The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - Hormonal Health Uncovered Ft. Brianna Bitton & Dr. Jennifer Shepherd On Acne, PMS, PCOS, & Reproductive Wellness
Episode Date: December 27, 2024#790: Join us as we sit down with Brianna Bitton & Dr. Jessica Shepherd – the co-founder & founding founding medical advisor of O Positiv. Supported by a team of board-certified doctors, O Positiv H...ealth is dedicated to empowering women through every stage of life, from their first period to post-menopause. In this episode, Brianna & Dr. Shepherd discusses the realities of the female reproductive system, shed light on the lack of resources, share personal insights into women’s health, uncover hidden truths about birth control, & recommend how to take control of your hormones & reproductive health!  To connect with O Positiv click HERE  To connect with Brianna Bitton click HERE  To connect with Dr. Jessica Shepherd click HERE  To connect with Lauryn Bosstick click HERE  To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE  Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE  To Watch the Show click HERE  For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM  To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697)  This episode is brought to you by The Skinny Confidential  Head to the HIM & HER Show ShopMy page HERE to find all of Michael and Lauryn’s favorite products mentioned on their latest episodes.  This episode is sponsored by O Positiv  Visit OPositiv.com and use code SKINNY for 25% off all O Positiv products.  Produced by Dear Media
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The following podcast is a Dear Media production.
She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire.
Fantastic.
And he's a serial entrepreneur.
A very smart cookie.
And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride.
Get ready for some major realness.
Welcome to The Skinny Conf but all our insulin and glucose.
And that's kind of the halt of PCOS. PCOS is not an ovarian disease. PCOS is really at the core insulin glucose issue and a metabolic issue.
We're finally talking about it. I think that maybe it has been going on forever, right?
And women's health has just been so historically overlooked that we're finally getting to a place where we're comfortable to talk about these things. We have a duo on the show today. Brianna Bitton,
she's the co-founder of O Positive Health, and she is joined by Dr. Jessica Shepard,
who is a founding member of O Positive Health, and she's also a board-certified OBGYN.
This episode is really honest, and it's breaking taboos when it comes to the vagina.
You're going to learn everything you
need to know about the vagina in this episode. I think Michael's eyeballs were popping out of
his head. There's a lot to learn. And I feel like women's sexual health is being talked about more
and more. And this is a great conversation because we get the doctor perspective. And then we also
get the founder of O Positive Health, who has a personal experience.
And she'll tell you her story, which is really great.
I hope you all love this very candid and open conversation.
Dr. Jessica and Brianna, welcome to the show.
This is The Skinny Confidential, him and her.
One of my favorite things about this show is i get to indirectly manipulate my husband and
have him learn about all the things that he would never listen to me on yes you're like and you're
stuck in here too yeah you can't leave i i feel like this is surprisingly enough not going to be
the craziest conversation i've had on this podcast i don't know we'll see though let's
give us the verdict at the end yeah and we'll see we'll check the barometer
let's introduce you guys to the audience so we can get some context why don't we start with you
so my name is brianna bitten i'm the co-founder of a positive and we're a women's health company
we specialize in vitamins and supplements for women through their first period all the way
through menopause and beyond. Yeah,
founded this company with my brother about six years ago and we're so happy to be here.
Hi, I'm Dr. Jessica Shepard. I'm a board certified gynecologist and here with the O Positive team
as the medical on the medical advisory board. And one of the things that I think O Positive
really brings to light is the stories, the stories of women and how to use that as the momentum to have the formulations and coming up with a wide array of different products that meet women at every stage of their life.
Why did you decide to be a gynecologist?
That is such an interesting question.
The reason I actually decided to be an OBGYN was because of babies.
They're so cute.
But then I loved gynecology.
So obstetrics is the practice that we do during pregnancy,
but gynecology is like anything outside of pregnancy.
And I think I loved being able to talk to women from adolescence and puberty
all the way up to older age and really capturing all of their experiences.
Was there a lot of men in your class or was it all women? There were actually more women than men. But now I remember when I
was in residency, we finally crossed the threshold for females to go over 49% of all OBGYN residents.
No offense to men. I would rather, I've always been since i was 16 i would rather have a female and
to each its own i just always wanted a female gynecologist have you ever been to a male
gynecologist i haven't oh interesting i've never been like it's just a sisterhood like you you're
going to a doctor who gets it like you could talk about your symptoms and most likely they've had
them too so it just makes you feel more comfortable i feel like i have a question would you go to a female urologist no you would yeah they're qualified
what if they were like if they were like the best one and i had a real issue going on and then there
was like a guy and he maybe wasn't like yeah i think if it comes to medical stuff i'm like i
need to figure out who really knows their shit. That's where I'm
going. I just prefer a female. It's so interesting. If I'm going to be a urologist, there's probably
something going on. I'm like, I need somebody that's qualified here. Brianna, what is your
aha moment with this? Why did you decide to get into this arena? So I was struggling with
period cramps like crazy. I was calling out of work. I was working as a
Walt Disney Imagineer. I was designing the theme parks and it was so fun, but that's the background
I come from. I was a normal girl working in corporate America and having just debilitating
cramps, mood swings. I was a disaster to be around, like a raging bitch, if you will. And it was affecting my life.
And my brother and I were talking, we were actually living together at the time in an
apartment.
And so he was like witness to all of this craziness.
And he's super involved in wellness.
And we're talking about starting a company and supplements and wellness because we're
so passionate about that. And I was like, is there anything that women can do to proactively help with their period? So instead of taking like
an ibuprofen or go on birth control, like, is there anything we can do to help this from the
inside out? So we started looking into it and realized that there were very amazing clinically tried ingredients that were proven to help PMS.
So that was our first product, the first ever PMS gummy vitamin flow.
And that's what we created.
That was our first baby.
What's like an ingredient that's random that we wouldn't even think of?
