if you are in relationships. It’s, to me, it’s like that masculine and feminine energy. If there is somebody, if you, you are in a heterosexual relationship and there’s a male who wants to take on that role because you wanna be out and do the career, that’s amazing because that’s, you’re not holding it all.

You know, it’s about having these conversations and something that’s really with me at the moment is the just saying, we choose your heart. And is it, do you want to choose the heart? Holding everything and doing everything because this is the narrative we’ve been told to be a good woman and a good wife.

We’ve got to be amazing at our career, amazing at home, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Do we hold of that at the heart of our health suffering? Yeah. Or do we choose to have difficult conversations with those who love us? And, you know, I would take this away. If this, if you are in an abusive relationship, I would avoid these conversations because they would be used in the wrong way.

But to sit down and say, I don’t wanna do this anymore. I wanna sit down with you and says, yes, it’s gonna be difficult. And yes, it might feel a bit exhausting and yes, it’s gonna take time to keep pushing it. But isn’t that about making the choice of the hard now so that your health doesn’t suffer later because your hormones cannot keep holding you through this.

And, you know, I know I talk about crash landing into premenopause HRT. Isn’t just the answer. You know, it’s not this golden ticket. Everything has to change around it to support that and get the most out of it. So let’s ease that journey and have the difficult conversations. So our daughters don’t have.

Absolutely. Yeah. And speaking of daughters, um, I know you’ve got kids, you have girls, right? Mm-hmm do you have girls? Yeah. Seven and nine. Yeah. Okay. So they haven’t hit periods yet? Not yet, but she, you know, I, I go in and teach about periods in schools and mom and daughter circles. So I feel like they’re kind of, they’ve probably got more information than most adult women at the moment.

yeah. Yeah. So I would love if, if you’re open to it, I would love to talk about, um, I know there’s a lot of moms who, you know, I guess I’ll just share like my menstrual trauma story or I guess it’s my mom’s, but it was sort of like passed down to me. Um, so when my mother was a child, she was very, very poor.

Um, like they, they really lit like dirt poor. Um, and so they did not have the money for my mom to have. A lot of period products. And of course back then, you know, tampons were like very, very new. Um, there, we didn’t have period underwear back then. We didn’t have the diva cup, you know? And so what my mom had for her for several years of administration was the old fashioned garb belt.

And if, if people don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s like literally a belt that you wear around your waist, but it has these like straps with snaps or clips. And you like strap your pad into those clips. And that’s what you wear during your period. And like you can wear underwear over it or whatever.

Um, but it, my mom just told me like what a pain in the ass, it was to deal with these straps and wearing these garter belts and like all this stuff. And then of course later they invented like adhesive. Pads and pads with wings and all of that. But for the majority of us who were in our thirties or forties, our mothers did not have that.

Um, and with my mom being poor, her family couldn’t afford to buy menstrual products so that she had like plenty of pads. And so they had enough money for her to have one pad per day. And so first couple days of your period, like one pad per day is not enough mm-hmm . And so my mom remembers like blood trickling down her legs in school and her underwear or her pants getting stained because they only had the money for one pad for her per day.

And she remembers like smelling bad and, and just all of this stuff. And so when I was starting, my period, of course, the perspective that my mom was teaching me about my period through was her own, which was this very traumatic, like. Her period was not a blessing to her. It was a curse. No, it was a curse every month that she was gonna smell bad.

She was gonna have stained clothes. Like she was gonna be uncomfortable. It was not a blessing for her. Um, and so then my period was not a blessing for me for a very, very long time. And I had these horrific periods as a teenager. I was put on birth control at 15, um, got off, had two babies with no problems.

And then the period symptoms came right back. Um, so obviously the birth control didn’t heal anything. And I had to figure it out the way that we are talking about through diet and supporting my body, listening to my body, honoring my cycle, all of that. So when my daughter started menstruating, um, which was gosh, four, four years ago now, um, five years ago now my goodness.

Um, she’s 17. So. My daughter, um, I, I just wanted her to have a totally different experience and I did not want her to see her period as this awful curse or this inconvenience or this dirty, gross thing that we couldn’t ever talk about. Um, and so, you know, we read books together about men arc and we, um, I let her choose, like if she wanted to use reusable pads or if she wanted to use period underwear, or if she wanted to try a cup, um, like we had all those conversations and when she started her period, this is like, I just think that this is such a redemption story.

