Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #396 Empowering Women's Health w/ Kayla Osterhoff

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

Welcoming Dr. Kayla Osterhoff to discuss her pioneering work in women's health research. Dr. Osterhoff, known for herbiorhythms.com, and her extensive background at the CDC, delves into the complexities of women's health that have been largely overlooked by the traditional scientific community. The conversation covers key topics such as the lack of female subjects in health research, the flawed assumptions in current medical practices, and the unique physiological cycles of women. Dr. Osterhoff emphasizes the significance of understanding these cycles for better health outcomes and introduces the Women's Health Research Scale, a new framework for improving research quality and applicability to women. She also highlights the historical context of societal structures that fail to support women adequately and the importance of female leadership in today’s world.    Connect with Kayla here: Instagram Her Biorhythm   Our Sponsors: Let’s level up your nicotine routine with Lucy. Go to Lucy.co/KKP and use promo code (KKP) to get 20% off your first order. Lucy offers FREE SHIPPING and has a 30-day refund policy if you change your mind. With Happy Hippo, you're getting a product that's been sterilized of pathogens, tested for impurities and heavy metals, and sold with a guarantee. Go to happyhippo.com/kkp and use Code KKP for 15% off the entire store Organifi.com/kkp and grab a Sunrise to Sunset kit to be covered with Red, Green and Gold, with 20% off using code KKP If there’s ONE MINERAL you should be worried about not getting enough of... it’s MAGNESIUM. Head to http://www.bioptimizers.com/kingsbu now and use code KINGSBU10 to claim your 10% discount. Full Temple Reset is happening soon and it will be a life changing experience. Join us!   Connect with Kyle: I'm back on Instagram, come say hey @kylekingsbu Twitter: @kingsbu Fit For Service Academy App: Fit For Service App Our Farm Initiative: @gardenersofeden.earth Odysee: odysee.com/@KyleKingsburypod Youtube: Kyle Kingbury Podcast Kyle's Website: www.kingsbu.com - Gardeners of Eden site If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe & leave a 5-star review with your thoughts!

Welcome back to the podcast everybody. We have a very special guest in the house. This is round two, but it's round one for everybody with Dr. Kayla Osterhoff. First did this podcast with Dr. Kayla online and we lost about half of it, which meant it was a no-go. And she reached out to me letting me know she was going to be traveling to Austin as it is and would love to do another one face to face. I was overjoyed and I am super happy that we got to meet each other and do this one face to face on our farm in Lockhart. It was incredible. Dr. Kayla Osterhoff is probably best known for her website, herbiorhythms.com. She worked at the CDC for six years and has uncovered so much in women's health that it's really mind

boggling. We talk science, which is largely centered around men, we talk studies, data points, we talk why blood work really doesn't work for the female body and how complex the female body is. And trust me, if you're a dude, you want to know this stuff. Regardless, if you're a woman, you for sure need to know this stuff. But even if you're even if you're not, we are surrounded by women in our lives, we date women. If you're heterosexual male, you have a mother, that's everybody. So we can cover all

bases there, you've got a mom, a lot of us have sisters, and all those of us that are parents will likely have daughters. And this shit is unknown. It is largely undiscovered unknown until recently. And it's really been in large part due to the work of people like Dr. Kayla Orov, who have felt a sense of something being off kilter when it comes to our sick care system and how that really has failed women in general. We dive into a ton of stuff in this episode

that I think is really valuable for people of all walks of life. I learned a ton. I'm really excited to have her back on with our brother, Dr. Nathan Riley, who introduced us. And we'll do a little three way here in the future that I think is going to be just as good. My hope is that if it's just as good as this or even a quarter as good, it's still going to be worth a listen. This one was one of my favorites of the year.

All right. You can support this podcast by sharing it far and wide. Share it with friends. Post it online. Do whatever you want to do to get the word out. Also leave us a five star rating with one or two ways the show's helped you out in life and to support our sponsors. They make this show possible and I really appreciate them. And then one more quick announcement before we get started. We are days away from full temple reset at this farm

right here in Lockhart, Texas. It's gonna be March 12th through the 16th. It is an in-person summit. If you want to reset your body in the shortest amount of time possible, this is the best way to do it. It is supervised. We get blood work done before.

That's optional, but we have medical staff on site for blood for, sorry, edit this part, Cole. We have nurses on staff with IVs for upgrades. We can get into NAD therapy, glutathione, you name it. So many extra add-ons we can bring into this. So many extra add-ons we can bring into the body to help us detoxify to help us have energy and help us be the best version of ourselves while going through sauna, ice bath, a complete overhaul of education regarding the psyche and Jungian

psychology featuring my boy Eric Godsey. I think this is our sixth run of it. So we've got a lot of experience doing this. These are small. These are intimate. And these are highly immersive retreats where you get to come here and fully invest in yourself. Invest and rediscover your body, your mind, and your spirit, resetting all functions of your existence.

And trust me when I say this, this will change your life. There are no two ways about it. If you can make it, take the time to give this to yourself. March 12 through the 16th, go to fitforservice.com. And we can link to this in the show notes. So just click on it there. If you're at fitforservice.com, click under Current Offerings and you'll see the first one popped up right here, Lockhart, Texas.

Come meet me and Eric Godsey. And without further ado, Dr. Kayla Osterhoff. Dr. Kayla Osterhoff, it's a pleasure to get to see you face to face. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. We had round one online and ran into technical issues which pissed me off, but when you contacted me and said that wasn't your best

and that you wanted to do it face to face, I was absolutely thrilled. So, thanks for making your way out to Lockhart, Texas. Of course, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me out. Yeah, well now you get to see the family and be in the house and also know like there's something I think I talked about

on our original podcast that never aired due to technical issues is everyone I know knows women. And there's not a lot of dudes who think of women's issues as their own issues, but if you truly want to know, I mean, I've recommended to women the book, King Warrior, Magician Lover, is such a great book, because it'll show you the shadow sides of men

and the optimized male, right? And those are also replaceable archetypes where the king becomes the queen, the warrior becomes the huntress, the magician becomes the high priestess and they're absolutely substitutable. But so much of what we're going to discuss today impacts me because I'm a father and a husband and I also work with women and we're going to talk about, you know, how we can optimize for work and things of that nature. But, you know, getting to work with our friend, Dr. Nathan Riley, who I've brought into my lesson plans

in teaching health and wellness has been mind blowing just to see some of the stuff we're gonna discuss today because truly men are very simple creatures and very easy to optimize and very easy to tinker with. And we'll talk about the science and why that makes sense for science. And we'll also talk about why that doesn't make sense from a female standpoint. But this is fascinating to me.

Like diving into this stuff was absolutely mind blowing. It made sense automatically, especially anybody who's ever been in a long term relationship. Some of this stuff, you're, it's recognizable, right? Yeah. But let's start with who you are, who you were, your education, all that stuff. What was life like growing up? Yeah, oh my gosh. Well, I was a kind of a hillbilly from Reno, Nevada, living out in the desert and riding dirt bikes and shooting guns growing up and building forts in the sagebrush. You'd fit right in here. Yeah,

yeah, so Texas feels like home to me because, you know, I'm one with the desert for sure. And grew up in, you know, a family, very low, middle class, pretty, I wouldn't say we were like poor, poor, but we were poor. We were pretty poor. So we didn't have a lot, but one thing that really struck me from my upbringing and watching my lineage, especially the women within my lineage, was seeing how the women have kind of fallen through the gaps in my family. But then when I look out into the society, it's kind of the case for most women. So my great grandmother had mental health issues and those were kind of passed down and trauma and things were passed down to my grandmother. My grandmother ended up committing suicide when my mom was only 13. And because of that and some other traumas that

happened to my mom and then also experiencing those things, that dysregulation with her grandmother and her mother, she carried that stuff on and ultimately passed it to me, which is the work that I've been doing on myself for the past good 10 years. been doing a lot of reflection and healing work and and it's really guided my work in the field of women's health but what I found was particularly in the experience with my mom and some of the mental health issues that she experienced broader health issues that she experienced, broader health issues, and ultimately what resulted in addiction was that the medical community knows nothing about women and is completely failing at helping support women with their bodies, with their health, and especially with their mental

health. And with my mom in particular, her mental health issues that she was trying to get support for, the doctors just didn't really know how to guide her and help her there. And with the addition of some injuries, she ended up having a full-blown addiction that was fully prescribed. So she was taking everything as prescribed

full-blown addiction to opioids. And so that culminated when I was a junior in college, undergrad, and she had her first round of overdoses that year. And prior to that, because she was such a high-functioning woman like most of us are with all the issues that we have going on, we can, we have a really incredible capacity to just push through. And that was definitely the case for my mom. And so when she had her first round of overdoses, it was like a complete shock to my self, to our whole family, because we had no idea because that's just how well she was able to just keep pushing through and hide her pain and her struggles. And so when that happened it really completely shifted me. At that point I was studying to be a physical therapist and I totally shifted gears. I took a year off from school to help my mom

because I don't know if you're familiar, but getting into rehab and that whole situation when you don't have money is very, very difficult and you have to do a lot of work. And had I not taken time off of school and just focused fully on my mom and helping her, she wouldn't have been able to move past that point in her life. And luckily I had the flexibility to do it, but so many people don't.

