Find out why we are RE-Naming the “Menstrual Cycle” the “Ovulation Cycle”…
RESOURCES
- Buy the book “The Cycle Syncing Handbook” by Angie Marie on Amazon
- Buy the book “Taking Charge of Your Fertility” by Tony Weschler on Amazon
- Visit Angie Marie’s website itsangiemarie.com
- Visit Angie Marie’s website thehormonehacker.com
- Watch this episode on YouTube
- Listen to this episode on iTunes
TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Intro Snip
00:40 Introduction Angie Marie
02:24 Angie Marie’s personal struggle with birth control and ectopic pregnancy
03:46 Female Athlet Triad aka “relative enerty definciencey in sport”
05:58 Why is Dr. Haley having this discussion?
07:08 What did you learn in school about female health?
08:02 Why is it difficult for someone to get pregnant after hormonal synthetic birth control (the pill)?
09:21 What are things to consider when deciding which birth control might be best for you?
10:56 How do you wish you were prepared as a child for the female changes ahead of you?
11:30 What is the main event of the cycle (it’s not the period!)
12:39 What is the purpose of the period following ovulation?
15:06 What are the four seasons of the female cycle?
19:48 What are the birth control options, which are best, and how do you combine them?
22:20 How does fertility awareness work as a birth control method?
24:57 What is the typical timeline of events in a normal healthy cycle and what are the days you can get pregnant?
28:15 What can interfere with your normal cycle?
29:26 What is the best time during the cycle to try to get pregnant?
30:35 Does the strongest urges to mate correlate with your most fertile days?
32:00 What is your favorite took learned in Doula Training?
32:35 What does the acronym BRAIN stand for?
35:27 What should parents share with their children that are going to go through these changes?
40:38 How important is nutrition related to menstrual cycle symptoms
43:45 What are some success stories related to your teachings?
TRANSCRIPT
consider this 50% of the world has menstrual cycles, ovulation cycles, and 100% of the world is here because of them
You are listening to the Dr. Haley Show, the podcast dedicated to helping you optimize your health. Each episode there will be an interview or a message to help you discover better health. We will be featuring health radicals on the show to bring new ideas to the table, as well as doubling down on key fundamentals to support you living your best life. Your host is no other than the founder of Haley Nutrition Dr. Michael Haley.
This is the Dr. Haley Show podcast. And today we’re going to be talking about some potentially controversial topics related to female health that could bring into question political and religious beliefs. This discussion is not going to address those aspects of female health. The things we’re discussing today will be focused on physical and emotional things that people experience, and what choices we might make related to them. Your personal philosophical opinions or beliefs are up to you. And you know, if two people dig deep enough in a conversation, they are likely going to find differing opinions. That is not our intention in this discussion. Education is our intention. My guest is Angie Marie. Angie uses her cycle as a mindfulness and action oriented tool to move, eat, work, and be in relationships with intention. She has been teaching clients and students to do the same. She is a public speaker on this topic and author of “The Cycle Syncing Handbook” She also hosts the podcast for the Love Of with Jenny and Angie. Other accomplishments include being a doula and fertility awareness educator. More can be found on her website itsangiemarie.com Angie, thank you so much for joining me today.
Thank you. It’s so funny to hear all of those, I guess, accomplishments. Back to back, because I never thought I would be so into this period world.
Yeah, well, it’s a beautiful thing. And how did how did becoming a doula fit in?
I never was interested in anything about reproductive health growing up. I never saw that as a potential interest, let alone career path. I did not like the idea of being on hormonal birth control when I was in my well, I’m still in my reproductive years, but especially thinking about college and in my 20s, I just had this intuition that I didn’t want to be on some sort of synthetic birth control. So I decided to use the copper IUD. It works for many people. It worked for me, although I did have heavier periods and a lot heavier cramping than I had ever had before, so that was the downside. But I figure that’s the price you pay to be a woman in society. You need some sort of birth control, whether or not you have period symptoms.Maybe you have symptoms with your birth control. So I went like that for a few years, just being okay, complacent about my birth control until one day I started having really severe symptoms. I was having stabbing pain in my pelvis, spotting that I would notice for on the toilet, and I thought, well, is this what they taught us is normal in health class in middle school? They said pain and spotting are normal parts of having a cycle, so maybe this is just my body readjusting to my environment. I had just gone through some life transitions. I was finally starting to fuel my body more. I had had the female athlete triad or now they call it REDs relative energy deficiency in sport. So I just was I had lost my
Wwhat was that again?
