Sorry for Apologizing_Menstruation with Alisa Vitti: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Sorry for Apologizing_Menstruation with Alisa Vitti: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Missy Modell:
Welcome to Sorry for Apologizing. I'm your host, Missy Modell; activist, strategist, and recovering chronic apologizer. In this podcast, we'll explore all of the ways women have been conditioned by society to play small, whether it's being expected to have children, tolerate chronic pain, or accept gender inequities from orgasms to paychecks. This season, we'll work to challenge the cultural beliefs that brought us here and discuss all of the reasons why we should be asking for forgiveness rather than permission. It is time to stop apologizing.

Missy Modell:
Hello and welcome. We are joined by the absolutely brilliant Alisa Vitti, a functional nutrition and women's hormone expert, the founder of modern hormone healthcare company FLO Living, bestselling author of WomanCode and In the Flo, creator of cycle syncing method and creator of My Flo, the number one paid period app on iTunes and my personal period tracking device. Thank you for being here. You're amazing. Hi.

Alisa Vitti:
Hi! So happy to be here. Such a pleasure.

Missy Modell:
So we're gonna get right into it. Every episode we start with a tweet and I want to get your immediate gut reaction to it. So this is from @Arfa, she said, period pain on the first day is literally near-death experience. What is your take on this?

Alisa Vitti:
I find that to be just really sad and frustrating. Sad because I know so many women are suffering with this symptom and frustrating because they don't actually need to, because they're just simply missing one piece of information that would sort of free them from this pain. So here's the information. Your uterus is governed by three prostaglandins, but they do only two different things. There's PG1, 2, and 3, PG1 and 3 govern uterine relaxation and PG2 governs uterine contraction. So these prostaglandins are manufactured from the essential fatty acids that you're taking in from your diet. But because women are eating diets high in processed seed oil and canola oil, sunflower oil, these types of things, they jack up the production of PG2, causing more uterine contraction than is needed, which equates to pain and suppresses the production of PG1 and 3, so you have less relaxation in the uterus, right? So it's working harder than it needs to expel the endometrium. All you have to do to get rid of cramps for the vast majority of women, assuming that there is not endometriosis or fibroids present, right, is simply change the fats that you're consuming. Within a cycle or two, you're going to be producing what is designed for you to be doing by nature, more PG1 and 3, so more uterine relaxation and less PG2, less uterine contraction, because nature is extremely efficient by design. So in order to expel the endometrium, we just need a little bit of activity from the uterus, not a whole lot. When it's overactive, it's a form of inefficiency.

Missy Modell:
Okay, because I'm personally been under this misbelief that periods are supposed to be painful. So where does this even come from? This idea that this is a natural way of life and something we need to tolerate?

Alisa Vitti:
Yeah, it's part of this millennia-old mythological narrative that is not grounded or founded or based in any scientific reality. And the problem with not having the actual information about how your body works is that you then believe this mythological narrative and then you then don't take any action, right? Imagine if we had a narrative going that said, well, when you have a 103-degree fever, you know, what can you do? That's just what's going to happen sometimes, nothing to be done about that. You would actually then have behavioral conditioning based on that belief, which would say, well, there's nothing for me to do, so I'll do nothing, right? Meanwhile, we obviously have the opposite. When we have elevated temperature, we monitor that very carefully, we take fever reducers, we do things, we rest. We get right away into action to resolve this issue. But all of these narratives that are mythological based about painful periods, difficult periods, problems with your period and symptoms are intractable, cannot be recovered from, right, there's, part of your life for the rest of your life. We then just take no action on any of these things over time, and the compounding effect of that is pretty profound in a woman's health experience.

Missy Modell:
And I obviously did a bit of a historical deep dive because I found it interesting how do we arrive at this point, and there was even shame during medieval times and there was a view that cramps were a reminder of Eve's original sin, and the church didn't make any pain relief readily available, which is not that different today, our options are not that fantastic. We have, what, Midol and a heating pad, which still feels kind of archaic, like strapping a heating pad to you.

Alisa Vitti:
You know, yes. The origins of this really are biblical in nature, but they've been propagated by every institution ever since and every culture. And then I would say also I do find it and myself, when I went through my own experience in my late teens, early 20s, when I got to see that even after many, many years of a diagnosis, and then I finally was able to get to a diagnosis, right, that my treatment options were basically, here's a medication we can throw at the problem, even though it's not going to fix this, and it was never designed for this. There's no surgery potentially that we can do, if there is, it's not going to cure anything. And then the third option, which is still one of the most popular treatment options is, we got nothing for you.

