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I'm Hormonal | PCOS, periods, gut + hormone health insights
If you're looking for information on women's hormone health, PCOS, perimenopause, estrogen excess, hormonal acne, gut support, and overall how to feel your best--look no further. I'm Hormonal host, Bridget Walton, provides you with the information you need to get your hormones in balance so you can feel your best. Long-form episodes come out on Tuesdays and you'll get a mini episode on Thursdays.
I'm Hormonal | PCOS, periods, gut + hormone health insights
The Cycle Book & Mindful Tracking with Laura Federico and Morgan Miller | Ep. 75
Discover how understanding your menstrual cycle can transform your relationship with your body. This episode features Laura Federico and Morgan Miller, authors of "The Cycle Book," who share insights on individualized cycle tracking and the importance of incorporating pleasure into the process.
• Learn about the gap in sex education regarding menstrual cycles
• Discover the benefits of analog cycle tracking
• Understand the various biomarkers to observe during the cycle
• Explore the significance of pleasure and comfort in tracking
• Recognize the role of cycle tracking for managing PMDD and chronic illnesses
• Discuss data privacy concerns related to digital tracking options
• Find actionable tools for integrating tracking data with healthcare providers
BUY THE BOOK & CONNECT WITH THE AUTHORS
www.thecyclebook.com
Instagram - @thecyclebook
Laura Federico's website - laurafedericotherapy.com
Morgan's website - morganmillermidwifery.com
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Welcome to I'm Hormonal, your source of information about women's hormone health and how to support your body. Naturally, I'm your host, Bridget Walton, and I'm a certified functional hormone specialist and menstrual cycle coach. I am on a mission to hold these hormone conversations with as many menstruators as possible, because you deserve easier access to accurate information about what's up with your unruly menstrual cycle and with your fertility mysteries. Don't you think it's time that we figure this out once and for all? Hey guys, welcome to this week's episode of I'm Hormonal. This is episode number 75. And in today's episode you're going to hear my conversation with Laura Federico and Morgan Miller, who are the authors of the Cycle Book. Laura is a psychotherapist and a certified sex and relationship therapist in private practice, and Morgan is a certified professional midwife, lactation consultant, activist and a birth center founder, also in private practice. And they both, through their own experiences with their clients, found that there was this real gap, the real need for a cycle tracking method that would truly help people menstruators to get to know their cycle, be able to correlate what they see change throughout their cycle with whatever their experience is, whether it's mental health related, whether it's hormone related, help them better navigate their lives. So I think you're really going to love hearing this conversation that I had with them about the cycle book. You can pre-order the cycle book now by going to thecyclebookcom and then buy it through any major book retailer or your small homegrown bookshops. If you'd like to, you can just ask them for the cycle book. The book will launch on January 28th, so if you are listening before January 28th then you are ahead of the curve. And again, the cycle book is the name of their book and what you'll be hearing about. So I really just jumped into the intro there without even saying a welcome to you, new listeners. I'm really glad that you found me. My name is Bridget and I'm a women's hormone coach. Here on the podcast I sometimes will do episodes where it's just a solo episode, me chatting with you, but today, of course, I'm doing an interview with you. But today, of course, I'm doing an interview. On Tuesdays, my episodes that come out are the longer form conversation, like the interviews, and then on Thursday I will have a follow-up episode that is just kind of a mini. It will touch on this same topic from Tuesday, but it'll give you the chance to consume the information in a more bite-sized form, or if you want to just come back and kind of get the highlights from it, then it serves that purpose as well. So, Tuesday normal form, Thursday mini, and that's kind of the rhythm of how things go around here.
Speaker 1:I want to say a real quick thank you so much to those of you who have rated and reviewed the podcast. I just went in a couple days ago to see what you guys had been commenting or reviewing and I just saw a really sweet, sweet message in there. So thank you so much to those of you who have rated or reviewed, or, if you like, what you hear today and you think, all right, I've got an extra 0.75 seconds. I can go click five stars or leave a review. Then I would love to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 1:If you want to connect with me on Instagram, then you can find me at Bridget Walton, as you might expect. I share some information about hormones there, and you can find me at Bridget Walton, as you might expect. I share some information about hormones there and you can kind of get to know me a little bit more. I'm always welcoming a DM and I would love to be in touch with you. Any questions that you have, any type of topic that you want to hear me talk about here. Send me your requests through DM. Again, it's at Bridget Walton.
Speaker 1:And maybe my last disclaimer for today.
Speaker 1:Then we'll get into it.
