LadyGang - LG Quickie: Everything You Thought You Knew About Your Cycle Is Wrong!

Episode Date: April 2, 2026

We’re kicking off our new mini-series with Natural Cycles by finally asking the question every woman has wondered at some point: Why does no one ACTUALLY teach us how our menstrual cycles work? Joined by board-certified OBGYN and reproductive endocrinologist Dr. Natalie Crawford, we break down the four phases of the menstrual cycle, what your hormones are actually doing each week, and why you feel like a boss one minute... and a feral recluse the next. Plus, Dr. Crawford shares the shocking truth about why most period-tracking apps miss ovulation, how cycle tracking can help you catch bigger hormonal issues sooner, and what every woman should know about fertility, embryo transfers, and advocating for herself at the doctor. Whether you’re trying to get pregnant, avoid pregnancy, or just want to understand your body better, this episode is the masterclass we all should have gotten years ago.LadyGang is brought to you by Natural Cycles! Take control of your cycle and fertility! Get 15% off your yearly subscription to the NC° app plus a free NC° Band at https://naturalcycles.app/LADY // Natural Cycles is for 18+ and does not protect against STIs. Always read and follow the instructions for useSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Based on Natural Resources Canada fuel consumption ratings, conditions apply. Visit HyundaiCanada.com or your local dealer for details. It's time for a quickie. Podcast One presents The Lady Gang, The Hollywood Girl Posse with Lady Gang Quickie. Here's Kelty Knight, Becca Tobin, and Jack Vanek. Let's make this quick. Today, Lady Gang, we are kicking off a little mini series with our friends at Natural Cycles

because apparently we have all had menstrual cycles for decades and we absolutely have no idea what is happening inside our bodies. Like, why do we feel unstoppable one week, then we're feral the next week? We want to break up with everyone in our lives once a month. And, you know, we are taught how do you make it through disephria in the Oregon Trail in school, but not how our hormones work. Disephria? Is that what it's called?

Dysentery? Dysentery. Whatever. It's so close. So today we're starting with the basics and we're joined by the amazing Dr. Natalie Crawford. She is a board certified OBGYN. you know when you see that word and you're like, I don't know how to say this.

Some people say OB-GYN. Reproductive endocrinologist and serves as the medical advisor for Natural Cycles. She specializes in fertility, hormonal health, and helping women better understand their cycles, whether trying to prevent pregnancy or conceive. She's also the founder of 4Fertility in Texas and is known for breaking down complex reproductive science

into clear, empowering information for women everywhere, which is why we invited her to come talk to us. um let's start here guys for having me yeah we're so excited to have you first of all let can you describe in feralness the four phases of the metro cycle because as we're putting this together i was like if i was being like held had to walk the plank and someone was like name the four phases of the menstrual cycle i would be like the luteral i don't know can you just give us like a brief refresh on things we should know. Yes, let's dive in. Because most of us grow up in the majority of our reproductive years thinking that the menstrual cycle is just about having a

period and not understanding that it's really hormones that control everything inside your body. So the way I like to think about it is the first phase is considered menses. This is when you're bleeding. This is your period that we all know about. By definition, your hormones are super low in this timeframe, and your uterine lining is shutting. What's happening in your ovaries is you have a bunch of eggs that are really super small. They then start to grow in what we call the follicular phase, and it's actually well-named because each egg grows inside a follicle. So this follicle gets stimulated to grow. This is the follicular phase. Hormone from the brain is called FSH, follicle-stimulating hormone. Egg is growing inside the follicle, making estrogen.

It's actually estrogen production that stops you from bleeding as the lining starts growing. So in the uterus, you have a new lining growing. Inside your ovaries, you have a follicle, an egg growing larger. But in your body, you're going to have more and more estrogen. So as the follicular phase goes on, you're going to start to notice some of those estrogen changes, notably feeling more like a boss bitch, having more concentration, having a higher sex drive,

just feeling like you're really peak self most of the time. That's the normal response. Estrogen only, no progesterone. We call this estrogen dominant. when estrogen is at its peak that actually tells the brain i have a mature egg and then this is going to be ovulation which is a very short-lived phase estrogen signals the brain the follicle that grew the egg actually ruptures this is a cyst that bursts and the egg is released into the abdominal cavity and then that is the ovulatory phase that egg if you're trying to get pregnant only has 24

