Tea at Four - Ep 48: Doctor talks about getting to know our menstrual cycles, how our hormones and periods affect us and why virginity is a social construct

Episode Date: February 2, 2024

This month, our episodes are all about GIRL LITERACY which is all about getting to know our bodies. This week, Doctor Aziza Sesay joins the girls to talk all things menstrual health - specifically the ‘in-between bit’. Lauren and Christie talk about their own periods, as well as discussing what happens to our bodies when we’re NOT bleeding, how women can empower themselves by tracking their cycles, and debunking some well known myths about periods, including the idea of women ‘syncing up’. As part of our New Year’s Revolution campaign, Girl Literacy challenges our knowledge on our bodies and the effect it can have on our mental wellbeing and life choices. Through our content we aim to raise awareness of unspoken issues surrounding women’s health and bring them firmly into the group chat.

I'm really sorry that you went through that. Have you had investigations? No. Okay, so I'm going to debunk that myth. The sperm's hanging around. Where? The concept of syncing up with your friends. I remember at school, one of us on our period,

the next day, it's like a pack of werewolves or something. Is that a real thing? If you think that it might be a condition please keep pushing for it you lose a teaspoon amount of blood wrong i do about 17 ladles hi guys welcome back to tf4 i'm christy and i'm lauren and welcome back to 49 revolutions body literacy series yay this week we are covering periods and not just that bleeding week we're And I'm Lauren and welcome back to 4ix9ine Revolution's Body Literacy Series. Yay! This week we are covering periods. And not just that bleeding week, we're talking everything.

The bit in between, the bit before, the bit after. The emotions, the whole shebang. The whole shebang, yes. Right, so we spoke to Dr Aziz Asese who walked us through how tracking can actually empower us, empower our lives, empower the people around us, us our partners how we can hack our cycle yeah i think for me what was quite interesting is not comparing yourself to other women coming from a girl's school me especially it's like every girl's going through their period so you're thinking this person's period is normal maybe mine's abnormal but no it's all about learning about your own body and knowing your own cycle for yourself my favorite fact was that period pain

has actually been likened to the pain threshold of a heart attack. Yes. Which I can believe. Try and test it here, me. I am patient zero. But I think the worst of it all, that erectile dysfunction is actually researched

five times more than PMS, premenstrual syndrome. Yeah. Which is all the more reason it's good to have these conversations so we really enjoyed it and we hope you do too enjoy so today we're joined with Dr Aziza Sese hello welcome to the podcast uh would you mind just telling our audience what you do what's your job all right my favorite question no I'm Dr Aziza Sese so I'm gp a gp educator an honorary senior clinical lecturer i'm also a host a speaker and i run a platform called talks with dr sissay which is all about

health awareness advocacy empowerment and i do general health but there is a specific focus on women's and gynecological health so i'm really excited to have a conversation today so are we i mean also you document a lot of this stuff on social media what is the hope in kind of making those informative videos especially for our generation i think we're scrollers rather than go to the gp yeah yeah come and see me the truth of the matter is what i'm finding is that a lot of the times people are not coming forward to see us and particularly during the pandemic and lockdown it was getting to a point where everyone was scared of going in to see the doctor because nobody wanted to catch covid right and people were consuming their health information from social media and WhatsApp groups and all of that.

And I was really concerned because there's a lot of health misinformation that's out there. Right. So I thought, you know what? Let me try and get the information out there in a fun and engaging manner. So I was already doing talks. But then I got pregnant because that was one of the things that we were doing during lockdown as well. Yeah. And then the vomiting nausea, I couldn't do it anymore.

So instead I started creating fun videos, like really short ones to get your attention. And the fact of the matter is, it was to try and remove the taboo and the stigma and the shame and the embarrassment that's around particularly anything women's and gynecological health and also to get people to start to question things like oh okay my periods are really heavy oh that's not normal or things like cervical screening oh i need to attend that um does it saves my life it could save my life it could prevent cancer you

know all these things that some people consider basic knowledge is not out there and it's just to hopefully change impact and save lives amazing yeah i think what we were both on the same page about is kind of we need to go back to basics yeah and on a personal level i've just come off the pill for the first time in 11 years i don't even know what a natural cycle looks like as an adult so I guess my question to you is how do we start from the beginning with understanding that yeah that's a really good question and welcome to there's nothing wrong with taking the pill for that long. And again, everything needs to be about your choice. Now, you used the word natural.

So I would just say, I would say what's normal for you as an individual. It's about understanding your cycle, how it works for you, what your periods are like. And knowing what exactly we mean when we say cycle. So I know you guys are asking me questions, but I'm curious to start off with to ask you guys this question okay all right i already said no pressure all right so is this true or false menstrual cycles are supposed to last between two to seven days something like that that's what i was taught in school yeah yeah literally i think it's true but does menstrual cycle mean period or does that she got the trick question she's listening she's listening okay okay right so that's my answer maybe no yes the answer is no yes okay so yeah that's a trick question and everybody falls for it because everyone uses the term menstrual cycle interchangeably with period.

Menstrual cycle is the whole cycle. So it's a series of physiological changes that happens to your body, right, in preparation for potential pregnancy. And it typically lasts around 28 days, but it varies between individuals and it can last between 21 to 35 days right the whole cycle 30 days in a month yeah it's not a whole month some people it can last shorter than a month and some people can last longer than a month and that might be their normal that's why i said the first thing is understanding your normal so yeah the menstrual cycle basically is the first day of your period to the day before your next period. Okay.

And when I say that even on an individual basis, the length can also vary, right? So because it's impacted by stress, weight loss, illness, that sort of thing. So it's important to know that's the menstrual cycle, right? So when we talk about periods, that's part of the menstrual cycle called menstruation, which is literally the part where you bleed. Right. All right. And the reason that that happens is because, again, hormonal changes.