My daughter started her period on the, on a, uh, lunar eclipse of a new moon. So it was like, I’m like, oh my God, you were like this magical, like . Um, so I remember it and just being like, oh my God, of course, of course you would start your period on a LUN clips of a new moon. Um, or it may have been a solar eclipse, but it was a new moon.

I know, for sure. And there wasn’t an eclipse happening. I just don’t remember if it was LUN or solar, but. anyway, the, and we celebrated it. Like I invited two of my best girlfriends over who my daughter has grown up with. And she sees them as like, sort of like mentors that she can talk to outside of me.

Um, and we took a sauna, the four of us together and like us three adult women, like shared period stories. And, um, I have one friend who has a degree in anthropology. And so she told like some anthropological tales of like menstruation from civilizations in the past. And we just had this beautiful conversation about bleeding and being women and in the context of the sauna, um, and my sauna at that time, we’ve since painted it.

But at the time our sauna was red. And so I had just finished reading the book, the red tent, and I was like, oh my God, we’re having this like red tent, like ceremony for my daughter and her first period. And. And it was just wonderful. And like, my daughter’s been bleeding for five years now and she, she has chosen, she doesn’t wanna use anything that goes up into her vagina.

So she uses, uh, washable pads and she uses period underwear. Um, she does not see her period as a curse. She doesn’t have symptoms, she doesn’t have cramping or heavy bleeding. She doesn’t get breast centerness she gets a little bit irritable in the week before her cycle, but I just skip her space because I know that that’s what she needs, because that’s what I need before I bleed.

And it’s, I, I truly feel like in doing that, I was able to heal some ancestral trauma through that and like create a different lineage for my daughter than the one that I came from. So I’m curious, um, what kinds of ceremonies or special things that maybe you plan to do or that some of the people you work with do with their daughters when they first start bleeding?

Lindsay, I cannot tell you how much joy it gives me to hear you say that because I truly believe that if we start to change this narrative, just as you have with our daughters, women will step into their power. Our womb is the center of our feminine power. Our cyclical nature is our power, which is why we’ve been taught to suppress it right within the culture that we live in and this massive movement towards celebrating menarchy.

They said that only get you only get your first period once. Yeah. Okay. And what this, you know, this may sound a bit dramatic to some people, but. That narrative and that experience of our first period can have long term impact on how we experience our body, even linking through to, um, eating disorders and how we treat our bodies.

Because when we’re taught to hate this thing that our body does, we’re taught to lo it, we’re taught to fear it. We’re taught to shut it down and pretend it’s not there. It’s a sign of weakness, which is all the opposites of those things. And what we’re seeing is that when girls celebrate this and see that it’s not, so to be ashamed of it completely changes their narrative.

So I run something called first moon circles. Which are mother daughter circles. And they come with their moms and all these like tween girls kind of walk in like, oh my gosh, I cannot believe my mom has made come here. And within two or three hours, they have turned into these empowered Queens who are like, yes, I’m so excited to get my period.

And they, you know, one of the things we do in those circles is to, they sit with their mom and they lead on how they want to celebrate it. And that can be from sitting on the sofa, having a cuddle, watching a DVD, to having a full on period party and anything in between. So I offer lots of suggestions, but one of the things I suggest to moms who.

See this, that their daughter’s kind of stepping into their womanhood is to create a box of celebration that they can gift them when they get their first lead. And that can include things like a beautiful journal, a lovely pen, a nice hot water bottle, maybe some really beautiful chocolate, maybe a piece of red jewelry, a red crystal, like whatever it is that you think your daughter will like, because I believe every woman should have a period box.

Okay. Because those couple of days for your period where you are like, leave me alone, I’ve got lock on my bedroom door and not for the naughty staff. It’s for me where my period is due to lock myself away for my family and be like, leave me alone. This is my time. And I pull my period box out, which is a beautiful box.

And inside it is the most beautiful chocolate. It’s a big, soft, fluffy socks, because if we have cold feet, we have a cold womb. We need to keep on going warm. Mm-hmm I have in. Beautiful mug. I have my favorite moon journal. I have a beautiful pen. I open that box. I have gorgeous, essential oils and aura sprays.

I open it up and it’s like a retreat. And if you gift your daughter a little box like that, she can continue to build on that and see her monthly cycle as something to look forward to. Something to go. Yes, I get my box out. This is my time. The last thing you wanna do when your parents starts like, oh, where’s the hot water bottle.

