Men Still Don’t Understand Women’s Bodies — Here’s What They Need to Know | Miranda Popen

[00:00:12] We're Back We're Back This Is What Now Number Three This Is Number Three Yeah I Don't Know If I've Done Three With One Person Before So You're My First So Honored You Should Be I Am Assuming That It's By Fan Base Only 100% He's Like Demanding 100% Yeah It's Funny Because I've Actually Gotten The Most Amount Of Comments On Why Conversations Around The Menstrual Cycle Is So Important For Men Because This Girl Is Sassy And We Don't Like Her

[00:00:41] She's Correcting Us And And I'm Like Let Me Tell You Well That's The Whole Point Because I Think We Suck At Learning These Things I Mean We've Talked About This Before Too Right Like We've Gone Through At Least The Education System Here Where You Get One Class On Reproductive Organs And How Sex Works And How You Get Pregnant And What Happens To Women And In Most Cases You're An Adolescent Teenage Boy Who's Just

[00:01:11] Just Like You Know Making Fun Of The Way It's Being Drawn On The Board By The Teacher Who Looks Uncomfortable Sharing This Information The Second I Remember My Mom Gave Me A Book For Puberty I Threw It Under My Bed Because I Was So Embarrassed And So Nervous About All Of It But It's Funny Because Even Still Like Doctors In This Day And Age Out Of Like An 18 Year Career Only Get Like Six Hours Of Nutrition Really? And It's Split Into Two Different Three Hour Classes So Like Out Of

[00:01:41] The Past 18 Years With One Thing That You Remember That You Did For Six Hours Oh My God Yeah That's A Problem For Doctors So Then You Can't Blame The Average Joe For Not Knowing Yeah So If You're Like Hey Why Is This Or Why Am I Feeling Like This And They're Not Talking To You About Your Diet Or Nutrition Or Hormones Or Anything Like That There's Just This Medical Reaction Here's Birth Control Here's Medication Here's

[00:02:09] Painkillers Antidepressants So Like Nobody Gets The Answer So What's A Better Way To Teach Kids About The Menstrual Cycle About Puberty Honestly I Think That There's Two Things That Need To Be Happening With Kids One There Needs To Be This Understanding Of What Regulation Is In Their Own Bodies Like Understanding Their Own Bodies And How They're Even Feeling From Like Anxiety Anxious Hormones Mood-Wise

[00:02:39] I Feel Like A Lot Of People Who Are Dealing With ADHD Autism Are So Much Struggling With Blood Sugar Disregulation And And I Totally Understand A Lot Of The Parents And Also Adults We Are Just These Imbalanced Blood Sugar Human Beings That Are Just Dealing With One Blood Sugar Spike And Crash After The Next But We Don't Spend Enough Time On Just Sitting With How We're Feeling Even Like As A Collective And Then There's This Other Aspect To

[00:03:09] We Are We Do It Where We Don't Talk About Self Advocacy And I See This So Much In Women's Sports Women's Sports Is Popping Off Right Now But It's Only Happening Because It's A Money Maker And That Is It So It Does Suck Because For Girls For Women It's Almost Like We Are Only Going To Get Enough Information And Attention Based Off Of How The Next Female Athlete

[00:03:38] How Paige Beckers Is Going To Blow Up And How Do We Make Sure How Do We Make Sure That She's The Best She Can Absolutely Be While She's On Her Period And It's Not Like What It's Not Necessarily For Us And Our Self Advocacy It's Just How Can We Take Advantage Of That So Right Now Even Just With That Conversation Girls In High School Girls Who Are Having A Female Coach Girls Who Are Trying To Play Sports

[00:04:07] Like The Conversation Shifting A Like The Conversation Shifting A Little Bit I Feel Like The Conversation Is Almost Happening There But It's Really Based Off Of How That Coach Is Building That Safe Space With The Kids With The Girls To Talk About Their Hormones And Their Periods Because Mom And Dad Are Too Embarrassed You Know It Was Actually Crazy Because I Was Teaching A Course For Young Girls Young Athletes And This Was For A Basketball Team