So when that happened, it totally shifted me, cracked me open, changed my view of the world. me open, changed my view of the world, and I started asking deeper questions about women's health and why we are being misguided and mistreated from the medical community specifically, and specifically with overprescribing certain medications, including opioids, but now I have a broader understanding. We're really overprescribing almost everything to women specifically. So at that point I decided to shift gears and I switched to get my masters in public health

rather than go to physical therapy school. And my goal was to go and work at CDC and work on the opioid epidemic because I wanted to like really make a change with this. So I got my master's in public health. I got my job at CDC, but it wasn't in opioids. I ended up working in global public health. So moved myself from Reno, Nevada out to Atlanta, Georgia,

became a Southerner and started working at CDC. And during my time there, I was able to do so many amazing projects and work within the space of cardiovascular disease and emergency response. While I was there, I worked on the Global Hearts initiative and set up cardiovascular disease programs and clinics within several countries. Mongolia, Africa, Brazil were the countries that I was in charge of for that initiative. And then I also worked on all of the emergency responses that happened while I was there. I was there for like seven and a half years. And so I worked on the Zika response. I don't know if you remember that back in the day. And then I worked on both

of the Ebola responses in Africa. And then I worked on the COVID response just for about seven months before I finally hung up my hat at CDC and had enough of that. Enough censoring the truth from the people. Yeah, and we could we could talk a little bit about that if you want. But Well, as you know, I just had Peter McCollough on and it was funny because he had a lot to say on the CDC.

He had a lot to say in 2021 on Rogan's podcast. But having been four years removed from that, five years removed from 2020, the thing that he really brought up was not just what the CDC was doing, but that there was a global coordinated effort to only bring one remedy. And there was a global coordinated effort to suppress any information and knowledge of cures outside of that. And like that to me, five years after the fact, like, what are you really focused on? It's like the fact that this was worldwide, right? Like that's pretty impressive. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I can roll back the curtain a little bit on some of that. Sure.

Sure. Absolutely. But I'll finish what I'm saying here first. Yeah, it was it was a it was both a hugely expansive time for me because I got to do so much amazing work that honestly I didn't even have the the skill set or credentials to have any business doing but I kind of got thrown into the wolves because I am kind of a high functioning capable person which also comes from part of my mental health background of having kind of channeling that anxiety into something more productive. So when I was there, I also had some eye opening experiences that showed me that we really are missing the mark

by a mile when it comes to women's health. And there are so many more question marks than there are answers. And we are operating from crazy assumptions, like absolutely insane assumptions when it comes to women's health because we certainly don't have the information and data that we need to make real accurate useful decisions for women's health especially when we're talking about public health which is broad strokes which in and of itself is a flawed idea. But particularly when I was working on setting up

those cardiovascular disease clinics in these countries, what we would do is CDC would come in with some of our other global partners like WHO and some other partners that were involved. And we would work with the ministries of health in each one of these countries and set up sets like pods of clinics that would produce the protocols that we set for them based on the research that we had done with our global partners for the last

30 years. So it's kind of old data and research that went into these protocols. And then there is some interest of private pharma that goes into it as well, as much as we want to say that that's not the case. I think people listening to this podcast know that's the case by now. I would hope so. This is their first time. I hope I'm not blowing anybody's mind with this. We're not red pill in anyone today. Okay. Okay. So, so all of that, you know, I, I had seen the research that went into it, worked briefly on kind of the ending of

these protocols and procedures. And my job was to go into the countries and actually work with the clinicians, the ministries of health to set everything up, make sure they have all the resources that they need, make sure that they have the protocols, that they're trained on the protocols and that they have the data collection system so that we can track outcomes of the patients long term. So after about a year or so of doing that really with a year, year and a half, I would say we started getting some of that outcome data and pretty much across the board,

all of the male patients in all three of the countries that I was working in were getting better. Not everyone, of course, but I'm looking at like the broad trends of populations. The male patients were progressively getting better and certainly preventing cardiovascular events at a pretty good rate. So we were happy with all of that. When we separated out the female patients, what we saw is they were either no change, not getting better, or getting worse, or even having

more cardiovascular events, which was really kind of a head scratcher because all of the research shows that the medications that we were prescribing are like frontline interventions, well known, well used, well understood to prevent cardiac events and lower blood pressure specifically. And it wasn't working well for the female patients. So I at that point took it upon myself to start

looking into it because it was just not sitting well with me especially with the experience I've had with the women in my family and the whole reason why I was here to begin with and also you, just reflecting on my own female body and understanding that a lot of what was recommended to me didn't work. And I didn't really understand why, but it was starting to like come together at this point. So I went back and I pulled out my epidemiology textbooks,

my biology textbooks, my biochemistry textbooks, anything that would give me an idea about why the disease progression in women would be different and then also why the treatment would need to be different because from the way that we were operating and the way that we still are operating pretty much is that human biology is human biology and it works the same. Um, so I went back, was looking and what I noticed, and I had never noticed this before is in all of my medical and health textbooks, every single figure and model is the male model except for one area, which is reproductive health.

except for one area, which is reproductive health. So you only see a female model in the reproductive section of these books. Everything else is the male model. Why is that the case? Well, that's because that's what we do the research on and that's where we have the knowledge and information and it just so happens that that's also the figures and models that we default to

As a society and this goes beyond medicine and beyond biology as well Which we can hit on that later But So looking at that I was like, okay This is weird and then that kind of triggered something within me so I started looking at the research that we had used to put in to create these protocols and going back and back and looking. A lot of it was even hard to find.

But once I was able to kind of look into a good chunk of it, I realized that there were pretty much not female subjects included in these studies. Very few. And if they were, they were usually postmenopausal. And at that point, I didn't really understand why that would be. Now I understand. So that was also a real question mark.

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It's a win-win. For an exclusive offer, go to bioptimizers.com slash KingsBoo and use promo code KingsBoo10 that's K-I-N-G-S-B-U all caps 1-0 during checkout to save 10% and if you subscribe not only will you get amazing discounts and free gifts you will make sure that your monthly supply is guaranteed. You can't believe the amount of red tape that is there when you're creating these protocols. That's why it takes 30 years to develop before you actually have it come into your clinics. And this just kind of like got past everyone.

So then I started asking some more questions and bringing this to the forefront, bringing this to the decision makers, bringing this to my team, bringing it to the researchers who were putting these things together. And it wasn't met with a lot of open-mindedness. And I totally understand why, because at this point, so many, probably billions of dollars had gone into creating these protocols, creating these systems structures, bringing in all the resources, all the teams, all the trainings, all the work that had been done. And the salute, I wasn't offering any solution, I was only raising questions. And at this point it's like what are we gonna do? Reverse 30 years of research, say that we've got it all wrong for women.