Missy Modell:
That's an option?

Alisa Vitti:
That's an option.

Missy Modell:
The option is do nothing.

Alisa Vitti:
Do nothing and suffer. And it's really interesting when you really look at that in the context of this, we're in some of the most advanced technological and medically advanced moment in all of human history, but for this vertical of healthcare, women's chronic hormonal healthcare, option-wise, nothing is an option. Doing nothing is a treatment plan, because, why? There's no funding, there's no research, there's no innovative development. It's frustrating for everybody involved, I'm sure of that. But yeah, it's not easy to navigate these issues as a woman. And that's precisely why I started FLO Living, because I was patient zero in my own, just awakening to these issues. I thought, Oh my God, you know, here I am, I was at Hopkins planning to become an OB-GYN. I grew up in Massachusetts, I had access to Harvard-trained gynecologists. For seven years, no one knew why I was gaining so much weight, covered face, chest, and back, in cystic acne, from the age of 12 to 22, I only menstruated six times, three of those were chemically induced with synthetic progesterone, but the entire time I was being told, eh, it's normal. And then mental health issues and depression, anxiety, insomnia. It was horrendously bad towards the end in terms of my quality of life. And finally, you know, after doing my own research in the medical library at Hopkins, I found an article on Stein-Leventhal Disorder, and I said, oh, that's me, this is what I have. So I went to my gynecologist the very next morning and I said, we need to do all the testing for this, I'm certain this is what I have. She did the testing. I came back and she said, yeah, you do have this, which we also call polycystic ovarian syndrome. And then that's when I had my sort of big eye-opening moment. I recognized, one, I was part of a huge population of women who were suffering from all of these types of issues, whether it be PCOS or fibroids or endometriosis, for whom the road to a diagnosis is long, too long, and at the end of it, you're basically prescribed a medication that was never intended to be part of that experience and does not fix any of these things, right, aka the birth control pill. Or you're told there's nothing that we can do, you can just deal with it as best you can with over-the-counter pain meds or whatever other topical treatments you want. And I just thought, Oh my God, this is something I have to do something about for myself, but I made a sort of a little promise to myself if I could figure it out, then I would build a hormone care platform for women like me, whether they had PCOS or fibroids or garden variety PMS or difficulty conceiving that there is a different way to actually approach hormone care that is about putting our biology at the center of it.

Missy Modell:
And do you think the road being so long, despite there being pretty blaring symptoms, right? Like I feel like if you were to list out one symptom of endometriosis, of PCOS, they seem pretty consistent. But why is it so long to arrive at that diagnosis for people, do you think?

Alisa Vitti:
Well, I think it's a combination of things and there are wonderful books written about this, but there's definitely a lot of issue with women's pain being taken seriously in the medical environment, and that's well documented, so I don't need to opine on that, but that is just a fact. And so, you know, when we don't believe that women are suffering, then we change our treatment approach, right? And then secondly, there are no definitive tests, right? There is no definitive you test this one thing and we know if you have PCOS, you test this one thing and we know you have endometriosis. And because gynecologists are not necessarily trained in the sort of endocrinology aspect of things, right? They're looking at the maintaining the physical structures, doing your exam, making sure everything looks good, looking for, you know, treating for STIs and these types of things. It's a little bit of a gray area, the ways in which endocrinology and gynecology overlap and we just don't have definitive testing so it's not easy. I mean, even for women in menopause, there is no easy hormone test to say, well, this is why you're having all of these symptoms. The better news with menopause is that we do tend to treat women based on what they're reporting, even if it's qualitative, we say, well, if you tell us you're having hot flashes, we believe you and we will give you some sort of, you know, HRT, hormone replacement therapy, right? But we're not doing that so much with women in their reproductive years, aside from prescribing birth control pills for absolutely every problem, which is not a cure, you know, and just very briefly on that, birth control is a form of hormone replacement therapy for younger women in their reproductive years. And it shuts off all your own internal hormone production, that's really important for you to know. And the reason why that's important is that's how it works, in order for you to not get pregnant, which is the original purpose of this medication, it has to shut off your ability to ovulate, which you're not producing your own hormones, you're taking these little doses of it on a day-to-day basis and you're also not menstruating. So that thing that looks like a bleed once a month is just breakthrough bleeding that usually resolves over a couple of months or you both kind of stop, and there are a lot of health implications to that, too. But this is not a cure for what's wrong with you at all.

