In this episode, we're joined by nurse practitioner and author Beth Mclaughlin to discuss how to balance your hormones with food and the importance of advocating for the education of our own bodies.
Surprise uterinekind! We’re back with a blast from the past! This episode has been itching to hit the airwaves and now it’s finally here. Don’t worry, we’re not going anywhere uterinekind. We are still working on providing you with the top research, data, and resources for your best uterine health! Check out the uterinekind app to keep up with all of our work and take charge of your uterine health.
If you’re an avid Hello Uterus listener, you know that unfortunately, PFAS are not going anywhere anytime soon. These endocrine-disrupting chemicals are everywhere and have even found their way into the food we eat. PFAS and EDCs leeched their way into our daily diets and it’s affecting society’s overall health, but they’re hitting those with a uterus even harder. Even in the warzone of a grocery store, after this episode, you’ll be prepared to optimize your health via food thanks to this week’s guest! Today we’re joined by Beth McLaughlin, a certified nurse practitioner who's written a hormone food bible for the cyclically inclined. Her book, Sink Your Mood With Food, is a comprehensive recipe guide for women to balance hormones and feel fabulous again by improving mood, sleep, and overall health. Throughout this episode, Beth emphasizes the importance of understanding hormone cycles, advocating for whole foods, reducing processed foods, and educating on optimizing health through nutrition to balance hormones and enhance overall well-being.
Lastly, we end on the most expensive high note yet! We’re talking billions!
Thanks for listening, learning, and being you. And join us back here every Tuesday for all things uterus, in service to you, uterinekind.
Carol: I'm Carol Johnson, and this is Hello, Uterus.
Joining us today is nurse practitioner Beth McLaughlin to discuss her book, Sync Your Mood with Food, a comprehensive recipe guide for women to balance hormones and feel fabulous again by improving mood, sleep, and overall health. She'll share with us tips on supportive eating rather than restrictive eating.
But first, Uterus in the News.
What's that wrapper on your double double have to do with the uterus? was once coated with PFAS. Hopefully, it's not still coated with PFAS if we can rely upon the manufacturers to be truthful to the FDA. So greaseproofers, you know, those little wrappers that your hamburgers and such come wrapped in, there, there are substances applied to to that paper and paperboard packaging to prevent the leaking of grease or oil.
In the spring of 2020, the FDA published findings from a scientific review and analysis of newly available data on a subset of PFAS that contains 6 2 fluorotelomer alcohol or 6 2 FTOH. Kind of doesn't matter. Let's just stick with PFAS. The findings raised safety. Oh, and P. S. PFAS, you may. also have heard the term forever chemicals, talking about the same things.
These are chemicals that do not break down in the body, our body doesn't know how to metabolize them, and they are either associated with or directly linked with numerous terrible, chronic, and cancerous conditions that affect the human body. So, in the spring, the FDA published these findings. As a result, the FDA then worked with industry to reach voluntary market phase out agreements for all greaseproofers that contain this subset of PFAS.
Notice, this subset, right? So this work combined with the FDA's efforts in the 2010s pertaining to another subset of PFAS substances known as long chain PFAS removes all PFAS grease proofers with known safety concerns from the market. Okay. The wording here, which I'm reading this from the announcement that came out at the end of February, 2024.
You got to pay attention to the words. Words are very powerful here. And when certain words are missing, equally as powerful. So with known safety concerns, that requires research, right? And it's research that, that got the FDA to convince industry to remove the First particular subset of P-A-S-P-F-A-S chemicals from their food papers.
So it's happening, right? But it, it's really important to understand that this is a really achingly slow rollback and your health is. Super, super important. So make good choices. You don't have to wait for things to be eliminated by manufacturers. We can get engaged and educated about chemicals and chemical exposure and make better decisions for ourself.
In fact, it becomes much easier to do that. to make good choices about the foods and products that you use when you understand how they impact your body and why it's important to reduce exposure to them. But one of the things that I wanted to point out that in this statement that the FDA released was that They said that manufacturers of the remaining PFAS containing grease proofers authorized for food contact use have voluntarily stopped selling them for non safety reasons.
Really? Really? I don't know. It just doesn't, it just doesn't land as being super honest because first of all, like companies don't voluntarily do anything that requires them to like retrofit manufacturing or, you know, perhaps spend more money on things. And we know it's very cheap. to use these chemicals.
That's why they're so ubiquitous. So I just, I think it's interesting that it specifically says for non safety reasons. And, and so I go back to one of the very first episodes of this podcast where I said that I really do believe that, that 2023 is going to be the year of the endocrine disrupting chemical and PFAS are one of the worst offenders there.
In 2010, there were four published studies on PFAS and Female Health listed on PubMed. In 2023, there were 220. That's over a period of 13 years when there was essentially no investment in female health research. And we went from 10 articles on PFAS to 220. So the science is catching up and what it's learning is clearly inspiring industry to take action.
which means that what they're learning is probably not good. And while there's a lot of not good news in the world, this piece of news is both good and actionable. You are able to make better choices because of this research coming forward and choose not to get takeout food or to go food that uses these greaseproof paper wrappers or boxes.
