Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - Your Hormones Aren’t the Problem—This Is

00:00:00.680 I don't think I can be your friend, Isabella said.

00:00:04.060 Rebecca's stomach flipped.

00:00:06.340 This is the love story of real hinge couple Isabella and Rebecca,

00:00:09.900 written and read by me, Temi Denton-Hurst.

00:00:12.360 Listen to the free audiobook now.

00:00:21.880 Hey all, Joe here and you are listening to Under the Influence.

00:00:27.780 What if I told you that your period tracking app knows more about your body than your doctor does?

00:00:35.420 And it's not even legally required to keep any of your secrets.

00:00:40.660 There's honestly nothing more powerful than understanding how our bodies work.

00:00:45.580 But there's also a lot of companies tracking our data, without our permission,

00:00:49.580 and a ton of misinformation being perpetuated by social media influencers.

00:00:54.820 Today we're talking to Laura Federico and Morgan Miller.

00:00:58.320 a midwife and psychotherapist who are the authors of The Cycle Book,

00:01:02.220 an interactive step-by-step guide to tracking hormones and knowing your body.

00:01:07.540 And by tracking hormones, they mean writing down observations about your body with a pen and a piece of paper,

00:01:13.940 not handing your data over to some Silicon Valley bro.

00:01:17.480 There are so many questions that I didn't even know what to ask about my cycle.

00:01:22.320 I mean, for most of my life, thinking about my period has been about when I can and can't wear white pants,

00:01:27.780 and when I can and can't get pregnant. And there's just so much else going on with our hormones that

00:01:33.820 we have to understand. We are going to talk about what the luteal phase is, which after three kids,

00:01:39.500 I still don't know, and why it matters. We'll also get into whether tracking your cervical fluid

00:01:44.720 could actually change your life. And most importantly, when is the best time of the

00:01:49.940 month to schedule sex with your husband or a triathlon?

00:01:57.780 How can I keep my menstrual data private?

00:02:03.760 I don't want anyone knowing when I get my period, when my eggs are dropping.

00:02:10.000 Like what happens to my period data when I track it in an app?

00:02:15.800 Yes, I think that is one of the most important questions we can be asking ourselves right now.

00:02:21.880 Um, I really like imagining somebody just waiting to see when your eggs are dropping

00:02:27.980 and what they're going to do with that.

00:02:30.700 I like, I picture someone on the other end of the app, you know, just like just tracking

00:02:37.620 my data the same way that someone at factory farms tracks chicken ovulation.

00:02:42.540 But they're like, it's Joe's time.

00:02:44.700 It's Joe's time.

00:02:46.100 Yeah.

00:02:46.700 Well, the reality of the current app situation is that nearly every period tracking app is not HIPAA protected.

00:02:58.020 HIPAA being the main federally regulated confidentiality protection that we have.

00:03:05.640 So there's a lot of places your data can be going and none of it is really up to us.

00:03:12.780 Yeah, this is what I thought.

00:03:15.380 And that's why I will say I got suckered into a lot of period tracking apps when I was trying to get pregnant, which is kind of crazy because you can also do math.

00:03:27.000 But I don't like to do math, so I wanted someone to tell me when my ovulation window was.

00:03:33.440 And so I was using those for my first and my second pregnancy.

00:03:37.440 The third one was an accident.

00:03:38.860 But now, I don't think I would ever, knowing what I know about how these companies are stealing our data, I would be so wary of sharing any of this information with them.

00:03:51.500 Am I right about that?

00:03:54.880 I think it's a good hesitation to have.

00:03:57.320 We don't know what people are using that data for.

00:04:00.480 And it's also not privately owned necessarily and going to stay with that person the entire time.

00:04:06.040 And data gets sold left and right all the time through a lot of these tech agencies.

00:04:10.160 And so it might be currently housed in somewhere that you feel comfortable with.

00:04:14.180 But down the road, those things might change.

00:04:17.500 Right. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

00:04:19.220 And that just that definitely makes me nervous.

00:04:23.160 And I think it would make me even more nervous if I were still, you know, of a proper breeding age, which I'm, you know, slowly, slowly.

00:04:30.600 I think there's one egg left in there. And she's like smoking a Marlboro light and wearing a caftan, maybe. So I mean, my period's probably on its way out in a few years, but not gone yet. And I'm definitely thinking about hormones more than I ever have.

