Speaker 1: 0:05

Welcome to the Brilliant Fertility Podcast. I'm your host, dr Katie Rose, and this podcast exists to help illuminate the path ahead of you. With expert interviews, clinical pearls and real client success stories, my intention is to bring you hope for what's possible on this journey and to give you tools and resources to navigate the ups and downs on the road before you. If you find this podcast helpful, don't forget to subscribe on your favorite listening platform. And I have a big request If you have a minute, can you leave us a five-star review and let us know what did you learn? What did you come away with? Did you leave with that spark of hope? This helps more people like you find the podcast. My mission is to support as many humans as possible on their path to become parents and by you sharing and subscribing, you're part of that mission too, and I'm so grateful for you for being here.

Speaker 1: 1:13

Welcome back to the Brilliant Fertility Podcast. I'm overjoyed today to have Lisa Hedrickson-Jack with me. I'm having like a little bit of a nervous celebrity moment because I've followed Lisa's work for so long and you know there feels like there's not as many people as we would hope stepping up to educate in the way that Lisa has. So I'm just so honored today. If you aren't already aware of Lisa's work, I'm just going to give a quick introduction and then we're going to dive in. So Lisa Hedrickson-Jacks is a certified fertility awareness educator. She teaches practitioners how to use cycle awareness charting in their practices and she's authored three bestselling books the Fifth Vital Sign, the Fertility Awareness Mastery Charting Workbook and the most recent book co-authored with Lily Nichols, real Food for Fertility. Lisa, you've worked tirelessly to debunk so many myths around cycle health, birth control, ovulation health, and I'm really excited to get to pick your brain today.

Speaker 2: 2:15

Yeah, I'm excited too. Thank you for having me. It's so interesting, you know, to reflect on all the things that have happened in my career. I feel like you had me thinking of it when we were talking before we got started.

Speaker 2: 2:28

But, as I mentioned to you, obviously this work is so important and I spend so much time off air working with clients, and so I just hear similar stories over and over and over and over again women going to their practitioners and not being listened to, not being supported, not being heard, having to go to multiple practitioners to get anyone to even listen to them, being diagnosed with one thing and being told it was another. I literally just had a practitioner tell me that she spent 10 years being told she had pcos, when she literally didn't, because she actually was on the HA spectrum, like it just. This is this is what I do Like. So when I'm sharing this information in this way, it's because I just there's so many women suffering and at some point you just have to be the change you want to see. Yeah, absolutely you want to see?

Speaker 1: 3:20

Yeah, absolutely, Even though it may have felt like very much going against the grain. You've described that you started charting your cycles like very early, like well before this was considered something common practice. How old were you when you learned about cycle awareness and started following these practices?

Speaker 2: 3:43

Yeah, it would have had to be around 19. I keep trying to figure this out because I was. I wrote about it in the book and but so I'm a November baby and so when I went to university I was 17 when I entered university and then I, you know, turned 18 around there, so around 19, because it was 18, or 19, because that was around my first year of university. So my backstory on all of this is that I had my very first period. I think I was 13. I've been thinking about this lately, trying to kind of actually like note down the exact dates, but I was 13. When I had my first period.

Speaker 2: 4:21

My very first period was painful. My periods from the beginning were painful and they were heavy and I was very active. I did ballet, I did track and field, I did basketball, I did volleyball, you know I did all these different sports and you know no one wants to be in like a leotard With all the bleeding, and I did have some of those embarrassing moments, you know. So I girls talked, and so I went to the doctor and I said three words to him and he put me on the pill and what I found was that when I was on the pill, my quote periods, like my withdrawal bleeds on the pill, were more manageable for me.

Speaker 2: 5:03

So I was on this pill and all of a sudden, I didn't have like as bad of cramps and and I didn't have this heavy bleeding. And so, being a child, I was like I'm fixed. This is amazing. And I wasn't using it for birth control at the time. So I just came off of it periodically, like I would just stop taking it because I wanted to see like, because I was like okay, I'm fixed. And every time I came off of it my actual period would come back with vengeance. So in my case, I saw a very clear difference between my actual period and whatever this pill thing was, and I wouldn't have had the language, I wouldn't have called it withdrawal bleed when I was 14.

Speaker 2: 5:40

Because I didn't know what that was, because I didn't know what that was.

Speaker 2: 5:42

But so what happened in my case was, from a young age, I didn't know that there was a difference and I did know that there was something wrong. And I didn't know of any friends of mine who had periods that were so painful that they needed to take drug like they need to take, like the. They took Midol and then I, you know, moved up to the ibuprofen because the Tylenol acetaminophen doesn't work right, and so I didn't know anybody who had pain as bad as mine and I wrote about it in my book. But my mom, she didn't have pain with her periods, but she had ridiculously heavy periods and so she had fibroids identified and they grew to be quite large and she needed to have a hysterectomy. And before she had the hysterectomy, she, when she had her period, it was like like a whole event, like she had like a table cloth on the couch that she would let lay on, like she would have to write, like just so much blood. She was always low in iron and my, uh, my, when she did have the surgery to have the hysterectomy because of course that's what they did, right, ladies um, my aunt came to visit and her eldest sister and she had also had a hysterectomy.

Speaker 2: 6:45

So I was young but I was just privy to these adult conversations and I just remember thinking like I don't want to have, this is not what I want for my future. So, even though I was very young when I decided to come off the pill, so I did the opposite, I think, of a lot of people. I was on the pill when I didn't need birth control and then when I needed birth control, I came off the pill because I had read I was always a nerd, so I read the whole insert and you know I it's funny now looking back at it because I was still a child like I didn't understand. I used to take, like if I missed a pill, like again, didn't use it for birth. If I missed a pill, like again, didn't use it for birth. If I missed a pill, I would do what it said. It would be like take two or whatever so, but I wasn't even using it. So when I think about like why was I even doing that? But like I didn't fully understand because I was just thinking like this is for the condition and so this, I need to do it properly, right.