No, we have to keep operating upon the assumption that it's the same for all people. And unfortunately, you know, that is still the case, and that's still the way that we're operating. And it's not just in cardiovascular disease, it's in every single thing. And so that was kind of the beginning of the end for me at CDC. And I wanted to do something that was a little more innovative and more focused on women's actual health to actually kind of fill

some of these gaps. And then that's when I also got really interested in the research. So at that point, I started looking more broadly at health research. And what I realized is that we have such a huge gap. We're not including women in research, even to today. We haven't been since the beginning of scientific inquiry for a couple of reasons. But significantly the thing that kind of really solidified with this was

in 1977, the FDA in the United States banned women from clinical trials from studies. And that was due to ethical reasons of reproductive concern, right? So they don't want women of reproductive age to become pregnant potentially during a study. Understandable, I get that. But the real reason why we don't include women now, then, and prior to that, because we already weren't including women in studies, is because they're actually very difficult research subjects

that are very expensive to study and take way more time because we're so much more biologically complex. So this goes back to what you were saying where men are simple and they are amazing research subjects. Same day in and day out, same processes, everything's pretty much on repeat, very very small changes over long long periods of time, very manageable, easy to control for a lot of things. When we look at our female subjects we have variability, significant variability that's happening from day to day and major major significant variability that's happening within different hormonal phases across the month, but then we have significant hormonal changes across our lifespan that also cloud this whole picture. So

because of that, that's why we aren't including women in our studies. That's why we haven't been. And even to today, after that ban got overturned, it took till 1993, which is kind of shocking. But when the ban got overturned, the FDA and NIH and all of the partners were like, OK, we need to include women in studies now. And everybody agreed that that would be a good thing to do. So since then, about every five years,

there's a report that comes out through the NIH that is like progress and pitfalls in women's health, essentially, I think that's what it's been called most of the time. And every five years, they basically publish the same thing which is we really need to start including women in studies And we haven't done a good job at doing this and here's all of the issues that women face Because we don't understand them. We're not doing enough research. They're not being included. They're being over medicated They're being injured sometimes killed because of improper treatment, and we need to do better. And everybody agrees about that, but we're not actually doing it.

And so it's been a really interesting road to kind of throw myself into that piece of it and really double down and dedicate myself to women's health research, to understanding female bodies, to educating the public, educating our policymakers, educating our economic decision makers because it's so crucial and important. And it's not just for women, as you mentioned,

this is information that we all need to know. Yeah, that's huge. Thank you. That was awesome. Like, yes, yes, yes. Go, go, go. Yeah, I don't know where to... Where I want to head next is, I think if you can break down these different phases in a cycle, maybe we should go top down and just talk about the different aspects of a female's life first and then break down these core when we're talking about reproductive era, what that actually looks like.

Take it from the big to the small, please. All right, let's do it. So women's lifespan, we have these major checkpoints that are major hormonal shifts. So the first thing I'll say is the ovarian hormone cycle, so the ebb and flow of estrogen and progesterone that happens throughout the month but also an ebb and flow that happens throughout our lifetimes. This is the key driver of women's global physiology. So this is kind of the pacemaker of our bodies. So when we look at,

for instance, the male biology, it's set to the pace of the circadian rhythm or the adrenals. And so it's a 24-hour repeating system where all of the global physiological processes, so we're talking the brain, the metabolism, the immune system, the nervous system, the cardiovascular system, the respiratory system, musculoskeletal, all of it is set to this 24 hour pace. And if you look at what happens in the male body, all of those chemical cascades and processes, it repeats on a daily basis and it's pretty consistent.

The same thing's pretty consistent. The same thing's pretty much happening every day. And so that's also why when you look at the way that a male operates or the way that we've kind of set up society to be this 24-hour system, it works really well with the male body and typically unless there's issues going on, there's a pretty's issues going on there's a pretty consistent energy level there's a pretty consistent effort there's a pretty consistent focus and things are again pretty simple and then when we look at our females it's a totally different system it might as well be a different

category of human but we don't really see it that way, but that is what it actually is because it's a totally different operating system. Because yes, we have the sleep-wake cycle, we have the adrenals and the circadian rhythm and all of that, but that's not the key pacemaker, the key driver of our global physiological processes. What it actually is, is the ovarian hormone cycle. And so the ovarian hormone cycle of the ebb and flow of estrogen and progesterone, of course we have some others,

follicle stimulating hormone, luteinizing hormone, all of that, right? But that ebb and flow of estrogen and progesterone has been found only in the last about 10 years to be the key driver of women's total health, well-being and all the processes that are involved. So all the things that I mentioned before. So what happens is as estrogen ebb and flow throughout the lifetime, but also throughout

the month, they significantly modulate all of these processes. And so that's why I say that women who are actively cycling are actually four different women over the course of a month because that's how significantly these hormones shift and create changes within all the global physiological processes that make them so different in each one of these phases. It's also a reason why they make horrible research subjects because now you have actually like four research subjects but really a new research subject every day if you're being honest. And it also creates a lot of a lot of

issues around how we operate in terms of especially like global health. When you want to make broad strokes but you have so much variability within half of your population you're gonna fail that half of the population and that's pretty much what we see is happening. So going back to your question the life phases there's many major hormonal checkpoints that women go through where they are significantly a different being in each part of these things. And any woman listening is gonna be like,

oh yeah, that's totally true. I was a totally different person when I was in that phase versus when I was in that phase. So we have the actively cycling reproductive years. And this also has a lot of variability just within this one population because we have different things at play. We have women who have normal, I put normal in air quotes,

normal cycles and regular cycles. Then we have women with hormonal dysregulation. And they may not, for instance, have a period for whatever reason, maybe they're underweight, maybe they have metabolic issues, maybe they have some autoimmune stuff going on, depends what's going on there. And then we have women who are on hormonal birth control.

And so that causes a lot of variability there as well. And then we have pregnant women who are a totally different category of women, a totally different being, yeah. Where those ovarian hormones, the levels are extremely high during that time. So it creates a totally different organism, like a totally different operating system.

And then we have breastfeeding women, which is a little bit different than that, but similar, but a little bit different. And then we have our perimenopausal women. And that's when things are, the cycle is being stretched and condensed and things are up and down and changing and ebbing and flowing in a different way than it was during the regularly cycling time. And then we have our postmenopausal women where the ebb and flow is subdued. Now we're getting to more of a steady state and at that point what happens when women make the transition from pre-menopausal to post-menopausal, the biggest change that happens, the most

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Here's the problem. We aren't taught as women how to take care of our bodies. So during the time period when we are actively cycling and we have this ebb and flow and we have these different needs every month and we have these different processes going on, which we have zero idea how to navigate even personally, but forget about it. Societally, we put a lot of tax and load on our adrenals during that time period. That's why women experience burnout 200% more often than our male counterparts.

And that's only in reported. It's probably closer to 200% more often than our male counterparts. And that's only in reported. It's probably closer to 300% more often. So when we're ringing out our adrenals during our our actively cycling years, we're ruining our reserves, our backup reserves plan that we need for the last part of our life. So this is reserves, our backup reserves plan that we need for the last part of our life. So this is what I say and believe is responsible for 99.9% of menopausal symptoms. If women were taught to take care of their bodies, take care of their adrenals for that first big chunk of their lives,

then we wouldn't have all of these issues with menopause because when we have that shift where the ovarian hormones are saying, okay, I'm gonna take a back seat, I'm gonna pass it to the adrenals, the adrenals are there, ready to pick up the load and carry forward. If the adrenals are already tired and worn out,

and that's our system that we're trying to switch over to, of course we're going to have huge, huge, huge issues. And that's what we see happening across the board. Yeah, that's, I mean, it's the one point in time where the female becomes male-like. And kind of, yeah. Just from like the, which operating system you're going to, and maybe a little bit more studyable in terms

of the ease of study. Sure. Nathan Riley brought that up to us a long time ago, how blood work is absolutely meaningless for females that are in their prime, in their cycling time, because of the fact that you'd need at least 28 days of blood work to even see what's going on. And then you'd want months of data

to actually look at that and have something to compare to, right? 100%. So this is the issue. And this is actually one of the things that I'm working with policymakers to change the standards for women's health research. Everybody wants fast, cheap data.