00:04:51.560 And as someone who lives inside social media and lives inside the Internet, I see so much fear mongering around hormones, around birth control, around cycle tracking.

00:05:05.860 You've dove into all of this in the cycle book, talking about tracking our hormones and knowing our bodies.

00:05:14.860 What is the biggest miss and disinformation that you've seen on social media about our hormones?

00:05:21.840 That is such a good question.

00:05:23.460 And I also really appreciate the understanding that just because our periods are ending, that doesn't mean that we stop tracking or paying attention to our hormones because we have hormone receptors on all of our major body systems.

00:05:39.860 and so much of what we experience can be impacted by hormonal cycles, no matter where we're at in

00:05:46.940 that kind of lifespan. And there is so much scary shit out there about what's going on within our 0.96

00:05:56.980 bodies. And Morgan, I don't know if you agree with this, but I think one of the biggest pieces 0.98

00:06:02.780 of misinformation is this idea that our bodies and our hormones are just waiting to be like

00:06:10.480 hacked in some way. And that if only we could figure out exactly how we can like tinker

00:06:16.780 with these hormones, then we're going to somehow achieve this level of homeostasis that, you know, 1.00

00:06:24.000 every woman deserves. And I do believe that we deserve to be in control of our bodies. I do

00:06:31.120 believe that we deserve to be in control of our health and our well-being, but I don't believe

00:06:36.280 that we are like an algorithm-based sort of being just waiting to be biohacked. And I think that

00:06:43.860 makes us so vulnerable to all of these kind of like wellness products and apps and methods of

00:06:52.700 being super, super invested in the minutiae of what's happening in our bodies in a way that

00:06:59.460 just kind of like funnels us into this pretty kind of predatory at times wellness system.

00:07:06.820 It definitely is also, dare I say, patriarchal, the way that we talk about hormones and being

00:07:14.000 hormonal, where it completely misses the point on what hormones are. They're in all bodies and

00:07:20.580 they are simply chemical messengers. So they're the little things floating around in your body,

00:07:25.760 telling your body to act in certain ways. So it becomes this entire battle against hormones. The

00:07:32.480 hormones are wrong. You're too hormonal. There's all these things that need to be fixed and hacked

00:07:38.020 and tweaked with your hormones. But the reality is your hormones are just the things in your body

00:07:43.880 that are trying to tell you what you need. And we need to start listening to them perhaps instead

00:07:48.460 of saying to quiet down and you need to stop speaking up so much about what it is that your

00:07:52.920 body needs that's so interesting because i do remember you know in middle school high school

00:08:01.560 and even college being hormonal was an adjective to be you're being bitchy you're being oh my gosh

00:08:11.200 he's on her period she's so hormonal yes because so many of these things so many of these things 1.00

00:08:18.180 having to do with our periods have been equated with women being cranky ass bitches 0.99

00:08:25.040 100 it's done us a absolutely huge disservice we have gotten lost in that rhetoric ourselves 0.97

00:08:36.220 even the the kind of like um the like reclaiming efforts are like you know pink t-shirts that are 0.98

00:08:43.620 like, so what if I'm a bitch? It's like wine o'clock on my like cycle or whatever, just like 0.86

00:08:48.320 some like total nonsense, you know, that is also taking us so far away from any kind of

00:08:55.140 respectable engagement with our bodies as like, you know, medically important and, you know,

00:09:02.500 sort of like basic human rights sort of approach to how we take care of ourselves. It is always in

00:09:10.440 this demeaning lens it when we actually designed this book one of the things that was so important

00:09:16.680 to us was to try to create some sort of representation like aesthetically that wasn't

00:09:22.960 like full of like chirping birds when it's your fertile window in fact we were like please god

00:09:28.720 let us never say fertile window in this book you know like just this sort of like really heavy 0.90

00:09:34.920 effort to move away from some of that the the lens of you know just being like so bitchy so hormonal 1.00

00:09:43.720 we're just you know these like little ladies walking around you know and if we're gonna 1.00

00:09:48.920 reclaim it we still have to do it in the same way it's a huge multi-layered um pretty oppressive way

00:09:57.700 to look at our bodies it really is and at the end of the day hormones are health periods are health

00:10:08.280 and yet they've become this thing that's almost like an other in our society it's it's very

00:10:16.560 interesting to me i'm raising raising a boy child raising raising a small man okay and and our house

00:10:24.780 is very kind of period agnostic i guess i would say like it's neither good or bad it's like

00:10:32.260 scraping your leg and bleeding essentially right it's a thing that happens and i i had i did have

00:10:39.080 to explain periods in a burger king rest stop bathroom what all three of my children because 0.70

00:10:46.480 what mother would ever go to the bathroom alone and my daughter was like oh my god mommy's dying

00:10:54.500 And then everyone comes over to the toilet to look in the toilet because also my children examine each other's poops all the time.

