Cycle Syncing 101: The Science Behind a Symptom-Free Period with Alisa Vitti

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
PMS is a hormone imbalance. If I tell you, Roddy
that I have had no PMS for twenty years, I
just like to share that with people because I want
you to know that that's possible.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Right. Today's guest is the creator of the cycle sinking method.
Alisa Vissi is a pioneer in female biohacking, a functional nutritionist,
and the founder of flow Living, a platform that helps
women balance hormones naturally.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
You know, we go to the doctor saying I don't
feel right with my cycle. Usually we're prescribe birth control
pills which don't fix what is wrong, and we are
aging our ovaries so much faster than we realize because
we are not taking care of our cycle phases. We're
putting in too many toxins. We're creating a lot of inflammation,
and it's absolutely messing with ovarian function. Starting to align

(00:44):
your self care with your cycle phases really does work.
Just here living the experiment of what happens when you
support the female hormonal ecosystem for a long time.

Speaker 3 (00:54):
Rather than going against it, you get a lot.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
Of return on your investment, is what I can say.
From the front line.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
I'm RADI Wukiah and on my podcast A Really Good Cry,
we embrace the messy and the beautiful, providing a space
for raw, unfiltered conversations that celebrate vulnerability and allow you
to tune in to learn, connect and find comfort together.

Speaker 3 (01:14):
Alisa, it is so great to have you here.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
On A Really Good Cry. Thank you so much for
being here. I'm so happy to be here. Honestly, it's
been years in the making. It really has been. I
was just telling Alisa that we're reminiscing about the time
that I actually reached out to her because I read
in the Flow what about a good few years ago,
maybe twenty twenty three or twenty twenty two, and I

(01:37):
reached out to her on DMS and I was like,
I love you so much.

Speaker 3 (01:40):
This book has changed my life, and it really had.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
So I know at the time you weren't able to
come here because you had a baby, any baby born,
and you're.

Speaker 3 (01:47):
Really prioritizing that.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
But I'm so glad that we get to have this
conversation for other people to experience, because I think more
than ever, this is the time that it's so needed
for women.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
I mean, I think it's always needed, but I you know,
I'm thrilled to be here, and it's so fun whenever
we get together to talk about these things. I think
everybody is up leveled when women are given permission to
learn about their bodies.

Speaker 3 (02:11):
So true.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
Yeah, and honestly, that's really what this podcast is about.
I want to stop by talking about In the Flood,
which is a book that made the term cycle sinking
go absolutely viral because you came up with it. I
want to talk about what cycle sinking is and why
is it so important for women to know about it.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
Yeah. So I created the method because I was researching,
like what are we missing? Why are so many women
suffering with all of these different things versus men? Like
why why are women having more hormonal problems compared to men?
And I uncovered a second biological clock in the female
body called the Infreedian rhythm. And you know, we know
about our circadian clock. It governs our sleep wake cycles,

(02:52):
but it also governs a lot more nuanced things in
the body and the in freedom rhythm. Yes, it gives
us sort of the timing on our ovulation and menstruation,
but it also impacts our metabolic system, our stress response system,
our immune system, and our brain so it just was
a very logical thing, just like we have a method
of caring for our circadian rhythm. We don't think of

(03:14):
it that way, but our sleep routine is our method
for circadian rhythm support, right. We needed a method to
support this in Fredian rhythm because the fact that we
didn't know we had one and we were not catering
to it was creating a lot of dysregulation in these
other systems of the body, which is the answer to
why are so many women compared to men suffering with

(03:37):
hormonal imbalances because we're dysregulating this Infredian rhythm. So I
looked at the four phases of the menstrual cycle, which
each have their own unique hormone ratio, and I wanted
to map out a diet, fitness, and lifestyle program that
would really optimize each of those hormone ratios so that
we could sort of experience a symptom free journey throughout

(03:58):
the month, because that is really how we're designed to feel.

Speaker 2 (04:02):
I feel like when you were saying we forgot that,
we don't even didn't realize that this system existed. I
was thinking about like women back in the days, who
you know, lived without phones and lived without busy environments
where they were traveling. In all of this, I imagine
it was very easy for a woman way back when
to actually live according to their rhythm, because that's all
they were really taught to tune into. Like there wasn't

(04:25):
tuning into other things around them. It was tuning into
the body. And we're going to wake up when the sunrises,
we're going to go to sleep when the moon comes out.
And it must have been such an easy way because
it was so in tune with nature to also be
in tune with their own body. But somehow that kind
of message has been lost the more and more things
that were introduced into our lives.

Speaker 1 (04:45):
Well, it's interesting because if we look at the origin
of the word menstruation, it comes from either the Latin
or the Greek for measure, the unit of measure, and
so this idea of measuring time is so tied with
lunar phases and the female cycle from you know, ancient cultures.

(05:05):
So yes, I do think that there was a period
of history in which women were much more in tune
with the rhythm of their bodies. But absolutely industrialization has
sort of interrupted that the experience, and so many of
us don't have a good visceral sense of which phase
of the cycle we're in. We know when we're bleeding,

(05:26):
but most women feel like surprised by well, you know,
where am I, and like, oh, my period's coming. It
feels always like an unknown always.

Speaker 3 (05:35):
Yeah, even if you.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
Know it's coming, Like even if I know the date's
coming up, I don't know what's happened. Something's happening to
me and I'm like, oh, yeah, it comes. And so
the only part you're really aware of is when you
actually mentioned when you actually on your period, like when
you actually get the symptoms.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
But when you really start to practice the cycle sinking method,
you really get to a place where you feel distinctly
each of the phases and their subtle nuances of the energy.
And it's very cool, you.

Speaker 2 (06:00):
Know, it's beautiful. Yeah, it is so beautiful to experience it.
What are some of the signs and symptoms of people
when they all hormonally imbalance for women? And how would
someone start to recognize it and realize that there's something
a bit off with them.

Speaker 1 (06:15):
And maybe to take action. Yes, I mean PMS. We
normalize that as something that you know to expect during
the month. But really, PMS is a hormone imbalance. It
is the It's an inverted ratio of estrogen and progesterone
in the luteal phase, and that is why PMS exists.
If you have the proper balance of those two hormones,

(06:38):
you have no symptoms. If I tell you, Roddy that
I have had no PMS for twenty years, I mean,
I just like to share that with people because I
want you to know that that's possible.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
Right.

Speaker 1 (06:49):
And it's not like I'm doing anything special outside of
this method, right. I don't take any special herbs or
you know, I'm a lessers more kind of girl when
it comes to health. So it's really really interesting. And
we actually just concluded a three month i ORB approved
clinical trial on the cycle sinking method, which is a
big deal. And the preliminary resulting that we're analyzing the

(07:13):
data formally right now, we're incredible. I mean, women in
the first thirty days had an eighty percent reduction in
their PMS symptom burden and severity, and that only improved
over the three months that we were doing the intervention.
It's really exciting because you know, we go to the
doctor saying I don't feel right with my cycle, and
usually we're prescribe birth control pills, which don't fix what

(07:35):
is wrong. In fact, they also shut off your Infredian
rhythm and stop ovulation, which is a huge theft from
your future self, your postmenopausal self, because every ovulation you
have today puts let's say bucks in your health bank
account postmenopausely for your brain, your bone, and your heart. Right,

(07:57):
so every ovulation is cardio osteo and or protective today
but also for those decades that you will be no
longer ovulating postmenopausala. Yeah, so you want to be you
want to have a healthy cycle. It's it's your health
insurance for the future, but it's also your current health insurance.
And in twenty seventeen, the American College of Obstetrics and
Gynecologists decreed that your cycle should be considered a fifth

(08:20):
vital sign, like the other things we take in the
emergency room, like your temperature and your blood pressure. So
we do have to look at things like PMS as
a big red flag, like you have something the equivalent
of having a fever. You want to take action around that.
You don't want to joke about it. You don't want
to like downplay it. I am here to validate that
if you're feeling like something is off, it's off, and

(08:43):
to encourage you and give you hope that actually starting
to align your self care with your cycle phases really
does work.

Speaker 3 (08:50):
It so does.