hours to get fertilized but within that time frame that follicle is going to reform and become known is a corpus luteum, fancy word for fatty cyst. And now it makes progesterone. So now we're entering the luteal phase. So LH, luteinizing hormone coming from the brain, stimulating progesterone production from this cyst. And progesterone is the pro-gestational hormone, pro-pregnancy, totally shifts your metabolism to get ready to have a pregnancy, whether you want to be pregnant or not. Meaning you need more calories, you need more sleep, your energy goes down. You're starting to conserve resources. So it's progesterone's fault. It is all progesterone's fault. I'm an estrogen lover and I blame progesterone for everything. And then when you

don't get pregnant, that corpus luteum can only live two weeks. It'll die. You'll then get a period again because it's that progesterone drop that signals no pregnancy happened and the process starts over. So we like to just think about it in those feral terms. Your period, you're obviously bleeding, hormonally low. Most people feel not great. Headaches, cramps, really hormonally sensitive because you don't have any buffer. Follicular phase, high estrogen, sexy boss bitch in that timeframe. Ovulation is usually that peak sex drive when you really are noticing that you're wanting to get it on. And then the luteal phase, you're more of a recluse. You don't want to go out with friends. You want to eat everything, sit on the couch, and then the

process starts over again. Wow. That's the most thorough I've ever heard our cycles explained. That was honestly a masterclass and we're old ladies, so we should like, I, you know, I mean, my period's on its way out and I just learned about it. So this is crazy. But like what? Well, it brings up a good point because people don't learn until there's a problem or you're struggling in some way. Whereas this is how our bodies function. Isn't it crazy that we're not taught this at a much younger age. Shocking. What is one thing about tracking our menstrual cycles, like as women, that we would be shocked to learn and could help us if we actually understood what our bodies were doing? Apps that you track your period in. So the majority of

period tracker apps, if you are putting, here's my period, and it gives you a fertile window, it's only detecting ovulation correctly about 20% of the time, which I think is shocking. This is why apps like Natural Cycles can be so much more helpful. And I think it's important for people to understand because it's also using a sign of what we call fertility awareness. It's using your temperature. So a sign from your body. When your body makes progesterone, as we said, it's going to slow everything down. One of the ways it does that is it raises your core body temperature. And so you can see an increase in your body temperature in the luteal phase that confirms ovulation. So utilizing natural cycles, and there's so many wearables, natural cycles has

a band, there's Oura Ring, Apple Watch, so you don't even have to think about it or obsess over it, can confirm when you ovulate. And this is important because the first signs your body gives you that things are off is a switch in the different links of these phases of your cycle, meaning a short luteal phase or a long follicular phase, but you have to know when you ovulate to know the lengths of these phases. So many times women just see my period's regular, they don't know when they're ovulating, and they're missing the red flag warning signs that, oh, my luteal phase is actually short now. Maybe I have a thyroid problem, starting perimenopause, maybe something's going on. So we've not been given the agency to utilize the signs our body is giving us

that things are hormonally changing because we don't know how to track ovulation specifically. So interesting. My sister-in-law started her, she has a 22-year-old son now, but when she was trying to get pregnant with him, she was having issues. And her doctor told her to put a thermometer next to her bed. And every morning, the first thing she was supposed to do was like pop the thermometer and track on a notepad, like what her temperature was. So it's so crazy that it's taken this many years to have the technology to not have to do that. Becca, you're right on. I actually used to say, please don't check BBT because it's so frustrating. It would be this one-time thermometer measurement. You'd have specific graph paper to

like know what was happening. And even when I was trying to get pregnant, you know, 12 years ago, I was trying to track with it. It was so frustrating even as an expert. This is where truly like wearable technology, the natural cycles algorithm has changed the game because now you don't have to think about it. And so, you know, technology can be good and bad, but this is a place for women's health that it's, I think, a huge advantage to know what's happening within your body and not have to obsess over it. Could it essentially save people so much money because they're figuring things out about their bodies before they have to go see someone who's quite expensive? Absolutely. And if you are going to see somebody to piggyback off of that, you're