00:11:03.400 And so they're all like, oh, my God, we should we should call an ambulance.

00:11:07.920 Someone get daddy.

00:11:08.840 The baby's almost out the door. 1.00

00:11:10.160 And I'm like, let's explain what a uterus is.

00:11:18.580 And periods and blood.

00:11:20.840 And since then, we have had so many, so many cobbled together makeshift conversations and then good scientific based conversations.

00:11:29.980 But we're a period friendly house, but also, like I said, period agnostic.

00:11:34.620 It's just a thing that happens in life, as opposed to when I was growing up and Cosmo and Sassy Magazines, every embarrassing situation involved a tampon. 0.72

00:11:45.620 That's so true.

00:11:46.420 I've actually never thought about it.

00:11:47.840 it's always some sort of scenario where a pad has fallen out of a purse or someone's dog ate

00:11:56.500 the tampon I feel like I read so many like embarrassing stories there were so many dogs

00:12:00.920 eating the tampons or you were at your boyfriend's house and you left the tampon in the trash and the

00:12:05.380 dog got it out of the trash they're they're seared into my mind and I do think we have a real

00:12:13.240 opportunity now to erase that shame and all of that language that I think was introduced in a 0.59

00:12:21.140 very patriarchal way, but then perpetuated in women's media. Yeah, I think the media in particular, 0.93

00:12:28.060 you're exactly on it. So much of it became predatory because it was quite effective for this

00:12:33.600 shame and fear. Those are wonderful selling tactics. And so we can feed on our human instincts

00:12:40.280 that way. But I think this next generation has such better grounding and less fear around these

00:12:47.240 body functions. We just need to give them the information. We weren't given this information

00:12:52.840 about how our bodies work. And once we start to share that, we can be set up in such a different

00:12:57.320 way. And I want to know what you hear from women about what they want to know. What are people

00:13:06.460 asking you, when you start this conversation about hormones and your cycle, what are people

00:13:12.140 most curious about? But let's take a quick break, and we'll dive into that when we get back.

00:13:22.320 I don't think I can be your friend, Isabella said. Rebecca's stomach flipped.

00:13:27.860 This is the love story of real hinge couple Isabella and Rebecca,

00:13:31.540 written and read by me, Temi Denton-Hurst. Listen to the free audiobook now.

00:13:36.460 we are back when when you tell people that you have written a book

00:13:46.640 about women's cycles women's hormones what are what are the first questions that you get

00:13:53.640 people ask us all of the time about ovulation people don't know how to understand from their

00:14:04.280 own body's cues when they are ovulating. Nobody has been taught this, it seems. And we've even

00:14:11.440 asked people in wildly different locations, did you get this sex ed? Is this just something that

00:14:18.740 we missed in the United States or did you get this? And nobody has this information. And so

00:14:24.200 a lot of times people ask us about cervical fluid and they have a lot of questions about

00:14:30.200 cervical fluid. Morgan, what do people ask you about when they come into your midwifery office?

00:14:36.340 I mean, it's definitely ovulation is a huge question mark for people. But I think

00:14:41.240 what I see most often is people are really intuitive and they have instincts that something

00:14:47.380 is happening cyclically with them, whether it's a symptom or like a mood or just something that

00:14:53.640 seems like a repetitive nature. And they feel like it might have this relation to hormones,

00:14:58.360 but they don't have any grounding or framework for it.

00:15:01.020 And then we start to talk about ovulation

00:15:03.040 and signs of shifting from follicular to luteal phases.

00:15:07.100 And it's just these giant eyes of aha moments.

00:15:10.460 I mean, Laura and I have sat in rooms

00:15:12.660 full of medical providers who went to medical school

00:15:16.040 and these are the same reactions we're getting from people.

00:15:18.980 So you can imagine how people feel

00:15:21.180 when they finally start to get this information.