Speaker 2 (08:51):
I used to when I was younger, have ready a
back paired crops the top where you just want to
the first day or e n two you're just like
wrapped up in a ball, you know, water bottle in
your stomach and kind of not being able to do anything.
And then when I started studying Ibada, and then after
I read your book, the subtle changes that I made
and the difference that I felt I could do everything

(09:11):
that I normally would do to a lesser degree and
some time, but at the time just to protect myself.
But if I want to go through my day, do
my work, get cook do all the things that I
normally do, I can easily do it and I don't
have crumps and I don't feel like the whole world
is ending around me. And it stabilized my mood so
much more. And it's You're right, It's such simple shifts,

(09:34):
and I would love to get into.

Speaker 3 (09:35):
The cycle and how different phase is.

Speaker 2 (09:38):
Yeah, I would love to go through each phase in detail,
if that's okay. Yeah, I would love to discuss what
that looks like.

Speaker 1 (09:43):
I just want to share that. A number of women
when we were wrapping up the last study session, they said,
you know, now, what am I going to do? I
don't have like all these symptoms letting me know when
my period's going to start. I don't have the breast
ten anymore. I don't have the acne or the mood swing,
so like I have to actually track so that I

(10:06):
know which day of my period's going to start because
I'm not getting any physical suffering as the sign like
it's about to carry. And I was like, well, that's
a good we call that a good problem to have. Yeah. Actually,
so that's what I want for every woman is to
just where you feel like your experience, where you feel
good every day of the cycle. There is no better
cycle phase than I love them all, like it's like

(10:28):
having four different children, Like you wouldn't love one more
than the other. They're all beautiful and they have different
you know, energies and properties, and they're different and beautiful
in each way.

Speaker 3 (10:37):
When did you stop practicing cycle sinking.

Speaker 1 (10:39):
Gosh, I think, well, I'm definitely the person on the
planet who's been doing it the longest I started probably now,
I would say fifteen years ago I started evolving the practice,
so it's been a while, and I absolutely credit this
consistent practice over the past fifteen years to be one
of the main reasons why now at forty eight half,

(11:01):
I'm still ovulating, I'm still menstruating regularly. I'm not on
any HRT, I'm not on any peptides, I'm not on
anything yet. I may do those things in the future
as needed, but I'm interested in playing the long game
of how can I use basic biological systems support which
cycle sinking really is a great example of that. How

(11:24):
can I use that to extend the functionality of my ovaries. Remember,
the ovaries are the first organ in the body to age,
and we are aging our ovaries so much faster than
we realize because we are not taking care of our
cycle phases. We're putting in too many toxins, We're creating
a lot of inflammation, and it's absolutely messing with ovarian function.

(11:45):
And so that's why you have girls at six and
a half who are going through puberty at six and
a half. You have girls in their twenties who are
doubled over in cramps, with major menstrual problems. You have
women in their thirties who cannot get pregnant. And you
have women in their late thirties early forties who are
showing stage two perimenopause symptoms meaning irregular cycles, hot flashes,

(12:09):
night sweats, major mood disruption, and really just advancing through
this process of ovarian aging so much faster. And I'm
just here living the experiment of what happens when you
support the female hormonal ecosystem for a long time.

Speaker 3 (12:26):
Rather than going against it.

Speaker 1 (12:27):
You get a lot of return on your investment, is
what I can say from the front lines, because I'm
feeling really good and I think that's available to more
of us. Should we start the process as soon as
you know about it.

Speaker 2 (12:40):
Yes, we absolutely should tell us what it entails, please, so.

Speaker 3 (12:44):
In phase one?

Speaker 1 (12:45):
Yes, So I actually like to consider phase one, you know,
the first phase of the cycle, the follicular phase, because
doesn't menstruation feel like the completion of the journey.

Speaker 3 (12:54):
It really does.

Speaker 1 (12:55):
So even and people get tripped up on this, You're like, well,
but day one is day one of the bleed when
you're counting for fertility, and that's fine. You can still
count day one as the bleed day one for let's say,
approximating ovulation, if you're using that counting method. Although now
in the world of you know, biometric devices, why guess,
like use a device so that you know exactly when

(13:18):
you're ovulating, whether that be basal body temperature tracking or
your analysis that you can do at home, or a
ring or a watch. I mean, there's just so many
cool ways now, Like, there's no excuse not to know
when you're ovulating in which phase you're in. But I
think from an energetic perspective, the way you relate to
your cycle, I'd love for us to reevaluate what we

(13:38):
consider the first phase, which is the follicular phase, the
beginning when all the eggs are developing on the ovary
and you're feeling like your estrogen's kind of coming back
online and you're interested again in starting again. Just like
your overy is starting again, you also are interested in
re engaging with life again in a fresh way. So

(14:01):
then from a let's say metabolic perspective, we actually have
a slowing down of our metabolism in this first half
of the cycle, so we can we are more efficient
calorically speaking, you can eat a little bit less, but
you still going to feel really good from a blood
sugar perspective, and our cortisol levels at rest are lower,

(14:21):
so that's what's happening. And ovulation, of course, we have
sort of this wonderful ovulatory surge of estrogen and FSH
and LH which stimulates the verbal and social centers of
the brain, making us very social and all of that.
And then we move into the second half of the cycle,
the luteal phase and the menstrual phase. This is when

(14:42):
metabolism speeds up and we need two hundred and seventy
nine more calories per day, and this is when progestrone
shows up to the party. The luteal phase is my
favorite phase. Oh okay, it's my favorite phase. It's the
longest phase of the cycle, and when we think about
just the concept of manifesting, it's also really beautifully baked
into the menstrual cycle. This is the phase of the

(15:02):
cycle where you do things right. You don't just idate
and speak about it and talk about it with people.
You get to work right. And I love that it's
the longest phase of the cycle because when you think
about the arc of manifesting anything, right, you ideate it
in the follicular phase, you speak it into existence in

(15:23):
the ovulatory phase. Then you do things in alignment with
that vision in the luteal phase, and then you evaluate
and like you know, celebrate in the menstrual phase. Right.
So it's the longest phase, and it should be a
phase where you feel calm and focused if you have
adequate levels of progestrum resting CORESOL levels are a little

(15:44):
higher at this time, so that's going to affect how
we eat and how we exercise, which I'll go through
in a second. Then menstruation is a beautiful phase as well,
not to be discarded because we're bleeding. No. In fact,
the right and left hemispheres of the brain are communicating
the most across the corpus colosum. So this is when
you can really evaluate the facts and your feelings about
any situation and just decide what you want to do

(16:08):
right the next cycle. Right, because follicular phase is coming
back up, you want to start planning, like what are
you doing with your major life buckets? Right, So that's
what's happening, let's say ten thousand foot view. How do
you care for each of these phases? In the first
half of the cycle, we eat, you know, there's obviously
the food chart from chapter four of the book is famous.
Everybody's meming it, and there's so many Instagram posts. Everybody's

(16:31):
done such a great job like putting their spin on it.
I love it. But to get the correct one, please
reference the book or the app, because there's now it's
like a game of telephone. I think a lot of
people are excited about cycle sinking, and they're maybe misrepresenting
it a little bit. So just make sure you get
the right information. In the first half, you're going to
be eating lighter foods, You're going to be focusing on
gut health. You're going to be you know, you can

(16:54):
do a little bit of extended fasting in the morning,
not much past fourteen or fifteen hours, meaning from dinner
to breakfast. And then from an exercise perspective, you can
go really aggressively with your cardio and your hit workouts
in this phase second half of the cycle. As I said,
since metabolism speeds up, why does it speed up because

(17:15):
you're three D printing a little organ, the endometrium. Right,
you're manufacturing this tissue out of the food that you're eating,
and it takes more effort on your body's part to
do that, so you need more calories. This is why
stabilizing your blood sugar is critical for progesterone production. We're
very very tightly titrated to glucose and cortisol and progesterone,

(17:39):
so you really do want to watch that in the
luteal phase, which is why you'll see the food recommendations
here are much more substantive. So if you're the smoothie
salad girl, you're going to feel really comfortable in the
first half of the cycle. But in the second half,
I want you to get more comfortable with your macro self, right,
because you want to build like a nice bowl of grains,
root vegetables, legomes, cook leafy greens and proteins and fats.

