Realfoodology - Non-Hormonal Birth Control with Elina Berglund of Natural Cycles

Episode Date: January 11, 2023

128: On this episode, I interview Elina Berglund, Co-Founder of the FDA cleared contraceptive birth control app "Natural Cycles." Topics Covered: Importance of measuring your temperature Does traveling affect your cycle? Oura Ring Hormonal birth control and Natural Cycles  When to take your temperature to track your cycle  Is Natural Cycles FDA approved? Ovulation strips  Is your data safe if you’re using Natural Cycles? Check Out Natural Cycles: https://www.naturalcycles.com/ Code REALFOODOLOGY gives you 20% off + a free thermometer  https://www.naturalcycles.com/publications (this links to our publications and clinical findings) Instagram: @naturalcycles TikTok: @naturalcycles Sponsored By: BiOptimizers: Magnesium Breakthrough www.magbreakthrough.com/realfoodology Code REALFOODOLOGY gets you 10% off any order. Organifi www.organifi.com/realfoodology Code REALFOODOLOGY gets you 20% Off Cured Nutrition www.curednutrition.com/realfoodology REALFOODOLOGY gets you 20% off Check Out Courtney: **REALFOODOLOGY PODCAST IS NOW ON YOUTUBE!** Courtney's Instagram: @realfoodology www.realfoodology.com My Immune Supplement by 2x4 Air Dr Air Purifier AquaTru Water Filter EWG Tap Water Database Further Listening: Oral and Gut Microbiome Connection with Dr. Staci

On today's episode of The Real Foodology Podcast. What happens during the menstrual cycle is kind of like an orchestra of hormones. After you ovulate and your body releases an egg, which is the moment when you can get pregnant, your body starts producing more progesterone. And this is what warms the body. After ovulation, your temperature is higher than before ovulation. That is the clue to figure out when ovulation happens. Hi, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of The Real Foodology Podcast. As always, I am your host, Courtney Swan, and I'm so grateful that you're here today.

On today's episode, I sit down with Alina Berglund, who is the co-founder of the FDA-cleared contraceptive birth control app, Natural Cycles. This is a subject that I am incredibly passionate about. I have done many episodes about hormonal birth control and the detrimental effects that it has on our bodies. So if you're interested in that and you haven't listened to the episodes yet, please make sure that you go back and listen to some of the previous episodes that I've done on that. This episode is about cycle tracking. I was introduced to the world of cycle tracking probably about eight years ago now when I was introduced to the world of cycle tracking probably about eight years ago now when I was looking for a alternative

to hormonal birth control. And I wanted something that had no sort of intervention in my body whatsoever. And when Natural Cycles came out, or when I became aware of it, which I think was about four or five years ago now, I was so incredibly excited because now was something that was just, or they created

something that was, according to their research, it is 93% effective with typical use and 98% effective with perfect use. And we're talking about a contraceptive here, guys, that has no sort of intervention in your body whatsoever. It's actually an app, but it's an FDA cleared app. And everything that I'm talking about right now is going to be explained more in detail with Alina, who is the co-founder of Natural Cycles, which is why I was so incredibly honored and excited to be connected with her because we get to hear from the woman who created this amazing, amazing app exactly how it works. We dive a little bit into her background and her story. She is such a fascinating woman and really knows her stuff. She was originally a particle

physicist and then had her own journey with birth control and wanted to create an alternative option to hormonal birth control for women who are suffering and also because she wanted it for herself. We talk about how it works, why natural cycles and why cycle tracking is incredibly effective. Also, she mentioned in the interview that they do a ton of studies. I'm going to leave a link in the show notes so that you guys can see all of those published studies and see its effectiveness with your own eyes. We talk about how it works. We talk about syncing it with your Oura Ring. So if you have an Oura Ring, you can also sync your natural cycles to your Oura Ring.