00:15:24.000 i have had three children and i still couldn't totally tell you when i ovulate

00:15:31.900 isn't alone is a pet wild it took me until i was dealing with infertility to understand right

00:15:40.820 right and i didn't i didn't deal with with infertility so i didn't have to i didn't have

00:15:46.340 to think about it that much when i was when i was doing it when i was doing the tracking and all of

00:15:51.420 that I had a sense right because I was like all right we should probably do it this day but now

00:15:58.180 that I'm not thinking about it that information has left my brain I can usually feel when I

00:16:03.500 ovulate I usually feel a pinch but that is because I am highly attuned to what happens in that part

00:16:09.040 of my body now but I couldn't tell you if it's four days after my period ends or 10 days or I

00:16:14.420 or what the signs of it would be?

00:16:17.700 Well, this is one of the biggest things

00:16:19.660 that Morgan and I feel extremely strongly about

00:16:23.960 is that we should not be viewing cycle phases

00:16:27.080 only in the context of fertility.

00:16:29.700 And ovulation, the luteal phase, the follicular phase,

00:16:33.940 for a lot of people, there are strong associations

00:16:37.460 with changes in their bodies,

00:16:39.980 whether it's their mental health or their physical health

00:16:42.780 or a chronic illness or even how they feel in relationship to other people, these hormonal

00:16:48.500 shifts change things in how we feel. But not only were we not taught about like literally how to

00:16:56.040 tell when you're ovulating, but the only reason we were taught about something like ovulation

00:17:00.980 is because most of us were taught that's the scary time you could get pregnant, you know,

00:17:07.020 make sure that you know about this. And we've missed out on all of the rest of the ways that

00:17:14.280 these hormonal shifts truly change how we exist in our bodies and in the world. And as a really

00:17:20.820 quick example, there are a lot of conditions that we know that have been studied that have an

00:17:29.260 exacerbated symptomology during certain cycle phases. So people with asthma, people with mental

00:17:36.660 health conditions like anxiety, depression, OCD. When we're talking about people's sexuality,

00:17:43.040 things change. And none of us are being given the tools to understand that we might need to,

00:17:48.320 for example, change our medication to match our hormonal cycles or treat ourselves differently.

00:17:54.420 It's mind-blowing. It is mind-blowing. And I want some more examples of this. And can you

00:18:02.440 talk to me just a little bit about how knowing what part of my cycle is, like something very

00:18:08.840 specific, can actually help me improve my life, can help me make a change that will make my life

00:18:15.900 a little bit easier, a little bit better. I can give you an example from my clinic just this week

00:18:25.760 with a client who has chronic illness, and it really presents as a digestive issue for them.

00:18:33.320 They've been getting treatment from multiple different providers and kind of

00:18:37.080 mix-matched results, but they feel like they're over-medicating themselves.

00:18:41.160 We've been working on cycle tracking together and quickly found a correlation that happens

00:18:47.020 when she switches from the follicular phase to the ruteal phase. And so when we were able to

00:18:53.900 start to identify those clear signs, like Laura was talking about, of ovulation, that became our

00:18:59.960 signal of moving into a new phase. And that became the signal for this person to manage their

00:19:07.320 medication and diet differently, so that they were able to plan what foods they were consuming.

00:19:13.560 And then they have been able to reduce the amount of medication management they've had. They're not

00:19:18.260 having to go call in sick for work as many days. They've completely been able to shift what their

00:19:25.460 days look like from an entirely preventative aspect because they have an understanding that

00:19:30.600 their body needs different things at different times of their cycle. And now I'm going to ask

00:19:38.700 what is probably a very dumb question. Explain to me the follicular and luteal phase again. 0.68

00:19:44.960 Definitely not a dumb question.

00:19:47.580 Great question.

00:19:49.200 So after a person bleeds, they start to enter into the follicular phase.

00:19:55.460 That's kind of the first half of the menstrual cycle.

00:19:58.940 It is the part where your body is preparing to ovulate.

00:20:03.700 So your body is preparing a follicle to release an egg.

00:20:08.100 And that's a whole different hormonal cocktail that occurs just in the specific phase of

00:20:14.440 the follicular phase. Once you start to leave the follicular phase, you enter into the ovulatory

00:20:20.940 phase. And that's a shorter window, but it's where the body is actually releasing that egg.

