Fertility Awareness Method with Lisa of Fertility Friday – #27

0:26 Charlene Lincoln: Welcome back to another episode of The Fertility Hour, and I have a very special guest. I know her from her own podcast ‘Fertility Friday’ which I’m sure if you’ve been cruising around and checking out fertility information, you have heard of Ms. Lisa, a fertility awareness educator and holistic reproductive health practitioner who has been charting her own menstrual cycles using the Fertility Awareness Method for the past 15 years. Wow. She is passionate about helping women to develop body literacy by understanding their natural cycles. After struggling with excessively heavy and painful periods for years, Lisa discovered the connection between health and fertility firsthand. Her personal experience of overcoming a Hashimoto’s diagnosis and uterine fibroids has influenced her practice immensely. Lisa created her weekly radio show, the Fertility Friday Podcast, to connect women with a deeper understanding of how fertility and overall health are connected and intertwined with their menstrual health. The number one response from her listeners is always: “Why didn’t anyone teach us this stuff when we were growing up?” Exactly. That’s so frustrating. Her mission is to share the message of body literacy with as many women as possible. Each week she conducts in-depth interviews with professionals who specialize in helping women to restore their fertility naturally. You can learn more by heading over to her website at FertilityFriday.com. Thanks for being here. Thanks so much, Lisa.

Lisa: Thank you so much for having me, Charlene. It’s my pleasure to be here.

2:05 CL: Great. Hey, and before I forget, please head over to our podcast website FertilityHour.com. There you can download a free report ‘How to Restore Your Fertility Naturally’. I think it says Free Report. Share it on your social media channels. It’s expertly written by my podcast partner Dr. Iva Keene. So thank you so much. And if you want to leave a comment, we’re working really hard to give you great guests and information. We really appreciate it. We read all of them.

Okay. So you’ve been tracking your charts for 15 years. That must be so fascinating. I mean, I’m a total nerd and I think it’s fascinating because what a wealth of information you have about yourself. I mean, it’s like a journal of your life, right?

Lisa: Yeah, totally.

2:56 CL: Like this is that time I went through that breakup and look at my charts, or this was a good time, or I gained some weight during this time. Right? I mean, there’s so much amazing information. So, tell us about the heavy bleeding, the Hashimoto’s and kind of what was the lightbulb moment where you’re like, “I need to get on top of all of this”?

Lisa: Yeah, for sure. So I feel like my story is kind of the opposite of the usual way people figure out birth control. So when I was about 19 or so is when I needed birth control. I had been put on the pill when I was about 16 because I had super heavy periods from the start, like the first one was painful. They were really, really painful. So I’ve had two children now and so I can tell you that my period pain was worse than the early stages of labor.

3:50 CL: Wow.

Lisa: The great thing about labor is like you get a contraction then you get a break, then you get like another contraction. But period pain lasts all day long. So I struggled with that for a really, really long time. When I was 19 and I actually needed birth control, because I had been taking the pill not for birth control, for other like to kind of minimize the painful periods and things, I never took it at the right time. I didn’t follow any of the rules. So I knew that I couldn’t trust it for birth control because I would have constantly just been terrorized at the thought that I was pregnant and didn’t know it.

So instead of going on the pill when I needed birth control, I actually went off. I was also concerned to have like a family history of fibroids and that type of stuff. I was concerned just in general. Because every time I had gone off the pill, my period pain was the same. Like I could tell that it wasn’t treating anything. So yeah, when I was about 19 years old, I was at university and I went to the University of Alberta. There was like a women’s center on campus and they always had these cool talks and speakers and things like that. That’s how I discovered fertility awareness. I went to this talk and this author had written this really cool book and she was talking about it. In her talks she just mentioned that she had discovered that you weren’t fertile all the time and you could actually learn to track your cycle. I was like, “Aha!”

5:16 CL: You’re like, “Oh really? I must know about this.”

Lisa: Yeah. So I took myself to the book store, got a copy of Taking Charge of Your Fertility.

5:23 CL: Oh my gosh, I love that book.

Lisa: I started tracking my cycles when I was 19 and now I am 35. It’s like I’ve been doing it for a long time. That’s been my primary method of birth control.

5:35 CL: Wow. You kind of still look 19. That’s pretty cool.

Lisa: Thanks a lot.

5:42 CL: Like the kids didn’t age you. Okay. So anyways, Toni Weschler who wrote Taking Charge of Your Fertility, I think you interviewed her on one of your podcasts. You’re so lucky because she actually retired this year and she said no more interviews. But that book is amazing. It should be on every woman’s book shelf, right?

Lisa: Yeah.

6:05 CL: It’s like a wealth of your information. Oh my gosh, you feel like you got this when you read that book and you start practicing it. So, tell us. You found out that you had fibroids at a certain point that was confirmed. And then the Hashi’s diagnosis as well.

Lisa: Yeah. So basically, around that time when I started charting my cycles, my cycles were really, really long. So my average cycle was about 38-39 days for a couple of years. When I first started charting, I went to doctors and they told me to go on the pill. Of course they did. That’s what they say, right? And it was through one of my charting instructors. So also being at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, it just so happened that that was the physical location of Justisse Healthworks back then. So there was and still is a group of women who would meet monthly for several months out of the year and just teach other women to chart. So I’d learn from trained instructors who knew what they were doing and one of the times, one of the instructors was reading my charts. She noticed that my temperatures were super low so she suggested that I get tested for a thyroid issue. So it was pretty devastating. I think I was early 20s, like 21 or 22 when I got this diagnosis that I had. I didn’t get a Hashimoto’s diagnosis back then I just was hypothyroid and I was put on thyroid medication.

But even so, my cycles didn’t just like miraculously turn around and I still struggled with painful periods for quite a long time. So my journey wasn’t such that it was like super easy and immediately, and that over the years I had to continue to advocate for myself I had to continue digging, doing research, and furthering my education as part of my journey of being a fertility awareness educator. So now, my periods, like I figured that out but it took a couple of years to do that. And then my thyroid thing, thyroid issue was caught early so it’s never really caused me a ton of grief and problems but it’s still something that I have to manage and ensure that I’m eating well, getting enough rest because it’s obvious for me and my charts and also my physical symptoms if my thyroid ever goes off. So it’s just something that my charts helped me to monitor and keep in mind.