If you don't have it, do not worry. You don't need to purchase one in order to use natural cycles. And then of course, we also go over how they keep their users' data safe. I know this is a huge concern for a lot of us women in light of the recent overturning of Roe versus Wade. So do not fret. I definitely talked to her about this

and she gives an amazing explanation about how our data is incredibly safe and protected. So definitely stick around to the very end for that. If you are at all interested in starting natural cycles for yourself, they gave me a code to share with you, my audience. If you use code realfoodology at naturalcycles.com, you're going to get 20% off and you're also going to get a free thermometer. And yeah, with that, let's get into the episode. Before we dive into the conversation, if you could just take a moment to leave a rating and review, if you're enjoying the podcast, it means the world to me. Your support helps more than I can even say. And I just appreciate it so much. Thanks for being here.

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breakthrough, but all of Bioptimizers best in class products for 25% off. This is the only time of the year that they offer this discount. So you're not going to want to miss it. So go to bioptimizers.com slash realfoodology and enter code realfoodology and you're going to get 25% off. That's B-I-O-P-T-I-M-I-Z-E-R-S.com slash realfoodology. Alina, I am so excited to have you on the podcast today. I'm actually literally wearing my aura ring right now that I sync every single morning to my Natural Cycles app. So for everyone listening, can you tell them a little bit about your background? What was your motivation for starting Natural Cycles and how did you figure all this out? Yeah, well, it wasn't necessarily

straightforward. It was a long journey to get to here, but it kind of started with, well, when I was a teenager, I struggled with hormonal birth control. And at that time, I kind of went to the library and tried to read up about the Billings method and cervical mucus and figure all that stuff out. Because I feel very alone on how to find a method that works for me, but it was too complicated. I ended up then spending 10 years on the hormonal implant, which worked well for me. And it's also very highly effective contraceptive method. But then when I was around 28, it was time to take it out. And I knew that we wanted to have kids in a couple of

years and I thought that maybe I should not put in a new one and you know give my body a chance to get back to normal before trying to get pregnant so I was again like looking and this time you know there was a google scholar and internet and you know so I started reading up about the research on the menstrual cycle and figured out that the temperature changes throughout the menstrual cycle. I had no idea. And I was like, well, I wish I'd known this before. And this was also, I'm originally a particle physicist. So this was when I was doing research at the CERN laboratory in Switzerland. And particle physics is really about a lot of data and trying to find a signal in a haystack of noise. So I thought, oh, I can start analyzing my own temperature data, apply my skills from

particle physics to figure out when I'm ovulating, when I'm fertile, when I'm most importantly definitely not fertile. So that's how it started. But very quickly, my husband and I, and he's also my co-founder, figured out that this is a huge unmet need worldwide. It's not just us trying to find a natural contraceptive method and also eventually using it for planning a pregnancy. But there are so many couples and women worldwide that would benefit from such an innovation. app and also, you know, figure out how to make it an official medical device as a birth control, which we managed to do in Europe and the US by the FDA. Yeah, it's really impressive what you

guys have done. And I just want to say that I'm incredibly grateful that you guys started Natural Cycles. And to be honest, I'm so honored to even be connected with you because when I first found out about Natural Cycles, I mean, this was years ago, I was one of those women that you're talking about where you're saying, you know, there's a lot of women that could benefit from this because I went through several phases in my life, starting in my 20s where I tried hormonal birth control. And every single time I did it, I couldn't even last a month because of just how crazy it made me feel in my body. I was completely disconnected from myself. And I just, every time I tried to take hormonal birth control, I couldn't do it. And so when Natural Cycles came out, I was like, oh my God, this is amazing. I

had never even heard of this concept of tracking your cycle. And I didn't even know that this was a thing similar to what you said about learning that our temperature goes up and down based on the different phases in our cycle. So can you talk a little bit about that? What is the science behind that and how does natural cycles actually work? How does it keep us or how does it help us? Yeah. So what happens during the menstrual cycle is kind of like orchestra of hormones. And after you ovulate and your body releases an egg, which is the moment when you can get pregnant if a sperm meets the egg, your body starts producing more progesterone. And this is what warms the body. So basically when