So there's chastberry.
There's dong quai.
There are all these ingredients that have been vitamin B6, been around for centuries, right?
Like they've been used in like medicine
and Eastern medicine forever.
I mean, this is a compliment.
The Disney background is making sense.
You're very animated.
Oh my gosh, thank you.
I talk with my hands a lot.
I cannot imagine seeing her PMSing
when you're like, I was such a bitch.
I'm like, I can't see it.
Oh my gosh, you're too kind. I mean, I'm fine right now.
She's like, ask my brother.
Yeah, ask my family. It's funny because, like, I didn't even realize I was PMSing, but the entire family was like, oh, God, watch out.
Did you find out what the root cause of the severity of your cramps was or was it just normal cramps?
So actually through the research research too, we discovered that
cramps and PMS isn't necessarily normal. You shouldn't really, and Dr. Shepard can speak to
this as well, but you shouldn't really be experiencing PMS. It's a hormonal imbalance.
So for me as well, I have the copper IUD because I can't do the birth control pill. It just doesn't work with my body and makes me, again, like really crazy and hormonal.
But so the copper IUD makes your periods really gnarly.
That's what I heard.
I heard that.
And you can maybe speak to this, Dr. Shepard.
I heard that the IUD intensifies cramps.
Well, I would say the copper one.
I think the copper one, you know, just kind of for all the patients that I've seen, that usually is the one where we'll see a little bit
more cramps. And the reason actually behind that is there's two reasons. So of all IUDs, there's
ones that have hormones and then there's ones that don't, which is the copper. And so the copper one
just is like by slight measurements, a little bit bigger than the other ones. And so sometimes that
can be kind of the cause of having more cramps. But the other ones. And so sometimes that can be
kind of the cause of having more cramps. But the other thing is the hormones, the one with the
hormones is there and it kind of calms and quiets the uterus because of the hormones.
So if you don't have hormones, then you're more likely to have pain with your period
because there's nothing there to kind of create this kind of environment where the progesterone
is kind of calming the
uterus down. And so the one without hormones is just not giving you any hormones and it's a
touch bit bigger. But yeah, that is something a feature that most people will say is that
I might feel a little bit more cramps. But the beauty of it is that it's a birth control
option that doesn't have hormones. What do you think about all the stuff that's coming out about
birth control now? I, after talking to a lot of scientists and doctors like yourself, I've just
like learned so much about the birth control pill that I almost feel bad for the 16 year old me who
went to Planned Parenthood knowing nothing about it. Getting on this pill for 10 years i i just i didn't i didn't
have the the tools what what what is your opinion i like to take a full approach to it you know
being a scientist and knowing what we see in a general population of women when i say general
i'm like global population of women is i do have appreciation for it because when you think about
when it was made back in the 40s this was when there was
nothing like women really had nothing for pregnancy prevention it was just prophylactics for men right
that's what it was and so that to me was the beginning i would say at least of women being
able to say this is the choice i would like to make with my body and this might be the thing
that i have to take in order to make that choice. So kind of put that in a bucket of like, yes, women are being able to make a choice and decide what they would
like to do with their body when it comes to pregnancy. Now, fast forward, we've done so
many different things with the kinds of hormones that we put in actual birth control pills. It's
that used to be so much estrogen that it was like causing blood clots. We've really, really changed that. What I will say is that I think that we need to kind of be more innovative in how we're creating the
hormones that go in the birth control. So the good thing is that, you know, in the science field,
we do a lot of research and data that looks at what are the outcomes that we've seen in the last
20, 30 years of use of these things? And is it causing harm?
Is it something that we should maybe change?
Is it something that we shouldn't use?
I think that we can do a lot more work in looking at what we can actually do to be more
innovative in what goes into it so that we can advise patients on a better example of
what they can take for themselves.
So I think that there's a lot that can be said
in this whole arena.
Like we could take a whole hour
and talk just about birth control.
I think our bodies where they are today,
we have a lot more environmental factors,
endocrine disruptors that actually are causing
a lot of the changes that birth control
might be having an interaction with.
So I think it's something that we actually need
to open the book again and say,
let's take a refresher look at this and see what we have on the market and see how we can refine it and actually make it better it's annoying because now that i have a
daughter i don't i wouldn't want her to go on birth control but at the same time it's like what
to your point what do you do yeah i really think that they should do something for guys like can
the guys do something for fucking once did you know that shit i've ever
seen in my life he's like it's absurd it's like why doesn't the girl just take on everything
i know and it's i saw something that like they put you can like heat up their like balls or
something like you can tell me more okay i saw it on the internet i'm
chronically online so like who knows the validity validity of this but i did see there was like a
ball jacuzzi where you like heat up the balls and it makes it not temporarily well because
this is true but they say like if you go in a jacuzzi michael bostick they say if you're trying
to procreate like i've i've had my friends like you're trying to procreate, like I've had my friends,
like if you want to procreate as a man,
like you don't,
maybe you don't want to do a bunch of hot saunas.
Like it's actually good to go into cold first.
It's true.
Because it makes it closer to the body.
I don't know if that's true.
I don't know if that's true.
It's very true actually.
So actually,
we have one product for males.
Okay.
So Prego is our pregnancy sector kind of.
I thought you were going to say
you had a ball jacuzzi for me.
No.
But it boosts,
it boosts sperm production in males to help with conception.
That's amazing. Yeah. So our conception support, we have like, it's a counter product. So we have
a prego for women that has CoQ10 and all these great ingredients to help make your eggs as
healthy as possible. And then there's a male counterpart for your partner to help the sperm production and the
mobility and because it sounds silly to say this but when we were researching this obviously 50
percent of infertility is the male's responsibility and it's so crazy that it gets projected onto the
woman because the guy's insecure
we've done all these i've been a big proponent.