Where did I put that oil? Where’s that? It’s just there. Yeah. Already for you to nourish yourself. So that’s something that moms can do, but you know, just see what your daughter wants. Does she wanna go out for a family meal? If your partner is open? If her dad is open, ask, how do you wanna be. You know, let’s change the narrative around dads as well.

How do you want to talk to your dad about your period? They might be like, what, you know, actually, it’s really beautiful for a father to speak to his thought about it. Maybe give her a little piece of jewelry with a red stone in it that she can keep forever. Yeah. You know, to acknowledge that. And I think we have to remove this thing that it’s the talk we had.

I’ve had the talk with her about periods. It’s done. This is an ongoing conversation because the way we speak about our daughter’s bodies and with our daughters is gonna change from when they’re three and when they’re 13 and when they’re 21, you know, but what you are doing is saying I’m creating a safe space for you, where you do not have to feel ashamed about what your body is doing.

Okay. And you can, she can then gauge, you know, so many girls think it’s normal to be in this incredible pain, have the symptoms you experience. Cause they dunno what’s normal. And actually, if you are leading the way and saying, this is what it should be like, and you’re like, actually, you know, how is your blood, how are you feeling?

Actually, we need to go get some further investigation into this or cuz that’s not right. Although, you know, periods don’t really settle until our early twenties. So don’t worry about that. You know, they don’t go into this NA rhythm straight away. So just, but just let her lead, listen to her, say I’m so excited.

I can see how your body’s changing that, you know, your, your menarchy is gonna be here soon. How would you like to celebrate that? Cause I would love to celebrate her with you. Mm yeah. And just let her lead. Absolutely. And I hope for people listening, like you can see how. You may not even remember your first period.

You may not remember the conversations that your mom did or didn’t have with you, or you may remember it. And it was very traumatic because you didn’t have any support. You didn’t have any products on hand. You didn’t know how to use them. Like you didn’t have any education about your body. Um, like you may have been really freaked out.

And so I hope people see that, like, if that was happening to you at 10, 11, 12, 13 years old, subconsciously that created. A threat in your nervous system around your cycle. And so the underlying belief is this is uncomfortable. This is painful. This is something I don’t talk about. This is dirty. This is something to be ashamed of.

I definitely can’t talk about this with men around. And your nervous system is carrying that for all of those years. Like your, your mind may not remember, but your body keeps the score. And absolutely, and I would absolutely encourage any moms who are listening, um, to really openly talk about cycles with not only their daughters, but also with their sons, because yes, you know, you may have a gay son and that’s fine, but our world is better when men know about women’s cycles too.

Mm-hmm . And when men start to have education and understand how to honor women in their cycles and like, that’s something I’m so thankful that my husband does. Yeah. Um, Every month. And I think, go ahead. I’m so glad that you raised that Lindsay, because I think one of the things that can be mistaken is when we’re talking about menstrual education, that this is still remains, this female only space, and that’s not the case.

We need our guys to come on this journey with us. And most of them probably are gonna put their hands up and go, oh yes, please. We’ve gotta probably lead that conversation. So I really wanna sit down and just talk to you that each day my body’s fluctuating and changing and the things that I need from our relationship and the way we run our home, it’s gonna be different.

Can I talk to you about that? Because most partners just want you to be happy, but they’re not gonna understand it cuz their body doesn’t go through this. We have to take our guys on this journey with us. Oh, my, so thank you for raising me. Yeah. And so I just decided like, again, we didn’t talk about periods in my house.

Like my mom and I would go to the bathroom and shut the door, you know, like we didn’t talk about it in front of the, my brothers or my stepdad. And so I decided like it’s gonna be different in my house because like I bleed, my husband knows I bleed, we might as well fucking be able to talk about it. And my husband has a daughter.

He knows she’s gonna bleed. Um, there’s also a brother involved, you know, like my, we have a son and he’s straight. So chances are he, he has a mom who bleeds. He has a sister who bleeds. He’s probably gonna have a girlfriend and a wife one day who bleeds. So like he should know about it and it doesn’t have to be weird or whatever.

Um, but the other thing was. I think it’s difficult for men when they don’t understand how women’s bodies work and what it’s like for us. Like they, it can start to create like tension in a relationship. Yeah, absolutely. When every month you’re like in a bad mood and you’re feeling irritable and you don’t wanna be touched.