And pretty much all research, when it boils down to, is all privately funded. Even the stuff that runs through government is mostly coming from private sector. And so everybody wants their fast, cheap data. The only way to get fast, cheap data is to study male subjects. Even when we're looking at animal studies,

we mostly use male subjects, because that's the only way to do it. And I'll just give an example. If you want to do like a point in time data collection study. So you want, you have one day and you want to just collect blood work from everyone in that one day. And you're going to do a one day data collection study with a hundred people. And let's say 50% are female. Well, for the male subjects, you can absolutely do that.

No problem. You can do your one day collection, go on to your methodology and move forward, publish your study. You can probably get your study done in a couple of months. And if you're really good, you can probably get published within six months. If you're using female subjects,

you absolutely cannot do a point in time data collection unless you are tracking the cycles and exactly where every woman is or at least testing the hormones alongside whatever else you're testing at the point of data collection so that you know what phase of the cycle and what her hormones are like at that point of collection. So let's say that you did want to do a point in time and you were able to track all of the cycles. There's another problem and you alluded to it already, which is you have to study at

least three cycles to account for the variability that happens even within subject. So you could do a point-in-time data collection but then here's the real conundrum. Every woman that you figured out, okay this is where she is in her cycle on the day that we collected the data on the first time. Next month when we want to do it again, we've got to hit that same spot. Good luck. Good luck. So we got to hit that same spot again

and collect the data again. And then we have to do it a third month. And so all of these people, we have to track all their cycles, all the variability. They're going to be coming in and chaotic timing because all the cycles are going to be all over the place at different timing because women have different lengths, the women have different lengths even between cycles. And so that makes a whole chaotic mess.

But really what the gold standard would be for this is you would want to collect the data not only knowing what phase the woman's in, but you would want to collect the data in all the phases. So technically you'd want to do all four phases, but if you could at least do three phases you would be way ahead of the curve. So the menstrual phase would be the first phase and that's marked by the lowest amount of estrogen and progesterone. Then the late follicular phase would be marked by high estrogen, low progesterone. And then the mid luteal phase would be marked by high progesterone, low estrogen. In each one of these hormonal states that are starkly different from the others, the woman's physiology is significantly changed and different.

And again, it's kind of like a different research subject. So now you think about it from a researcher's perspective, you have a complete chaos and nightmare on your hands because you wanna get this checkpoint for every single woman three times during the month, over three months. So now you're a nice little point in time study that was gonna take you six months to publish

and it was gonna cost you maybe 100 grand, right? Now you're looking at millions of dollars, you're looking at at least a three month data collection, probably more because you're not gonna be able to keep everybody on track and get all the data points that you need. So you probably need an extra month at least to get everything. Um, and then to process and analyze all of that data, it takes an incredible

higher amount of expertise, time, knowledge, resources. Um, and there's also the issue of powering because if you're going to collect all the data correctly, you also need to report the findings by those delineations. So now you have these little populations, right? That you're reporting the findings by. So then you have a kind of a powering issue in the end. So now you have to have way more women included

in the study to get the accurate results that would be applicable to the populations that you're trying to apply it to. Yeah, that's loaded. It's a lot. And I mean, from what I gather, it doesn't look like that's going to, like it reminds me of the CDC or FDA or whoever saying,

every five years, hey, we really ought to be doing this. And no one ever does it. It doesn't look like that's going to change when you actually understand what is necessary to be able to apply the broad strokes. The more that you've uncovered for yourself, the more you come to understand. And then there are applications once you understand these things.

Break down for us these weeks what they actually look like how it changes the physiology The cognitive function all the things yeah, yeah Yeah, and I want to just kind of go back to something you were just saying now, which is It is complex and it kind of makes it feel like we just need to throw up our hands and just go Keep moving forward with the way that we're doing it because we don't know what the solutions are. But there are solutions and one of the things that I'm actually working on with several of my colleagues who are women's health experts from across the country

is we've created this women's health research scale, which is to improve the quality and applicability of research for women and specific populations of women. So when you put it all into kind of a methodology, which is what we've done, we've created this framework of how to study women and what things to keep track of and standardizing some of the definitions that we don't yet have standardized within the field of medicine when it comes to women's health. So there is a way to do it. And the thing that I'm really excited about is integrating this framework and these systems in with AI,

which is going to be, I believe, the solution that we have needed. Because, yes, women's biology is super intricate and complex. So many moving parts that it's really hard for a human brain to keep track of all of it, but AI could, and could make these processes easier and also help us to better estimate, um, the cycles and the rhythms that are going on within the female body as we collect more and more data, we could start to feed that in and get an easier model to work with. So I am excited about that. I was going to say, just on the testing piece,

that are you a fan of the Dutch test? Oh, yeah. Yeah. So like, Dutch tests, you can explain what that is for people that maybe haven't heard of it. And then just thinking about the AI and machine learning, being able to take all of them, because it's gaining more popularity among holistic doctors and functional medicine And then just thinking about the AI and machine learning, being able to take all of them, because it's gaining more

popularity among holistic doctors and functional medicine doctors, that there probably is a lot of data points there when you run that through something like that. 100%. So the Dutch test is amazing because it's testing the ovarian hormones, but it's also testing the adrenals. And it's not giving you just your like blood levels like if you

go to the doctor and you ask for a panel you want to test your estrogen progesterone testosterone whatever they'll do a blood sample and again here's one of the crazy things if you go into the doctor like I want to test my hormones they go sure and they go ahead and test your blood levels. But they are not keeping in account where you are in your cycle. Even if they ask you when was your last period, they really don't know. They just give you a range. Okay, if you were in this phase, this is what the range is. If you were in this phase, this is what the range is.

But it's not telling you in the phase that you were in, were you optimal? And it also doesn't give you the information of if you were in the next phase, how would those hormones look differently? And is that functioning properly? It's again, that point in time measurement doesn't work when we come to women. So with the Dutch, it's amazing because it's not only testing your it's a dry urine test, so it's testing the hormones in your urine but the benefit of doing that is you're getting the metabolism of your hormones you're getting the metabolites and so you're getting the

levels of your hormones accurately but you're also getting the downstream metabolites which is telling you how is your body processing and utilizing your hormones and so that's the real key and game changer. I always recommend that women get both, get the blood and do the Dutch at the same time. That would give you your best overview. But if you had to choose one Dutch, 100 percent, it's going to give you way more information. And then it also tests the adrenal. So it's going to give you your cortisol curve, which is huge to understand where you are on that burnout cycle. Yeah. How

far along are you? Exactly. And I have yet to come across a Dutch test of any woman that is not somewhere in the burnout cycle somewhere, right? And that's because the sex hormones and the adrenals are so intricately connected. And so for women, if you're ringing out your hormones, your sex hormones, you're also ringing out your adrenals. If you're ringing out your adrenals, you're also burning out your sex hormones.

They're interconnected and related. So it is really important to get both at the same time so you can understand where you might be in that scope. And then also understand how well your body is metabolizing and creating the hormones that you need and where some of those blockages might be happening as well. Big time. Yeah.

And have you tried? Have you gotten into the month-long test that they do as well? Yeah. Because the original Dutch is, I think, six different measurements throughout the day at specific times via urine. And then I think Dr. Riley did one for Tosh

where it was a month long. And I was like, Dave, you got to pee on that every day. And she was like, well, we're going to get the most data. I was like, all right, cool. Yeah, yeah. That's kind of a game changer. It is more expensive. And obviously, it's hard for us ladies

to remember to do that every single day. But it is worthwhile because it's called, I think they call it cycle mapping. But you're, again, going to see how much variability you have from day to day and how you're shifting throughout the whole month. So you can see the whole progression of your hormones in relation to your adrenals as well, which is such a massive piece of information to have. Cool.