[00:04:37] And There Was An NBA Father That Was And He Dipped Like He Dipped Like He Didn't Want To Be There For The Yeah And Like This Is About Your Daughter Not Busting Her ACL During Ovulation But She Doesn't Even Know When She's Ovulating And You Have No Idea What Her Bleeding Means Because Chances Are She's Going To Be Highly Anemic In This Day And Age So How Do We Make Sure That Your Or Her Health And Hormones Don't Get In The Way Of Her Sport This Is Puberty Is One Of The Number One

[00:05:07] And Reasons Why Girls Are Quitting Their Sports The Second That Puberty Happens Because We're Not Holding Space We're Not Making Sure That We Can Show Up The Best Possible Way For Them Like It's Quite Insane What The Stats Are How Do You Help Everyone Better Understand Health And Hormones In Relation To Sports If You Want Change You Have To Be Change So We Have To Talk About It We Have To Normalize It We Have To Have Tampons

[00:05:34] Everywhere The Fact That We're Going To Toronto Tempo And They're Just Handing Out Tampax Boxes To See Grown Men Walk Away With Tampax Boxes Is Quite Literally I Don't Think The World Truly Understands How Much Change That Alone Is Creating Yeah To Make All These Grown Men Walk Out With These Boxes Of Tampons But As A Collective We've Just Normalized It I Don't Think Tampax Even Realizes

[00:06:02] What They Are Doing With How Much They Are Just Normalizing This Mission Of Everybody Has A Period Yeah Everybody Is Affected By Hormones How Can We Just Make This A Normal Conversation And Then Of Course We Have To Keep The Conversation Going Teachers Coaches Parents Friends We Have To Post About It We Have To Talk About It If You're A

[00:06:27] Parents And You Have A Young Daughter And You Have A Young Daughter And Her She's Right In The Thick Of Puberty Her Menstrual Cycle Started If You're A Dad What Do You Do What Do You Say Because Typically You Kind Of Brush That Off And Go Hey Mom Can You Take This One No But I Think A Lot More Dads Want To Be Involved Oh You Know What If You Saw Burt Kreishner He Has One Of The Best Bits That Are Out There And

[00:06:57] He Actually Inspired Me For What I Want To Do For My Future Daughter And On Stage I'm Gonna Embarrass Her On Stage No But When My Future Daughter Arrives If That Day Were To Ever Happen Or A Niece Or Anything Like That This Is Something That I Think That All Men Should Just Do Is Make This Fun I Think That We Don't Talk About Laughter Enough I Don't Think That We Talk About Joy It's So Interesting How This Can Just Break The

[00:07:26] The Seriousness And The Trauma It's Like We Just Have To Make Jokes Like Lighthearted Jokes Of Course There's So Much Shame And Judgment And Pressure That Comes When Girls Get Their First Period But Burt Kreishner's Daughter Was Like Dad I Got My Period I Need You To Go Get The Supplies And Burt Was Like Oh My God Honey What Do You Need Me To Do Like Didn't Your Mom Already Pack This And She's Like I'm Already Set I've Got My Period Kit In My Bag But I Need You To Go Get Pasta Marinara I Need You To Go Get Red Velvet Cake We've Got A Sleepover All The Girls Are Coming

[00:07:56] Over And We're Going To Invite Some Over And We're Going To Invite Some Boys So The Fact That He Was In On This Whole Joke Because The Daughter Apparently All The Girls Like Name Their Periods And She Named Her Freddy Yeah So The Fact That She Named Her Period Freddy And Then He's In On The Joke With All The Girls Too And They're All Laughing At These Little Boys That Have Like Red Velvet Cake All Over Their Faces And He Was Like This Was The Best Sleepover I Ever

[00:08:26] Had And He Went And He Went And He Went And Got A Red Suit No Way He Got A Red Suit He Was Ready He Had Balloons He Had Streamers Like He Was Like Happy Freaking Period And He Made This Like Fun So How Can We Make This A Celebration Rather Than It Being This Like Detrimental Change To Who You Are As A Person And Same Thing For Like It Is Quite Beautiful The Conversation That I'm Seeing Happen Change Online

[00:08:55] There Was Also Another Man Who Was Like I Am 100% There For My Woman Who Not Only Carried My Child But Ever Since She Was Like Nine Years Old Her Body Went Through The Most Debilitating Pain In Preparation To One Day Hold My Child And I Don't Think We Reflect On The