(18:02):
A really well balanced macroplate is really going to be
the thing that keeps you energized and keeping you away
from any of that like PMS, you know, craving attack,
hang the yeah, all that stuff that's your body trying
to save you from yourself. When you wake up at
the bottom of a bag of crisps and you're like, oh,
I'm back right after you've gone into a Grellin trance.

(18:25):
That's all you are. You're in a neurotransmitter trance based
on Grellin. Grellen has taken over. Your blood sugar has
become so dysregulated that your brain is like, we got
to help this person out. She doesn't know how to
feed herself today, so we're going to give her an
overwhelming craving to get blood glucose levels up. And that's
why we have this type of sort of irrational craving

(18:46):
during a uteal phase. It's just because we're mismanaging blood sugger.
How might you be mismanaging your blood sugar in this phase?
Continuing to fast in the morning, right, you need to
eat within thirty minutes upon waking, and substantial substantially in
the luteal phase, so thirty grams of protein, about thirty
to forty grams of carbohydrates, twelve to fifteen grams of fat.

(19:07):
You really want to actually measure your macros to keep
your blood sugar balance. And if you don't have a
good handle on that, I would use a CGM a
continuous glucose monitor for the first one cycle, just so
you can see how your body is responding to all
these different food changes. That was one of our fun
findings in the study as well. We had everybody wear
a CGM and they were most women were really shocked

(19:30):
at how, you know, there's resistance to eating. We as
women have a lot of resistance to nourishing ourselves, and
so there's fear about feeding our bodies. And I said, great,
we're just going to put the dogma aside. You're going
to eat these things and you're you're going to see
the data in the CGM if your blood sugar is
happy with this or not. And everybody was like, oh
my god, I can't believe that this is what my

(19:53):
body needs and how good I feel. So that's really
important too, to just help us break free of the
sort of conditioning we've received. Let's not under appreciate the
fact that because we've been left out of all of
this medical fitness and nutrition research, we've been fed a
narrative for many, many decades that has been based on

(20:15):
the assumption that we are just smaller versions of men
that require maybe fewer calories and more cardio to compensate
for our mysterious you know, female metabolism, which is just
utter unscientific nonsense and so, but that has left a
lasting behavioral impression on our relationship with food and nourishing ourselves.

(20:40):
The best thing I can tell you from all of
this research that I've done is that actually, compared to men,
women thrive when we eat more and more frequently from
a hormonal perspective. So like you know, don't do too
much fasting until you're closer to menopause. And really, I

(21:00):
mean I eat every three hours. I'm closer to menopause.
I eat every three hours to keep my blood sugar
stable and to keep my metabolism really as at its
optimum place.

Speaker 3 (21:13):
Right.

Speaker 1 (21:13):
The more you restrict, the slower your metabolism performs, and
that throws off progesterone production. And we want to preserve
progesterone production as much as we can, and there's a
really direct line between that and blood sugar management. So
that's why you're eating differently throughout the cycle. Then, of
course during menstruation you have all of this blood loss,

(21:35):
and studies show that we lose specific minerals or more
mineral envitamin deficient in specific measurable ways in the menstrual phase.
So the foods that I selected for that phase really
help re nourish those missing nutrients. So you're going to
be having things that are a little bit more warming, stews,
meat basting, seaweeds, things that are really rich in these

(21:56):
types of nutrients. And then when you're doing this consistent
you know, phase over a phase, you just feel really good. Yeah,
you know, And then you couple in the workout, so
you do the cardio in the first half and then
you do more zone to kind of cardio in the
second half. Let me set the record straight because I
know there's a lot of again people having conversations on

(22:18):
social media. You can strength train in every phase of
the cycle, right I do? You should? You can. You
may be recovering from a lot of hormonal imbalance where
you feel a lot of fatigue in the second half
of the cycle, where you don't feel like you have
the energy to strength train until you get yourself back
to a state of homeostasis from a hormonal perspective, and

(22:40):
that's okay, So don't push yourself. But when you are
in the flow with your cycle, you can strength train
every day of the cycle. And there's so much advantageous,
you know, benefits to doing that from a blood sugar
perspective and a mitochondrial ovarian perspective. So I would definitely
encourage people to do that too.

Speaker 2 (22:58):
I remember when I'm I was really struggling with the
certain parts of my certain parts of my cycle where
I was working up really intensely, like so intensely, actually
not more intensely than I normally would, But when I
was doing it during the phase before my menstruation, I
noticed there was a significant difference in how much I

(23:20):
was able to bounce back. So I was really going hard,
and no matter what I ate after my workout, no
matter how much I tried to replenish, my body was
just feeling flat out. And then it would affect the
rest of the phases and I almost like it felt
like I'd got into a deficit that I couldn't get
back from. And so I would do my lower back

(23:40):
would end up hurting more. I do the same ways
that I would normally do, you know a couple of
weeks before, but my lower back would go out, my
body would feel weaker. I'd come back, I'd have my
potein shake, I'd do all this stuff, and I'd be like, oh,
I feel so like my head feels heavy. Don't feel
like I'm just not replenishing. And when I started realizing
that I had to it wasn't that I stopped working

(24:01):
out during that phase, but I had to go at
a lower intensity during that time. And what a difference
it made to actually then catching up with energy for
the rest of the phases when the phase that I thought,
you know, just off to my menstruation is what I
usually would feel like the best, and I'd have so
much energy and it will be incredible. But it was
like I was catching up because I put myself so

(24:21):
flat out during the phase where I was supposed to
be having a little bit more rest, and instead of
doing that, I was pushing through. So I was kind
of borrowing energy from the other phases.

Speaker 1 (24:31):
I mean, that's a great example of I think what
we're doing in general as women, which is where, you know,
because we are more comfortable with the practices of self
care from the first half of the cycle, we try
to maintain those in the second half, which are a
mismatch for what our cycle phases need. In the ludial,
in the menstrual phase, and we're putting a drain on

(24:52):
our system. So we kind of are creating a big
leaky bucket from a micronutrient perspective and energy perspective, and
that puts us in deficit, not just with our blood sugar,
our cortisol, our progesterone, our mood. And it's a vicious cycle.
So I want you to get into like a delicious
cycle where you are nourishing yourself properly and then you're

(25:13):
exercising in a way that is sustainable for you. I
will say oftentimes in the luteal phase, just specifically to
that your little practice, just to maybe tweak your practice.
It oftentimes women work out in a fasted state I do,
which is a big no noe. So if you work
out in a fasted state, especially in the luteal phase,

(25:34):
when your metabolism is faster and resting cortisol is higher,
now you are putting your body in a very vulnerable
position because you're putting yourself into hypoglycemic reaction.

Speaker 3 (25:44):
That's exactly what I used to face, and then that can.

Speaker 1 (25:47):
Take hours, if not days to recover from, depending on
how sensitive you are. So you were just having a
very bad hypoglycemic reaction in the luteal phase because you're
mismanaging your blood sugar, which is the whole purpose of
the dietary part of the intervention of cycle sinking is
to protect against blood sugar mismanagement, which we when you

(26:07):
do that, it's very hard to maintain hormonal balance.

Speaker 2 (26:09):
What do you think these days are the biggest red
flags you're seeing women day? Like the top three things
that are literally ruining a woman's hormontal health.

Speaker 1 (26:17):
I mean, fast at anything, fasted workouts, fast like extended
fasting definitely not a good thing from a hormonal perspective.
Caffeine on an empty stomach really problematic from a cortisol
perspective and a blood sugar perspective. And then I would
say too much blue light exposure at night that really

(26:40):
disrupts melatonin production. And melatonin is so connected to our
ovulation potential, and when we don't make enough of that,
we age the ovary really quickly, so we can really
put an end to ovulation much sooner than we should.
So those three things alone, so I mean, I would say,

(27:00):
eat your breakfast within an hour of waking. Wait until
in fact, study just came out about that if you
believe the idea that having that cup of coffee or
green tea or something on an empty stomach first thing
in the morning is what's giving you that jolt, it's
actually not that. It's that within that first thirty minutes,

(27:20):
your body is offloading melatonin and so what you're you're
like coming out of the sleep mode, right, So you're
naturally and your cortisol's onboarding, so you're naturally kind of
waking up. It has nothing to do with the caffeine.
The caffeine. Putting it in too early can actually prevent
that process from happening properly, keeping you more groggy and

(27:42):
then messing with your blood sugar and cortisol. Right, So
it's best if you're going to do it, to wait
one hour. So I always say eat your breakfast within
that first hour to boost your energy from a blood
sugar perspective, and then have your caffeine after the meal,
which is how every other culture has caffeine. Yeah, after
a meal, So we should just adopt that logic. It's
good for us. And then from the perspective of the

(28:05):
evening routine, you know, make sure you put your phones
your screens on, like red light, you know, whatever, the
anti blue light, there's always like an app you can
download or wear blue light blocking glasses after a certain hour,
you know, at least by eight o'clock.