8:36 CL: But isn’t that beautiful because, I mean, the self-care that you just talked about, that’s for all women across the board whether or not. And it’s so nice that if you were to chart, I mean, I do not keep my charts now but I would just think you could go, “Oh, my body is off.” Like you’re feeling a little bit off but then you confirm with a secondary indication of it and then you can address. Because sometimes we sort of are in denial that we’re overly stressed, we’re not eating as well as we should, we’re not sleeping well. So sometimes we need kind of those markers of “Oh, okay. This is really happening for me.” Right? Like we get that disconnected.

Lisa: Absolutely. And that’s why I love charting. So for instance, I work with women, I teach women how to chart their cycles, so to use the fertility awareness method either as a primary birth control or to support them if they’re actively trying to conceive. But when you’re charting, what happens is your menstrual cycle is like a vital sign and it changes based on your health and your fertility. But it’s not only related to your fertility. So for me, I had a thyroid issue and that was evidenced by super low temperatures on my chart, really long cycles and then fatigued and other things. So now that my thyroid is under control, my cycles are within the normal range. So they’re usually around like 30-31 days in my case. And so like what you mentioned about being stressed and kind of ignoring those markers, when you’re charting your cycles, you actually have essentially like a printout of your health. So it’s I think one of the most fascinating things that women discover when they learn. They learn that it’s more than just like you think, “Okay, wow.” I can use this for birth control, I can figure out when I’m fertile in my cycle, and I can use that information to do what I want. But as you continue charting, if you have a super stressful month, if you go traveling somewhere, if you get sick, you notice that your charts reflect that. Your charts basically respond to all those things that happen. So it’s really profound because we’ve never been taught anything about our bodies, let alone the fact that our cycles are so closely related to our health.

10:59 CL: Absolutely. You know, I practice Chinese medicine and when I was in my studies, just like I don’t know if anyone’s been to an acupuncturist but we talk about poop a lot like the quality of poop, the smell of poop, does it float. But also the menses, too; the quality of the blood, does the blood have an odor or are you clotting, what’s the color of it, is it watery, is it thick in consistency, is it dark. I mean, all those are such indicators of imbalances that are going on. Are you missing your period? Are your periods painful? Than if you go to a conventional doctor and you bring up those, those are all kind of irrelevant signs to them because they don’t really know how to — They just don’t know how to interpret them or they don’t believe that those interpretive signs really mean anything. But to go back to the 15 years, I mean, gosh, I guess I’m a little bit lazy, like how did you keep motivating to do that? And I’m sure in the very beginning 15 years ago you were literally tracking on a piece of paper the chart that you probably Xeroxed off the back of that How to Take Charge of Your Fertility book or maybe in those classes. But then have you know evolved to 21st century technology of charting like apps and things like that? What do you use now?

Lisa: That’s a really good question. I love that. So actually back in the day circa 2000, so I’m like a super hyper nerd, let’s just put it out there. Right? I learned about it and I couldn’t just leave it at that. I had to become a fertility awareness educator, started a podcast about it and I’m even writing a book about it right now. So I always take it to this level it doesn’t need to go to. So what I did was actually made these physical books and I used to sell them and I would give them to my friends. So all of my close friends have like somewhere in the piles from 2000 charting books I used to make for them. So when I first started charting, that’s what I did. I made myself an Excel spreadsheet like a chart and then I did Xerox it a zillion times and I bound it into a book and so I had my own charting books. The thing is that when you are actively using fertility awareness as your primary method of birth control, you’re highly motivated to chart because when you chart, that’s what tells you which days you can have the sex on. So yeah, I was highly motivated to chart because I wasn’t on the pill and because I was in university, a young woman, and it was not part of my intention to have a baby at that stage, like I wanted to complete my degree and figure out my career. So yeah, highly motivated.

But I think the bigger thing is that it became a habit. What I always say to my clients now is, because now it’s been so many years, even if I wasn’t intending to check for mucus when I go to the bathroom or something, like it’s such a habit that I can’t even not — like I always know what’s going on because every time I go to the bathroom it’s just a habit. So it’s not an additional hassle or burden for me. It’s like brushing your teeth. Like brushing your teeth is not a hassle or burden. No one has to tell you to brush your teeth. It’s very similar to that.

So I started with my paper charts and that was years. I would say at least 5 to 7 to something years. And at some point, because when I first started charting there were no apps, let’s just put that out there. I didn’t even have a cellphone when I graduated from high school. So yeah, there were no apps. That was not a thing. So eventually, I started charting with Kindara for a little while and that basically, it didn’t last that long. I think I charted with Kindara for like a year or two and then when I was about 30, that’s when I had my first child, so that’s when I had my son. But what was interesting about that is basically I’ve been using fertility awareness for birth control for like 10 years and then really, like I switched so it was very interesting. In my case, you think after 10 years of avoiding pregnancy, you think that it’s going to happen like that like as soon as I switched it up. It actually took 4 months and I actually got pregnant, and then I had a miscarriage and then I got pregnant right after that.

I remember it was kind of weird because I had never had sex on my fertile days, I’m protected. So then when my husband and I were ready to start trying, I was convinced that I would get pregnant that first exact month and it didn’t happen. Since then, I did use the Justisse Charting App for a little while. But I’m back to paper. So I actually made myself a charting book. So that’s like the full circle. You ask for kind of like the impression. So I’m back to paper; I’m a paper girl. I have my pens and crayons that I draw my little dots.

16:09 CL: I like that too. I know. Scheduling and I can see it with charting. I’m like, there was nothing wrong with that paper option. I kind of need to just see all laid out.

Lisa: I like that you’d have to write it then because it’s a way to help me to remember. I always check but writing it, going into an app sometimes for me is like especially at night when I’m trying to avoid the blue light and stuff like that. So just having the piece of paper or having my book on my bedside which is where it is right now. It’s down the hall. It’s a really helpful physical reminder to me, and so every night.

16:43 CL: That’s good. I’m glad you mentioned the blue light because right, it’s disruptive of sleep so if you want to wake up, kind of look at your phone and do that thing, and your sleep is really sensitive and you wake up, you know, a lot of women are waking up throughout the night for whatever reasons. Well, that kind of brings up another question. So a lot of women have sleep issues. That’s kind of a concern and we’ll talk about like these fertility sensor type bracelets like the Ava bracelet that came out in 2017 that’s trying to kind of bypass the erraticness of some women’s sleep. Because how much is that throwing off your temperature and not giving you the most accurate data points.