[00:09:48] I Think We Reflect On The Emotional Heaviness Of This As The Male Counterpart But Also I Think As The Female Counterpart That We Need To Kind Of Remember Who The Fuck We Are And Remember That We Do Hold More Weight In This And That There Is Also This Like Deep Maybe Even Like Spiritual Connection To Ourselves Or Emotional Connection To Ourselves But There's So Much Hate

[00:10:16] I Hate I Hate I Hate I Hate I Hate My Period I Hate My Period I Hate How I Feel I Hate What It Does To I Hate What It Does To My Relationships Like Hold On For A Second For One You Can Fix Your Shit You Have Way More Control Over Your Hormones Than You've Ever Been Let On To Believe But Also You Need To Remember What You're Doing Your Body Is Obsessed With Having A Period Even If You Don't Have An Egg Even If You Aren't Sexually Active Your Body Is Still Obsessed With

[00:10:46] Getting Pregnant And I Think Of Getting Pregnant And I Think That's Like One Piece Of And I Think That's Like One Piece Of Information That A Lot Of Men Don't Understand Is That Whether There's An Egg Or Not The Body Is Just Constantly Trying To Mature And Either There's Going To Be An Egg That Is Fertilized And There's Pregnancy Or If Not Hopefully The Body Is Able To Make Enough Progesterone Which Is The Natural Chill Pill Queen P Is The Cycle Regulatory Is The Cycle Regulatory Is The Cycle Regulatory

[00:11:16] So Everything That We Deem As Wrong Of The Cycle Of Menstruation Is Coming Back To Ovulation And Progesterone So We Can Have Symptom Free Period Yeah You Talked About All Of The Stuff That's Happening To A Woman From The Age Of Nine Is In Preparation Essentially To Have A Child And I And If I'm Not Mistaken On A Previous Episode You Said To Me That Women's Bodies Are Hardwired

[00:11:45] To Basically Give Birth Like Biologically Speaking That's The Way A Woman's Body Is Designed Forget All The You Know All The Other Stuff That Comes With Should She Her Choice All That Stuff Like Yeah Yeah Just From A Biological Perspective At Least That's The Way You Shared It With Me Right Okay Okay How Do Men Show Up Better For Their Partners When They're Going Through That In Preparation For Getting Pregnant And Then Also In Postpartum

[00:12:15] I Think One Of My Biggest Pet Peeves About Society Is That Men Are Almost Fueling The Problem And It's Literally Out Of Like The Goodness Of Your Heart Because You Understand That Your Girl Is In Pain And She Has Her Period And You Don't Know What To Do How Do I Give Her Comfort Food? Do Not Bring Her Chocolate And Popcorn And Pizza And Pasta Like That Is Literally Fueling The Problem Yes You Need To Absolutely Ask Her What She Needs Is She Hungry? Does She Even Have An Appetite?

[00:12:45] How Can You Support Her? Does She Need A Heating Pad? Does She Need Her Back Massaged? She Might Even Need To Have An Orgasm Like There's So Much That An Orgasm Can Actually Do And Help The Pelvic Floor Retract But There Needs To Be Breath There Needs To Be A Safe Space There Needs To Be Comfort For Her To Go Through Her Process That She Needs To And You Can Literally Help Her With Your Dick

[00:13:13] But We Don't Talk About This We Don't Talk About This At All We Literally Have So Much Shame Around This Female Orgasm And If Society Talked About This And If Society Talked About This More Then We Would Understand That We Have Everything That We Need Already Inside Of Us Right? Like Centuries Ago When Women Were Deemed As Psychotic Like Men Were Like Doctors Were Just Giving Them An Orgasm Half The Time

[00:13:40] Like It's Quite Crazy That We Don't Talk About How This Female Plateau Which Is Like Part Of The Orgasm Can Create This Whole Dopamine Effect Can Help With Our Neurotransmitters Can Support Our DHEA And Basically Support The Pelvic Retraction Like Pelvic Cavity So An Orgasm Helps Relieve The Tension It Can

[00:14:08] It Really Does Depend On Certain Individuals Like For Those Who Are Struggling With Endometriosis Or Adenomyosis It Might Be A Little More Challenging But A Big Part Of Pelvic Floor Therapy Is Also Through Breath So Can You Support Her In Breathing While She's Going Through This Process Can You Help Her Try To Almost Like Hit That Next Level Like When You Go For A Cold Plunge

