Unzipping Taboos: Candid Conversations about Sex - Bodies Aren’t Calendars: Periods, Pregnancy, and Protection

Episode Date: February 25, 2026

In this episode, we unzip how the menstrual cycle actually works, what influences the likelihood of pregnancy, and why real bodies don’t operate on neat, predictable timelines. We explore how stress, medication, and everyday life can affect cycle timing, while clarifying common misconceptions about ovulation, fertilization, pre-ejaculate, and STI risk.We also talk about emergency contraception, breaking down what options exist, how and when they work best, and why effectiveness can vary from person to person. Along the way, we highlight the importance of access, accurate information, and autonomy when making time-sensitive reproductive health decisions. Our conversation addresses the very real issue of period poverty, highlighting it as a systemic issue connected to education, infrastructure, and dignity—and underscoring why comprehensive menstrual health education matters at every stage of life.This episode offers clarity where there’s often confusion, replacing silence and stigma with practical knowledge and compassion.If you have a story, thoughts and/or a topic or question for Dr. Sue and Charlie please share your ideas here:  ⁠Show suggestionsIf you want to ask Dr Sue a sex question for the weekly Q&A you can submit it here: Ask a question

Hey, everyone. Welcome to Unzipping Taboos, candid conversations about sex with Dr. Sue and Charlie. We are both here to explore the questions you've always been curious about, but maybe not always comfortable asking out loud. No judgment, no shame, just open, honest conversations. So zip down and let's get candid. Before we get started, I do want to let you all know that we have now partnered with jackandjilladult.com, one of the top online adult stores. And because you're here with us, you get 20% off with code UNZIPPING20. Go check them out. Now that that business is out of the way, today we are unzipping. How would we categorize this, Dr. Sue? Let's not tell them. Let's just. Okay.

Mystery subject. I love it. Some mystery unzip. On that note, would you like to give our listeners a little bit about your background before we get started? Sure. So I have a bachelor's and a master's in health education. And then I decided that I needed to specialize a little bit. I feel like this is the fourth time in like a week I've had to do this for different things. So I feel like I'm repeating, but that's good. It's good practice. It's good. I have a PhD in human sexuality education. And what you do with a PhD is often go into academia. So I went into academia. um i do the professor thing you know i teach um every time i say that you know it's like a throw away you know it's a professor thing i guess whatever um but i do all the things that most

people associate like i do some research i i mostly teach um i write textbooks i speak places um and then in my spare time well my make-believe spare time um i do a lot of work um where i feel like it needs to be done. And so sometimes that's my local community talking to everything from youth groups up to folks in their 70s and 80s. Sometimes it's working with people who work with those folks. So either administrators of facilities that work with seniors or parent groups or training teachers. Basically anything anyone needs me to talk about sex, I will be there with my cape on oh i should have a cape um i know right and then in my spare spare time um and this is part of doing the work where i think it needs to be done so much of of what charlie and i have talked

about in the episodes we've done and so much of my my work it's always been addressing people's questions and if you don't have someone like me to come talk to live though i'm happy to take the show on the roads let me know if you want me to book me live um but like where do you ask the question and how do you know you're getting good information and how do you do it without doing it on reddit or it's not that reddit's well i don't want to say reddit's bad but you don't know who you're getting the information from anyway so um one of the things i do is people submit anonymous sex questions to me and then once a week on sundays at 9 p.m eastern i release one question and one answer. I'm trying to help combat. Oh, I'll segue into the topic, trying to combat some

very common questions that often include myths. And actually what we're going to do today, just a little teaser, the anticipation of killing people. A little peek under the corner. Actually, that's how we got started on this one. It was based off some of the questions I was getting to the Hey, Dr. Sue. And we'll put a link to that in description if you want to submit a question but i don't do this by myself because otherwise i would just be talking to myself i do this with the fabulous charlie so for those of you who do and don't know charlie uh charlie is our curious co-host he's always ready to tackle the the topics and the reasons that we think the way we think um about all the topics not not just the sex topics really it's all but we do the sex

ones here. Uh, but I feel like you should tell us more about you. Uh, I'm Charlie. And I think the key thing there that Dr. Sue mentioned is the curiosity, um, meeting, meeting people and situations where, where they're at and being curious about how we got there in those, in those moments on those topics. And I am also someone who has always kind of inherently challenged what's been expected of me uh especially as a woman in society growing up the messaging that that you hear from external um external sources versus the messages that you get at home if um I was very privileged to have parents that for the for the most part never told me I couldn't do anything because simply because I'm a girl um it was always if you put your mind to it you can do it

And I know that's a very privilege, that's a beautiful privilege that I grew up with. And so it was also fostered this sense of rebellion when you're going out into the big bad world and people are like, no, you can't, you're a girl. Fuck you, I can't. Watch me. And that's why we're friends. So here we are. I'm here to help so that Dr. Sue doesn't feel like she's talking to herself.

