Chinese Medicine and the Menstrual Cycle (Episode 326)

Full Transcript: Episode 326

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: This is the Fertility Friday Podcast, episode number 326. Welcome to the Fertility Friday Podcast, your source for information about the fertility awareness method and all things fertility. I’m your host, Lisa Hendrickson-Jack. I’m the author of The Fifth Vital Sign and the Fertility Awareness Mastery Charting Journal. I’m a certified fertility awareness educator and holistic reproductive health practitioner with nearly 20 years of experience teaching women to connect to their fifth vital sign through menstrual cycle charting, balancing hormonal health, and optimizing the menstrual cycle without hormones. I’m outspoken about hormonal birth control and its impact on fertility and overall health because you have the right to know how your body works and how artificial hormones disrupt that natural process. I host live coaching programs to help you achieve optimal fertility and health because it’s important to have healthy menstrual cycles regardless of whether or not you want to have babies. I’m also a wife and mother of two beautiful boys. I know, I know, I’m a busy girl, but I managed to fit it all in. This podcast is designed to empower you to take full control of your cycles, your fertility, and your overall health, and I’m so excited that you’re here with us today.

Today’s episode is all about Chinese medicine and how Chinese medicine looks at the menstrual cycle. And for those of you who’ve tuned into some of my many previous episodes where I’m interviewing Chinese medicine practitioners, the way Chinese medicine looks at the menstrual cycle is central, central to understanding health. It’s a huge part of how women are cared for within that modality, so it’s always a treat to talk to Chinese medicine practitioners and to really tune in to how they’re looking at the menstrual cycle as a sign of health that they’re paying attention to. So Chinese medicine was doing this already, and hopefully one day we’ll see that carried over to all areas of medicine. So without further ado, let’s jump into today’s episode with Michelle Oravitz.

And I’m really excited to be here today with Michelle Oravitz. Michelle is an acupuncturist, Ayurvedic practitioner, and certified hypnotherapist specializing in fertility health. She was inspired to change her career from architecture to acupuncture — we’re going to have to get into more on that — after having her own reproductive imbalances resolved by her acupuncturist. Her method of treatment encompasses not only herbs and acupuncture, but also incorporates diet, supplements, essential oils, and, most importantly, the mind and how it influences conception. She helps women and couples both online and in person and is the host of The Wholesome Fertility Podcast, which is how we met. So without further ado, welcome to the show, Michelle.

Michelle Oravitz: Thank you so much, Lisa. Thanks for having me.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Well, thanks for coming on the show. And today we were going to focus on the application of Chinese medicine and how it can have a positive impact on the menstrual cycle, and also some of just the general tenets of maintaining homeostasis and balance. I’m really excited to dive into all of that, but before we do, I do want to get more into — you were an architect. You’re going to have to just tell us the story of how you switched careers, because that’s a pretty big switch.