[00:14:34] Women Can Also Access Part Of This Brain Of This Release Through That But How Do We Support Them There? It Can't Be About You And You Just Getting Off It Has To Be About Breathing And Being With Them Like It Very Much Can Be And Should Be Seen As More Like A Spiritual Practice That's Just Like A Safe Space But This Is A Tool Beyond Just Painkillers Painkillers Are Just Ruining Our Gut

[00:15:01] Even Though They're Getting Rid of The Pain In That One Moment It's Also Fueling The Problem So Period Cramps Happen Because Of Prostaglandins We Were Born With Three Prostaglandins One That Fuel The Problem Two That Stop The Problem So We Have A Two To One Ratio Where We're Not Supposed To Have Any Issues I'm Going To Say That Again So We Have A Two To One Ratio Where We're Not Supposed To Have Any Issues Yet Here We Are Debilitated So We Take Painkiller

[00:15:30] And Even Though It's Working In That Moment It Is Actually Fueling The One So We Want To Block The One Support The Two And That's Going To Come From Your Omega-3s Your Food Your Diet Having Enough Protein For Your Height Age Weight Are You Saying That Painkillers Make Period Cramps Worse? Yes Baby Aspirin Aspirin Is One Of The Better Ones But I Typically Would Suggest Baby Aspirin And Omega-3 And An Orgasm As A Combo Yeah

[00:16:00] Usually When I'm Out For Dinner With A Bunch Of The Guys Like They Are Like Notebooks Out They Are Typing Everything On Their Phones Like They Want To Know This But I Don't Think That They Understand That They Can Really Truly Be Part Of The Support And Literally With Their Own Bodies Which Is Like The Coolest Thing But It Can Not Be Forced Like She Has To Be The One That's In Control Because She Has To Breathe If She Feels This Penetration That Is Too Intense

[00:16:29] It Can Also Be Fueling The Problem So How Can It Be A Tool So If We Were To Go To Pelvic Floor Therapy There Is Internal Consultation They Are Basically Working Around The Walls And They Are Also Trying To Get You To Retract And Breathe And It's So Interesting Because You Need To Be So Deep Into Your Body During Pelvic Floor Therapy You Can Have Your Knees Bent And Relaxed

[00:16:57] And They Could Be Folded In With One Another And Then Your Pelvic Floor Is Just Shaking And You Would Just Feel That From The Inside So Breathing And Like Being With Your Partner And Being In That Safe Space And The Can Also Help The Cramps Go Away But Like The Breath Needs To Be There And Eventually Like Hopefully She Can Even Learn How To Do This On Her Own The Nutrition Piece Yeah I Wanted To Ask You About That So How Does Nutrition Play A Role In Helping Women Through Their Menstrual Cycles Yeah

[00:17:26] I Mean If Her Pain Is Severe Or If She Is Struggling Every Single Month It's Really Important It's Really Important It's Really Important That We Are Not Just Normalizing This We Are Not Just Brushing It Off Every Time Because Eventually It Does Also Kind Of Get To The Relationship I Feel Sometimes There Needs To Be This Teamwork Especially If You Guys Are Living Together I Actually Just Found This Out How Many Of My Clients

[00:17:55] Who Are Well Within Like They're 35 And Up who barely have any vegetables. You need to have four to six size fistfuls of vegetables a day. If the man's not eating it, chances are she's not eating it. It really is interesting how much the female bases her diet and nutrition off of the male. He's the alpha of the house sometimes.

[00:18:20] So how do we, as a team, get through this whole process? Yeah. So having enough vegetables. Especially in the instances where she's in pain. Yeah. Right? But she's in pain not because of that one moment. She's in pain because of all the shit eating that you guys have done beforehand. Or if you aren't eating all these vegetables before, green vegetables contain sulforaphane. And sulforaphane basically breaks down estrogen in little bite-sized pieces

[00:18:49] and it makes it a lot easier for the body to then metabolize, for the liver to metabolize estrogen. Mm-hmm. So if estrogen is constantly backed up, like if you're not having two to three bowel movements a day, like one to two, I'm going to say it's still going to be there. Like you do literally need to have two to three bowel movements a day for your body to properly process excess estrogen. Yeah.