And also just our conversations from the moment we became friends, really from the moment that we met, which was very closely to when we became friends. It was almost instant. We just found this, my curiosity fit well with her expertise and her perspectives and her curiosity um because we also grew up in just different parts of the country so that was also um an enjoyable journey yeah together and we continue that journey yeah left coast east coast right coast all right i mean that's why you got that chip on your shoulder from the wrong coast wow

and that's the end of the episode it was like killer it's the end of the podcast and that's when it all went wrong that's when no one saw Charlie again what is it at that moment she realized she fucked up a few moments later

so this anyway I'm not gonna we gotta finish the episode then you know if the body disappears this episode was following in the vein of what we've done. So if you haven't listened to the last two episodes, please feel free to go back and listen or watch them. They were on myths. They were on common myths and then more specifically on male myths. And this one followed naturally, but it also came from one of my Hey Dr. Seuss

because I know that no one's scrolling through. I really have to check how long I've been doing that. I really want to say it's three years, but I'll check it eventually. I got enough things to do right now. I know that that's enough. I know that people don't go on and onto my Hey Dr. Sue and they don't scroll. I mean, I'd love to know how people find me, but they're not scrolling through every Instagram post. They're not scrolling through every medium post. They're not scrolling through every YouTube video. And so I very often get repeat questions or similar repeat questions, like the same exact thing. And one of the questions I will get at least once every two months is pre-cum I was exposed to pre-cum or I exposed someone to

I mean I was exposed to pre-cum am I pregnant yeah am I pregnant or I touched my pre-cum to somebody um and I kind of love that when I get it from from both sides of the story because um so often we just think of pregnancy as like a woman's issue and um I do get concerned men of you know did i did i accidentally get her pregnant when i didn't mean to so so i had just gotten another one and i had just answered another one and that's when we were starting to talk about so many of what we hear about the myths around pre-cum and um pregnancy and when you should do pregnancy tests and what happens if you did maybe accidentally get exposed to sperm it sounds like it was a kitchen accident like oh they were exposed to sperm

I think we need to repeat that because I'm sure everyone heard you say this isn't like an OSHA thing yeah um but that's where this one comes from and and it it it's fascinating to me because I feel like the one thing if we're going to do sex ed in high school in schools um and I don't think we do it well and you should all listen to that episode I feel like if we're going to do anything we're going to talk about menstruation but we don't actually talk about like it's just like okay you're bleeding here's what you do we don't talk about the phases and I honestly I don't teach the phases because that's how I put people to sleep but they don't understand timing a pregnancy and and they're not talking about emergency

contraception in most places and it kind of helps to understand when you're ovulating to understand if you need emergency contraception and um so there's no easy title for this one we'll figure it out when we're done yes i also feel like you need to work on your game a little bit dr sue you don't have to put people to sleep about the menstrual cycle i know i just i have 15 weeks to cover everything there is in creation about human sexuality and i'm like that seems like ample time yeah actually one of the things one of the things that i talk about instead of going through the actual phases i mean we talk about timing we talk about when you're more most likely to get pregnant which most people do not know um i actually spend more time talking about period

poverty which i know we didn't do in the pre-show so i don't want to like whip that out right now but um i think it's important to expose my students to this concept of period poverty because some of them have no idea what it is and others of them have lived through it and i think everyone has a responsibility to address it but they don't even know it exists so that's where i spend that time don't judge she's silently judging me we said you said at the beginning we don't judge i'm just judging that you said you put people to sleep talking about a cycle that's what i'm judging not okay so in this phase we have the menstrual cycle and that's well if you teach it like that of course you're gonna put people to sleep because i ever really taught anyway

so where do we i mean we now have lots of things we could talk about so i don't know where we want to start we do i think i think it is good to start with the cycle okay um i think that's a good foundational piece for this topic i'll make it interesting folks i have faith in that. But I think that's a good foundation because I know that many times women don't really get the education around the phases of their cycle until they're actively trying to get pregnant. And then you become hyper aware of that. And then there's the stress of being hyper aware of all of that, that can impact, um, impact that journey. Um, but there, I don't recall learning about the phases in the detail that you do when you are trying to get pregnant.

So with that, there are four phases in a menstrual cycle, right? What are they, Dr. Sue? Do I have to do them in order? Yes. It'd be more fun if I did it alphabetically, but that would really screw with people's thoughts. We've got the menstrual cycle, the menstrual phase. That is when, if she is bleeding, that is when she is bleeding. And I say if because some people don't bleed very often, very much. We usually bleed about three to five days, but the menstrual phase is going to be longer than that.