Speaker 2: 7:37

But when I actually needed for birth control because I knew all of that I knew that I would have been so nervous if I ever missed anything and I was not that great about taking it at the same time and I just felt like I was going to be so nervous. So I came off the pill and I also felt like my periods shouldn't be like this. They shouldn't be so painful. I don't know anything about how to figure this out, but I want to come off of this. So eventually I'll figure it out.

Speaker 2: 8:02

So that was like my mindset when I was, you know, 18, 19, and it was right around that time that I discovered fertility awareness and so you know that's. And that really sealed the deal, because then I was like, oh wow, my plan was to use condoms, but this is so cool because now I can chart my cycles and understand when I'm fertile or not, and I can also use condoms. I can use them. More specifically, I just felt so much better learning about my body, because before that we were taught that you could just get pregnant every single day of the cycle and it was like a constant feeling of terror.

Speaker 2: 8:40

So I find it interesting now, you know, 20 plus years later, when I'm speaking to women who are, you know, the age that I was then, they're way more terrified to come off the pill than I was, because they've now been told that condoms don't even work. It's a very different world that we're living in now. So I feel like the education now is like OK, well, one method isn't enough, you need to be on the pill and condoms. So the thought of them coming off the pill now is very scary to a lot of women.

Speaker 1: 9:12

It's a very disempowering place to be, that's for sure. I'm also curious, like when you came off the pill and you decided, like I really want to know what my cycle is doing, I want to understand this. Like I really want to know what my cycle is doing, I want to understand this, and you knew it sounds like your intuition was really spot on, that like this isn't normal to have this level of pain, this isn't normal for women to have this level of bleeding and fibroids that just go unchecked. Was there anything else that changed for you around that time that helped you establish a healthier cycle?

Speaker 2: 9:46

So with my journey. I mean this was taking place around like the year 2000, the year 2001. You know that was the year that I entered university, was the year 2000. And there just was not. There's like it's it's interesting to think back. There was no social media, was not? There's like it's it's interesting to think back? There was no social media. There was nothing like that. You know other women who discovered charting, like I remember I interviewed a friend, like one of my mentors, who had already been charting and she was one of the mentors that kind of taught me when I was in my 20s and she was like, yeah, I went to the library, right.

Speaker 1: 10:22

So did you get the good old fashioned Tony Weschler?

Speaker 2: 10:26

Yeah, like the old one, right, like yeah, exactly. But you know, I guess the reason I bring that up is because in my journey I learned about charting and I did learn about the connection to health well before I was able to actually overcome my period pain. It took quite a while. That's one of the reasons why I teach about it now, you know, and I even did have mentors. I was seeing somebody like I would go to one of my mentors and she would have sessions with me and we talked about the cycle, but even with that, she didn't really have a specific protocol that touched my period pain, you know. So it's still.

Speaker 2: 11:12

I learned about the cycle. I was able to identify that I had an issue with my thyroid early on, which was really interesting because my temperatures were low and my cycles were not irregular per se, but they were sometimes on the longer end. I look back and I wonder if I had a touch of insulin resistance, you know, and things like that. But but really and truly, my journey to overcoming period pain and now being able to consistently have periods that do not like that are zero to one out of 10 on the pain scale, that was not instant. That was not my early experience. That came later in my like later 20s, when I actually was able to get a hold of that. So although I did learn a lot, obviously I was charting, I was teaching other women. To chart the actual specific painful symptom that I experienced took a while for me to because there just wasn't the same level of information availability as there is now.

Speaker 1: 12:06

Yeah, absolutely. I think back to unfortunately, even for me, in naturopathic medical school, we were not taught that level of cycle awareness. Like you know, we had the general idea of, like this is the follicular phase, this is the luteal phase, this is about when ovulation will happen for most people, although now we know that, like there's such variation within that. And I remember the first time a patient in my second year of practice came to me with their cycle chart, like on paper, with the temperature graphed out and the you know, the cervical fluid mapped, and I was like what the hell am I looking at? And she expected me to be able to interpret that for her, and I felt so like fish out of water. Like I was so interested in fertility.

Speaker 1: 12:58

I knew I wanted to focus on that, but I felt very unskilled in that area and it was a wake up call for me that like okay, if my patients are coming in more educated on this than I am, like I've got some work to do and this would have been around 2013. So, so, yeah, I had to go digging for, like what is, what is my map for this? And started out with, you know, tonyeschler's work and then eventually finding, like Creighton method and other methods that gave a little bit more specificity behind the cervical fluid. What I appreciate so much about the fifth vital sign and the work that you do is that it is so specific. There is no, you know, moral bent to it that maybe some other methods have. So I appreciate it because it just it can fit such a wide spectrum of humans and their cycles. But, yeah, it's really frustrating that this just isn't a widely available. Like when a woman starts her period, this information should be available.

Speaker 2: 14:06

It should be common. Yeah, it absolutely should be, and it's interesting because you know so. Literally, today I just started a new class of our mentorship where we mentor women's health professionals. You know, in all of that and the method that we the, the method that we teach, is symptom thermal and we do the the cervical mucus, the way that we track cervical mucus is the basically the same foundation as Creighton, like his as he termed it vaginal discharge reading system. Right, but it's very but we.

Speaker 2: 14:42

What's, what's great about it is that we've kind of taken the evidence-based approaches to really help to use the cycle not simply to identify if you're fertile or not, but when you have that level of specificity, you are able to identify more related to the hormones, um, what I think that of as interesting, though, is that I don't know if this is part of the reason that we don't have as much access, but if we look at the history, where did this information come from? Who did the research? When we are talking about mucus methods and when we're talking about temperature charting and all of that, who did the research so that we could have that information Right? And a lot of it did come out of the Catholic Church a lot of, and I'm not saying that as a bad thing, I'm saying objectively that that's where it came from. I'm not Catholic, but I just when you. So, in teaching it to practitioners, I think that it is useful to know where it came from. That kind of shed some light on to why I feel like it's not as widely acceptable or widely accepted, but then that's, it feels like a conundrum to me.