Michelle Oravitz: Yeah, it’s a huge switch. I was an architect. I was working in New York City, a really, really high intense job, and a lot of imbalances. And we had spoken before — we have very similar stories in the sense that we were put on the birth control pill by our doctors, every single doctor I went to, because when I started menstruating at age 13, I would miss like three months of my period, and I just — my period was all over the place, and I would just miss it. And I’m like, this isn’t normal. So when I was 17, my mom took me to the gyn, and he put me on the birth control pill, and I wasn’t even sexually active. I was asking him because I thought that’s what it was for, and I thought I was going to go in and come out with a solution and a cure — my naive 17-year-old self. And that was the first time I actually had that experience where it was like, well, here’s the pill, and it’s going to get you back to normal, you’re going to get your period every 30 days now. And I said, yeah, but what if I come off of it? And you know this whole story because we’ve spoken in the past, and he said, well, then it’s going to go back to what it is. That makes sense, but okay. And on and off the pill, on the pill, off the pill. And of course, I felt off when I was taking the pill, and I would retain water, and I had all kinds of different symptoms. I know you know this all too well. And so, years, it was like that. And then there was a point where I just would get off of it because I wasn’t feeling right, and I just wanted to get back into my own balance. Innately, I felt it, and this was in my early 20s. And then finally I backpacked in Europe, and did this whole huge three-month traveling, and the whole time I was away I didn’t get my period. And I came home, and I was 24, 24 just turning 25, and I told my mom, I’m like, this isn’t normal, I’ve got to do something about this. I don’t know what to do though, like I can’t go to the doctor because I know what’s going to happen, it’s just not a solution. So she had happened to hear about an acupuncturist named Dr. Lee. I went to him the first day, and I came home with a bag of herbs, because he did it old school, like the ones that you boil, which most people don’t want, they want pills, you know. But I came home, I boiled the herbs, I got my period that day, and just so happened that ever since then I became regular, I was getting my period every month. And I remember him saying to me, the period is so important for women, and I knew that, but it was like I didn’t really, really know that. It wasn’t like I was trying to get pregnant, you know, I was young, single at the time. Shortly after, I actually happened to meet my husband, and then years later, like retroactively, thanked him for giving me my fertility, really, because I wouldn’t have had it the way it is now had it not been for Dr. Lee. But it turned out that he actually specialized in gynecology — I didn’t know that, I happened to go to him for that, but I didn’t know that. So then I was so moved by it — of course, I was working a high stress job, I wasn’t living a very balanced life, working in New York City, going out to drinks, you know, just being in my 20s, and also working really hard and demanding a lot for my body and not giving it and nourishing it with what it needed in order to function.

So that was the beginning of my body awareness. I started to realize that not only was my period becoming normal and regular, but I also started to feel different emotionally, and what it is, it’s like this piece of a puzzle, it’s like a keystone — you find it, and everything else starts to fall into place. My skin started clearing up, I began having much better mental clarity at work, and I also found that annoying people at work didn’t annoy me as much. It was like — wow, that’s impressive.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Definitely, you know, as you know, in a corporation you can have all kinds of personalities and egos.

Michelle Oravitz: And I was like, it rolled off my back, I had a much more positive outlook. So I decided then I wasn’t really happy doing the kind of work that I did, and I wanted to work with people, and I wanted to pay it forward. I was just so excited at the fact that something so simple as acupuncture — just putting a few needles in certain locations and taking herbs — can change a person’s life so much. And then I remember loving the fact that Dr. Lee was explaining to me, we don’t treat the symptom, we treat the root cause, and we take the root cause and change everything in the body, and then once you get to the root, everything gets ironed out. And I was like, this is the most amazing thing ever, it’s genius. So I moved — after my husband, he’s a doctor, actually a Western doctor, he finished his residency, we moved to Florida. I enrolled in Ayurvedic school to become an Ayurvedic practitioner, and then shortly after that, towards the end, got pregnant, and then put everything on hold. And then once my kids were old enough, went back to school for acupuncture. It’s been my dream. Yeah, so that’s my story.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Well, what a journey. Thank you for taking us through that. One of the things that I just want to zone in on is your intuition. I think that all of us have it, and I think that little voice inside your head, when you were in the doctor’s office and even just how you made a point of asking, like, what happens when I come off of it — means that you were already kind of thinking about this, because you had experienced this issue for years before you actually went to the doctor. And it made me think of my experience as well — I mean, it was different for me. I went to the doctor to get the pill because I had heavy, painful periods, and I played a lot of sports, and I had no other knowledge of what to do, so it was like a transaction — like, give me the pill, basically. I didn’t actually get a chance to say that I have heavy painful periods, and then he was already writing the prescription, so I didn’t have to ask for it. It was easy. But what you talked about, with what happens when I come off of it, and the doctor said, well, you’ll have the same exact issue and we’ll have to deal with it then — that was my experience too, of, I had these painful heavy periods, and I’d go on the pill, and in my case they were lighter and less painful, and then I would come off the pill and then they would be just as bad or worse. And this continued, and so I think a lot of women have that internal sense, or even just the question of, is this right for me, or this isn’t what I expected.