00:20:26.680 And that's the ovulation that we're all talking about. After that has occurred, you shift into

00:20:32.680 the luteal phase. And the luteal phase is where your body is preparing to start the whole cycle

00:20:39.080 over again. Or, you know, kind of fluff up that endometrial lining that's inside your uterus and

00:20:45.560 prepare it for the next bleeding phase. Or if a person were to get pregnant, it would be preparing

00:20:50.740 for that pregnancy. So it's shifting a totally different hormonal cocktail than what was occurring

00:20:57.040 in the follicular phase. Again, things that we just are not taught in health class or by

00:21:08.300 by our doctors. This feels like a conversation that my OBGYN should be having with me. I mean,

00:21:15.880 not something that I have to go searching for. Agreed. Totally agreed. Totally, totally agreed.

00:21:23.060 You know, the other part of this is that the way that Morgan just described that was really gorgeous

00:21:29.820 because what she didn't do was focus the description of each of those phases on pregnancy

00:21:38.300 or fertility, which is the other part of how most of us were taught about these things.

00:21:43.500 It was always in the context of a reproductive cycle, which, yes, obviously a huge part of

00:21:50.020 this, whether you want to be getting pregnant or you really don't want to be getting pregnant.

00:21:53.940 But for so many of us, all of our cycles outside of perhaps one or a few children

00:22:02.020 exists outside of the context of fertility, and we just kind of ignore it in so many ways

00:22:09.080 because that's what's being modeled to us. Exactly. Exactly. And like I said, I have not

00:22:16.380 thought. You know, I've been in an interesting period, right? Because I thought a lot about

00:22:23.960 my cycle and my hormones when I was trying to get pregnant, haven't been thinking about it.

00:22:30.460 And now that I'm experiencing the symptoms of perimenopause, I'm thinking about my hormones again, but not so much my cycle.

00:22:37.820 I like I for some reason have not been connecting those two.

00:22:41.520 Yeah, I think that's the part that Laura and I are so excited about is let's make that connection because you if you are a person who menstruates,

00:22:50.060 you have this amazing tool in front of you full of all of these biomarkers where you can use that

00:22:57.060 information as grounding to understand the hormones. If you have those signals, if you

00:23:03.840 have things like cervical fluid, if you have bleeding phases, and you can start to learn

00:23:08.280 those other biomarkers in your body, it can give you that context to understand what are the

00:23:14.100 hormonal shifts that's happening. Perimenopause is a huge hormonal shift. It's akin to that

00:23:20.040 hormonal shift that people recall when they're 13 years old and how wild that can feel. But

00:23:26.100 imagine how different it can feel if you have grounding and understanding of it every day to

00:23:30.220 know, oh, that thing that feels wild in my body, I actually understand that that's what this shift is.

00:23:37.400 I'm also noticing signs of perimenopause. And I at first thought I was just like,

00:23:44.440 truly losing my mind and had without any kind of context of hormones was was like this is sort of

00:23:53.580 it you know like like goodbye everyone you know I'll never be the same and you know who is this

00:24:00.680 new person I I don't know her and I don't really know what to expect and having the lens of hey

00:24:09.380 this might be because of a thing was truly so comforting for me. But I wouldn't have come to

00:24:17.220 that if I wasn't like quite literally spending all of my time outside of work on this particular

00:24:22.960 project. And still with that information, it's still pretty scary at times because so much

00:24:29.880 changes. I mean, I don't know if that's your experience with some of what you're noticing

00:24:33.860 with perimenopause but for me it was really disorienting constant shifts constant shifts

00:24:40.160 I thought a lot of it I attributed to just aging right I'm like okay my joints feel creaky and

00:24:48.780 strange and my sleep is different but I'm a 44 year old woman maybe this is just what happens

00:24:55.800 to bodies not necessarily thinking that it had to do with perimenopause

00:25:01.280 Totally. Now, I have some very specific questions for you about what I should and shouldn't be doing during different phases of my cycle. Can we dive into that when we get back?

00:25:19.240 Absolutely. Yeah.

00:25:20.780 i don't think i can be your friend isabella said rebecca's stomach flipped this is the

00:25:30.940 love story of real hinge couple isabella and rebecca written and read by me temi denton

00:25:35.540 listen to the free audiobook now

00:25:38.160 we're back i have some specific questions about what is a good time of the month to

00:25:50.520 do certain things. And this is just, I'm like putting you in the hot seat right now.