Speaker 2: 15:51

I'm with you, yeah, but on the other hand, so the reason that I just have been like who gave me a megaphone, like why this has been my focus for my career, is because, at the end of the day, it's not taught.

Speaker 2: 16:06

And these institutions you know our education systems and even the medical system, like you mentioned in your naturopathic school, like even in all of you know all of the different institutions that are teaching women's health whether we like it or not, it literally just isn't being taught health. Whether we like it or not, it literally just isn't being taught. And I don't, even if I don't even try to focus on why it's not being taught anymore, it just isn't. So what is the solution? Is the solution to lament about the fact that they're not teaching it, or is the solution for us to make sure that we take it into our own hands and provide that education. Whether it's, like you said, for yourself, you found a way to learn about it, and for myself it's been about disseminating that information so that we can increase the number of women who actually are aware of this. And now, obviously, my focus has been on women's health professionals, because the world is a big place and I can't teach every individual human being.

Speaker 1: 17:07

And I'm not what you guys know yet.

Speaker 2: 17:10

But I really do like, when people say, like everyone needs to know this, I really believe that, and so I feel like the way to do it is to teach people who have the ability to disseminate to thousands in their careers Like this is that's what I think is really like, and I've seen an incredible shift in 20 years of being in this. Careers Like this is that's what I think is really like, and I've seen an incredible shift in 20 years of being in this field. When I started, like I said there was no social media and no one was talking about it and no one knew what you were talking. It was a very, very, very niche thing. When I started my podcast in 2014, there were zero and I'm not exaggerating. There were zero fertility awareness podcasts. There was a handful of fertility podcasts. It wasn't even a thing.

Speaker 1: 17:47

No, it wasn't a thing, because someone suggested I start a podcast in 2014. And I was like what? That's crazy. And so, yeah, I mean you are one of the pioneers in terms of bringing this into public awareness, into a way that could be disseminated, and for all the ways in which social media can be problematic. It has also opened up the possibility for people to learn about this, for providers to learn about it. Hopefully, you know the open-minded ones who can understand the value of passing this forward, and you know, obviously, my work primarily focuses on fertility, but I also have just wondered you know, if we can catch girls who are starting their period at 9, 10, 11, 12, we can start understanding their cycle, teaching them this method? Would we also be preventing them from the fertility struggles at 30, 35, 40 years old, the painful periods, the fibroids like, when we can identify what in the cycle needs to be supported, if we can potentially prevent a lot of these issues down the line?

Speaker 2: 19:01

I mean, I think that that's possible. I think that it comes with not like the cycle. Education is foundational, so that they understand that it's not separate. I feel like that's one of potentially even a bigger myth than the myth that you ovulate every cycle on day 14, which, which would be that it's just not related. So when you have all this pain with your period that it's, it's kind of only related to that specific body part, whereas we know that it's related to a variety of things. It could be related to inflammation, it could be related to immune dysregulation, right, like is in the case of endometriosis, when you have tissue that's growing in places is not supposed to be grown. That's obviously like a sign of immune dysregulation. So I think there is this potential, like a sign of immune dysregulation. So I think there is this potential. But of course, the question is who? Who is teaching and how are we doing that?

Speaker 2: 19:51

The conversation around teaching teens to chart their cycles, I always find it to be really interesting one. I've been asked a lot of times and people be like so you know, do you think we should be teaching teenage girls, right? And they get all like weird about it and people have all these different opinions. So what I always say is, like well, you know, you can teach someone to understand their body, it doesn't mean that they have to go use the method for birth control. So there's a like, and so that's kind of the question Like, do you think girls should use this as birth control? Well, I mean, I think that every woman should have the opportunity to learn how her body works and I think that for a teenage girl, it can be really foundational to teach her the connection between cervical mucus and ovulation and teach her that she can predict when her period is coming.

Speaker 2: 20:39

Because when I was a teenager, like I don't know what's going on now. Obviously it's been a while, but but when I was a teenager, I used to my mom bought me a subscription, I think, to like teen people or YM or one of those magazines, and every magazine they would have a whole section on like period disasters. That was the whole problem, right, like everyone was just terrified of, like having somebody see that you had your. It was every month and it was consistent and that was like the only thing, that. And I would, of course, go because I was in that age group I would go straight to that and be like oh my gosh, she, someone saw the blood on her white pants.

Speaker 2: 21:15

Imagine, though, like wow, you could just tell her how to like what her cycles are about. She could learn what her mucus means without even tracking temperature. I'm not even saying that, like I'm not making a judgment about the type of method. I'm just literally saying, like, without even having her track her temperature, she could pay attention to mucus and she could actually predict her period, if she understands her peak day, which would be the last day of her, you know, like the fertile quality mucus. And then, if we just taught young girls about the different phases of the cycle and how that relates to energy and what a normal cycle looks like, so that you can understand that if you have extreme pain, it's common but not normal, and it could be a sign of a deeper like. Just the basic stuff that I've been talking about for 20 years. Like this is the kind of stuff that changes a young girl's life.

Speaker 1: 22:05

Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 22:06

Thinking that, like I, just like painful periods are just normal and I have to hide it and I just have to put up with it. I just have to deal with it and no one explaining why your mood kind of shifts around different parts of the cycle. But also not to just teach you to expect that it's normal to be a totally different person, totally sad and depressed and teary or angry, and venting at people to learn that moderate to severe PMS is a sign of hormone imbalance and there's ways that you can support progesterone and balance that out, like all of the things. And this is why this is such a an interesting topic Like this, is why women get so fired up about it, because we're not taught about it and it's life changing. But when we get down to it, it's not so complicated, it's not so hard to understand Like we just have to tell us yeah, and so it's funny because I went to Catholic school.