You choose not to use microwave popcorn. The bag is coated in these PFAS chemicals. You make those choices because the research tells us that this is not healthy for our bodies. Right? So, so it's good and actionable news, still also a lot of work to be done to protect our bodies from chemicals that are disrupting our hormones, which is why I'm so excited to after this quick break, when we're going to learn about the Beauty Edit Study from the Mahalangaya Lab at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, we are going to come back and talk more about hormones and food.
with Beth McLaughlin, who is the author of Sync Your Mood with Food. So after this quick break, we'll be right back with Beth.
Angel: With the increased amount of research that emphasizes the higher usage of hair and consumer products among Black women, the evidence is clear. Thanks Black women are at a higher risk of exposure to hormonally active chemicals, or EDCs, in related diseases.
But it doesn't just stop there. Chemicals in hair products have also been linked to hormonally mediated endocrine diseases that are more prevalent among Black, Hispanic, and Asian women and girls. We cannot keep dismissing this information for women of color. Wanna learn more yourself? Go Consider joining the Beauty Edit Study.
The Beauty Edit Study aims to address these concerns by providing a mobile friendly website with comprehensive educational content to increase awareness and understanding of the effects of endocrine disrupting chemicals on the reproductive and endocrine systems for three weeks. To learn more information about the Beauty Edit Study and to join yourself, visit their website which will be linked in the description of this episode.
Now, let's get back to it.
Carol: Joining us today is Beth McLaughlin, a certified nurse practitioner who's written a hormone food bible for the cyclically inclined. What we eat matters, and by understanding how our body operates, we can be a better custodian of it. Her book is called Sink Your Mood with Food. a comprehensive recipe guide for women to balance hormones and feel fabulous again by improving mood, sleep, and overall health.
Nurse Beth McLaughlin, welcome to Hello Uterus. Thank you so much for spending time with us today. Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. Absolutely. Um, so in your experience and personally too, so not just your experience with patients, but also how has learning about how our bodies work impacted your ability to fine tune your own wellness and impacted patient's ability to fine tune wellness.
And how can we get inspired by learning how these bodies work? I, I'm going to interrupt my question to just sort of like lay a foundation here. I I just find it kind of remarkable that we walk around in these absolutely magnificent systems, and we, and specific to the female body, we don't know really largely how it operates, but it is magnificent.
So I find it wild. that we don't prioritize learning how this works, you know, like we know how curling irons work. We know like so much about the 52 million products that we put on our body, but we don't understand how our own body operates. So to just sort of light a fire under our collective rumps, how does learning about how our bodies work impact our ability to fine tune our wellness?
Beth: Well, I think that it's not the norm to know how our bodies work because we just accept symptoms. And I have found through all of my care of patients and myself that we just say, well, this, this will go away or we'll feel better next month, or it's probably normal. And what we need to really do is listen to our own bodies and get to know our own bodies, because we're the best judge of our own symptoms.
And unfortunately, when we present them to a, and I'm in the medical field, so it's a hard thing to say, but when we're presenting our symptoms to a medical provider, they We have maybe minutes to relay a message. So to learn about, you know, how you feel about how your own body is and how your own symptoms are is, is really just kind of monitoring it and, and seeing what you feel like day to day.
Because that's what started to happen to me in my forties is I thought, what is this about? I had new symptoms. new issues. They weren't severe, but things were changing. And I started to kind of go within and think what's going on in my body. And that's where my passion for the female system and the cycle just like broke out because my specialty is not in women's health.
But as a female, I started to see these changes in the lack of attention to them. And I also have three daughters who were uncomfortable when they ate certain foods and were uncomfortable with their periods. And I said, you have a lot of years. to deal with this stuff. And you haven't even had children yet.
So it just kind of drove me to look at what I was feeling and what they're feeling. And then I thought, I need to spread this message to know your cycle and to know what's going on in your body, because we have to advocate for ourselves. So that's really why I wrote the book is everything I learned through my own experience and then helping my daughters and then now helping my patients.
So I guess it's more reflecting on your own symptoms.
Carol: Yeah, that's a really important point because we operate on a, you know, a rhythm every day. And often the majority of our sort of waking time is unconscious, specific to our own body, right? We're out there, You know, at our jobs or we're dealing with kids or we're focused on other things and our symptoms, we kind of compartmentalize and dismiss.
And so when we talk at UterineKind about dismissal of symptoms, we don't put it all on the, on the care teams. It's just overall. that anything that happens with the female system, you know, it just, it must just be that time of the month. It's so simplified. And I guess simplified is too kind of a word.
It's diminished. And, and that really diminishes our own recognition of self. And, and so what I love about what you're doing here is that you're saying, no, dismissing these symptoms and minimizing them is not the way to go. And actually, by sort of unlocking this curiosity around the female body, one in which, you know, myself and you and others operate.
By unlocking that curiosity, you will improve your health. It's almost like when someone sort of says, you need to go on this diet. It feels like this thing that's sort of forced upon you. But what I found in my own experience is that when I pay attention to understanding how my body works, that I consciously and effortlessly make better choices.