00:25:56.700 When, all right, taking, taking the risk, I'm going to call it a risk of pregnancy out of the

00:26:02.360 equation because that's not possible anymore since I got my sweet husband fixed. What times

00:26:07.480 during my cycle am I going to perhaps be more game for, for doing it, for, for, for getting,

00:26:15.280 getting down? Like, when should I be scheduling date nights? I have a friend who literally

00:26:20.020 because she knows her cycle so well, she's like, there's a six hour window where I want a bone.

00:26:26.960 Oh, I love this question. And as a sex therapist, this is something that I love talking to people

00:26:32.420 about. And it's also extremely relatable, but ovulation and the window around ovulation for a

00:26:39.140 lot of people is a time where they do see that increased desire, libido, lubrication. I actually

00:26:45.560 love all of the memes about people who are like ovulation hits and it shows them just like looking

00:26:52.000 at any man who walks by and like imagining like some sort of like romance novel scenario with them

00:26:58.500 and it's like truly any man walking by but I think it's really a funny way to name that for so many

00:27:06.940 people, ovulation and like the days around it really is that. But I mean, I'm imagining Morgan's

00:27:16.220 voice in my mind right now. Everybody's an individual and that is not a hard and fast

00:27:22.200 rule by any means. And we really want people to understand for themselves, what does that look

00:27:28.140 like? What are the phases in which you might feel that? Some people feel cornier sort of in the

00:27:34.060 the kind of like premenstrual phase leading up to bleeding. For some people, bleeding is a time

00:27:39.040 where they're really feeling it and there are conditions around that that turn them on and

00:27:44.900 make them want to get into it. So it really is different for every person. But I would say

00:27:49.280 classically, ovulation is what we're going to see some of that around.

00:27:54.580 Yeah, I think that that general answer is fairly true for a lot of people. A lot of it has to do

00:28:00.140 also with like how your energy is in your body and how sleep is and we tend to have more space

00:28:08.160 and capacity for others when we're able to meet those needs that we first essentially have for

00:28:13.620 ourselves and sometimes hormonally those things can be achieved easier but just like laura said

00:28:20.020 for some people ovulation is like not their sexy time they do not like how that sensation feels in

00:28:25.060 their body. I would say in my office as a midwife, another trend that I see a lot is the one that

00:28:31.260 Laura mentioned, that pre-bleeding phase, a lot of people have that sensation. And sometimes it

00:28:37.340 has to do with the physical changes that occur with the hormone changes, which many people are

00:28:43.820 not aware of, that their cervix, which is the opening part of your uterus, that that part of

00:28:51.420 your body actually moves throughout your cycle. It moves from being higher or lower in your pelvis

00:28:58.020 and it also opens and closes and it opens like significantly where you can like see a hole

00:29:04.480 through it versus it's totally closed. And so sometimes people feel that sensation around

00:29:09.240 ovulation or right before bleeding where their cervix is a little bit lower and it's starting

00:29:14.880 to open, and that can feel a sensual feeling for them as well. So much good information to have.

00:29:23.180 So much. I know I have a sex therapist question, which is unrelated to my cycle,

00:29:28.260 but related to perimenopause. Which lubes and oils do you recommend to your clients?

00:29:34.460 now this is another super individualized thing um and so i i can say that being able to try

00:29:47.560 out a few lubes and even just put it on the skin of your hand is really what i recommend people

00:29:54.640 start with because people have such different preferences and also what they're looking for

00:29:59.780 sex is really different. So if you're using a lube for penetration, you might want a lube that

00:30:07.460 lasts a little bit longer versus one that is maybe preferable, but the lubrication doesn't

00:30:14.620 last as long. You know, if we're talking about lubrication for touch externally, like on the

00:30:22.460 vulva, what you're looking for might be a little bit different too. So what I would recommend is

00:30:27.260 think about what you want to use that lube for and what you want that lube to do for you and then

00:30:36.120 try out a few lubes maybe like two or three and and see where you want to go from there actually

00:30:42.100 wildflower sex has a really great um lube rundown on their website where they explain all of the

00:30:49.140 different qualities of the lubes that they offer but really what i want people to start thinking 0.75

00:30:53.880 about is like what do you want this lube to do for you what type of sex are we talking about