Speaker 1: 23:08

So in high school the extent of our education around these topics was gradually more horrific STI pictures. So when you're a freshman it's like, pretty, like PG-13 pictures. When you're a senior it's like full, x-rated, graphic STI pictures just to like scare the bejesus out of you essentially. And you know this idea that absolute abstinence is the only way and it's just not realistic and it's not helpful because it doesn't teach people about their body. So I know I mentioned with like learning about the fertility awareness method as a practitioner in my first year I was angry, but then I started diving more into like, the understanding of like, why, why is that the case and what can we do about it.

Speaker 1: 24:00

So it is interesting that models like the Cretan method kind of emerged from the Catholic Church and being able to be in your truth about feeling like this isn't normal, like it doesn't feel right to have this level of pain, it doesn't feel right to feel psychotic for an entire two weeks before your period begins.

Speaker 1: 24:37

Like this is where change can happen, and it's wild to me that 50% of our population is bleeding every month, maybe depending on what they're going through. I mean, obviously there's such a variation of PCOS and HA and people who are in continuous birth control, who have been so disconnected from their cycles that just being able to have a shame-free conversation around this is so important. Yeah, there was just so much in the shadows for me growing up Even though it was never ashamed in my own home. It was not something that you like talked to your friends about. It was not something that you could like ask your health professor about in sophomore year of high school, like it just wasn't a thing that you opened up about. So the fact that we can have a conversation like this and maybe you know a woman who is dealing with her 11 year old, who's just started her periods, and say, hey, there's a different way, we can do this. You don't have to go through what I went through. We can pass this on through generations.

Speaker 2: 25:48

Yeah, it's, it's just wild and and there's, there's so many different. I think one of the things I was getting at too, with just how things started, like not having any access at all, and how things are now it is. It does give me hope. A lot has changed in the past two decades. A lot more women know about cycle charting and fertility awareness is obviously it has become more of a common topic. But I will caveat it by saying that I don't think that we're anywhere near to critical mass, like I, really I don't think that. So when you're in the online space of cycle charting and you've, you know, follow the people and you've read the books, you start to think that everybody knows about it. And even though I've been in this field for so long, I am under no like when I'm in my just normal life and I go to, you know a little, get together with our family, friends and stuff no one knows about this stuff.

Speaker 1: 26:48

Yeah, I remember my my last well woman visit. I mentioned something about, like they said, oh, what type of contraception are you using? Or what type of birth control are you using? And I was like, oh, I use the fertility awareness method. And they kind of chuckled and say, oh, so we'll see you back for your pregnancy next year. And I just had a deep breath and say, actually, there's a lot of scientific evidence for this being an effective method of contraception when used appropriately. So here are some resources. But yeah, just knowing someone who is in that space, who had been in that space for a couple of decades at that point, based on my knowledge of her training, it's like all right, we've got work to do.

Speaker 2: 27:29

Well, I, recently I did a podcast episode. I don't know, I don't like I do them ahead of time so then I never remember when they're released. But I covered this study and it was the study of largely women's, like female care providers. So there was a high percentage of nurses and midwives, and doctors, naturopaths, but it was 97 percent of the respondents of this survey were female and it was about their knowledge and attitudes towards fertility awareness based methods. And, honestly, if and if you read it, it's shocking because you would think, just because someone is female, we tend to that they're going to have more knowledge on these topics or whatever. But whether or not the person that you're working with is female has nothing to do with their education. The education is the same and the education is lacking in this area. So the study was really I mean, it was a very small percentage of the providers that thought that fertility awareness methods were viable at all and there was a heavy bias against them and there was a mix of qualitative and quantitative data. So I always like the quantitative studies because then they put in what they actually said. But if you read what they actually said, it was like well, my Aunt Harriet, she is fertility. She had like eight kids, so it doesn't work for her and like the actual things that they said about it were very, very negative, and like the actual things that they said about it were very, very negative. And there was only a small percentage who had had any real training or anyone in their clinics were trained in the methods, and so there was knowledge of specific methods by a certain small percentage of providers. But I feel like this is something that we all need to be aware of. We need to understand where we're actually at. So, even though there's more people talking about it on social media, your average health professional and it's regardless of what kind, it's just not something that's taught.

Speaker 2: 29:27

I was interviewed a few, maybe a month or two ago, and it was such an interesting interview. I think it was like a medical doctor and then they did the podcast together. It was like a medical doctor and then they're like he was they. They did the podcast together. It was a medical doctor don't remember his name and then his partner of like the podcast partner. They do it together. She was not a medical doctor and it was like she was the one that was like I want her on the podcast and he like so and this came out like they were talking that's why I this and he was the one that was kind of like, ah fine, whatever. And then he like picked up my book and read it and the whole interview was like him asked me all these questions. I went to med school and I'm looking at your chapter three and you're talking about, you know, the cervical crypts and like C, s, s mucus and L mucus and they didn't talk about any of that. Like it was like a whole situation and I'm like I know.

Speaker 1: 30:19

I know, I know. So now that we've established that, like, unfortunately, the vast majority of healthcare providers aren't yet trained in this, the public can start learning about it. The public can start educating their providers and little snippets about it, introducing them to your work and such. But if you had to narrow down the benefits of fertility awareness method, of symptom thermal methods, like what would be the top three benefits of using these tools?