I've said that a lot of times. There's even like the
cap test where it shows like the male sperm. Even if
it swims well, it can't penetrate the egg and it's a male
problem. I think a lot. We've been vocal. We're not
going to put Michael on your product though because he does not
need any more sperm. I've got enough sperm.
I'm good on sperm. I just got
salmon semen on my face. I'm
semen-ed up to my head.
Can I ask one more question
as it relates to birth control?
We don't have to stay on it
for too long,
but say for the parents
out there listening
whose daughters are coming in
and they're starting
at a young age,
is there a direction
you kind of point them in
to say like,
you know,
is it an IUD?
Is it a pill?
Is there a...
That's what I love
that we've done differently
over the last,
I guess you could say,
40 decades is we've given more breadth to what's available. So that's really the conversation on
what it should be because most times you only think of a birth control pill, but there are
actually so many different ways that we can provide contraceptives that I think if you walked into,
you know, for people who are listening, if you walk into a doctor's office and you're wanting
to get some feedback on contraceptives, if your only option walking out is the pill,
then that's not a good visit. There should be much more discussion around what this means and
what your choices should be. And is there something that you kind of like push people
towards or do you kind of... No, I actually like to hear their story first, see where they are,
what their lifestyle's like, are they good at remembering to take something
every day versus not and then also asking what is the outcome you're looking for because some of
these birth control options can really help with cramps or they can decrease bleeding or there's
so many different features so it really should be like the storytelling and then kind of like
giving the menu so you can kind of pick and choose i would like take a birth control on a Monday and then it'd be like Friday and it'd be like, fuck.
You forgot.
Yeah.
And then I would like take 10
and be like, let's hope this doesn't do anything.
Oh my gosh.
One more question.
And this may be an ignorant question.
No, ask your ignorant questions.
We can't wait.
We're on the edge of our seat.
I've heard people say they stay on this
because of like acne.
If they're not having
to preclude from procreating, like do you recommend that or you say, hey, do something different?
Yeah, we actually work a lot with dermatologists when they have patients who are like in the
reproductive age or like younger and they'll send them actually to the OBGYN to kind of give them
what birth control should we put them on because it actually really works really well for acne.
What is it doing? Yeah, It's fascinating science behind it.
So what it does, birth control,
is it actually decreases the receptor
that bind to testosterone.
And so if you have less testosterone around,
then you're going to have the decreased oily skin,
the decreased acne,
and all the things that come with
just a subtle shift in your testosterone.
But really helping that testosterone level go down
is really what's going to impact the skin.
And then also estrogen is like, oh my God, estrogen for the skin is great because it increases like blood flow.
And like, because think about when you're pregnant, right? Most people will be like,
my skin was flawless during pregnancy because estrogen goes up. So yeah.
But that's also kind of why we founded Flow was to give women an alternative to taking birth control to help with their
hormonal acne, help with their cramps, help with all of those things. Because that was,
at least from my experience as a 16-year-old going into the doctor, that was kind of the only option
for me at the time. I wasn't using it even at that age as a contraceptive. I was like a nerdy little high schooler. But,
you know, the cramps and the acne and giving women another option and a way to balance their hormones
if maybe acne is the concern and they don't need a contraceptive at the time. So we wanted to
provide women with something natural. And I think that's really smart because I remember when I was
getting off birth control and I've told the story before on the podcast, but I was going to just get prescribed a spirulina lactate, which is like the thing in it that helps supposedly. I don't know if that's true, but that's cool that you guys have given people a more natural option to switch off more gracefully and seamlessly without feeling like they have to just go on something else.
Yeah.
And I think that's important too,
is to just to make sure that there should be no shame
on either side of it.
Exactly.
Is that if you decide to take one versus not,
that it's okay.
But that's the beauty in having these products
is that you still have an option outside of
taking all these other things.
Why are we seeing such a surge in PCOS?
Like what is going on? I have PCOS.
Yeah. Why? Why is I want to know why I've never seen so many women talk about this. I know it
feels like it's everywhere. I had an ovarian cyst rupture a year ago. And that it's it's so funny.
All of this entire brand all revolves around things that have happened to me. Like I'm a complete disaster,
like I'm such a mess. So had an ovarian cyst ruptured, discovered that I had PCOS.
And when they went in there to like do the surgery and fix me, they discovered I had
endometriosis too. So do you think perhaps the reason that you had such bad
cramps was because of the endometriosis? Potentially, and I never knew about it.
And with endo, there's really no way to know if you have it unless you go in, right? For sure.
Yeah, that's the diagnostic tools. You have to go in surgically.
If someone's listening, what are the things that they should be looking for?
Endometriosis is typically what we'll see very painful cramps. So cramps are the uterus is contracting during your period. So that's usually why people feel cramps is because
it's contracting and we sense that as pain. So when they're elevated and like really increased,
like people are in the fetal position or can't go to school, can't go to work, and it's really
debilitating, that is a clue for a practitioner or a doctor to
be like, hmm, I wonder if this patient has endometriosis.
Then the other thing is that we tend to find the longer that people have endometriosis
and it's not diagnosed, we'll start to have pain in between their periods.
So it's not dependent on the cycle.
It starts to be in between the periods.
And that's because of the endometriosis in the pelvis is responding,
whether it's your period or not. And that is a good telltale sign as well.
In both of your opinions, I'd love to hear both. Why do you think people are having women so much
of a hard time getting pregnant? Is it because we're saturated with more content so we're seeing it more? Or is it because
there's something going on with cleaning supplies or endocrine? What is going on? Because I see it
everywhere about infertility and we've had a lot of experts come on the podcast. You guys have been
around this world. What are your opinions on that? I mean, from a social perspective and from being involved in this
company perspective, I think number one, it's that we're finally talking about it. I think that maybe
it has been going on forever, right? And women's health has just been so historically overlooked
that we're finally getting to a place where we're comfortable to talk about these things.