And if man doesn’t understand what’s going on in your body, he can take that personally and be like, why are you such a bitch every month? You know, like what did I do? Um, but for me and my son and my husband being able to be like, um, Hey guys, I’m actually not gonna go with you to, to town because I’m bleeding and I really need to stay home and take care of my body.

Now they have an understanding, whereas it’s not me trying to keep a secret about what’s happening with my body and not talk about it. So then they don’t understand why mom wants to stay home. They don’t understand why mom needs to lock herself in her bedroom and like, you know, play her spiritual music and spray or sprays everywhere.

Like, but when, when you talk about it, then they understand, and they don’t internalize that as something that they’re doing wrong, that they need to fix. It’s like, they, you can say, actually I’m just bleeding and like, I just need some space. And you can say that to your sons too. Like, and isn’t that showing, I mean, can imagine if we kind of like, if we’re in a heterosexual relationship and we date a guy and he goes, is it your period coming up?

Don’t worry. I’ve like, I’m on it with the kids, the done. I’d be like, oh my God, I’ve never felt more horny in my life. You know what I mean? It’s like, imagine if we had that narrative, there was normalized. And also I think there’s something really powerful in if we do have children and we’re showing this is my boundary of self care, this is how much I value myself.

I need to go and rest my body needs. It takes a lot of energy to schedule womb and rebuild it. And a matter of days, you know, the womb doubles in size before we bleed. Mm-hmm all of our energy is going. That’s why we are tired. Yeah. We need to rest. And when you can rest in that phase, you are like turbo charged for the rest of the month.

But when you are depleting and pushing through and keep on going, you are taking from an empty cup. Find the still, I mean the red school are an amazing resource. And they talk about having a big bleed, you know, if you only ever get to do this once one day totally dedicated to just being on a period. Yep.

You know, just being still yeah. Just, you know, taking a day off. Oh no. Of, of work. That’s that’s what I do. Yeah. I mean, I do that and I, again, back to like capitalism, you know, capitalism expects women to show up whether they’ve got PMs or they’re bleeding or not, or menopausal. Yeah. And, and you’re not gonna get a paid vacation day.

To take off work to take care of yourself. Mm-hmm , which I think should be mandatory. Like that should be something that’s allowed for women. Lindsay, honestly, the pain. I see some of my clients, women who have endo who have P C O S V excruciating pain that they are in. And they show up in this life, they go to work every day, they do all the stuff with the kids.

They shut this world and they are in chronic excruciating pain. You know, if men had periods, we’d be having a very different course. there is no doubt. There is absolutely no doubt. They would, they would be like days off for everyone. Everyone gets the day off free product. Yeah. They’d be like, period retreats.

Like just go, just go sleep. It’s fine. Yep. Yep. Yep. There’d be like period support people like somebody who comes to your house one once a month to like, do everything for you. So you don’t have to do it. Yeah. If men were bleeding, this is the world we would live in. It’s so true. Yeah. Um, and I do that actually too.

Um, several years ago I started to take, uh, The the first day of my period, I just took it off and I have the ability to do that because I’m self-employed. And so I like go in my room and I turn the heating pad on and I eat my chocolate. Yeah. And I just stay warm in bed and I drink tea and, um, take a hot ESO salt bath.

And like, I just really pamper myself. And, and I would say for anyone listening to this, he’s like, oh yeah, right. I’ve like nine to five. This is what I have to do. I don’t have that privilege. Carve it out one of the days at your weekend. Okay. You may have stopped even bleeding by then, but carve that day out and have that day, then, you know, we have to, we do live in a masculine world.

That is all action. Go, go, go sharp at the same time. If you don’t maybe have the privilege that Lindsay and I have to maybe create that space, find another space to do it, you know, or even if it’s after you’ve finished work that evening. Yeah. You are gonna go into cocoon. You’re gonna have a deep bath.

You know, some women don’t like to bath from their bleedings. It’s like, oh, it’s dirty. It’s not, it’s sacred. You know, sit there, nourish yourself, absorb all that lovely magnesium, have all the oils, the candles, even if it’s an hour. Yeah. Nourish yourself in that space and your body will thank you for it.