Speaker 3 (28:21):
So then you know with the intimate and fasting because
obviously they wreck.

Speaker 2 (28:25):
There's been so many people that have shared that having
a minimum of like a fourteen fifteen hour to allow
your body to detox and to get the benefits of
intimate and fasting, that having that block of fourteen or
fifteen hours is what's really important.

Speaker 3 (28:41):
So would you.

Speaker 2 (28:41):
Say that that's not necessarily accurate for a woman or
is it very dependent on what type of woman you are.

Speaker 1 (28:48):
So you can do that. Ex So, the Golden fast
is a twelve to thirteen hour fast between dinner and breakfast,
So that means like seven pm, you're having your last
bite of food and you would have your next spite
of food until sometime between seven or eight am. Okay,
that's great. In the first half of the cycle, you
might be able to push that another hour, so that

(29:10):
could be that fourteen hour window right in the luteal phase.
Definitely not keep it to twelve and you will see
the impact and the benefits of doing that there's more
harm in delaying replenishing your glucose levels in the luteal
phase than there is any benefit from fasting. And then

(29:31):
obviously the research that's been done on intermittent fasting has
been done on men and postmenopausal women, which shows huge benefits.
When I am postmenopausal, I will be intermittent fasting. I
will be extending my fasting. I think we'll see. I
have actually taken up a very serious strength training practice
over the past fourteen months, so I am bodybuilding five

(29:53):
days a week, and I actually don't think that there's
a place for the fasting in my current routine because
I have to prefuel my muscles with adequate levels of
glucose before I train, and I'm training very heavy. I mean,
my hip thrust is two hundred pounds. Yeah, squat is
a grid pound squad, you know, like my bench press

(30:15):
is seventy pounds. I'm lifting really heavy and so you
need to fuel for that. So again, you know, we
shouldn't be so afraid of nourishment. Now, fasting has a place,
especially when you're recovering from let's say some sort of
intense infection like limes disease or there's a lot of
reasons where fasting can be a very big help to

(30:37):
the body because the constant introduction of food can be
a drain when immune system is overburdened. But for the
everyday woman who is just dealing with PMS, if we
really are talking about getting a handled on that, we
have to approach and support our master regulating hormones. In
order for you to change your sex hormone output estrogen progesterone,

(31:00):
you have to work on the master regulating hormone support
of glucose, insulin, and cortisol. Right. So that's why we
change diet and exercise, because then we change those inputs,
we get better sex hormone outputs. That's the key.

Speaker 2 (31:17):
Would the intimated fasting also be applied to if someone
was trying to lose weight with women who are trying
to lose weight or achieve weight loss in their workout program,
would what you're saying apply to them also?

Speaker 1 (31:31):
It would apply because the studies around intermittent fasting that
I do think have some merit, or for women with
PCOS which I used to have and I used to
be two hundred and ten pounds covered in face, chest
and back and sistic acne, and I did not menstraight
from the age of twelve to twenty two, so you know,
I understand weight issues. That being said, I've never used

(31:53):
intermittent fasting as a tool for my weight management, and
I've kept off a significant amount of weight for a
long time. But there is some emerging research that shows
that for women with pcos, there's some value in doing
some extended fasting to help at least get them started
where they could get to a place where they have
better metabolic flexibility. Because women with pcos have a lot

(32:14):
of insulin resistance on the level of the cell, overburdening
the body with glucose is the problem. So intermittent fasting
isn't the thing there. It's just a mechanism that reduces
overall daily glucose load and that benefits the cell from
a woman who has this insulin resistance. For women who

(32:36):
are trying to lose weight, in fact, delaying nutrition and
going long periods of time without eating, let's say we
do that the most between lunch and dinner. It slows
down your metabolism. So, for example, in the past fourteen months,
and I didn't think I had any weight to lose,
I've lost twenty five pounds strength training and eating more,

(32:59):
more free and more. You know, I was already nourishing
myself a lot, but I started, you know, at midlife.
I thought, let me just see what other new experiments
I can do. And that's really been the thing. So
I think again, we have this whole like narrative that
is not based on actual data that we feel really

(33:20):
comfortable with, Like, yes, we feel, we feel now. Listen,
a calorie deficit if you're going to lose weight is important.
It's an important part of weight loss. But that does
not eat. That does not have to involve going many,
many hours of the day without eating. You can be
in a calorie deficit and eat every three hours because
the goal is even in a calorie deficit, you still

(33:42):
have to stabilize your blood sugar Otherwise you're going to
be hypoglycemic. You're going to be craving things, You're going
to be throwing off your lept in response. It's going
to just it's a vicious cycle.

Speaker 3 (33:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:53):
And then you know when people get their hormones tested,
are the you know the targets or you know the
ranges that they give when you're testing your hormones, are
they based on the right demographic in terms of when
they are getting tested. If your hormones are showing normal,
but you're still showing up with symptoms that there's irregular,

(34:15):
like there's hormone irregulation.

Speaker 1 (34:17):
What.

Speaker 2 (34:18):
Yeah, I would just love to touch on that because
sometimes they can be it's so.

Speaker 1 (34:21):
Frustrating, right, yeah. Yeah. So the problem fundamentally with blood
analysis is that it's just this one crystallized moment in
time whenever you take the blood draw. That moment, that
minute of your cycle is what the data is going
to show. Yes, yeah, it's I think in the light
of all the new options that women have. You know,

(34:43):
for example, Mirror Health has a wonderful at home your
analysis device where you can be tracking your estrogen and
progesterone metabolites every single day. Oh wow, so you can
every single day of your cycle know how many how
much estrogen progester on your body has made that day,
and then you can get that picture for a whole month.

(35:05):
That is much more valuable information to have. You understand,
are you in general having the right flow of these
hormonal ratios in each phase of the cycle as opposed
to just a blood draw Now, the other thing that
I think is valuable too about having more consistent testing
if you're concerned, is that you're absolutely right. You can

(35:27):
go and get a blood test and you can be
in normal range for that minute of that day of
your cycle, and then you have this frustrating conversation with
your provider where you're like, there's nothing wrong with your labs.
Everything is normal, and you're like, but I feel bad,
and then there's this sort of opportunity for gas lighting
to happen, and this sort of again, this cultural narrative

(35:48):
of like it's in your head because it's not on
the labs is perpetuated. And I think it's because the
tool of this blood test does not match the thirty
twenty eight to thirty two to day experience of a
dynamic hormone pattern that is changing in real time day
over day. How can a blood test be sufficient to

(36:08):
really get a full picture of what could be going on? Right? So,
I think if you have concerns, do something that's a
little bit more comprehensive, so that you can see more
data and you can see that it's not in your
head because it's not.

Speaker 2 (36:21):
So. Urine analysis is a better way of someone going.

Speaker 1 (36:25):
There's many, there's many, there's that there's you know, you
can wear even HRV levels in things like rings and watches.
They're able to sort of be mapped now onto menstrual
cycle pattern. So there's many, many biometric devices that are
available to us. It is a really exciting, i would say,
historic feminist time because of femtech and some of these

(36:47):
biohacking devices that have been evolved. Even simple things like
having an access to a continuous glucose monitor, what a
powerful tool in managing your hormonal reality because if you're
not you know, and I wrote about this in my
first book, Woman Code, it's the first step of the
flow protocol that I used in my practice for years
before I opened, before I started the first femtech company

(37:07):
in the US in twenty twelve, which is flow living.
That you know, if you are not managing your blood sugar,
you have no shot in helping yourself from a hormonal perspective.
It's so germane to your endocrine function. It's table stakes.
You can't. You can't out supplement or out biohack. Having
a poor diet, yeah, you just cannot. And eighty percent

(37:30):
of what gets you well is dietary.