Speaker 1:But, as always, the information that I share with you here is for educational purposes only and it should not be used as a replacement for any sort of medical diagnosis, advice or other one-on-one guidance from the practitioner.
Speaker 1:That's right for you Now. That being said, if you are looking for some one-on-one guidance from the practitioner, that's right for you Now. That being said, if you are looking for some one-on-one guidance to navigate through your hormone imbalances, to get your period figured out, to figure out any gut troubles that you've got, then you can always take me up on the free consult that I offer, where we can talk about what your goals are, what you're going through and how I can support you through that process and getting back to balance. So, with all of that out of the way, I hope you love this conversation with me, Laura and Morgan, who are authors of the Cycle Book, and I will see you on the other side. Tell us what inspired you to write the book and then we'll get into, like what is in the book, what can a listener learn from it and really, what's the main takeaway you want them to have? But where did it all start?
Speaker 2:Morgan and I have been friends for ages now. We met in our early 20s and we have always connected on just sort of like the big questions in life and also the how do we navigate the messiness of life. And I think, as we kind of like grew up over the years and went into our respective fields of midwifery and therapy, we had all of these same questions that were coming up in our personal lives. We were seeing them in our clients' lives. There was just this like huge gap in sex education and support and information around our menstrual cycles and what they mean besides, like something is wrong, or you do or you do not want to get pregnant. We felt there was this like gigantic space that we saw a sort of need for additional support and so we started with this project and it didn't start as a book but it ended up as a book and we're so glad that it did.
Speaker 1:But it was really for ourselves and hopefully for the people that we work with, which you know we've been able to experiment with over the years to really good results and hopefully for everybody who menstruates out there especially for younger, younger gals out there, younger menstruators, but even right, I'm sure that, just like I meet gals all the time who you know aren't familiar with their cycles yet or don't know what a missing cycle might mean or anything like that, there's just a huge opportunity to learn about it. So, Morgan, talk to us about what is in the book. It's a guide. You have some templates in there, like orient us to what's all of the goodness included?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think we took great effort to make this book really different and really accessible and really joyful. There's so much of it that's educational as far as what we were talking about, like the missing sex ed, that nobody got, the missing body knowledge that nobody got when they were growing up, that you either didn't get through your sex ed, through school if you had one of those, or haven't been able to even navigate through healthcare providers. That information isn't always readily accessible even in those spaces to have that, you know, kind of innate understanding of your own body. So we really took great effort to have that information be accessible as a groundwork. But then also, how do you apply that knowledge to understand the individuality that is you, besides the basic function of the body and how your hormones work?
Speaker 3:And so this model of cycle tracking is really different than others because it's really individualized and lets people connect with themselves and find, you know, their best way of using it and how to get the most out of it. So I think that that's one of the things that's most exciting about this is really, you know, empowering people to regain agency over their bodies, when we weren't taught this information and we weren't told what to do with the information. When we have it, it can really just change lives. So we've got a series of education throughout the book, as well as some really amazing you know journal prompts that help you figure out what is the best way for you to be tracking your cycle. How can you get the most out of this? Not everyone is going to try track their cycle in the exact same way and it needs to be really matched to what people's desires are for their own life.
Speaker 3:So that's something that Laura and I do individually with our practices and I'm sure you do as a menstrual cycle coach as well figuring out what are the best pieces of information to gather, but really, you know, giving that to people directly on their own, in their hands, through this book, that they can figure out what path makes the most sense, so that they can, you know, regain that power over themselves. And that's where the cycle charts come in, so that people can really hold that information on their own.
Speaker 1:You mentioned that this method of tracking is really different than other ones. So I kind of want to dig into that more, and the first thing that comes to mind, of course, is that it's not a digital tracking source. So maybe we'll come back to that specific part of it being, you know, handwritten or analog acoustic. But aside from the fact that it's non-digital, like what is that thing that's different about it? Or for a listener who, like, hasn't ever tracked their cycle in any type of way, what would they want to know about?
Speaker 1:it first.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's such a good question because so many people don't really know how tracking works outside of, like you're just kind of recording when you're bleeding, um, in an app. And something that I learned kind of the hard way myself was that there are all of these hormonal shifts that happen throughout a person's cycle that impact so much more than just fertility. And so, for my own experience with PMDD, I had to learn that there were certain phases in my cycle that dramatically impacted my mental health and really significantly impacted, like how I felt in my relationships and other parts of my life that you know had to do with regulating my moods or, you know, being able to show up in the way that I wanted to, or being able to feel the way that felt authentic to who I am, and really not knowing that that was happening was something that I kind of had to figure out out of necessity and at a point in which I wish I would have known earlier. And so when we're talking about tracking, we're talking about being able to understand and assess if there are patterns related to our health, our mental health, our sexuality, fertility yes for sure. Pain, chronic health conditions, these sorts of things as the cycle kind of changes, and Morgan is so brilliant and did such an amazing job of identifying some really helpful and yet easy biomarkers that a person can track, along with some of the kind of again, mental health, maybe relational sexual sort of cues throughout the cycle. And then you kind of get to look at this chart and see, like, is there a pattern here? What does this tell me? What do I want to do with this information? It's so empowering, I would say.