[00:19:16] Otherwise, that estrogen is going to continue to recycle through the system, through the bloodstream, and fuel the problem. So throughout the week or throughout the month, especially the second week after her period when she's most likely ovulating, is when she needs to have the most amount of vegetables. This means that she's going to be able to break down metabolized estrogen and she's going to have a better period in two weeks from there. It's kind of like ovulation is like the warning sign.

[00:19:45] Do you ovulate? Do you have any symptoms during ovulation? Yes or no? That's kind of like, okay, I am going to have enough progesterone to have a healthy period or I'm not going to have enough. I helped my liver process the estrogen or I didn't. I was drinking a ton. It's summer. It's patio season. We're indulging. But you still need to hit your protein and your vegetables. How much protein should a woman be eating?

[00:20:13] I truly believe that for somebody who is 5'4", maybe around 130 pounds, should be having anywhere from like 140-150 grams of protein per day. And that's assuming that they're leaving the bed. If they're staying in bed and they're just blinking their eyes and they're not moving, they're still going to have to have around 110 grams of protein just for the bodily functions to happen in a symptom-free way. So if they're staying in bed, 110.

[00:20:44] If they're walking, going to work, working out, 140-150 grams of protein. I want to get to some of the questions. I have them here. So you put out a story a few days ago and said we're going to be having this conversation and you polled a lot of the people on your Instagram and said, hey, what do people want to know? And you got a bunch of questions. And the first one is actually the most interesting because it seems like it's the simplest,

[00:21:12] but also even when you shared it with me on one of the previous episodes, I was like, wow, I knew so little about periods. Why do women get periods? A period is the body's way of shedding the lining of the uterus when pregnancy doesn't happen. So every month the body that is obsessed with hormones is basically trying to prepare for possible pregnancy.

[00:21:39] So it's going to build this nutrient-rich lining. And if there's no fertilized egg that's being implanted, then the hormone levels drop and the lining is shedding. It is a sign that your reproductive hormones are communicating with your ovaries and your uterus. Because even though this is the caveat that you still might not be ovulating, just because you have a period doesn't mean that you're ovulating. Just because you're ovulating

[00:22:08] doesn't mean that you're going to have a period. Okay. And why do they hurt so much? Why do periods hurt so much? Yeah. So kind of coming back to those prosclandins, if we have those three prosclandins and we have higher levels of the PGE2 and less of the PGE1 and the PGE3, then there's going to be more of those stronger contractions that happen.

[00:22:35] So it's quite literally just a chemical reaction. And if I were to make this equivalent to a sugar craving, you weren't just born with a sugar craving. You weren't just born with a sweet tooth. It's a chemical reaction. You go through a chemical reaction for a sweet tooth like I would go through a chemical reaction like a sweet tooth. And yet it's like you make it worse for me or you put more shame on me for it. Not me, to be clear. Not you.

[00:23:05] Not you. So while there's mild discomfort that can be normalized, this pain, the prosclandins, can also cause vomiting. It can go through our bloodstream. It can go up to our head. It can cause headaches and migraines as well too. And it just, it makes you miss work, destroys relationships, ruins your day, your productivity. And of course, there's also the added points of this or the added causes would be endometriosis

[00:23:34] or adenomyosis. And those are? Those are when there's uterine lining that's either growing on the inside or outside of the uterus. Can a woman get pregnant while she's on her period? Yes. Really? Especially if she has a short cycle. So like right in the, no pun intended, thick of it, she can get pregnant. Yeah. So if you have a period that is arriving every,

[00:24:04] I typically say a red flag is a cycle that's 27 days or under. If you are having a period that is every 27 days or less, I consider that as a short cycle. A lot of short cycles that are out there are every 21, 23, 25 days. Sperm stays in the body for about five days. So if you have a short cycle and it's staying there,

[00:24:32] high chance that you are going to get pregnant. Why is a shorter cycle a red flag? For one, based off of how, like we just don't always pay attention to ovulation. Ovulation changes every month, every person. Yes, there's this information around you should be ovulating between like 10, 14 days of your cycle. I don't think we talked about that enough. I think the period should last anywhere

[00:25:01] from like three to four days of bleeding. And then after your bleed, you should get your period, you should ovulate about seven to 10 days after. That is the goal. But a lot of people have a short or long follicular phase. And that ovulation, if you are not tracking it because calendars, like looking at these menstrual cycle apps,