The reason the menstrual cycle happens at all is because of hormonal changes. So at the very start of the cycle cycle we have a drop in our sex hormones okay and i'm gonna bring out this uh your little friend all right now the reason i was showing you this is just basically to say that at the start of the cycle we already have a thicken in the mitral lining or womb lining okay when the levels of the hormones drop that's what comes out as period blood it's we're literally just shedding the lining so i guess it's a perfect opportunity to break one of the first myths which is that oh you know period blood is dirty or it means you're

getting rid of toxins and that kind of thing no you're literally just getting rid of your womb lining yeah that is it you of your womb lining that is it you know your womb lining and it's mixed with some cervical mucus and vaginal discharge that's it yeah it's not dirty it's nothing to be embarrassed about more than 50 percent of the world's population goes through it at some point in their lives so yeah i think it's um funny you highlight this like the purpose of this body literacy campaign is that we don't know what's actually going on in there and i couldn't explain that to you but i could tell you the side effects why why is it that we've got to this age and a lot of us

just maybe have forgot that stuff from school or need a refresher of what's going on down there is the conversation just not around very much i don't know so personally what i found is that it's just not spoken about enough there's a lot of shame there's a lot of embarrassment there's a lot of stigma there's a lot of taboo and often when we use these words vulva vagina um clitoris it makes people feel so uncomfortable and it's like why they're literal body parts they're names of literal body parts you know and often we use euphemisms as well which again perpetuates that shame and another thing that i have found and not just me a lot of us content creators especially in the women's health and gynecological reproductive health space or sex space we have

found that we get censored a lot i've been censored multiple times just because I've used the word vulva or vagina or clitoris, even periods. Yeah. So those sort of things make it so difficult because, you know, patriarchy doesn't help. And it's just the people with the power. They don't want us to have these conversations so we don't have it. Even using the word period, I mean, they didn't say it in American TV until the 1980s, just to say the word period. And often people are too embarrassed to say that word.

They use words like, I mean, what are the words they use for period? Blob. I mean, I've never used that in my life. I call it Tom. What? Period, Tom. Time of the month.

Oh, time of the month. I've never heard of that. I'm on my Tom Tom. What? Period, Tom. Time of the month. Oh, time of the month. I've never heard of that. I'm on my Tom's list. That's a man's name and I'm not on board with that. Even so much as something as small as hiding a tampon when you're going to the toilet. It's just a bit of a... There's no shame around it,

but I think it needs to be a private thing. Yeah. And it doesn't have to be a private thing. And it doesn't just affect women and people who menstruate. It affects everybody. You know what I mean? It will affect you directly as an individual, obviously, but also indirectly. And we do need to include men in these conversations, boys, everyone, because they will one day grow up into men and they may have female partners.

Also, they probably have sisters. They definitely, you know, have moms and aunts and those sort of things so they should know about and daughters one day yeah so for me my first period my mom wasn't in the country so guess who had the conversation with me oh my gosh really how did that go i mean i was 14 so it wasn't too bad i had my period later yeah and at the time than most of my friends so it was okay i was older yeah and um it was more of a conversation of well you can get pregnant now wow yeah it's funny like menstruation talking about it in like school times it was a bit funny funny subject or becoming a woman but now as you say it is a conversation that's gonna kind of

affect other people even though side effects like low libido, anxiety, depression, how that's going to affect your partners. So it really is something that's indirectly affecting people too. I do also feel like in schools they did us a disservice because where it was like a sex education, girls one day, boys another day, we were never in the same room. I think only when I got to secondary school,

which I went to all girls school, that's when it was like, okay,'s talk about you know sexual health where it was more detailed i was like okay cool i understand this happens to me then this could happen these are the side effects but back in school especially at a young age i know friends that started their period at nine years old yeah so i'm like yeah nine years old yeah what the hell but the fact that we were just like separated it gives us a. And if you're like come from a family where it's just like, you know, Mel, how do you not be like, oh, I'm going through this.

Oh, I need help. And I always push for this. And that's why I say that it's a conversation that should be had, including everyone. And I completely understand that girls often may feel uncomfortable and shy to have the discussion with boys. And absolutely fine. Have the discussion together and then to have the discussion with boys and absolutely fine have

the discussion together and then give them the space separately to be able to then ask questions but they need to know about it everybody needs to know and i when you talk about oh what what went wrong in the past and what was it that they did in the past yeah that kind of thing so i feel like the focus before was i mean you kind of touched on periods, touched on contraception, like don't get pregnant, not to get pregnant. And that was mostly it. You don't have that discussion about period pain and how it could be debilitating and how it could affect your life and how actually that could be due to an underlying condition. And the mitriosis, adenomyosis, fibroids, all these things people don't know about and they suffer for years and years and years and years and they become adults and it's only then that they realize oh

okay this isn't normal yeah and then i guess for boys i often say that yeah you know they're limited to i don't know what dreams and how to put a condom on we need to have better education i think we all know the basics so the classic bleeding admittedly that's what I knew but I think what we wanted to touch on in this episode was the importance of the in-between bits too because I know you kind of said about the period pains but then there's also PMS there's also the post stuff and it's like it's not just what happens in those seven days of the bleed it's everything else around it and I guess people don't really have much awareness of that stuff or the side effects yeah no i think that's great and it's so important because actually the other side can affect an individual quite severely

as well and again because of the hormonal changes so i said the first phase is um the menstruation phase okay during that phase the same thing i'm sorry at the same time you have the follicular phase so that's where the follicles which are immature eggs start to develop okay and as they're developing they're releasing the hormone estrogen now estrogen is that hormone that makes us feel good it gives us the energy it improves our mood mood and it just keeps going higher and higher um as the cycle progresses okay and then at the middle of the cycle that's where the estrogen level peak and ovulation happens so that's where the egg is released and it is at that point where you feel the best you like you you feel like your memory is the best you know you're

energized you're in a great mood and also your libido goes all the way up but that's because of your it's nature essentially your body is saying look you you better get pregnant this month we just released an egg you need to have sex because the egg needs to meet the sperm i mean we've done all this work to get the womb ready. So yeah, in that follicular phase, the womb lining is essentially thickening. It's making itself perfect to hold the fertilized egg. Wow. That's crazy.

