The Menstruality Podcast - 162. The Connection Between Food and Menstrual Cycle Health (Lisa Hendrickson-Jack)

Episode Date: September 5, 2024

Are you (or your friends or the people you work with) struggling with menstrual health challenges like irregular cycles, spotting or heavy bleeding, menstrual pain, PCOS and intense mood changes in the premenstrual phase? Would you love to understand how you could work with food and dietary shifts to create menstrual health?Our guest today is Lisa Hendrickson-Jack, the author of The Fifth Vital Sign, and teaches women’s health professionals to use the menstrual cycle as a vital sign in their practices, so they can empower their clients to optimize their hormones, menstrual cycles. She is the co-author of Real Food for Fertility with Lily Nichols, which contains a wealth of information about how food can support cycle health and in today’s conversation Lisa shares her top tips for healing menstrual health challenges. We explore:The dietary changes helped Lisa heal her period pain from fibroids, including a simple switch with her dairy consumption, reducing inflammatory foods and increasing green leafy vegetables.Why balancing our macronutrients (protein, fat and carbohydrates) is key to hormonal health, and how the calorie counting, breakfast-skipping culture hasn’t done any of us any favours. The foods to include, eat more of, or go easy on if you’re experiencing intense mood changes in the premenstrual phase (hint: a real game changer for PMS is ensuring you’re having enough protein). ---Receive our free video training: Love Your Cycle, Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life - www.redschool.net/love---The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [e-mail]---Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.schoolSophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardyLisa Hendrickson Jack: @fertilityfriday - https://www.instagram.com/fertilityfriday

Welcome to the Menstruality Podcast, where we share inspiring conversations about the power of menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause. This podcast is brought to you by Red School, where we're training the menstruality leaders of the future. I'm your host, Sophie Jane Hardy, and I'll be joined often by Red School's founders, Alexandra and Sharni, as well as an inspiring group of pioneers, activists, changemakers and creatives to explore how you can unashamedly claim the power of the menstrual cycle to activate your unique form of leadership for yourself, your community and the world. Hey, welcome back. Thank you so much for joining us today. Are you or someone you know or someone you work with struggling with menstrual health challenges like irregular cycles, spotting or

heavy bleeding, menstrual pain, PCOS or intense mood changes in the premenstrual phase of the cycle. And would you love to understand how you could work with food and dietary shifts to create menstrual health? I learned so much from this conversation. Our guest today is Lisa Hendrickson-Jack. She's the author of The Fifth Vital Sign, amazing book, and teaches women's health professionals to use the menstrual cycle as a vital sign in their practices so they can empower their clients to optimize their hormones and their menstrual cycles. She's also the co-author of Real Food for Fertility with Lily Nichols, which contains a wealth of information about food and the menstrual cycle. And in my conversation with Lisa today, we're exploring her top tips for healing menstrual

health challenges with food. So let's get started with how what we eat impacts menstrual cycle health with Lisa Hendrickson-Jack. So Lisa, it's so great to be with you again. We spoke maybe two years ago when we were doing our Wild Power Retreat about cycle health in general. And today we're going to look at this amazing, huge book that you've written, Real Food for Fertility. And yeah, really about how what we eat impacts our cycle health. But first, I'd love to hear how you are and maybe through a cycle awareness lens, where are you at in your cycle? How's it feeling? Oh, that's a great question. So I am actually in the menstrual phase right now. In the interest of TMI, it's why is it TMI Tuesdays. I'm not sure when it'll be released, but we are

recording on a TMI Tuesday. So I'm in the menstrual phase. So I am towards the end of that, which is great, because I think as your audience well knows, I can still do anything I need to do on any day of the cycle, but my preference is to be a little bit more in my bed, or relaxing or doing non, you know, activities during that time. But yes, that's where I am from a menstrual lens. And then in a general lens, I'm in the mid summer, and I just came home from a trip with the kids. So I took them across the country to see their grandfather. And so, yeah, we're in the midst of some summer fun and now just kind of catching back up now that we got back to work. So it's actually a good time, like cycle timing wise to be in that kind of menstrual pre-spring phase while I'm kind of getting back into the swing of things. Yeah, nice. How is it for you having kids on a menstrual cycle? Like, are you able to get some rest when you bleed? Or like, what are your strategies for having a bit more space when you're in the menstrual phase? Well, I mean, ideally, I'm not traveling and all of that in the middle of my period. But with that said, I have,

so I have two older children, like some of the listeners and like that's not older, 11 and eight. And then I have my baby girl who is two. So with the age difference, I am able to get some balance because if I really need a little bit of space, like my 11 year old and eight year old, they're fully capable of making breakfast for themselves. And so we've, you know, we do our best to teach them a lot of the life skills that are necessary. So, so yeah, so we are, I am able to negotiate that my husband's really supportive. And so I, I do kind of navigate that. And it's been so many years of having the cycle. So it's also something that I've had many years of experience and prep

and those kinds of things. So for example, on days, like this one, where I'm doing interviews and calls, and I'm also in that menstrual phase phase we usually try to do a light dinner option that doesn't require a lot of complex cooking or things like that so we kind of do our best to negotiate it's not always perfect but we do our best to negotiate that totally same I always try and like on day 26 27 cook up a big something so there's like something there to eat but you know life yes of course could you take us back to the beginning um so that we can understand what inspired this work for you because I know I read I think it might have been in real food for facility or somewhere else that you as a young girl you had really painful periods and then you were coming like on and off the pill and could

you sort of tell it tell us about that story and what inspired this work for you? Yeah no that's great it's always fun to kind of go back and talk about those things so there's a few things that shaped me into this work and looking back I definitely feel like it wasn't a coincidence so I think that I was probably supposed to be doing this. But one of my earlier memories actually was of my mom. My mom had very heavy periods, never painful, extremely heavy. She had fibroids. And that interfered with her ability to have more children. So she wanted to, so I'm one, only child. And she wanted to have more children and they actually did try, but that pregnancy ended in miscarriage. And so, you know, at that time it was so different though, that

would have been in the eighties, you know? And so she had these fibroids and they grew quite a bit. So I remember her appearing kind of like she was pregnant and that went on for a long, long, long time. And then it resulted in her having to get a hysterectomy. So this is something I shared at the beginning of the fifth vital sign. And I remember during that time, my aunt, her eldest sister came to visit, and she shared that she also had a hysterectomy. And had like, they talked about the same kind of problems. You know, she talked about the time when she had, she put on one of those giant pads and the giant tampon and went to work and still someone tapped her on the shoulder and said, you know. So that was one of those kind of formative experiences where quite legitimately being young, I was probably about 10 or something when I was privy to these adult conversations.