Speaker 2 (37:34):
So true, are there any like your top three foods
that are supportive for women's hormones and health?

Speaker 1 (37:41):
I mean protein because we synthesize hormones from amino acids,
So let's not I know protein's a hot topic right
now because everybody wants to have your protein, and I'm
here for that. I do eat a lot of protein myself,
but especially as I'm aging, more protein helps me make
more hormone and I'm interested in playing the game of

(38:02):
how can my bod how can I help my body
make more endogenous which means internally produced hormones for longer? Yes,
you know why not? We can play any experiment we want.

Speaker 3 (38:10):
Why not do that?

Speaker 1 (38:12):
So more protein is helping me do that. But even
when you're younger, if you're having hormone imbalances, you can't
get pregnant. You know, protein is a really important thing
to look at. How much protein are you eating? And
you should actually do that, not just from an opinion perspective,
but you should calculate via actual macronutrient amount of protein
that you should be having. We don't have to guess anymore.

(38:33):
Which is I think the thing that I love to
share with women. This is not about what do we
think it should be. We can know we can track
our hormones, we can measure our macros, we can measure
our blood sugar. We can measure these things and we
can actually see things change. It's so excited. I mean,
this has not ever been possible before. It's very exciting.
Every woman should feel so empowered to take her cycle

(38:57):
management into her own hands and feel like she can
be successful because that is absolutely possible. So protein is
the first one.

Speaker 2 (39:05):
How much protein do you recommend pergram body wave?

Speaker 1 (39:09):
I mean there's a standard calculation, so I stick with this.
That okay with that one, and then you know, I
would say after protein, the second thing that I think
is really important from a food perspective for women would
be healthy fats. You just also need those because hormones
are stabilized in a lipid ring, so you need to
make sure you're having healthy fats. It also helps with

(39:29):
just hormone production prevention. I mean, you got to have
the right fats and the BISO, stay away from like
processed seed oils and eat more good, healthy fats. But
the third one is definitely one I don't think you've
heard before, and one that I just think is utterly fascinating.
So orange foods are really valuable for the ovaries because

(39:54):
it turns out that the ovaries have fourteen different beta
carotene receptor sites. Oh wow, So root vegetables, organ meats
all contain high levels of beta carotene vitamin A that
the ovaries need to store in there in their tissue

(40:14):
to function, just like we we know right, Oh yes,
my thyroid needs to store iodine and selenium, so we
know to consume those things to give our thyroid the
things it needs to do to have to make hormones.
But your ovaries need beta carotene. So that's why, especially
in the luteal phase, you want to be eating your

(40:35):
root vegetables because your ovaries love that. So that's another
food that I think. I eat sweet potatoes every day,
depending on what carrots in the first half of my cycle,
sweet potatoes at the second half, for sure.

Speaker 2 (40:46):
What about three foods or how many foods that you
think are unknown to women that are actually affecting the
home and health in a negative way, disrupting the homeleone.

Speaker 1 (40:55):
Unknown to it. That's an interesting question. I mean, well,
I think stevia is one that is is under discussed.
So historically the stevia plant was used as a light
form of contraception. There is some in certain traditional cultures
there's some endocrine effect and impact from that plant that's interesting.

(41:20):
So it's in a lot of different things. So monk
fruit is a really good alternative that does not have that.
And also I noticed too that stevia's sweetness is so
intense that it can generate more of a salt craving
that then kicks off another sugar craving. So in Chinese medicine,
when we look at the yin and young principles of food,

(41:42):
yin foods are very sweet things, and young foods are
more salty things, right, heavier, oily, fatty or saltier things.
So if you're having something that's very very yin, even
if it's just the taste of like something extremely sweet,
you're going to naturally crave something more salty to get
back to a sense of balance. And so you can
really be like sea sawing all day, like you have

(42:03):
your super stevia sweetened tea, and then you're like, I
need salty crackers, and then you just don't feel like
you're in control. Whereas monk fruit. I don't feel like
we have that same reaction.

Speaker 3 (42:11):
That's so interesting. I didn't know that about.

Speaker 1 (42:14):
Yeah, and then if you're trying to conceive, you know,
I would definitely go light on the stevia. So that's
definitely one. I would say from a cramp perspective, the
Omega six oils that fats, they really jack up the
production of prostaglandin that controls uterine contraction, so makes you

(42:34):
have more painful cramps. Oh no, So you want to
just really avoid those types of things, and you want
to you know, choose your healthier fats, avocado, allive oil,
those things that actually increases the production of PG one
and three, which causes more uterine relaxation, so you can
expel the endometrium with less effort, which is how it's designed.
You're not designed to be in any pain during the month.

(42:57):
So that's the second one. That's an unusual one of
a third one because you qualify it.

Speaker 2 (43:02):
Does something you just I feel like sometimes, I mean
from even my experience of my friends, they don't really
even think about the food that eating and how it
affects the homones.

Speaker 3 (43:09):
So it doesn't even have to be.

Speaker 2 (43:10):
Something that people find extremely unexpected. But you know, even
things like dairy, like does dairy affect your homones in
a positive or negative way?

Speaker 1 (43:18):
I would say, I'm not so hung up on dairy.
The only thing I love to suggest is if you
have any sort of digestive or immune issues, like, try
to choose a two based dairy because it's going to
be more compatible with our intestinal system. But the one
thing that I would say that you could reconsider for
sure that we know has an impact on hormones is

(43:39):
way based protein.

Speaker 2 (43:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (43:41):
I've been hearing way.

Speaker 1 (43:42):
Protein absolutely impacts insulin levels and pancreatic function and is
really problematic if you have any issues with acne or
pcos or anything sort of with cycle irregularities. I would
definitely not choose way based proteins. I don't use any
protein powders myself outside of collagen, but I tried a

(44:03):
bunch of them and I found them to be so
challenging from a digestive perspective that it just really started
to make sense to use more whole foods. So that's
what I do.

Speaker 2 (44:13):
One thing I find people always on the fence about
soya products. I don't know whether you've had much research
in that, but I feel it went from one way
of saying it can give men boobs to you know
now saying actually, you have to consume an extreme large
amount for it to even have any kind of effect
on your hormone.

Speaker 1 (44:30):
So well, I did do an experiment on my boyfriend
in my twenties with with tofu and soy based products,
and I said, okay, for just a month, right, You're
just gonna eat you know, soy for the protein. And
I can, from an anecdotal perspective, can absolutely attest to
the fact that that impacted his sex drive for sure.

Speaker 3 (44:49):
Interesting, but he.

Speaker 1 (44:50):
Was eating a large amount of it. Now, for women,
it is really about the quantity and the quality. So
back in twenty thirteen, I went on the Doctor Oz
Show and it was actually the first person to go
on national television to simulate the colors of menstrual blood
to talk about what the different colors of your bleed
needs or hormones. But we also took a he had
this super cool prop made for me. We dissected a

(45:13):
soybean and we looked at the good parts of the
soy and then the parts that were problematic, and it
was very fun. So I've been talking about this for
a long time. For women, it's quantity and quality. There
is protective aspects to soy. Phytoestrogens act as a selective
estrogen receptor modulator. So that's great because instead of you

(45:34):
having the dirty estrogen that your body produces impacting your cells,
the phytoestrogens from the soy. This is also true of
flax can adhere to those serm receptor sites on the
cell and prevent that interaction between the cell and those
dirty estrogens. Now you have to eat whole soy products,

(45:55):
so like nato etemamee right hempe fermented soy really really good.
But then when we get into like the more processed
soy products, TOFU is kind of neutral. Then we get
into like the soy milks and the soy protein powders
and all the sort of like hydrolyzed soy proteins, that's

(46:18):
when it becomes too much and problematic. So you definitely
want to use there's absolutely a place for soy products
if you're sensitive to them. Listen to that. You may
find that it's also stage of life. I find that
women in their forties and fifties really love incorporating soy
products as it has an estrogenic support to it, and

(46:41):
women who are suffering with a lot of symptoms in
their twenties and thirties might not find it as useful
for them. But you have to feel out your reaction
to food. Everyone's bioindividual, so there is no blanket statement
about which foods are the right foods, like there's no
perfect daily diet, which is why the cycle sinking method
is a and not a diet, right. It's about you

(47:03):
have to take the what is universally true about our
cycle health and our hormone ratios and our endocrine system functions,
and then you have to apply the method to your
unique female ecosystem and you have to feel intuitively, how
does this feel to me? Because we're all a little
bit different, and that's exactly what I want every woman
to be doing. Don't get stuck into a dogmatic relationship

(47:26):
with cycle thinking. This is not the point of that either,
make it your own.