Let's get comfy. Let's go. Let's get cozy. Alexa, play Real So Cozy. Right. Okay. Okay, that makes sense yeah okay so that's the best part of the cycle all right and then the egg can live for about 12 to 24 hours okay um and once the egg is released what remains becomes a structure called corpus lithium i don't want to go too technical but it's important to remember this.

That releases the hormone progesterone. Okay. So the estrogen level drops a bit and then it comes up as well a little bit because the corpus luteum will produce both progesterone and estrogen, but more so progesterone. Now that's the hormone that makes us feel blech. Okay. I hate that. So that's a hormone that basically makes us feel quite lethargic.

Our mood is off. We can feel down and depressed and anxious and just not really our best. And also that dip in estrogen, that then also has an effect on our mood and making us feel really oh so that phase after ovulation is called the luteal phase and that's when people tend to experience what we call pms so premenstrual syndrome right that usually lasts around two weeks but it varies depending on the individual and even on the in the individual themselves it can vary for different cycles and um it's also the phase where people can have conditions like pmdd have you guys heard of what no yeah i think so yeah yeah so pmdd stands for premenstrual dysphoric disorder. Okay. And essentially what happens is it's like PMS, but much more severe. And it can be very debilitating.

Again, they can have symptoms of depression, feeling low, irritable, less energy, bloating, abdominal pains, abdominal cramps, just not great. And it can be so bad that actually statistically it was released that 34% of individuals who suffer with PMDD have been suicidal, have had, have attempted to end their lives. So this is why we need to have these conversations. And I was really pleased that you invited me to talk about this because so many people aren't aware of that and they don't make that link of oh I'm always feeling really low right before my period and then I feel better

you know and again because you know everyone sees periods and the menstrual cycle is just it's just one of those things like you know get on with it yeah you don't see it as a big deal or oh she's just so hormonal actually it's a condition that is making people suicidal yeah you know what i mean so yeah so basically that that that's it you have the menstruation side then you have the follicular phase that happens alongside then you have the ovulation the best time yeah and then you have the luteal phase now during that phase the luteal phase if the egg doesn't meet the sperm by that point um then the corpus luteum is like all right what's happening here no no pregnancy all right well i give up it just just dribbles away right yeah and

that's why the the levels of progesterone and estrogen drop significantly and then the cycle starts with the womb lining shedding right oh my god what makes sense 27 years of young age and it makes sense yeah that's mad i'm just taking that in for a minute why do i just not know them basics no i feel like now think about is that i'm trying to like focus obviously i'm back at the gym now so when i'm ready to rumble i'm like yeah cool i'm in my good phase and then when it comes it's like it's a whole new different person and i do feel because i come from a family where it's a lot of females all of us have a different type of emotion sometimes i don't talk to that person because they're very very evil it's one of those where it's like she's very kind today but then she's very low i'm the loud person in my house so when i'm quiet they're like something's wrong period

it's coming it's on its way so it's now that you've explained it it's good to kind of like picture what's going on inside but also think about my emotions my hormones how i'm feeling and how that affects those around me as well do is it quite are we empowering ourselves by tracking ourselves because i think a lot of women maybe you know want to be natural and just want to go with the flow pardon the pun but is it better if we should be looking at okay this is why i'm feeling this way and this is seven days before my period is that better for women i think so i i think it's really important that we know ourselves and we understand our body we understand our cycles we understand how things work for us as individuals yeah because you can kind of plan

your time as well like okay i know that i'm most productive it's coming up soon i'm gonna make sure that i do the best i can during this time and also it helps you have more compassion for yourself because it's like okay actually you know what i'm not being sensitive it's the hormones i literally don't have any control over this yeah it's just one of those things i also think it's helpful and i have a reel on my uh page talks with dr sissy on instagram where i've basically broken down it's a quick video showing you the same person, but over the four phases of the cycle. Right. And I had so many comments and people sending me DMs saying, Oh my God, this makes so much sense. I finally understand why this happens. But it's also been helpful in my relationship. And this is where it's helpful for men to understand. So my husband now, before we used to have more arguments during my luteal phase and he's watched it now

and he's like, oh, okay. She's not being snappy at me. She's not being real. It's not her, it's the luteal. Yeah, literally. It's not you. It's your hormones. Right.

Wow. Yeah, there was a viral clip of Jack Whitehall in one of his standup talking about, oh, I've learned that there's um a viral clip of um jack whitehall in one of his stand-up talking about oh i've learned that there's only a specific number of days a month i should ask my wife something without her getting pissed off and now flow the app have come out with this like uh partner's mode so i don't know how i feel about that i mean it's great we should be tracking ourselves but the idea of a man having one up on me going like oh do you know what do you know what snowbob are asking you today I know what you're doing let me give it a couple of days and she'll be fine yeah it's like no I'm human and also I guess we

have to say not every woman is the same so some people might you know really be affected by those hormone drops than others so and some people might not be affected at all like this is again why i say know yourself know your cycle know how it works and i think honestly i i genuinely think it's a positive thing i don't feel like it's a guy um tracking or it being intrusive and it doesn't have to be a guy like partners can be yeah women as well but um it's just i feel like it can be helpful for relationships right so then you have the understanding that, you know what, they're not attacking me and they're not trying to be difficult with me. Actually, I just need to be more supportive as a partner and realize that, okay, let's just leave it for now.