And I remember thinking to myself, you know, I want to learn a little bit about what's going on. So I hopefully don't have to experience that. I just didn't, I was hoping that I wouldn't have to have a hysterectomy. So when I first had my periods, they were heavy and painful from the beginning. So I guess my mom's periods were not painful, but mine were from the start. And that was, yeah, that was something that continued for a while so like most girls I went I would say most at the time when I was growing up girls talked so you kind of knew that if you go to the doctor and asked to be put on the pill your periods are supposed to be quote lighter and all the things so that's what I did and the doctor put me on the pill right off the bat and I barely had to fit I didn't even have to finish my sentence, really. I think he was already writing the prescription. And so being a child, I thought to myself like,

yay, I'm fixed. This is great. And so every now and then, because I was not using the pill for birth control at this time, I would come off of the pill and lo and behold, my actual periods would come back with a vengeance. And in my case, they were different. When I was on the pill, not a lot of pain, the periods were a little bit more manageable in terms of volume. But then I would come off and it was just like, whoosh, and it was just as painful as it was before. So that was something that I didn't have the words to describe that. But I did know then from my experience that it wasn't actually my period. And it didn't actually fix my period. So that set me up for a whole lot of stuff.

Because then when I actually needed birth control, I found fertility awareness. And I had this kind of sense, given what I shared, that I wanted to figure it out. I didn't know anything, but I wanted to figure it out. And so I wanted to actually come off of the pill so that I could see what my cycles were really like, because I knew they weren't like whatever the pill cycles were. And so when I needed birth control, that's when I decided I was going to come off the pill. I'm a child of the 80s and 90s. And so they taught us that condoms work. So I wasn't afraid of using condoms. I actually thought that they were a valid, effective method. I think it's so different now because so many of the girls are not at all taught that condoms are effective. and they think of it as like a side method in addition to the pill.

But I just like to clarify that because I grew up before the, maybe before the pharmaceutical industry took a full hold. I don't know. And yeah, so that was what I did. I came off the pill and then I tried to manage. So in my 20s, the pain was pretty significant. I mean, I would sometimes be on the floor and I tried lots of different things at the time. There wasn't a lot of information available for me. I wish I knew then what I know now. This is why I've written these books and shared more information about the evidence-based strategies to reduce period pain. And so now I'm quite fortunate that through a variety of different factors, including a lot of those specific strategies that I learned along the way, I no longer experience

these ridiculously painful periods every time. Nowadays, it kind of ranges on that scale of zero to 10, 10 being like someone's trying to stab you in the stomach. It's either nothing or, you know, maybe a one sometimes if it's really bad, it's like a two. So it's been very nice for me to be able to come full circle with that. For those listening who are experiencing intense pain, I can imagine they're thinking, please tell me what you have done, Lisa. Could you summarize in a nutshell some of the things that you think helped the most? I mean, certainly making different dietary changes. Like when I was growing up, I mean, I was addicted to sugar and I was eating gummy candies and all the things like as if they were

a food group. And I was definitely under eating protein. So I feel like my diet was like mostly carbs and all of that. So yeah, that was a big part of it. And the quality of, no one in the 90s that I remember, I mean, that's not true because there was always a few people that were hip to it. I always had some friends whose parents were, you know, hip to this stuff. But I grew up in a small town and so no one was talking about food quality and, you know, getting your meat from a local farm and stuff like that, getting your milk from, no one's talking about that. So the dairy, the meat, all the things that I was consuming were just the regular conventional, highly inflammatory products. So I would say these days, I mean, we get our milk from a farm, it's raw. I know people asking me about that a lot.

And A2 versus A1, which is known to be less inflammatory. I think that that plays a role. What's A2 versus A1? So there's a protein in the milk that is known to cause a lot of problems and inflammation. So for example, you've probably heard of children who they can't have cow's milk, but they can have goat's milk or sheep's milk. And a big part of that is the protein. So the sheep's and goat's milk are naturally A2, have that protein. Whereas the conventional cows, like the Holstein cows, tend to make milk with that A1 protein. And there's a lot of research on the link between that and inflammation and a variety of other issues. And it's very interesting. I talked about that. We talked about it in both books. So we

talked about that a bit in Real Food for Fertility. And I kind of went to town at this like huge milk section in the fifth vital sign where I talk a little bit about that. And so for some women who have severe period pain, if they switch from the A1 dairy, so nowadays, it's a little bit different because nowadays there are, depending on where you live and depending on what type of milk they stock in the store, you can find A2 cow's milk and they'll sell it that way. They'll say that it's A2 and stuff like that because people are becoming hip to it. And typically it's the Jersey or Guernsey cows that have the milk that's more predominantly A2. I know way too much about cows.