Yeah. And, and it, I, I know it may not sound like, oh, so you’re saying if I just like, get off work at five and go home and like take a hot bath and eat chocolate and, you know, cocoon myself, like. But that’s gonna have an impact. Yes. That’s what we’re saying. Yeah. yeah, absolutely. That’s the beginning because most women can identify with that late new teal phase, the premenstrual phase, and they can identify with the bleed, but the rest of the, the other phases are kind of like what?

And once you start to acknowledge one phase, you start to see that you’ve got four phases, every single cycle. Yes. They’re biological and hormonal, but you can equate each of those phases to a different energy. Some people like to equate them to the phases. Um, the, the seasons, the, of the like whispering summer, autumn, winter, I like to equate them to female archetypes of the made in the mother, the eant and Theron or wise women.

You know, those four phases. We have this death and rebirth cycle every single month. And when we understand those phases, we can maximize their strengths and manage the shadows of them. But at the moment, we just are trying to live like we’re the same every day. And we. . Yeah. Yeah. It’s so true. Whew. This is juicy stuff.

Um, so I I’ve asked all the questions that I had and then some, um, but I wanna check in with you and see if there’s anything else that wasn’t said that you wanna make sure is said before our time is up. No, I could talk to you all day about this Lindsay day. Oh know me too. I’m good. I just hate that.

There’s just, I think just, I want women just to begin to see, I, I acknowledge that there can be trauma and there can be pain around our menstrual cycles. But while, once we start to acknowledge the power that exists within our cyclical nature and the many, many steps we can take to harmonize our hormones through our lifestyle, we can start to feel good.

And every single woman has the right to feel. Yes. And, and along those lines, like some ways that if you don’t know how you feel about your cycle, or you’re not sure how your body might be responding to how you feel about your cycle, like check in with yourself, is there shame around your cycle? Is there dread around your cycle?

Do you view your cycle as this like massive gross inconvenience and you can’t wear the clothes you want and you can’t have sex and you can’t do whatever, like, or is there an anticipation about your cycle where you get excited that it’s coming? Um, is there a gratitude for your cycle? Is there honoring your cycle?

Like. How you feel about your cycle is dictating how your cycle is responding to how you’re feeling. Um, and so if you do have dread or fear or gross feelings about it or shame or whatever, like that’s a place that you can start and start to work with that and sit with that feeling and really figure out where it comes from.

And like, how can you create some space around that feeling and some regulation in your nervous system around that feeling and move through that feeling so that every month when your period comes, you don’t have to feel that shame or that dread or that disappointment or that grossness or whatever. And it can really become something that you look forward to.

And. Adele, my period is something that I like crazy look forward to now. Yeah. Like I really, really I’m bleeding my day. Yeah. And I, and I feel like that late Al phase, like that week leading up to my cycle, it almost feels energetically. Like it feels like something is coming to a climax and like, I can feel my body and I had COVID back in June.

And so my first cycle in July was my first cycle post COVID. And I had seen a lot of women talking about how COVID messed with their cycles. And some were late. Some people skipped periods. Some people passed massive clots after they had had COVID. And so my period, this last time was actually like five days late.

And I was like, that is, that is not normal for me. Like my period comes on the, like the full moon every month, every month it comes on the full moon. But what’s interesting is that according to my cycle tracker, My period was five days late, but I ended up bleeding right at the start of the full moon. And so it was like, I don’t know if COVID did that or if my body is just like so wise that it wanted to keep that rhythm up, I’m not really sure.

Um, but the rest of my period, I, I had more cramping than usual this time. So the only difference was COVID. But, um, but yeah, when those five days that I was late and I knew I wasn’t pregnant. Um, but my husband had a vasectomy like 17 years ago, so I knew I wasn’t pregnant. Um, so it was just like this, like build up like suspense in a movie, like, oh my God, when is it gonna happen?

Make it happen. Like I wanted to happen. And then it finally came and I just, the relief that I felt in my body and I feel that way every month. Yeah. But this last cycle was particularly like that because there was. Anticipation and the suspense leading up to starting my period, know what, when I see these like magazine articles, you know, doctors say there’s no need for women to bleed.

I’m like, no, oh my gosh, it’s this, this release, it’s this cleansing its clearing. It’s this detoxification, whether that’s energetic, emotional, physical, whatever that is for you, women need to bleed. Otherwise we wouldn’t have been given a womb. That’s right. You know, it’s there it’s, it plays a functional role in managing our bodies.