Speaker 2:What's different about the chart that morgan and I worked really hard to create is that it is simplified. It involves, um, being able to expand what you are tracking to anything at all that is important to you. It is not heavily fertility focused, it is not just focused on what a clinician might refer to as dysfunction. It is focused on anything that is important to the person who is doing the tracking anything at all, and that I think is so cool and just really, really exciting.
Speaker 2:The last bit that I think is quite different is that we took great effort to include the importance of finding some kind of comfort and pleasure within yourself as you are tracking, and so there's a lot in the design that is meant to make this not a terrible task that one has to do, but like anything related to our own well-being, hopefully something that is like lovely and aesthetic and like enjoyable and also functional. But why shouldn't we get something that also like looks great and feels good and is like a nice addition to the day, rather than something that you like drag your feet to do? Morgan, how do you feel about what am I missing?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I think that that's where Laura and I can can speak firsthand, and I'm sure you as well, bridget. Like you know before, there are cycle tracking methods that exist out there, but a lot of times when you first show either one of those charts or one of those complex apps to someone, when I'm sitting with a client, I just see this total blanching, white face happen when they're like oh it's, it's an amazing way to gather information, but it's not always been made accessible and sometimes it feels like you have to like go back to college and learn a whole new language of how to read this spreadsheet and it's. It's just so highly complex. But it doesn't have to be that way and can be really simple and can be really beautiful. And so that's where we really, when Laura and I have been working with our clients over the years, really trying to rewrite the script of cycle tracking to be so much more expansive.
Speaker 3:Integrating a stressor of actually tracking your cycle is gonna completely negate the process. So it had to be a process that was easy and beautiful and also really gives people credit for the fact that tracking is not always easy, it's not always accessible, especially when we haven't been taught about our bodies and a lot of our society and culture has kind of fostered some disengagement from our bodies. It's not always easy for people to start suddenly listening to or access that information, and I think that's where we're really, really excited to give people the tools so that it can feel easy and safe to do that.
Speaker 1:I definitely have felt that myself and working with clients who are like, oh my God, I cannot handle one more thing on my daily to-do list. Yes, this was actually the reason that I had to end my Duolingo streak, because I was like I can't, I can't do this for 90 more seconds or three minutes a day, and so I guess what I'm just thinking of, or what I'm getting towards, is having charting or tracking being like more a part of somebody's kind of self-care routine, and have it in that aspect would definitely make it a lot easier. Is there something maybe that you recommend in the book or just that you guys do, like yourself to make it be that nice, nourishing part of your day instead of instead of another task on your to-do list? Like Laura, is there anything that comes to mind for you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I appreciate that thought process so much because there is intentionality behind the way that we can approach these things and, in general, I think that if we are able to reframe some of these things as a tool that helps us feel the way that we are hoping to feel, that efforts can feel really different, instead of this being something that somebody has told us that we have to do or something that we are feeling the pressure to do because we're trying to solve a problem.
Speaker 2:We're kind of advocating in general, morgan and I, for everyone to start with this information as early as possible, not in a moment of crisis, but just like as a pathway to understanding your own self a little bit better. And I think, if we're reframing this as hey, like, this is a really great stepping stone for me to know myself and my body just a little bit better in a really simple way, on a kind of regular basis. That feels so different than here's this homework, because things have really gone south in a way that you did not expect and you have to do it or else catastrophe right. There's something so special about this being like a lovely preventative tool of taking care of ourselves and knowing ourselves.
Speaker 1:How long? And again, I'm kind of thinking of this question for somebody who hasn't ever tracked their cycle at all but is this a two minutes at the end of the day kind of thing, or what feels digestible and reasonable? Or how do you see gals who are using your book and using your chart Like what does that look like practically in their day?
Speaker 3:It practically can very easily be two minutes or less for that daily engagement and it's really just a very quick pause but with a huge, huge payback Once you get that information. It's really, really lovely how easy it can be to integrate into a daily routine.