00:30:58.660 and what are your preferences for how you want your skin to feel all of that is good advice and

00:31:05.160 i'm going to go to that website asap and try to figure this out for myself because this is a

00:31:09.820 question that i have just been it pops up at certain times and then i forget that that it

00:31:14.100 existed lube is everyone's best friend what times of the month will i likely and again all bodies

00:31:21.520 are different but likely have more energy to tackle like a really big project a task or to say

00:31:27.860 do a sprint triathlon like i'm doing next weekend this one is highly variable but i say a lot of

00:31:36.000 people tend to have higher energy in the follicular phase so before you ovulate reading up till that

00:31:42.920 time okay so from bleeding to egg drop right yeah and for some people that's hard because the

00:31:49.580 bleeding phase can be exhausting for them. And so it kind of takes a while to segue into that

00:31:55.660 really good energy. But for other people, it's like the moment they bleed, they're like,

00:32:00.600 I feel great. I'm getting back at life and getting back into the energy flow and everything feels

00:32:05.400 good again. So it's a little bit different on when that begins, but somewhere around bleeding

00:32:10.840 and aster and then towards ovulation is where a lot of people have that peaked energy.

00:32:15.620 okay okay i'm i'm here for that last question should i be changing my diet during my cycle 0.73

00:32:23.740 this is one of those things floating around on social media a lot guys i see so much crap on 0.53

00:32:29.480 social media about hormones from people who are definitively not an expert in anything i know

00:32:35.360 literally not anything i wouldn't go to them to be like how do i tie my shoe but it's still

00:32:40.760 really compelling. Like it's extremely hard to look away from it. You know, it's wait,

00:32:45.860 what did I, I saw a trend recently. Oh, it was one of the carnivore diet trends. And it was like

00:32:51.460 how to balance your cycles with the types of raw meat that you eat. And I lost like two hours of

00:32:58.500 my life to it. I could not look away. And honestly, at the end of it, I was like, okay, like bring on

00:33:04.880 that, like, you know, bring on the raw beef. Like I'm, I'm in, like you've convinced me I'm,

00:33:09.580 I'm won over it's really really hard to turn away from even though it's so clearly terrible advice

00:33:17.360 terrible advice like I just think that so much of it is made up by some dude who smoked some bad 0.99

00:33:24.040 pot and it's like this is a thing that could happen and then his idiot little sister makes a 0.98

00:33:31.360 reel of it well there's also no real good information out there so we're all kind of 0.99

00:33:38.620 screwed like it's like okay well i'm not going to do the raw beef thing like according to ovulation

00:33:44.220 or whatever but then like what am i supposed to do like what are you supposed to do exactly

00:33:48.520 100 i think there's kind of two theories out there there's this idea of you can eat certain

00:33:54.580 foods and they have let's say like phyto hormones like there's a phytoestrogen or a phytoprogesterone

00:34:00.980 like plant-based version of these hormones in your food and then that can kind of

00:34:05.780 tailored to whatever your cyclical hormones are. But I'm a much bigger fan of the idea of

00:34:12.800 eating to your cycle, let's say in respect to how does your body feel and what does it feel like it

00:34:21.360 needs? I mean, a lot of people like have different cravings when their life looks different ways and

00:34:27.020 your hormone changes how your life feels. So you might have cravings for different things at

00:34:31.020 different phases. And I say, go for it if you have it. I don't necessarily think that that

00:34:36.860 means you have to eat a steak every day of your follicular phase or whatever that might be. But

00:34:43.260 I think when people start to understand how their own individual body is communicating

00:34:48.940 and they start to see those hormonal signs, suddenly they realize like, oh, I have a craving

00:34:54.740 for a burger before my bleeding phase. And that feels good to me. And I'm just going to hit that

00:35:00.420 craving and no big deal and they're not necessarily like cycle syncing um with their hormones and

00:35:07.140 their phytoestrogens but i guess i say lean in if something sounds good get after it my mantra is

00:35:13.340 oh that burger sounds good you eat that burger girl what am i not asking you like what else

00:35:19.920 do you want to tell people about this book and about our cycles like what do you really want

00:35:24.700 people to know something that we are really trying to get the word out about is what actually

00:35:35.260 tracking does for you and and that's really just the practice of mindfully listening to your body

00:35:43.000 really being able to notice sensations that feel important to you and just in a really simple way