going to have more data to know what's going on. Because if your doctor says, are your cycles regular? And you say, yes, move on to the next question. If they say, are they regular? And you say, well, they're actually shorter and my luteal phase is now eight days and this and that. Suddenly you're leading them down a pathway to help get to an answer sooner. One thing I tell patients all the time is as a doctor, I am leveraging the information you give me to decide what tests to order. And so having better data to give your providers is step number one to working within a healthcare system that can be really frustrating. That's awesome. How do you decide like when someone comes to you and they, we, we, we were, we, we just recorded with some women that for an

episode that's going to come out and they were sharing their fertility journeys. And obviously at this point in our lives, we all have had friends that had these journeys. Like when do you decide to send someone and say, try for a year and come back to me or the like, let's dig in now? Like what are the deciding factors of if someone should just keep trying or if they should really try to find a you? Does that make sense? No, I think there's the medical answer and then there's what I actually believe is the best answer. The medical answer says that everybody should just try to get pregnant for a year and then we do testing when you have failed. If you are 35 and older, we should do that testing at six months. I push back on this because I don't think women

should have to fail before we get basic data about our bodies. That testing, they're not even recommending an egg count, a semen analysis. I've seen couples trying for a year who had no sperm, 0% chance of getting pregnant that whole time, or somebody who has a very low egg count for her age and would have definitely chosen to be more aggressive sooner, but she didn't have that knowledge. So I think if kids are on your plan, if this is something you want, getting the data first is always going to be the smartest game plan, but you're going to have to advocate for it. This is going to be an evaluation of your anatomy, how many eggs you have, and a semen analysis. in addition to tracking your cycle,

like we said, natural cycles, whatever you wanna do before you get pregnant so that you can know everything's in working order before you just start trying. It's really frustrating to me. And sometimes we do this testing and everything comes back fine. And I'll tell somebody,

hey, 70% of people will get pregnant in the first six months. We can feel confident moving into this stage that we've done all the testing and we don't have anything wrong. And we can feel so much more comfortable with the decisions we're making. What I am sick of seeing is really smart, educated women sitting across from me saying,

if I'd had this data, I would have made a different decision. That to me doesn't make sense in this era of information that we live in. It's crazy. I don't think that I would have had a successful anything. I was 33 and had a bunch of failed pregnancies. And my doctor, for some reason, she just told me like, you know, you could keep going through this. you could keep trying and keep losing and keep having all these like baby heartbreaks. She's

like, but if you want more than one kid, just go do a neck retrieval, go make some embryos. And like I went and I did that. And it turns out I was like literally at the finish line of probably being able to have done that. And it's crazy. It's heartbreaking to think so many women don't get told that from their OBGYNs and they get to a point where it's too late. I mean, just this week, I saw two patients that I should bring to light. one had been trying for four years, asked her OB for an evaluation and was told not to stress about things. Like that's crazy to me. The second one went proactively to her doctor and said, we want to get pregnant. What should we do? Should I track my cycle? What? Her doctor said,

we don't need to test anything and definitely don't track your cycle because it'll just cause you to stress out about it. We have two patients trying to get answers being gaslit. So this really shows that you have to understand your body to know what's wrong. You have to advocate for yourself. And especially when it comes to fertility, if you get that gut feeling or that red flag that the person sitting across from you is maybe not looking out for your best interest the same way, getting a second opinion is not optional. It's really essential. Wow. But Dr. Crawford, okay, devil's advocate here. And I don't have skin in the game because I don't know. I have a I have a question for you. If the story we hear over and over and over again

is all of these girls getting told by their doctors to chill out and to relax. So are is there some sort of comprehensive like study on stress versus like these girls, you know, people do stress out and then they get so focused on it that that doesn't happen. Like what? Why is this the thing that everyone's being told? Because this is not you're not the first person to say this. Every one of us has seven girlfriends that have gone through this exact same thing. Yeah. So what, like, why is it laziness? Stress, absolutely. Okay. Okay. I have a few answers here. I'm gonna try to hit them really fast. One, stress absolutely impacts fertility. Stress by default causes your body to go into a different metabolic state that causes insulin resistance, inflammation.