after ovulation your temperature is higher than before ovulation. So that is the clue to figure out like when ovulation happens. But that's of course not the only important thing and natural cycles algorithm is very complex and advanced and it also takes into account previous cycles from you and tries to predict when you will ovulate and also give a buffer because sometimes it can happen that you ovulate early. So when you basically use natural cycles you measure your temperature either with the aura ring so you sleep with the ring and it measures on your skin during the night, or you measure in the mouth when you wake up in the morning. And then the natural cycles algorithm will run and you will see a red day if you might be fertile that day and should use protection if

you don't want to get pregnant, or a green day if you don't need to use protection that day. And then if you use it to plan a pregnancy, it's similar, but the algorithm is optimized slightly differently. And it really is just three days per cycle where you have an elevated chance of getting pregnant. So instead of just red and green days, it gives you kind of a scale of red days to highlight when are your most fertile days to kind of pinpoint those of red days to highlight when are your most fertile days to kind of pinpoint those highly fertile days. Amazing. And are there any women that this won't work for? Like, for example, maybe if they travel a lot, like I heard that traveling and you're on different

time, why am I, I'm blanking on what it's called right now, but like different time zones, like quite often, I heard that it may not work as well then. Well, there are many things that can affect your temperature indeed. And maybe first of all, I should say like, you have to be above 18 because we've never performed any clinical studies on women below 18. So we're certified as a contraceptive method for 18 plus. Also, it doesn't protect against STIs, so it's usually for women in more stable relationships. But indeed, many things affect temperature, and that's also why it's so important to have an algorithm that then can scrutinize the temperature data to kind of try to distinguish, okay, this is ovulation versus, oh, she traveled or had a night out.

So with the aura ring, the beauty is that it actually affects those things less. So whether you had a night out or drank a lot of alcohol, for instance, we can then see that in your heart rate and correct your temperature based on your heart rate. So I would say someone with very irregular lifestyle, like either you go out a lot or you travel a lot, the Oura Ring is better than measuring the temperature. But it's as effective whether you use the Oura Ring or the manual thermometer. It's just that you will get more green days with the Oura Ring because you know we can the data is smoother basically but the effectiveness as a contraception is the same. Okay that's great to know because I actually get that question a lot of my DMs

and then another question that I get which I think I already know the answer but I want to get a definitive answer does this work if you're on the hormonal birth control pill people ask me this and I want to know. So hormonal birth control, like the birth control pill, works in the way that it prevents ovulation from happening at all. So basically it stops your natural cycle and instead the bleeding that you get once a month

is induced by the pill. So you will feel like, oh, I still have a cycle, but it's actually nothing to do with ovulation and menstrual cycle. So natural cycles won't work in the sense that we cannot detect an ovulation if you don't ovulate. So you will just get red days, basically, which defeats the purpose.

Natural cycles does work with other methods where you do ovulate, like the copper IUD, for instance. So the copper IUD doesn't disrupt your menstrual cycle. It more disrupts the environment in the uterus to prevent sperm from meeting the egg. So I know women that use both natural cycles and the copper IUD that are maybe highly fertile and had issues with unwanted pregnancies without. Awesome. Okay. Yeah. I just wanted to clear that up because I've gotten that question before. And I don't know why you would want to do both, but I just wanted to put that out there because I've been asked that question before. For people who are very new to this, and let's say maybe they don't have access to getting an

aura ring, which by the way, I want to say this really quickly. I used the, uh, the thermometer for years before you guys were able to sync it with the aura ring. Um, personally, I recommend getting the aura ring if you're in a place listening, if you're in a place to get it, because it is, oh my gosh, the way that it works with the natural cycles is amazing. And also all the other features are really great. Um, and it just makes it a lot easier in general to track your cycle. But let's say someone is not at a place that they can get an Oura ring, so they can very easily get the thermometer. Can you explain a little bit about the basal temperature and how it works as far as like when you need to take your temperature and all that in order for