00:35:50.980 record them and to see if there are any patterns. And we really, really want to advocate for people

00:35:57.580 doing this on pen and paper because the risks are just pretty high right now. Outside of all of

00:36:03.380 the lack of protections for our really important personal data, we are also seeing an environment

00:36:11.200 in which people's digital communications are also not really being protected when we're talking

00:36:19.360 about reproductive status and can be used against you. And it's a pretty frightening time for a lot

00:36:26.720 of people. And when we're talking about reproductive rights, we really want people to feel a sense of

00:36:32.520 agency over what's happening in their bodies so that they have accurate data, individual data

00:36:40.960 that they can then use to advocate for themselves and their health care as they see fit. And this

00:36:47.340 is a really simple way to do that. And we're really trying to kind of like walk back some of

00:36:54.820 the stigma around this, walk back some of the associations that we have around this and just

00:36:59.920 make this like a just general, like you said, you know, period agnostic, just like a general health

00:37:07.440 thing that we can all do really easily that goes a really long way. Yeah, I think the other takeaway,

00:37:15.100 just to piggyback onto that is the apps that are out there we we know that they're not safe but

00:37:23.280 really really really people do not realize how inaccurate they are and when we are talking about

00:37:30.160 people's reproductive status whether they're using that you know app for trying to get pregnant or

00:37:37.520 trying to not get pregnant or even trying to be mindful and understand their hormones

00:37:42.640 it's not really pushed publicly, but they're accurate like 20% of the time when it comes to

00:37:50.660 predicting when ovulation is. And that is not a good percentage. And I can tell you over the

00:37:57.440 years as a midwife, it is devastating to have clients walk into my office who have been using

00:38:02.580 this information for years, trying to understand their body. And they are hit with so much

00:38:07.520 frustration. And we can look at their apps and realize it's because it's been wrong the whole

00:38:12.960 time. And they've been giving this wrong information that they've been basing their

00:38:17.160 life choices on. And it's just devastating and crushing. Our bodies are individual. They are

00:38:22.900 complex. They're nuanced. But it's not so complex that you can't understand it. Maybe the algorithm

00:38:29.500 can't today in 2025. But you can through a simple process of learning this pattern recognition.

00:38:37.520 and this is something we can just do easily with a pencil and a paper right we don't need

00:38:43.360 we don't need an expensive app that we're paying for every month we can just write this down

00:38:48.480 and figure it out right yes we made this like really beautiful really easy to use chart you

00:38:54.840 just sort of like fill in a bubble you write your own categories in it's it's because we are

00:39:01.980 kind of always done wrong, in my opinion, in this realm.

00:39:06.060 The we being all of womankind? 0.73

00:39:08.680 Exactly.

00:39:09.520 All of womankind. 1.00

00:39:10.800 We just haven't been given attention and time and useful tools. 0.92

00:39:15.400 There is a problem.

00:39:17.480 And I think in so many instances where there is a problem, there's a lot of people who

00:39:24.380 come in and try to make money off of that.

00:39:26.880 And that doesn't always translate into the best, safest, most effective product for people and especially for vulnerable groups of people and especially for historically oppressed groups of people.

00:39:39.120 And I think we've just we're sort of like on the receiving end of that right now.

00:39:42.260 Like there is like a problem.

00:39:43.780 People are like, I don't know enough about my reproductive health.

00:39:46.700 And the solution, which for so many of us has been an app, is not effective and it's not safe.

00:39:53.800 And it doesn't mean that we need to come up with another app.

00:39:58.560 You can just track on pen and paper.

00:40:03.500 I love this.

00:40:04.560 I love this.

00:40:05.100 Tell everyone where they can find more of you and more of your book.

00:40:09.600 You can find us at The Cycle Book on all social media platforms.

00:40:14.940 And then you can find us online at thecyclebook.com.

00:40:18.240 And the book is available through all major retailers.

00:40:23.800 We'll see you next time.

00:40:53.800 You want to impress them on a first date, but also play it cool.

00:40:59.460 So what do you do?

00:41:01.560 I'm Rufy Thorpe, and I wrote and read a real love story about a hinged couple that navigated exactly that.

00:41:07.920 Listen to the free audiobook now.

00:41:23.800 Thank you.

Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - April 08, 2025

Your Hormones Aren’t the Problem—This Is

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