Yeah. Cool. Can we break down the weeks now? I'd love this. Okay. I love this. So the female, I call it the female bio rhythm. Whereas we talked about the male bio rhythm is that 24 hour cycle. Your plug, plug, plug, herbiorhythm.com

is your website. Yes, herbiorhythm.com and you can get a lot more information about all of this stuff. And I also share a lot on social media too, that's free. And so feel free to check any of that out. But so starting with phase one of the female biological rhythm, which is a month long rhythm versus again, that 24 hour rhythm that is in the male biology. In phase one, what happens hormonally is again, this is when estrogen and progesterone are at their lowest level so this is the period this is the shed phase is what I call it for women this is when women have our lowest hormonal in terms of estrogen and

progesterone status but it's also when we have this global physiological downshift in our whole body so all all those systems that I mentioned before, the brain, the metabolism, nervous system, cardiovascular, all that stuff, takes the downshift when we're in this low hormonal state. So it's kind of like this hibernation mode that our body goes into. And so this is when the metabolism slows down. So the conversion of fats, carbs, and proteins that go through the citric acid cycle to generate ATP, which is fuel for the cell, that whole thing slows down during this time. Also the the glucogen production and that whole process of metabolism slows down a little bit during this time as well. Um, and what we find is that, um, there is also a big downshift of the neurochemistry and the brain function as well in terms of the excitatory and mood regulating neurotransmitters. So, um, and this is in relation specifically to estrogen is what we understand. So estrogen is correlated with the function and activity of again, our mood boosting and our excitatory neurotransmitters.

So everything from glutamate to epinephrine to norepinephrine, to serotonin, to dopamine, and even oxytocin to some extent, is all related to estrogen level specifically. So in this low state, again, women's metabolism is slowing. There's this low hormonal state, and there's this downshift of our mental functioning as well. It's kind of more like our mental energy is lower during that time. A lot of women will report that they feel brain foggy during this time. And also a lot of women will report that they feel like they have less

energy during this time. Tired. Yeah and that's absolutely true and it's totally perfectly normal and that is what's supposed to happen during this time. But that all kind of sounds like a bummer and it's like, man, we have to have that every single month. But there's a benefit and what you'll find and I hope what people will understand from listening to this entire progression is that the female body is so beautifully designed, so intricate, so amazing. And there's so many benefits and gifts that happen

in each one of these phases. If we understand it, it's like the greatest biohack that ever existed that only us half of the population have access to. So it's pretty cool. All right guys, quick break to tell you about Organifi.com slash KKP. Grab the Sunset Kit to be covered with red, green,

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during that low hormonal downshifted state. You were just posting on this. I was just looking at it today. Yeah, that's an incredible post. Yeah. So it's really interesting that it correlates with this higher level of discernment, decision-making, intuition, which is really interesting if you think about it, because the body is downshifting us. It's saying, okay, you can't operate at your normal level. You can't have all the energy to have all the outward focus and be distracted or focused on everything else, you're gonna have to take your energy if you're doing it right and focus it inward. And so we have more of an introspective state during this time as well. So it's a great time for self-reflection, for planning, and this is when I do all of my decision-making. Because again, I have this higher level of discernment during this time period. But it requires me to allow myself to

have the downtime, take all the meetings off of my schedule, to have alone time with me have enough rest so that I can operate at my highest level with my highest skill set at that time. Yeah, I love this is making me think of a hermit archetype, you know, going to the cave, get your time to yourself. One thing that you're pointing to, which I think is brilliant,

is that you lean into each of these phases fully. Yeah. Right, and because you're not trying to work the same way a man would be expected to, you don't have to hit the gas pedal, right? Like most women, if they're required to work through this part, on anything, you know, my wife, her job is to teach our kids,

we homeschool and to run this house and to do all the many things that go into that. And we participate in a homeschool co-op and other things. And there's a lot of moving gears there. I see so many people burn out because they're like, all right, let's caffeinate through this. Let's jump on whatever new tropics I can to make sure my brain's firing on all eight cylinders

instead of actually just saying, all right, this is the time to rest. This is winter time for me. Let me lean into that. Yes, so the biggest mistake that women make, but the biggest mistake that we're making as a society is that we are holding ourselves to the bar of such a tiny

little point out of our bio rhythm so We'll get to it but in phase three when we typically feel our best and we have all the energy and focus and power strength endurance ability to basically do all the things that we and power, strength, endurance, ability to basically do all the things that we want to do all of the time. And it's kind of like the superwoman mode. What women do is they actually get to that point and they feel so great and they're like, this is my bar, this or better.

And it's absolutely not possible to maintain that. But once we understand all of the intricacies and we allow our bodies to get the nourishment and the needs met in each one of the phases, there's actually so many beautiful gifts that are available to women in each one of the phases. And it, again, it's this amazing progression that really reinforces my belief in something amazing progression that really reinforces my belief in something greater because it is just perfect the way that it's set up. So going from phase one we go into phase two which is the increase in estrogen. So it's called the

follicular phase. The follicular phase also includes the menstrual phase, but for the purposes of this conversation, we'll separate it as its own thing, as phase two. So the key point in hormonally is that estrogen is rising to a peak. So as we talked about before, estrogen is related to all those neurochemicals. So now we start to increase our excitatory and mood those neurochemicals. So now we start to increase our excitatory

and mood boosting neurochemicals. We see a shift in how our brain functions generally at that time. We also see that the metabolism starts to speed up and we have more fuel for the body. We have more access to fuel for the body. We also have a higher caloric need that starts to happen during this time. So when we're in the kind of that winter mode and the metabolism is

slower, we actually have a lower requirement for fuel because the body's not converting everything like it would be during that time period. But that's also another kind of misnomer because women oftentimes will have like cravings for sugar or whatever. And so they're actually eating more at a time period where their metabolism is slower and the requirement is less. And again, this has to do with hormonal dysregulation and it has to do with just a lack of understanding

what the body actually needs and then giving it what it needs. But there's so many things that we're doing completely backwards and wrong when it comes to our bodies. So in this second phase, as we start to increase our energy, we start to have more and more resources. Again, we start to feel like we can do more and more. Our power, strength, endurance

starts to increase and increase. Our mood increases, our mental energy and focus increases, and we start to feel pretty darn good until we culminate at the next phase which is phase three which I call the bloom phase because this is when women typically feel their very best. That is the peak of estrogen, but we also have some other amazing hormones rolling around at the same time, follicle stimulating hormone, luteinizing hormone, some others.

So it's like this high hormonal phase, and we have all these resources available to us. And what we see cognitively is our ability to strategically think and act and respond increases during this time, but also our emotional intelligence increases as estrogen rises to a peak, which is really interesting if you think about it. So when we hit that, again, that phase three where we have that peak and we can actually work longer days, we can do more, we have more strength, we have that peak and we can actually work

longer days we can do more we have more strength we have more endurance we can hit our PRs we can do all that stuff this again is the bar that we're setting for ourselves and we're like I'm superwoman and this is who I am and I'm gonna be this woman for the rest of my life but then the next week comes along and we're unable to, and then here comes the negative self-talk that comes in, here comes the disappointment in ourselves, here comes the societal pressures to always be on

and go, go, go and grind and just push through. I don't know how many women I've heard, probably all of them, say at times like, yeah, I felt this way or I knew this or I knew my body needed something different But I just had to push through because that's what we're taught. We're taught from such a young age Don't listen to your body. Your body is wrong Disconnect you need to operate in this consistent way How many times were we told as kids consistency is the key to success, right?

That's not true for females. It might be true for males, maybe not fully even true for males, but it's more true than it is for females. So we really shoot ourselves in the foot and then we get to this point where like, yeah, I can do it all. I can handle everything.