Lisa: Well, there’s a lot of really interesting pieces just in that statement. The first thing you said was how women have a lot of sleep issues and that’s something I’ve definitely seen with my clients. We’re human beings and we live in a digital age. So I think that what’s interesting is what the research shows is that if you’re looking at your computer screen or your phone or your television past 9 PM, the effect of blue light which is, yeah, the sun also has blue light. Like blue light isn’t inherently bad but the effect of having that light at nighttime when your body is supposed to be preparing for sleep, that does have a disruptive effect on your hormones similar to what you’d have from a cup of coffee. So from a more hormonal menstrual cycle standpoint, sleep is really important.

So some of the common issues that come up for women who are either paying attention to those cycles or not but especially women who are trying to conceive and kind of having some difficulties and paying attention to what’s going on. Many women struggle with spotting so they might have a couple of days for their period they have some bleeding that’s not their period, but it happens for several days before their period. For women who are tracking their cycles, after ovulation you’re supposed to have about 12 to 14 days before your period; that’s called the luteal phase. So that’s a healthy luteal phase, about that average of 12 to 14 days. But many women will find that they start bleeding, say, about day 9 or day 10 so their luteal phase is on the shorter side. So when you track your menstrual cycle, when you get an understanding of the hormonal pattern that’s happening throughout your menstrual cycle, you start to understand that your menstrual cycle reflects what’s happening with you hormonally as well. So the first half of the cycle, that’s when your ovaries are producing estrogen as they’re preparing for ovulation, eventually the estrogen hits like a set point and that triggers ovulation. Then once you ovulate, your ovaries start producing progesterone and produces it then for that luteal phase. So when you have, say, spotting before your period or when you have a shorter luteal phase, that is an indication that your progesterone just isn’t quite cutting it and it’s potentially on the low side.

The reason I’m kind of going on what feels like a tangent is because sleep disruptions and light exposure at night time, that impacts your hormones. So the more light, the less melatonin when you’re supposed to have it when you’re sleeping, and that has a negative effect on your progesterone level. So the reason I’m going on this big tangent is because for many women, addressing their sleep, making sure they’re getting enough sleep, making sure they’re sleeping in the dark can have a profound and very significant impact on their menstrual cycle such that their luteal phase might lengthen if light is the issue, so there’s other issues that can cause that. So it’s not to say like this is a blanket, like everybody is going to be totally fixed. But if that’s the issue, then many women have found that, “Okay, yeah. I change my sleep environment, I sleep in the dark, and wow, my menstrual cycle, my luteal phase has lengthened. My spotting is less.”

There was another part of your question though and that’s with regards to the disruption of sleep and how it can affect your basal body temperature. So of course for women who might not be familiar with charting, you take your temperature every morning first thing and before you get up as part of charting because after ovulation, your temperature actually goes up. So if you plot all different temperatures on the graph, after ovulation you’ll see that your temperature actually rises and stays high. In terms of like getting an accurate temperature, ideally you’re going to want to get at least five hours of uninterrupted sleep like in a perfect world.

21:20 CL: Gosh. “At least.” If you want to function.

Lisa: Yeah. Well, I don’t mean that five hours is good for actually feeling rested but in terms of getting an accurate temperature, because then you’re like at rest so your body resets. So I have had a couple of clients try the Ava bracelet. The challenge of Ava is that it’s on the wrist and the wrist is not one of the three places that we take the temperature from. So when you’re taking your temperature for the purpose of charting your cycles to identify ovulation, it’s oral, axillary (under your arm), or vaginal. The reason for that is because those places have kind of like a stable accurate measure of your metabolism. And that’s what we’re measuring. Like we’re measuring your basal and metabolic rate. So what all of that means is you’re resting. It’s like if you were at rest for a long time, it’s the very baseline amount of energy, the baseline energy expenditure.

Some of my clients who have tried the Ava, the wrist, the temperature is actually a bit lower or different than it would be. It all depends. It might work for some and not for others but I’m also coming from like a “charting your cycle, fertility awareness educator using this method for birth control” type of perspective. So when you’re coming from that type of perspective, you’re looking for a specific kind of like we need the basal body temperature type of thing. But it’s not to say that it couldn’t be helpful for someone who’s just wanting to kind of like… you know what I mean?

22:58 CL: Yeah, I do. Let’s talk about healthy menses. Because like you said, we’re not taught about our bodies and we’re not taught about kind of what an ideal healthy menstrual cycle looks like. I’m talking about site, smell, the whole thing, the clotting. There’s so many things that women, we get our menses from 11 years old to 13 or 14 and then we have our menses and we do our thing. And it’s a little bit of a private event and you don’t know that it’s not normal. Right? Because it’s normal for you.

Lisa: Yeah.

23:39 CL: Big clots, dark blood. I don’t know. Talk a little bit about that. How do you educate women on what is an ideal menstrual cycle? Do you get a lot of pain and cramping? Is that normal?

Lisa: I think the first thing to consider especially because we have our period and we have our menstrual cycle. So the menstrual cycle is the whole thing. So day 1 of your period, the first day of actual flow, so even in the example earlier regarding like the spotting. So if you have like spotting, that is not the first day of your period. The first day is actually the day of flow. So that would be day 1 of your menstrual cycle and then you would have your period. You’d have several days before ovulation. So at some point if you’re paying attention to your fertile sign, so the three main fertile signs are your basal body temperature, cervical position and cervical mucus. So in the whole menstrual cycle at some point you would expect to start to see mucus. Cervical mucus can either look, if you’re paying attention to it, it can look something like creamy white hand lotion and it can also look like raw egg white. I think that’s important to talk about because we’re just not taught. A lot of women have found themselves in the doctor’s office thinking they have like an infection when really it’s just their healthy cervical mucus that they didn’t know about because no one told them. So that happens as you approach ovulation and then you ovulate in a healthy cycle. And then after ovulation, as we mentioned, you have about 12 to 14 days without mucus before you have your next period. So that’s kind of just the general cycle.

So a healthy menstrual cycle ranges anywhere from like about 24 to 35 days. That’s considered to be the healthy range. So of course the average is closer to 28 or 29 days, so that’s what the studies show us of course. But I think the myth is that every cycle has to be 28 days or it’s abnormal. So there’s a lot of women with 27-day cycles that think there’s a problem and a lot of women with 29-day cycles that think it’s a problem; or 31, or 32. And it’s important to know that there is variation. It is absolutely normal for the cycle not to be exactly the same every single time. The problem arises when you have more than, say, 8 days between. So if you have a cycle that’s like 24 days one month, 37 days the next month, 52 days the next month, then 28 days the month after that, that’s a sign of an issue. So I think that’s helpful just in the overall sense.