But when we hear cycle, when we hear period, you're in the menstrual phase. then get into the follicular follicular phase thank you see that was entertaining right there that's when your body is kind of getting ready to be pregnant here's the thing we need to keep in mind about bodies

and I do talk about some of this in class if we were to cut your head off it's incredibly violent but if we were to cut a woman's head off from the neck down women are designed to get pregnant they they tend to be hornier while they're ovulating i know we haven't hit ovulation phase um they tend to get hornier when they're when they're ovulating um everything about their body is about getting pregnant unless they're stopping that with hormones and so same thing

for the for dudes by the way like if we cut off their heads like everything from the neck down is about doing the best they can to get someone pregnant so to make this less violent our body the human body is biologically engineered to procreate but only from the neck down well and the reason I say that is when we put the heads back on see it wasn't leaving people decapitated when we put the heads back on then things like am I attracted to someone of a different sex than me do I actually want to be a parent do I think that this is important as a part of my life like all of that comes back into play okay so what's happening the follicular phase wow that bird's gonna kill me is that our bodies are women's bodies are getting

ready to get pregnant we're developed we're taking one of the follicles we're stimulating it we're making it ready then we ovulate and that's when it is released from the ovary and that's what is it sorry the egg the the potential egg the potential embryo um this is not going to last forever which is why timing becomes so important after ovulation phase then we get into the luteal phase which is where your body's like are we pregnant are we pregnant are we pregnant am i pregnant i got hormones are we pregnant oh we're not okay bye-bye and that's when we start to see the inner lining see if i did it like that it would probably be amusing and that's when we start to see the inner lining of the uterus um

start to slough off and we go back into the menstrual cycle the biggest problem we do when we when we talk about the phases is that we talk about it as a 28 day cycle and that's going to fuck up our math because first of all most people do not have a 28 day cycle and second of all it makes the math not work um because when we're talking about when ovulation happens it usually happens about i always say 14 i mean technically it's 14 to 16 but it for the vast majority of women it's going to happen 14 days before the start of her next cycle so if you're if you're if you have a 28 day cycle we're always taught you're ovulating on day 14 And in a 28 day cycle, that is absolutely correct. If she has a 35 day cycle, that is no longer correct or even close to correct. And so if you are trying to get pregnant, you want to have as much sex as possible around day 21. And if you don't want to get pregnant or get someone pregnant, you want to make sure you're using a reliable contraceptive or avoid sex around that time.

um and so that's that's the biggest thing is people like 28 day cycle like no because that also throws off the math one of the myths we talked about last time was being able to get pregnant while you're bleeding or two times ago and if you have a short cycle like if you have an 18 day cycle you're ovulating meat possibly while you're bleeding um so that's what yeah that throws off the math bad math so there you go all right so there that's the foundational piece the foundation of how you could possibly get pregnant and what the phases of a menstrual cycle is. And, and I think that's just really is just important to know. Cause I, I, I do know that I have friends that didn't learn about that and really what those phases meant. Like you

learned, you learned that you had menstruation and ovulation, but not the follicular phase or deludial phase and what that really meant like i don't recall that being a part of learning about when i'm about to get my period you just said that to make me repeat the word didn't you no i said it to show off because i can say it you know the thing is i've seen i've seen some really bad sex ed and i don't want to slam teachers especially those who had me come into their space um sometimes i will go into spaces if if asked um to give feedback on lessons and to help them to get better at what they're doing and i admire that they're willing to take that help i have seen some very overwhelming for seventh graders information being thrown at them

because it's it's so hard for them to even think about pregnancy like that's not how your brain works in seventh grade um yeah yeah and then because we do such crappy sex ed you may not get i was talking to someone recently i think i didn't i didn't necessarily ask consent because I didn't know I was going to talk about this, but I think I can talk about it broadly. They are doing 21 days of health with their students in one year. And that is all the students are getting in four years of high school. They're not even getting a menstrual cycle worth. Well, that'd be a great way to push that.

So I feel like I mean, I want to cut some slack to folks who are like, I would love to talk about that. But I got 21 days or I see them once every three weeks. How am I supposed to do anything? So. So, yes, that's how it is. So you can get pregnant. The problem is that you are most likely to get pregnant when you're ovulating and then you have a little window of about 72 hours. But it's 14 days before the start of your next cycle.

And only your body knows when that's going to be because your cycle can change. It can change because of stress. It can change because of medication that you're on. It can change because of the people you're around. Our periods can get in sync if you're around new women. Did I mention stress and maybe some more stress? You have now. And maybe some stress.