It's not the right time, you know? So I actually think it's a good thing. I think it's helpful and it could probably prevent loads of squabbles and unnecessary arguments. I'm in two minds i feel like in terms of partners it makes sense but then let's say for instance in the workspace right where when i started work working in retail something as your period i used to dread telling my manager oh i'm on today i can't work or i'm in severe pain i can't come in because it's

one of them ones way it's like they didn't understand it so it's like obviously now that i'm pretty sure i need a manager's mode partner's manager's mode here's a screening of how i feel right now i just find it interesting how back then it was something like okay don't speak about it you're embarrassed about it i can't emotionally come to you and be like i really i love my job don't get me wrong but right now i just can't give me the grace to um you know have this time out because i'm going my body's going through it um so i hear the tracking thing yeah i don't know how to be incorporated with work hello yeah so i think what's really great um with the women's health strategy and also the fact that there's so much more awareness now, there are like now people are becoming more in tune with the fact that you know we can have menstrual health problems that can significantly impact our productivity

our ability to come into work at all you know um and just whether or not um we can perform in the best way um so it's putting things in place to support your employees and also believing your employees, you know, and and making it a safe space that they will feel comfortable enough to have this conversation because it's not inappropriate to have that kind of conversation with your employer. You should be able to say, look, I'm really struggling right now. Yeah. And if, you know, you mentioned that it's because of your period. Yeah. That's fine. You know, but I will also say here, anybody who's watching. struggling right now yeah and if you know you mentioned that it's because of your period yeah that's fine you know but i will also say here anybody who's watching this look if you're having periods that are so painful that they're impacting your life whether that be um affecting you going

to work going to school affecting you doing your day-to-day that is not normal yeah get that checked out i wish i had that please yeah same i wish i had that i i used to miss my exams because they were that bad oh my goodness i'd take my exams when after everybody else did so after i was off then i'll come into a private room then do my exams did you ever get it checked um i did but it was down to like low iron for me oh yeah so you must have had heavy periods yeah very heavy i had the same thing I went to my GP about what I thought was maybe endometriosis symptoms like I when I was at school I used to have the most horrific periods like I would wake up in the middle of the night and black out physically wake up on the on

the bathroom floor and I bled so much and I'm having the bum shooting pains everything is happening and then I've gone to the gp and i've said look at this there's like is this endometriosis like it seems a lot of the symptoms and they said oh well it's just because you've woke up in the middle of the night so it could be low blood sugar um and you could just be having really severe uh period pains and this just went on for years and years and it was never like an endometriosis uh diagnosis it was just, no, you're just a person that has severe period pains. I'm really sorry. I'm really sorry that you went through that. Have you had investigations? No, because it's always been passed off as, yeah, severe period pains. Some people have it worse

than others kind of thing. Okay, so I'm going to debunk that myth. I'm not trying to give any personal medical advice. But I would always say that if you feel like i'm not trying to give any personal medical advice but i would always say that if you feel like you're not listened to and you're not being supported supported sorry uh and you think that it might be a condition please keep pushing for it right whether it means you seek a second or third or fourth opinion just keep pushing you need to have some sort of investigation done, right? If you're concerned that you have heavy, painful periods, they do things like either an ultrasound scan.

If they think that it might be endometriosis, they may do what's called laparoscopy, which is keyhole surgery, where they have a look inside to see whether or not you have endometriotic tissue. So it's always important to please push and advocate for yourself and know that periods that make you black out is not just a plight that you as an individual goes through.

Yeah. And also you need to at least have some sort of treatment because to be honest, there's treatment out there are treatment options out there. And I think that so many times people people have had very painful severe periods for the longest time or heavy periods and say for instance oh it runs in my family or yeah that runs in the family or oh i've had this for the longest time it's fine uh you don't realize that that's not normal and you don't get it checked out yeah i think that again having these conversations openly um learning more about periods and womb health and different menstrual health problems that can be associated and also knowing that you can ask questions you can push for investigations to be done i feel like it could change things so yeah

big especially like that the idea of the in-between bits because yeah we all know that the seven days but kind of highlighting that i'm actually not okay some of the other days of the month and then the bit after that i think that would help both employers people around us our partners yeah definitely knowledge is power it goes a long way so i know there's medication out there obviously the painkillers when people are on there's like the neurofen period pain tablets and so on but in terms of like health food and diet are we doing ourselves a disservice when it comes to like feeding ourselves and how can we kind of like manage like our diet yeah natural okay so what i would say is what i always say to everyone. Okay. When we talk about health in general, the best thing that you can do five, five leading health tips. Okay. Yeah. Make sure that you're eating healthily, right? You're having your fruits and vegetables. Make sure that you're exercising. And yes, you can exercise in can and if you want to. There's a myth that exercise is unsafe or harmful when you're on your period.