Missy Modell:
I think it's important to also note what is a normal period and a normal cycle versus what's not, because I think a lot of people might think what they're experiencing is normal and it's very much not, and they don't have the knowledge or the access to know otherwise. So how would you classify and what are indicators that people should really look for?

Alisa Vitti:
The first place to start, you know, and I'm really proud to have been the first human being to go on national television to simulate menstrual blood, to educate women about this, I did that back in 2013.

Missy Modell:
Thank you for your service.

Alisa Vitti:
I used fruit juice. You know, it was so controversial. Half the producers were like, oh, no, no, we cannot do that, and the other half were like, We have to do it. So at the end of the day, we did it, but it was just fruit juice. And the idea is when you look at the color of your bleed every month, that's a really important report card that you're getting at the end of every cycle. How did you do? Meaning, how were all the things that you were putting in your body, how were they affecting your hormones? So if you have a nice, healthy, cranberry red-colored bleed, you did good, things are working well. Estrogen-progesterone is nicely balanced, everything is where it should be. If it starts off kind of like prune juice color or ends up with that color or it is that way throughout, that's indicative of insufficient progesterone levels, which is really problematic if you're someone who's trying to conceive, if it's very dark, like purple or, you know, it's hard to describe that color, but, you know, that's sort of like very dark, bloody color with clots with or without clots and heavy, that's indicative of excessive levels of estrogen, which is not a good sign of what you did the month before, right? Because it means that some of the things that went into your diet and your lifestyle were jacking up your production of estrogen or impairing its ability to be broken down in your body. And then if it's light, pale pink, like pink lemonade or slightly on that spectrum, that's indicative of not enough estrogen, right? So that's sort of first thing is just understanding the color of your bleed and how that's a little bit of a scorecard for you. Then the other thing to look at is frequency. Are you relative to yourself having your bleed on a consistent cadence, right? So yes, there's this 28-day cycle that people refer to, but there is a normal standard deviation anywhere between 27 and 34 days. If you relative to yourself, are having your period every 27 days or every 32 days, as long as that's consistent for you, that's good. And then you want to look for regular signs of ovulation mid-cycle. And again, everyone has talked about there being sort of this like day 14 as the perfect time. Again, it's relative to you. It could be somewhere between day 12, day 15, right? You just have to know your window and you want to be looking for that beautiful cervical fluid. What does perfect ovulatory cervical fluid look like? It looks like a raw egg white. You know, when you separate the yolk and the white and you're baking something, that raw egg white, if you were to grab it and stretch it between your two fingers, that's what your cervical fluid looks like during ovulation. During the luteal phase when you're leading up to your bleed, that fluid, the vaginal discharge can be a little bit more cloudy, so less see-through, but that cervical fluid is crystal clear and shiny, and you'll see it on your toilet paper. When you're wiping, you'll see it and you want to be looking out for that healthy sign of ovulation. So three things to keep in mind; signs of ovulation, regular cadence that's regular for you, and the color of your bleed.

Missy Modell:
I like that you call it "your bleed".

Alisa Vitti:
Well, isn't it so annoyingly confusing, right? Nowhere else, anywhere, do we have this mishmash of, like, not enough vocabulary, right? So your cycle can be the whole month, can also be the bleeding week. Your menstruation can be the whole month or the bleeding week. It's so crazy-making. So I just like to say your cycle is the whole thing, the menstrual cycle is the whole thing. And then the bleeding week is when you're bleeding because we should call it by its function, right? We call ovulation that week. We call that the ovulatory phase. We call the luteal phase, that phase because it's the ovaries producing a corpus luteum which produces progesterone. We call the follicular phase and the cycle, the follicular phase, because the ovary is producing follicles. So we should call the bleeding week, the bleeding week or menses, you know, if you want. But even the word menstruation, it's from the Greek or the Latin, it means the word month. So how is that helpful to refer to that? From an etymological point of view, that word is not quite right for the week where you're bleeding. So yeah, I like to call it what it is.

Missy Modell:
I love that. And you've talked about hormones, and I feel like if you're on TikTok at all, all I see, and I don't know if it's on my For You page specifically, these experts, I don't know what their background is, talking about balancing your hormones. So how do we know what to look for and what are effective ways to balance your hormones, and why is that important?