Because that's the thing that comes up a lot with the pre-com. I'm leading. I'm giving myself the segue. If you're losing a lot of body fat and you're losing a lot of body fat quickly, your period can be thrown off. Like there's so much I can throw off your period. so if you're counting realize that it's not a perfect math yeah all right so you gave yourself a segue i did so so what happens is people will be like i was exposed to pre-com and i'm like okay what how where like i had someone be like i accidentally swallowed pre-com during a blowjob

am i pregnant i'm like no that one i can absolutely say now i can unequivocally say your reproductive yeah your reproductive system and digestive system are not linked that way yeah um but she was terrified she was absolutely terrified this was an in-person event someone came up to me afterwards um i've had the um there was pre-cum on my leg like on my thigh well it's not it's not like that it's not houseworms like a little worm sorry for those of you who couldn't see that crawling up the thigh wait wait i have sperm on a pen actually you do but it's getting lost in the background um it's not going to swim its way up your leg figure out how to get to your to your to your vaginal opening figure out how to get past you know up the vagina and through

the cervix it's not it's not happening that way if it was near the opening of the vagina then yes possibly you could have been exposed you were exposed possibly there could be a potential pregnancy, but there may not be any sperm in pre-cum. That is absolutely possible that there is no sperm in pre-cum. And if there is, there's not a lot. And you know, it only takes one to get you pregnant, but it's a numbers game. But the odds are going to be really low. But the reason I bring up the stress is that people will, when I used to work in clinic, people would come up to me like, I was exposed to pre-cum yesterday. I'm like, okay. And they're like, I'm pregnant. I'm like nope does not happen that quickly right does not happen that quickly and then what happens is

they're like i'm going to take a pregnancy test i'm like that pregnancy test is not going to be anywhere remotely accurate so it's going to show negative unless you were pregnant from something else um and so what happens is they wait usually i tell people wait if you miss your period and it's been by more than a week then maybe do a pregnancy test and the reason that we want you to wait and i can't tell you how many times i would have people come into clinic and they were terrified that they were pregnant like like real legitimately like i don't want to be pregnant this isn't where i want in my life and then they go to the bathroom to give us a urine sample and that's when they'd get their period because it was like their body's like oh you're finally dealing with

this okay cool no we're fine because the stress of like oh my god am i pregnant can actually delay your period coming so you need to relax i know that's really hard to say and do well easy to say hard to do um but you need to give it some time pregnancy tests are not looking for sperm they are looking for a fertilized egg that is producing a hormone called hcg that's not going to happen within 48 hours of you being coming into contact or pre-cum and i think that's that's another good segue into like the timing between fertilization like there there are stages for someone to actually begin producing that hormone the hcg hormone it doesn't happen when the egg is fertilized like in that instant no it takes it can take up because it still has to travel

the fertilized egg now has to travel and attach itself to the uterine lining right implant yeah implant yeah and that's what happens the hcg is not it wasn't hcg was not invented for pregnancy tests hcg is the hormone that says to your body like hello i'm here don't get rid of me um and that's what we're waiting for we're waiting for enough hc we're waiting for hcg hcg to be produced and enough of it to be picked up on the tests if it's been more than a week i would say test at that point and if you test negative and you want to give it i wouldn't give it that much more because it may be a sign of something else going on like not getting your period like that can be a problem um but you're gonna have to wait and

it's because we're waiting for the waiting for the fertilized egg to implant which is a really fascinating thing because sometimes the body doesn't get that message and then you have your normal period and you'll never know yeah yeah i think that's the other thing to consider or i don't know how many people know know this and maybe I'm repeating some misinformation but the women's immune system initially treats or reacts to that fertilized egg as a foreign body yeah and for some women to decide do I need to attack and get rid of this and cure myself cure this body of this yeah and for some of them it's because of their blood type so it's called an rh incompatibility and so if you are a negative if you are a negative blood type

and this is going to be a positive thing your body's going to be like i don't know what this is there are there is a shot of medication we can give you um once you're in a pregnancy that will help to reduce that or eliminate that risk but yeah no um bodies are fascinating they really are they really are and that we evolved to have this this sentience is uh to be sentient is quite incredible yeah in my in my mind um in my sentient mind anyway do you want to mention that pre comes comes with the risk of stis just so we don't I was gonna say yeah so so we've we've kind of focused on on pregnancy and and some of that because this episode is about about the myths surrounding different things regarding pregnancy and and all of that but pre-cum there there are still risks

being exposed to pre-cum yeah so is the risk of us yes how do I want to say it like if you're if you get pre-cum around your mouth you're there's possibility if there's an STI in the pre-cum that you'll get it you know so yeah so be safe just as possible yes please i mean unless you're fluid bonded in which case you don't care like yeah or you don't that's an interesting term what's that fluid bonded oh when you're fluid bonded with a partner it means that you are absolutely okay sharing fluids with them and like it's funny because anyone who's heard me talk about so many of my problems with sex ed but one of the big things is it's really rooted in death disaster disease and dysfunction and so we're always like safer sex and use a condom and i'm

like but what if when i'm your fluid bonded with your partner and you're okay with that like what if you are in a truly monogamous relationship i'm sorry i was waiting for the sarcasm there um what if you're in a truly monogamous relationship and you're both sti negative or you both have an sti and you know the risks like i learned something new today yay can i go home now yep you're all done you can retire fade into the background i'll take over from here all right well um now that we've talked a little bit about like the phasing of the menstrual cycle and then the the time that it can take from fertilization to a potential positive pregnancy

test um love that alliteration thank you do it so inadvertently sometimes i'm just such a sucker for alliteration um emergency contraception maybe yeah maybe you you are fluid bonded but But things have come up and it's not the right time and you want to make sure. Yeah, or a condom broke or you didn't use a condom at all because you were in the heat of the moment or you were drunk or, you know, maybe you forgot to take one of your pills or they were stealthing. Oh, go listen to that episode. Yeah.