it to be the most effective? Yeah. So the best data is the sleeping data because then your temperature is the most stable day to day. And again, if you have unstable temperatures, doesn't mean it's not effective as a birth control method. It just means that you might get more red days. Similarly to if you forget to measure sometimes, it's fine. You might just end up with a bit more red days. So the algorithm always errs on the side of caution. So with the thermometer, you should measure right away the first thing you do when you wake up. Because that's the closest to your sleeping temperature as we can get with this thermometer. So you wake up in the morning, you take your temperature, and then you go on

about your day. Before you get out of bed, I think it's important to say, right? Like literally the second you roll over, you take your temperature. Exactly. So that's why it's nice to also be able to provide several options because women are different and they have different routines. So especially for women, maybe with small kids or so, the Oura Ring is better because it might be hard to manage to measure temperature. The first thing you do when you wake up, usually you wake up from a screaming baby. Yeah. So I've read that it's, so your method is 93% effective with typical use and 98% effective with perfect use. Can you explain that, what that means? Yeah. So any birth control method is measured in the way that we look at,

we make clinical studies. So we see, okay, if a hundred women use it in a year, how many would get pregnant? So with natural cycles, it means that seven out of a hundred would get pregnant for any reason. And the most common reason is that the app shows that you have a red day and you're fertile, but you might choose to not use protection anyway. Or some users use withdrawal, which is not super effective. And the perfect use means that the user follows the instructions. So she does actually use protection

on those red days and then two out of hundred women get pregnant in a year maybe because the condom fails or something like that and it's quite similar to the pills effectiveness it's also 93 with typical use um so it's more effective than just using condom alone, which is like 85% effective, but it's less effective than methods that are inside your body that you can completely forget about, like the IUD, for instance, or the hormonal implants. Yeah, absolutely. So this requires you to be a little bit more in tune with your body, which is something that I talk about often on this podcast that I find

incredibly empowering and super important because what's more empowering than being fully in tune with your body and knowing exactly what's going on? There's a book that I am now blanking on, what it's called. I'm going to have to look it up. I should have had it out. But it teaches you how to measure your cervical fluid so that you can also know in what phase you're in during your cycle. And I think while doing a combination of that and also using natural cycles, what a way to be in tune with your body and your own cycle and know exactly what's going on. And I find it so incredibly empowering. Yeah, that's what we, I feel the same myself, but also what we hear the most from our users is really like, you know, they start using natural cycles because they

don't want to use hormonal contraception or they haven't found a contraceptive method that suits them. But once they do start using natural cycles, they're always like, oh, wow, I feel like I finally understand what's going on inside and they feel very empowered by that. And they usually describe that for instance in the app reviews. And for me, that's really like the ultimate motivation for what I do is to hear the feedback from my users. And they literally tell me every day that it's been life changing for them, which is amazing for me. Yeah, that's amazing. What's some of the feedback that you get

or is there anything that you can share? Maybe some personal experiences from people that you've heard or maybe your own personal experience with it. Yeah, I think I'm quite a typical user myself. I felt also very empowered with all the insights and understanding my body. Maybe when there's higher risk of PMS, for instance, you know, after ovulation and before menstruation and, you know, during the fertile

window, which is those five days leading up to ovulation, you might feel a bit more like frisky. And it's so true and it's so interesting to see and then of course we also used it to to get pregnant and I was amazed when when we we made our daughter we felt like okay if I'm gonna get pregnant now everyone will think natural cycles fail so we actually wrote on Twitter exactly what day we would try which was was our wedding anniversary. And then it worked on the first try, which I really didn't expect to. And of course, we were very lucky and it's not like that for everyone. But it was amazing for us to manage to have that kind of control. Yeah. I mean, this is another thing. So I'm in my 30s now.