In terms of the actual period, so a healthy normal period ranges from about 3 to 7 days in length and we would expect to see like a flow pattern that’s kind of like a crescendo-decrescendo. Meaning that it starts moderate to heavy like it actually flows. Like so we’ve got the faucet on but it’s moderate to heavy and then kind of gradually decreases, so like that crescendo-decrescendo type of thing. We would expect it to be a variant of red. Whether that’s like a wine or something, but we would expect it to be red. And of course, in a healthy period you wouldn’t expect to have a bunch of clotting. You wouldn’t expect it to look like black or really oxidized. So in terms of the quantity like how much bleeding, that’s a big topic among my clients, it’s something we talk about a lot of them would have. But what’s normal in terms of what we would expect for the volume would be somewhere between 25 to 80 milliliters of bleeding. So I think in the US that would be between like 1 to 4-5 ounces or something like that. So the reason I would say that it’s helpful as women especially like we’ve been taught, I think most women know if it’s super heavy that’s a problem, we all have that awareness. But we’re not always taught that if it’s too light that it’s actually a problem as well. So your period is like a printout, again, of what was happening hormonally the month before. So again, like estrogen and progesterone are what develop your uterine lining. They each have their own roles. Estrogen causes the lining to grow, progesterone causes it to mature. And so then when you get your period at the end of the month, that gives you information about what was happening hormonally.

So I think that’s really helpful. So 25 milliliter being on the low end, like at least an ounce. If you use menstrual cups, you fill it over the course of your whole period at least once, not altogether. If you added all of it up, you should fill it one time over the whole period. Then 80 milliliters is the top. And the reason that that is the top is because typically, if women are having periods that are heavier than that, they’re more likely to have anemia, iron deficiency. It’s interesting because iron deficiency can cause heavy periods and it can also be a result. So there’s this interesting relationship between the iron. But I think it’s helpful as women for us to have these guidelines, for us to know just to have a sense of like, “Oh wow, there is something as too light. There is something as too heavy.” But it’s also important to know that every woman is different. So it’s possible to have a period on the lighter side, but some women just have lighter periods and some women just have heavier. Our uteri are probably not all the same size. So we’re not all going to have the same.

29:30 CL: I started using a menstrual cup about 4 or 5 years ago and a couple of times it’s let me down. A little leak and spill, you have to get used to that. I like it because I like looking at my body fluids, but in just a way of I like to see what’s going on and it shows me just the color consistency, if there’s an odor or if there’s clotting. I guess with pads too. But do you educate people on tampons? Because I come from a background we don’t do tampons. I know some women prefer them and there’s natural ones but there’s a lot of toxic sanitary type pads and tampons, and I think they should be illegal, honestly. I really do. It’s ridiculous that they’re put up against our sexual organs and they’re toxic. But what’s your take on that?

Lisa: Well, I’m right there with you. I mean, tampons and pads, so let me just kind of backtrack a little bit. So I gave you the history of my menstrual charting situation. So I discovered menstrual cups right around the same time that I was kind of going through my fertility awareness metamorphosis. So I’ve been using menstrual cups since like 2000.

30:50 CL: Yeah. Those Instead, right? That’s the first one that came to market.

Lisa: No. I started with it was called The Keeper. So it was like brown.

30:58 CL: And you kept it. It wasn’t like a disposable thing.

Lisa: Yeah. It was made of natural gum rubber. This was pre-DivaCup. I feel like I’m dating myself but it was pre-DivaCup. So the reason that I switched is that, again, like I went to this great university and there was all these fantastic events, like all these feminist women.

31:21 CL: Right. Where you learn about menstrual cups, yeah, and that’s the party talk. Okay.

Lisa: So I went to this information section and it was the first time I had ever been informed about menstrual products. It was the first time I learned that the materials that are used to make conventional pads and tampons are genetically like they’re engineered. You take a team of people to create fabrics that are super absorbent. And so they’re absorbent that they absorb your own bodily fluids and cause problems. And also, they just did simple things like I remember they put a tampon in water, so it obviously stuck with me because we’re talking 17 years later. And then kind of you see what happens, it kind of just bends and then they pulled it out and there was all of these little fibers inside the water. So then to illustrate that all of those fibers and things staying inside of your vagina, right?

32:19 CL: Toxic fibers.

Lisa: Yeah. So rayon, dioxin.

32:25 CL: Perfumes.

Lisa: A study that came out that showed that dioxins were found in tampon. So from a holistic standpoint, using conventional pads and tampons that are bleached and full of chemicals, putting them in your vagina is a very bad idea. There’s a lot of women who have like I myself had painful periods for years and there’s a lot of women who struggle with that and find that if they stop using the chemical-laden products, their pain minimizes. So it’s a huge problem. Huge. And I remember just when I first started using menstrual cups, it was like “whoa!” I feel like I’m going on a tangent here but you know how all of the commercials about menstrual products, it’s the blue liquid and it’s water? It is not water. It is blood, it is tissue, it is secretions. So a tampon we all know does not absorb tissue. So they’re not really that effective and then if you don’t bleed enough then when you pull them out, they’re uncomfortable just from a practical standpoint.

When I switched to menstrual cups so many years ago, I remember thinking like, “Wow! This is what happens when you have like a ‘for women, by women’ type product.” Because all of a sudden you have something that actually is designed to hold what comes out of me, which is not water and it’s certainly not blue liquid. It’s very comfortable. So yeah, I’m totally onboard. I have had issues with leaking in the past. So I used The Keeper, I used the Diva Cup, the Lunette Cup, and most recently now I’m on the MeLuna.

34:07 CL: MeLuna.

Lisa: MeLuna. I have no affiliation with that and I’m just like an enthusiast.

34:12 CL: That’s good to know. I’ve only used the Diva Cup and there’s just a learning curve and I guess on your heavier days you do use a pad because there might be some leakage. I think and I’m just assuming that some women are like, “Oh, that’s gross. I don’t want to put my finger up there and pull it up.” You probably have something way more sensitive than I want to say like, “Oh, get over it.” But I just think you need to really get in touch with your body in that way and it’s not gross at all. What would you say? You’re more tactful, I’m sure.

Lisa: Well, I think it’s complicated. When I was in University, I volunteered with the sexual assault center and then I ended up working for the Sexual Assault Centre of Edmonton. So I used to go to like schools and high schools and talk about the impact of sexual violence and something. So I’m just aware that there are a lot of reasons why women are not necessarily comfortable with touching their body. And it’s not always like because of history of abuse or violence. It could also just be the abuse and violence that’s inflicted on women every day just like when you turn on the TV.

35:25 CL: Religious upbringings that make you feel not comfortable, right?