Speaker 1:I know for me too and I'm sure that both of you have felt this way too that when I started to track my cycle, while it's just a couple of minutes a day, that really opened up my eyes to feeling into my body and like looking into my body for the rest of the day too, to notice, okay, how do I feel, what's changing all of those good things. So I guess I want to say that, to say that, while, yes, the actionable part like for a listener who's like just two minutes, what does that mean? But it is like an all day, every day. This is like a part of how you, that part of your relationship with your body. I guess Would you agree, or do you guys have anything to add on to that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. I mean I think that's why it was so powerful for Laura and I when we were setting this up to really include pleasure and comfort in people's tracking models, because simply taking that time to acknowledge whether that is or is not present in your day starts to build a pathway for looking for it and building it if it's not already there. And we know that there's so many positive health benefits for for hunting it down and having it integrated into your life, and I think that that I mean that's just everything, that that by having these very minuscule, small, accessible mindful moments you know it's not asking somebody to you know, go meditate for 60 minutes so that you can get your blood pressure down it's really accessible you can still get these huge, huge benefits by having that mind-body connection click that happens in that under two minutes but then extends throughout the day as well.
Speaker 2:I mean, how infrequent if we're not asking ourselves is that check in with what's happening in our bodies? I mean, how often do we go way beyond the point of even just like having to pee and like not even noticing until?
Speaker 2:hours have gone by and you've been so busy and you haven't even noticed that like very basic bodily function, very basic bodily function. So I think that this is really really exciting in that you are building into your day a very quick check-in to just noticing certain things and how they're feeling in your body. And it's the absence or the presence right Like it's like oh, actually isn't that weird? I didn't notice any of that throughout today. What does that tell me? When we're talking about pleasure and comfort, that's super important. But also when we're talking about how we all experience something like pain, sometimes these things are so present and so significant that we aren't actually getting a good read on when they are and are not there. So this like really simple ask of hey, check in and think back on how your body felt throughout the day is so exciting in terms of, like the actual effect that that piece of it can have.
Speaker 3:And particularly how you're saying, laura, talking about pain like I do have a lot of clients who come to me for menstrual cycle help when they are dealing with pain throughout their cycle, and they have already been tracking They've been tracking every type of pain in many, many different ways. They've got extensive data that they're walking in with. But we often can't work together to start to solve the puzzle or figure out the problem if we're not also looking at pleasure and we're not also looking at kind of like a baseline grounded comfort, like when are the days when, even if you have chronic illness and pain present every single day, when can we calibrate to more of these other pieces of your life going on as well? Because when we're doing things like cycle tracking, we're really triangulating data and we need these different data points. So it's just integral to be able to include things like pleasure and comfort in this, and that's when we have the giant aha moments with these clients, where we suddenly have a brand new pain management plan that we never had before. It's so cool.
Speaker 1:When we look at pain wow, not pain. When we look at pleasure and comfort, when we look at pain well, not pain.
Speaker 2:When we look at pleasure and comfort, is there a specific marker or like? How does that look in the tracking practice? Is that pleasure as in sex with your well, solo, or with a partner, or is that other areas of life that we can experience pleasure in, Like? I would love to hear more about those two areas and what that means in the tracking. Yeah, we are huge advocates for people defining these terms in their own words and in their own experiences. So pleasure can absolutely be under the experience of, you know, sexuality and eroticism and touch, but it can also be so many other things and especially when we're talking about like Morgan is explaining, like pain, we're trying to understand for someone what are days that feel better than others. And even if it was a very, very small moment of pleasure, something as simple as walking outside and having the temperature of the breeze that hits your face be a little bit warmer than you thought, it might be right, Like to just sort of be attuned to some of these much smaller sort of moments. What does that look like in the context of everything else that you have going on?
Speaker 2:And when we're talking about comfort, really what we're trying to help ourselves and other people figure out is what does a grounded, regulated moment look and feel like for you? It could be an experience. It could be a very abstract feeling. When I work with clients, I love to go as abstract as they want. Sometimes we use colors to describe like a feeling or a sensation within themselves, but we're really advocating for hey, when do you feel like grounded, like yourself, like pretty stable, and when do you feel pleasure, which could be anything that is important to you? And how do we make sure that we are not missing out on all of that when we're also trying to solve some of these oftentimes more uncomfortable feelings?