So emergency contraception, there's actually, there's two types and then there's multiple types of one type. that was super confusing so let me try that again so there's there's two ways of doing it there's there's pills and then there's another way let me just do the other way first because most people don't know if it's within five days the sooner the better let me start with the sooner the better so after you have unprotected intercourse the sooner the better to do these you can actually have a copper t iud put in in five days and that's considered emergency contraception Oh, interesting.

Yeah, most people have no clue. Unfortunately, most people that I talk to who work on college campuses at the medical center are like, that's great, but we don't do those. Not that college kids are the only ones who deal with this. Right. But to have an IUD put in, it has to be determined that you're a candidate. There may be insurance issues. So that's not usually a decision someone's making off the bat. It's probably a decision they were already thinking about or consulting their gynecologist about.

So that's one way is a copper T. The other is by pill. and and in there we've got some we've got two options um the the brand name is plan b it is one pill well for those of us who are old we remember when it was two pills um it's one pill you're going to take it as soon as humanly possible after unprotected intercourse but not necessarily if you're on the pill so if you're good to know yeah because that's going to throw so many hormones at you if you're on a pill what you should probably do is take a look at your just your instructions and see what it advises you to do if you miss a pill because for some

it's just like take it the second you remember it that one day gap won't usually be a big deal unless you're on a mini pill um and i always like if you're on a pill you should probably check that sheet out you know it's the one that's like when you unfold it it's and the letters are that big Yeah. And then like you're making like a paper duck and you're like just trying to find information and it's two in the morning and you're freaking the hell out. So when I used to work. Pharmaceutical origami. Yeah. Oh, there could be a whole thing there. I usually advise people when you get a new when you get a new pill.

Actually, I think you should do this for any medication you take on the regular. But if you're on a new pill, you should go in and read what you should do if you miss a pill, because if it's the one where the levels change every week, the directions are actually different for every week. So I'm not going to give what you should do because it's very specific to your brand. You can also get the consult from the pharmacist. Yes. Yes, who will probably break it down for you way better. But often, because there's so many brands and so many combinations, they will also have to whip out the pharmaceutical origami.

I want to name this, coin this term. I want to trademark it. I know. So plan B is, it's a lot of hormones. And so if you're already on a hormonal method, I would actually advise you not to run out and get plan b i would advise you to contact your pharmacy or read the instructions for a missed pill plan b can be used up for 120 hours after unprotected intercourse don't don't do the deadline drop on this like don't be like well i've got 100 more hours

take that as soon as humanly possible the sooner you can take it the better it's going to work here's the good news bad news let's do good news okay because i feel like i'm a bad news person just by nature the good news is coast it is the good news is well it's a sort of good news see i already like deflated my good news the good news is that plan b or a generic version is available over the counter through mail order services you don't want to name amazon but it's available through amazon um you can get it through places you can get it but you need to have it Like you're not going to get on and, well, I guess they do next day delivery. Sorry, there's a whole segue in my brain there. You can get it over the counter is really my point because there was a point in time where you needed to have a prescription for it. And then there was a point in time where it was available over the counter only for people 18 and over.

that is no longer true is theoretically and i'm going to say theoretically it is theoretically available to anyone who wants it regardless of your sex so if you are male you can still get these and so when we talk about partner contribution and partner you know part shared partner responsibilities um if you are using condoms i think you should have some plan b available just or generic just in case shout out to costco not that i work there um you can get plan b generic the last i heard was it was $6.99 which is way better than 50 yeah it's usually 50 bucks or more yeah so you get it for $6.99 and for those of you who did not know you can use the pharmacy at costco without being a costco member you can't get a hot dog though

but you can get some plan b or the generic version and you can also get glasses and hearing aids go ahead yeah with everything in our current climate plan b is still available in over the counter in all 50 states currently as of the time of this recording theoretically theoretically so the reason I want to throw that in there is that for one of my projects for one of my students years ago and I tell this story a lot they had to go out and experience something new it's a whole project that we used to do and she was married that was the thing she was married that's a very key part of the story she was in her mid-20s she was married she never wore her wedding ring and so she decided to go by Pam B and see what that was like and she went to