I think that, but also the birth rates have been going down. Like if you look at France, it's like the last, since like the World War II,
it's the lowest live births that there's been since then. The data is interesting.
Yeah. I also think maybe, I mean, I'm 32 and single and thinking about freezing my eggs. I
also think people are having babies later in life and that's a contributing factor. And Dr. Shepard?
Yeah. There's multiple reasons why we start to see this.
One, because of our environment.
I think a lot of it has to do with food, kind of like the environment, toxins.
That really disrupts internally our body and the ability for a body to function the way that it does consistently all the time.
The other thing is age.
Age is just one of those things that we can't say that we're not aging when we are.
So if we wait longer, which is fine, but with that comes just biologically for a female,
we are born with all the eggs we'll ever have.
And so as we start to age and they kind of decline and their quality declines, that's
just something that we can't fight.
And then the last thing that I would say is that we really, when I'm going to
go back to food and diet is a lot of the Western diet and just what we're exposed to from like
pesticides and how we prepare our foods really has wreaked havoc on our body internally and
inflammation, but all our insulin and glucose. And that's kind of the, the halt of PCOS. PCOS is not an ovarian disease.
PCOS is really at the core insulin glucose issue and a metabolic issue.
That is so weird that you say that because I just talked to a doctor on air who told me that people who are going on Ozempic are getting pregnant left and right.
And Ozempic, and I'm not a scientist, but it does something with your insulin.
Is that correlated? It's completely true. So a GLP basically is a drug that we've used for years
before it was a weight loss drug specifically for diabetics because we were controlling the rate at
which insulin is absorbing glucose and correcting that whole relationship. So once that's corrected,
your hormones actually can respond better,
like all over your body, your thyroid, your reproductive hormones. And so when we started
to see that people were now taking it for weight loss, one, they're losing weight, which is going
to help with increasing pregnancy rates. But two, they were correcting their insulin glucose ratio
and boom, getting pregnant. So as a doctor, if someone comes into your practice and they're overweight, would you use GLP-1s as a tactic to get pregnant?
It's kind of like indirectly. So if they're like, I want to get pregnant, we would do the same thing we would do with anyone else. Look at like, what are the reasons why? And looking at everything. But we do know that obesity has, for as long as we've known, been one of those things
that's going to decrease your actual pregnancy or ability to get pregnant. So I do suspect that we
may start to use it as that. But right now I can see people using it indirectly to saying, hey,
let's look at you and let's try to use a GLP and see if we can get your weight decreased.
All the while, let's see if we can get you pregnant too.
So Dr. Shepard, if women or couples come to you and say, hey, we're trying to procreate
and what, do you give them a couple of things that they should maybe start thinking about
doing before they start trying?
Yeah, absolutely.
Because that is at the core of figuring out, because infertility, when we look at one in
eight couples or single people have infertility issues, there are so many reasons why.
But a category of infertility is unexpl are so many reasons why, but a category of
infertility is unexplained, which is the worst diagnosis because we'll work up everything.
And then at the end, we're like, God dang it. We didn't get in one of these little
compartments that could have caused it. Now it's unexplained.
You've been around all different kinds of women because of what you're doing, Brianna.
What are some things that have shocked you about this space that you didn't know? Oh my gosh, so much. I would say that how many women
are struggling silently would be the biggest surprise. When I started this, I thought I was
kind of like going out on a limb. I was not the one to be talking about my period in public. That
was not my MO. But then when I started to talk about it and I started to ask my friends and
have these little focus groups, everybody was going through something. So I would say that
noticing that PCOS was wreaking havoc, noticing that so many of my friends were calling out sick
because of their periods and really just having these
experiences that we didn't feel comfortable enough talking about openly in public. Like it wasn't
truly until when we launched Flow about like five, six years ago, our ads were some of the first to
say period or PMS on Instagram. Like there were not people posting about their period on the internet.
It's so interesting to me.
I remember being in class with you and,
and,
and getting my period and not thinking it was a big deal and didn't
understand.
And people are,
this is when I'm like 13,
people were so weird about it.
Yeah.
And we're also 13 year old kids.
So everyone's weird about everything. Right.'re also 13 year old kids so everyone's weird
about everything at that age but you'd like slip your tampon up your sleeve and like sneak or bring
your entire bag to the bathroom with you or whatever you know i will say they didn't have
pretty wrapping back then when i was so it was like very obvious now they're like we'll make it a
pink or yellow with flowers i never had a tampon i only had a pad i have a really weird theory
yes tell us everything the doctor
might you might have to plug your ears i believe this is my own deductions i think that there's
endocrine disruptors in the applicators and the tampons and toilet paper from the stuff that I've looked into. And I think it's fucking crazy
that girls once a month take a plastic microplastic thing, shove it in their vagina,
and then let it sit up there. Sorry, Michael, but I don't understand that. And then I also
don't understand if you really deep dive of what's in like drugstore toilet paper how
we're wiping down there with all of these toxins and we're expecting some great result yeah I think
that that's part of the problem well I think that the industry actually has shown that too
no I hear that all the time I think that that's why you do start to see a lot of these other
companies who are coming out with more organic forms like, you know, there's coral and then there's honeypot.
And so you'll start to see a lot of this shifting towards exactly what you said. So people who are
sitting there and saying, I think that this may be a cause. I'm going to create a product that
actually does the thing that I want it to do. It would make sense, though, because it's a habit
that so many women are doing
We're all doing the same habit. It's on and a lot of us are getting a bad result
You guys should do
Tampons next I know and in this like branding would be so cute. I know we've
ideas here
Stay tuned maybe but I make them like really aesthetically pleasing
yes we don't do cases a case maybe a um like a little like wallpaper situation on the package
organic non-toxic on the branding team learn you're hired i mean i just think that like that
is a huge problem and i've always felt weird about that ever since I was little.