And we really do have such a high capacity that we can do so much during that time. So it is important to earmark that point of the month. This is actually when I will, if I can manage it, I try to do my pitches during this time, any major presentations, different talks that I might get because women are actually more influential at this time. We have that higher emotional intelligence. Got the intelligence. We've got the glow. We can

communicate better. We are also processing information in our brain in a more proficient way because we have all of this neurochemistry working in our favor at that time. So it is a great time and it is important to track and understand when that is because you do want to leverage it Then we go into the next phase which is the whole back half of the ovarian hormone cycle Which is the luteal phase and this is about two weeks Honestly, it should be split into two phases because it's so long and there's kind of a stark difference between week one and week two because it's so long and there's kind of a stark difference between week one and week two. But the big key thing that happens here is estrogen plummets back down, back down to low,

progesterone rises to a peak. So now we have our second most important chemical in the female body, biochemical in the female body, which is progesterone. So as progesterone rises to a peak, it does some really interesting things, particularly to the brain. So yes, we're back in the low estrogen state. Yes, the metabolism has slowed down again. Yes, we're not getting all of those neurochemical benefits, but there's something else that's shifting and happening that is a major benefit if we can harness it and in the right way. So as progesterone rises to a peak,

so does our GABA hormone. So our GABA is the neurotransmitter that's in relation to our down regulatory system. So this is why progesterone is sometimes called the like natural anxiolytic. It's like this anti-anxiety. It's the, it helps us to regulate our nervous system. It's got this calming effect on the body, which is really, again, so beautiful and interesting that it comes online at the same time when the female nervous system or the female stress capacity is shrinking. So our body is more sensitive to stress more and more as progesterone is rising

and giving us a little boost of regulation, giving us a little relief from all of that. Kind of at the same time as it's as the stress bucket is shrinking it's also getting a little bigger with progesterone. So it's trying to kind of balance that out. What's also interesting about that is GABA is related to getting more restful sleep. And so we find that women actually have a higher sleep requirement during this time. We should actually be sleeping a little bit more during our luteal phase, but then we're getting that boost of GABA, which is also helping us to with memory consolidation. And it's also

helping us to clean up our brain while we're sleeping through the microglial activation that happens, which is more streamlined during this time because of the progesterone. So the other interesting thing that happens with progesterone is that it increases brain-derived neurotrophic factor, BDNF, which increases both neuroplasticity and neurogenesis. So what's really cool about that and I think it's really cool because I'm a neuroscientist but I think a lot of people find really interesting is that you know back even about 10-15 years ago we always thought that whatever brain cells you have or whatever tissue you have in the brain that's it once you kill those

you know that's all you get you're not gonna you're not gonna regenerate those that's where if you remember the commercials, the dare commercials, where it's like, this is your brain on drugs. And any questions? Yeah, if you do this, you're never gonna, you're never gonna recover. Thank God that was incorrect. Because between Arizona State being the number one party school in the nation, and then electing to play football and fight for so long, I would be

hurting right now. Yeah, thank God for neurogenesis, right? So, um, what's really cool is that women get this boost in neurogenesis every single month and we get neuroplastic, an extra boost in neuroplasticity. So what does that mean? Our ability to learn and adapt and grow while we're getting this kind of natural anxiolytic thing that's happening with progesterone at the same time when we're being a little bit squeezed by the pressure of stress is creating this

really unique time period where we have this greater capacity for learning. What we also see is our verbal acuity during the middle of this phase increases and our ability to kind of learn and grow and adapt is higher. So for women who are trying to like adopt new habits or make changes within their lifestyle, I always recommend that they do it, initiate it during this time period when they get that little extra boost because it will be a little easier and more helpful. So I kind of call this phase the brainy phase, but as you can see like if you look at the progression of everything it's it's quite beautiful and perfect if we can leverage it and live our lives that way because we have that hermit phase where we're going to go ahead and do our planning

during this time. We're going to make our decisions decisions. We're gonna allocate our resources for the rest of the month. We're gonna decide what's gonna go on in our family, in our communities. And what's really interesting is that this is actually the way that ancient societies used to work is, um, have you ever heard the story of the red tent? Yes. Okay. So please, please explain this because I think I think it's critical for I've had a lot of conversations on this podcast about rites of passage for men because they've been extricated

in our society. But they also even though you guys have timestamps, unless we honor those moments as a rite of passage and as a clear delineation and mark in change in the female progression, then that gets lost as well. So I'd love for you to talk about that. Yeah. It's like this technology that we've lost that would really be so beneficial for society. If we could come back into alignment with it, honor it, and then leverage it for our benefit, it would really work well.

And it's also why I believe that feminine leadership, like women leading in an actual feminine way that honors their capabilities, honors their cognitive function, honors these ebbs and flows and honors the gifts that the female brain brings, which is a totally different organism. If we could do that, it really would change the world and that's why we require, it's like an absolute requirement that we start to get women into leadership positions to work alongside their male counterparts and

bring that different perspective, bring those different gifts in. So the story of the red tent, essentially what it is is that ancient cultures understood that this phase one time period that's more introspective, that has that higher intuition, higher decision making ability, again, ability to allocate resources, make decisions, look kind of bigger picture, but in a more internal process, happens during this time. And so they used to leverage that by sending women to the red tent. I don't know if they actually went to a red tent, but they would gather because also at that time there wasn't all of these endocrine

disruptors that are making cycles all erratic and crazy and all over the place. Most of the cycles would sync up with the moon, which is also a really interesting thing that happens. That still does happen, but not as much with all all of our modern toxins and everything that messes up the cycle. So when that would happen, it would kind of align with the moon phases. All the women would pretty much cycle together in the tribes or communities or whatever they were living in. And so during that phase one time, they would all get together and utilize that higher intuition, higher ability

for decision making and discernment. And they would actually do the planning for the entire community for the rest of the month. And so it, it is something that obviously we have completely lost touch with, as individual women, but also societally, I have hopes that we could get to a individual women, but also societally. I have hopes that we could get to a place there, but it's gonna start with individual women understanding that this is something

that they need to honor and they need to leverage for their own wellbeing, but also for their communities, for their family. All in all, women are still the centerpieces of communities. That's the truth. And the way that our brains function and the things that we are focused on, it actually creates this focus on connection and on relationships and on kind of the emotional undercurrents of society.

And so it is a gift and a benefit that we bring. However, we're not utilizing the full potential of what we could offer. And that's also why I say women are like the greatest untapped potential within society that we are just like wasting at this point, because we don't understand that technology like at all. It's crazy. So in that beautiful progression, right, we have that hermit wise woman phase, you could say. And then we go into that more strategic thinking, we have more energy, more ability,

we start to kind of go closer into that leadership phase where we are having higher communication skills, higher emotional intelligence, more energy, more power, more strength, more endurance, working longer days, we have more focus, so we can get a lot of things done. And then we come to that peak where we're gonna leverage that and we're gonna do the things that we need to be influential during. It's also a great time for us to do our social things like our social networking, creating deeper connections within the community or creating partnerships. Things like that are so great to leverage during that time period. And then we go into the back half where we go into that bra phase, where we can start to do more of our learning activities,

our educational activities, speaking, writing, things like that. And so if you kind of look at that and you map out your life in that way, you have a perfect time period for all the different aspects of your work in your life, no matter if you're working in the home space, in the family setting, or if you're working out in the corporate space, or whatever it is that you may be doing.

There's a perfect time period to do all the different aspects of your work that you have to do where you will be working optimally and you'll get so much more done than if you try to be consistent and do the same thing every day Which is what society tells us that we have to do Beautifully beautifully stated. Yeah, and you're not fighting uphill battles, you know because the the Everyone that you've looked at that has adrenal fatigue and and all these issues, you know, obviously long term That's what's getting us into so many issues in the menopausal phase. But even just prior to that, it's not a good time. It's not a good look. It's not a good feel for the body.

It's not optimal. Because of the fact that they're not leading into these things. They're trying to power through it. Yes. Right. And remain at that peak constant of of ovulation. I'm the best. I'm going to be my best at all times. Yeah. Yeah, it's just it's a it's a pressure that is crushing us as women. And it's a pressure that is crushing us as women. And it's a pressure that we're putting on ourselves. It's a pressure that society is putting on us.

And it's really also important to zoom out from this. And let's just take a bigger look at the way society is set up and how women are operating within society that is not functional for us, but it's also not functional for society. And so if we can all kind of get on board and understand these broader strokes, we will start to be able to support women and we'll start to be able to tap into this technology of the other half of the population that we haven't been able to really leverage yet.