i don't think it was the pharmacy i think it was the pharmacist so she went to the pharmacy and she and at that point plan b was behind the counter and it is still in many places and that's why i say theoretically it is behind the counter or is behind lock and key and for some people that is just way too embarrassing or too much of a barrier yeah um so she went to the counter and she asked for the plan b and she was told to take a seat in like the waiting room you know like the two broken chairs next yeah the consult area yeah and the blood pressure machine that's also usually broken yeah and the pharmacist came out and in i wasn't there and the way she described it he was very very patronizing patronizing and like patted

her on the knee and was like started lecturing her on the evils of of premarital sex and the best part of the story she's married and so then she was like that's great give me my pill um but i can imagine where yeah a 16 year old a 20 year old might might be too embarrassed if you're in a small town and it's one of two pharmacies or the only pharmacy i think and every and everybody knows everybody yeah i think i may have told this on another episode if i didn't i'm gonna tell it Now, I had a friend who lived in a very small town, and she picked up condoms once on the way home. She was coming from school and picked up condoms from college. It wasn't like high school.

And by the time she got home, someone from the pharmacy had called her parents to tell her that as an adult child, she had picked up condoms. Wild. Yeah. So there's no way, I mean, in some situations like that, there's no way you're buying P&B. So you can get it from Costco. You can get it online. There's a number of places. not just amazon there are a number of places you can get it online but you need to have it handy

so that was the good news see there was a lot of good news to peppered with some bad news the way you classify good news seasoned with pessimism it's beautiful here's here's the outright bad news the pill is less effective if you are heavier and we very often do not tell people that so the reports on this differ like i've seen some reports that say once you're over 165 pounds it's not effective anymore and don't take two that is gonna don't don't don't double up on plan b that is really not great for your system so it says for one it was like if your bmi is over 25 which is like three quarters of the country or you outright weigh over 165 that that plan b is not an option or

plan b knockoff because there are generics that are cheaper and then there's other papers that say if your bmi is 30 and so i i'm i would lead myself to believe that it starts becoming less effective over 25 which is technically overweight on the incredibly racist bmi scale because it is racist go read the um racist sexist yeah go read the ama statement on that um but whether bmi is racist or not the point is is that if you're heavier it is going to become less effective so if you're like great dr sue like you gave me an option then you took me away there is something called ella e-l-l-a um that you can take that is much more effective for folks of all weights but it is prescription only so you're going to have to have access to a physician or in some

nurse practitioners or PAs who are going to be willing to write you a prescription and you're going to need to get that prescription. But I know that this is the one thing I know I say in class every year when we talk about emergency contraception. And to a human, I have never had someone be like, yeah, I heard that before. That is the one where I'll be like, yeah, after a certain BMI or after a certain weight, it stops being effective. And I've had people get really angry. They're like, why didn't someone tell? I don't know why we're not saying this more. So now you all know, please pass this information on to anyone that you know and love, regardless if they can get pregnant. Call your mom. Say hi to your mom for me. So there you go. So there's the good news, bad news. So for emergency contraception, and that is also within five days. So we're looking at a timeframe. Again, faster the better. Don't wait this out because you have the time. i feel that if you are sexually active and not using a hormonal method you should have some plan

b or generic or ella on on hand because if you're if a condom breaks or you forgot to use one and it's three in the morning there ain't no way you're gonna calmly go to sleep and wait for stores to open the next day it's got a shelf life of ah crap this is the one number it's three to five years is what i want to say but it is a definite one of those yeah i want to say i'm gonna say three to be careful it may be five i think charlie's about to fact check me because i'm not afraid of being fact checked live we're fact checking sorry for those of you listening yeah we are um it's giving me timelines i'm gonna go short end while you look this up i'm gonna go short end and say three years just because plan b has a shelf life of four years la expires after

three okay so i was close so three years so so i would say get it and if you're worried about access to reproductive care and you're in a place where you can get them now i'd say get them now and if you have a loved one who is younger who may need it and you don't think they'd ask a pharmacist or ask someone to get it from behind the plexiglass get it get it and have it on hand first comes first you throw it out you know safely like at a medication drop not just um i think the important thing to point out about how plan b how this works particularly um is that it is it delaying the ovulation or is it spiking your hormones to prevent potential implantation it is spiking your hormone well not not the not the copper tiud because that

doesn't have hormones in it so that would prevent implantation the plan b so plan b and ella are both going to spike your hormones it's basically like do not do what i'm about to give you math on although technically you could there is uh it's essentially you're looking at like two three weeks of a pill don't don't do that just because that's an option you will get really sick but essentially it's spiking your hormones so if you have not yet ovulated you will not ovulate And then if you have ovulated, it will decrease the, it's going to be a hospital, it's in hospital environment for the, for implantation to happen. I just realized something I didn't say that I need to.