So I've always worn pads and all my friends make fun of me.
They think it's like, but then I start to think, well, what's in the pad?
Well, I was just going to say one of the up there.
We had 90 other things with the cups.
I think in general, there's a large amount of people that are starting.
Oh yeah, Michael, weigh in on tampons. I think in general, there's a large amount of people that are starting to agree that a lot of the things we eat and consume and drink and materials we use that needs to be maybe looked at again.
Well, that's why we created the Flow Endocrine Superfood. So our newest product is to support the endocrine system as a whole. And that's really why we created it. So all of our
products so far have been very hyper-focused on specific women's issues. So number one,
vaginal probiotic at Target, right? It's always like we wanted to figure out the vaginal probiotic.
We wanted to figure out menopause. We really wanted to focus on these issues that women deal
with. But then when we were thinking about it, the background of all of these imbalances, everything, all of the discourse we're
hearing about cortisol and insulin, all of these things, it all is the endocrine system. So it all
roots back to this system that's behind the scenes controlling the majority of how we feel, our mood,
our fatigue, our weight. I feel like it's going to be like the gut.
Exactly. It is. And no one's really addressing it holistically. So, and the gut plays a huge part.
Like I'm forgetting the exact number, but all of our hormones, like excess hormones
are absorbed by the gut microbiome. So it's so crazy how we have this system that all works together
to really make us feel our best,
but is kind of ignored.
And then we're dealing
with all of these disruptors, right?
Like our water has plastic,
everything has plastic,
our tampon applicators.
Like Michael, not to talk,
I'm literally,
everything I direct toward Michael
is about balls.
I'm so sorry.
Well, I can understand.
I mean, it's true.
The underwear.
The underwear.
Yeah, there's microplastics in guys' balls.
I found non-toxic kids' underwear.
I have to link it in the show notes because I learned that our daughters are wearing underwear
that's filled with endocrine disruptors.
Well, I did this.
I was talking about this the other day and I won't get into political stuff, but I was
just saying a bipartisan issue is that I think there's general consensus that it takes a
lot of work just to find healthy alternatives and to live in a healthy way.
It shouldn't be this hard to figure out what to use, what to eat, what to wear.
It's a real exercise.
And I think Lauren and I are fortunate.
We have resources as we've gone in. Like it's hard for us. I can imagine people that struggle
and don't have as many resources. Like how the hell are you supposed to know? And I think about
this for like, for our kids and their kids. Like it's, you know, I, I, I talked to my parents
about this. They're older and like, they're like, they don't remember having to deal with all of
this kind of stuff when they were younger. And these, a lot of these issues, and I'm sure
doctor you've seen them.
A lot of this stuff is, you know, we're living longer
and we have a lot more at our disposal now,
but it takes a real effort to just be health, just baseline healthy.
Yeah, I mean, 7 out of 10 chronic diseases in the U.S. are avoidable.
And that means it can be avoided through like diet and or exercise or, you know.
Give us an example of a couple of what you mean by that.
Oh, so for example, diabetes, hypertension, COPD, which is like chronic obstructive pulmonary
disease.
How do you, is that exercise?
So that would be like a lot of what we inhale, right? So exercise is going to decrease that,
but also diet. A lot of it really
has to do with diet because just like you were saying before, the body is really all connected.
And so if the gut microbiome, which really connects with the brain, right? And so a lot of disruptors
that you may ingest or not being excreted from the body, a lot of that blood is then shunted to
the brain, right? And so you have to think of what we're putting in
our bodies is fueling our bodies and so if they're all interconnected and we're not fueling it in the
best way or we're in environments that kind of breed these things that are not great for our
bodies then that's when we start to have all of these issues so we are living longer but we're
not living longer healthier what are the tall tale signs of an imbalance and what do you both
recommend to someone who thinks that they might be imbalanced? So what I've noticed is fatigue is a
huge one, right? Like if you're feeling lethargic and tired, there's most likely something going on
and chronic stress, right? Like we are all chronically stressed as Americans. We're buzzed up and like
always crazy. And just we have so many different, especially when we're looking at the female
hormones, right? Like something like PCOS, you're bloated all the time. You can even have facial
hair. Like there's so many little signs that are very telling in a hormonal imbalance.
I think that a lot of it is everyone knows their
body best. And when your body starts to not function in the way that it should be or used
to in the past, I think that should be the kind of like that light bulb that goes off in your head
is that something's off. And what in my lifestyle could I do to change that or get it back to the
regulation that it used to be. And a lot of times
it can be something as simple as like your daily activities that you're either not implementing
something or you've taken something out that was extremely helpful for you. And again, I'll go back
to like diet and exercise and the food that we take and whether it's getting sunlight in the
morning or grounding or making sure that we meditate to decrease our cortisol levels. I think those are things that everyone can take part in. But I think as a whole, we all can take
part as a community. And I think that was such a critical point that you brought up is that we need
to make sure that we're watching all of these things that we're putting in our foods and in our
plastics. So that really is now impacting everybody in a way that's like
over time like what you've seen like you're saying yeah we're seeing it over time that
this is impacting everyone in a way where they're not showing up more healthy yeah i mean like we're
vocal because we do this show and talk to people like yourself all the time that have an expertise
and you know we sometimes we catch a lot of shit because what you're doing is you're telling people
in some kind of time that like hey maybe you're not living the way
you should be and that it feels like a personal attack and it's not it's just a lot of people are
just unaware of the fact that they have different options or healthier options or maybe the things
that they think are healthy are really not healthy i mean we were talking earlier about just cleaning
supplies like looking and seeing like what are you actually cleaning with? Is it necessary all the time? I had a follow-up question for you. As a doctor,
what do you find most challenging or frustrating for yourself when it comes to treating your
patients? Yeah, I think, you know, even in the medical community, we haven't done the best job
in allowing people to have ownership of their own kind of journey in the things, again, that they do every day.