And I will just state for the record that I am the last person on the planet to do that willingly. I do not do, I do not go quietly into those decisions. And, but what I have found is that when I learn more about how my body operates, that I effortlessly make those choices. I can't explain it. And that's one of the reasons why I was so excited to hear about your book, because I thought, Oh, this is, this is the opportunity.
to simply and easily and, and fairly quickly understand some key components about your body and how to, you know, best support the way it operates. It's like nobody puts water in their gas tank. I hate to reduce it to cars because I know that that really irks people, but literally nobody puts water in their gas tank because someone told them that gas is what goes in the gas tank.
And so we're going to do the same thing here. So let's talk about mood. It's one of those aspects of human life that is both hyper focused on and minimized at the same time. And by that, I mean, it's an easy target for shaming. Don't be so moody. And then it's minimized. So it's taken from this big thing, like it's your mood that's making this problematic and then minimized.
In the sense that like, for instance, when people say it's all in your head, like, Oh, your symptoms are all in your head. It's no big deal. It's like, okay, what is it? Is it everything or nothing? Meanwhile, every waking moment is shaped by our mood. So I see mood as chemical and chemical means physical to me, meaning that our moods are part of our overall physical symptom, which is coordinated and operated by our hormones.
So is, is that accurate? Is that an accurate? Yes. Okay. E expression. Yeah. So I'm not just riffing here that no moods are an expression of our physical state. Yes. Can you talk to us about that?
Beth: Well, it's interesting because as I was doing my own research, I realized, and I know this from training, but I realized hormones were more than just the estrogen, progesterone.
It was the thyroid hormones and all the hormones from the brain to the gut, to the to, to the everything in the body. And that. That is where I started to understand mood more. Because my first symptom that really bothered me personally was some anxiety in and around my cycle. And that was new for me. So when I was asked metaphysical about it, it was immediately to a medication as a treatment.
And I said, possibly, but let me just like reverse and see what's going on in my body first. So it really took me at that point to say no to medication and just let me look at what's influencing my mood. And I immediately went to nutrition, which then brought me into the whole aspect of sleep and movement in your body and what you're putting in your body.
So it's really just the whole thing. It's the whole package. And it's all these little pieces that people don't get. unfortunately, get educated about unless they go looking for that information. So that's why, partly too, while I wrote, part of my book is educational and part is a cookbook because I needed to explain it in a simple way as if you're my patient.
So the way I wrote is the way I teach my patients. And it's interesting because one of the biggest symptoms that women talk about is mood. And we're either, you to, you know, moody, you know, or bitchy. And then that's how it's perceived when it's part chemical and part what we're doing to our bodies, what we're putting on our bodies, we're putting in our bodies, our lack of sleep, our hustle mode, our hustle culture, our high cortisone levels, all sorts of other hormones than just estrogen, progesterone.
Carol: Yeah, that as a practitioner that You, over time, you looked at, or you sort of reverted to estrogen, progesterone, but that moment when it, when you were in a clinical setting seeking care, you realized, and then I would assume just doing your own reflection on, you know, the research that you realized I was way more than estrogen and progesterone.
And you also said something that I keyed in on, which is what we put on our bodies and what we put down. in our bodies. And so we're going to, we're going to talk about what we put on our bodies in a little bit. But if we can just kind of like zero in on a meal and just break down, like how does the meal you eat affect hormones?
Beth: Sure. I just have to quickly mention diet culture because I used to fall for every diet and lose a lot of weight on them and gain a lot of weight when I went off them and portion control. And, and that is so stressful for women. And our cycles aren't meant to eat the same way all the time, because interestingly enough, before our, we menstruate, we need two to 300 more calories.
So we feel more hungry, which I always thought was me failing. my diet per se.
Carol: Wow. Yeah.
Beth: So I stopped portioning food and started looking at the foods I was eating and not giving me my, that stress of you're eating too much carbohydrates. Cause that's the thing that we all, you know, as women, we tend to say, okay, I have carbohydrates, but a perfect hormone meal is full of protein, which we need.
desperately as women, especially in perimenopause, healthy fats, avocado, olive oil, nuts, fiber and greens and healthy starches, sweet potatoes, quinoa, things like that. And so if you build your plate with those four meal or those four types of, you know, foods, you actually have a completely healthy plate.
and you're satisfied. You're full and you're satisfied. And if you go into part of that, into my book, I actually talk about how to eat in order, which shouldn't stress someone out, but if you can try and focus on the fiber rich foods, it helps with digestion. So we don't, don't tend to feel as bloated after eating.
Cause a lot of women, young, my kids all the time, I'm so bloated. I'm so bloated. I mean, that's horrific to feel at 16 years old as is 40. Um, but if you actually see Start with your fiber, your greens, so you have your salad first or your veggies or whatnot. You can stimulate your digestion to then bring down the carbs and the proteins in a healthy way.
Carol: And so with trying to create a plate like that, and, and really just an overall sort of. you know, personal nutritional quest to over time. I try to look at it as each week, right? I try not to get like too fixated on a day. I try to look at it like a week by week. So when we're looking at that, like how, like how do we change our thinking?
Because I I'm immediately when I'm envisioning that I'm still imagine that people go back to their typical grocery list, right? Their typical shopping list. And so it feels a little bit difficult to. to make the leap from the typical stuff that I buy and cook to this, to this new, maybe not new, but probably old, old way of eating that's more, more appropriate.