Alisa Vitti:
Hormone balancing is a process where you identify some of the, let's say, endocrine disruptive things that you're doing or the hormone-disruptive things that you're doing, and you stop that behavior or replace things that are needing to be replaced. For example, I don't know, let's say you were eating all non-organic produce, and we know that the chemicals that are used in these fertilizers are estrogenic, xenoestrogenic meaning they mimic estrogen in your body and they mess up detoxification pathways, which would make breaking this estrogen, estrogen or your own estrogen down more difficult, right, removing that and switching out to organic would be a helpful thing to do. But then there's sort of the replenishing phase as well, right? So, so many women are micronutrient deficient whether they've been exposed to taking birth control for a long time or just eating in a way that isn't hormonally supportive. Getting the right micronutrients in your system is super important. But for me, when I started tackling this issue, hormone balancing is a process of working with the endocrine function of the body to allow it to do what it's designed to do, which is to balance your hormones. The idea that you balance your hormones is not quite accurate. What you're doing is you want to be giving your body the building blocks that it needs to do its job of balancing your hormones. It is so interconnected and complex and highly interdependent that there is no way for you specifically to balance your hormones, so to speak. You can only give your body the correct inputs so that it can do its job and give you the correct outputs, and I think that's an important thing to understand, that you want to become an ally to your endocrine function as opposed to someone who is, let's say, blocking its optimal performance, which most of us are without realizing it.

Missy Modell:
What does cause a blockage?

Alisa Vitti:
So many things, right? Drinking caffeine on an empty stomach, sugar, having too much sugar in the diet, endocrine disrupting chemicals in your food, in your makeup, in your home cleaning products. Unmanaged adrenal response, meaning if you're having like lots of stress and you're not doing anything to flush cortisol, and just generally how we are not aligning our self-care, whether it be food, fitness, or lifestyle with the actual hormonal patterns of our cycle. And this is really the big discovery that I kind of put together for my second book, In the Flo, which is the basis of the cycle syncing method as we have these specific hormone ratios in each of the four phases of our cycle. We have to change how we're eating, what we're eating, the caloric levels of what we're eating, what types of workouts we're doing to support, right? So there's this endocrine support that we need to kind of take care of, and then there's the cycle support, and that's really the name of the game.

Missy Modell:
And I think it comes with an understanding of our body. And I just want to share a quote that you made that I love so much. "Nothing is more powerful than a woman who understands her body".

Alisa Vitti:
I would say so.

Missy Modell:
...

Alisa Vitti:
I did say so, so one thing ...

Missy Modell:
And so, can you talk about that a little bit, just what this understanding does from a mental health perspective, from just a functioning perspective?

Alisa Vitti:
Well, think about it this way. When there's something that you don't understand and you have to make a critical decision, but you don't have enough information, this feeling that arises, I mean, this happens to me all the time when I have not enough information, is fear, anxiety, you know, wait, am I doing the right thing? Is this okay? Am I going to be okay if I make this choice? Because I don't know all the things that I don't know. And I think when we as women don't have the right understanding of how our bodies work, we have so much anxiety baked into the relationship that we have with ourselves that's like low-grade constant. It's like the water in a fish tank and where the fish in that fish tank and we don't even see it because it's just our normal kind of situation. But when you leap out of that or walk over a bridge of science, as I like to say, by really getting the facts correct around how your body works, it's not mysterious, you know, that if you put certain things in, you're going to disrupt your hormones, and if you don't and you change what you're doing, then they start to balance themselves out for you. And those types of major recovery from symptoms, whether it be severe acne or painful periods or missing periods or infertility or I mean, this is on your ovaries, whatever it is, that it is a higher percent within your power to positively improve that situation and resolve those symptoms. It's very relaxing. Instead of feeling fearful, anxious, disconnected from your body, you feel in tune, excited, motivated, like, yeah, let me get on that. And the way it feels over time now, you know, having been doing this for myself personally now for 25 years, it's like when you get your temperature taken and it's off, you're like, oh, you know, let me get right on that. Yeah, okay, I know what to do. I maybe had too many cookies at that holiday party, let me do 2 or 3 things. I would get myself right back on track and then, you know, hunky dory, everything's good, right? It isn't this big, overwhelming thing. You don't have to go down substack rabbit holes of trying to figure out what is wrong. You just know what you know and you can't unknow it. It's pretty simple how your body works, which is why I've taken such great pains to explain it in a very approachable way in both of my books so that really women can get this education. And once you have it, it's totally transformative. And I think that sense of anxiety and frustration with your body just, it goes away without you having to do much about it. And it's pretty powerful to use that as the lever to transform your relationship with yourself.

Missy Modell:
And how do we then combat, even from a societal cultural perspective, the shame being thrust upon us for having periods, for having reproductive cycles, and almost trying to limit information that we get to those things?