Speaker 3 (47:31):
What about?

Speaker 2 (47:32):
I want to ask you about supplements or hubs that
you recommend women specifically take and if they should change
throughout the cycle.

Speaker 1 (47:39):
So I formulated supplements back in twenty seventeen because I
was really frustrated about, you know, the fact that we
just didn't have formulations that were really supportive to our hormones.
So yes, there are some table stakes things that the
endocrine system loves, so that I put in my balance
formulations which you can find on Flow Living. But those
are things like you need B vitamins. You need vitamin

(48:01):
B six to help with progesterone production, you need magnesium.
Magnesium is so critical for every aspect of our health,
so I prefer magnesium glyconate. We need omega three fatty acids.
Why because it reduces inflammation on the level of the ovary,
promoting ovulation. It helps with mitochondrial health, which protects ovary health.

(48:23):
So I think omega threes are really really critical. Vitamin
D three, I mean D three is we call it
a vitamin, but it functions like a hormone in the body.
So that's just so essential for us to be having.
K one and K two are really good as well,
because it helps your body absorb more calcium from the
foods that you're eating. Studies show that taking supplemental calcium

(48:46):
is kind of not very helpful, but taking on the
cofactors that help your body make calcium from your dietary sources,
more bioavailable D three, K one, and K two really
really a good thing. Plus K one and K two
are helpful with reduce using cramps and probiotics because if
your gut is not functioning, your estrobolom is not able

(49:07):
to metabolize estrogen inside the intestinal tract, which is then
a problem because then you'll recirculate that estrogen. So those
are like the basics. Then if you get into some
more specific things like if you have PCOS, or if
you have heavy bleeding or fibroids, or if your perimenopausal
you're trying to conceive, then there are specific supplements that
I recommend, which I formulated as well, that you can

(49:28):
go and look on the site and you can even
take a little evaluation and see which supplements are right
for you as far as in each phase of the cycle.
That is also something that you can use supplementally strategically,
different supplements through each phase. So things that I like
are Let's the way that I formulated the cycle sinking

(49:49):
supplements was looking at what are the kind of core
vulnerabilities of each phase. So in the filicular phase, our
core vulnerability if we aren't you know, managing it from
a cycle sinking perspective exactly perfectly. You could be a
little more fatigued, right, you just come off your bleed.
You could be a little low energy. So I like
to use coenzyme Q ten in this phase to naturally
boost cellular vitality, right, which are going to boost mitochondrial

(50:12):
energy in this phase. In the ovulatory phase, the vulnerability
is xtrogen overload. So if you have any breakouts during
ovulation breast tenderness during ovulation, this is a sign that
you're not metabolizing estrogen efficiently during ovulation, So you want
to use a couple of things like sulforaphane dim These

(50:34):
types of things really help the body metabolize estrogen better.
In the luteal phase, the core vulnerability is blood sugar
lows hypoglycemia, So I like using some simple things like
cinnamon chromium procolinate that really help keep our blood sugar
more stable. And then the menstrual phase, I would say
is the sort of histamine and cramping, and I really
love nettle extract for that nice so that you'll find

(50:58):
in the cycle sinking supplements. Also on flow living dot Com.

Speaker 3 (51:01):
Is a chocolate.

Speaker 2 (51:01):
Any of the supplements that we could use throught what
phase can we use chocolate?

Speaker 1 (51:07):
Chocolate? I eat chocolate every I eat cocow every day.
Every day is a day for cocow gets a super food.
It's and it's especially important as you go through life,
especially in midlife, because cardiovascular health is more of a
thing to pay attention to in midlife. As estrogen levels
naturally decline, we have more risk of cardiovascular impact. Yes,

(51:29):
cocou is very cardiovascular protective. It's a longevity food that's
not a supplement. That's a super food. Get it girl
every day.

Speaker 3 (51:37):
Yes, okay, adult chocolate every single day.

Speaker 2 (51:40):
A woman in her thirties comes to you and says,
I want my fertility to be the best it's ever been.

Speaker 3 (51:45):
What do I do I'm in my thirties.

Speaker 1 (51:47):
I mean start cycle thinking immediately, you know, if you're
on birth control, get off of synthetic birth control.

Speaker 3 (51:53):
Let give book about that.

Speaker 1 (51:54):
Okay, good, I was wondering. Yeah, okay, so start cycle
seeking reconc or the mill. Get off of alcohol. I
stop drinking two years before I first conceived, So I
stopped drinking at thirty five. I haven't reintroduced it into
my life since so it's been almost fifteen years with
no alcohol. One of the best decisions I've ever made

(52:16):
really reduces inflammaging. Right, So what we want to do
when we think about getting in the best fertile thing,
it's reduce inflammaging and like oversaturate yourself. From a nutrient perspective,
you want to when your when your body gets this,
when your brain and your ovaries kind of communicate like okay, uterus,

(52:39):
you're free to go. You're free to proceed with an implantation, right,
all systems are go. The way that that happens is
that you are energetically macronutrient micronutrient. From a micronutrient perspective,
ripe like a juicy peach. That's the visual I always
give my clients. Yes, I still see private clients of
ripe like a juice peach, right, ripe with nutrients. So

(53:02):
you have to be eating robustly. In fact, I would
say motherhood, the journey of motherhood really begins with the
moment you desire to become a mother, because you must
make a lot of changes to optimize your fertile ecosystem.
The same way you would make those changes when you're pregnant,
you would prioritize eating your best to have the healthiest baby,

(53:24):
and the same if you were breastfeeding, you would be
making those choices. So it's the same thing. You're starting
your motherhood journey the moment you decide to be a mother,
and so yes, you want to be eating really robustly
whole foods, lots of plants, lots of protein, fats, all
the things we talked about cycle sinking for your cycle phases.
Taking good quality supplements is important. Yes, you know, you

(53:47):
really want to reduce that inflammation. So I really love
ncetyl cysteine for that. I love our alphaalapoic acid. These
things are supplements that are known to help with ovarian
function and lowering that inflammation. And you know, just again
taking away some of the toxins that create that sort
of stress response in the body that might make it

(54:07):
a problem from a conception point of view.

Speaker 3 (54:09):
Yes, and we've talked about the pill. We mentioned it.
I really want to go into it.

Speaker 2 (54:16):
Does taking the pill for years in your early life
affect your fertility a later time?

Speaker 1 (54:22):
I mean, unfortunately, there's not a lot of research where
I can come out and give you a definitive answer.
What I can say is that I think it is.
What we do know is that the pill depletes you
of some of the key micronutrients that your body needs
from an endocrine system perspective to be maximally fertile. So
there we do need to at least appreciate that there's

(54:45):
got to be some sort of recovery period where you
have to take some supplementation, improve your diet to kind
of recover from being exposed to that medication for a
period of time so that you can give yourself the
best chance. And that conversation is not really being had like, well, no,
it's just wait till get your period back and everything
should work. But then we have all of this idiopathic,

(55:05):
no known cause infertility, which is not necessarily being caused
by birth control. But I do think that the overloading
of the female body with endocrine system disruptive toxins, the
mismanagement of our blood shirt, it's like a conflagration of
many things that are going wrong for women's hormones puts
us at this position where it's harder for us to

(55:27):
get pregnant, and it shouldn't be so hard, No, So
I think that the pill is just one piece of
that puzzle that can be you know, just something that's
adding to that internal dysregulation when it does come time
for you to be thinking about conception.

Speaker 2 (55:42):
Is there anything about the pill that you think women
from a young age should know that they're not told.

Speaker 1 (55:48):
Oh, yeah, it's not a cure for your period problems.
But like that, it's the thing we like. It's not
fixing your pcos. It's not fixing your fibris, it's not
curing your endometriy. It's not getting rid of any of
these problems because it's not it's not addressing the root
causes of why those problems have arisen in your body.
It's just a really like band aid situation.