REDs. They called relative energy deficiency in sport It’s what they used to know as the female athlete triad. But now we know that all bodies can have this set of symptoms. Basically, it’s when you’re over exercising and under fueling, you’re not meeting your caloric or macronutrient needs in order to keep feeling healthy. That made me have stress fractures that were keeping me sidelined in my sports. I was super fatigued all the time and I lost my period. That’s where the triad comes in. So once I start getting these symptoms, I think, okay, maybe this is my body getting back to normal. Maybe it’s starting to have a period again. Well, flash forward a few days later and I’m in the hospital being told that I have an ectopic pregnancy, which is a pregnancy that occurs outside of the womb, outside of your uterus, and is very deadly. I was 24 years old at the time, and in order to save my life, they had to remove my right fallopian tube and that just, I mean, totally threw me for a loop. I had no idea how my reproductive system even worked at that point. I didn’t know how that had even happened. I didn’t know the risks of different types of birth control, and how I could minimize risk for other emergencies in the future. The way I coped with that was learning as much as I could about everything fertility, pregnancy, birth. That’s when I decided to take a birth doula training, a birth and fertility doula training, and I found that I actually didn’t want to be necessarily working one on one with people and birth and pregnancy settings. But I loved talking about menstrual cycles, and that’s how the hormone hacker was born. It was my first successful business where I was blogging and creating courses and teaching people The symptothermal method of fertility awareness or birth control, or to help them conceive. And so now I have this beautiful relationship with my own menstrual cycle, and I hope to have other people have that same relationship, because part of being in tune with your menstrual cycle is knowing when there are potential problems
yeah. And I think it’s more than that, too, you know, it’s safety. It’s knowing when you’re in trouble. But planning, knowing when you can get pregnant and when you won’t get pregnant or aren’t likely to get pregnant. I think it’s an interesting discussion we’re having, too, because myself as a man, why am I having this conversation with you? What do I care about this? I’ve never experienced any of it and stuff like that. We have to know what’s happening with our loved ones. in my case, you know. Well, I have a daughter. And can she approach me if she has a challenge? a potentially dangerous medical something happening in her. And I like that, you know, you’re making this natural conversation. You’re letting people know it’s okay to talk about these things. If there’s one thing that most everyone can agree on in this area, it’s education is lacking Chances are you weren’t taught these things in school, which is why you had to go learn them on your own and figure things out. So what was education like? What did you get in school?
okay. I will tell you the biggest myths that they give us in school. Typically what you’re in fourth grade when they start broaching this idea of reproduction and, you know, all the icky things that we want to hide in society. And so for me, in my public school education, which was a I mean, I had a great public school system, but it’s still, you know, this is the way it’s always been taught. We tell people that, you know, you’re at very high risk to get pregnant if you have any type of sex. You, are dirty. You need to keep yourself clean. You need to hide any, any potential image of blood. That’s why in these commercials for tampons and pads, we see blue liquid instead of red liquid, because people are so disconnected from that idea of a natural cycle. So for me, I was taught to hide and suppress and neglect my menstrual cycle. Even if you look at birth control, a lot of teenage girls are getting on birth control at 14, 15, 16 years old. And that means that they’ve never had a chance to understand how their natural, healthy cycle works. 20 years later, sometimes they’ll come off birth control. They’ll be in their 30s, decide that they want to have a kid, and they’re like, why is my menstrual cycle abnormal? Why am I not ovulating regularly? How come I can’t get pregnant? And it’s because hormonal birth control, synthetic drugs are meant to suppress that natural cycle, and it acts as a Band-Aid to cover up any symptoms that you’re having. So when these teenage girls are getting on birth control to manage acne or mood or other symptoms, they’re really just covering up those symptoms with a Band-Aid and not treating the cause at the root. And those problems are going to come back out potentially decades after, when you finally decide to get off birth control. I think we need to do a lot better at educating the benefits and the risks of all of these.
So is birth control dangerous long term then to the female reproductive system with men, we know that, you know, if we take, performance enhancing medications or hormones that long term, it can hinder our body’s natural balance of these same hormones and
it really depends on your goals here, too. I mean, some people, if you don’t want to reproduce, right, if you don’t want kids, maybe you don’t worry as much about the risks of hormonal birth control. Maybe if you do really want to be in tune with your natural cycle, you choose a non-hormonal method like the copper IUD. I don’t believe that there’s one type of birth control that will work for every single body. And if you know the benefits in the risks and the alternatives and what your intuition even is saying about a type of birth control, then I believe you can make an informed decision, even if it is something with synthetic drugs. There are people with endometriosis PCOS who for some people it they make they want to take that trade off of. I will take the synthetic drugs in order to manage my painful symptoms, and that’s fine as long as you are fully aware of all the benefits and risks. I didn’t even know that my copper IUD came with a potential risk of an ectopic pregnancy. Again, a life threatening situation that I’m very glad I was. I’m an outdoorsy person. I could have easily been on a five day backpacking trip and died from this had I not been close to a hospital. There are also some people who have genetic susceptibility to, blood clots and strokes on certain types of birth control pills. You need to know whether that is in your family history, so that you can avoid those types of birth control pills. So really, it’s all about knowing your options, asking the right questions of your doctor, never feeling rushed or bullied into making a choice when you don’t have all the information. First.