Alisa Vitti:
That's a complex problem that we're dealing with and I do not know how to solve that problem. Truth be told, I mean, it's overwhelming even for me to think about. But what I do know is that if you arm yourself with information, then that is your personal point of liberation from that, let's say, oppressive narrative of shame and things, you know, like I do not feel shame about my cycle, that seems really foreign to me. And I think that every time I've taught, you know, we get through all the science, everybody gets really excited, and then there's this moment, every workshop where there's this collective feeling of like righteous frustration in the room. It's very palpable. Like, I can't believe that this was withheld from us, kind of a vibe. And, you know, we have to work through that. I was like, you know, that's appropriate for you to have that frustration. Let's move it through our bodies and let's move forward. You know, there, unfortunately, we can't do anything really about this massive complex, ancient millennial, long sort of mythological narrative, but you can for yourself, liberate yourself from that. You can start to have a positive relationship with yourself simply by the act. You know, this is why I think the cycle syncing method is so important, helpful, and trending massively on social media because it is a practice. It's not a diet at all, it's a method, and it's a daily practice that not only aligns you with your hormonal patterns, but it really brings out the shame narrative right out of your body. Because if you're putting your biology at the center of your everything, it's hard for those two things to coexist.

Missy Modell:
I love that so much. And even just seeing how far I've come too, and I briefly shared before we hopped on that, even when I was with a partner and I had my period, I would apologize. I'd say, oh, I'm sorry, I have my period. And a lot of what you speak about, how powerful orgasms are for your period, for life, for being a very happy human on this planet. So maybe get into that a little bit. The beauty and the importance of having orgasms generally and even specifically during your cycle.

Alisa Vitti:
Well, your whole cycle is an opportunity for you to have your orgasms. Let's start off with a sad statistic, which is that 67% of women are sexually unsatisfied, and I think that's a low-ball number, it's probably more like 80%. But, you know, the reason why women are sexually unsatisfied is because they don't know how to biohack their orgasmic process. It's a process. There are four stages to your orgasmic process, right? I write about this as well in both of the books so you can get your hands on the info, but the idea is that we have been misled a little bit by the pornographic narrative, which, you know, coming from the male gaze is pretty kind of one-note where you are just climaxing out of the blue and very quickly and at any moment and without much help, and this is not how your body works. It's not even how the male body works. You have this beautiful first step in the process called tumescence, which I just think is a beautiful word.

Missy Modell:
It's romantic-sounding.

Alisa Vitti:
It is. It's the process by which the structures, the tissue of the vaginal canal and the labia and the clitoral structure, you know, huge, beautiful structure that you only see a little part of it, like the tip of the iceberg kind of thing, that whole area becomes engorged with blood and the circulatory process really opens up, and this is called tumescence. So beautiful. You must tumesce before you can have pleasure. It must happen. If you don't have all the tissues unfurling, if you will, and exposing their maximum surface area from this engorgement, then you will not have as much pleasure as you are supposed to have, so that's the first step in the process. Then there is the orgasmic plateau, which is the most important step in the process that we all try to blow right by with our vibrators to get right to this thing called climax, which is the end of the process where all 10,000 nerve endings kind of start to finish their maximum capacity for sensation. And then you go into the fourth and final stage, climax being the third, into the refractory period where you have to take a break because especially when you're using a vibrator, you've overdone it, fried the nerve endings, you got to take a break. If you work this process properly and you stay in the orgasmic plateau for as long as possible, using a technique called the edging technique, which is super simple, you just go a little faster, then go a little slower, go a little faster, go a little slower, and you're breathing into your pelvic basin and really kind of monitoring your whole experience and your present to the sensations that you're having, you will have the most health benefits from staying in this process, in this phase, in stage two, for as long as possible. You will generate the most nitric oxide and oxytocin, which gives you all those great health benefits. It's like the magical phase, and I recommend women do this at least twice a week, every phase of the cycle for at least 20 minutes, staying in that orgasmic plateau. You can climax after that whenever you want. Interestingly enough, the longer you stay in orgasmic plateau, the more lovely of a climax you will have without having to short-circuit all those nerve endings, therefore shortening your refractory phase, therefore making you more multiple orgasmic. It's a fun practice, highly recommend it. And you know, all the things about orgasm that I've written about are so important to know which is orgasm, not climax. Those hormones and chemicals that are secreted during that phase boost your immune response, produce more collagen in the skin, regulate ovulation. If you're struggling with fertility challenges, orgasm twice a week. Great, great thing to do. If you're thinking you're coming down with a cold, orgasm a couple days in a row, boost your immune system, right? I mean, everybody asks me, what is the thing, the supplement, you know, anything that I would take to a deserted island, I would probably just take some aloe vera gel so that I could both keep my skin hydrated from the sun and also use it as a lubricant so that I could use my orgasm to keep myself healthy, and I think every woman should be doing that. And understanding, secondarily to this whole orgasmic process, that you have different sexual range, if you will, in each of the four phases. Your libido changes throughout the cycle depending on where you are in the cycle. And understanding that is important, from a foreplay requirement point of view, you may need less in some phases and more in others. You have wet phases and dry phases. Some phases, you must start with lubrication, additional lubrication because you will not be producing any. And knowing that is so empowering because instead of you thinking something's wrong with me, something's wrong with my libido, something's wrong, I'm not lubricated, or I'm not getting there as quickly as I was the other day. Why is that? Now you just know. Oh, yeah, right on time. I need 15 more minutes. Thank you very much, and get the lube, we're going to be good to go. It's going to be great for me, and we all understand what is required for us to have a good time, right? Whether that's solo or with a partner.