And like I mentioned earlier, I feel very blessed that I was never on hormonal birth control for longer than like a month period of time. But I have a lot of girlfriends who I've witnessed over the years who were on it for 10, 15 years. And then after coming off of it, getting married and then wanting to start families, realizing that the birth control that they had been on for the last 10 to 15 years messed up their body so much that they were really

struggling to get pregnant, which is another reason why I'm so grateful and I'm such a proponent for things like natural cycles where you can be in tune with your body and you're not shutting off your ovulation because women, when they're put on birth control, are not told that once you come off of it, not for everyone, this is not everyone's experience, but I've witnessed a lot of women struggle for years trying to get their cycle back and trying to get their body back when they want to get pregnant. And so that's what is so beautiful about natural cycles and this ability to track your cycle and do it on your own, because then you're in full control of that. And you can be aware of when

you're ovulating and when you're ready to get pregnant, you can be aware of that. And actually, I tell this story pretty often. I have a girlfriend who was actually the first person that ever introduced me to this method of tracking your cycle. And she told me a similar thing to what you just said was that she was using, what was it called? I think it was the Lady Comp. And it was this huge machine. And every single morning she would wake up at the same time and she would do her temperature.

And for years she used it while she was married with her husband as a way to keep from getting pregnant. And then when they decided that she wanted to get pregnant, then she used it to get pregnant. And she was able to get pregnant very easily because she had been tracking her cycle for years. She knew exactly when she was ovulating and she did it to conceive both of their children.

It's really like working with your body instead of changing it, which is maybe not for everyone. But if one is able to use protection sometimes and have a stable relationship where this works, then it's really amazing. So you mentioned earlier that the app is FDA cleared as contraceptive. Can you explain what that means? There are different risk classes of medical devices. So since we were an app, it was initially not really obvious

because we've been doing natural sex 10 years and we were one of the first apps to be a medical device at all. And definitely the first one in the women's health space. So it took us a while to navigate this. But in the end, we ended up in risk class two, which is the same as, for instance, the condom. So for the purpose of contraception. So risk class one is a lower risk where you just register with the FDA.

Like, for instance, in principle, for planning a pregnancy, you should be FDA class one, even though I know many apps aren't. And class three is something that's more inside your body with a higher risk, like the IUD, for instance, that can actually physically damage you. One of the things that I really struggle with the most is falling asleep at night. And this is why I love Cured Nutrition, because I have found that their product Zen in combination with CBN has really helped me to fall asleep quicker. In Zen, it is a combination of magnesium, reishi, CBD, and then it has things like passionflower, ashwagandha. All of these just help to calm the mind and calm the body and get you ready for bed. And then I also take their raw

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That is cured, C-U-R-E-D, nutrition.com slash realfoodology. I get a lot of questions in my DMs from people, or not questions, more statements. And they say, I would love to do this, but I'm so terrified of getting pregnant while using this. What would you say to someone that says that? Yeah. At first I would say, I completely understand. Before you understand really how it works and understand your own cycle, it does sound almost too good to be true. It was also scary for me at first. But then my advice is that start with just using condoms all the time. And then you start seeing that this is not rocket

science. It's just how your body works. And you'll notice, you'll see the signs, oh, I'm actually ovulating. And you'll learn a you'll see the signs. Oh, I'm actually ovulating. And you'll learn a lot about your body and your fertility and realize that, oh, I cannot get pregnant every day of the cycle. And also, we're scientists, so this is really our forte, but we've published 15 clinical studies to date with natural cycles. And four of them have investigated the effectiveness of natural cycles as a birth control method and it's been consistently always performing the same and part of being medical device we we redo these analysis on a monthly basis so we would see right away if the performance is not what we claim or what our clinical studies told us so we're really

on top of this. I would say more than traditional birth control methods where you just kind of send the product out to the world, but you have no feedback on how it performs. We can actually see that every month and the product has always performed as expected. But it's also good to know that there's no contraceptive method that's 100% effective. So if you do have intercourse, there's always a risk of pregnancy. Yeah, there's always a risk. And no one can make this choice for them. You know, I say this with absolutely no judgment.