Speaker 2 (56:11):
And have you seen from obviously the years of clients
that you've seen and the studies that have taken place,
anything that a woman is put on the pill for,
like the standard things like acne and pcos. Have you
seen other means of being able to heal your body
through it be successful as I wanted to get I
just wanted to.

Speaker 1 (56:31):
Put it out.

Speaker 2 (56:32):
I fully agree, but I just think sometimes people will
need to hear it because the amount of pressure and
only choice given to women at such a young age,
who like, oh god, I've got can I can't even
leave the house. I don't even want to leave the
house because of how I feel or how I look.

Speaker 1 (56:49):
Been there, I've been there. I mean it used to
take me half and I remember the only thing that
I that would cover the redness and the weltz well,
I used to use Clinique under eye concealer as a foundation. Yeah,
you know, because no prescriptives under ie concealer as a foundation,
because the regular foundation was not thick enough to cover
and it would take me thirty minutes of what I

(57:10):
would call spackling my acne. It was so painful and
so humiliating to walk out of that. So I totally
totally empathize with the situation that being said, how I
cleared my skin was not with pharmaceuticals. Even topicals did
not work. It really was only until I started healing
my hormones that that things got better. But yes, absolutely,

(57:35):
I think the reason why that is sort of the
prevailing recommendation, like oh, just go on the pill, is
because there's an assumption that we won't do the things
that are needed. Yeah, right, you know, especially young teenage
girls like, oh, well, they're just not going to do that.

Speaker 2 (57:54):
So let's an investment of energy time studying, like really
understanding your body well.

Speaker 1 (57:59):
And I think, I actually think that the reason why
we're set up for that, that's to me, by the
time someone says to a woman, just go on the pill,
that's the the baseball swing, the pitch of that was
what you were educating, how you were taught about your
cycle at puberty. So it's like a setup, right, It's

(58:21):
like like this is going to be you know what
it's going to be. Yeah, and I'm not gonna and
you're not going to understand your cycle. It's gonna kind
of be this mysterious thing.

Speaker 3 (58:33):
And that you dread, yeah, and you don't want to
so and.

Speaker 1 (58:36):
So then when you start to have problems where you
just feel like I just can't manage this and I
don't even know what's going on and I don't understand
my body and nobody understands women's bodies, and like this
is a mess. Please somebody help me. And it's like
take the pill. Right, It's like a perfect little psychological setup.

Speaker 3 (58:51):
I get rid of all the things that you don't
even want in your life.

Speaker 1 (58:53):
Yeah, I mean, and who wouldn't say yes to that?
So I think the the solution is multi fast. That did.
But you know, I haven't almost eleven year old daughter
at the time of this recording. Shoe will be eleven
in two weeks. I dedicated this book to her, actually,
and so one of the things that I started doing
when she was you know eight, you know, I started

(59:15):
talking to her about her cycle in different age appropriate ways.
It wasn't like the blood and the pads and that's
like I didn't ever that talk when she was but
I said things like, you know, cause she would come
in the bathroom and she'd be like, mom, what's going on? Yeah,
Like you have no privacy as a mom. Just FYI
Like people just walk in. It's like starts when you're
in labor, Like forget it. At some point I thought

(59:38):
to myself, Okay, how am I going to do this?
You know, because there's no modeling for any of us
as moms, Like how do we empower our daughters to
have a different trajectory than we had where like we
weren't really given the right information. Said Okay, if she
happens to stumble upon me changing a pad, should I
try to hide that or should I just let her
sort of see it and not make a big deal

(01:00:00):
lot of it, and like, baby, we can have a discussion.
So I obviously I went with plan B being the
period queen. I thought maybe I should do that, and
so we started having this conversation at eight, she's like,
what is that. It's like, that's the nest, the nest
that the baby could grow and cut, you know, an
analogy that would be age appropriate. And then that turned
into a well how does that happen? I was like, oh,
you get you have this special biological clock that started

(01:00:22):
at like nine. I started talking to her about her
in Fredian rhythms, so I got her excited. Yeah, at
nine years old, I said, you're going to go from
feeling the same way every day to feeling a little
different each week of a month. And that's a superpower.
So still we're not talking about, you know, the bleeding
and the pads and the tampons, And we still haven't
had that conversation. And she's eleven. She's just starting her

(01:00:45):
first signs of puberty, so right on time, and according
to this, she should be getting her she should be
getting her first bleed around the time I turned fifty,
so it'll be like kind of a monumental celebration. And
she knows that we're talking about going to be like
this surprise, and I'm just really empowering her to be
excited about it, about this big change that's going to

(01:01:07):
happen as a source of empowerment and power for her.
So there's nothing she could come in here and teach
you about the Infredian rhythm, the four cycle phases, and
what you need to do in each race. She is
fully versed. She's not practicing it yet, but she knows
that that's coming. Just prepared. And then the other thing
that I do is I prepare her in the circadian
ways to practice. You can't start at it like cold.

(01:01:31):
So we do things like she looks at her bowel movements,
not just what they look like, but what time is
she having them? Should she be eating more vegetables, Should
she be taking some more magnesium? Does she need more water?
What's going on? She eats every three hours at school.
I don't make her wait. I mean they have lunch
at eleven thirty in the morning, and then she has
field hockey practice after school. So I pack her a snack,

(01:01:52):
that's two thirty she's eating. Yeah, and then she comes
home and she eats, and you know, so I'm like,
she's already learning about stabilizing her blood shirt and I
use that language, you eat to keep your blood sugar stable.
So I don't dumb down the science. And I would say,
as a mom of a young girl, we could definitely
lean way into giving them a lot more education and

(01:02:14):
more scientific realities about how their bodies work. They can
handle it beautifully. And what would it be like if
an entire generation of young girls knew how to balance
their blood sugar, knew how to eat for their cycle phases,
had no period problems in their twenties. What would be
unleashed onto this planet a lot of feminine power. I
am here for that, So, you know, I do think

(01:02:37):
we have to start earlier so that when we do
get to the place where people are having these sort
of hormonal crises and they go to the gynecologist and
the and they will, you know, offer the pill. That's
what you should expect. Is not nothing wrong with offering it.
That a young girl who's been educated in this different
way might say, I'm going to take some time and
do something.

Speaker 3 (01:02:56):
Get back to you on that.

Speaker 1 (01:02:57):
I'll get back to you on that. That's all. That's
I just wann't that breathing space.

Speaker 2 (01:03:01):
For people, the feeling of empowerment and feeling like your
body is in your hands.

Speaker 1 (01:03:05):
You can take the pill if you need to, but
you don't have to. You can, you don't have to.

Speaker 2 (01:03:09):
I remember when I change my mindset around dreading my period,
and there was like this switch that I felt of like, wow,
how grateful I am.

Speaker 3 (01:03:17):
That I get a period? Like how grateful?

Speaker 1 (01:03:20):
And I started I still celebrate every money.

Speaker 3 (01:03:22):
Yeah, I appreciate my body for it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:23):
I thank my body for it every time I even
get like a hint of it in my tummy. I
literally I give myself a huargain. I'm like, gosh, I
am so grateful that my body does this. I'm so
grateful that it's so regular. I'm so grateful that our
body gets to experience this every single month. And I
think even psychologically, if you are dreading something, if you're
constantly telling your body, I don't want this, I don't
want this, I don't want this, of course the experience

(01:03:45):
isn't going to be great. Of course, your mind is
telling your body how it wants to feel. You're saying
you're gonna dread it, So, yeah, you'll dread it. And
so I think having that shift of mindset as well,
where you are just as we say to talk lovingly
to our body, it's like, feel lovingly towards every process
that happens in your body, and I think that will
completely shift the way that it's your own interaction with yourself.

(01:04:06):
It's like, how are you going to keep telling your
body you don't want a process that is so natural
to you? And then it just feels so different.

Speaker 3 (01:04:13):
You welcome it.

Speaker 2 (01:04:14):
You start to nourish your body differently, You start to
realize what a gift it is, and as soon as
you think of it in that way, you kind of
start shifting and changing the way that you live to
help it thrive.