Missy Modell:
And it's so true, and I feel like people only think lube in penetration or using a toy versus using it all the time for whatever level of interaction you're having, whether you're solo or with someone else.

Alisa Vitti:
Yeah, and I'm a big fan of breaking the dependence on vibrators. I think they have a place, but if you're really interested in building a, optimizing and maximizing your pleasure capacity and your pleasure response, you've got to personally connect with yourself with direct contact with the clitoris, and that's something that you need to practice and skill build around and using that edging technique. And it's going to be helpful too, when you do decide to engage with partner, to be able to share best practices, so to speak, right? So like I said, I think there's a great time and place for vibrators, they're super empowering, but you can have so many more orgasms when you use them less frequently.

Missy Modell:
I think at one point I almost dulled the situation, like it almost like lost sensitivity and it was concerning for a little bit.

Alisa Vitti:
Yeah, a lot of women talk about that.

Missy Modell:
It was very strange and I find it much better when I don't use that one as much.

Alisa Vitti:
Yeah, break it out when you're getting tired.

Missy Modell:
I love that. It's, yeah, it's your automatic.

Alisa Vitti:
It can be your finisher but not your starter.

Missy Modell:
That's great. Just quickly, switching gears a little bit, just talking about PMS, because I feel like that is something I personally experience, PMDD, and again, falling under the category of like what is normal PMS and versus what is something that should be looked into or something to be curious about.

Alisa Vitti:
Well, no PMS is normal because all PMS is a total indicator that you have a hormone imbalance in the luteal phase. So in the luteal phase, which is the longest phase of the cycle right before the bleed starts, 10 to 12 days, you are supposed to be making a lot of progesterone compared to estrogen, more progesterone than estrogen. When you are making the correct concentrations of these two things, you have no symptoms, zero, no PMS, nothing.

Missy Modell:
I don't know what that means.

Alisa Vitti:
That's what happens to me every month. Nothing, nothing happens. Okay, when you have more estrogen than progesterone in the luteal phase, which is what most women have, insufficient amounts of progesterone, we can talk why that happens, if you'd like, but most women do have this problem, that's when you have, any and all symptoms of PMS can occur. And depending on how big the gap is between these two hormones, like lots, lots more estrogen to progesterone, the severity of each symptom can be greater. So you can have lots of bloating, lots of breakouts, lots of headaches, lots of insomnia, lots of mood swings, lots of fatigue, lots of brain, lots of anything. When you correct this ratio, the symptoms evaporate like magic, really.

Missy Modell:
I even told you earlier that I grabbed my matcha. I'm PMSing, getting my period in a several days, and I'm needing caffeine. And I just want you to debunk this very quickly, because what I've heard is, oh, caffeine is actually good for you. Well, not maybe not right this second, but when you have your period, it helps. It's in Midol. Can you please walk us through this really quickly?