So what we've, I think we've constructed this kind of relationship where we wait till we're sick,
and then we go to the doctor and we give you something, right? And so that becomes this
transactional kind of relationship until you're only going because you don't feel well. But what
we should be teaching is before you get to me and don't feel well, what are the things that I can teach you to stay well? And we've moved away from that. And I think, you know, when we
look decades, you know, before is what was a doctor really? They were kind of like the community,
like guy who would go around and like meet with families and talk to them. And, but they asked
their transaction used to be like food, right? like I'm going to give you these groceries if you kind of help out if you know we have a cough and because we've just come
up yeah medications are not a bad thing so I don't want to put shame on medications but I think maybe
we have used them too much as a crutch instead of focusing on the things that could really be done
every day and when we look at the you know the ingredients and like flow and looking at the
endocrine system and something that you can add every day.
Yeah.
That can help with your system.
It's that proactive approach.
That makes you feel better.
That's.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I remember when I was a kid, you'd go for like a checkup and then the doctor would be like, okay, go do these few things or eat this kind of, like, I don't really do that anymore.
I feel something that has helped me balance my hormones.
And this is so weird is weightlifting.
Oh, interesting.
It naturally helped me.
Me too.
I can tell you weightlift.
I can tell.
Don't you feel like it balances your insulin or something?
Absolutely.
You know why?
Yes, there is a reason why.
Your muscle is the biggest absorber of glucose.
Yes.
So if you're like taking that glucose in
because you're lifting weights,
then you're decreasing the glucose
that's just sitting around doing nothing.
And that's what you don't want glucose to do.
You don't want it to sit around, do nothing.
And that's the insulin resistance that we hear.
It's when the insulin isn't being absorbed by your muscles, right?
Let's all compare our biceps.
Let's all compare our biceps.
I've been slacking on my Pilates arms.
You're busy building a company.
I want to get to that.
I think it's very impressive that you and your brother have created this out of nothing. I always find it super interesting when
there's someone that sees a need. They want to disrupt a space. They want to stop with the taboo.
And I feel like you guys have nailed that. And you've also done beautiful packaging.
What has been the nitty gritty entrepreneur behind the scenes of this?
Because I know it's not easy.
Oh, no.
So I would say really the beginning was the most nitty gritty.
We when we came up with the idea, right, we're like, oh, great.
This is a great idea.
And then we got down to business and it took us two and a half years of R&D to make this
happen when we thought it would kind of be maybe a plug and play.
And we learned really quickly that that was not going to happen. And we had to employ the
best doctors, nutraceutical scientists, manufacturers, because again, like I'm just a girl who was
struggling. Like I didn't know the first thing about creating a supplement. I just knew that I
needed it. And so we had to employ all of these people,
get a dream team together and make this happen. So I would say that would be like a huge hurdle
that we had to overcome. And then when we launched and we launched first with Flow,
I think the second hurdle was figuring out how to expand, right? We're like, okay,
we have this hero product. And we learned really
quickly that like we had a great response from our community. And we had all of these women
telling us their experiences. It's so funny. Like our social ads and our social posts almost became
little like message boards. We created this community and these women would be talking to
each other and be like, oh, this really helped me. You're like, I've been trying this.
That's so smart. It's like a community where people feel comfortable to talk about things
they can't talk about. Yeah. And because we were kind of like putting this platform up and being
like, hey, we're just going to call it how it is. We're just going to talk about these things in the
open. It really inspired people to just start kind of spilling their stories. So we got a lot of
feedback. We got a lot of great things that our customers wanted so that's when we
started expanding into more products like addressing menopause and my mom really helped
us develop that product too because she went through it and what did she say about menopause
and how have you developed a product around menopause if someone who's listening wants
support with that yeah so she actually she fine, but she, we discovered she had uterine
cancer. So she had a hysterectomy and like, thank God we caught it like super early. It was
the best possible scenario in the case. So she had a hysterectomy and was forced into immediate
menopause. So it hit her really hard. And because she had the cancer, it was a little bit more
risky for her to do any bioidentical hormones
and stuff like that. So she was instrumental in creating Menno, our menopause product,
which is an all-natural, proactive approach, kind of how we approach everything,
with actually a lot of similar herbs and vitamins that are in flow, our PMS supplement,
that naturally balance women's hormones and give them the support that they need and
really help balance those hormones as they're fading out. So maca root is like the female.
I've heard that. Yeah. It's amazing, right? Yeah. Incredible. What besides herbs would you tell
people about menopause? What are the things that you would prepare them for, Dr. Shepard? I would
say we've kind of constructed this idea that menopause is like horrible.
And so people are already fearing it.
And 40% of a woman's life is spent in the menopausal stage, right?
Because once you pass menopause, you're menopausal till you die.
I could use a break from my period and pads and tampons.
Like look at the silver lining.
Then like we can do what we need to do without protection.
Right, for your pregnancy.
Menopause is kind of...
You were like in the minority, I would say.
I'm good with that.
Good.
I'm glad you are.
You just share the word.
Carson, pull this clip for later.
Save it for me for a while.
But no, I think that because women might dread it or the symptoms that may come with it,
that we need to actually start these conversations earlier. And once we start the conversations earlier, then people have a
fundamental idea of what's going to go on, what they can take, what would be good for them,
and then also beefing up their weightlifting because that's also important too. And so I
think if we can enter this stage more with the readiness of this is going to be a transition
that I have to
go through like 100% of women are going through menopause like there's not 96 or 92 it's 100%
so what can I do in understanding it so that I can make this journey the best version of myself
and enjoy this 40% of my life that I'm going to spend in the post-menopausal phase why I wanted
to have you guys on the podcast is what I like about this is I feel like you're rebranding things that society has put such a fear around.
Periods, PCOS, menopause.