We've kind of tapped in pretty well to the technology of the male biology and what that can offer in terms of productivity, in terms of consistency, in terms of creating all these structures and systems and all of this right industry really comes out of the gifts of the male biology and it's so beautiful. And we also have different ones that come out of female biology and female cognitive function and what we're capable of. But we haven't tapped into that, at least in our modern society. So if you go back to the beginning of industry, which would be the agricultural movement, right? So when people started to settle and it was all about property rights, naming rights, and who was actually working the land. So because the men were the ones that were working the land, they were the ones that became the landowners and they were the ones who

were involved in creating all of the systems and structures that went along with the age of agriculture, right? And it's kind of a fun thing to think about. If women were the ones who were tilling the land and working the land and they became the property owners and they were the ones who created all the systems and structures because they were the ones operating within it, then if you fast forward to our society today,

it would look completely different. It would probably be just as dysfunctional and one-sided as it is now, but it would be a totally different thing. So from the age of agriculture, we went into the age of enlightenment, right? In the age of enlightenment, this was all about science, education, learning, research, and scientific inquiry. That's when scientific inquiry came onto the scene.

So within those structures, it was primarily men operating within those structures as well. So because men were mostly the ones who were involved in all of that, There were very few women involved. Of course, they were making all the systems and structures related to it. Makes total sense. They are the ones there. They're the ones that need to be catered to. They are the ones that are designing it.

They're the ones that need to be supported by these systems. Totally makes sense. So then we get to the Industrial Revolution, which is kind of the beginning of our economy as we know it. And all of the structures that go along with our economy that still exist today were created at that time. And again, the players in that industry were men. And that didn't change until we get into the World War era, where because a lot of men had gone off to war,

it created this need for women to enter into the workforce. So that was the first time that women entered into any of these arenas in any significant way. And so when women entered in, that was only about a hundred years ago. So in this whole progression, we're looking at thousands of years and only 100 of those years have women been on the scene.

But everything was created throughout those thousands of years for the players that were in those areas, which were men. So when women came in, of course things weren't really set up and optimized for us. And it's an unconscious thing. So when women came in, of course things weren't really set up and optimized for us. And it was, it's an unconscious thing. It wasn't a conscious decision to make. But now here's the problem.

We're in the age of information. We're in the age of data. How do we build our new structures and societies, policies, everything? It all comes from data. This goes back to our gender gap in health science research and data, policies, everything. It all comes from data. This goes back to our gender gap in health science research and data, right? Because we haven't been studying women very much and because we have so much data and information

on the male body, the male biology, how things work for men, we have unknowingly, maybe knowingly, some created a very male biased system because that's the information that we have. That's the data that we have. You can only do as good as your data is really in the way that we're operating today. And so that's kind of what we're dealing with. So it makes a lot of sense that the patriarchal structures, if you wanna call it that, are created to cater

to the male centeredness, the male bias, and that women are struggling in a lot of ways to operate within these systems and to keep up. And it's also why women are struggling in a lot of ways to operate within these systems and to keep up. And it's also why women are experiencing all these different health and well-being related issues, with burnout being significantly more for women, with adrenal issues generally, with autoimmune issues, with depression, anxiety, all of these things because one, we don't understand our bodies and how to really care for them properly, but also two, our structures

are not set up to support us and the way that they're set up, they're just ringing us out. Yeah, I think about when we had Dr. Kelly Brogan here and she had so many data points on just the numbers. How many people out of all the math, how many hundreds of millions of people in just America are on SSRIs and antidepressants, and what percentage is largely female?

I can't remember if it was well over half. I can't remember exactly, so I don't want to butcher it. But it was way over half. It wasn't even close. Same thing with antidepressants. When I was in college, I had a doctor prescribe me anything I wanted. So I had Vicodin, Xanax, Valium, all this shit.

Oh, fun. No, it was. It was until it wasn't. Yeah, exactly. It did such a good job at keeping the skeletons in the closet and never really addressing it. That's a whole conversation in and of itself. But when we don't have the correct tools,

and then this is your best option, you're like, oh, man, that volume feels fucking great. Wow, I don't have a care in the world. I feel awesome right now. Look at that fixed. And so to see that those numbers are skewed in the direction of female as well is also horrifying. It's not a, that's something that really lands home for me

because of I saw what the end of that road looked like and it was dark, you know? I did as well, you know, with my mom and my grandmother and my great grandmother, they all fell victim to that whole negative cycle. And once you're in it, it's really hard to get out, especially for women, because there's not good solutions and answers. What's most scary about what you just said with the SSRI and the antidepressants and

anti-anxieties and whatever, most of that research like more than 90% of that research that came into developing those drugs and developing the therapies and the protocols in prescribing them was done on male subjects only. But then we're prescribing them to female subjects. This is a huge issue and something that has started to come to the forefront and be acknowledged as a big issue that we've really got things wrong when it comes to women, especially women's mental health and the way that we're treating mental health for women, because it's a totally different system.

But we don't have the research and data understand it. And we haven't developed the right kinds of therapies because we haven't done the right research. That makes sense. So much in a, yeah, in a, not a, not a, I mean, I see light at the end of the tunnel because of people like you and Dr. Nathan Riley. Yeah. But in large part, it's not a, I mean, I see light at the end of the tunnel because of people like you and Dr. Nathan Riley. Yeah, um, but in in large part it it's not a it's a hard pill to swallow and thinking about where we're at right now

For sure It is the tides are changing though. Um, so for instance, um, there is a major Acknowledgement across the globe of these gender gaps in our health science research, in the data, in our education, we're acknowledging that we've done a bad job and that we need to make some changes. And at the very least, we need to start including women in research so we can understand them better

and develop better therapies that are more effective for them. And actually, interestingly, back last year in November or December, the White House announced an initiative. Actually, I think it was sometime last year. I can't remember when, but the White House announced an initiative where they're going to infuse the field of health science research with $13 billion to try to close some of these gender gaps and get women included more.

But there's a big flaw in that. And essentially we're going to waste $13 billion if we do the same mistake that we're already making, which is doing the research by just including more women, but we don't do the research properly for those women. So again, that's why me and some of our other colleagues, including Dr. Nathan Riley, who have developed this scale to measure the quality and the applicability of research for women, but also for prospective studies, it operates as a checklist so that studies are actually using the right methodology, using the

right data collection methods, using the right reporting methodology when it comes to studying women because it's a totally different system that you have to account for. You can't study female subjects the same way that you study male subjects. You just cannot do it, but that's what we're doing. And it's absolutely crazy. And the most crazy thing is even in studies that do include females, let's say they include 50% females, 50% males,

which we're starting to see a lot more studies like that. One, they're not doing the right methodology like barely any of them are. But what's even most concerning is they're not even reporting the findings by sex, which is a requirement. So it's like you might as well throw the whole thing out. Yeah. Right. But that actually is a requirement of the NIH, but they're not upholding that policy. They have a policy that states that sex is a significant biological factor that has that reporting and findings needs to be delineated by sex at least, but they're not they're not upholding

the policy. So this is kind of a backbone of that to allow them to uphold it. So we'll be working with, you know, global partners to help them to implement the policies that they already have in place, but actually provide a functional framework that researchers can use, that policymakers can use, that funding mechanisms can use as an incentive to fund proper research so that we don't waste billions of dollars creating the same problem that we already have. Let's level up your nicotine routine with Lucy. Go to lucy.co slash KKP and use promo code KKP to get 20% off your first order. Lucy offers free shipping and has a 30 day refund policy. If you change your mind,

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first order. That's very uplifting considering everything. Fix what Einstein say you can't fix. Insanity is thinking you're going to fix the problem on the same thinking something along those lines. Yeah, I just butchered that. I get a lot of questions around perimenopause and postmenopause and a lot of talks around hormone replacement therapy.

And, you know, I know this stuff inside and out for men through performance enhancing drugs and all the way into, you know, what does that look like, you know, as a post, you know, expert professional fighter and those kinds of things, like just maintenance of those things and where I'm optimized at my best. And it is really simple for men, even though there is a bigger playing field than what they would say according to like, this is a normal testosterone. Those numbers have tanked every 10 years. You've seen men's testosterone drop.