What would you have done differently?
you know, I think it would start all the way. I like to think about this as if I have a daughter someday. How will I give her a good relationship? And I think the very, very first, at the earliest, step in being more empowered with your body and your menstrual cycle is just opening up the conversation. Instead of entering these health classes as a place for kids to learn how to, you know, stuff their tampons in their sleeve when they go to the bathroom or your dirty or your body’s a problem. I think we should be teaching them about what is actually happening, even on a hormonal level. We tell kids, we tell everybody, adults, that the main event of your menstrual cycle is your period. Well, actually, it’s obvious ovulation is the main event of your entire cycle. It is what drives the rest of the cycle. You can’t even have a true period without having ovulated 10 to 16 days before that. So we should really be calling this the ovulation cycle and talking about the benefits of healthy ovulation. Ovulation is so I mean, let alone for fertility. It’s great for your skin, your hair, your digestion, your thyroid. Everything in your body is so interconnected, and ovulation is a key piece of that health that interacts with the rest of your body, too. So I think you should start talking about this earlier.
The name change has my vote. I say we start using it and people are just going to have to adapt.
All right. We’re going to ovulation cycle I love it. I mean, it does because that’s how menopause happens. You stop ovulating and that your ovaries start getting less efficient at growing eggs and releasing eggs. And menopause happens when you stop ovulating. And that’s when you stop having periods.
Okay. And you know, I’m a physician, so I’m supposed to know the answer to this? But what’s the purpose of the period following ovulation? So this is why it’s a cycle. It happens on a repeated basis. After you ovulate you have two options. One you become pregnant. Two you do not become pregnant. And depending on what outcome you get there, you’re either going to grow a baby or you’re going to release the lining of your uterus, your endometrium as your period. And that gives you the next start of a another chance to get pregnant. Evolutionary biology wants you to get pregnant every single time, even if you don’t want to get pregnant. Nature’s thinking of you and thinking, okay, we’re going to we’re going to make this try and make this happen. So your body needs many chances. 400 chances every lifetime to try and make a baby. if you actually, this is a fun fact. So when you are pre ovulatory, if we’re going to use ovulation as that main event, the time in between your period and your ovulation, that’s called the follicular phase. And in this half of your cycle estrogen is the main hormone player. Estrogen is making you feel good. Act a certain way. Even you know your skin changes, your breast change. This is all very estrogen affected. Then once you ovulate that time between ovulation and the start of your next period, progesterone becomes the key hormone player in progesterone. This time, where progesterone is dominant is called the luteal phase. Because this little mini organ starts growing on your ovary and it’s called the corpus luteum. The corpus luteum is producing that progesterone. And this is what’s so cool is if you become pregnant, that corpus luteum, that tiny little mini organ turns into the placenta of the baby that you would be carrying if you don’t become pregnant. The corpus luteum dissolves. And that’s what part of what creates the start of your next period. So it’s just funny that, like, nature has designed such intricate systems and it’s all going on in a place that we’re not able to look at, so we don’t even question it. Right? We’re just like, oh, there’s on flow again. Here’s the curse again. But really, there’s so much really cool science going on.
You know, what I love about this conversation already is the conversation that is shunned in so many places. I look at you and how excited you are to talk about these things, and that’s how it should be. It’s like, so cool, I love it.
I mean, I would again, if I have a daughter someday, I want her to know. It’s actually really cool that you have this cycle because it allows me to be four different versions of myself during an entire cycle. Remember, ovulation is that dividing line, right? You have your time before ovulation and you have your time after ovulation. If you break that down even further, you have the days around which you are most fertile, and you have the days that you’re bleeding on your period that comes out into nice little quarters of a cycle. And I feel like a slightly different version of myself in each of those quarters, each of those four phases of the cycle. And how cool is that to have four different sets of super powers throughout one cycle.
is that is that for different, feelings based on hormones at the time? Hormones.
So the way I look at it and again, this might be very individual. Some people have terrible periods. Some people love being on their periods. Some people are uncomfortable around ovulation, while others love the feeling of being at like max fertility. Because again, nature is trying to get you out and excited and all that. So the way that I like to parallel this is looking at the four seasons of nature. If we’re looking at our period time, our bleeding days, a lot of people feel like it’s an inner winter. What is the energy that you would describe of winter?
hibernation.
Oh my gosh. Imagine if you could have in this busy, busy world where we’re just go go go rush, rush, rush all the time. Imagine if you gave yourself permission to have a mini hibernation, even just one day a month where you could just not have any meetings. Do whatever you want, take a day for yourself inner Winter is a great time for that. You’re able to be still, to reset, to just think, you know, let inspiration come to you. This is how I use my cycle for creativity and my work. I just let things come to me during my inner winter or my period. I’m not trying to actively plan or strategize or being that hustle mode yet, because that’ll come in my spring and summer. But I want to lean into that energy being a little bit more still and hibernating. It’s not like I’m totally withdrawing from the world, but I am letting myself have a little bit more of that quiet time with myself and introspection. Then once you finish your period, you’re moving more into your follicular phase. That’s what I like to think of as my inner spring. And that’s when, you know, ideas start sprouting around. There’s a reawakening, just like in nature. You start to, you know, water this garden of ideas. But you’re not necessarily in full bloom yet because you need to plan a little bit more, maybe set some intentions, create the strategy for where you want to go that cycle. Boom. Summer. Your ovulatory time. That’s when these ideas are in full bloom. That is, when you are on display to the world, on whatever stage that you that you prefer. You’re collaborative. You’re finding new people to meet, you’re trying new things. You’re feeling really strong and confident. Thank you nature. And then, of course, just like every summer ends and turns into fall, it happens in your body too. So after ovulation, and as you get into those premenstrual days, it feels like an inner autumn where you need to take a step back, prune back to what truly matters, get things finished up, completed, edited, ready for winter. Because of course, this is a cycle. You’ll get all the seasons again. And so this is how I love to look at right now. I’m in my inner summer, so I’m feeling even though I’m so busy this week. This week, as you know, some people might call it like Hell Week, but I’m actually like, this is a good time for all of these things to be on my calendar because I have that extra energy and confidence that’s coming with my summer.