So can you, can you give us some tips on how to sort of frame this? so that we can make that transition.
Beth: Absolutely. Because it's not overnight and it's super stressful. And the last thing I'd want for any mom or woman is to be in a market and just be overwhelmed. So I usually tell people who've asked me or myself, I start with maybe one meal.
of the week, something so simple. So I leave every day to go to the office, so my lunch was my one meal I started with, and I, I had to pack it. So then I would just simply say, all right, I have a salad with some grilled chicken, a little brown rice, and my dressings, olive oil, salt and pepper, like super easy.
And so, I like to food prep. Not all people do, but I like to make like a bunch of chicken to have in the house or a bunch of steak or whatever protein I have. Shrimp. I love seafood. Um, and have those things available for my family and available for quick meals. So I tried, most of my recipes are very quick recipes.
They're actually all things I just make. So I always say start very small, just one meal and just, and just add that to your plan for the week. And those are the foods you focus on at the store and then not worry about the rest. Don't worry about it.
Carol: Right. Because even just that one change, that one change is impactful.
And so I want to kind of go back to where we started just to really zero in on how the food, like when we imagine eating food, I feel like most people imagine you chew it, you swallow it, it goes into your stomach, your stomach processes it. And then what it releases is what it doesn't need. And then. All the good stuff is, is easily absorbed into your body and voila, everything is operating in perfect harmony.
But I have a, a sneaking suspicion, if that's the right way to say that colloquialism, that we've done some damage to our gut and that we are, uh, out of balance as a result. And so when you made that change and replaced your lunch and now you started eating that every day or some version of it every day, how does that directly change your hormonal balance?
Beth: Because you're nourishing your body with It really comes down to whole foods, which is like people have always said, if you walk the perimeter of the grocery market, those are your whole foods. And it, the processed foods, as good as they can be, almost we become addicted to the amount of sugar in them. or chemicals because they, they make us feel good.
So that brings us back to our brain where it spikes our blood sugar and it increases our dopamine and we're happy. I mean, how happy are we after cake? And then how miserable are we 20 minutes later? We feel one as women, we feel regretful and shamed, which is terrible that we do that to ourselves. And two, we feel maybe bloated or sick.
sick. Most of the time, I think, because we have this massive blood sugar spike. So, unfortunately, the American Standard Diet is highly processed, so keeping the food is very simple. This isn't meant to stress people out in any means. It's meant to make small, simple changes. But when you can do those things, your gut loves it.
Your gut is so, is, is, your gut is as important as your brain,
Carol: really. Can we just, I want that to sink in, like seriously sink in. Your gut is as important as your brain. That's why we keep talking about the gut microbiome and paying attention to it. And I swear, I promise you, I'm so grateful Beth keeps saying we don't want to stress you out, because it, it.
It can seem stressful, but I promise you that if you just push that aside, cause that's just a response to, Oh gosh, I don't know something or I have to change something. Push that aside and listen to what she said about how simple it actually gets. Your life gets more simple. when you just focus on whole food and maybe kind of put eating into its proper position, which is one that is both elevated, but also like a concise position.
And what I mean by that, strange words to use to describe this, but as you were describing, you know, the outer perimeter of the grocery store. I had this image in my head of a person eating processed food, like a bag of potato chips, which I never knew was actually processed food. I thought, Oh, those are sliced potatoes fried.
How bad can it be? You don't want to eat it for three meals a day, but come on, you know, every day, a few potato chips. No, it's processed food. And, and when I picture someone eating that, it feels like there's no. There's no moment of being satiated. Right. And that gets to that, that chemical brain gut connection where, where the gut is saying, I don't really recognize this.
It's not giving me what I need. And then it feels like To me, like everything goes haywire. So is that your experience when you work with people? How do you frame processed food to them and how do you get them to recognize that it's not food?
Beth: Well, the biggest indicator is reading the package. So reading the label, you know, years ago, I didn't have a label.
Computer, so I read labels. I read labels while I was eating. The number of chemicals on there, I mean, they're, I can't pronounce them. And then you look at, say, peanut butter made of just peanuts, and literally it says peanut. And then you look at like processed peanut butter, and it says It's high inflammatory oils, and so it's really just being aware of what's on the label, and as good as chips are, and I eat chips, it's not as if I don't, the way you feel after is typically not well.
But a lot of the ingredients, I mean you can, nowadays with the options they give you, it's some healthy chip options. There are brands that do give healthy chip options, and you can enjoy those certain foods, but I think it's more about being aware of just what you're putting in your body. Unfortunately, cost is a problem for a lot of people, and I, I don't know why, but we've made healthy food more expensive.
That's a whole other topic. Yeah, right. Um, but, but it's, and it goes so quickly and you have to eat it before it goes bad. And, you know, it's things like that there that are issues, but yes, it's, it's just so many chemicals we're putting in and we don't mind doing that to eat those things because it makes us feel happy.
We come back to the brain.
Carol: Right. It is so wild. It is all connected. And it brings me back to what you first started talking about, which was. you recognizing symptoms in your body and then as a practitioner realizing this is not normal and I need to pay closer attention to what's going on. And then it seems like over time, you've slowly sort of pulled those threads apart and recognized the things that negatively impact your body that you maybe didn't pay attention to before because life was moving so fast.