That's not true. You can if you want to. Don't smoke. Minimize alcohol or don't drink at all. And maintain a healthy weight. Those are basic things that we should all strive to do. But when we talk about our menstrual health and our diet, they are interlinked. You know, if we're eating unhealthily, if we're having loads of takeout, fried food,

you know, a lot of red meat. Yeah. These are all what we call inflammatory foods, lots of refined sugar. They will impact our periods because they cause the body to become more inflamed and so on so it's really important that we ensure that we have healthy diets that were having anti-inflammatory foods so right yeah the white bread you just need to have i would say basically have the foods that are natural right cut down on your processed food processed meat get the things that grow on the trees yeah you know all those things can help to improve and our overall wellness and our menstrual health yeah so will that like help the side effects a little bit if we if we are nurturing

our body in that way yeah absolutely so when we talk about pain that happens during the period um or when we talk about pain in general it's because of an inflammatory process so if we're eating foods that are causing our body to become more inflamed it will make our period pain worse you know it would perhaps make our periods more heavy it could impact those things it could make us feel worse as well make us feel more lethargic because the body is working harder but that's that's ironic because when i think about the chocolate that i want to consume when i'm in that little time but then i'm bending over like ebenezer scrooge you're walking around the house you're sitting on your bed having a chocolate then a bit i don't feel so great after right exactly but i don't think it's my it's me affecting my period

i'm just thinking it's like oh just the pain so of course it's gonna hurt so yeah it's just getting the balance right i mean obviously we're human i'm not telling you like completely cut them down uh cut them out sorry uh but definitely cut down uh and you might notice the difference a lot of people often say that actually when they've improved their diet they've noticed a change in their cycle sorry in their periods um sometimes they say that it's it's lighter you know it's not as painful yeah so something to consider for sure now i'm thinking about it when i was younger maybe didn't have such a healthier diet but maybe i i think my period pains are less painful as an adult is that like a theory or is that something that happens as you do get older i think it varies depending on the individual

because unfortunately you do have people who as they get older they get worse periods and then also you can get conditions like adenomyosis endometriosis developing as you get older so it varies on the individual it sounds like you've been quite fortunate that things have improved but also you've also said that your diet has improved it has but i was also put on the combined pill so i don't know if that there's interlinks but i haven't i didn't have a period i was always skipping those seven days yeah yeah maybe it wasn't all right. No, no, that's fine. That's fine. Okay. So another myth.

Yeah. And actually, do you know what? This was because it's what we were advised to do initially. So when the pill came out in order for the Catholic church to agree to it, it needed to fit in with what's, what was more, most natural in a woman in that,

you know, we bled for at least seven days so that was the whole point to let you know the person taking the pill bleed for seven days seven days but you didn't have to yeah you know it's come out um that you don't need to take those pill-free breaks it's not necessary at all you can just continue i know there's some um individuals obviously who would prefer to bleed like okay at least i know i was gonna say there's that myth that the blood like collects you're not shedding it well yeah yeah i'm sure i thought that so when you're on the pill it's not the same as when you're not on the pill because you're getting a constant um constant flow of

progesterone and estrogen depending on which one you have so if you have the combined pill it has both estrogen and progesterone because you have a constant small amount um in your blood and your body um that essentially keeps the lining of the womb thin so it's not thickening remember all the period is is you shedding your the lining yeah right so it may thicken very little like a very very very tiny amount yeah and that's why once you stop the pill you have what's called a withdrawal bleed so that's not a period it's just because the hormones you've dropped you basically drop the hormones right you're not having the hormones anymore so you might bleed um just a little bit so you can back

to back it's absolutely fine okay um to do that and it's safe actually and they've said that for instance if you back to back a lot and you start to notice that you're having spotting and all of that then take a four or seven day break yeah start a new pack again and shake it back to speaking of leading myths we had another one uh the concept of syncing up yeah with your friends i remember at school one of us on our period the next day it's like a pack of werewolves yeah yeah is that a real thing no unfortunately sorry guys i hate to break it to you but no i know it's pretty cool right um well not i don't know depending on who's living i mean the pack of individuals i used to love it because let's say for instance at home

and my parents used to live with us it used to be my mom me then my sister so my mom would buy the pair of pads she'll stock up the fridge and everything like okay cool then my sister oh yes god i'm next to school i have a pair of myself so it's just a coincidence yes literally the best word to use let me explain okay the science not the moon or the sea or the water no right no no and you're not syncing anything up or anything like that it's basically um it's it's it's kind of like i guess it's by chance what happens is if for instance okay you it may actually be that you know you've lived with people who all have a similar length of cycle similar length of period and then it just coincided that y'all are having it at the same time or it could be that say for instance three

different um people with three different cycles are living together say one has a short cycle of 23 days the other one may have 28 the other one has 30 right and say one's period lasts seven days and the other one's last four and the other one lasts five eventually it will come a time where all of you will be on the period at the same time but one of them might be on day two whilst the other one is on day five and the other one might be on day seven so it seems like y'all are having the same uh the period at the same time but you're not that doesn't make sense because the next month it didn't really happen again we just mean the lulu oh man is that confirmation bias you want it to be true like listen to how this is going to be a part of something oh my god so you only remember the

times when you synced up and it might have been that it was only i don't know three or four times in the year oh my god we're always synced up no she said no oh wow i thought that was true that's wild i thought that was the cool thing about here we all synced yeah we're back to back okay so are there any other myths you hear around you know periods menstrual cycles that we can debunk? Yeah. So, okay. What do we say? Okay.

Here's another one. But this is with regards to period products. Okay. So can tampons get lost inside you or menstrual cups? Yes. Yeah. Maybe not lost, but wedged. Okay.

Wedged. Okay. Stuck. Stuck. Sorry. Wedged. Okay. Stuck. Stuck. Sorry. Good. So that you said yes, but actually it's no. Okay.