And if we just think about it, your brain doesn't know why you're stressed. And stress comes from a lot of different things. I would argue the unknown or not knowing that you're on the correct path is much more stressful than any data point I can give you. Women are resilient. And if you give them data about their body, they can come up with a game plan to tackle it. And not being given that opportunity, way more stressful. So I think like that answer to me when patients are told that, I think is really sloppy in some ways. Now, I think we have to acknowledge the medical system is not set up

for comprehensive conversations. That's a whole nother problem. And if we had universal healthcare and everybody's dollars had to come out of the same pot, we have to be very judicious about who gets what test. That's not healthcare in America. And for somebody to sit across from a woman and say a $79 blood test

that's gonna tell you how many eggs you have, I'm gonna be the gatekeeper to you getting that information because you haven't failed hard enough doesn't make sense to me. And even the American College of OB-GYN, ACOG, the medical organization for OB-GYN says, do not test AMH in women who do not have infertility

because it will cause undue stress. So it's not always bad doctors, but sometimes it's doctors practicing in a bad system and not really thinking about the patient who's sitting in front of them and how they might use that information. Wow. That's so crazy.

Mornings without coffee. Road trips without snacks. Movies without popcorn. Without our favorite foods, we'd miss out on all our favorite moments. Learn more at canadasfoodsystem.ca. I want to open the floor for Jack because I know she's, you know, in her family planning.

Is there anything you want to ask Doc about what year temperature should be? like if she's going to implant does she need a right a correct temperature should she be tracking or is she good yeah i'm kind of like in the very very beginning stages like we're trying for our october-ish of this year we have six frozen embryos so we'll be doing ivf um so yeah i mean is there i went to my gyno and i was like yeah i think in the next like six months i'm like is should i be doing anything she's like take prenatals for six months and then that was about all she told me. But like, I've had a lot of issues with doctors where I've had to advocate

for myself and different health issues that I've had. So I've had that experience where it's just like, I can't trust doctors, you know, until I find one that I feel like is kind of vibing with me in a sense. So like, is there anything generally that you would recommend for somebody that's in my position that's obviously not going to try naturally? And I'm going to be 39. so regardless of if you're going to try naturally or you have embryos that you're looking to implant the state of your body is extremely important and if that pregnancy is going to implant and especially when it comes to inflammation so to simplify it i like to consider this what people call trimester zero this is the time period before you get pregnant where you have the opportunity

to set the stage for your internal body's environment so leveraging things like eating an anti-inflammatory diet, high in fruits, vegetables, and fiber, avoiding alcohol, ultra-processed foods, getting more sleep, trying to, you know, avoid toxins where you can. It's not that there's one single decision that's going to be like, this is going to make or break if the transfer works. But if we think about every day, we're exposed to inflammation through all those different things. So we have what I call the inflammatory burden. And these little decisions can add to it, right? We stay out late, we eat cake, we drink alcohol,

we eat a bunch of crap, we are really stressed, we don't move our body, or they can reduce it because we ate vegetables, we got a good night's sleep, we built some skeletal muscle. So we control the lever on that inflammatory burden, which is a signal to our brain and our uterus about the state of our body. So not to say you can never do anything

or have a set strict of hard rules, but that by making anti-inflammatory lifestyle practices a part of your common life, this is going to leverage that, you know, you want to stay out late or you do want to have alcohol here. It's not a big deal because your body can tolerate that inflammatory burden.

But when we're just constantly being challenged all the time, that's one of the biggest levers. I would say for my patients going into embryo transfer, it's not getting enough sleep. That's going to be one of the key ones. We're just chronically okay with getting less sleep than we need. we need at minimum seven, seven and a half hours in our luteal phase. When we have progesterone,

we need more sleep. So really trying to cultivate that. And then two is going to be building skeletal muscle is something that especially we don't see women doing enough. Long story short, skeletal muscle, when you use that muscle, allows your body to clear inflammation in an easy way. So these are two kind of anti-inflammatory practices that we can leverage leading up to an embryo transfer specifically. And of course, yes, taking a prenatal vitamin, that's going to be advantageous as well. But thinking about, okay, I'm going to start to get my body prepared for pregnancy in this time period so I don't have to sit on the other end of a transfer that maybe doesn't work, wishing I'd done something different. Also, Jack, I think it's important to say, right,

even with genetically tested embryos, only about a 65% chance of success per embryo. Incredible compared to natural fertility rates. But there's a lot in the science we don't know. We think a lot of this could be, you know, environmental of our bodies or even of the embryos. So knowing that you have confidence and I did what I could, I brought my best to the table.