Like every single person is individual and needs to make this decision on their own. But you do need to outweigh the risks of being on hormonal birth control versus doing it this way. And doing it through natural cycles, yes, it absolutely requires more work on your end. Less work if you have the Oura ring, a little bit more work if you're manually doing your temperature every morning. But as I said earlier, I find it incredibly empowering. And also, a lot of, well, everyone listening to this podcast listens to it because they're incredibly concerned about their health. And this is why I feel so passionate about this whole realm of conversation because a lot of women were not given, most women,

I would say, were not communicated to the full risks of being put on hormonal birth control. When I found out that being on the pill meant that you just weren't ovulating at all, it just completely shuts off your ovulation. I was, honestly, it was really angry and incredibly confused because we have always been told, oh, this actually regulates your hormones. Like if you have a hormonal problem, this is going to regulate it. And then when I found out that it was actually just completely shutting down ovulation entirely, not even regulating our hormones, but completely turning them off and then replacing them with some synthetic hormones, I was like, what? And you think about all these

women that are so concerned about their health and they don't even think about their hormonal birth control as something that could be affecting their health and all the different side effects that were never communicated to us. I just, yeah, it makes me really upset. And so I'm so grateful that you created something like this for, I mean, you're helping thousands of women. It's incredible. Thank you. It's a very rewarding job to be able to do something for women and women's health. I'm very grateful for what I'm able to do every day. Is there anything that you've learned from your users that you're really shocked by, like trends?

I feel like I still learn something new all the time, which is so much fun. Especially through our customer support, we hear our users' stories and ask questions. Like, for instance, there was one woman that had two uteruses that asked, like, can I use sexual cycles? I didn't know I could have two uteruses. I didn't know that either.

Yeah, it's, yeah, the woman's body is like, it's so special. So many things can can happen and um also like uh once we we got a question from a user who had fallen pregnant and she had had kind of like a break with her long-term boyfriend and met someone else for a short time and she wasn't sure who was father the father to her child and from analyzing her data we could figure out like who was the father and it turned out it was the the long-term boyfriend and she decided to to keep it and oh my gosh can you share how you guys figured that out well she basically told us like when she had been with which guy and then like just from the timing of a relation, it became quite obvious who was the father.

Wow, that's really cool. Yeah, that's pretty mind blowing. Yes. That is wild. Can you use ovulation strips? Like are there other things that you can do on top of natural cycles that will only make it more effective? Like for example, ovulation strips? Yeah. So our algorithm also recommends for you when to take an ovulation strip such that you don't have to end up taking them all the time. So basically what ovulation strips measure is the

luthianizing hormone that rises just before ovulation. So it's especially useful if you're planning a pregnancy because then it really pinpoints that most fertile day, which is like the day before ovulation. So in the Natural Cycles app, you will see, it's called LH, luthionizing hormone. So you will see what day we recommend you to take one if you want to. And then the algorithm takes that into account. So it's useful if you're planning a pregnancy, but also if you are preventing a pregnancy, you might end up with more green days because it needs less of a temperature rise to feel confident that you've ovulated. Okay, awesome. I think this episode is going to help a lot of people listening because there's a lot of confusion around this because so many women have been trained to just take a pill and then not have to worry about it. and are confused, scared, don't know what to do. Can we go into that a little bit, actually?

What are some of the misconceptions that most people are not aware of when it comes to taking the pill? Well, I think that you already asked about the most obvious one, which is that they think that the bleeding is actually a real period and that they're still ovulating.

So that's, I think, is the most basic one is that, no, the bleeding is actually induced by the pill. You don't have to bleed at all. It was put there such that women would feel like, oh, yes, I have a regular cycle. Everything is working well. But it's actually, like, for instance,

we have a lot of users with PCOS, which can make your cycle very irregular. And they have been often told to go on the pill to regulate their cycle. But what the pill does is kind of masks the symptoms of PCOS. And then they often like using natural cycles because then natural cycles can tell them if they are ovulating at all and when, even if they have a super irregular cycle, which is very good to know, especially if you want to have kids in the future. So that's one example of it. Okay. Yeah, that's good to know.