Speaker 1:Valeria, you'd mentioned that. Morgan, you have a couple of biomarkers that you incorporated into the charting, so maybe we can pivot and talk about that a little bit, because I'm curious what those are, how they support the charting process and just generally gathering information about, like what the heck is going on in our bodies.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I think there's. There's two really big biomarkers that can give you a ton of information about what's happening hormonally in your body, and one of them is the simplicity of body fluids. I think that's the one that people have most access to, especially when they're maybe already paying attention to days that they bleed, just from a logistics perspective of making sure they have whatever menstrual products on hand that they need to. But looking at bodily fluids a little bit more expansively and starting to track things like cervical fluid are so powerful, as you know, and I think it's a lot of building that familiarity with that. You know so much of our culture has like an ick factor around bodily fluids, but the reality is we're fluid beings and that's how it works, and the vagina is a is a fabulously clever system that self cleaning and regulating, and so there are things like discharge that happen that are normal. Discharge is like I don't know, not everybody's favorite word.
Speaker 3:It doesn't even help our cause to even talk about normalizing discharge, but I think when we just acknowledge like body fluids they're just normal, you know, sometimes it's blood, sometimes it's something else, sometimes it's some cells fluff off, sometimes it's this thing called cervical fluid then it can start to feel a little bit different in your body, and that's something we've we've worked with clients a lot over the years and acknowledging that it's not always easy to start tracking body fluids when society has trained us to disengage from them because they're dirty and icky, but I think that once we start to differentiate the types of body fluids that we have and understand what they are and why they exist, the ick factor goes away and it's instead this incredibly fascinating language and tool for what's happening chemically in your body at that time, and that's definitely one of the most body at that time and and that's that's definitely one of the most powerful pieces that people can be tracking. There's also, of course, temperature, somebody's basal body temperature, their temperature at a state of rest, like when your body is chilled out.
Speaker 3:It is so powerful and telling us what your hormones are doing so, I think considering doing daily temperatures is a really fabulous way to check in on what's happening with your hormones in your body, and there's lots of ways that that's made accessible these days, so it's not too much of a headache to gather that information and really get a ton of power out of it.
Speaker 1:I like to wear the temp drop drop like armband thermometer.
Speaker 3:So yeah, I don't have to use my brain to remember, to wake up and do it.
Speaker 1:So I totally, yeah, hear you on basal body temperature For listeners or who have listened to the podcast before. They've probably heard me mention that before. Let's talk a little bit more about cervical mucus, because that's also something I've touched on. But I think what I hear from clients or other gals that I talk to who are like I know that there's a difference. I know that a certain type, like stretchy, is more fertile, but I don't know how to identify what stretchy is Like. I feel like I'm doing it wrong. So does the book, does your book talk through like each different type and what to look for? And I don't know any other thoughts you have on for somebody who's trying to figure out like, okay, what is this? Consistency or like viscosity, anything mean? How can they best interpret that? I don't know. Morgan, do you want to tackle this first?
Speaker 2:yeah, I mean first, who ever did us so wrong by naming it cervical mucus, like in in, like, making this something that nobody was?
Speaker 3:ever going to touch.
Speaker 2:Just want to call that out for a moment, all right.
Speaker 3:Sorry. No, it's so true, yeah, I know, I'm on a rebranding mission, so I call it cervical fluid.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'll jump on board with that too. I mean it is it is.
Speaker 3:It is viscous, it is, you know, mucus is the word for a reason, but I think it's really it's. It's hard to identify and not everybody has the same amount of cervical fluid, so it's not as simple, as you know, showing somebody a image on Google of what you know peak cervical fluid is. It's not the same for everybody, but I think when you start to understand what it is and why it's there, it starts to feel more accessible in people's bodies. So we offer multiple ways that people can check in on their cervical fluid that are like lower or higher level investment, depending on your own interests in it. So there's always going to be the person that's like, you know, the A plus plus student, who's peak, interested and ready to get a protractor out and figure this stuff out, and there's ways that you can really get into it.
Speaker 3:But then there's also simple ways of how can you identify that cervical fluid when you're just walking around town. You don't even need to be checking your underwear necessarily. You don't even need to be checking your underwear necessarily. You don't even need to be inserting a finger to analyze what that mucus or fluid might look like or feel like, or measure it or stretch it. You can just be walking around and start to identify the sensation of when that's present or less present in your body. So I think there's there's multiple tools that can be made available for it, and it's so fun to work with people and find what's the one that works for you and how does it show up clearest for you, Because sometimes it's not as easy as just checking your underwear every day, or not as easy as you know, checking with your fingers and seeing what that looks like. It's never as textbook in real life. So there has to be some real tools around how you can identify it.
Speaker 2:Otherwise Something that Morgan is really great at is using sensory textury words to help identify your own cycle of these body fluids, and so when we're figuring out how the sensations feel for each person, the you know options of feeling what that feels like include, you know, when you are moving around and walking and noticing sensations in your vagina or around your vulva.