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I want to talk about the different methods of birth control, different categories, all the different options there are, and then really break down the method of planning and knowing your body and knowing when you can get pregnant and when you’re likely not to. Yeah. What are what are the different options? There’s hormonal…
so if you’re looking at, you know, a birth control that you can go to the doctor and get prescribed, you have those physical barriers and you have hormonal barriers, physical barriers or things like condoms or diaphragms. Actually, I, I think diaphragms are great. They’re kind of out of style now. Nobody really goes to the doctor and asks for a diaphragm, but they can be a really good option or alternative to condoms, or you can use them both together for even more efficacy. All of these different types of birth control have a different efficacy rate. So for example, if you’re using condoms in a really responsible way and you are, you know, you’re following all the rules that they tell you they’re still, 93, 94% effective at preventing pregnancy. But if you’re using that with another form of birth control, like a diaphragm, or just by knowing when you’re fertile and when you’re not, that increases a lot. If you’re not following the rules of condom use and you’re just kind of like, oh, whenever it’s close enough, that’ll drop your efficacy rate down into the 80s. So really, whatever method you’re going to choose, make sure you know the rules, make sure you know the risks. And I would argue if you can learn a fertility awareness method on top of whatever method you choose, you’re going to be in such a better place. For me, my copper IUD was 99.4% effective at preventing pregnancy, and unfortunately, I was part of the 0.6% where it just did not. There is nothing wrong with it. It’s just the way that it’s built. They don’t necessarily know why, but sometimes it fails and it doesn’t do its job. If I had been tracking my cycle by using a fertility awareness method, even if I wasn’t relying on it for birth control, if I was just noting my fertility signs and symptoms, I would have caught that it ectopic pregnancy before it ruptured my fallopian tube and sent me into a really life threatening situation so people can do this with whatever if they’re even on the pill. There are times when the pill fails, right? I’m sure you know people have gotten pregnant while on the pill. It just happens sometimes. Whether or not you’re following perfect use of the pill, if you are monitoring your fertility cycles, you’ll know I’m actually potentially fertile these days. That means that I am either going to abstain completely from unprotected sex or sex at all, or I’m going to use double up on different methods.
Yeah, yeah. the fertility awareness. let’s start with the when should you avoid intimacy? how many days prior to, you know. I’m turning it over to you know, there’s so there’s so much information here.
so I would love to start just by busting the myth. A lot of people hear fertility awareness method, and they immediately think calendar method or rhythm method, these are not the same. I use The symptothermal method of fertility awareness. The symptom means that you are looking at changes in your cervical mucus, and the thermal means that you are taking your temperature, your basal body temperature, upon waking every day. When you combine those changes across your cycle, you’ll notice you can actually graph this and you do graph this. If you track your fertility signs, you can graph your thermometer, your thermometer readings over the course of a cycle. And you’ll notice that after ovulation, your basal body temperature is higher than before ovulation. Again, ovulation is the main event. You’ll also notice changes in your cervical fluid, your cervical fluid or your cervical mucus almost becomes like egg white consistency when you at your max fertility, and it will dry up when you’re not as fertile. So by putting these symptoms on a graph, you are able to get a visual representation of when you are potentially fertile and when you were not. And that differs from just counting days like a calendar method or a rhythm method. We’re using actual science here. And when you actually practice at this, again following all the rules, it’s 99.6% effective at preventing pregnancy. Of course. On the flip side, if you’re collecting all this data, you’re able to also know when you can potentially get pregnant. So if that’s a goal of yours is I want to conceive, you can time sex for the days that you know you are most likely to be able to conceive. So the way this works, and again, if you’re going to use this for birth control or even to conceive, you want to be working with somebody who can teach it to you. There’s a great book called Taking Charge of Your Fertility by Tony Weschler. That’s a great place to start. But again, don’t practice everything I say unless you have to talk to an educator like myself. So you’re looking at your cervical mucus. Cervical mucus is that liquid, that fluid that you’ll start to notice on your underwear in a cyclical pattern. It can sometimes look white. It can sometimes look sticky, sometimes it’s clear, sometimes it’s stretchy and wet. All of these qualities are connected to your hormones. So after you finish, you’re. And that