Absolutely.
Beth: Yes.
Carol: You've mentioned high inflammatory oils. Can you talk to us about what they are and, and where they hide and how we can avoid them?
Beth: Yes. So seed oils, sunflower seed, cotton seed, there's all sorts of seed oils. I can try to list them in my brain are high inflammatory oils. So canola oil.
vegetable oil. Those are considered bad oils, meaning that they cause inflammation in our body. And truly, most disease is inflammatory based. And that is obviously a huge issue with the whole standard American diet, because those oils, they can mass produce all these foods that are sustainable, meaning they don't go bad.
And they, cause so much inflammation in our bodies, which then lead to other issues. So the healthy oils, like avocado oil, I've, I've started cooking with that. Nobody knows the difference in my family. They have absolutely no idea. All it is a switch of a bottle, uh, virgin oil. I also love and coconut oil. I also love, but those three.
Just making that tiny change, and I've, I've told my patients about this, just switch the oils in your kitchen. It's a huge change in how you feel, and, and you're taking the inflammation out of those meals that you're using them for. I mean, to think of how much we've made with vegetable oil in the past, not knowing.
It's terrible. It's everything, right?
Carol: It's like, I mean, it's Like, I think I haven't used processed peanut butter in forever, but I feel like it's like peanut flavoring and then processed oil. Like I don't even know what it's made of. I just know it. You're right. It's like peanut oil. It's like slippery. You know, when you get, when you grind peanuts, it comes out, it looks almost like oatmeal, maybe a little bit less, you know, sort of separate.
It's a little bit more condensed, but it looks like oatmeal. And then when you look at like processed peanut butter, like Jif, it's like, I don't, I don't, it doesn't even look like food. I don't even know what it is. But, but then I also think about, so it's got the oils in it, but then they're also processing it in equipment that's probably coated with toxic PFAS chemicals.
Like that's how I, again, as a stubborn Taurus who doesn't like to make changes ever, that's what got to me, was just sitting and contemplating. what I was eating. And, and I thought that I had a clean diet cause I have celiac and it wasn't a clean diet and contemplating my diet and not complicating it because I'm not a chef.
It hasn't been difficult. And actually going back to the idea of simplifying what it's, what it's done. I spend less time in the kitchen. I spend less time thinking about food. It's just not a priority in my life anymore. And maybe that. is something to talk about. Just the, the priority that we place on it.
Like food is celebratory and wonderful. And I love it. Grocery shopping used to be my favorite thing to do. I love the idea of it, but putting it back in its proper place, I think we could all benefit. Like, have you, have you seen that in your work? How have you addressed that within your own family or how have they responded to these changes?
Beth: Sure. Well, food is really for survival, and we've made it a pleasure, and we've made it a reward. And as much as I love my dear husband, who's a police officer, when he works a double shift, he rewards himself with a big You know, he used to, he doesn't so much anymore, but a big breakfast sandwich and bacon and all these things because he's tired and, and shift work makes you that way.
And not to shame him at all, he knows it, but he uses it as a reward. And a lot of us do. If we go to a restaurant, we'll get an appetizer, a beautiful entree and a dessert because it's a reward. And then we pay. So. I think if we look at food as more of something that we need to survive versus something to make us happy or to treat our sadness, that's the, you know, the way you look at it.
In my family, well, I have three daughters that are teenagers and they're all athletes and they were first not understanding why they were doing well at, one's a gymnast, doing well one, one gymnastics meet and another not so well. So that's when we started looking at how they feel on their cycle. But then we, you know, I taught them just the food that will help fuel them during those times in their cycle, certain things to eat before their sports and certain things to eat for their period.
So it was more just educating them, but they're not taught that anywhere else. They've never been taught that at the pediatrician. They don't need to see a nutritionist, so they haven't been taught that at nutrition. With a counselor, other than that, it's TikTok. Right. That's how they're learning things.
So we make food a priority, but we make smart food choices, if that makes sense.
Carol: Yeah. And it seems like that as they get educated, it's not like, Mom, stop making me do that. It's more like, this is the information. Like, it's not me. I'm constantly telling my kids like, gosh, you can't drink drinks that have 40 ingredients in them.
99 percent of which, like you couldn't spell, pronounce or, or define, right? Like we can't be doing that. And at some point they will recognize that it's not like us and our own little idiosyncrasies and fixation on chemicals. They'll, they'll get that it's happening. When you were talking to your kids about their cycles and how it impacted their endeavors.
How, how did you break it down for them? So what, what are those phases in the cycle and what's nutritionally important for each of those phases?
Beth: So, I broke it down to them, well, I had them first start following their cycles, so they started to be aware of when they were cycling. And then I broke it down to the menstrual cycle, the follicular, the ovulatory, and the luteal phases, which are our four phases, because really most females think their cycle is their period.
So, the week of bleeding is their whole cycle, and yes, it is their period, but there's three other really important phases. So I think the, the major piece of information I ever told them, which they all had these epiphanies were for were the fact that we're not like baby little men. We're not 24 hour cyclers.