Speaker 2:It includes looking at the fluids and noticing it and maybe examining a little bit more what those fluids look like in terms of color and viscosity. But there's something I think really empowering about just being like oh, it kind of feels different, just sort of around my body and Morgan has used words like lotiony or creamy to describe a type of body fluid that would not be that ovulatory fluid and then the really slippery feeling of that more kind of like egg white looking fluid and how that might feel and how it feels when it feels quite dry. Actually, you know in and around the vagina at certain points in the cycle what blood also feels like as well as looks like. I think just involving to whatever level of comfort a person has their senses to be able to be like. There's more than just again like looking at this picture that always shows up online of something in between fingers. There's a lot more that we can kind of use to help identify how some of these things feel within our bodies.
Speaker 3:And that's especially when so much of our society these days, you know a lot of people have been utilizing things like hormonal birth control for extended periods of their lives and you know they're into adulthood and they've never experienced cervical fluid perhaps, you know, and it can be totally disarming to suddenly be trying to engage with a brand new thing in your body that you have not experienced before. And I think that's where we really took great effort to meet people where they're at in reality, because a lot of people haven't are like introducing themselves to their menstrual cycle for the first time in their 30s, and there's a lot, you know, to learn with it that we weren't taught initially and it's, it's right there and it's easy and it doesn't have to have the ick factor of discharge.
Speaker 1:I have to imagine that, right for somebody who's just getting off of birth control, this would be a great time to start charting your cycle and getting familiar with everything all the new changes and cervical fluids, like you mentioned. We talked a little bit, or you mentioned really briefly PMDD, laura, and how charting helps you. Maybe could you elaborate on that, for if there's a listener who also has PMDD and is like how can tracking my cycle and charting really help me better navigate that journey, like how was that for you or what, what could that person see from that experience?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that what is tough is that even in a situation where we have access to good diagnostic care and evidence-based treatment options, there is still a lack of time available to most patients in the medical system for all of the information to be explained. So I was lucky to be diagnosed with PMDD straight away and be given information about my treatment options when I was younger, which is honestly pretty miraculous given the rates of, you know, sort of lengthy time for good gynecological diagnosis for a lot of people. But what I didn't understand was that really? What we were talking about was, um, the change in hormones around ovulation. That was something that wasn't really communicated to me and I also didn't have the sort of basic information necessary to even understand that at that time.
Speaker 2:What I knew about menstruation was a person gets a period and what I understood after my PMDD diagnosis was half of the month is good and half of the month is bad, essentially. But I didn't know what that really meant or why that was happening. I knew enough to pursue treatment options, but it wasn't until much later on in my life, when I was getting off birth control, when I was dealing with some difficulty with secondary infertility, when I was trying to sort all of this out that it was this, exactly like Morgan says, like when we work with our clients for me to personally, an aha moment when I was tracking and I actually understood, oh okay, around this time where I'm noticing signs of ovulation and this change in my cycle phase, I'm noticing all of these really difficult symptoms that are wreaking havoc on my life, and these are things that I really want to be able to address. But I didn't know that that was going on really until I started tracking, and so what was so life-changing for me was not only knowing why and how this was impacting me, but also how I can change my systems of support and how I can take care of myself better, and even what clinicians do I want to seek out to ask questions to and to inquire about additional options for myself.
Speaker 2:But before that, it was this kind of like this, like very opaque, like you know, two weeks bad, two weeks good. Two weeks bad, two weeks good approach, which was not I mean, it just really wasn't what was actually going on, and when we don't really know what's going on with ourselves, it can be really disorienting and, additionally, anxiety provoking, and it was really empowering, to feel like I knew what was going on with my body. I see that in my clients too, for sure. That when that, that sort of unlock of oh I like actually know what's happening in my body, it just feels so much better.
Speaker 1:That's a good feeling and I love what you said too about having this information and knowing what's going on allowed you to change your support systems.
Speaker 1:Because, yeah, just knowing knowing how things change or how you change doesn't inherently change what's going on hormonally. But you can say, okay, well, I know that I'm probably not, maybe I'm not going to be in the mood to go do that thing, so maybe I just won't plan it or however, whatever it looks like for you or for a particular person. So it's a good way to like plan for your future self and be like what's future me going to want or not want or enjoy or hate? Are there any other? Like we know that charting is good for all menstruators, but I'm just thinking, you know, when I'm working with clients who have irregular, unpredictable cycles, for sure I'm recommending tracking so they can see what the patterns are and see if or when they're ovulating. Are there any other folks that you guys work with who you're like yep, for, for menstruators who are experiencing X or Y, totally start cycle tracking, you know yesterday? Um, because it's really going to be worth the bang for the buck. Like, does anything come to mind? Morgan on that?