[00:25:31] they are not always the best form of birth control. None of these apps are asking if you are ovulating. And so many people, I will say, I'm just like, oh, are you ovulating? They're like, well, my app says. I'm like, wait, wait. So your app knows your discharge, your temperature, and the position of your pelvis? In no way one person is putting all that information into an app. In no way one person is even tracking all of that. So for like majority of my clients in my community, I'm always pushing like

[00:26:00] I am a protein pusher and I am a basal body temperature pusher. Yeah. If you are trying to get pregnant or not, I'm going to emphasize this even more for the girls who are not trying to get pregnant, track your damn basal body temperature. If you truly want to understand your symptoms, your period, what is wrong with you and what direction you need to go in, you need to understand your temperature because from there, you can understand is it your follicular phase that's wrong or is it your luteal phase that's wrong? And from there,

[00:26:30] we can decide what we need to do. Yeah. Okay. So another question that we got was what actually happens during ovulation? So ovulation is when one of the ovaries is going to release a mature egg and this makes it very, this makes it available for fertilization for about like 12 to 24 hours. In the days leading up to ovulation, your estrogen is going to rise.

[00:26:59] It hangs out with testosterone. There's going to be cervical mucus. You're going to see that clear slippery discharge and a lot of women's libido energy will naturally increase. As much as this whole thing is called the menstrual cycle, I truly believe it should be called the ovulatory cycle. Like ovulation is what's determining how the whole entire monthly experience and menstruation goes, how your symptoms go.

[00:27:30] So you can have a weak ovulation. You can have a skipped ovulation. You can ovulate and if your stress is so high, it basically steals from your progesterone. So you really do want to see, do you ovulate? Does your temperature sustain for a few days? There might be a little baby dip, but then your temperature should rise. That rise in temperature means that your body's making progesterone. If you don't have progesterone, there's no chill. If you don't have progesterone,

[00:27:59] you're going to have a crappy period. So you want to be using your thermometer that you take every morning. Like if you love your girl, you push her to take her temperature, whether she's trying to get pregnant or not. So that means she's waking up from her slumber. She's not talking to you. You stick a basal thermometer in her mouth. You don't move. You don't let her move at all. You do this all for her. And once it beeps,

[00:28:28] then you can let her leave her bed. Like shove that in her mouth, make her take her temperature. And then if you can see that her temperature is rising, it's like, okay, cool. We're going to have enough progesterone, hopefully for a good period. Let's protect this progesterone now. So between now and menstruation, what do we need to do to keep this girl regulated? Does she need to do her cold plunges, her breath work? Does she need to go get a massage?

[00:28:56] Does she need to send kids to grandma's house? Does she need to go for a walk? Is her blood sugar regulated? Can you go make sure that she's eating every three to four hours? Or if the tempters are just going downhill, buckle up. You got two weeks to like tack everything down. Yeah. Because you are waiting potentially for a hurricane. And that hurricane can, her again,

[00:29:26] can quite literally, the hurricane can be a little bit of damage, maybe not so much, but you're kind of just like sussing everything out. So I like to use that time as preparation, not just like waiting. You don't want to wait. It's like, let's be proactive, not reactive. Does she need to go to a pelvic floor therapy session in between? Does she need to do some stretching? Does she need to stick to her heating pad? Like how can you keep the hip flexors, the abductors, the SI joint supported?

[00:29:57] That comment about the hurricane leads into another question that we got, which was, why does my girlfriend act so differently before her period? I really want to emphasize that this is not every single person, but there's going to be different reactions to every hormonal shift. All of those spikes that happen in temperature, you could almost see it every like 12 to 24 hours, how she's reacting to certain shifts.

[00:30:27] And she might react to those sensitive shifts when the temperature's dropping, or she might react to those shifts when the temperatures are rising. So that kind of tells us, is it when hormones or progesterone's going down or when estrogen's going up? And when the mood swings happen, either before the period or after the period, quite literally tells us how the body is reacting to estrogen and progesterone because the estrogen after the period that's rising can put you more on edge.

[00:30:56] The drop in progesterone or even the rise of progesterone can also make you feel very anxious, rage, irritable. So in the week before the period, the progesterone and the estrogen are naturally going to begin to fall. You can't stop that. That is part of your chemical reactions. And these hormonal shifts are going to affect the mood, sleep, the appetite, and even how the brain responds to stress.