Speaker 2: 30:50

Oh, that's such a great question. I honestly don't know if I've ever been asked that the top three benefits. I think that one of the benefits clearly, like we've been talking about, is that you, you do learn about your body specifically. So I think that a lot of women are disconnected from their bodies in the sense that they're having these symptoms potentially, and they may be even going to their providers and it's a common experience for women to go to providers with symptoms and have them be dismissed. So and then the kind of like gaslighting stuff is real. So a lot of women have these symptoms, but it's like they've been taught that it's normal for things to be abnormal. So whether we're talking period pain or spotting or whatever, or even PMS or whatever, like they've been taught that it's normal, and so I think what I've seen is that a lot of women are struggling with stuff, but it's like they don't even and I don't think it's specific, like I don't even think it's specific to period stuff, like if you think about people who work in, like with clients that have GI issues it's not uncommon in those, like, if that's the population, like how many times do you go to the bathroom? Like right. So I do think that it caught like oh, I didn't know that going once a week was a probably right. So like I'm not saying it's specific to menstrual issues, but that would be one thing where, when women start charting their cycles and they start to understand the connection, like they even just that general information about what's normal and what's not normal, then all of a sudden they realize that they don't have to keep putting up with whatever it was. So I would say that is a huge one and it's very empowering because that's like a first step for many women to actually start to address some of the issues that they have or even know that it was a problem. And I'll give one other example, which is you know, I have to do, I have to put specific questions on an intake form. If I don't put a specific question about period pain and have them read it, I could have a client with nine out of 10 pain and they don't bring it up because they've had it for so long and they just you know, this is just they like they're not even there for that. They're just like. You know, this is other thing. And but yet there's this big elephant in the room, right? So that would be the first benefit. The second benefit I think could be just having the freedom to not like. You have the freedom if you're looking to avoid pregnancy. You have the freedom to not be on contraceptives.

Speaker 2: 33:36

I feel like I've spoken to so many women over the years who they just don't know about charting. They've never learned about it and certainly no one's ever told them that it could be an effective method. No one's ever talked to them about the actual research behind double check symptom thermal methods in particular that have the highest efficacy rates and even high typical use efficacy rates, because there's a wide variety of different effectiveness rates depending on the type of method. So I think when women don't even know about charting and they don't even know about this option, they often feel kind of like, kind of trapped. They don't feel like they have any options. And then whatever side effects that come from this, if they happen to suffer side effects, again, that's another thing where some of them don't even know that what they're experiencing is a side effect of that, where they might have started developing anxiety or panic attacks, but they've been on the pill for 10 years so they don't even know that that could be related.

Speaker 1: 34:37

So having just the freedom to make an actual choice of like right absolutely part of informed consent, Like if you, if you're not actually given all of your options. That's not true informed consent.

Speaker 2: 34:51

Yeah, you can't even I would say you can't even make a true choice of what type of birth control you want if you don't really know that all of these other options exist and I suppose, another benefit, so I'm just picking three, like I could probably go on for an hour right, who chart their cycles and it kind of tags along to the birth control angle. When I was in those early days in university I, you know, was taking all these women's studies classes and learn about feminism and all this stuff. But the focus is often on like. Even when they talk about like reproductive rights, like, the focus is often on avoiding pregnancy heavily. I believe that a true, like, free woman, you know those true reproductive rights are having again the choice to both have children when you want and to avoid pregnancy when you're not ready.

Speaker 2: 35:49

And I believe that you know when you chart your cycles I've seen it you're not altering your body. And if you're learning about your body at the same time and you're learning about what's normal and you have the opportunity to work on whatever's going on, you learn a little bit about. Oh, when I stay up all night and drink 10 cups of coffee and work out and skip breakfast, my cycle gets all weird and I have super raging PMS. But when I don't do that, my spotting goes like right. So you have the opportunity to learn how your cycle works, how to support your hormones and when you're ready to get pregnant. It's potentially more likely to happen sooner and easier because you actually understand what's going on. And if you charted as birth control, for example, then you, when you're ready to conceive, there's no transition, I would agree.

Speaker 1: 36:47

I would agree, and this is purely anecdotal, but I've been in practice for 12 years and the people who have come to me already charting their cycles or they came to me three years before they wanted to get pregnant and said I really want to learn about my cycle, how do I improve my hormone health? How do I learn about my cycle? How do I avoid pregnancy? Now, and we started charting then. They tend to be the ones who get pregnant faster when they're ready, versus the people who are coming having had no knowledge of their cycles. And you know, just at 35 years old, learning what a follicular phase, what a luteal phase is. Not only is there so much pressure then to figure it out and learn it, and sometimes like obsess over the data there's, which we can talk about in a moment too, because you know there's just so much more opportunity when you've had that time to really learn, like what is your wise body trying to communicate and what are the lifestyle factors that can impact it. I've absolutely seen it in my own cycle as well.

Speaker 1: 38:03

But I do want to circle back to because both of us started to laugh we talked about obsessing over this, so when we do often have people start learning about charting their cycles and they're like starting to obsess about well, what does this temperature mean? It was a little bit lower on this day and it was higher on this day and I did wake up to pee, so is that really accurate? And I don't know if the cervical fluid is normal. Is this fertile enough, Like can you speak a little bit to that obsession that may come when some of us chart our cycles?

Speaker 2: 38:38

Yeah, that's it's. It's really, it's really funny to kind of call it out. This is a topic that comes up a lot and the way that I talk about it, you know, one thing also to give a little context, like, keep in mind that I have been in this world for over 20 years, right, and I've charted all this time and I've charted through, like I mean, I didn't actually chart while I was pregnant, but I've had three children in there and charted, you know, postpartum, and now I'm 42. So we're getting into that premenopause shift. So a lot of personal charting experience. But I've also worked with, you know, thousands of clients at this point, and so so one thing I'll say is that charting, I think, by definition, think about the woman who, who desires to, you know, track her cervical fluid and her temperature, and who's willing to get up and, like you know, put them on their mouth.

Speaker 1: 39:32

We might be a little type A. Is that where you're going with this?

Speaker 2: 39:35

Okay, we're type A, and I'm calling it out because I'm also like, oh, yes, this is us, we are the type A people. Okay, welcome. So, by definition, the women who are willing and excited about tracking. We're already overachievers. We're like a little neurotic already, and then we're kind of perfectionist. So we looked at the book and it's like, right, so, yes, so this can be a problem.