Speaker 3:I mean definitely chronic illness, anyone who is, you know, living with any sort of chronic illness. I think that it can be just life changing to start to understand how cyclical hormones interplay with chronic illness and it can completely change what people's management plans are for that. So I do a ton of that at my clinic working with people. Absolutely, cycle irregularity, you know. Cycle tracking can really help us figure out why that irregularity is there and what we can do about it.
Speaker 3:And I think you know common things that I also see are really where Laura and I have thinked up in the past, with shared clients around. You know, changes or differences that people are not comfortable with around sexuality or desire and arousal and understanding what's happening with that, and that's been really huge to be able to use cycle tracking in a much more expansive way around. How are people connecting with themselves? How are people connecting with their partners? How are people connecting even, you know, platonically with friendships and at work and in life, like how does this mental health aspect integrate into cycle tracking? And it's huge if we haven't caught on yet. That's, I think, where a ton of cycle tracking can really be a game changer.
Speaker 2:And I think, too, just the experience of paying attention to one's body means that this is a useful tool for anybody who's dealing with some kind of conflict within their identity. Or maybe people who are coping with anything related to body image that is feeling really complicated. People who are coping with the kind of oppressive systems that we often live in which, like, don't allow us to like be free and, you know, be who we are, and having that feel really tough. There's something really powerful about like hey, like defining our own norm within our own bodies, setting up our own systems, understanding our own patterns, and having that be the valid data set, rather than looking externally to how we should be feeling, to how we think we should be presenting all of that kind of stuff. I think, when we're talking about people who are neurodivergent and are approaching a relationship with their bodies, this is like a really, again, really useful way to define the ways that senses feel good for you to integrate into, how you, like you know, interpret your body signals.
Speaker 2:And then the last category of people's experiences in which I think this is like yeah, like, let's get it going as people who have survived any type of trauma to their bodies. So, whether that is sexual assault, whether that is harassment, whether that is medical trauma assault, whether that is harassment, whether that is medical trauma, whether that is the kind of trauma that a lot of people experience around, again, identity. This is really really helpful because often we want to go a bit more slowly and approach the body with a little bit of extra care, and I love having some runway when we're working with that, so that we have all the time that we need to figure out the best ways of listening to the body and being present with the body and engaging with the body, because if you've survived trauma, being present with the body is much more complicated, and so the ask would be a bit different. It wouldn't be just like, hey, just start tracking your body. We want to be able to make sure that it's safe to be in the body before we do that.
Speaker 1:And the book will walk them through those kind of different I don't know three different lanes, so to speak, about what kind of pace to move at. Oh, that's really beautiful. On the same note of, I guess, oppressive systems or otherwise, whatever systems are out there, maybe this would be a good time to just chat on data privacy, like for somebody who's listening and is like, well, I have this app on my phone, I have years and years of data I can just which. This is me too, sometimes, right, because I'm like, I'm like, oh, I love to pull up a little graph or some stats about it. But of course, I can see too the value in taking time to sit down, write down, connect with myself in that way. So anyway, on the data privacy note, and for somebody who's kind of on the fence about digital versus journal charting and tracking, like, what would you say to them or encourage them to consider, morgan, do you want to kick us off with this?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean unfortunately, I think, in the world that we live in today, our data is just not safe. It's not protected in those formats through those apps. To be completely transparent, laura and I started this project as an app. That's how we were going to go. We needed to make an app that got rid of predictive algorithms and really let people identify things on their own, and we really. It became clear the deeper we dug into it. I mean, we were in beta testing, we had all of it, but it just wasn't the right place for us and it wasn't the right place for our clients and our friends and ourselves.
Speaker 3:So we really feel strongly that moving that information out of the cloud and into your own hands is the safest thing people can do these days, while our laws and regulations take time to catch up with the technology that is existing. I think that you're totally on it as well. There's something really powerful that happens when we can, you know, take a pause and not be looking at a screen and take a moment with a book. That's always beautiful as well. We really took great effort to have this be a lovely experience for people and not feel like homework, because we know the ease of apps and that access there, and there are some great companies out there trying to do really cool things, but I think just the status today is it is it's it's not safe to have your information there. So that's where that was a really strong choice for us to make make this into a book Instead.