Yeah, and especially because I get my milk raw too. So like the farmers, we have Guernsey cows that you know, all the things. But yeah, so there's some women who have really intense period pain, and they switch up the milk, they switch up to whether it's they go to sheep's milk, or goat's milk, or buffalo milk. milk now it's crazy what they have now or uh you know maybe they just find it a two sores so this isn't a panacea for everybody it's obviously not just as simple as this for every single person so i'm not trying to minimize it but some women do find that they have significant relief from making one of those types of shifts because i know sometimes women are just told like don't have milk at all. But it is helpful to learn about the differences. So conventional dairy cows are fed

grains, which leads to a higher omega six composition in the milk, which thus increases inflammation. Whereas when cows eat grass, like they're supposed to. The milk composition is more balanced, more of a favorable omega-3, omega-6 ratio. So there is even just the quality of the milk can improve. But for some women, it's not only the quality, it's also this protein issue. And so they find that switching to one of those different sources. So that was something I would say played a role as well as the excessive sugar consumption, the lack of information about nutrition. I grew up learning about the food guide. And it's much more educational to learn about macronutrients, protein, fat and carbohydrates and learning that within each of those categories, there are more, you know, nutrient dense, less nutrient

dense options, and more inflammatory, less inflammatory options that can be helpful. So I would say one big piece of it is learning about what foods are inflammatory, and reducing those and then increasing foods that are not inflammatory. So incorporating more green vegetables, incorporating fish and seafood that are naturally higher in omega-3 fatty acids, and just really making that a part of the everyday. I think it's also sometimes challenging as a teenager, because you're not necessarily making the meals. Like my mom was a wonderful cook, and she cooked all the time. But you know what, we know a lot more now about nutrition. So in addition to that,

I also want to mention because this is something a bit controversial, and it could be a bit like it's, I'll just say it, and then you can tell me. I did have three children in the middle of that. So my nutritional changes definitely made a difference. But I also want to mention that after having my children, there was a bit of a shift as well. And I mentioned that it's controversial, because I mean, many women are just totally passed off when they have period pain, their doctors tell them, oh, just have a baby. And it's like, well, that's not like, what is wrong with you people? And it doesn't mean that everybody has this experience of they have a child, and then it's magically better. I think

that it's important to be aware of that. But for some women, they do find that after they have children, there's a bit of a shift. So in my case, I would say that that probably did play a role. It was probably one of the factors. But given that I had a significant gap between my second child, who's eight, and my baby, who's two on purpose. We just had two boys and we were very busy. So we were a little bit of an add to the mix. But I did find that the pain started to kind of like resurface a little bit more as that gap, like as my son, as it had been like five years and six years. And at that point, I was relying more heavily on my strategies. So and in addition to that, I mean, it's a big question. But in addition to that,

there's also specific key nutrients that I incorporate on a regular basis. So things like magnesium and zinc, and so the things that we know to be anti inflammatory, N-acetylcysteine, there's some research on N-acetylcysteine NAC and reducing endometriotic lesions. And I don't know if I have endometriosis, but I think that it's possible. I think it's a possibility given the nature of the pain that I've experienced and things like that. So yeah, so that's kind of, and turmeric and like, there's a variety of things, but the focus on reducing inflammatory factors and increasing the anti-inflammatory options. That's so helpful. Yeah. I was, I went through infertility treatment for a long time and I was told that my, I did get pregnant. I was lucky I got pregnant. I was told that my fibroids might go because of the pregnancy hormones. And I haven't had period pain since

RT. So it's, yeah, it is interesting, but I see why you say it's controversial because it can be used as like a fobbing off thing yeah yeah and then all women don't necessarily have the experience of after they have a pregnancy to just not have any pain anymore no that was already really interesting and I just I learned so much from you like this book I mean like the milk thing I didn't know that I don't I can't drink cow's milk it gives me pain so but then when I have sheep it's a bit better so now I know why I didn't know and this book real food for fertility it's huge and I just wanted to start by saying like thank you so much for making it so heavily researched because I think one of the things you say or something I heard you say in an interview

was there was just so much information out there about food and the menstrual cycle. And you two wanted to make sure it was evidence based throughout so that people could really lean into it and relax into it. And that was my experience. And I remember you said that there's like 2000 references and you had to publish them in a PDF because it would have made the book like 200 pages longer. Yeah, it's kind of it's a whole thing. I mean, part of it, I think there's a lot of different reasons for it. I think there is sometimes this kind of like, are you doing it because you don't feel secure in what you're saying? So you need to like, so there was because I had a lot of conversations with the editor as

well, because I'm like the citation crazy person where one note can have five to 10 papers attached to it. So when you see the number 25 in the chapter, if you go to 25, there could be like four papers or five papers or something like that. But there's a number of reasons. One of the reasons I would say from my personal motivation is that I was literally on calls before this one. I spend my days listening to women tell me about their experiences with their medical doctors. So I had a woman today tell me that her doctor told her not to eat liver. So she's like postpartum. And she wants to have another baby. And she was told that. But I was like, well, did the doctor provide you with a

like a research paper? Like, no, because when you're a medical doctor, you can just say things because of your credentials and you're just assumed to be accurate, regardless of whether you actually had training on that topic or not. So given this history of just women just being told things by their medical doctors that often the things that they're being told are outside of these individuals specialization, frankly. I aim to not be that for this person. So I don't want my clients to come to me and say, oh, well, Lisa told me this, so I'm going to do it. I don't want that. I want you to know that, you know, this recommendation is coming

from a certain place and this is what it is and this is why and this study said that and etc. Because it's just, well, first of all, it's actually more ethical. It takes it into a more professional place. Obviously, if there's evidence behind a recommendation, it's more likely to be effective. But also, it empowers the woman to then if she wants to lean into that a little more, if she wants to do a little bit more of her own independent research into it, then she has the ability to do that. And I think there's part of me that wants to up level how we look at all professionals so that when your doctor says that thing in the office, that you don't just say, okay, that you say, well, interesting. Can you show me where you read about that? I'd love to

read the research on it. I think that it's time we start asking everybody to kind of like back up what they're saying. So that's a big piece of it. But I think also Lily's work and my work, we've always had that research focus on it. Yeah, I just I think part of it is that because now when Lily posts something, or when I post something, or when we talk about something, we're literally asked for that research, which is great. I'm really glad that everyone does that. Please do that with your doctors also. Yeah, happened to me when I was pregnant. They were like, well, you're 40. and it was an IVF pregnancy. So we're going to induce you at 38 weeks. And I said, oh, why?