Speaker 2: 39:59

This is one of the reasons, I think, why working with someone can be helpful, hopefully someone that has experience. So you know, I joke that, like, 90% of the job is talking your clients off the ledge. I stand by that claim. I do too, and really and truly, though, like my philosophy around charting, that that I've always taught my clients is that, you know, the goal from my perspective is not to have a quote perfect chart, because you are an actual human, you are alive, and the whole point of my work right, like I named my first book, the Fifth Vital Sign, because I'm arguing that your menstrual cycle is a vital sign right, if you were to take your temperature all day, every day, you're not going to be the same temperature for 24 hours straight, because you're human, and if you chart your cycle, you're never going to have exactly the same cycle over and over again and you're going to go out, you're going to go on vacation, you're going to have a month where something stressful happens, and all of that. So the goal from my perspective is obviously to understand your body, to understand normal parameters. A parameter isn't 28 days exactly. A parameter is a normal range of. You know of the different aspects that we can track, whether it's mucus or temperature or overall cycle length or luteal phase length. We want to understand what's normal and I feel like you don't want to look at your cycle as this being like right or wrong. You want to be starting to work with it like it's like a dance. Ok, you're learning to work with it Like it's like a dance. Okay, you're learning to dance with your body. You're learning that and you're learning your limits. So you know you try something, you see some success and then you fall off the wagon and your cycle goes back Like it's information.

Speaker 2: 41:49

So this is how I talk about it with uh, with our practitioners and with clients, where we can get into the weeds for sure. So if you have that one cycle where the temperature was really weird, like I'm all down for that, we can have that conversation. I'm I call myself the 50 questions lady. I'm always in there like, okay, well, was anything different this month? Uh, I encourage clients to track certain details. Like you can track the time that you woke up, you can start to know what specific factors impact temperature changes and you can write that on your chart and we can go through that all together.

Speaker 2: 42:26

But at the end of the day, the purpose of charting again from my perspective, isn't for us to go crazy about every single temperature perspective isn't for us to go crazy about every single temperature. The value in charting, from my perspective, is actually seeing the shifts and changes and patterns over time. So one of the things that I try to convey, especially to new charters love you, love you guys is that is that, like I'm like 20 something years in, okay, like deep. So one cycle to me means a lot, like less than your very first, like you're very, that's all that you have, that's like all of your data. And if you've been charting for three months, you have like three cycles. So each cycle is like why is this like?

Speaker 2: 43:13

But for me, I would actually look at those three cycles and I would look at, well, what happened in the first cycle? Were we charting correctly? What happened in the second? Like? I'm actually looking at it differently. I'm looking at the shifts that have happened, the changes, and I also know that you have, if you continue charting, potentially years, if not decades of charts in front of you. So the significance of that one specific temperature on that one chart to me is a very different thing. So I try to find the most loving way to be like. I know it matters, it does matter, but probably not as much as you think it does. We need to put it into context and the bigger picture is actually the other conversation that's happening around, like why are we seeing these patterns?

Speaker 1: 43:52

Thank you. Yes, sometimes I feel like mother bird and if people are hearing it only from me, it gets a little, you know, they start to get a little deaf to it. So just that. But I would absolutely agree. It's like we need bird's eye perspective. What are the patterns? What are the lifestyle influences? What is this particular part of the phase telling us about what your body needs? What is it communicating?

Speaker 1: 44:22

What I often will say is the data point is neutral and if we can disconnect how people tie in their worthiness as a human or their ability to do something right because there is often that right or wrong like am I doing this right? Is my cycle right? If we can disconnect that and have them really start to learn that, like the data itself is neutral. We're not striving for perfection. We're hoping for understanding more than anything else. And then, as we start to implement the lifestyle factors, the herbs, the acupuncture, whatever modalities we're using, how do we start to see a shift? Does that lengthen your luteal phase? Do we see more days of fertile quality cervical fluid around ovulation? Do we see better sleep, like there's a lot of other things that matter more than this one little data point? That was weird that day, yeah.

Speaker 2: 45:24

Well, and it's a practice. I feel like it's it's it's more than just that data point, it's a whole practice, because you know, my experience and also the experience of my clients is like they kind of have to go through those different stages of learning. You know my experience and also the experience of my clients is like they kind of have to go through those different stages of learning. You know like, so that is totally normal, right To be in that stage where you're obsessing over every little thing. I feel like that's part of the learning journey until you really start to kind of like come into the fullness of what this really is, which is you have this way to track what's going on in your body, and I said before that it kind of alerts you to your limits.

Speaker 2: 46:01

So one of the things I love about charting is that it's it is a personalized situation, and so I'm sure you've had conversations with clients that are feeling discouraged or frustrated, because they'll say things like well, my friend gets to eat whatever she wants and her cycle. And you know, here I am and I have to give up, blah, blah, blah. First of all, I always say, well, we don't know what your friend's cycles really look like. So there's that, but at the end of the day, the charting helps it to be a lot more personalized and while it can be very humbling I've had a number of our practitioners say that they were like this was really humbling. I came into this and I thought that my cycles were totally fine and then we started charting and I was shocked Not that there was like a big problem, but you start to notice different nuances and differences, like I didn't realize I still had something to do. Or clients who have always had X. My luteal phase has always been nine days, so I just thought it was totally fine.

Speaker 1: 47:01

Right, Kind of like back to having a bowel movement once a week.

Speaker 2: 47:04

It's like we don't know what we don't know and they didn't come for that because they didn't think it was a problem. They were like, no, I'm good, my cycles are always, you know, um. But then they discover that, wow, like this. It was a running theme in one of one of our programs. It was really funny because it was like and then it was like, I was like getting like, do I need to go and buy a pregnancy test? Because it's like day 13 in my luteal. I've never had a 14 day luteal. And then it finally came and I was like, oh my gosh, right, because.