So they can never get lost. Yeah. They can get stuck and difficult to find, but they can never get lost because, ah, anatomy lesson. It's go. You have the gatekeeper of the womb, basically. So obviously this is the vagina right the only place you can go is up here right and this is the cervix and the cervix has the tiniest hole

unless you're giving birth and it's 10 centimeters and so if you think about it say this is a menstrual cup right you put the menstrual cup in yeah it just sits there there's literally nowhere else for it to go right it can't it cannot go back past there and then i just twinged inside but again with the tampon nowhere else to go there's so many like back in the day rumor that you hear you're thinking that's why i used to be scared of wearing a tampon same same i wore a pad for years there was oh gosh i've got a very embarrassing story right so we went to visit a family friend in paris in france they live in the

countryside so imagine the nearest shop is an hour drive oh gosh and i was on right so we run out of pads and i'm like i need to change my pad so see there was at the time there was only my cousin and her her partner there and i think she was out in the garden and he was in the house. So getting to the bathroom, oh, ran out of pads. And I was like, knocking, guys, I need some, I need some pads.

And all this tampons, I don't like that. I'm going to get pregnant. I can't put that on me. I was actually so, I panicked. I stayed in that bathroom until they drove an hour to buy pads. It was the most traumatic experience. So those tampons there.

Put them away. They're not my best friend. I've grown now. Yeah. But it was a very traumatic moment for me. I think that's the case for a lot of people. I was exactly the same. I don't know why I was so scared of tampons.

Yeah, literally. I think it's the thought of having something inside you, because I was the same. And then there are individuals who may suffer with a condition called vaginismus, which is where you get involuntary spasms of the vaginal muscles or the pelvic floor muscles. So, like, literally, you feel like you cannot get anything in. So that sometimes can make it scary, and then it's like what's going on but yeah

if you've ever if you've ever experienced that again go see your doctor there's a there is a cure it can be cured um you just need the support yeah my mom hates them she used to scare us like it's not good african parents it's not good you shouldn't put it up you but mom i don't want to leak if my pad is overfilled so see that isn't normal that's another oh christine look you shouldn't be doubling up on your period products if you need to do that yeah that's not normal you need to get checked out it means your periods are too heavy and it could be that there's an underlying condition yeah No way. Yes. If you're having to change your pads every hour, right? If you're having to double up on your pads,

if you're bleeding through constantly, it's called flooding. If you're experiencing flooding, anything like that, that's not normal. You know, that means that your periods are too heavy. And again, it could be an underlying condition. It could be fibroids, which is actually more common in black women you know two to three times more common so it's important that you know that even again even if it runs in your family that oh you know we all have heavy periods it doesn't mean anything please just get it checked out because there are

simple things that we can do again ultrasound scan scan to see whether or not there's something underlying. Again, bloods. Is there a thyroid disorder or something? There is something that we can always do to try and figure it out. But at the same time, there's something that we can do and give you to help manage it. Because if you're losing a lot of blood from your period, it's going to make your iron low, which then can cause the symptoms of anemia, headache lethargy tiredness dizziness that's great that's so true i think it always gets blamed on like oh do you know my mom my mom used to have heavy periods or like

that this is just normal but it's just like no what's actually normal for you i think what we do a lot of the time is a look around to other people and like my friends might have had really light periods then they went on the pill but that might not have been right for me but i think what we do a lot of the time is to look around to other people and like my friends might have had really light periods then they went on the pill but that might not have been right for me but i think what's important with getting to know ourselves is what is our own normal kind of thing that's true so we got some myths that we found on the internet and we just want to share some of them with you and then we can kind of like you know debunk them and see whether they're are they real are they yeah let's do it so first one you can't get pregnant on your period oh this is my favorite one oh all right you can you can you yes but the how does the egg somewhere yeah okay shall we talk about it please

it all has to do with cycles and the length okay now remember i told you that the egg can live for 12 to 24 hours all right? Sperm can live up to five days. Okay. All right. Now think about it. Of course they can. Of course they can. You know, they're resilient.

They stick around. They don't die. Where's the egg? So if you, for instance, have a period that lasts, let's say seven days, right? And you have sex on day seven all right um and the sperm's hanging around and where in you guys chilling oh my gosh pesky little yeah it's hanging around okay right and it lives five days and say that's around day 12.

Say your cycles are only 24 days in length. Let's say something like that. Right. And let's say you ovulate around, so ovulation can happen anytime between nine to seven days, nine to 17, day nine to 17. Okay. Right. What if ovulation happened around that day 12 yeah right if you had

a shorter cycle the sperm is there the egg is there get out they met and the baby came so so it doesn't even have to happen on said day of sex. The sperm and egg can be doing the dance. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They just need to meet. That's literally it. You know, you could make so many videos out there.

It's possible. But literally, you could just, it could be, you know, one of those scary movies just lurking around waiting for the egg to come out. And the egg is like oh there you go there you go i hate that i hate that and there have been people who've been cut out um because they think oh you know what we're having sex when i'm on my period um the egg isn't there so it's absolutely fine and again this is why it is very important to understand and know your cycle yeah so what some people do is they may uh you can kind of tell when around

the time when you're going to ovulate so often um there's like a slight temperature rise so you feel warmer also you can some people check their cervical mucus my friend says she feel can feel it yes when the egg pops yes is that a thing whoa whoa whoa whoa what do you mean you feel like she said she goes oh excuse me there it goes it's like a click inside kind of release

yes that's true it's called mittelschmerz that's what the pin is called I think that's the person who who discovered it

but yeah no it's possible and it's because yeah you technically it is the egg is released yeah so some people can feel it and they can feel what side.

What side? Yeah, yeah. Wait, so when, oh my God, maybe no, maybe I feel it too. I get a bit of like, oh, what's going on here? Probably just gas, Christy. I might be feeling it. I'm going to check my cycle. I might be feeling it, maybe.