Speaker 1 (01:04:26):
Yeah, it's a beautiful relationship. I would say. The other
gift of the cycle sinking method as a consistent practice,
like a yoga practice, right you show up every day,
you do your best, is that it's a direct way
for you to start actively engaging your feminine energy. And

(01:04:46):
this is something that I think we need to be
talking more about as women, because our feminine energy is
very restorative and healing. I'm actually someone who's been studying
this for the past twenty five years, and you know,
really looking at the molecular and biochemical basis of feminine
energy in the body. It's not this like woo woo

(01:05:07):
thing you have to dress in robes and like follow
the lunar cycles. That's really fun. You can do that too,
I'm totally down with that. But for most of us
who are more type A women, right, we want things
to be feeling like they're have some grounding, and feminine
energy is a real thing inside of your body. We

(01:05:27):
can look at it through the lens of our cycle phases, right,
the ebbing and flowing of when we are nurturing others
versus nurturing ourselves. That the fact that your cycle actually
codifies a space and time for each of those activities
should give us some role modeling of what it looks
like to engage in feminine energy. Right, That there's a

(01:05:48):
restoration period baked into our cycle as essential to fully
expressing our feminine right is important that there is creative
output but also restorative input. And this is important because
you will not be cycling forever. Cycling is a finite,
beautiful phase of your life, which is why every cycle

(01:06:09):
should be celebrated. I every time I get my bleed,
I put on a pretty robe, like a long like
either a beautiful robe or like a long maxi dress.
I have like a special period tea cup that I use.
It does have the lunar phases on it, and I
make certain herbal tea and I like really celebrate. I
welcome it that day. But when we practice engaging from

(01:06:33):
our feminine more, it really helps set us up for
a much easier, eased perimenopausal transition because instead of going
through your reproductive years burning yourself out, yeah, draining like
we talked about earlier, that leaky bucket, constantly draining your micronutrients,
your energy, your blood sugar, your progesterone. You by the
time you hit forty five, you are crispy from an

(01:06:55):
ovarian perspective.

Speaker 3 (01:06:56):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:06:57):
If you start practicing, not only will you get all
the best and fits, let's say, from a health perspective,
but when you start engaging and living more in alignment,
in attunement with your feminine energy, you also prevent this
burnout and you get to live into your midlife transition
in a much better way, with more of your feminine energy,

(01:07:17):
with less body resentment, with more excitement and optimism for
this next chapter of your life. So I just want
to encourage younger women to be looking at it not
just as a biohacking practice for you as a female,
which of course it is, but also because it's a
very psychological healing process of reclaiming feminine energy in your life.

Speaker 2 (01:07:40):
Yeah, you've touched on perimenopause, and I'd love to ask
you that before we come to an end, because we've
been going for a while and it's been such a
wonderful conversation. Butmenopause and menopause for women who I find
most women I know are dreading that phase of their life,
and again that's probably something that we've been told rather
than something that they actually should be dreading. What are

(01:08:00):
some of the tips or recommendations that you give to
someone going to perimenopoolse and then in menopoolse as well,
what's something you want them to know?

Speaker 1 (01:08:08):
Well, perimenopause, you're still cycling, so keep cycle sinking. I
would say this is the time to up your game
on your circadian rhythm practices, so you know, make sure
if you haven't ever used a CG like get that
you may be more sensitive to glucose at this age
because estrogen's declining, So you may not be able to

(01:08:29):
eat as many carbohydrates in one meal as you used
to when you were younger. And that's okay, that's normal.
So you just need to kind of adjust for that
instead of saying, well, I used to be able to
do this, I wish I could go back to that. Yeah, yeah, sure, great,
But reality is, here's where you're at, So make the
adjustment in dosing of your carbohydrate macros. Sleep is a

(01:08:49):
priority that melot protect your melatonin at all costs. I
also recommend women starting to take melatonin after the age
of thirty five. And there are numerous studies that talk
about the importance of melatonin for women in terms of
bone density protection, ovulation regulation, breast cancer protection. It's an
essential In fact, it's the first hormone in the brain

(01:09:11):
to downregulate. That's really what kicks off perimenopause is the
lowering of melatonin production.

Speaker 2 (01:09:17):
And taking melatonin does that not then disrupt your sleep
because a lot of people feel like they get such
light sleep from taking melatonin.

Speaker 3 (01:09:24):
Is that not no.

Speaker 1 (01:09:25):
It's really about quality and dosing. And I know that
there's been a lot of chatter in the male biohacking
world about melatonin being like a no no, but that's
really because of one small study that talked about the
impact of melatonin on sperm production and sperm motility, which
obviously has nothing to do with women. So there are
many many I also publish a weekly newsletter on women's

(01:09:46):
biohacking that you can subscribe to on my Instagram channel,
and I did a whole expose on this whole topic
because I was just so frustrated women are terrified of
taking melatonin because of these conversations that are just again
when women are left out of research, We get these
top these little things like oh this is bad, Well,
if you have testicles, it's bad. If you have overaries,

(01:10:07):
it's a different conversation. And there are studies actually looking
at the impact of melatonin supplementation on ovariant function.

Speaker 2 (01:10:13):
So it's definitely so through menopause, and then so they
continue to take it off to they've moved through.

Speaker 1 (01:10:18):
Menipolos Absolutely such an important hormone, such an important supplement
for women's health. I think an unsung hero of women's
biohacking is melatonin strength training. You will have muscle wasting
after thirty five, so get on those weights and not
low weight, high rep, high weight, low rep heavy goals,
heavy girls. Yes, And then, like I said, the sleep thing,

(01:10:41):
blue light blocking. That's then one last thing for both
perimenopause and postmenopause. And this is a topic that we
don't get to talk a lot about, but really is
so important because again, as our cycle hormones go away,
we go back to a life of just our master
regulating hormones. So insulin, cortisol, all those things you want
to be managing melatonin, but oxytocin and nitric oxide are

(01:11:05):
really important. These are the hormones that we make when
we are in community, but also when we are in pleasure.
So upping your self pleasuring practice is a really important
thing to be doing in perimenopause. It actually promotes more
regular ovulation, can extend your ovulation, slows down the rate
of ovarian aging. I think getting very committed to a

(01:11:28):
self pleasuring practice that you're using specifically to generate more oxytocin.
It's like the inverse. You know, all the male biohackers
are talking about retention, and that is valuable for them
from a testosterone perspective, but for women it's the opposite.
The longer you can stay in orgasmic plateau, not climax
climax as the finish, but that phase before, the longer

(01:11:49):
you can stay in that phase, the more oxytocin and
nitric oxides you make. I've written about this in both
of my books. I talk about it as often as
I can, because, again, if people ask me what is
the one biohack, I would take it into deserted island.
I would say you just some loop, because that alone
would help protect many of your body systems and really
is a very important part of sailing through perimenopause and

(01:12:12):
menopause that I don't think is getting enough discussion.

Speaker 3 (01:12:14):
Oh my gosh, thank you so much for this brilliant conversation.

Speaker 2 (01:12:16):
I feel like we covered so many different things that
are really important for so many of the women in
this community to hear, and I feel like it's never
too late to make changes in your life ever. Listening
to this immediately, thank you exactly, Thank you so much
for being here. I'm so grateful for your book, so
grateful for all your research and the amount that you've
given back to this female community.

Speaker 3 (01:12:37):
It's so so needed, So thank you. You're welcome.

Speaker 1 (01:12:41):
I can I extend a little offer to your community
for the app for the cycle sanking Oh yeah please? Okay,
So if you're interested in cycle sinking and getting started,
you're welcome to download the Myflow app. It has the
same icon as the cover of the book, and you
can get access to a free month of the cycle
sinking feature by using the code rati.

Speaker 3 (01:12:59):
Amazing, I'm going done today.

Speaker 1 (01:13:01):
You know, make sure it has the circle icon and
and it's just it's a great tool because it's the
only official cycle sinking app created by me, and it
has you know, you can type in what what ingredients
you have in your pantry. It will give you customized recipes.
There's workout videos to take you through. It'll help you
sort of start planning your projects around your cycle phases.

(01:13:22):
It's a really.

Speaker 2 (01:13:23):
Great help having a tool rather than having to figure
all out yourself.

Speaker 3 (01:13:28):
Indeed, thank you so much.

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Host

Radhi Devlukia

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