Speaker 2: 47:30

But these are, these are the things like this is we're learning about a like what's normal in general, like one of the things I'll often say is human beings, we always want to be so unique, we think we're so individual. If I go to the zoo, they know like what, the monkeys. What's going on with the monkeys? Right, it's not like this particular monkey just gets to have like a nine day luteal phase, right, like we know what monkeys. I don't know anything about monkey luteal phases, that was just an example. I'm just saying like if someone was to talk to you about like an elephant gestational period, they're not going to just be like, oh yeah, and that, like this particular, like like Gina, the elephant has a totally different gestational period than the rest of the elephants, right?

Speaker 2: 48:10

But for some reason, with us as human beings, we often think, right, like I'm different, I'm unique. This thing happens in my menstrual cycle and this is, you know, this is because I'm I'm Tina and this is my method. And it's like, no, Tina, we're all human beings. There's a range of what's normal and so when you start to look at the cycle in that way, it helps you to kind of know where you are actually at and then, if you didn't know that and you start making shifts, you can actually see, like that potential. So I feel like I kind of forgot where I was going with that.

Speaker 1: 48:47

But definitely that has been a theme. Yeah, we had started by just you know, talking about like the limits, like it helps you understand your limits, but like where you are. Also, I'm also curious, because you kind of alluded to this, with your own cycle journey, heading into 42 years old, heading into perimenopause, what insights is charting giving you now? Yeah, at this phase of life?

Speaker 2: 49:12

Well, so there's. There's a few uh for me personally, I think, beyond like it's like a two-parter, because knowing having the knowledge that I do about what is normal and what's not, and what the pre um, what the pre pre menopause phase is characterized by it means that I am not nervous when I see some of those changes. So if we go back to that type A situation, you could have had a very there are. There are plenty of women who have pretty consistent cycles. It doesn't mean they're exactly the same, but they have a pretty kind of consistent range of what they experience. But then when you get into this age category, you start to see potentially different things. Like you could be one of the things that many women see as they get into this pre pre menopause stages the occasional really early ovulation. Or they see shifts in how their body makes hormones, having a more difficult time making progesterone. For someone like myself, I've been charting all these years so I've had a lot of time to really learn my body and understand what my limits are. And you know when I was alluding to that before. It's like I think it's natural for people to kind of like they test every now and then you know they'll.

Speaker 2: 50:35

I had a client once who was fully like hypothyroid and she was like on medication and she's just like she just decided to go off of it and I was like okay, and then her cycle was like like all of a sudden, like 40 days, like whatever, like it was very different than what it was before. And I remember she was like can this be related? And I was like yeah, heck, yeah was before. And I remember she was like can this be related? And I was like yeah, heck, yeah. And it was like, oh, the thyroid medication was actually working. I had been taking it, for I think this is, I do think it's natural though I'm not really trying to poke fun I think it's natural, especially if you've had certain thing for a long time or whatever. Like you start to wonder, like is it even working? I've been taking this stuff for so long, and then you come off of it. It actually yes, I think it is is natural and important to question things. Yeah, so I feel like, yeah, with the cycle, you know with me I've had a lot of time to lean into that, so I feel like for me it's, it's a gentle, like I'm observing it in real time and over the last several years I've started to see a gentle movement in my cycle length to having a bit of like shorter cycles.

Speaker 2: 51:34

And let's say, my average cycle length would have been closer to like 32 days, 31 days in my like 10 years ago, and now my average cycle length is closer to like 28 days, you know, and having more of those 27 day cycles. So, seeing that kind of lean towards potentially an earlier ovulation, my luteal phase length has been pretty great, which has been nice. But you know what I'm saying. Like I'm I'm experiencing this as a gradual thing. I'm seeing this gradual shift over many years to having these kind of cycles that are a little bit shorter.

Speaker 2: 52:10

I'm noticing that I have to pay a lot more close attention to my what we call foundational factors in my program. So when I was in my twenties I could have gotten away with staying up late and all this stuff, and now I definitely noticed that I'm more sensitive to that and you know my cycle is in line. So if I want to continue having these lovely luteal phases and you know, minimal PMS, minimal to no PMS, like right, like just having the the dignified mood change as opposed to the like kind of situation, then I have to be kind to myself. I have to have boundaries. I have to say no to certain things. I have to prioritize my sleep. I have to make sure I'm prioritizing my my meals throughout the day. I have to have boundaries. I have to say no to certain things. I have to prioritize my sleep. I have to make sure I'm prioritizing my meals throughout the day. I have to, you know, make sure that if I'm working out a little bit more I'm not like a huge workout person, but I've incorporated some weight-bearing activities and you know things like that. So if I'm like I've just noticed those kinds of things, so I feel like my experience of it is not simply just the charting but it's also the knowledge around what is normal in these phases.

Speaker 2: 53:19

I have seen clients have the absolute opposite experience to that. You know, women who may have been on the pill for 10, 15, 20, 30 years and all of a sudden they're coming off of it, they have a baby and all of a sudden, sudden they're like what, 38, 41. They've never had the opportunity to chart, they've never had the opportunity to learn, to work with their body, to understand that their body has limitations. And this is something like if you've always been on the pill and you've never really had that feedback. And you work out a lot, or you drink coffee a lot, or you skip meals or you do whatever you do, but you never had the cycle to to, kind of like, alert you to the fact that maybe your body isn't happy about it, like you know. Then, all of a sudden, when you're 40, it's like very difficult because your body is no longer being like your 20 year old body's like. Okay, could you just please, could you, hey, could you stop?

Speaker 1: 54:10

um, we didn't hear the whispers.

Speaker 2: 54:12

Right now it's yelling at us a 20 year old energy. It's more polite, it's like could you, please, could you? But your 40 year old body's like, look, lady, if you're not like right, so I mean yeah it's I there's.