Lisa: If you think about even just the vagina, the concept of your vulva and your reproductive organs, some women were not given a lot of positive ideas about it. Most women think that there’s something wrong with the way their vulva looks or smells. Like you know what I mean? Many women have never even taken a hand mirror and looked at their vulva. And so in my work, in my line of work, I’m showing women how to interpret their cervical mucus secretions and like encouraging them to check their cervical position and things like that. And yeah, I have clients who are absolutely not comfortable with touching their cervix and it’s a big and complicated conversation. We do have to be sensitive to the fact. First of all, when I was in junior high I can still remember learning that I was fertile every day and we didn’t learn anything basically, which is not true. There’s only 6 days or so in a cycle that you can actually conceive. But I remember looking at the diagram of the vulva in class and back then it was different because that was like in the ‘90s. But I remember the vulva that we looked at, there was like a dot. That was like the clitoris and I literally went home and looked at my vulva because I didn’t have the dot, so I actually thought that there was something wrong with my vulva. And so this is a big conversation because as women we’re not educated about our bodies. So how can we expect women to be super comfortable with putting their hands in their vaginas and all of this kind of stuff when, literally, I didn’t even have an anatomically correct model of a vulva when I learned about my body and my fertility.

37:24 CL: Oh my gosh. I know you have a much more sensitive overlook at that then you need to get over yourself. I didn’t literally mean that, but thank you so much for bringing that up. I love having a daughter. My daughter is 5 but ever since she could speak or whatever, she knows it’s her vagina. She looks at it. She’s very comfortable with it. There’s no cutesy name because vagina is a weird… I don’t know, maybe that’s not the prettiest name for something. But it’s not something you don’t talk about and it’s something you can look at and touch. And you can call it by its proper name. So anyways, we get to sort of reparent ourselves for our children and teach them things that we weren’t allowed to sort of be comfortable around.

Lisa: Well, my sons run around, “My penis!”

38:15 CL: Oh yeah. Boys seem very proud of that and it’s out.

Lisa: “I’m washing my testicles.”

38:21 CL: Exactly. Or it’s uninhibited in general with that. But girls, “Oh, you’re not supposed to do that” or “Don’t call it that.” I don’t know. Just all these weird things around it. Okay, let’s talk about — I’m going to be devil’s advocate here and say, alright, all this sounds interesting but it sounds like a lot of work, and have you ever heard of Clearblue Easy?

Lisa: Yes, I have.

38:53 CL: If I’m just trying to get my fertile days, don’t I just use the OPKs and kind of make my life a lot easier?

Lisa: I love that question. Because there’s no real simple answer. So the Clearblue Fertility Monitor is actually specifically used in one of the types of fertility awareness methods. So if you’ve ever heard of the Marquette Method of fertility awareness charting, it actually utilizes the Clearblue Fertility Monitor because it measures like as your estrogen levels rise from my understanding and so it’s an actual legitimate method of fertility awareness charting. It’s different than checking mucus and all those other aspects of it. But there’s like an actual type of fertility awareness charting that utilizes the monitor. So my understanding of it is that it detects as the estrogen levels rise to a certain point, so that is the indication of when you’re in your fertile window so you can actually use that information to either try to achieve or try to prevent pregnancy.

So I suppose that’s a good place to start the answer of the question which is to say that there are a lot of different ways to chart. The way that I teach and what I do, I teach women a symptom-thermal method of birth control which is a combination of the “sympto” like the symptoms and so that is your cervical mucus, that is your cervical position. Both change in response to estrogen and progesterone. So these give you an indication of when you are in your fertile window, when you’re capable of getting pregnant. So for the women who are kind of like “What is she talking about?” in order to get pregnant, basically in order for sperm to survive long enough in your body to fertilize an egg, you have to have a cervical mucus in order to make that happen. So when you’re in your fertile window, your estrogen levels are rising and that triggers your cervix to release cervical mucus and it triggers changes in your cervix like the position and the texture. And so when you make cervical mucus and you have sex, the cervical mucus keeps the sperm alive. It’s the right pH, it feeds them and it gets them all ready so that when you release an egg, it’s okay. So we have that.

When you use the symptom-thermal method, it’s those symptoms plus the temperature and so the temperature doesn’t help you predict anything but it helps to confirm that you’ve ovulated because your temperature goes up after you’ve ovulated. And so it seems like it sounds like a lot of work because you have to check your cervical mucus every day, you have to check your temperature every day. But it’s not necessarily for everybody. I think that’s the other thing. Even within fertility awareness, that’s why there’s so many different ways to check it and chart it. But at the end of the day, as I mentioned for myself and for women who use this method and do it, it becomes a habit and all in all it doesn’t take that long. You invest some time initially to learn so you have to get yourself Taking Charge of Your Fertility by Toni Weschler. You take a class with someone like myself who can walk you through to make sure that you get the effectiveness. So for the listeners who may not be familiar with fertility awareness, there are actual valid scientific research studies that have been done that show that when used correctly this method is 99.4 percent effective, the sympto-thermal method in particular.

So once you get in the habit of it, you learn it, it’s like brushing your teeth. It really doesn’t take a lot of time out of your day. So there are other methods like because the temperature confirms that you’ve ovulated, some women use temperature only. So there’s devices like the Lady Comp and I think Daysy incorporates some of the mucus information. But those are essentially like super thermometer computers with a price to match that will actually kind of calculate your… So as a fertility awareness educator we typically are a little bit less on the side of like use a calculator to calculate your fertility. But there’s lots of different options for women.

You asked also about ovulation predictor kits. And so, ovulation predictor kits are very helpful in the sense that they’re detecting a hormone called luteinizing hormone and so as you approach ovulation, like your estrogen surges eventually, gets to the point that it triggers ovulation. And what that means is that when your pituitary, when your brain detects the high estrogen levels, your pituitary gland releases luteinizing hormone and that is what then actually triggers your ovary to release the egg. So luteinizing hormone is released 24 to 36 hours before ovulation. That’s what the ovulation predictor kits are testing. And so it’s helpful but the challenge is that I think that the best use of ovulation predictor kits are within the context of actually understanding how your cycles work because when you’re paying attention, you’re charting your cycles for instance. Like let’s say you’re charting your cervical mucus. You will produce cervical mucus in a healthy cycle 3 to 6 days on average before you ovulate. And so some women may have a few more, some a few less. But, in general. So when you’re trying to conceive you want to utilize your days of mucus because like I said, the sperm lives in it. That’s what keeps alive.