Okay. Emergency contraception is not an abortion. I was going to bring that up. So I'm glad you said it. Yeah. I think we need to be very clear that emergency contraception, plan B, the ones that we're talking about, the ones that you take within ideally 72 hours of a broken condom, a missed pill, and then sex where you feel like you are at risk of getting pregnant. It does not

end in established pregnancy. Yes, it is not an abortion. Abortion pill is methoprism or misoprostol. Those are two completely different medications. Some of those are used for other things, by the way, before you start thinking about banning them. It is not an abortion pill. if you were already pregnant before that happened like if you got pregnant two weeks ago and your period's just and you didn't realize it and your period's a little late and you have unprotected intercourse and you take plant b you're going to probably have some side effects from the hormones you're taking but it's not going to stop that from happening yeah the key the key here is if you find yourself needing to figure out emergency contraception you've got i know dr sue said 120

hours but really you should operate within 72 hours i would like it in 24 there you go to be honest with you there you go i would like it in five like condom broke as soon as you can it's rolling across the bed grabbing it off the shelf and taking it five minute now you do have up to five days but don't push that deadline no all right what else you got dr sue I kind of want to talk about period poverty. Let's do that. Was there anything else we were supposed to talk about? No.

Okay. So two things. One just fun fact I'm going to throw out there if you did not know. Period cups, tampons, pads, period underwear are all covered by FSA, flexible savings account. So if you have an HSA or an FSA account, you can use those dollars for menstrual products. Largely. Very helpful. Mm hmm. Which is a great segue into period poverty. So period poverty. Have you ever heard of this? I have. OK. Because I was talking to a group of people about it and they're like, are you just making up words now? I'm like, I do sometimes.

Are you just doing alliteration? I know, right? Period of poverty is in some ways what it sounds like, an inability to get access to menstrual products. It's also an inability, it's also an entire environment where you can't access them, you can't safely use them. Like there are schools where like you can't go to the bathroom when you need to because for safety reasons they're not letting kids into the bathroom. It's about having somewhere to throw them out. We don't want to flush pads. But it's also access to clean water.

And I think that's the thing people miss the most. It's not just about, oh, well, there are pads. You know, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's an English. We can do this, Dr. Sue. There's a dispenser. That's the word I wanted. There's a dispenser of pads and tampons in the bathroom. By the way, the number of times I have been at schools, they're like, yeah, we give away

pads and tampons are free and i've walked into the bathroom they have been empty empty empty like cobwebs like it has nothing in our field um so most people we were in school it hasn't been so most people think it's that and i know in some places it's a quarter and people like oh you know it's a quarter how much is that if you're living paycheck to paycheck that's that's expensive um And so it's also about clean water. It's about the ability to dispose of product or clean your hands when you are done. And I think that's the part some people miss. And there are parts in this country and around the world where access to clean water is not a guarantee. and so if this is the first you're hearing about it i would encourage you to find out if this is a problem in your local community there are community groups that do attempt to deal with it there are some places where they will hand out free tampons and and um and pads oh at my favorite

place the public library um there are other places that will do community events to try to raise awareness there are there are things that communities are doing this is one of those where like addressing this is definitely really good at the if it's being addressed at the community level so if you're first hearing about this um if you work in education please find out what your schools are doing and if you don't work in education and you care about this look around i would just say google period poverty local community um and find out if there's ways of getting involved but when i start talking about this people are horrified or just i'm not sure if i want to use horrified or disgusted but both that people don't have access to the well to running water to clean water in

any circumstance but also like imagining a 14 year old girl who got her period at school and she can't wash her hands like that that that's upsetting for a lot of people um i would also say that period poverty part of it is also a lack of education about periods because we we talk about menstruation but sometimes we don't and the fact that we're not educating everyone i think that people of all sexes i don't care if you have a penis you should understand how menstrual cycles work you should understand what periods are do you find often as well that um the education around menstruation around preparing girls for their first period so much of it is about is about you're going to get your first period here's what it means and here's not how to not get pregnant

but now know that you could possibly get pregnant and it's the focus is very rarely on the hygiene of it yes yeah i mean back in the day like back in the are you there god it's me margaret like the book not the movie i have not seen the movie sorry but like there was a whole conversation there about like menstrual pads and the belt which we don't use anymore i i feel like that was better education about what that might look like and how to use them and how to like then than most people were getting in public schools um i don't think there's a lot of like here's i want to take that back i don't think there's a lot of because there are some really good curriculum that address these things specifically they are often sponsored by

tampon creators and pad creators but i kind of don't care because they're quality education yeah um there are those curriculum and i do know teachers who are like I don't use curriculum often, but I use that one. But I don't think we're doing it as well as we should. And I don't think we're explaining it to men. And there's that whole thing that when they tried to send Sally Ride into space for like seven days, they asked her if 100 tampons were enough. But one of the things that I do, unfortunately, is watch social media clips that my students make me aware of, which I hate them for. But also, it's important.