These are things that we've been taught, like you said, that we need to fear.
And it shouldn't be like that.
And the energy around that is probably making it worse when it comes.
A hundred percent.
Even the pregnancy thing.
Listen, again, I'm not an expert, but I believe if you're thinking in your head all the time,
oh my God, I can't get pregnant. Oh my God, what's my temperature? Do I need to be checking
my cycle? What's my... That chaoticness around the pregnancy, I believe creates a barrier for you to not get pregnant.
You're not in a flow state. And when you're getting pregnant, you should be in a flow state
because things are flowing towards you. It's life. And so, you know, again, this is my own
experience with my kids. I was like, I'm going to get pregnant. That's all I did. I said, I'm going to get pregnant. And I constantly thought in my head, a pregnancy is flowing towards me. Listen,
this may sound woo woo. I just think if you if you're constantly stressed about the menopause,
stressed about the pregnancy, you're not you're not getting a flow towards you.
No, I think it's important for each of those categories, pregnancy, puberty and
periods and menopause is exactly what you said. I think the mindset is very important with that,
but leaning into the experience rather than trying to push it away because then you're just
creating this like, you know, relationship where it's not flowing like exactly like you said. So
the more that we lean into it because we have an understanding of it, but we have a mindset that this is something that I can do, like I can do hard things. I can do
things that might be a little bit difficult, but I'm going to flow with it. That is going to create
much more of a pathway. And I've heard so many stories like that, like women will be so stressed
and it's like the center of their universe and they're like trying to get pregnant. And then
the second they kind of give up, but they're like, you know what? I'm just going to go with the flow. They get pregnant. Well, it's very
similar to getting married, in my opinion, or dating someone like if you're constantly like,
I need a guy. I need a guy. Where's the guy? Where's the guy? A guy doesn't like me.
That is not attracting what you want. If you're like, you know what? Fuck it. What happens happens.
If someone finds me, they're lucky to be in my presence like
i'm i'm so great you're gonna attract a certain kind of person because you think you're great i
think i think it's with everything though i think this is a desperation career with money with
dating with everything i think if you're putting out like a certain kind of energy that's a bit
of a repellent in some ways totally like if you're like you're applying for a job i need the job and it's just like whoa you know yeah that energy what you
radiate you know comes internally so you're pushing that out without even realizing it
and the atmosphere can read it so i i totally agree with that and i actually tell that to my
patients i'm like hey let's let's let's work up here a little bit so that we can kind of control
some of the things that are going on here.
I call it the ruminator.
And what I really like about the way that you are as a doctor is you've mentioned so many different tools that don't have anything to do with the medical community.
And like you said, medicine's needed when it's needed, but there should be a plethora in your toolbox.
I think what you guys talked about with Makaroot, like that's such an amazing tool. Grounding, meditation. Yeah. It's like, it's not just like
a one size fits all. What are some really all-star ingredients? I see that there's
all different kinds of adaptogens. What are the ingredients that you like have handpicked that
you're really proud of besides the maca? So in the flow endocrine superfood powder,
there's four buckets we're kind of trying to tackle. So it's the brain, the thyroid,
the ovaries and liver and kind of the reproductive section of your body and the gut. So
and they all work together, you know. So L-theanine and roidiola are the ingredients
that help the brain. So L-theanine is thatidiola are the ingredients that help the brain. So L-theanine
is that calming ingredient that is in matcha. And it gives you kind of that calming effect.
You'll take this or you'll have it in the morning with your smoothie or with some lemon and water,
and you'll feel calming effects within the hour. It really keeps you at that homeostasis and stops
that cortisol spike. So it really, really helps with that.
That's incredible.
I struggle with another thing, hypothyroidism.
So I have a thyroid imbalance.
So iodine and selenium are used to balance your thyroid
and produce T3 and T4.
So selenium is actually in,
have you heard of people like eating two Brazil nuts a day?
So yeah, do you? So that's what selenium is actually in, have you heard of people like eating two Brazil nuts a day? So yeah,
do you?
So that's what I have not seen you eat.
I haven't been in my office there.
I can't,
I'm going to see,
I'm going to make a video.
Very enthusiastic about that too.
He was like,
you know,
it's amazing that I can even live without you watching me.
And then for, for your ovaries and your sexual health, we have DIM, which is a super ingredient for ovaries.
I've heard about this. Talk about this. I've heard a lot about this ingredient.
Yes. So it is. And also artichoke extract.
So what it does is it just helps you produce the good estrogen.
So there's actually good estrogen and bad estrogen, kind of like cholesterol. And so you want to produce as much
good estrogen as you can. So DIM really produces the good estrogen. It really helps with PCOS.
It helps balance those hormones and make sure that you're at the optimal level of estrogen.
If our audience is listening and you both had to recommend one product to start
with, what is the product? Say someone, they have mild periods, maybe a little severe, but not crazy.
What would you guys both recommend? If it's mild periods, I would really start with the endocrine
superfood powder. That's what I thought you were going to say. Because it's such a holistic approach and it's weight management. It's managing your stress. It's managing your fatigue.
All really holistically. If you're struggling with something more focused, like hyper-focused,
then we have an ovarian product that I take every day to help manage my PCOS.
And we have our vaginal probiotic. It's our bestseller. It's like, it is,
it's changed my life. Like it's absolutely insane. Like, and it's funny, like even I was like not to
get too graphic, but this is what I do. Like, it's so funny. Cause it's still ingrained in me as a
woman to like get graphic. It makes everything as like fresh as a daisy. My favorite product,
probably because I'm older,
is Menno.
So I'm of the age
of where I am liking the Menno product.
Your skin is so beautiful.
You do not look older to me.
Oh, I'm almost 50.
You look great.
Thanks.
Weightlifting.
I think I'll just,
yeah, weightlifting is like,
that's killer right there.