So yeah, none of that, none of that yeah. yeah. I remember, uh, after my daughter was born, um, my husband had a vis hysterectomy when she was six weeks old, but when I went to my like six weeks postpartum checkup, um, My OB GYN was like, you know, are you ready to start talking about birth control? And I was like, well, we’ve got that figured out.

My husband’s had a vasectomy. And she was like, well, but I can prescribe you birth control anyway. Um, because you, I can prescribe you this one birth control where you won’t have a period for a year. She’s like, can you imagine not having a period for a year? And even then, even though I didn’t have nearly the knowledge and the wisdom that I have now, even then something about that was like, this is not okay.

Like for a year. like, you want me to not bleed for a year? Like that doesn’t seem normal. you know what, the side effects that are still again, you know, going back to what we was think about at the beginning, this medical gas lighting, you know, medical, the mental health impact. It can have, you know, the energetic, just energy fatigue.

It has, there are so many side effects and things linked through to this. It it’s huge. And for me, I’m not anti any of it. What I, what I struggle with is the lack of true informed consent. Absolutely. You know, how often did that when we are offered this stuff, is it right? I want to offer this to you because it’s absolutely your choice and whatever choice you make.

I don’t care, but can I tell you, these are the benefits of it, and these are the side effects, make an informed decision for yourself. Go away. Think about it, speak to your partner. If you choose to make a decision about your body, based on this evidence in these facts. The good and the bad and also Adele.

Yes. Here’s the evidence and the facts. Here’s the list of side effects. Here’s the list of benefits. Here’s the ingredients that are in this thing. Mm-hmm, like not only is all of that information important, but it’s so important to like, leave that appointment and really sit with it and be like, does this feel like a yes.

In my body? Mm. Like, do I feel like a solid grounded yes. About this? Yeah. Because if you don’t, then don’t make that choice. And that, you know, with that Lindsay is, do women understand that it’s their feminine intelligence? Our body is our sat nav. Okay. We’ve been taught. We have had to be in our masculine intelligence, which is our brain, our logic, our reasoning.

We’ve had to be in there to survive. Okay. We’ve had to do that. We’ve had to step into that, but the cost of that has been, we’ve stopped listening to our body. Our body will tell us, we get got feelings. Our intuition is one of our superpowers, and yet we’ve shut that off. Cause it’s like, there’s no logical reason for it.

Right. How often have you been in a situation where you’re like, I knew that wasn’t right. Yeah. I knew there was something with that and we don’t listen and it’s like, step back into that power. We love that. You’ve said that. Is it a full body? Yes, because if it’s not, it’s a no. Yeah. And that, that is like, I’ve always had very strong intuition.

And so even though I was only like 23 and my doctor’s like, here, I can give you this birth control pill and you won’t have a period for a year. Won’t that be great? Like, I didn’t have the vocabulary to say my intuition says no, but I did have that feeling in my body that I now identify with as like, that is the no feeling.

And if I don’t listen to that, the consequences are terrible, always. So I just have learned like part of embodying. What I teach is that when I feel that, no, I it’s a no. And, and it’s a no until I feel a yes period, and I don’t care what the benefits are. I don’t care how many scientific studies there are.

Like, I don’t care if it works for everybody else. If it’s a no for me and my body, then it’s an O yeah. Hm, amen sister, amen. Sister . I, I review that so can you please tell my listeners where they can follow you and find you, and if they are loving what they’re hearing and are like, this lady makes sense.

Um, and they have some issues with their cycles, how to work with you. Yeah, absolutely. So I hang out Masley um, on Instagram, I kind of feel like Facebook’s become a bit of a battleground. Um, so yeah, over on Instagram at harmonize you there and I offer free discovery calls for women to see, first of all, I’m the best place person to support you because it may be that there’s something else.

And I know some incredible high end, really experienced knowledgeable practitioners in the women’s health field that I will always be able to sign and post you onto if I can’t help. Um, but yeah, if you wanna get your hormones balance, understand your cycle a bit more I’m Miguel. So yeah, just come and meet me over there.

Pop me a message. I’d love to connect with people in my community personally. Um, so yeah, I’m here message me. Awesome. Well, I’m gonna have links to all of that in the show notes of this 📍 episode and Adele, I just wanna thank you so much for being here. Oh, thank you for having me, Lindsay.