I’m sorry. That’s approximately on what day compared to ovulation. So if you were looking at a healthy cycle, a healthy regular menstrual cycle falls in between 25 to 35 days long. That means that there are 25 to 35 days in between the start of one period in the start of a next. If you fall outside of those, then you have a slightly abnormal, cycle. And that’s something that you can talk about with your doctor to figure out why and what the consequences are of that and how to make it get into that normal range. But typically people who are in that 25 to 35 cycle time frame, they are ovulating somewhere 10 to 16 days before the end of that cycle. So for me, I have a 27 ish day cycle. The past couple of years, I’ve been pretty consistent with 27 days. I typically ovulate around day 14, to the best of my knowledge and what my data shows. You can’t know for sure the moment of ovulation unless you have an ultrasound wand, but for me, I know I’m ovulating about day 14. I’m getting my period after day 27 so that for me is healthy. I’m in that normal range, so a lot of people are going to start noticing that maybe sticky white tacky cervical mucus within a few days after their period ends. It depends on how long your period is. My period is pretty short. It’s about four days, so I notice cervical fluid probably starting around day 7 to 8. I personally start noticing really fertile quality cervical fluid that like stretchy stuff, the stuff I could probably get pregnant with. I start noticing that around day 10 – 11 and it lasts a few days. Then I notice probably tomorrow I’m going to notice a pretty drastic change in both my temperature and my cervical fluid, and then I’ll know, okay, I most likely ovulated in the past couple of days. I’ll be able to confirm that when I see a sustained rise in my basal body temperature and then I’ll know, okay, I ovulated for this part of my cycle. I know that my egg can only survive 24 hours once it’s released. If there’s no sperm to fertilize it. I know that sperm can live up to five days in fertile quality cervical fluid. If I do the math, I know. Okay, within a few days from now, I’m going to know that I can’t get pregnant again until next cycle. And that gives me some time to not have to be on hormonal birth control, but also know that I don’t have to worry about the potential of getting pregnant if I don’t want to.
Okay, and just to make the numbers easier, let’s say that your day 14 happened to fall on the 14th of the month. I’m hearing that you would see changes in the cervical fluid around the seventh of the month of that particular month, approximately, and if you had intimacy, probably starting almost any time after that, that could actually, fertilize the egg when you ovulate or having intimacy is as far as a day, maybe even maybe even two days after ovulation. Yep. So that would be kind of, you know, if you were looking at the calendar for that particular month where ovulation was on day 14, that would be possibly the, 7 to 8 days that you would be most fertile.
Yeah, yeah. So you’re there’s generally let’s say you have like a 28 day cycle. There’s really only about a quarter, a quarter of that time, like 25% of that time where you could even really worry about getting pregnant unintentionally. The issue is you can never predict things like stress can interfere with your menstrual cycle and delay ovulation, which means that all of this math would be thrown off. If you’re having a particularly stressful time at work. If you are traveling, time zone changes. I mean, even the over exercising things that we were mentioning earlier, all of these are interpreted as stress on your body. Your body is like, oof, maybe this isn’t a good time to get pregnant. There’s too much stress around me and it pushes off ovulation. So even it gets a little sticky. Because even if your ovulation is just delayed by a day or two, well, that could go into that period where you’re like, oh, well, I usually ovulate on day 14, so it’s day 16 now I must be okay. But what if you didn’t actually ovulate on day 14 that cycle? That’s why it’s so important. If you’re using a symptothermal method for birth control, you need to be having at least two symptoms charted. So you’re basal body temperature, cross-checking it with your cervical fluid. If you’re looking to conceive, you obviously have a lot more wiggle room here because, I mean, the more sex you can be having during that for a little time, the better, right? hopefully it’s still fun for you.
Well, that’s That was the next question. If we had determined that the 14th day of the month was, you know, the, ovulation day, when’s the best time for intimacy? And I think you’re suggesting every day within.
Okay. I mean, I want you to have fun with it, too. And so if you know, if you’re feeling a for a lot of people when they start conceiving, especially if they have challenges with conceiving, it feels like a chore, right? And you don’t want to you want to still live, enjoy your life and just put your time with your partner. So rule of thumb if you want to get pregnant and you notice that stretch your clear what fertile, fertile quality cervical fluid. The stuff that looks like egg whites have as much sex as you want, and that’ll increase your chances. But you don’t have to do it at a certain cadence. Right?
Right now for, for the woman going through this cycle, what days is she going to be craving the physical act the most? I would imagine it correlates very well with the most fertile time.
Thank you nature. So again, we’re you know, we’re mammals. We’re evolved humans who our goal as a species, like any species is to reproduce. So nature has designed you to feel like you actually want to be not just necessarily having sex, but also meeting people, dating, even just making new friends, feeling your most social. That happens when estrogen is peaking, which is right around ovulation. And that’s why ovulation is your inner summertime, because you feel like you want to be out in the sunlight and, you know, just showing off your full bloom flower power energy with the rest of the world.
Your superpowers. I am curious about the doula as far as your knowledge there, you’re not practicing, right?
I actually, I took a whole, like 3 or 6 month doula training, and then I ended up shifting straight away from birth into period. So I never even attended a birth.
Okay. I happened to have had four kids born in the same living room. And for us, it was a great experience. That was maybe some concerns, but we always had a plan in case there was a problem. If something came up, we knew how we were getting to the hospital. Exactly, and everything was ready. We had a grab bag if we needed it type thing. what have you learned in all of that training?
Ooh, my favorite tool that I use from doula training is the idea of using your B R A I N. And brain is an acronym. B R A I N is something that you should bring to every single doctor’s appointment. You know how when you go sometimes with some doctors, when you show up to the doctor’s appointment, you get that white coat syndrome where you just feel nervous because they’re a person of authority who has all this training. And what do I know about science and medical everything anyway? And a lot of times, the people, my clients, that’s when they go to the doctor. They get so nervous they can’t even remember their questions that they had. So B R A I N helps you remember to ask the right questions. B stands for benefits. What are the benefits of this thing that that you, doctor, are recommending to me. So maybe they’re recommending a type of birth control. Maybe they say actually you should really try the NuvaRing. Okay, well what are the benefits of this of the NuvaRing. R what are the risks? This is one that a lot of people forget. What are the risks of this particular type of birth control? I know it’s so I mean, these days, thankfully it’s easy to find birth control if you want it relatively. Right. but there’s I can remember getting my first IUD at a Planned Parenthood. I was able to make, an appointment maybe a week in advance, and it was relatively painless, which I know it isn’t for everyone, but for me, it was pretty easy, and I still didn’t ask for the risks. And I still don’t remember them listing, you know, signing away. I’m sure you do sign at some point, right. But you just going to ask have that conversation with your doctor. A in brain stands for alternatives. Okay. Are there any alternatives to what you’re offering me? Actually I don’t know if I like the sound of the NuvaRing. What other low dose hormone options are there for birth control? I stands for intuition. What is your gut telling you about this? I mean, for me, I did not like the sound of using hormonal birth control. My intuition had been telling me for years, don’t try it. And then after I got my fallopian tube removed from this emergency surgery, I was like, oh, I don’t know, should I try a totally different type? I mean, this the copper IUD didn’t work for me. Maybe I should try a hormonal one. Oh my goodness. I had anxiety, mood swings, anger. I was not. I had the only panic attack I’ve ever had in my life, and it was because my body wasn’t used to and didn’t like the synthetic hormones. I wish I had listened to my intuition and just never tried it for those few months. And then finally the N in brain is what happens if I do nothing? The N is for nothing. So this might be more or less for birth control maybe, but more for, you know, if you are giving birth and you, they say, actually, you should really have an epidural and you go through your, your benefits, your risks, your alternatives, what is your intuition say then you can say, okay, well, what if I just don’t have an epidural? Then what? So that’s one that a lot of people forget is you don’t have to do anything. You want to make the most informed decision you can. And that comes from asking all the other letters of B R A I N
That’s great. Could you give that to us one more time just in rapid fire? The acronym Brain and what they stand for?
B benefits R risks a alternatives I intuition an N nothing. What happens if I do nothing.
All right that’s perfect. And I want that because it’s going to fit on a short well done because I hear that and it can be used for so much more than birth control. It can be it’s a good acronym. I like it great.
what do you wish you were told as a teenager experiencing these things? You know what should parents, share with their children that are going to be going through these changes?
Number one, there is no need to feel shame about anything in your body, but know that the media is going to try to make you feel shame anyway. We have very unrealistic standards of beauty and bodies on TV on Netflix, and that will permeate your brain and make you start comparing yourself. It will give you toxic messaging that you know your body is something to be shameful of, to hide. I mean, you know, there’s the whole joke of if like a male and female nipple are the same, but we can’t show female, you just have to blur it out. I mean, we’re just inundated with the messaging that we need to be hiding our bodies, and I wish I knew that, that as a teenager, I wish I knew, like, okay, that’s to be expected. That’s where society is right now. But I don’t have to. I can choose to filter that out. I don’t, I can, I can feel the pressure, but I don’t necessarily have to feel shame or guilt around what my body looks like. I got my first period ever on my 14th birthday, I woke up to my period happy birthday from Mother Nature, and I didn’t even tell my own mother until that night because I was just so nervous. I was like, this is awkward and embarrassing. I wish I just hadn’t, you know, had to shove, toilet paper into my underwear. I should have just asked my mom for a pad or a tampon, right? And number two, I wish that again, that we could just share more of the good parts of having a menstrual cycle, an ovulatory cycle? The health benefits from ovulation alone. Even if you’re not trying to have a baby, you’re growing bone health because of that estrogen. It’s good for your skin. It’s good again. It’s good for every part of your body. If you’re of reproductive age, we want to be promoting healthy ovulation. It’s a beautiful thing. The super powers. That’s a beautiful thing. The collaboration that comes from women when we’re interacting with people of different parts of our cycle. Imagine if you had a roomful of women and some of them were having their super powers of winter, some spring, some fall, and some autumn. imagine the ideas that we could come up with all of those different strengths. So I just really wish I had known that there were any positives to having a menstrual cycle since all we focus on are the negatives.
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Now, do you wish your mother had maybe a couple of years earlier said, here, this is a tampon. This is a pad. I want you to have these and this is what might happen.
Yeah. You know, I think that for my family was pretty hands off. And I think this is typical, especially in America and with generations I think it’s changing a little bit. But, you know, I got the books, we went to the library. She, you know, gave me resources, but it still wasn’t an encouraged conversation. I think that’s the difference is like, as parents, as adults, we have several options. One, we can avoid it and make it sound shameful. Two, we can neutralize it, but also not really be super involved or three we can model like this is an active conversation. It’s ongoing. I mean, of course I’m sure it’s awkward as a parent to be like, so hey, how are your menstrual cycles going? But just by asking that question, like, shoot, you might find out that your kid is having, you know, ten day long, heavy periods. You might find out that they’re skipping class because they’re in pain. I mean, we have teenagers vomiting in pain from period cramps, and that is a sign of a hormonal imbalance. So just be an open book. It’s awkward for everyone at first, but the earlier we can normalize it, the better. And so as much as my parents are like incredible parents like, no, I don’t actually remember having a real conversation about menstrual cycles until I was in my 20s. And of course, then I started talking about it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m wondering how nutrition plays into symptoms and how period people experience various.
This is fun. So when you know where your inner seasons fall, your winter and spring and summer and autumn along your menstrual cycle, you can start playing with cycles syncing which is changing the way that you have habits and routines around things like food and movement, and even your social plans to line up with where your body’s at in that part of the cycle. So for a lot of people, when they’re on their period, they are thinking like, okay, how can I reduce inflammation so that my periods aren’t as heavy or painful? And how can I replenish the minerals that I’m losing through my period? And a lot of those are wintery foods. So thinking like really hearty soups and stews and seaweed and warming spices, anything that you would want in winter, it’s a good time for your inner winter. Same thing with the other. So spring, spring, spring is when you are your, follicles and your ovaries are growing eggs. You are increasing your fertility, you’re approaching ovulation, and this is a really good time to be supporting the estrogen detoxification. So we all we’re all exposed to a lot of phyto estrogens or synthetic estrogens in our environment. In our environment, there’s a lot of toxins out there right. And so a lot of these heavy periods that we’re seeing in society are coming from having too much estrogen and relation to progesterone. So if we can be eating foods that help us process all of that estrogen, that can help you have a healthier ovulation, healthier PMS symptoms, healthier period. A lot of, cruciferous vegetables are great for that. Fermented foods are great in your spring and having more, you know, light and crisp springtime summertime cooling foods. So around ovulation you have all this high energy and you want to be maintaining it. A lot of people forget to eat around ovulation because they’re just so, you know, and go, go, go mode and everything’s fun and they’re feeling great and confident. They’re like, oh my gosh, I’ve been working for six hours and I haven’t gotten a snack. So making sure that you’re maintaining those energy levels by getting enough healthy fats and carbs. And then in your premenstrual phase, you’re autumn. Think about those autumn foods, those sweet potatoes you’re loading up on omega three fatty acids so that you can make sure that you’re having less painful periods, reducing inflammation. It’s actually really fun to line up with the seasons in the. The easiest way I’ve found for people who are interested in trying this is choose just one food group to start with, and usually fruits and veggies are an easy one. So how can you choose rotating fruits and veggies for each of those, seasons and line them up with your menstrual cycle and just see how you feel?
I didn’t hear anything about junk foods in there.
Talk to talk to Dr. Haley. You can come up with a plan.
Yeah. So in the seasons, I don’t know if there’s a season for sugar and caffeine and all of those things that doesn’t seem that fit in anywhere. I don’t know.
That’s great. tell me about some of your success stories. Who have you influenced where it was life changing and, you know, thank you, Angie Marie.
You know, it’s funny because I started off doing fertility awareness classes. And so I got on one hand that just knowing, okay, I had clients who were planning to get off their synthetic birth control because their symptoms were driving them nuts, and they didn’t like the way it made them feel. Some of them similar to me, were they were getting, for the first time in their life, anxiety and mood issues linked to the synthetic drugs in their system. So the ones who were I really liked working with clients who were proactive, being like, okay, I’m going to get off birth control on this date. I’ve made the appointment. but I want to learn how I want to start practicing how to read my fertility signs now so that I can just, you know, full steam ahead, go into fertility awareness for birth control. Once my birth control comes out. And so then, yeah, getting feedback emails from them after the course is on. Oh my gosh, I feel more like myself than ever before, especially for these clients who were on synthetic birth control. A lot of times they almost feel like a brain fog while they’re on it, or like they’re just not entirely themselves, not entirely present. So every time I hear somebody say, yeah, it’s like, I feel like more alive than I did on birth control, that makes me happy. And then over the years, I shifted less from teaching birth control and more into this more creative side of how do we use cycles thinking to I mean, I wrote my book by using cycles thinking, I use cycles thinking to inform the way that I train for my ultramarathons. I have this really active lifestyle, and my menstrual cycle is one tool to help me live that way. And so every time I hear from other athletes like me, that tuning into their cycle change the way that they approach, whitewater kayaking is a fun one. I remember I just, on a whim a few years ago, wrote a blog post on how you can use the inner seasons of your hormones to, be more in tune with the way that you’re whitewater kayaking. And that just got shared around this small community of female whitewater kayakers. And I still get to this day a message once in a while saying that it was a really helpful post. So yeah, I mean, I don’t know, I have I’m such a multi passionate person and I’m such a I’ll always be evolving how what I’m doing in my work and the people I’m collaborating with. But I feel my best when it’s something I’ve done years ago is worth somebody sending me a message and saying, hey, just so you know, I’m still doing this and it feels really good.