Another question that I get quite often that I think a lot of people are going to be wondering, How do you keep your users' data safe since it is an app? Yeah, that's a very important part. And after the Dobbs decision that Roe v. Wade was a return, even more important, I would say. So as a medical device company, we were very used to working with regulation and processes and data privacy has actually always been a part of that so we've always taken data privacy very seriously and natural cycle is also not a free app

you have to pay a subscription which is um 100 a year which includes the thermometer for instance um so that means that we don't need to ever sell users data. We would never sell users data. We also don't need to show ads, so we don't have to track the user or data concerning the user in a way that basically the user is our customer. We are also a European company. Our headquarters is in Sweden, so we follow GDPR, which is also strict on data privacy. And we just earlier this month kind of launched something we call NC Secure, which describes exactly how your data is treated and

all the details around that. So this is something that we work a lot on. Amazing. Thank you so much for that explanation. I think it's going to bring a lot of peace to a lot of women because I've gotten that question a lot when I've shared about natural cycles. And it's a big deal. A lot of people are concerned about it and rightfully so.

So that makes me feel better too. Thank you. Yeah. I would be mindful of all free apps basically, because they usually monetize on your data in one way or another. Yeah, that makes sense. So is there anything else about natural cycles or really anything that we talked about today that you feel is important that we haven't covered? We're very excited about 2023. We are working on even more innovation on the product side. And we see that the customers that have tried the integration with Natural Cycles with the Oura Ring, they really love it. So we're working on more improvements next year. For instance, a better connected thermometer is going to come out next year.

Awesome. So we're very excited about that plus other things. So stay tuned because exciting things are happening with natural cycles. Yay. I'm so excited about that. I want to ask you a personal question that I ask all of my guests. What are your health non-negotiables? So these are things, no matter how busy and crazy your day is,

these are things that you prioritize for your own health. Well, for me, sleep is incredibly important. I just know that if I don't get enough sleep and I need quite a lot of sleep, so ideally I need like at least eight hours, I'm just not gonna perform as well the next day. You know, I'm gonna be slower than everything. So I usually, I'm kind not going to perform as well the next day. I'm going to be slower than everything. So I usually am kind of boring.

I go to bed really early. Also, we have small kids. So I'm always prioritizing sleep. And then I, maybe not every day, but I also try to get exercise in there too. Because I just know that if I don't exercise, I get more grumpy. I don't become, I get more grumpy. I don't

become as energetic anymore. So at least every other day I try to exercise, especially now when I mostly work from home because you don't get those steps in otherwise. Yeah, that's amazing. Well, please let everyone know where they can find you and Natural Cycles. On naturalcycles.com or you can go directly to the app store and download Natural Cycles. Also, our Instagram account is really great. We have, I think, around 400,000 followers and there's a lot of great content there, not just about birth control, but about women's health in general. So like you learn so much from our Instagram account. Yeah, it's a great account. And again, I just want to say thank you so much for creating Natural Cycles. You're really helping a lot of women. Well, thank you. That means a lot to me. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of The Real Foodology Podcast. If you

liked the episode, please leave a review in your podcast app to let me know. This is a Resonant Media production produced by Drake Peterson and edited by Mike Fry. The theme song is called Heaven by the amazing singer Georgie. Georgie is spelled with a J. For more amazing podcasts produced by my team, go to resonantmediagroup.com. I love you guys so much. See you next week. The content of this show is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for individual medical and mental health advice and doesn't constitute a provider-patient relationship. I am a nutritionist, but I am not your nutritionist.

As always, talk to your doctor or your health team first. Do you suffer from IBS or other digestive issues? Are you looking for a new podcast to listen to? Always talk to your doctor or your health team first. page, Lil Sipper, or you may have even read her book. Now you can find her wherever you get your podcasts. On Digest This, Bethany examines topics such as gut health, nutrition, the food industry, and highlights specific ingredients that can be beneficial or harmful to your gut health. She also explores non-toxic options in beauty, home, and cooking essentials. If it has to do with your health, Digest This is talking about it. Each episode features an interview with health experts, doctors, and wellness advocates, and delivers you information that is, well, easy to digest. Bethany also delivers a weekly segment every

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