So when you’re using an ovulation predictor kit, what I’ve seen is a lot of women who I’ve worked with wait for a positive to have sex. And by doing that and not combining that information along with their mucus, they can miss several days that are actually fertile, that they could be having sex, they could be utilizing. The other challenge is that for some women, the ovulation predictor kit is not helpful. So for women that have PCOS, for example, one of the characteristics of PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome) which is characterized by irregular ovulation, one of the classic characteristics of it is an elevated luteinizing hormone. So for some women who have PCOS, they get all this positive, like it will just read positive a lot and it’s because they have elevated LH levels. So for them, it can be frustrating because it does not give any additional useful information to help them pinpoint their fertility.

45:45 CL: Thanks for clarifying that. And yeah, for women who are a little bit on the older side, I got pregnant when I was 41, the OPK kits were pretty unreliable for me. I mean, I used them as a backup. I tracked everything, but I don’t know.

Lisa: I don’t want to say that they’re not good or whatever.

46:09 CL: Yeah, exactly.

Lisa: I wouldn’t say they’re good or bad. They’re a helpful tool. I would say from what I’ve seen, the most helpful use of them is with the mucus. So even in terms of, like, because they cost money, if you start to see cervical mucus and you know that that’s a sign of fertility, you can wait until you start to see the mucus to then start peeing on the sticks. As opposed to what the doctor typically says days 8 to whatever because what if you don’t ovulate until day 19? That’s a lot of days of peeing for no reason when you could have just waited until you started to see mucus.

46:48 CL: Right. And Lisa, what about this. Okay, I’m referring to myself here but when I was trying to conceive, you want that really like egg white stretchy mucus and sometimes you weren’t really finding it, and I know that there’s a lot of factors, the simplest one being like you can just be too dehydrated or whatever. But can you talk about that more? Because a lot of women can go like, “Gosh, I don’t feel like I’m getting that. I don’t get the stretchy cervical mucus that I need during that time.”

Lisa: That’s a great question. I mean, there’s a lot of factors at play, let’s just put it out there. So I think the first thing is that if you’re tracking your cycle, you’re only going to see cervical mucus. I shouldn’t say “only” because there’s lots of different factors. But typically, you’re going to see cervical mucus as you approach ovulation. So it’s all related to hormones. If you’re estrogen levels are really low, that is going to have an impact on your cervical mucus production, for example. So there’s all these factors, so I’ll try to go through as many factors as I can get through. One of the factors that influences how much cervical mucus that you produce is age. So just naturally, a woman in her early 20s, she has more of the cervical crypts that produce that peak type, clear, stretchy mucus. And naturally, it’s not good or bad, it’s just like anything else, as we get older, our cervical crypts change and we end up having fewer of the crypts just over time that produce the clear, stretchy mucus. So a woman in her 20s, it would be typical for her to have, say, even like 5 to 8 days of mucus in her fertile window, like in early 20s. By the time we hit our 30s it’s more like that 3- to 6-day window that I was sharing with you. By the time we hit our 40s, it’s more like 1 to 3 days and statistically that is what it is. So when I work with women in her 40s, every woman is a bit different but like there’s a different parameter in your 40s that we would consider normal versus in the 20s, so I think that’s one thing.

Another thing is hormonal birth control use. So hormonal birth control specifically has a negative impact on cervical mucus production. As I mentioned, it’s a natural aging process that we go through as women and naturally as we get older we have fewer crypts that produce that clear stretchy mucus. But hormonal birth control accelerates that aging process. So for women who have been on hormonal birth control for like, say, 10 years or 15 years or however many years, it’s not uncommon for them to have fewer days of cervical mucus. So I’ve worked with a number of clients who’ve been on birth control for the long-term and in some cases it takes a couple of cycles before they start to see mucus. In other cases they’ll see mucus, they’ll see the non-peak, the lotion type mucus. But I’ve worked with clients that haven’t seen peak.

Another factor is cervical dysplasia, cervical surgeries. So it’s like a super complex conversation but long-term hormonal birth control use, in particular, is associated with the depletion of a number of important nutrients. One of those nutrients is folate, and folate plays a very specific role in supporting cervical health. So what that means is that for women who are on birth control for the long term, they’re more likely to have abnormal cervical cells, cervical dysplasia, like this is shown in the research. Also I’ve seen it time and time again in my practice. So what can happen is that then these women are more likely to have an abnormal pap and then if it doesn’t get any better, they’re more likely to have a procedure like the LEEP procedure and so that is a literal cutting off of a piece, like scraping of the cervix. So there is a lot of women who’ve had these surgeries and different procedures done on their cervix and that is directly impacting their cervical crypts. So for women who’ve had those types of procedures, it’s not uncommon for them to have fewer days of mucus or potentially a bit less mucus production.

When you Google ‘cervical mucus production’, you get this lovely variety of all these fancy herbs and all that stuff, and I think that’s the whole point. Like they want me to say, “Oh, take this thing or take that thing.” But really, we have to look at the whole picture. So when I’m working with somebody, I need to know what the history is, I need to know what the past like birth control history. As I mentioned, cervical mucus is also impacted by hormone production so we want to know like okay, is there a thyroid thing going on. Like, is there some other reason that your hormones — is there something causing. I think it’s helpful to really recognize that there’s more to the story. It’s not always as simple as just taking this. I think one of the things that is recommended for women by a certain doctor is just to take this what’s called Mucinex. What it does is, if you think, we call it cervical mucus. It’s like your nasal mucus. So this would lose some of the mucus, right? But that doesn’t necessarily address a structural issue with your cervix due to cervical surgery. So I think it’s helpful to look at the whole picture.

The other thing is that what I’ve also seen women who have had, so they actually have had kind of injury to the cervix due to the surgery (like we’ll just kind of call it that) but still conceive even though they don’t have loads. Because fertility is complicated. There’s not one factor. And the other thing, I was actually super curious about this because especially in the way that I teach women to chart, it’s detailed and so you’re checking for mucus throughout the day and you’re like, “How much do I have? How much does it stretch? How many times did I see it today?” And you’re recording all this data. So it leaves a lot of my clients to think that you’re supposed to have loads of it. How much should we have? There was this one study that actually aspirated mucus out of women’s cervices to see how much. What they found was that during the fertile window, it was like a quarter teaspoon.

53:39 CL: Oh wow! It’s like egg white. So when you crack an egg, you think of copious, long, stretchy. Interesting. That’s a good perspective on it.