You know, I'm just interested. They said it's just what we do. I did a bit of research. There's no evidence for it. And I came back and said, hey, there's no evidence for this. They said, fine. OK, we won't. And I thought, OK, that's like that makes a really big difference. Yeah. Thank you. It's about power, too, too isn't it it's like there are power structures when you go into the doctor's office you're immediately often on the back foot unless they're a really great doctor who knows how to level the playing field and like so much of what we're doing at red school is about women and people who bleed having finding their own agency again coming home to themselves finding their own authority authority and using the menstrual cycle as a way to connect to their own power.

So I just really feel like you're part of this movement and this momentum there. And I really appreciate it. Well, thank you. And there's something else that came to mind as you said that, which is that especially when recommendations are kind of going against what the typical guidelines are or what the kind of going thing that we all do, like going on the pill for every possible period problem. So when you're recommending something that is different to what is kind of like the state of, what is it like the status quo? Yeah, status quo. Thank you.

Then it does help also to have that justification for it because people want to know, well, this is different to what I was told. You know, my, going back to the example that I shared, like my doctor told me I shouldn't eat any liver. Well, why? And furthermore, these are the reasons why we recommend it. And then it's up to you to decide what you want to do. And I also think that maybe as women, we're not used to that type of approach where it's kind of like a a la carte, like a buffet, like here are all the different options, you know, here are the rationale for these recommendations. And so, you know, and now it's up to you. And I think that that's positive and negative.

I think it's positive because then we have the agency and the power, but it could be negative that we have the agency and the power because it also puts the responsibility on our hands to make the right choices where it can be easier just to defer that to this trusted professional that's supposed to know everything yeah because also who's got loads of time to read loads of references which is again why I'm grateful for real food three years it took to compile all of it yeah I mean in this like influencer culture as well where there's all kinds of information flying around like you've probably seen it there's this thing going around now about a woman using poo as a face mask I'm not so I feel like I've heard everything I don't

even bat an eyelash anymore yeah I actually literally just watched a documentary because on the on the vacation with the kids I was like like, we need to no more Mr. Beast. We need to watch something useful. Anyone who has kids will understand what I just said. But I was watching these women make a hut. These African women, they had actually was fascinating. I feel like Red School would be really interested in this group of women. They like created this this.

They were women who had been abused by their husbands and so they just decided to create their own village and so without the men it's like a whole thing anyways they were using poo to like build the the actual um roof of the the thing so the face mask i don't know about but it looked like it was really helpful for the roof i've actually i've actually built with poop and straw before. It really does work. Not my own poop, cow poop. It really does work. Places I didn't know this conversation was going to go. I know, right? It's so fun.

Coming back to the book then, I was really excited to hear your definition of real food because it was really simple and it's when you hear it it's just so obvious and there's like there's no shame in it it's just like so could you sort of walk us into your definition of real food it's um yeah it's quite illuminating place to start I think yes well I'll start with I'm, you know, I'll take it from the book. But in a nutshell, real food contains simple ingredients that are as close to nature as possible, and not processed in a way that removes nutrients. So real food is as close to its natural source as possible, and grown in conditions that maximize nutrient density. So kind of like the way it was intended to be. So for example, we say real food often doesn't have a label, but when it does,

but that means we're saying that certain things in packages can be considered real food. Whereas some people would say, no, if it's in a package, it can't. But if you have like raisins in a package, like we're arguing that that's still real food, right? So we're not like so purist that no one can ever have anything in a package. Like we still live in this modern world. So I also think that it provides that realistic balance and incorporates what some of the things that we have to deal with in our modern world. Yeah, I often think about how we used to eat like 300, 400 years ago or less. And how, you know, thinking about your raw milk, all milk would have been raw.

And our bodies, I don't feel like our bodies have changed enough to warrant the food that we're eating. Like, are we really able and designed to digest the kind of things that we're eating these days? It's fascinating. Let's talk about um macros because I learned a lot from this piece because I've I clocked onto the protein thing probably I don't know when I was trying to get really healthy before doing IVF I think I was like I'm gonna throw everything at this I need to get as healthy as possible and I realized okay I'm not eating enough protein but reading your section of the book I realized huh I'm not eating enough protein. But reading your section of the book, I realized, huh, I'm not eating enough fat either. So yeah, can you share a bit like you say, in the book from our years in clinical practice, we've observed that many women under consume

protein and fat and over consume carbohydrates, carbs, we love the carbs, but we're over consuming. Yeah, could you say a bit more about this and the problem with it? Yeah. I mean, it is something that is quite common. The, in terms of the reason why I think there's a number of different reasons. I think, uh, I think in general, the, the lasting effects of the, the, whatever you want to call it, the calorie counting culture of the nineties and it scared everybody off of fat because fat would have more calories. So I think that there's a lot of women who don't necessarily have an eating disorder per se, but potentially have developed certain disordered eating patterns or are just falling into our culture that worships skinny people and sets the bar and the expectation that

women are to be small and not necessarily eat a lot. So I think that's more of a general thing. One of the things that I often say, I actually said this today in one of my calls. And so to make some, you know, sex stereotypes for a moment, when men work out, generally, not all men, but generally, they tend to want to bulk up because they're working out for this purpose of, you know, getting muscles and all the things. And when women tend to work out, again, generally, they tend to want to lean up, even if they want to build some muscle tone, it's typically to tone, it's typically they want to have a certain look to them. And I think that naturally lends itself, and especially with the calorie counting culture, I think it lends itself to when you work out, it doesn't even occur to you that you might need to

eat more food. Whereas when men work out, stereotypically, they're actively eating more food. They're eating more protein because they're trying to build up this muscle mass. So they have a totally different understanding of what they're trying to do to their bodies and also what that would require. Whereas women often, we either might eat the same, but it wouldn't occur to the average woman, the average woman who's not like a big workout person, you know, stereotypically, and at least in my practice, what I've seen is that when you add this exercise, it doesn't necessarily change the food consumption. But then what changes is the menstrual cycle. So, so then it's kind of like, all of a sudden,