[00:31:29] Another question that we got was, why doesn't she want sex sometimes? Which feels like a very loaded question, a bit broad, whoever sent that one in. But I assume obviously this is in relation to how she's feeling during her menstrual cycle. Yes. But what would you say to that? Because like I am my horniest self when I'm on my period. So it definitely varies per person. And also like testosterone levels,

[00:31:58] like I am an athlete. Majority of professional athletes are going to have higher testosterone levels. So that's going to vary for somebody who most likely has never played sports. That's just one example. A woman's sex drive is naturally going to shift throughout the menstrual cycle because hormones are always going to fluctuate. So a lot of people feel more interested when estrogen and testosterone are higher together, closer to ovulation.

[00:32:28] But let's say if you are sleeping under seven hours, and your nervous system is fried, you're naturally going to have a lower sex drive. And that's also for men too. There's just a recharge that you guys get every single day and we only have that every single month. You know, sleep keeps popping up on this podcast. It's such an integral piece of the human experience.

[00:32:57] How you go through life, how you feel in your relationships, your work, all of that stuff. How does sleep impact a woman's menstrual cycle? I mean, if you are waking up every night to go pee, a lot of the time that can be a reflection of being low in magnesium. It can be your pelvic floor. It can also be your liver struggling. It can be a blood sugar crash.

[00:33:26] There's a lot of reasons why we end up waking up in the middle of the night. Waking up in the middle of the night versus waking up to go pee are typically two different things. When we are mouth breathing and snoring, our, like even if you were clenching and it's a little slit of breath that's going out, that exhale, that can still raise your cortisol levels anywhere between 40 to 50%. Really? So when we have more cortisol, that means we're going to have more estrogen and inflammation.

[00:33:56] Like that alone can be impacting your fitness goals. You're naturally going to have a larger hip to waist ratio and also more debilitating period grams. Interesting. I feel like we could do a whole conversation on sleep. Totally, we can. What does a healthy menstrual cycle look like? A healthy menstrual cycle shows up every 28 to 32 days. If it's under 27,

[00:34:26] big red flag. If it's over 35, big red flag. We want this period to last anywhere from three to five days. If it's bleeding for seven days and it's symptom free, maybe you can get away with that but chances are it's going to show up still on your lab work that you're most likely anemic or nutrient deficient in one way or another. So we want the bleed to be anywhere from three to five days. It should look like this unsettled jello texture. For all the moms listening,

[00:34:55] it's kind of like that and dads. It's kind of like that unsettled jello mixture that's not too heavy, not inconvenient and it should be red from beginning to end. There shouldn't be this warning sign. Oh, I'm getting my period. I'm starting to spot. I'm seeing brown spotting. I'm seeing light pink spotting. There also shouldn't be this tapering at the end. It should be red, red, beginning, and done. That's it. For postpartum women, how do they navigate their periods

[00:35:25] after not having it for so long? You just want to talk about your wife the whole time. It's fine. Listen, I actually put this question out to a few of the women in my life who are in the postpartum stages, my wife included. And this was the main question that came back is how do you learn to navigate it after sort of being free from it for nine, almost 10 months? Yeah. The body is going to still be obsessed with ovulating and you can still be breastfeeding

[00:35:54] or not breastfeeding. Well, I was shocked when I learned that a woman is extremely fertile shortly after giving birth. Yeah. And that's the most, that's the highest chances of her getting pregnant again. Yeah. I know a lot of women who are getting pregnant like back to back. It's not healthy in my opinion also depending on how bad the pregnancy was and how the healing needs to be for her. Yeah. She does, I do believe her body needs a break. But,

[00:36:25] yeah, the body is always going to be obsessed with ovulating. Again, the body is obsessed with getting pregnant. So it's not like her sex drive and she's like just naturally horny for you right after pregnancy. It's this chemical reaction that is happening. Her body is always obsessed with getting pregnant. So whether she gets a period or not, she is still trying to build that progesterone. And from there, you want to track temperature. So I'm always going to say

[00:36:54] even postpartum if you can and I know it can be tricky having a newborn babe in the house and no sleep. But if there is any decent amount of sleep, you need at least a minimum of three hours in order for your temperature to regulate. So if you've got three hours of sleep, you can take that temperature and you can figure out are you ovulating or when are you ovulating and then we can decide from there when is your period

[00:37:23] most likely to happen. But sometimes it can be up to three months postpartum that you're going to start ovulating. Sometimes it can happen right away. Sometimes this can look like menstruation doesn't happen for a whole year or menstruation can happen right away. But even when you are menstruating, it does not mean that you are ovulating. So if you're

[00:37:53] already starting to get your period postpartum, you better be tracking your basal body temperature to figure out from there what is going on with your cycle. And I hate to break it to you, but majority of women who are postpartum are almost like thrown in the dumpster. It's crazy to see how much support you are given through your doctors and through your family leading up to the pregnancy. Everybody is checking in on you, making sure that you are good. Like you are almost treated like a goddess

[00:38:22] that you can conceive. And then it's like, oh, you conceived? Cool. There's no blood work done after. There's no checkups that are after. Nurses are not coming to your home. Nobody is trying to figure out if you are okay. Everybody wants to see the baby. Nobody is checking in on the mom. Like how is the mom's mental health? My biggest concern anytime that I'm working with clients is that we are identifying that those nine months they are short and sweet, but they are short-lived. We need to make sure that the mental health of the mom before and after

[00:38:51] pregnancy is actually set up the best to our abilities. A lot of people are skipping over this progesterone support and they're going right to IUI, IVF kind of thing and they're getting all this medication for this pregnancy, but now your body literally has nothing to stand on postpartum. There's no progesterone to act as that natural chill pill for you. And you just feel like a completely different person.

[00:39:21] I want to end this off with one more question that I've been thinking about. My wife gave birth to a baby boy and one day that baby boy is going to become a young man and he's going to encounter women in his life, friends, girlfriends, his own mom, maybe a sister one day who are going to be dealing with their menstrual cycles. As a dad, what should I be thinking about

[00:39:50] when I eventually have that conversation with my son? Is that a soft launch for a daughter? I hope one day. I mean, I wanted a daughter. I feel like you would be a good girl dad. I really wanted to be a girl dad. I'm happy with my boy. Don't get me wrong. You know what I would love to do is like a ponies and periods class. Like let's bring all the dads together, teach them all how to do proper ponytails and braids and talk about their periods. I think we should do that. We'll make it happen together. Let's do it. A hundred percent.

[00:40:22] So I think this is starting off by letting him be part of the process. Like for one, son, go grab that box of tampons, put it in the cart. Like just normalize that from like the gecko, get him to touch the box, get him to like read what are we dealing with here? Do we need the regular super, super plus? Right? I know it sounds like the Disney channel subscription but like we need to get them to understand an extra $2 a month. We need to get them to understand

[00:40:52] what is required here in this household. From there, I think another part of this is normalizing it in the bathroom. The kids are going to want to be with the mom anytime in the bathroom. I have so many moms that are literally reading books to their kids while they're going pee and the kids are sitting on their lap the whole entire time. So, how do we normalize this is how I put in a pad or even like showing blood

[00:41:22] a little bit? Like, just being part of the conversation that is it. Mom gets her period. Son, can you give mom your sweater? Normalize that conversation or oh, son, go let your friend know that she got her period and pass your sweater. Like, I think that there just needs to be this level of support and it's courtesy, it's chivalry and it's definitely part

[00:41:51] of raising. it's just being kind. At the end of the day, I think it's just being kind. Like, oh, you get a sugar craving? I get a sugar craving. Like, let's try to deal with the sugar craving together and go have some protein. Thank you so much. Of course. Thanks for having me. It's always such a pleasure because I learn so much and then I walk away and realize how much I don't know, which, again, only emphasizes

[00:42:21] how much information is out there and how much more work guys need to do to better understand these things. We're just scratching the surface. I know. Well, when you say that, doctors only get about six hours of education in this. We've now done three podcasts together. That's three hours and I still barely feel like I know anything. So if I were to say, let's do three more of these, I still don't think I would know very much. So we definitely have to do a lot more of these. And I really like the pony and braids. Ponytail and periods. Ponytail

[00:42:51] and periods. I don't know why I said braids. But we can do braids. We can do braids and bowel movements. We can do periods and pony details. We'll find the right marketing spin for it. Where can people find you? You can find me at theperiodlab.ca or at theperiodlab So good to see you. Thank you so much.