Wow, interesting. So wait, how do I know if two eggs come out? Was it, because I want twins, so. Oh, no one yeah but but i mean sometimes yeah sometimes two eggs can be released but um i think what often happens is you get the anyways that's not how twins work yeah you'll be back for a baby episode basics the babies okay uh number two rare very very rare um virgins can't wear tampons that's a good one that's a good one that's of course no false so what the heck is virginity i like i hate that word yeah you know don't ask me but no first of all virginity is a social construct okay right yeah and that has patriarchy riddled all over it because how do we know whether a man is a virgin or not you know what i mean so often when they talk about virginity and women right it's because of this thin band of tissue called the hymen okay and often we have it

when we're born um and it's just a thin sheet that often covers just at the entrance of the vagina yeah but there's so many different types of hymen some people don't even have any holes coming out of it some people have um like holes on either side. There's so many different names, so many different types. Okay. Now there is this thought process that if, you know, you put a tampon in, it's going to break it. Right. Because the skin is supposed to be, it's supposed to be this closed sheet that has tiny holes to allow you to

bleed when you're on your period right um but when you put a tampon and you rip it and and that's an indication that you don't have your virginity anymore but that's i'm like in the nicest way that's stupid you know so tampon's gonna take away my virginity my finger is gonna take away my virginity or things like horseback riding or cycling or gymnastics anything can break break the hymen and actually sometimes it doesn't even break it just stretches a little bit and to allow things to go into place so no that in order for that myth to be true virginity and hymen all of that needs to be true as well but that's a social construct and also define virgin does virgin mean that you've never had penetrative sex so does that mean that sex is only sex if it's penetrative right what about people who don't have sex um that's penetrative whether it's same-sex couples or do you know what i mean yeah

such a good point it negates them completely okay here next one says you shouldn't have sex on your period you can do what you want free world free will right you guys answered it yeah yeah you can have sex on your period i think um it's whatever your preference is for some people actually it can help with the period cramps because when you're having sex you're releasing oxytocin you know and again that's like a feel good hormone yeah that can help with the cramps some people say they feel hornier on their period that thing yeah yeah yeah that can happen to some individuals again how your body responds um another one you don't bleed when you're sleeping it's like a coke bottle laid down whoever put that detail in oh weird

oh because when you stand up it's like gravity okay let us debunk this yeah please i'm really thrown off by the coke bottle why does it have to be a coke bottle yeah comparing a lovely lazy lovely female to a what figure eight right i knew um okay so it okay gravity helps obviously but it's not about gravity what it is there is a hormone released when we are having our period or during menstruation okay it's called prostaglandins and it causes the womb muscles to contract and it is this contraction which helps to expel the womb lining right so even if you're lying flat regardless of gravity because it's still

doing that it's gonna come out i mean obviously if you stand up it i mean it happens you stand up when you're on your period and you can feel a gush that's gravity yeah but yes when you're sleeping you can still bleed and that's why some people unfortunately notice that you know they they may have bled through their pads right you know in their sleep at night of course it's possible yes uh christy that's one yeah so pms is all in the head that is body mind and soul yeah pms stress what's it pre-menstrual syndrome syndrome no of course not it is a real thing and that's such a dismissive and gaslighting comment and statement to make because actually if you didn't

know this 90 of women go through pms and again i told you it's because of the hormonal changes and how we respond to it the severe most severe form pmdd can be so bad, like I say, it can make people feel suicidal. And the issue when it comes to this is that it's so dismissed or misunderstood that you have statements like this, which is completely unhelpful. PMS is real. We need more research on PMS. Interesting fact, in case you guys were wondering. Okay, I'm going to ask you actually the question. How many times more research do you think there is on erectile dysfunction compared to pms oh there's an annoying amount yeah let's say between one to five how many times do you think there's probably

five times more yeah there is there's five times more research on erectile dysfunction that affects 19 of men compared to PMS that affects 90% of women. Do you know what I find this very unfair? We're meant to be carrying the kids of the future right so you guys need to look after us. So do the research on us please and thank you. Listen okay do you know minus cancer research it's about one to two percent of overall health research on women's health minus cancer come um affecting 51 of the population there's about one to two percent things are improving painfully slowly but we're getting there eventually essentially what it was is that the healthcare system was created by men for men and also because us women are so complicated with our

cycles and our hormones doing that it's like no no no let's not test it on them we need something more stable to test it on men so a lot of the times a lot of the medications that have been out there have been specifically tested and tried out on men and not women and it's only now that they're doing more and more of the research and even something like if we're not even talking about health sorry i get really frustrated by this reality even seat belts you know and accidents prevention everything was done tested on a male dummy it's only i think last year or the year before that they started testing on female dummies like with breasts you know great interesting and even i'm sorry and one more thing and even the cpr dummies they never had breasts right yeah hyper sexualized now

we have an annie yeah oh yeah'm at my training. Love it. Mad. Okay. You can speed up your period by pushing it out. No, surely not. Of course not. Why would you do that? Yeah.