Lisa: Yeah. A lot of women have totally normal mucus production. They’ll see it once or twice a day, a couple of days of their cycle. And they’re like, “I don’t have any mucus,” and you’re like, “Actually, that’s about right.”

54:07 CL: I like that.

Lisa: Yeah. And like I said, it’s complicated. A bigger problem: Cervical mucus is really important; it filters out bad sperm and all that stuff, but a lot of men have really poor sperm parameters. So I think that the challenge with fertility, as you know I’m sure, is the women are “It’s my fault. If I’m not getting pregnant, it’s my fault.” “If I have a miscarriage, it’s my fault.” “It’s because my mucus isn’t good enough.” It’s because my cycle isn’t perfect,” blah, blah, blah. And the last thing we think of is to get our male partner sperm tested. So like we have this sperm crisis. It sounds dramatic but I’m actually serious.

54:52 CL: Yeah. It is a crisis.

Lisa: If you look at the sperm production 50 years ago to now, all of the parameters are at least half, more than half of what they were. And so I always want to bring it back to it’s more complicated than just taking evening primrose oil so that you can have more mucus. Like, there is more going on and we want to look at it in a kind of a holistic type of a way so that we don’t think that if it was just that simple, everyone would do it and it would just work.

55:30 CL: Thanks for bringing that up. Two things is, I mean, we’re all guilty of it. Googling things or just talking to other people. “Oh, that worked for me.” Because we all are very individual in whatever is our imbalances, what’s the underlying cause of the imbalances and then also sperm parameters have changed drastically. And I think a lot of men do get their sperm quality checked but it could be quite low and considered borderline and they’re told they’re fine.

Lisa: I’ve seen it. I’ve seen the actual. I work with the client, they show me the sperm and they’re like, “Yeah, the doctor told me it’s totally fine.” And I’m like, “You know what this number means?” That means that it’s 4 percent morphology.

56:18 CL: And that’s considered normal.

Lisa: That means 4 out of every 100 sperm are normal.

56:23 CL: Yeah, that’s considered normal. I know. That’s unfortunate. Because I think that might be a reason for much of the unexplained infertility because the woman is thoroughly examined and then the man is greatly ignored and then they go on for sometimes years. It’s heartbreaking and unnecessary.

Lisa: And also, they look at the man later in the process. This is the challenge. After you’ve already been trying for six months to a year, finally we think “Okay, let me look into the guy.” When you discover low parameters, it’s not the end of the game. It is possible to improve sperm parameters especially if you’re working with like a practitioner who is coming from a natural perspective to kind of fully evaluate these men. So it’s possible. But sperm takes from inception to ejaculate at least 90 days to fully form. So then like you’ve already been trying for a year and now you need an extra 4 to 6 months for his sperm.

57:34 CL: So worth it.

Lisa: But I’m just kind of bringing up that we want to look at us as women. We kind of assume that we’re the problem and all that kind of stuff. And it’s not to blame anybody or anything like that. But I just want to kind of point out that there’s multiple factors and fertility challenges are complicated. It’s more than a simple “take a supplement” and things like that. Especially like yeah, you could think “oh, it’s my mucus,” but it could actually just be something like sperm. And it’s a good idea to consider looking at that initially, in the early stages. Don’t wait a year to test a sperm type of thing.

58:19 CL: Oh, right. Exactly. Honestly, I think testing sperm too, a lot of times they don’t test morphology. You need to have someone who’s actually going to sit down so you know when they say that your partner is okay, what does that really mean that 4 percent of the sperm is —

Lisa: You have to get the test.

58:41 CL: Yeah. The sperm or the vectors of DNA that are going to create your child and especially for natural conception, I think, it needs to be like a minimum of 15 million viable sperm. But the good news is, your partner and you can do much to improve the sperm and egg quality and the menstrual cycle. That’s why we’re here empowering women and couples, right? Yes. That’s what drives us because it’s such a stressful issue right now. I mean, that sounds like a broken record. Of course it’s stressful but there’s a lot that can be done. So if you’re listening today and hopefully you’re feeling inspired and curious. I’m actually feeling inspired to start tracking my temperature again. I’m always thinking, “God,” my adrenals are kind of worn out and then I’ll do a test that seems fine, but these tests, they’re not 100 percent. It’s kind of more we need to listen to our bodies. There’s this book that says — I forgot the name of it — like why do I still feel this way when my lab tests are normal, it’s referring to thyroid. You do a thyroid test, oh it seems fine. Oh God, I bet a half like 20 signs and symptoms when I go in and look at different checklists.

And we’re going to talk about that and now we’re kind of running past our time. But I just wanted to touch upon it. One thing was about tracking. Of course it cannot diagnose a thyroid problem specifically like what’s going on with the thyroid. It could be a first indicator that you’re having a sluggish thyroid issue or adrenal like your adrenals are under functioning.

60:34 Lisa: Well, yeah. When it comes to actually diagnosing things, yeah, that requires a trip to the doctor. But the menstrual cycle chart, like you mentioned, is a reflection of what’s happening in your health in a very little and kind of real-time type of way. So for instance, thyroid disorders are a good example because there are a number of markers that show up on the menstrual cycle chart in women who do have issues with their thyroid. So the thyroid is the body’s thermostat. It regulates your body temperature. So naturally then when you’re charting your cycles and every morning when you get out of bed, you’re measuring your basal body temperature which is a measure of your metabolic rate. When you have, say, for instance like a low-functioning thyroid, that means that your temperature is too low. That’s what it means. It means your metabolism is too low. So for myself, that was how my thyroid issue was picked up because my temperatures were too low and then when I actually did go and confirm and get lab testing done, it confirmed what I saw in my chart and that’s often what happens when I’m working with clients where the chart gives us this it’s like an early warning system, it’s like the fire alarm. Your menstrual cycle, whether you are ovulating super late like it’s delayed, whether you have very irregular or very few cycles in a year, whether your period has completely gone away, all of those are like the fire alarm going off in your house giving you an early warning sign.

So specifically to thyroid, thyroid is really complicated as well and if you suspect that you have a thyroid disorder, it’s not always good enough just to go to your run-off-the-mill doctor. It’s often better to find a practitioner who actually specializes in thyroid health. Because it is possible for you to have completely “normal” lab ranges. Because what one doctor considers normal is different to what another doctor considers, just so that we’re all clear on that. Like if you go to a naturopath, they’re going to look at your thyroid labs and have potentially a different idea of what’s normal versus not. A fertility medical doctor is going to have a different idea of what’s normal for thyroid versus a regular GP. So even that, even the fact that you know that different doctors look at the same labs and see different things, that’s a problem.