So a man will wake up and have hormones and then they fluctuate through the day. And then the next day he wakes up and he has the same hormone balance. Whereas we are. We're different every day for a month. So it gave them this feeling of freedom that maybe they don't feel the same day to day and that they don't feel like they need to perform.
or have the same mood the same way day to day. And I didn't just bombard them with all this information. They would come to me and be like, I have cramps, what should I do? And I was like, well, let's, you know, try some ibuprofen because I'm all for ibuprofen. Let me tell you, that is one of my most favorite medications.
Like, where are you in your cycle? And she would say, well, I'm getting my period in a few days. I'm like, all right, so you're in your luteal phase. Let's look at the things we can do to help that. It's not perfection by any means, but it was just small bits of information as they cycle, and we're so open in my home about periods.
I'm pretty sure my husband could write this book. Right? I love that! Yeah, he knows, like, so much about periods and cycles and just the phases of it. So then, as they were learning what foods helped them during their cycles, I would also say, So now you know why. Because my other daughter is a runner. Now you know why you can run your heart out during your follicular phase because you are, it's the happiest phase of your cycle and why you feel like you're running through quicksand right before your period.
That's normal.
Carol: What is at the root of that? So in the follicular phase where the, the ovary is developing the egg, right? It's developing and then getting ready to release the egg. What makes it so that we feel we can do anything?
Beth: I think that the estrogen and progesterone, well, the estrogen and progesterone are more balanced during that time.
And as we hit the luteal phase into our period, we get into estrogen dominance, which is, I learned mostly about that. I'm certainly not an expert, but I learned mostly about that through my own reading and my own education through this whole process of writing my book, that I wasn't even realizing that I was having estrogen dominance, which means too much estrogen in your body.
So that, in fact Impacts your performance, especially in sports, but also impacts your mood, how you sleep. I was breaking out. I've never had acne in my life till I was 40 years old and not pooping. So nurses like me love to talk about pooping. It's an important, it's an important thing. Yeah. Right. So vital and just eliminating all that extra estrogen.
And unfortunately the younger kids who love products are just loading their faces and their bodies with all these estrogen dominant products, but it's, it's just that balance of the hormones. So as you can balance out your estrogen dominance, you actually feel better through your luteal phase into your menstruation, which I found personally was through rest movement, listening to my body, hydration, and eating certain foods.
Carol: I couldn't agree more with personal experience. I swam and hiked my way through menopause and I had no menopause symptoms. And that's that, that, you know, just paying attention to, to my diet. I was living in a place where we didn't have processed food. Literally. I lived in a town where there was like barely any, like you had to break a sweat to get processed food in this town and then just working out.
But I fell off the wagon. when I left that town and, you know, and was like, Oh my gosh. Like I remember walking into a real grocery store for the first time after four years of living in this little, little community. And I was like, you know, smitten with everything I was seeing. And then I have the historical knowledge to say that that was not a good experience.
And now I'm back on the wagon and, and things are better, but I want to talk about chemicals, because again, you, you mentioned putting things on your, on your body on a scale of one to 10, how problematic are the products that we're using on our bodies? And then on that same scale, how pissed off are you at chemical companies?
Because I'm like a one gig a million pissed off. And, and, and I'm, I'm like losing my, I'm, I'm kind of losing it around that. I want to take them on. I
Beth: know. Their marketing is unbelievable. And their influencers and the ability to push it out to young people. I don't know so much that it's affecting my age group, the 40s, because we don't really want to put makeup on.
We don't have time for it. But it's also in our lotions, it's in our cleaning products. It's in our, you know, our Tupperware. I mean there's just everything in our home has chemicals in it and that alone can be very overwhelming when you're trying to eliminate them. And my best advice for that, and I've yet to fully eliminate chemicals, is it's very hard to fully eliminate chemicals is just one small thing at a time.
Like as soon as your lotion runs out, maybe just get that, just get a new lotion. Yeah. I agree that companies, as much as they're trying to make money and do well, the loading up of the makeup and the products and the perfumes and the oils, it's just so much. And like I said, three teenage girls that that do fall for a lot of that marketing and love products.
They just love products. And I don't know how to. It's funny too, because my daughter's best friend just had allergy testing and one of her allergies was parabens. And that's probably from an overload of exposure.
Carol: Right. Too, too much exposure to parabens in our products. Yeah. I mean, we just, again, it comes back to simplifying things.
Like at first it's like, Oh God, how can I take this on? But the message that I hope that we leave you with is that by eliminating that stuff from your life, life gets really simple. And maybe that's. It's part of the friction to doing it because, you know, if you don't have this elaborate routine in the morning, you know, that has all of these products that they smell good and they sort of lift your, your spirits and stuff that, that you have to kind of quiet down and just.
be with yourself. Yourself is really amazing. That's another thing that I hope people leave with today is that understanding the female body, like let's just state for the record, it's common here, but the female system is complex in the most beautiful way. And that complexity, led decades ago to people minimizing it and dismissing it and saying, nope, too problematic.
We're not going to study the female body. We'll just study the male body. And then we'll just apply what we learned there to the female body. And all of that is beat. of the largest, most constipated form of BS known to man. So don't pay attention to any of that. We have a very delicate system that we are just learning about.