That’s great. And for people that want the Cycle Syncing Handbook, I’ll make sure there’s links below the podcast, below the video, wherever you’re watching this or consuming this podcast, look below it for the description and the link to get that book. I want to know about your podcast.
So again multi passionate person. So this is not very connected to menstrual cycles. But my podcast is called For the Love Of. And we’re diving into conversations with people who have made big trade offs in order to pursue their passions. So think about a dad who is also an Everest guide. Every year during Mount Everest climbing season, he has to fly across the world, ends up losing 30 pounds of body weight because he’s in, you know, the death zone leaving his kids. How do you reconcile being a father and being an Everest guide? We’ve had people who, you know, pursue a PhD and end up changing their lives for their academic. We’ve had whitewater kayakers who have given up a traditional career in order to pursue their sport, but it’s not as glamorous as it looks. There’s always the, you know, we see the summit selfies and the cool Instagram posts, but how do people actually make those decisions to give up so much of the rest of their life to pursue a passion? So that’s what we’re talking about on my podcast.
Oh that’s great. Now, if we listen to your podcast, you know, right now just talking to you, my face kind of hurts from smiling. Is that going to happen if I listen to your podcast?
I think so my co-host is one of my soul sisters in life, one of my closest friends, and we are giggling quite often recording this. So if you are laughing along then we would get along in real life for sure.
That’s great. That’s great. Is there anything that you wish I had asked you? you know, I wish that you had asked how can non menstruates better support menstruates? Because like you said, you don’t have periods, but you have people close to you. You have kids. You have people in your life that you care about who are cycling humans. So my challenge for you is do not avoid these conversations. Do you know, Toastmasters, a public speaking club?
Yeah.
So I’m going to Toastmasters Group. And I remember my first speech was about the menstrual cycle. It was a virtual speech. I gave my speech about menstrual cycles, which is definitely not a topic my Toastmasters club had ever had somebody speak on before. And then you go after you give a speech. The other people in the club give you an evaluation. They say what you did well, what you can improve on. And I remember a man was giving me an evaluation and he said something along the lines of, oh yeah, I thought it was cool that you did this topic, because usually when my, my wife and my kids all get their periods, I just know, like to leave them alone and to go hide. And I was like, well, this is then you missed the point of my entire speech, because if we’re just running away from our loved ones because we don’t want to talk about, well, how are you feeling? And like, yeah, how are you feeling now compared to last week? Because you might be a totally different person. So my challenge to any non menstruater or out there is now to know you are also a cyclical being. If you, you Michael you have a 24 hour hormonal cycle. You are experiencing these shifts in your hormones, in your testosterone that are shifting on a 24 hour cycle. Some of us have the same shifts. They just take their 25 to 35 days. I wouldn’t want to avoid you for an hour or a day just because I’m uncomfortable with what’s going on in your Hormones. So my challenge to you is to lean into it, ask more questions. Don’t just hide and whisper about periods and make jokes about PMSing, let’s talk about it.
Yeah, I agree, I agree. This was a fun conversation. And you know, I happen to have the most incredible daughter and I would like to think that she knows that she could approach me and talk about absolutely anything. I hope that’s the case. I hope I’m having that environment for her. And, I know in today’s day and age, some, you know, little girls only have one parent and it might be the man or it might be the mom, or it might be adopted parents, even. And it’s this kind of conversation that helps break down the barriers and open that up so that people do feel comfortable having those conversations. I want to encourage the men. That’s why I wanted to do this. Why would a man want to interview someone and learn about the menstrual cycle? Because we have people around us that are experiencing these things and they might need us.
I’ll consider this 50% of the world has menstrual cycles, ovulation cycles, and 100% of the world is here because of them.
Right. That’s right. So true. That’s a beautiful thing. Angie Marie, I want to thank you so much for joining me in this fun podcast topic. And thank you for making it so exciting and inviting. Okay. you’ve got a YouTube channel. I bet.
I’m not on YouTube, actually, I’m more of an Instagrammer. you can find me.
Well, actually, now I have several. I would just start at my website. You’ll find everything you want there. It’s links to the social media profiles from that.
Okay. Awesome. Thank you.
I hope you enjoyed that episode today on the Doctor Haley Show. Make sure to hit subscribe on whichever platform you are listening to this. If this episode made you think of someone, go ahead, take a screenshot and share this exact episode with them. You can catch the show notes for this episode on Doctor haley.com. If you want to geek out with Doctor Michael Haley on other radical health topics. Be sure to check out his YouTube channel where he posts exclusive video content. All the details are at Doctor haley.com, and we can’t wait to hang out with you on the next episode.
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