But ultimately, your labs could be normal but if you are actually cold and your temperatures are actually cold, you’re showing menstrual cycle disturbances. So with thyroid disorders you may have cycles that are problematic. So you could have delayed ovulation, you might have abnormal cervical mucus patterns, of course like low temperatures and things like that. But there’s different signs that you might see and so it’s helpful. I think it’s helpful for women to have this additional information. The menstrual cycle in many ways can be used as a diagnostic tool to alert you to issues that are happening and also help you to continue advocating for yourself. If you know that you have a bunch of symptoms, like you mentioned, you’re running cold, you have like a foggy thought thing in a way but your thyroid tests are normal, your chart is abnormal. I mean, that at least gives you this additional piece of information and it can help you, like in my case, I didn’t stop when my doctors told me, “You just have to go on the pill. It’s totally fine to have a 45-day cycle,” blah, blah, blah. I knew it wasn’t normal so I kept going. I kept going until I found a practitioner who was willing to help me and it’s hard as women. It’s hard because we have to advocate for ourselves. But at least if you have this information, then at least you’re not crazy. People have written books about it. Right? I interviewed Janie Bowthorpe who wrote Stop the Thyroid Madness. You’re not crazy.

64:32 CL: Right. I love that site.

Lisa: People have written books about the fact that doctors don’t manage thyroid issues always in the best way. So you just have to keep going until you find a practitioner who will support you.

64:43 CL: Right. Just to talk about that scenario. It seems like if you’re trying to get pregnant, you would have had a thyroid workup but a lot of doctors, they’ll just do the simple TSH test and then if you fall into those very large parameters and then they say that you’re normal and then you start charting your temperatures and going, “Wait. Why are they so low? And I am cold and I am having a lot of these signs and symptoms,” then you probably just need to go see someone else. I would say someone who practices functional medicine because I’ve worked with a lot of clients who’ve even gone to an endocrinologist and I know there’s some brilliant ones out there and there are some that are just dealing with the 15-minute time slot and they’re kind of not giving you the attention that you need and you’re getting dismissed.

Lisa: The thing is, the thyroid is really interesting and it’s really complicated. So it’s like the doctors typically, like you said, the TSH level which is it’s kind of like your pituitary when your thyroid hormone is low. It’s like a feedback loop, right? So when your hormone level is low, it’s like your pituitary is like “hey, it’s time to make some more in thyroid,” right? So if your TSH level is elevated, it means that your pituitary is banging on the door, like “make more thyroid!” Then they typically will also test for T4. So the two main thyroid hormones that are produced in your body are T4 and T3. I’ll try to keep it brief. But it’s interesting though. T4/thyroxine, it’s called T4 because there’s 4 iodine molecules attached to it. T3 like triiodothyronine, T3 because there’s 3 iodine molecules attached to it. What’s interesting is that your body makes the most T4, so the majority of the thyroid hormone that circulates around is T4. But T3 is way more active and it’s what actually needs to get into the cells in order for you to not feel tired. So in order for your body temperature to be normal and in order for you to just feel normal, it’s the T3 that has to get into your cells. So the challenge with thyroid is that even if you get diagnosed with a thyroid issue and you’re given thyroid medication, you’re typically given like synthetic T4 like Synthroid or levothyroxine. So then what happens is the majority of your T3 is actually converted from T4 by your peripheral tissue. So throughout your body, in order for you to have enough of a thyroid hormone in your cells, your body actually has to convert the T4 to T3. So the problem now is not everyone is always a good converter. There’s a lot of specific nutrients that are required for that conversion process that a lot of us are deficient in because a lot of us are just deficient in nutrients just in general. And so if you don’t have somebody who gets that, who’s evaluating you and who’s doing the right testing and who knows how to support thyroid function and to not just give you additional T4 but to support that conversion process to monitor your signs, to monitor your metabolism, like all those types of things, then it’s possible just for it to kind of be treated.

And what I love about charting is when you’re charting cycles, when you’re checking your temperatures, when you’re monitoring your mucus patterns and your menstrual cycle, like if your thyroid isn’t treated, it’s going to show up on the chart. The chart is not going to improve. And so it makes it complicated in the sense that a lot of physicians aren’t necessarily looking at those parameters, but again, it gives you more information so that you can really see if it’s working. If you have a thyroid issue and your cycles are kind of off, and that issue is then addressed or any other issues that you may be struggling with, then you would expect to see an improvement your cycle. So in many ways your cycle, it’s like this feedback tool that actually it’s like a report card. It tells you if you’re going in the right direction you’ll see improvements. So I just wanted to share a little bit about that. It’s complicated, right? But you need to find somebody who’s willing to support you and who’s knowledgeable, like you said, from a functional perspective to at least get that it’s not just about replacing the T4 or whatever. It’s about supporting your body to actually do it. It needs to do so so that you actually feel better.

69:13 CL: Hopefully you’re listening to other episodes of our podcast but this comes up at some point in a conversation with almost everybody because it’s that important. I don’t feel bad talking about it once again because it’s really, I don’t know, we can’t emphasize it enough. I still talk to people who go and then I’d explain that scenario and they go, “Well, my doctor has me on Synthroid.” And it’s just like, well I don’t know, people have to go through that medication.

Lisa: Everybody is different. So for one woman, that might be enough. Everyone is different. Some people do better with this and some people do better with that. So there’s not just one solution for everything.

70:03 CL: Like how you explained it, you have to understand how it works so that you could make that instead of spending 10 minutes with your doctor and then you don’t really know the problem. That’s why that website ‘Stop the Thyroid Madness’, I think it’s brilliant. I learn so much from it. And one other benefit of tracking your temperature is if you are working with an acupuncturist, most acupuncturists who prescribe herbs really rely on those charts to prescribe herb formulas. I mean those are needed.

Lisa: Because don’t they prescribe them based on where you’re at in the cycle. So they want to know if you’re in your follicular phase like before ovulation or they want to know, yeah.

70:42 CL: Yeah. If your temperatures are low, do you support the kidneys. There’s a bunch of things. So absolutely, so those are really necessary. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed our conversation, Lisa. Before I usually prep people. But I just kind of threw her into the fire because she has her own podcast and I know that and she knows her topic so well and you did wonderful. Thank you so much.

Lisa: Well thank you for having me. It was a lot of fun. You asked great questions.

71:10 CL: Oh good. Thank you.

Lisa: So it’s my pleasure.

71:10 CL: Have a great rest of your day.

Lisa: You too.

71:13 CL: Bye-bye.