I had my luteal phase went down to eight days, and I'm spotting and my PMS is out the roof. And it's like, well, you know, how many grams of protein did you say you were getting? You know, how many hours of working out? Did you say you doing? You lift how many times a week? Okay. And then you walk your dog every day. Oh, and how long is it? Oh, for an hour. Oh, interesting. Yeah. And you live beside a mountain. So it's like all of a sudden we have to come into terms with that. So at least in my practice, and it's interesting because I literally had this conversation today with my practitioners in the FAM program, because we were talking about our FAM foundational factors. And so basically, what it comes down to is, as women, we have to kind of understand what our body needs and how that plays out in the menstrual cycle. And the good thing about looking at the menstrual cycle is that it's individualized automatically to each woman.

So you might have an idea of, well, this is how much I think I need to eat. And this is how much I work out. And it's all great. But if your menstrual cycle is being thrown off by this, if your luteal phase is too short, and if you just added recently your exercise routine, and all of a sudden this happens, like we kind of know like why it's happening. So we're really then able to work with it in a more, I would say, scientific way, because if your way is working, then it should be fine. If you're seeing some challenges in the cycle,

then we need to kind of shift around some of those macronutrients. And then we can actually see how that plays out in the menstrual cycle. So this is an extremely common scenario. I can't tell you how many clients I've worked with who, you know, they, they, it's almost like we think our menstrual cycle issues are independent from everything else. Actually, it's the fifth vital sign, as you have told us. Not independent. So it's like, I don't know what's going on. I've just got this luteal phase thing. I think my progesterone is low. But then we look at the information and it's like, OK, well, it looks like you skip breakfast a lot and your lunch is like salad. And then at dinner, you might get some protein and but you work out like five times a week. So this can't work.

Yes. Yes. Like the maths just doesn't work here. I'm going to pause my conversation with Lisa just for a moment to share an invitation with you. If you're healing menstrual health challenges like irregular cycles, spotting or heavy bleeding, menstrual pain, PCOS, mood changes in the premenstrual phase, we warmly invite you to explore Red School's new self-paced cycle power course. It's a great partner to the practical dietary advice that Lisa is sharing today. Over six weeks, Alexandra and Sharni, the founders of Red School, guide you to know, live and abide by the rhythm and intelligence of your menstrual cycle. By getting to know the powers of the four cycle phases or the inner seasons as Alexandra and Shani call them,

you can discover what your own cyclical self-care really looks like so that you can make tangible embodied shifts and find your way home to menstrual health. Red School's vision is to activate the vitality, creativity and leadership of a million people through the magic of menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause and this cycle power course is designed to help you to claim your cyclical nature in a world that would have us all be linear really so you can learn how to restore your own inner ecology to soothe your nervous system to express your needs to hold your boundaries and to be deeply nourished so you can find out all about cycle power and take your seat at redschool.net forward slash cycle power that's redschool.net forward slash cycle power. That's redschool.net forward slash cycle power.

It seems like from reading the book and from what I know, number one cause of having no ovulation, no cycle is inadequate nutrition. Yeah. And it's interesting because again, in order to support the body's ability to produce these hormones, and when we're looking at the hormones that are necessary to have a menstrual cycle, the ovarian hormones, we're supporting ovulation, we're supporting our ovaries ability to produce estrogen and progesterone. So as you approach ovulation, and as that egg is developing, that follicle is also producing estrogen. And that's where that comes from. And then after ovulation, you produce progesterone. And again, so we what we're doing really by eating sufficient foods, and we're supporting this hormonal process of ovulation because it's all intertwined. So we do need enough protein. Protein has also the single biggest thermogenic effect on

the body. So a lot of women who start charting their cycles become aware of, oh, I'm charting my temperature. My temperatures are supposed to be within a certain range. Like why are my temperatures so low? So when I first graduated from my, you know, fertility awareness training program, I left with this idea that it's always thyroid. It was like, we talked about thyroid so much in the program. It's like thyroid, thyroid, thyroid. But then when I started, you know, working in the real world with women, I discovered that my clients that had really low temperatures also weren't eating.

Like they weren't eating breakfast. And they're, you're kind of just like, where's the protein? Like, where's the food? So one interesting piece of information is that for women who do have concerns about low temperatures, before you jump to the thyroid thing, look at how much protein you're getting, because that's one of the first things that improves and normalizes when our clients essentially eat enough protein. So the recommendation would be to balance your proteins, fats, carbohydrates at each meal. So in the book, Lily talks about the plate method, and she provides an example of that. And that can be life changing. So I'm a West Indian girl, I grew up, my plate was like all rice with some meat on top and like a

little bit of veg. And so that's the opposite of what we want to do. Because when you have a plate like that, you're really loading up the carbs. And then you're not necessarily balancing that with the protein. And who knows if there's even any fat on board, let alone like the green vegetables. So with the plate method, we are kind of changing that entirely. So half the plate is veg. And ideally, if you're adding in some fat, you might be sautéing that and something, whether it's butter or coconut oil or something like that, or whatever it is. And then you would have your protein to be like a quarter of that plate. And then you would have your carbohydrate option to be like a quarter of the plate. So you're kind of changing that whole system so that instead of loading up with carbs. And