We're just learning about it. So, by eliminating those chemicals, which can be done, you can simplify to avocado oil. I put avocado oil on my hair. I like, I'm not a fancy person. I don't, I hate wearing makeup, but like I do certain things, avocado on my hair. I'll put like a clean oil on my skin. Like I just, I just eliminated all that stuff.
I don't paint my nails anymore. I don't dye my hair anymore, and I have more, more, you know, expendable income as a result. Oh, yes. And I feel better. So that's all great stuff for us to understand. So what would be one thing that someone could include in their day that straight away delivers health benefits to them?
Beth: Prioritizing sleep. I used to hustle myself through just maybe five to six hours, make sure I got up, ran, you know, the kids, all the stress, even young adults, getting seven, six, seven to eight hours of sleep a night without over, looking at your cell phone, cutting that back a little bit is huge for hormonal balance.
Just resetting your cortisol levels and how you feel in the day. That would be my first piece of advice, probably. How does sleep reset? Because as we go to sleep, our hormone levels basically reset. Our liver starts to detoxify. Our cortisol levels are dropped because we're not stressed. But as soon as we wake up and we turn, not that stressed in a bad way, but like, the fight or flight type.
You know, we turn the lights on or we go outside in that bright sun, we start having increased cortisol levels. That's why we have more energy in the morning. But it's just, it's a reset. Everything's calmed down. It's why it's very difficult to work night shift because you should be sleeping, but you're up.
So it's just so important to, to wake up feeling refreshed. Maybe hydrate with some lemon water, something that's nourishing and hydrating and then start your day.
Carol: So when, when we go to sleep, it's almost like the body can divert its attention to foundational repair style stuff. Is there too much? Sleep.
I'm asking for a friend. Is, is, is there an amount that's too much? It's
Beth: recommended seven to eight hours a night of uninterrupted sleep. Because I'm kind of like a 10 hour person. I don't stay up late. That's what your body needs. So then I would say it is normal.
Carol: Excellent. Because I, I'm kind of going all in and in the 10 hour camp, because I've recognized that like 10 hours is my sweet spot.
And so I'm going to own that. That's going to be my new thing. And then what's one thing that we should avoid under all circumstances? So I know like I love talking to people like you who have taken the time to go and like bring this information to us. And one of the things that I noticed that's consistent is that, You all are very conscious of not like being dictators or preachers or things like that.
And so you kind of say like, Hey, you know, dial it back, go easy, do you know, one thing at a time. Right. But to answer this question, other than like the obvious, like, you know, binge drinking and drug taking and cigarette smoking, what's, what's one thing to avoid under all circumstances that you would like get up on a table and preach about?
Beth: Honestly, it's the shame we put on ourselves if we're not perfect in our nutrition, our workouts, our sleep, our mothering, our lives. The amount of stress we put on ourselves as women to not even just be perfect, but just complete all of the tasks. And one day, like I drove myself to exhaustion doing all of that.
And I just scaled it back when my body was reacting. And I just think it's, it's okay to. Just be okay with the fact that maybe you're, you're not doing everything in a day. Or if you are trying to eat really healthy and you have a bad day, it's okay. Tomorrow's another day. Take the shame out of these small little failures and look at them as you're growing.
You're not perfect. Perfect is boring. And, and just give yourself some, some space to recover. And, and I don't know, I just feel like women in general, we're hard on ourselves. And we don't need to be.
Carol: That's a fantastic message. Like when you said that, it just, it landed. I bet that there are conscious moments of shaming ourselves.
And then there are multitudes of unconscious moments of shaming. And then of course, the shaming that happens to us by society and from people who are, you know, may or may not be intentionally trying to shame us. And it's thick. It's really thick. And that shame. must impact our hormones, right? Yes. So how can someone connect that?
The idea of the little interaction that we might, we might have with like a partner or a boss or someone where we feel shamed. How can we understand what that actually does to the inside of our bodies?
Beth: Well, it's part of our mental health. So it brings us Stress. And stress increases cortisol right away, which increases blood sugar, increases heart rate, and your body reacts to stress when it has to, like if you're running from a bear, but it also reacts to stress when we shouldn't be, when we should be calm and at peace.
And that's the kind of high cortisol level that will do damage to our hormones. You're in chaos, so it makes your body in chaos, I guess. So to feel shame, I mean, if you don't talk about it with someone, you leave it all in. It's your, it's your own mental health. And then it doesn't recover itself. We keep feeling that way.
If we keep failing on a diet per se, because we can't follow the rules, we feel bad about ourselves.
Carol: Yeah. And then that percolates. And if it's not that one situation that's happening, because chances are, In addition to that situation, you're also exposed to a lot of endocrine disrupting chemicals, which disrupt your hormones, and then your sleep cycle is off, and it's this, essentially, living in a state of dis ease, dis order, and so it's bringing it back to this very simple, practical way of living, which really, in its simplest form, is to live in wholeness with your body.
And so it doesn't mean that you can't have peanut M& Ms. Although I will tell you once I learned how toxic the chemicals are in peanut M& Ms, I could eat an entire quarter pound bag of peanut M& Ms and be like, fine. And now I can't even eat one. I could, they could be, I could live in a room covered with peanut M& Ms and I wouldn't, I wouldn't eat one.