Speaker 2:Well, I think it's important to name that the the information that we put in electronic digital formats. This information is currently not only not protected in the other ways that personal health information is, like it can be sold right, like it can be shared, but it's also now discoverable to be used in court, and some of this digital information has actually been used in court to prosecute people who are making reproductive choices that are now illegal in some spaces and some states. And so, as an additional layer on top of your data not really being protected or private, you know, get, get that stuff offline. Like. You know, protect yourself. It's not safe.
Speaker 2:And so we really really want to advocate again, like Morgan said, these are this is for us, this is for the people we love, the people we care about, like the people we work with. Like let's have another option that feels a little bit safer, and and also, let's take a step away from the predictive algorithms which, unfortunately, research shows us are not really accurate. I mean, a lot of the more popular apps are shown to be about 20% effective at accurately predicting the ovulatory phase. I mean so like that's just like we can do better.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we can do better. Like, let's do better, we can do better. And so I think that, while we recognize the ease of the app and also that, like dopamine hit, of looking at those graphs, we totally agree, we like, absolutely get it, but we're trying to create another option that is safer and more effective and more useful and also great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've definitely just on the ovulation prediction that I've seen with clients or with any gals that I'm talking to, who are like, oh, yeah, well, my app says that I ovulate on a certain day, which sometimes maybe is, or 20% of the time is accurate, but is so interesting from this other perspective of like, we just trust it and I'm sure that I did this too before I tracked my own temperatures and really looked into my cervical fluid, but you know you're just like all right, looked into my cervical fluid, but you know you're just like all right. Flow says I ovulated, so I ovulated. But again, the introspection and reflection is really really money in the kind of long run. I also. Yeah, I want to just come back to what you said about the information being discoverable and which is really interesting to me.
Speaker 1:I know that some apps and we won't call anybody out, I guess, by name or, if you want to, why not? But are there certain? Is it like every cycle tracking app across the board is not able to fully protect your information, or is it just right? Systems are vulnerable and generally cybersecurity stuff is crazy. Does that make sense? Or, like Laura, what do you think?
Speaker 2:Well, I certainly we can't speak to the regulations of every app at all and we're not experts in this arena.
Speaker 2:But you know, what we can say is that there have been like pretty significant class action lawsuits where people felt as if their data wasn't protected in the ways that they would have wanted it to be. We know that in the United States, the ways in which our personal health information is protected does not extend to apps, so none of this information would be considered the PHI that, like HIPAA, for example, is there to protect. That's really talking about health information shared in doctor's offices, through insurers, through medical facilities. It's not really designed to also apply to apps. That is just a different system. So we just don't have a lot of the protections that I think a lot of people would really want. Who knows if that will change. You know, again, what we can speak to is what has happened to a lot of users and how they have communicated that through a lot of legal pathways and ways in which people's again sort of digital communication has been used against them.
Speaker 1:Wow, yeah, I didn't know that those same protections aren't extended to apps. That is unsettling, but the good news is right when listeners go ahead and check out the cycle book and buy it. I know along with the book or I guess inside the book right there's a year's worth of charts to track with right Is there anything that we haven't touched on yet about the book that you want to reiterate or cover, or just make sure that listeners are clear on so they know why it's right and a good fit for them.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean. Another really cool part about the book project that was really exciting and important for Laura and us to integrate is some really tangible tools for what to do with the information you gather and how to use it, whether you're using it just for yourself and setting up your own systems, or having to navigate a healthcare system or working with your doctor. And how do you integrate that information when we know that not not a whole health care systems are really functioning these way of condensing the information you can gather from cycle tracking and handing it off to share with your provider, if you feel comfortable doing so, to see if it can change what?
Speaker 3:their management or treatment plans might be for anything that you might be navigating in that system. So there's some really cool, very actionable tools on how to use the information and how to engage with either your doctor, your therapist, your chiropractor, whomever it may be, but to really translate that information into finding more support for you.
Speaker 1:Well, how can listeners connect with you and how can they buy your book?
Speaker 3:The book is available for pre-order now on all major retailers, and you can get it through your local indie shops too. Just give them an ask for the cycle book and it'll be available in real life on January 28th and you can follow us through social media at the cycle book and our website is the cycle bookcom.
Speaker 1:Laura and Morgan, thank you so much for being on the podcast and for telling us all about the Cycle Book. I'm really excited for listeners to get a hold of it by pre-ordering at thecyclebookcom. Otherwise, thanks guys for making it all the way to the end. I know this was another long one again. Maybe I got to stop saying that, but I'm so grateful for you listening and will look forward to connecting with you here next week or maybe on Instagram in the meantime at Bridget Walton. So that's it. I'm Bridget Walton, a women's hormone coach, and I will look forward to seeing you here next week. Thank you.