Appreciate them for, yeah. Yeah, there was a time where there was going around where a guy was doing a video on Instagram, I want to say, and he was like, well, if your period sucks so much, just stop having it. Why didn't we think of that? It's this idea of people not understanding it, so they don't understand how painful it is. And I think we're doing a better job now of talking about pain with the simulators. I love those videos so much. I love those videos, yeah. I love them.

Yeah. And now we're hearing more talk. You know, people are saying now doctors are not just people. Doctors are saying that sometimes for some women, the pain associated with the period is as bad as the pain of a heart attack. Like we're finally starting in some places to take it seriously. But I fear that that kid, the we'll just stop having your period, is going to like be in a position one day to make laws and policies and not understand. So I do think it's a responsibility that we're teaching everyone about this. I want to get back to the impacts of period poverty just for a moment and the health risks that it poses as well. Because if we, I mean, this impacts one in five teens across America. We're just talking America right now. That's crazy. Terrifying. yeah yeah and the health risks of that that's why i touched on the hygiene piece for a moment there um the only thing i remember learning about like for sure learning about with period hygiene was

toxic shock syndrome i was just supposed to guess that yeah yeah that's really the only like scare tactic they had around period hygiene. Um, but the period poverty, not, not having access to the, the materials, tampons, pads, cups. Um, it, if you're, if you're a teenage girl and you're bleeding and you don't want it to go through your clothes or whatever, you're going to find things that aren't meant to be that close to your genitalia. And that's not that it's not that girl's fault for trying to find a way to not bleed through her clothes. Because then also to your point that you were talking about access to clean water, laundry, how are you, they might not have the quantity of water they need to do both laundry and cook in and drink water, good clean

water um so the ripple effect is is bigger than just not having access to the thing there are implications attached to it that impact these young these young girls yeah they're gonna try to do what they can to stop because if you bleed through your clothes that's it you're getting targeted and bullied for god knows how long um there are times where people of all ages and not to be a period bowery sometimes you just forgot to pack an extra one you know they'll wrap extra nap paper towel which is incredibly grating to your genitals and probably really uncomfortable and you hear stories about people shoving paper towel don't do this shoving paper towel up into the vagina with the idea of stopping it which makes sense from a physics perspective but is

really unhealthy and unsanitary right right because you may you'll go to pull that out and pieces can get stuck and then you have you have you've exposed yourself to a high risk of infection yep so go change the world listeners around period poverty thank you around anything we talk about that's your homework for um from this episode there was one more thing i wanted to go back to about what we teach people we teach we teach girls and women that it's always going to be this horrific experience and it's gonna hurt some women yeah like you've got your you've you've got cramps and it's uncomfortable and your clothes don't fit because you're retaining water and you're having massive mood swings and you're having cravings but it's not debilitating for

everyone and that is one of like i have seen genuine fear on kids faces when they come out of the lectures about this that they are being told this is going to be horrific and debilitating First of all, if your period is debilitating, you need to go talk to a doctor and get some help with that. It should not be debilitating. Uncomfortable? Absolutely. Painful? Sure. Debilitating? Not acceptable. And like little girls who haven't gotten their period will come out of the period speech and be like horrified that they're about to go through this horrible pain and agony. yeah and i have friends who taught their kids their girls that their periods were going to be this absolutely horrific part of their experience and it is and i don't know how much of that was psychosomatic yeah well i'm supposed to i'm having my period i'm supposed to be in pain uh yeah so so does it hurt yeah it's not the inner lining of a of an organist ripping out it's not pleasant it's contractions it's yeah with i mean it's not contractions to push out a

baby but that is that is the biological function that is happening yeah and it's detaching from your uterus yeah um so if it's i was just about to quote robin williams i feel like i've done that twice now in two weeks i'm not going to but um if it's again if it's debilitating get that checked out but it it doesn't necessarily have to be nor should it be and i think we sometimes do a disservice i'd like that we're telling people it's going to be uncomfortable because they should know like well when should i take something for this when do i know it's a problem we have to have that conversation but i think we need to stop scaring the crap out of them yeah that's it that's my final word i want to end on something happy and i can't think of it

oh well this is why i'm not an optimist but women are amazing women women and women's bodies like just amazing of the things they do yeah there you go that's a good place don't ever leave me with a happy thought at least that's not gonna happen we're all gonna die no um i mean that is true that is true it's how you fill in the journey from birth to death there you go where's your hippity dippity West Coast, Charlie. Everyone, I want to thank you for joining us on this episode of Unzipping Taboos. I hope today's episode sparked some new thoughts. Maybe you learned a thing or two. I did. I know I did. And that it will open up conversations worth having. And if you have someone you think could benefit from this topic or any of our episodes, really, please

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