when we get into the conversation about carbs, it's not to say that it's good or bad. It's to say that we're actually engineering the plate in a way that's more nutrient dense. Because what happens when you, you know, reverse engineer that, so you're eating a lot more veg, and then you have a sufficient, like a good size of protein, and you have that you're able to balance your blood sugar instead of having blood sugar spikes throughout the day, hungry, hangry, you know, for anyone who can relate to that. I used to eat oatmeal for breakfast every day and I would be hungry within 30 minutes. And so the whole day I was eating snacks and like chasing this and all of that. When you eat in a way that really balances the macronutrients, where you start your day with a really good, sufficient protein source, and you balance that with sufficient fat, it's like a slower burn. So picture like the fireplace, either the kindling

burns right away, or you have like something with oil that just like slowly burns, right? And so when what, what happens with my clients that adopt these changes to their eating habits is, I mean, first of all, they find that, wow, like this meal filled me up and I didn't need a snack for several, like for a couple of hours. I was actually able to go a bit longer and I wasn't sitting there waiting for the next snack. So balancing your blood sugar, having more stability and feeling better in general for anybody who is active, who does exercise a lot, to be able to actually consume enough protein, like you sleep better, you recover faster, you're not hungry all the time, like you're even your mood is calmer, there's a lot of benefits that you wouldn't necessarily think of right off the bat.

And there are benefits with PMS too, right, with mood. And I'm noticing this definitely. I'm a lot more steady in the premenstrual phase when I'm eating in a balanced way, and particularly when I'm eating more protein. I've got a quote here, it says, it's from the book, protein intake may play a role in premenstrual syndrome, possibly due to its influence on sex hormone levels, production of neurotransmitters and regulation of certain hormones that affect blood pressure and fluid electrolyte balance. So we're talking mood here as well and premenstrual challenges. So specifically to protein, absolutely. And one thing I should say about PMS is that women with moderate to severe PMS, they tend to have kind of an atypical progesterone pattern. So if we were to look at the progesterone levels in the luteal phase of a woman who's also experiencing

PMS, we're going to see that the progesterone is either low or it drops too soon. But either way, we have just not enough progesterone relative to estrogen during that time. It's a hormone imbalance. So and ultimately P imbalance. So, and ultimately PMS. So in my mind, when I teach about PMS, when I talk about PMS, I like PMS and low progesterone are essentially synonymous. PMS could be considered a sign of low progesterone, to be honest. And so when one of the first steps actually that I encourage clients when they have issues with PMS is to look at that macro to the ratio and ensure they are getting sufficient protein. Because again, if we're looking at an issue with hormone imbalance,

or not enough hormone production, then we have to actually go to what your body needs to make hormones. Like if I want to make coffee, then how am I to do that without coffee beans and water? Like it's, we're just literally at that level when we talk about getting sufficient protein and fat. So fat also, you mentioned that you said, oh, you know, the, I'm not eating enough fat is what I learned. Well, the fat, especially animal fat contains cholesterol and cholesterol is that precursor to estrogen and progesterone and testosterone and cortisol and even vitamin D. So if you're not consuming any animal fat, it doesn't mean you can't make any hormones, but you're making it a lot harder for your body to come up with the optimal hormone levels. And,

you know, as I mentioned, many women are prone to avoiding fat altogether. Many women are eating their eggs without the yolks or eating yogurt without any fat in it and things like that. And there's a lot of research to show. There's a really interesting food study that it's kind of like, I think it surprised the researchers. They might've been expecting to see something different because they found that the women who consumed the high fat dairy products, they were the ones that were less likely to have ovulatory disruptions. So all of a sudden, it was like, oh, wait, the women who eat high fat dairy, they are having better ovulation compared to the women

who are not like, what do we do with that? But ultimately, we do have the research to show that and it if you if you know anything about hormones, it makes perfect sense that that would be the outcome. Yeah, that was what I took away from the book was, oh, I need fat to feed my hormones. That was that's my layperson speak for it. Yeah. And so I don't have dairy. I mean, I wanted to ask you, this is just a personal question. Like, do you think it's worth doing everything I can to try and get dairy back into my diet again? Do you think like people who don't have dairy are really missing out on something important? Or do you think you can replace it with other like animal sources or vegan veg sources? one thing to say is I recognize that each person has their own limitations. So if you're not able to eat dairy, it doesn't, I mean, there are other things that you can consume. There's a lot of

nutrient dense options that you can have. I don't think it's a good idea to consume something that obviously doesn't sit well with you or causes you to have digestive upset and things like that. So, but I also know that for some of my clients, they really like dairy and they really want to eat it. So you could always experiment with different alternatives to determine if there's anything that is, that does work. So you could say, okay, well, let me try goat or sheep or buffalo, or let me try raw or whatever. Let me try cheese. I know some people will say like, you can't drink the milk itself, but I can have the cheese. But at the end of the day, I think some people can't have dairy.