Alisa Vitti:
No. So here's the thing. So I'm also going to get my period in a few days and I'm drinking water. And here's the difference, the difference is that I am, I'm always using the cycle syncing method. So what does that mean? That means this phase, I'm eating 279 more calories per day proactively, because that's what studies show we need metabolically to keep our blood sugar stable, which is part of the method, and you may not be doing that. And because you're not doing that, your blood sugar is all over the place. You're having more hypoglycemic, low blood sugar dips than you should. You're fatigued more as a result, your brain fog is increased as a result. You believe you are tired, really what you are is just hypoglycemic. And so then you reach for caffeine, which further destabilizes your blood sugar and then now makes worse this whole progesterone insufficiency because you're going to be messing with cortisol, which then has this sort of side effect of making more complicated your progesterone production, and it's a vicious cycle and you will have more symptoms leading up to your bleed, right? The reason why they put it in these over-the-counter period medications, like the one you mentioned, is because it can have a diuretic effect. It is not managing pain, it is flushing water from your tissues, which is not what you necessarily need, you shouldn't have bloating in the first place, right? So it's this terrible Band-Aid solution that's being hawked at women like, oh, yeah, here's a little pain reliever and some things to flush fluid from your system, a little diuretic, but you know, you're not fixing anything that's wrong with you. You're not addressing the root cause of these issues. You're not supporting this phase of your cycle properly. I've been caffeine free for 25 years, and I've been that way because I have a variation in a gene that 50% of the population has, which is a cyp1a2 gene where we don't metabolize caffeine quickly enough and it can actually cause massive amounts of anxiety, jitteriness, yes. And so every woman should go on the Mayo Clinic's website and look up caffeine toxicity, and please just read through the list of symptoms and identify, if you have more than a few, you are likely having this gene variation, again, 50% of the population has it, which means you need to stay away from caffeine too, because it's going to make your issues, it's going to make them a little worse. It's going to exacerbate any sort of mental health issues that you're having, and it's not going to help your cycle at all. So dependence on caffeine is only safe for half the population and not for the other half, you have to identify that for sure.

Missy Modell:
Obviously, literally starting the cycle, thinking about it today, and will be reporting back.

Alisa Vitti:
Immediately,

Missy Modell:
No, it's happening, I'm in. It's what everybody should be doing.

Alisa Vitti:
And that's what the My Flo app really helps for women. You don't have to become a subject matter expert, right? You just kind of get all the information you need in real-time as you're going through your cycle. We try to build things for women to make this whole process easier. And yeah, I mean, I think this is why women love the cycle syncing method, because it gives them a sense of understanding about where they are in the process and what to do to really empower themselves to feel differently, and the results are pretty quick. You know, you can start to feel better right within your first next cycle.

Missy Modell:
And I'm going to be freezing my eggs at the end of May. So this is good timing to kind of get into that rhythm.

Alisa Vitti:
That's right. Optimizing your hormones before an egg freeze or before an IVF cycle, all of those things are totally something that that would benefit as well.

Missy Modell:
And I know we went slightly over, I could talk to you for days, but one last thing that you talked about on my friend Drew's podcast, Broken Brain, about the Infradian rhythm, which was something I had not heard of before and would love you to just briefly speak about this. And this probably could be a whole other podcast episode, but.

Alisa Vitti:
So yeah, it's something that I uncovered in my research as I was putting together my second book, In the Flo, because I was asking myself a question after I wrote WomanCode, and, you know, I spent so many years educating women about how to fix their hormone problems, I thought, okay, great. And then I think maybe 6 or 7 years ago, too, we had this sort of wellness trend report saying, oh, we've mainstreamed the menstrual conversation. Do you remember this?

Missy Modell:
Yes.

Alisa Vitti:
And I thought, great, okay, now we have so much content online and this has gone mainstream and we're going to start to see a reduction in instances of problems. But that's not what we saw, that's not what I saw. And I started to ask myself a new question, which is, what have we totally overlooked? What are we totally missing that is preventing us from actually being healthy as women? And it was this infradian rhythm. It's a second biological rhythm that only is active when you're in your reproductive years, when you're menstruating, and it goes way beyond just governing the timing of when you're ovulating and when you're bleeding. It governs major system of the body, your brain, your metabolism, your stress response system, your immune response system, your cycle, your libido, all of this. So because we have never heard of it, we don't know that it's there, we don't know that we are disrupting it. Just the mere act of eating the same amount of calories every day of your cycle disrupts this infradian clock. Doing the same workout intensity, like I go running every day, if that's what you do, right? I don't. I know.

Missy Modell:
Definitely not. I mean, okay.