Speaker 1: 54:26

I find so much truth in that. And what's interesting, I think you know as often people come to me as, like their last resort for fertility is I'm working, with an average age of about 38 years old. So they haven't had that opportunity. They're just now learning to listen to that body wisdom, learn their limits, learn their boundaries. And so if anyone out there is in their 20s listening to this, like hey, you're ahead of the game, Start charting and know that if you are 38 or 39 or 42, it's like it's never too late to start learning about your body either. So don't feel like you've missed out. You know, feel whatever you need to feel about it. And then like let's get to work. So I appreciate you reminding me like we can't lament about it, Like we just got to get to work.

Speaker 2: 55:15

We, you know we gotta start learning now and I remember when I started the podcast, I would get a lot of emails like that, like I can't believe I'm 40 years old and this is the first time I'm hearing about it, and so you know, take the time you need to be upset, I guess. Don't dwell on it forever, but, like acknowledge the fact that it's unfair and unfortunate that you weren't able to be taught. But I do think what you said you just like now you know it. So we just have to go from here, because there's not there's not really a point of of lamenting in it.

Speaker 2: 55:45

I've had many women who have discovered it later do all kinds of things with that information, whether it's that they just start charting themselves, they learn as much as they can, or whether they start sharing with their daughters or their nieces or their friends or whoever. And so there are definitely ways to make this better, and I've just seen time and time again, like whatever experiences that you have, I think they happen for a reason, and a lot of those times we're able to like, if you did have that experience experience of learning it late and you are kind of devastated, like you're, just like this is, I would have loved charting, like what is going right. If that's you, then take that and use that, because that energy is going to help you to bring that to so many more people, because you don't want the experience. You don't want them to have the experience that you had.

Speaker 1: 56:31

Yeah, oh, I think I needed to devote a whole episode just around transmuting that energy, but for now, lisa, I know I could pick your brain for hours. We could. This is why you have to run an entire course about it, because you cannot just condense all of this information into an hour. But how do people learn more about this work? How do they learn more about you or working with you?

Speaker 2: 56:56

Well, first of all, thank you so much. This has been great and you're right, we could talk. We're very like-minded, so we could talk forever and ever. So to learn more about me, my current passion, as I mentioned, is teaching women's health professionals, so I have a whole mentorship certification program where this is what we do. So is teaching women's health professionals, so I have a whole mentorship certification program where this is what we do. So we're teaching women's health professionals to bring this knowledge to their clients in a scientific way and how to use the menstrual cycle essentially as a vital sign and diagnostic tool in practice. So it's so much fun. I do have an e-book that I like to share for anyone who wants to learn more. It's called how to Interpret Virtually Any Chart that your Client Throws at you, so that's really fun. Fertilityfridaycom slash chart. You can find out more about me at FertilityFridaycom. You can if this conversation interested you. I mean I did mention that I started podcasting in 2014. We are almost at 600 episodes.

Speaker 1: 57:56

It is wild, that's incredible. Yeah, the Fertility Friday podcast, I mean literally it was one of the first podcasts in this realm that I listened to, and so it's wild. But 600 and how many? 42?.

Speaker 2: 58:09

That's incredible Almost 600. We're not. We haven't quite cracked that yet. But and what I've been talking about recently, I've been going into the research. I shared a little bit about that paper. I talked about nerding out day and night, but really and truly that's been my focus. So we do a lot of those episodes where I kind of break down some of these interesting research papers and talk about different issues related to fertility awareness. So just type Fertility Friday in your podcast player. It's kind of funny because after all these years of podcasting, someone else called their podcast Fertility Friday. So just look for the pink one and you will find me if you're on the socials, at Fertility Friday on Instagram.

Speaker 2: 58:49

And I mentioned my books. Real Food for Fertility is my most recent book, co-authored with Lily Nichols, and the reason that we wrote that book is because I think there's a couple reasons, but she wrote Real Food for Pregnancy and for the longest time when I would have clients asking me about the nutritional foundation to fertility, I would say, okay, go get Real Food for Pregnancy. I know you're not trying to get pregnant, but could you just like, like, just follow the nutritional strategy. And when her you know pregnancy clients would be asking about fertility, she would be recommending the fifth vital sign and you know, okay, we'll learn about charting and right. So this was us coming together to create the ultimate resource for women who are trying to conceive.

Speaker 2: 59:30

And the other piece of it I'll say is, even if you're not trying to conceive, this lays the nutritional foundation for healthy hormones, healthy cycles. So when I, when we were writing it in my mind it was the textbook for my program. There's enough data for it to be a textbook, but it's written in a way that doesn't feel like that at all. We I think Lily and I for some reason, we've been blessed with the skill of disseminating very complicated research topics into like a readable format. So I feel like it's very welcoming, but it's jam packed with actual evidence and data. So for anyone who appreciates that and is looking not just for information but also to feel confident about where it came from, I think you'll appreciate it.

Speaker 1: 1:00:16

I appreciate it so much and it's one of the recommended reading materials for our brilliant fertility program as well. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2: 1:00:26

I'll just say one more thing I'll just say. Like the first chapter you can get for free realfoodforfertilitycom, in case anyone wants that information.

Speaker 1: 1:00:34

That is awesome, and we'll drop all of these in the show notes too, so you guys can access the ebook and the website and the Fertility Friday podcast. Make sure you're on the right podcast for that, and, lisa, just thank you so much for the work you do. Thank you for taking the time to be here, because I know that your schedule is full and I appreciate you getting here and spreading your message.

Speaker 2: 1:00:59

Well, thank you again for having me. This was so much fun. It was honestly such a great conversation and I'm I feel like we are like what? Are we sisters from another, like sisters from another district? Is that what it is?

Speaker 1: 1:01:11

I'll take that. Yep, it was so much fun. I love when we can like genuinely get some laughs in there, like, yeah, for sure, oh, thank you, thank you. All right, you guys, as always. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being here on the Brilliant Fertility Podcast. Leave a rating for the podcast on your favorite listening platform and be sure to share this far and wide.