So no, no, no. Okay. Christine? You lose a teaspoon amount of blood. Wrong. I do about 17 ladles. 17 ladles? Oh my goodness. That is not a teaspoon amount of blood wrong i do about 70 ladles that is so oh my goodness that is not a teaspoon no that's a small amount so um on average they say it shouldn't it shouldn't be more than 80 mils i i guess that's not like it's at 80 ladles i was like

so it shouldn't be more than that much i don't know how how how many meals is a teaspoon i guess it depends okay but the truth of the matter is it varies depending on the individual um again it's what it is for you as the individual and if you are finding that you're passing um lots of clots right or you're having you're changing your pad like literally it's blood filled it's soaked then that's abnormal but yeah if you change your pad i guess every four to five hours and you know it's not completely filling up the whole thing and obviously it gets lighter as the days go on yeah that should be fine it's another interesting fact is that for the longest time when they tested on period products they use like this they didn't use blood they'd never use blood they only started

using blood last year wait what so what were they using that little blue liquid on the adverts that they put in the yeah and obviously blood is very different to that so it's only i i believe um it was only last year that we were able to quantify how much of the products could actually carry because before it was like oh you can carry this much blood or you know it's it's perfect for your period and actually when we tested it with blood it wasn't it wasn't as great yeah certain products the cheek um okay next one women get me sorry women get moody when they're on their period because that's when testosterone levels are the highest whereas men are strongest because they're used to these levels all the time oh wow who wrote that okay um i'm not sure when testosterone is the highest i don't think it's then i thought that

it would have been around ovulation time but i'll check that okay um so women we've already spoken about this the reason that they're moody during um the period is because of that significant drop in sex hormone levels and the estrogen is lowest at that point as well um so that's why but also they're moody because they're in freaking pain thank you excuse me thank you talk to me like that yeah right lethargic yeah thank you god if i saw a man shedding his uterus lining oh i'd like to see you try well one day okay interesting fact if you guys didn't know this one i'm just dropping all these facts for you guys um period pain they've discovered can be as significant and as severe and as painful as a heart attack i can believe that for some individuals i'm not saying that's all that's right now now when i was in med

school and even you know as a as a doctor if we think that someone um is having a heart attack yeah we follow the acronym mona m being the first thing morphine we give the person morphine because they're having a heart attack if period pains can be as significant as a heart attack and we're telling them go take paracetamol or hot water bottle come on you know what i mean i'm supposed to go to work when i'm having a inside heart attack in my pelvis leave my house get on that transfer and not on my period oh my god so yeah it can be that significant and I guess the point of the matter is let's just completely oh I work with well-being of women I'm an ambassador for well-being of women and we started a campaign called just a period which

essentially is to remove that term completely it's never just a period okay let's stop you know nullifying and belittling experience lived in experience that people go through and let's believe people when they say like women especially when they say i'm in pain i can't do this yeah and also let's stop gaslighting each other you know like okay maybe my periods aren't that heavy or aren't that painful that doesn't mean everyone else's period is not like don't say oh you know they use the word man up no yeah i'm gonna say that if i ain't man up for nobody yeah but oh i you know sometimes you have to be careful i'm a feminist okay but that doesn't mean i'm anti-man i have a husband and i have a son yeah okay it's not about that it's just for equal and equitable rights and

equitable um treatment yeah because the gap the gender health gap is ridiculous and it's so bad in so many parts of the world even in the UK we have the worst we have the worst gender health gap I think in the whole of the g20 whoa we need to do better we need to listen to ourselves better when the women's health um they did a a women's health survey the call for evidence the department of health in 2021 21 and the people who came out what came out of it out of a hundred thousand women was that 80 of them felt like they were dismissed or weren't listened to 80 we need to do better and i say that as a health care professional and going back to that point we shouldn't make periods comparable to a man being kicked in the balls stop saying that stop thank you okay um next

one you can't eat or drink cold foods on your period because it will make your flow chunky oh wow where'd you guys get these yeah what wow um i'm sure that's got absolutely nothing to do with the texture of my blood no I don't know where that's come from silly okay last one uh don't eat warm foods because it will make your flow heavy no I don't know about look I okay these are all just interesting interesting facts I mean I'll I'll say that if you feel hot if you you feel overheated, maybe don't eat the hot food. Yeah. Do what works for you.

Yeah. Do what works for you, works best for you. It's not going to heat up your... Come on. It's not going to cook my insides. Just bubbling it while it comes out.

It's like, then don't use a hot water bottle. I don't know about that one. Okay. But yeah, I would say false. If you touch plants during your period, they will die.

Wow. Power, man. That's the same little, same little witches that were saying about syncing up periods. I think it's because for the longest time, whenever we thought about periods or we talked about periods, it's often seen as dirty

and toxins and in some cultures they say you know the women need to stay indoors or just stay away from people you know there was that there was a lot of that ideology when in some respects it at that time it's kind of like okay we're giving the woman time to go through it it was supposed to and my and look i this is my understanding i think it was probably supposed to be like a supportive thing maybe during that phase okay but then i with time it it's just that myth of it's dirty it's toxins you're passing germs around you know so that's why i guess maybe that's where that myths come from where you touch a plant and they die i'm on my period it's not true okay good good amazing what i've got a myth well i saw i used to think i used to think that we only got our periods because of adam and eve because eve

at the apple oh god that was like karma yeah that's karma for us because she had the okay let's talk about the beauty of periods because we often focus on the negatives yeah the whole process of this menstrual cycle is to make a baby it's beautiful forget about that part don't we yeah it's true it's an amazing thing life yeah and the whole process is to create life and the periods happen because unfortunately you know it didn't happen at that on at that point but you know it's also it's a good way it's to tell us that you know things are healthy it's it's a good thing to happen uh to us as as women as people menstruate as individuals it's part of life yeah i think that's a good note to end on it's a very powerful thing but we should empower ourselves by understanding what is going on inside us yeah because it only

helps ourselves and everyone else around us kind of thing our group chats our girlies yeah i love that share the words yeah love it well thank you so much for joining us it's been amazing thanks for having me i i just want to say do not keep this in the group chat please go and share yeah yeah yes please these are conversations we need to keep having and just yeah let's just stop the taboo and break it yes absolutely well thank you so much uh and i hope you guys enjoyed this episode of t at four and we'll see you next week that was so good i love my periods