So it's like, it really does help sort of ground you and simplify your life from this like chaos that is consumerism down to one that becomes less about consumerism, less about you. Producing profits for others, and more about you living your life in a, from a place that's like fun and you feel alive and you may not be perfect, but you just feel more engaged and you feel more aligned with your body.
Which I think is the message that I'd like to end on is that your book, Sink Your Mood with Food, it's a cookbook, which is great because you did the hard work and you made it easy for people to just execute easy recipes, knowing that they're clean, but you also, in the book, And, and in the work that you're doing and others are doing alongside you, we've been disconnected from our bodies for so long, and you're bringing us back into alignment with them.
And that, like your body is going to be so happy. Day one from experiencing that because that that I would think is what the body seeks as well. Like if we could interview the body, I think that probably the very first thing it would say is I wish that the entity that is inhabiting me understood me better because then we could live in alignment rather than me thinking, uh, geez, now I got to go figure out how I can metabolize 15, 000 chemicals that just came on the market in the last 10 years.
And I'm like an old system that doesn't really evolve overnight. You know, I think that is amazing to just, just seek that. So seeking alignment with the body, Do you feel now that you're there? Do you feel like you have that kind of a relationship with your body? And if so, how has it changed you?
Beth: I do feel I have definitely aligned myself.
It's evolving. I'm working with, you know, all of my own TIFs and whatnot, but I am easing through perimenopause. So I was having symptoms and now I like, I enjoy my period. I think it's a reward to get it. I'm so happy that I'm still getting it. I look at perimenopause like a gift. It's not a curse. And menopause, the day that you finally have no cycle for one year, is going to also be a gift in life.
I just feel better. I think better. I am clear. I love that I've been able to help young women, even just my daughters and their friends and whoever else would read the book. And I just, I think that small little changes over time bring big results. And if we can just give ourselves some, you know, relief of that stress we put on for that perfection and just know that the little things you're going to do are going to help you feel better in the long run.
Carol: Bravo, bravo, Beth McLaughlin. Thank you so much for spending time with us on Hello Uterus and sharing your book. I'm going to just say it again at Sink Your Mood with Food, a comprehensive recipe guide for women to balance hormones and feel fabulous again by improving mood. sleep, and overall health. And I think that that is something that we all aim to do.
So this is a book that is easily digestible with recipes, which is amazing, written by a nurse practitioner, who's having her own experience alongside her daughters, and also, you know, her experience in healthcare overall and bringing these, these tips and recipes to you. And in a way that's, That's, you know, not overwhelming, but actionable.
So thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. But thank you for taking the time to write the book because nobody told you, nobody, like, it wasn't like you had to do it. You chose to do it. And, and so we want to support people who are taking the time to create. learning experiences for females because our health has been ignored for so long.
And so now it's time to catch up. So I can't thank you enough, Beth. Thank you so much. Wonderful. I love it. We'll be right back with Ending on a High Note.
Ending on a High Note usually allows us the creative and flexible freedom to go out into the world and see what good stuff is happening out there. week and, uh, perhaps other weeks this year. We are going to stay firmly planted in the world of female health because we had some exciting news coming out of the White House with President Biden signing an executive order that will create a 12 billion dollar billion dollar fund to improve our understanding of women's health.
With this funding, we can aggressively study the female body, do that basic foundational ground floor research that we need on the female body. We can aggressively study diseases that impact females, develop diagnostics. We can't diagnose diseases until we understand them better and develop what they call Biomarkers, so that we can create diagnostics that are able to test for those biomarkers.
And treatments. And most important of all, and this is where UterineKind and our strategic partners like the White Dress Project are, are firmly focused. And that is on awareness and education on the female body. This is overdue and by not being educated and understanding how our bodies operate, we are not able to advocate effectively for our needs in an, in an exam room or within the healthcare climate in general.
And, and also it robs us of, of the opportunity to be thoughtful. Thrilled and excited by what the female body is capable of doing and how it works. There's so much to learn here, and with this $12 billion fund, we now have access to resources to help us get that research done. So very exciting Things that are coming up over the, certainly over the next 12 months.
There will be major announcements on research that's going to be funded out of a program called ARPA H. And we'll keep you posted on all that so that you can understand the work that's happening to benefit female health. So that is a huge high note. That's a 12 billion high note. I can't think of a note that could be any higher than that.
Thank you Angel for producing this podcast and thank you to the team at UterineKind for working hard on behalf of female health. Subscribe to Hello Uterus wherever you get your podcasts and follow us on social at UterineKind. Download the UterineKind app for free. This is a way for you to track your symptoms and create a medical record that is yours and you own it and we don't sell your data.
So, it's your data. you control it and you can delete it at any time. So please take advantage of the education that's offered within the Uterine Kind app and please track your symptoms if you're dealing with symptoms so that you can have a more effective conversation with your doctor. Until our next episode.
Be well, be cool, be kind.
Angel: The Hello Uterus Podcast is for informational use only. The content shared here is to not be used to diagnose or treat any medical condition. Please ask your physician about your health and call 911 if it's an emergency. And thank you, uterine kind, for listening.