You look great. Do I need to start? Weightlifting is a that's killer right there you look great
weightlifting is a game changer
yes
yeah you need to start
weightlifting
and doing the Pilates thing
Pilates is great
you can do both
I started doing the Pilates thing
okay
I liked it
I moved over from
I do the weightlifting
but then I do the
incorporate the Pilates
weightlifting a hundred
I think
I think everyone in the world
should weightlift though
that's a whole
other episode okay you know I just think it's so important I think it's changed my should weightlift, though. That's a whole other episode.
You know, I just think it's so important.
It's changed my life.
Unfortunately, it's one of those things where if you start doing it young, you'll carry it forever.
If you start doing it older, it's harder, but it's arguably needed when you're older much more than when you're younger.
I lost 60 pounds.
Wow.
And primarily weightlifting? i had a baby i was 60
pounds heavier than i was before and i implemented weightlifting and protein and it changed my
hormones and my life and my confidence and i weightlift now four days a week sometimes five
i love it you're my bff it shrinks the body composition you know it so like
jeans that I wore in high school I can wear now even if I'm the same weight as I was before and
couldn't wear them yes it's weird yeah the muscle weighs more than that because of all the stuff
that you're into with hormones and yeah and I mean you're so into all these things I feel like
weightlifting is right up your alley okay I gotta do it but i feel like i'm kind of like a horror when i talk about it like i'm i'm kind of not like a horror
for weightlifting like i like love it so much that it's almost like i don't know i feel like
you may have listened to me before because that's all i talk about you do weightlifting yeah i can
tell you can tell by looking at your body i i did it but i've increased so i've done it, but I've increased in my 40s weightlifting because it's a game changer.
And I know what it does internally.
What's your whole thing?
What's your whole schedule?
So I would say I'm the quick and dirty weightlifter where I can do it like in a good 35 to 40 minutes.
That's all you need.
But I know that if I do higher weights, lower reps, then I can kind of get that in.
It can work for me for the rest of the day.
But it's really that glucose because as you start to get older, your glucose is just kind of like,
I'm going to sit around. And I'm like, I don't want you to.
Explain how like, and I'm not like, you have to explain this, how it makes your metabolism go all
day. Yeah. So it makes your metabolism go all day because myokines, which is just a fancy word for
the cells that the muscle makes, is for our immune system. It's for decreasing our fat, right?
Increasing our muscle.
And it also helps with cognition as well.
So muscle really is, I call it like the organ of longevity.
It really is there to sustain so much of your body.
And then it also helps support your bones,
which we know when you get older, your bones get weak.
Yeah, not to pick on my dad,
if you're listening to this,
but as he's gotten older, he like kind of stopped doing that.
And I was like, hey, this, you know, you start to like get a little bit more now he's now he's jacked
he's like 80 years old he started again he started again he's just doing it for five years it doesn't
well i think a lot of women are scared you're gonna bulk up yeah it doesn't bulk you up it
shrinks it like shrink wraps you it kind of i feel like it would like tighten me up a little bit like
you look amazing oh gosh i mean you look amazing you look like you weightlift but i just think like with everything that you guys have with your
products it's very synergistic to what you guys are doing yeah you know it's so funny our our dad
started uh weightlifting now he's like freaked out he's like i have to start weightlifting blah blah
blah and he is the biggest fan of the mouth tape he wears it every single night the pink mouth tape our 60
year old father wears it his little lips every single night he had changed his life him and my
mom but if he keeps doing it it's the cutest thing you have to email that to me lauren at
the skinny confidential.com you have to email that to me that is so cute i love it your dad
what's his name ed Eddie. Eddie, if
you're listening and you keep doing this for the next
like, you know, I got my dad back into it.
He will add years to his life.
Excuse me, so will mouth taping.
Of course, but I'm saying just weight lifting alone.
It's so good for people. And he's building a
sauna at the house. He's like, he's going full steam.
And excuse me, so will Flo.
Absolutely. Get yourself some
Flo's super food Powder in your smoothie.
Strawberry lemonade is the flavor.
Hormone balance, energy and stress, got microbiome.
You can also check out the menopause one if you're going through that.
I think the vaginal probiotic is absolutely genius.
I love that you mentioned, because we have not talked about this on this podcast,
vaginal odor. Michael, plug your ears. I'm hung in talked about this on this episode or on this podcast uh vaginal odor yeah michael plug your ears i'm coming here pretty good on this episode
when you come back you can bring the ball jacuzzi and i will i will
to bring the organic non-microplastic tampons Do we have a code and can we do a giveaway?
Yes.
Yes and yes.
You guys follow at O positive, positive without the E on Instagram.
And you tell us your favorite part of this episode on my latest post.
We'll send you like a goodie bag of all the favorite products.
Yes.
Okay.
Full goodie bag, full gift basket.
One winner.
And then what is the code for everyone who wants to go shop?
It's SKINNY and it's 25% off.
You guys, check out O Positive Health and Target Nationwide in the intimate care aisle
and online at Amazon and at opositive.com.
Definitely enter the giveaway.
Go follow at opositive without the E on Instagram and go shop.
Use code SKINNY.
Definitely, I'm telling you,
get the superfood powder. It's strawberry lemonade. Like I said,
I'm going to be taking that vaginal probiotic. So things smell fresh as a daisy, Michael Bostic.
Thank you guys for coming on. Where can everyone find both of you? Pimp yourself out.
I'm just at Brianna Bitton. First and last name.
I'm at Jessica Shepherd, MD, S-H-E-P-H
E-R-D-M-D
come follow me
and if people
want to ask you
questions about
intimate care
or vaginas
or buttholes
or whatever questions
that they have
about gynecologist
questions
can they drop
in your DMs
oh please
hit me up
talk about it
all day long
and drop it in the
O positive DMs
as well as mine
I love it
thank you guys both
for coming on the show
thank you
bye