And so if you're one of those people, I would say just, especially if you're grabbing the book in Real Food for Fertility, you know, we have a section where we talk about, you know, foods that build a healthy baby, right? And foods that don't build a healthy baby, like products are in there but they're not the only food so there's a lot you can do there's a lot of foods that are really nutrient dense that you can add and I think there's at least some you know coconut options if you can have coconut for example like the coconut cream that are kind of comparable to the texture and things of some of the dairy products. So I think there are ways to just try to fill that gap. Coconut cream has changed my life because

I just miss that creaminess so much and you can definitely replicate it. And in terms of sources of fat, this sort of opened things up for me. Like you were saying, like animal fat is okay. Like the skin on the chicken for example which I always take off I've been like taking it off and it's like oh that that's actually good for me so it's such a brain shift for me all the dairy fat and then in terms of vegan options olives coconut avocado these are the kind of fats that we're wanting to bring more in in general well I always find it interesting I remember when they started demonizing avocados and I feel like my dad was like I'm not eating like so first of all my dad

is like I'm my parents are from the west indies so he grew up eating avocados off of trees and like coconuts off of trees and so then the tv says okay avocados are bad and coconuts are bad what I always find interesting though is that we're willing to not eat the chicken skin we're willing to not eat the avocado we're willing to not eat the egg yolk but like nobody stops eating french fries and like nobody stops eating chips nobody's like not eating cake and cookies I just find it interesting that we for certain things it's all like oh we're hardcore we're not gonna eat an avocado but like you're not you're content to eat the processed food though like we're good with that but we're not. We're not going to eat an avocado. But like, you're not, you're content to eat the processed food, though. Like, we're good with that. But we're not good with the actual things that grew on trees. I'd love to live in a place where I could pick avocados off trees.

I know, like, it would be so lovely. So I think, again, looking, this is where looking to the research is helpful to learn more about the full picture of it instead of jumping on trends. I always question, especially when it grows on a tree. I feel like for me personally, that's always like, because I also have a connection to the West Indies because my parents were from there. And when I was younger, we would travel there and I'd visit. So I have all

these fond memories of picking all these fantastic fruits off trees and things and then to come home to find out that the government is saying don't eat the thing that grows on the tree I'm just like if it grows on a tree you're gonna have to sell it better for me not to eat it like I'm gonna need to see a study on that I follow a woman I think she's called the black the black nutritionalist and she talks a lot about how it's like there's some race stuff going on in here like there's some racism in here too she's she's fascinating I'll put a link to her in the show notes um can we come back to carbs because I found it interesting you said in the book that our ancestors consumed half or a quarter

of the carbs that we eat now. And I found that quite motivating. Because again, thinking back to what we used to eat makes I always want to get closer to that if I can. And the key here for menstrual health, it sounds like from the book is about blood sugar, like keeping it stable is really key. Could you speak a bit more about that? Yeah, I mean, I've talked a touch about it. I think that I know for me, personally, that was something that made a huge difference, even just from a practical standpoint. You know, as I mentioned, I grew up like many people eating oatmeal for breakfast every day, which is fine, but not a lot of protein, you know, just oatmeal. And sometimes

even oatmeal with water, right? Not even oatmeal with milk, let alone whole milk, right? Or some extra cream or something like that. So I learned, and many of my clients can attest to this, and I'm sure many of the listeners, when you eat a breakfast that is devoid of protein or fat, you know, it doesn't take long for you to feel hungry again. It just doesn't provide that lasting, long, satisfying feeling. So when you focus on blood sugar balance, what happens is in order to keep the blood sugar balance, you do have to consume like the protein and the fat. So carbohydrate by itself is the nutrient that most significantly impacts the blood sugar levels. That's where we get the spikes. And many of us have felt that. I think all of us have felt that.

You eat that dessert, it's delicious, but then you feel kind of like, ooh, and then you crash, like you feel tired afterwards. So that would be the opposite of what we want to do. So when we prioritize balancing blood sugar by balancing those macros, so eating sufficient protein, pairing it with fat, or even like what you said about the chicken, just not like if you're eating food, if you're eating a cut of meat, just not necessarily like getting rid of all the fat just like eating the meat just as it is because protein and fat often come together on purpose almost like life knows what it's doing almost right so just consuming it together like don't take the yolk out of the egg just like eat it together because then you have the protein and

the fat and when you do that and then look at the carbohydrate choices, especially if there's a reason. So for every every one of us benefits from balancing blood sugar. But there are some of us who are more prone to issues with insulin resistance, women with PCOS, who are just more sensitive to this issue, who actually require, who in order for their bodies to function, it's necessary, but all of us will benefit from it. So we can learn a little bit about the carbohydrate category. Some of us would benefit from choosing lower glycemic carbohydrates as opposed to some of the higher glycemic carbohydrates. But when you learn about that, you're just filling yourself up with better fuel that lasts longer. And as I shared earlier, when you do these things, you can just, there's a lot of benefits. So benefit, whether it's just being able to go

longer between meals, whether it's that you recover faster when you're working out, whether it's that you notice changes, positive improvements in your menstrual cycle. It's huge. So balancing blood sugar, if you made that your focus and eating your meals and snacks like protein, fat and carbohydrate at your meals and snacks. So even for example, if you're having an apple, have a handful of nuts with that, if you can eat nuts, having a slice of cheese or something like that, so that it's not just like apples are great. So no one's saying anything about apples, but just pairing it with a protein or fat or both helps to kind of quell that blood sugar spike so that instead of just spiking and coming back down, you're actually giving yourself a lower like a longer burn um final point i found it sorry my dog's crying he wants to come in come on then have you got questions for lisa he always wants to be involved um we talk about the pre-menopausal years in the book like the 10 years running up to the last bleed,

and that a lot of challenges, I think you said, including even heavy bleeds can come from insufficient protein. And one of your recommendations in the book was front loading the day with protein, especially in the 40s or 50s, you know, in the run up to menopause. Could you say a bit about that? Yeah, I mean, one of the most powerful things, whether it's in the research, as well as what we've seen in practice, is by really focusing on that. So one of the things I like to focus on is breakfast. Many women get into a variety of different habits, whether it's that we skip breakfast altogether. There's a lot of women who are into intermittent fasting now because it's trendy, especially among the male influencers who do not have a menstrual cycle, for example. And in those situations, you can inadvertently make your situation worse