You've seen that average shrink, seen the average in men's sperm count shrink. So the new normal isn't normal. But for women's concern, you know, with what you've mentioned here, a lot of people get put on something to take daily. It says daily testosterone, daily progesterone cream or pills. And that doesn't seem to be a good idea considering how these peaks and ebbs and flows throughout

these four phases work. A hundred percent. And again, had we been studying women properly and understanding more of this prior to the last 10 years when we started to acknowledge these things, we would be prescribing HRT in a completely different way than how we're currently doing it and we're starting to see some better options that will create some of that ebb and flow. Sometimes that's not necessary. It depends on where a woman is. But one of the scariest things is that we're putting our young women on HRT

starting when they first start their periods, pretty much. So when you're a young woman and maybe you have you might have some mental health things going on. You might have some anxiety. You might have some mood issues, especially as it relates to your cycle, something with PMS. And oftentimes that or acne, when you go into the doctor, they'll prescribe birth control. And or if, if a young woman just wants birth control, of course they prescribe that. And what they're not telling these young women is that is hormone replacement therapy, right?

And it is going to alter the natural progression of your body, the natural development and maintenance of these hormones and how that natural cascade happens. And so we're starting to alter that from the very beginning. And that is correlated with our reproductive issues that we see now. That is correlated with severe menopausal issues and symptoms. That is also correlated with more severe PMS issues

later down the road. And then when women want to come off of those HRTs, especially after they've been on for a long time, I was an example of that. I went on at 17 or 18, and then I was on until I was like 27. So about a 10 year time period. And then when I came off,

nobody told me that that was going to be a difficult process. They were like, yeah sure just stop taking it. My hair fell out, my face exploded like I was a teenager. It took me a good three years to come back into homeostasis and start to have a normal cycle again but nobody walked me through that process. Nobody gave me a heads up. None of my doctors could help me when I was going in and my hair is falling out in clumps. They're like, oh, we could put you back on hormone replacement. And I'm like, oh my gosh, there's nothing you there's no no help. You can't help me. Um, and this is what a lot of women are dealing with and it's really sad. Um, so if we get a better understanding of the female physiology and how it

actually works we could have better therapies, we could have better protocols. Some of the medications that we have they might be the right ones but the way that we are implementing them could be totally wrong and probably is. So just for instance something as easy as like a blood pressure medication or anything from an antidepressant to a I don't you name it whatever kind of drug therapy what we're starting to understand and find is that the dosage even of those things should be different at different hormonal times. But nobody's doing that. Nobody's saying, okay, where are you in your cycle? Okay, this week

you're going to take this milligram, this week we're going to switch you over to this milligram, right? Or even, okay, you are post-menopausal, so we're going to change the dose versus if you're actively cycling, right? None of these things are coming into consideration because that's not the information that we have. Yeah, that's, I mean, it's mind blowing to think of that just due to the fact that it's maybe is a little bit more cookie cutter post menopausal. Yeah. But prior to that, you know, and all the issues that women face, it's a big one. I was thinking too, just along the lines of, of, uh, I think Dr. Nathan Riley was, was in on a documentary on, um, uh, birth control.

I can't remember. He was telling me about it. I don't know if he was actually in the film or just promoting it with, uh, Carrie Lake, someone, somebody who was on the, on TV, one of the TV stars. Ricky Lake. Ricky Lake. Yeah, yeah. OK. Yeah, he was telling me all about that.

I didn't watch it, but my wife and I have been super fortunate that she wasn't for a long time. She didn't like the way she felt on it, so she said, no, I'm not doing it. And fairly easy for us to get pregnant back in the day. Hopefully, we continue to not get pregnant. Two is perfect, a boy and a girl. But I was even thinking about,

like I remember hearing on podcasts that when a woman comes off of birth control and they could be in a long-term committed relationship, they often will change their view with their partner. And so when you think about that, like from a man's standpoint, it's like, well, that's no good. But from a female standpoint, that's also no good because it seems like it's dampening your intuitive processes of who you want to be your mate.

Right. It's messing and altering with your mate selective process. And so when you come off it and you're like, what the hell am I doing with this guy? That's a problem for everyone. That happened to me. And it goes full circle. That's a problem for everyone. That happened to me. And it comes full circle. Let's go. Yeah. All the things that women can experience, I've had them all. So I'm the poster child. Yeah. So that absolutely happens.

And we don't understand all of the mechanisms of what's going on there. But what I can say is that when we go on hormone replacement therapy at such a young age, we're kind of shutting off our body's intuitive processes already, right? The brilliance of the female biology and how it knows how to operate is being altered. And when that happens, we're also disconnecting from our own natural cycles and rhythms that are attuned with nature. And so when we do that, we're disconnecting from our body, we're disconnecting from our rhythms, we're disconnecting from nature, we're disconnecting from ourselves, and we're

not able to tap into all of those benefits that we talked about at the same level. It still happens, there's still an ebb and a flow. And if a woman's really tuned in, it may not affect her as much. But what it kind of conditions us to do is disconnect from our bodies. It conditions us to stop believing in the capability that our own bodies have to operate. And so when we become disconnected from that, we further kind of disallow ourselves to regulate and to operate at our highest level and to have our optimal health and wellbeing. And so, yeah, we're probably gonna make not as good decisions

because we don't have all the information and we're not tuned into that. So for me, I was with my high school sweetheart for 11 plus years. And when I got off my hormonal birth control, I mean, there were other issues. There were other issues. But when that happened, it was like, I could not stand the smell of him. Like he smelled repulsive. Yeah, that hurt that as well. That the smell, like the something to do

with the pheromones. It's like night and day, like a switch goes off, right? Yeah. Yeah. And at the same time, I was going through all that crazy stuff with my own body, not really feeling good in my own body, and all these different changes happening in my body. And then I'm repulsed by my partner, and I feel bad, and I don't really know how to operate with all of that.

And again, none of this, anybody tells you, is going to happen. So it was a really hard upheaval process that so many women experience, but it's not even something that we're really talking about. I didn't tell anyone about it. I just suffered in silence. Yeah. Well, I'm sorry you had to experience it, but I think from a life trajectory standpoint, you've, you've chose your parents well. Every little piece of this has been in place to aid and assist you and create the person that you become.

And I'm, I'm grateful for that. Grateful to know you. Yeah. Thank you. Where do you see stuff going in the future? And tell us about your website and what more people can learn from you. Sure. I'm excited about the future and tell us about your website and what more people can learn from you. Sure. I'm excited about the future. I'm an eternal optimist, so I'm kind of always that way. But really there's a lot of beautiful changes that are happening societally across the globe.

I do a lot of work with governments across the world. I do a lot of work with major corporations who are really wanting to understand women more, to start to integrate this information into their policies and their systems, to reinforce our global economies by bringing women back in, back into the workforce which they left in droves during COVID and did not return. Bringing women in and their gifts and their leadership, this is something that actually really is important to our global decision makers. And it's something that they're wanting to do,

they just don't know how. So helping them to understand these things and helping them to integrate better information into their policies, into their decision making information into their policies, into their decision making, is going to ultimately provide a whole different landscape that will be more suitable for women where women can be healthier, be happier, thrive, but not only that, where they can offer their full array of gifts to our society, which is something that we desperately need now more than ever.

So I see those tides changing. I see the shifts happening. I'm lucky enough to be invited into these rooms and conversations, and I'm so grateful and happy to be doing this work. But for anybody who wants to connect more in with me and my teachings or follow along with what's going on in the world of policy, of economy, as it relates to women is you can follow me on social media Dr. Kayla Osterhoff or check out my website herbiorhythm.com I offer a lot of different things for free and then I have courses and programs. I will have my first book publishing this year, late in the year. And I have another one that will come out shortly after on female leadership and cognition

in the female brain and all of that. So those are things you can look forward to. And there's also going to be a lot more information coming out in regards to this women's health research scale and improving the quality of women's health research. So if you want to get involved in that, if you go to my website, there's a section there that is the women's health science leaders, which is my nonprofit organization that is running that whole initiative. So you can connect in there and more information will be posted there as well. So cool. Well I'm so grateful that you've come out here and we got to do

this face-to-face. Thank you so much and I'd love to have you back on after after your books have come out and we can discuss. Yeah I would love it. Thank you so much. Thank you.