We have the embryo here. That I think is a really important piece of this puzzle. I have a question. What is skeletal muscle and how do you build it? Literally my question. I love it. Dr. Crawford. Are we weightlifting?

What are we doing? Oh my God, you guys are so good. your big muscles, like your biceps, your triceps, your quadriceps, like skeletal muscles are the muscles you think about. Your body has like smooth muscle in your intestines. You know, your heart has different type of muscle. So this is lifting weight resistance training. And it's not that cardio is bad or HIIT is bad, but it's that women need at least three days a week of picking up weight, ideally, and trying to build up those muscles because of the hormonal advantage is going to carry you now, during the pregnancy, postpartum, in perimenopause and beyond. We need

to pack on some more muscle than we historically have been told. Oh, I have a question for you. Sorry, Jack, go. No, no, I just said no. Go ahead. Okay. We're so excited you're here. Can you tell? This might be too inside baseball, but I'm asking for Jack and any other woman. So there's like this conversation being had. I have a friend in her early 40s who has one singular embryo left and they're about to transfer. And she told me that they're going to do a, an unmedicated transfer. So like, I'm sure everybody at this point in time, like knows a little bit enough about IVF where like, before you put you transfer, you shoot yourself up with progesterone. So like she's saying they know that her cycle is quote regular and they can predict

her ovulation to time her transfer. But this all comes down to is the natural cycles and something she could be using to absolutely confirm that it's a normal cycle? Oh, this is a great question. If somebody doesn't know to give the one sentence explanation for IVF, we make embryos with eggs and sperm in the lab and then they are frozen. And then we're trying to line up the environment where the uterus is perfect to put the embryo inside. There are different ways we can do that. So the traditional way is to do what we call a medicated cycle, where we're essentially giving you estrogen, making the lining grow, and then shooting you up with progesterone. So we're timing artificially when it would be that post-ovulatory timeframe. The other option is

what's called a natural cycle or a modified natural. They're slightly different. In a modified natural, we give you medications to make you ovulate. Think like Clomid, Letrozole, hormone shots you used in IVF, and then we're watching the follicles as they grow. In a true natural cycle, we are leveraging your body's ability to ovulate. And I should say, one, everybody's a little bit different. There's not a one-size-fits-all embryo transfer protocol because if there was, we would force everybody to do it. There's different patients that can benefit from each one.

But yes, part of the key if you're using a natural cycle is knowing that we really are detecting when you ovulate accurately and the temperature rise that's happening so the timing is great for the transfer. And natural cycles is a tool that can be helpful in this patient population. So I think that's another thing just to confirm, okay, this said I was ovulating, my temperature is rising appropriately. And especially if you only have

one embryo, I live in the world of it must be perfect or we don't do it, right? Like we want to have every assurance that this is the exact right time, your cycle looks perfect, or we should cancel and evaluate a different cycle type, which sometimes people need. So to me, this is a place we're leveraging, you know, temperature rise and natural cycles is only more data that's going to help you feel more confident or alert you to a problem where you could switch to something else. Interesting. Okay. Honestly, Dr. Crawford, get your app, girl, get your wearable. So excited. Thank you for coming on. This was mind blowing. You're going to help so many people and so many of our lady gangers. And you're so smart and lovely. And this was great. Yeah. I know two

babies in Austin that are here because of you. Oh, thank you guys so much. And I'll just say, I have a book coming out in April. It's called The Fertility Formula. Yeah. So if anybody is listening, do you have it? Show us. Yes. I was like, I'm getting it out of my bag so you can See how beautiful it is. Oh, that's pretty. I love it. I'm so excited about it. So it's going to help women just really feel like they have more agency over their own bodies

and understand the conversation and what's happening. I love that. We're going to link that in the newsletter for all of you listeners. And we were not here for a long time. We're here for a fertile time. Fertile time. Thank you. Lady Gang is hosted and produced by Kelty Knight, Becca Tobin, and Jack Vanek

with social media support from Kali Carrera, audio and video editing from Jared Monaco, and additional support from Steve Delameter and Podcast One.