without really realizing that that's what you're doing. So for example, coffee isn't breakfast. That's something we said in the book a number of times. But it's a very common practice for women to get up and they make the coffee and then maybe they eat at 11 or 12. But what happens is that over the course of the day, if you skip your breakfast, for example, there was a few interesting research studies that we looked at. And even if you, you know, if you do skip breakfast, you're likely going to eat a little bit more at lunchtime. But what the researchers found was that it's not going to offset. It's not like if you skip breakfast, even if you eat a little bit more at lunch, it doesn't mean that you eat what you would have eaten at breakfast. So you end up with just net lower overall calories for the day. So one of the ways to kind of offset that, to balance blood sugar, to support

menstrual cycle health, to support hormone health, and also to not be hungry hangry all the time, is to do exactly what you said, to front load the protein. So eating a higher protein breakfast intentionally. So whether you're trying to get in like a 30, 40 grams of protein right off the bat in the day, when clients have done this, when women do this, they notice the difference right away, you know, whether it's they feel like they have better energy, better attention. And it doesn't mean that you have to get out of bed and five minutes later, eat all this protein. You can still kind of pace yourself and eat when you're hungry, but you still want to eat breakfast. You don't want to just, you know, not eat for six hours.

You want to make sure that you're eating breakfast. And even if you can't have your big breakfast right off the bat, you might still want to have something before, you know, so that you're not going so long without eating. But it makes a huge, huge difference for anyone with menstrual cycle issues. And it's interesting because for some women, they want to take different supplements. They want to, you know, they want to do everything, but look at the diet. So it's like, I'm willing to take it. Just tell me what to take and I'll take it. I'll do this and that, whatever. And for some women, they find that they hit a wall, like they can't get anything, like nothing's changing. The cycle isn't changing. Nothing's

changing. But it's often these dietary changes that really make those lasting effects. So especially for women who have blood sugar control issues, you know, this strategy was shown to also be really supportive for women with PCOS. Mm. What's your favorite high protein breakfast of the moment um that's a good question I like leftovers often yeah I was thinking about what I was eating last week well so I mean it really depends on the day I eat a lot of eggs and sometimes we'll have some meat with that. Like, so, you know, eggs and maybe a protein, whether it be like sausage or leftovers. Right now in my fridge, I have some fish from dinner that, you know, we paired with eggs for breakfast this morning.

And so it's often like leftovers. I love soup. We make a lot of soup in the house. So I also like leftovers. I love soup. We make a lot of soup in the house. So I also like that. Like I like to be able to, like it's maybe it seems like an unconventional breakfast, but to heat up, um, leftovers. So yeah, I'm big on leftovers. Um, and one of the reasons I also I'm saying that is because I think that we have to think of breakfast as an actual meal. Like if, if breakfast is like a piece of toast and like a banana like

we have to like that's not a meal you wouldn't eat that for lunch we have to start thinking of breakfast as more of a meal yeah I was lucky to spend a year in Thailand and I stayed with several families and they thought it was so funny that we ate different food at different times of the day because they were like no you just eat food in the morning in the middle of the end of the day and um yeah that changed my thinking and yeah it makes it easier to get more protein if you think that way I think also I love that you just eat food yeah just eat food lady come on I mean you need to do special breakfast food I think it's like a Victorian thing it sort of came came in Victorian times

along with so much other crap oh my goodness well this has been so educational and if our listeners are wanting to hear more from you obviously read the book real food for fertility but how can they connect with you and your work well thank you first of all so much for having me and this conversation was a lot of fun and it was fun to talk about all the food aspects of it obviously so um to connect with me for anyone who is wanting to read more we talk about everything we talked about today and so much more we didn't even get into the menstrual cycle charting aspect as you said the book is big it's 500 pages so there's a lot of information in there. And it's the kind of book where you can use as a reference guide, where you can,

if you are focused on a specific topic, you can kind of focus on that topic for a while and then kind of jump around if you don't necessarily like you could also read it cover to cover, but I'm just saying you have options. So you can listen to the audio book, which has you've just finished recording. Yes, we have just released the audio book which has you've just finished recording yes yes we have just released the audio book which is really fun as well so you can find more about the book at realfoodforfertility.com you can find the links our book is available on amazon and on audible as you mentioned you can get the first chapter for free there as well if you're wanting a little sneak peek and as for me I have my fertility friday podcast which is wild because I'm in my 10th year of podcasting at the end of November this year. It'll officially be 10 years, which is really wild. I've been

thinking a lot about that. It's an interesting milestone to hit. I keep thinking like, how old am I? What is happening here? But that's really fun. So if you enjoyed this conversation and you're wanting to kind of continue on this journey with me, you can type Fertility Friday into your favorite podcast player and you will find me. And you can find me on Instagram at Fertility Friday. And I guess I have a lot of fun and a lot of fun over there. And I'm trying to think if there's any other places you can also find me more information about me on my website, fertilityfriday.com. And for any women's health practitioners, that's been a focus of late. I created my mentorship program, Fertility Awareness Mastery Mentorship. And we work with women's health practitioners who

are really wanting to introduce fertility awareness cycle charting into their practice in a meaningful way. So to be able to teach their clients to chart, feel really comfortable about that process, but then to also be able to use the menstrual cycle to kind of analyze what's going on health-wise. So in today's conversation, we talked a lot about how sometimes you see these symptoms on the chart that can be related to what's happening overall. And so we teach our practitioners how to do that. Beautiful. Thanks, Lisa. I hope you have a brilliant rest of your day and I look forward to connecting with you again soon take care so much bye

thank you for joining us today I would love to hear what you're taking away from this conversation you can always email me at sophie at redschool.net I learned so much from the book and from listening to Lisa and I hope that you did too. As I mentioned in the middle of the podcast we now have a new self-paced cycle power course which will serve as a great partner to the practical food and dietary advice that Lisa's been sharing today if you're working to heal menstrual health challenges. You can find it at redschool.net forward slash cycle power. Okay, that's it for this week. I'll be with you again next week. And until then, keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm.