Speaker 1
You talk about how we can perfect our cycle. So how do we do that? And is there such thing as like a perfect cycle? Well, there's an optimal cycle, yes. And, you know, I really talking to women about checking the color of their bleed every month because it's like a live hormone test that in real time, it gives you a great snapshot into what's happening. So what you want to do to optimize your cycle, to perfect your cycle, again, is to recognize you may have a diagnosis, you may have already a condition, you may have just PMS. Going through those first three steps of the flow protocol that I describe in Women Code is critical for you to reestablish endocrine function. And then you want to check your cycle every month and you want to say, okay, what color is it? What's the consistency? How long is my bleed? You know? Am I having any symptoms? And really trying to get to a place where you're having that optimal flow, which is four to seven days, nice, fresh, healthy red color, clot -free, and pain -free. That is an optimal cycle. And that is absolutely something that you can biohack. So for example, let's say you're having tremendous cramps well cramps are the imbalance of prostaglandin ratios right so there are three prostaglandins in your system PG one two and three if nature designed you to be in pain Which a lot of us believe because that's the cultural narrative that says, oh, women have the curse and they're gonna suffer and be in pain, it's even in some religious texts that we're supposed to suffer, it's not biologically accurate because you have only one prostaglandin that controls for uterine contraction, that's PGE2, but you have two prostaglandins, PGE1 and PGE3, that cause uterine relaxation. So you just have a little bit of uterine contraction that you get stimulated by so that the uterus moves and can help move the endometrium out of the body. But you have twice as much prostaglandin that causes your uterus to relax. So nature designed your periods to be pain -free. However, if you're eating the wrong kinds of fats, fats that are high in omega -6, heavily processed vegetable oils, etc., you're going to jack up the production of PGE2 and suppress the production of PGE1 and 3, and you're going're gonna have more cramps so you can literally eat your way out of cramps within two cycles. Wow okay so what about like low energy and just feeling like is that part of you know is that meant to happen like on the first day because for me i'll talk about my experience for the first day usually the first of the day, I feel really low energy. Like I just want to lay on the couch or lay in bed. I do feel a little bit bloated, but is that normal, quote unquote normal? Is that part of it or should we not be getting any bloating and should we not feel low energy? Yeah. I mean, so, and this is why I wrote my new book, In the Flow, because what you need to understand is that there is a secondary biological rhythm running in your body that governs six major biological systems. And what's important about that is that just like I shared just a moment that nature designed you to be pain free, nature designed you to feel good all month. And so if you're having symptoms like, you know, really noticeable fatigue where you need to lay down and rest that much and bloating, then yeah, you're not in the flow, right? You've somehow been doing something at somewhere along the way that is endocrine disruptive. And of course you are. Of course any woman is, because we've been deprived of a very critical piece of information. And I'd love to share that with you guys because it's what I am introducing to the world in this book, In the Flow, that is really game -changing. It really turns everything we've been taught about the way we take care of ourselves, the way we eat, the way we work out. It really turns that all on its head. So without further ado, I'll just tell you what it is, because you've been kept waiting long enough for millennia. Yes, sure. So you, we as women, in our reproductive years, have something very special, a special biological rhythm. We all know about the circadian rhythm, right? The one that is aligned with the solar pattern, right? The sun rises and sunsets and how we are our pineal glands are stimulated by sunlight and we make melatonin around that and all of that. And we've also really come to understand as a scientific community how essential it is for us to nourish and support our circadian biological rhythm, right? We wear blue light blocking glasses, we make sure we get an adequate sunlight, we take our vitamin D3, we to get adequate sleep. We've done multi -decade studies to show the effects of what can happen when you work against the circadian rhythm, like people who work night shifts at hospitals and things are at bigger risk for serious diseases. So we're all on board that taking care of circadian clock is critical for health. But for women in their reproductive years, you have a second equally, if not more important, biological rhythm called the infradian rhythm. The infradian rhythm. It's a new word. It's a new term. And it's something that you need to know because it's a cycle. So circadian is a cycle that is one day in freudian Rhythm is a cycle that is longer than a day and in women we experience that in our monthly cycle, right a 28 -day cycle and Why this is so important is because it turns out that this in freudian rhythm impacts not just your reproductive system, but your brain, your metabolism, your immune system, your microbiome, and your stress response system. So I'm somebody who's a systems thinker. I'm somebody who likes to go to the deepest, most impactful route, like the foundation of how something works or the root cause of what is why things are not working. And when I, after having been taking care of women at Flow Living for so many years and being, you know, hormone and nutrition expert for 20 years, I said, why is it now that, just in the past five years, why is it that we have more information, more wellness content online than we've ever had before, but women are sicker than ever before? Right? Over 50% of the female population is struggling with a hormonal issue. And that's just the ones who are aware of them. And you're right, Melissa, it could be a much bigger percentage. The reason why we're all, as women, so sick, hormonally, not where we want to be with our weight, feeling all of these symptoms, feeling fatigued, feeling overwhelmed, feeling like we're not where we want to be in our lives. We don't feel healthy. We don't feel energized. And we're not where we want to be in our lives. And just like we know how toxic and dangerous it is to work against our circadian rhythm, it is equally toxic and dangerous to work against the infradian rhythm, and we've been doing it constantly. And it's so important that we just stop doing that, like period, pun intended. We've got to really, we've got to start taking care of ourselves based on our actual biology. And, you know, I've been talking to a lot of people about this book and, and why it's so important. And, and one of the things I like to share is like, you know, we're not, this is not like asking for some special treatment, right? I'm not saying, oh, we have to, we have to be we're delicate, we have to, you know, take care of our infradian rhythm. No, the guys are doing this, and they've been doing it for millennia, they've organized the entire culture, worldwide. I mean, if you want to talk about what is the patriarchy, the patriarchy in my scientific lens is that we've organized culture around the male hormonal pattern. Right? Think about it. What is a power morning? When we think about the zeitgeist of what, okay, what do all the guys say about what's important if you're going to have a successful start to the day? Well, let's break that down. Melissa, I'm sure you've heard this before too, right? It's like, okay, let's wake up at 5 a .m. and either do some meditation or writing or something, right up, right when you wake up. Then do some physical activity. And of course, if you have time and a partner have sex, because that's what you want to be doing, then do some meetings, power through some work, get things done. And then in the afternoon and early evening, socialize and then go home and rest. And why is that? Because the male hormonal pattern is optimized for exactly those activities every single day at exactly those times. Men go to sleep and produce all the testosterone they're ever going to make for the next day while they're sleeping. They wake up with the maximum concentration of testosterone and cortisol circulating in their bloodstream as soon as they open their eyes. So they are literally raring to go physically and sexually and cognitively. And they need frontload as much of their activity in the morning to take advantage of that hormonal ratio. They have enough of that sustained through about two o 'clock, and then around three o 'clock it really falls off the cliff. And the rise of biohacking right now is really for men falling off the energy and stamina cliff in the afternoon with nootropics and upgraded coffee and adaptogens because they need to find a way to compensate for the fact that they really lose a lot of energy, mental concentration, etc., physical stamina in the afternoon if they want to extend that. Otherwise, in corporate culture, it's happy hour time and they're socializing and then they go home and they crash. And all of our society is organized around this hormonal pattern. And all I'm asking for is that women, without us requiring the world to change yet is that we live in a way that's oriented around our own biology because it works for men so well and of course it's going to work for women so well. And that's why men have less hormonal problems, feel like they're thriving in their lives in other areas because they're never behind the eight ball of their hormonal pattern. They're supporting it. They're nurturing that hormonal pattern for themselves every single day and women are doing the opposite. We're actually trying to live as if we have a 24 hour hormonal pattern when we don't. We have a 28 day infradian pattern. So what does that look like for us? How does that look and how can we support the infradian rhythm? So that's what I map out in the book. In fact, the book has chart after chart. It has a food chart of you have these four distinct hormonal patterns that occur throughout the cycle of your follicular ovulatory, luteal and menstrual phase. You have specific hormonal ratios, just like the guys have a particular concentration of testosterone and cortisol in the morning, you have specific concentrations of estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, luteinizing hormone, follicular stimulating hormone in different concentrations in four predictable weeks, right? They change four times over the course of the month. And you have to change what you're eating because your metabolism changes. Your caloric needs change in order for your body to produce these hormones and break these hormones down. You have to change what you're eating each of those weeks. You have to change how you exercise each of those weeks. I'm going to go into that a little bit more in a second. And you have to, like men, front -load all their writing and thinking and meetings in the morning, because that's when they have their hormonal propensity to do that well and with less effort. You also want to organize your work projects around what is optimal for your brain chemistry in each of those four phases. So in the book in the flow. I have a food flow chart. There's a fitness flow chart, so you know what to eat when, which workouts to do, which phase of the cycle it takes. So you don't have to become an expert like me. You could just follow the charts. There's a new time management tool, a completely new daily planner for women to use to orient themselves around their infradian clock. This is something I created for myself that I've been using for 20 years. It's why it gets so much done. So you can use my planner. And then there's a workflow chart. So you know which projects to work on, if you're an entrepreneur at which times of the month, or if you're in a corporate setting, how to do that. In a corporate setting, there's sex and relationship, the love flow charts, you know, 60% Melissa of women around the world are not sexually satisfied. And it's simply because they don't know how the infradian rhythm is affecting their sexual response and their sexual requirements, each of the four phases, which we can dive into as well. But you can't expect to have the same orgasmic result if you're doing the same type of stimulation each of the four phases of the cycle. Of course, no one's teaching us that. So we are have very hit or miss with our sexual pleasure and to the tune of 60% of us are missing and not hitting, right? And so that can be completely 100% of the time we can be hitting a pleasurable response if we know what we're doing, if we know how this rhythm works. And there's even a chart about mother, like motherhood, and how do you use your hormonal pattern to your advantage as a mom? I'm a mom of a young daughter, and let me tell you, this has been a huge liberation just to be able to mother in a way that works my biological reality. It's amazing how everything just shifts, and it's so logical, right? It doesn't... For example, your brain chemistry changes up to 25% over the course of one infradian turn of the clock, right? So within one month, your brain is distinctly different from itself than it was a week ago by up to 25%. You're not the same person. Why would you want to do anything that you did last week, this current week, because you're like a whole different creature? Metabolically, your metabolism is slower in certain phases of the cycle and faster in others, meaning you can have less calories in certain phases of the cycle, but you must have more in other phases of the cycle if for example you do high intensity interval training all month long because we've heard that is good it is good for men every day, but it's not good for women every day. And if you do it at the wrong time of the cycle, you can turn on fat storage and turn on muscle wasting. So here again, this rhetoric that says, just do it. Get up early. Push yourself. Don't quit. It is good for guys. Terrible for you. And that's why women are not making the, achieving the body that they want and they're working out so much harder than they need to and they're messing with their hormones anything that you do. From a self care point of view that is not in alignment with supporting this in freedom is fundamentally and endocrine disruptor. And will make you sick and stressed and miserable and it doesn't need to be that way. So That's how you do it. You start to change what you're eating When you're in the different phases you change how you're working out and you change what you're working on in your life so that everything becomes less stressful so that you increase your energy week over week. You never fall off the energy cliff. How I know that I'm doing well is every time I get my period that it feels like a normal day. It feels like, oh, okay, great. I got my period, but I'm feeling good. I've not been supporting my infradian rhythm I may have an experience like you describe where I'm really like Energy energy depleted at you know during my bleed and that's a that's a great indication that I've been somehow out of the flow I haven't been nurturing my infradian rhythm enough. My period will always give me that real talk feedback like, yeah, you did a good job or nope, you didn't do enough. And then I just do better next month. But it's really an exciting way to live because you're basing it on your actual biochemistry.