Alisa Vitti:
If you do that same hit workout every day or you go running every day, you have like this daily routine and you never deviate, that will disrupt your infradian rhythm, which has massive implications to all these systems of the body I just mentioned. And when we look at sort of the rates of issues that women deal with compared to men whose male cycles are oriented around a circadian clock, they produce testosterone every 24 hours, their instances of hormone issues, of autoimmune issues are much lower compared to women because they are intrinsically supporting that 24-hour cycle. In fact, you could look at the entire biohacking conversation as being one that really optimizes male performance, right? In fact, the whole biohacking thing really started in the military years, one of the world wars, and looking at how do we use nutrition and exercise to optimize performance, male military performance. And that's grown over time and changed a little bit, but most of the research I was really shocked to find on fitness and nutrition and even medical research on drugs and procedures are all conducted on men and actively, proactively, on purpose, leave women in their reproductive years out, but then we are sort of marketed a conversation in the media like, oh, look at this new study, HIT workouts, intermittent fasting, these are the gold standards, everyone should do it. The research was only done on men and postmenopausal women. When I'm postmenopausal, I will be doing a lot more intermittent fasting. But what we do know from some of the preliminary studies is that intermittent fasting for most women in the reproductive years gives you the opposite result. There we are, because that's not being really put forward in journalism, and women aren't aware that these studies don't include them. We then try every single trend and fad, and women are disrupting their hormones pretty profoundly as a result. 80% of women will have a hormone problem in her lifetime. 80%, that's almost everybody.

Missy Modell:
That's unbelievable.

Alisa Vitti:
Not, that is like no, men are nowhere even close to that galaxy of a percentage. Women have more autoimmune disorders than men. The impact of disrupting this biological clock is pretty profound. And so when I saw that, I said, my goodness, we just need a system, a method to support this infradian clock, and that's how the cycle syncing method was born, to really support that infradian rhythm, right? We know that doing things to support our circadian rhythm are essential for our well-being. But women also need to understand that they have to support this infradian rhythm while they have it active, and the cycle syncing method is the only way to do that.

Missy Modell:
And if you're in your reproductive years and even if you're not, do you recommend doing some version? Is there cycle syncing post-menopausal?

Alisa Vitti:
No, no need. You don't have a cycle, you don't have to do it, right? When the cycle has ended, you move on to a different type of self-care. As I had said many times, the form of your self-care should match the function of your biology, period. Pun intended, right? Because if you're cycling, you got to support your cycle, if you're not, you can do other things, right? And we should not try to feel like we should retrofit ourselves into a schema that doesn't put our biology in the mix, right? So, for example, if you happen to be in a relationship with a man and you are having a cycle and he says, let's get up at 5 a.m. because so and so health biohacking guru said that that's going to optimize my testosterone production. We should get up early, you should do with me and all this. You don't want to say yes to that.

Missy Modell:
I dated that person. I dated a biohacker.

Alisa Vitti:
You want to wait and do things according to your own cyclical needs.

Missy Modell:
Oh, this is pretty revolutionary stuff. We all have so much to think about after listening to this episode. So we wrap up every show with the question, what are you sorry for apologizing for?

Alisa Vitti:
What am I sorry for apologizing for? I don't know. I don't really apologize often. That's true. There has to be a really good reason. I like, I'm happy to take responsibility for things that I need to take responsibility for. I think just in general, whenever, before I sort of became aware of the overuse of apologizing for things, even just using that as a like a verbal filler in sentences like, sorry, you know, sorry for this, sorry for that. I'm sorry that I did that.

Missy Modell:
Yes.

Alisa Vitti:
I'm sorry that I used sorry too often when I didn't need to a long time ago.

Missy Modell:
Yeah.

Alisa Vitti:
Yes.

Missy Modell:
Thank you, and where can people find you?

Alisa Vitti:
You can find me on, if you have issues with your period, you can come to us at FloLiving.com. If you want to find us on social on Instagram, it's @Alisa.Vitti or @FLOLiving. You can find us on TikTok @CycleSyncing or @Alisa.Vitti or @FLOLiving. And you can find my books on Amazon, In the Flo, and WomanCode, and the app is MyFloTracker.com.

Missy Modell:
You're unbelievable. I'm honored to have you today. Thank you so much.

Alisa Vitti:
Thank you. So fun to do this.

Missy Modell:
Bye.

Missy Modell:
Thank you for listening to Sorry for Apologizing, brought to you by Rescripted. If you enjoyed this week's episode, be sure to check out the show notes to learn more about our amazing guests. To stay in the know, follow me @MissyModell on Instagram and TikTok or head to Rescripted.com, and don't forget to like and subscribe.

Sonix is the world’s most advanced automated transcription, translation, and subtitling platform. Fast, accurate, and affordable.

Automatically convert your mp3 files to text (txt file), Microsoft Word (docx file), and SubRip Subtitle (srt file) in minutes.

Sonix has many features that you'd love including collaboration tools, upload many different filetypes, advanced search, automated subtitles, and easily transcribe your Zoom meetings. Try Sonix for free today.