Michelle Oravitz: Exactly.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Like, for example, early on in my cycling journey, my cycles were typically 38 to 45 days on a regular basis, and I requested a referral to a specialist who told me the pill was the only thing that would ever — so it’s the same kind of thing, where you expect a solution, or you expect someone to say, well, this is a health related issue and these are the things that you can do to improve it. They’re just giving you a pill that’s going to force a bleed every 28 days to make everybody in the room feel better. So I’ve had a few Chinese medicine practitioners on the show over the years who’ve really taken us through just the philosophy, and it’s really different — maybe share with us a little bit about the way — how does Chinese medicine look at the menstrual cycle and health and wellness? Tell us a little bit about the yin and the yang, but just basically share with us a little bit about how that philosophy differs from Western medicine and philosophy.

Michelle Oravitz: Yeah, for sure. Actually, one funny thing that came to mind was when I went to Dr. Lee, he used to tell me, like, Chinese kidneys, and I’m like, kidneys can be Chinese? Because Chinese kidneys are different, they’re not the same as Western kidneys — Chinese kidneys are actually a reproductive, you know, they hold reproductive health, and it’s not just about urination. So it’s kind of an interesting thing. So basically, Chinese medicine is founded on the philosophy of the Dao, of Taoism, and Taoism literally translates as “the way,” and what that means really comes down to this very basic but yet so intricate symbol of the yin and the yang. It’s very simple, but yet you could see it and create philosophies on it and talk about it and see it in every single part of life. So the yin and the yang is like night and day — two complete opposites that meld into each other. So night doesn’t just become day, it gradually — you know, there’s the sunrise, the sunset — and the same thing happens with the body. The body has these cycles, and that basically is at the core of what runs all of nature, and it translates actually very easily into what Western medicine calls homeostasis. And homeostasis is just the body always wants to find balance. When you’re too hot, your pores open up and release heat, and so it’s kind of like steam, you can literally feel steam sometimes from your body if you put your hand next to somebody who’s sweating after a workout. And so the water also helps it — so the water is yin, the heat is yang, and it creates almost like a steam-like thing. And so the body will always revert and give you signals of what you need to do in order to create balance. Now, over time, unfortunately, we as humans — we were talking in the pre-talk about babies, and with babies there’s no denying when they’re hungry, there’s no denying when they’re tired, they’ll let you know, and that’s the instinct that we’re all born with. Over time, what we do is we start to deny our own instincts, we deny our own messages, we deny our own intuition. You had just mentioned we all have that intuition, that’s something in us that tells us this isn’t right, or this is right, or there’s got to be some kind of solution to this. That intuition is there, it’s the same kind of instinct, it’s connected to the same thing, that inner knowing, and that of how we’re built and designed as humans. And so basically, over time, we start to ignore it — we stay up past the time that we should go to sleep, we confuse our mind and our melatonin by looking at artificial light, and it’s on the large scale, it’s on the small scale — we eat more than when we’re full, and we don’t eat when we’re hungry. And so over time, that confuses that homeostasis, that natural, innate homeostasis. So what we do as Chinese medicine practitioners is we use two major modalities, they call it “the two legs.” One of them is using the acupuncture meridians, which is basically — if you open any kind of machine, you see a bunch of circuits running, they’re basically transporting energy, and each meridian has its own purpose and function, and it goes through different organs and ties organs together. So there’s a yin and a yang organ that are paired up — so, for example, the liver and the gallbladder, they’re together, they’re like a pair. The liver is a yin organ, it’s solid, yin is very solid and a little bit more inert. Yang is usually hollow, so the gallbladder is a sac, it has passage through — yang is more active, yin is more condensed and dense and holds nutrients. So each one has a pair, and a lot of times the channels are also interrelated and connect, and so it’s very intricate, it’s really interesting. So what happens is we look at the channels and see if there’s any blockages, because it’s basically like highways in our bodies, and if we need the ambulance to come from one side of town and carry medicine to another, and if there’s a blockage, that person’s going to get sick and not get what they need. And the same thing happens with our bodies and our organs. So what we want to do is create this free flow, but not only is the free flow important, which removes blockages, but it’s also important to tonify deficiency, because we need energy in order to get from one part to the next. And that’s where the yin and yang — these are two opposites, deficiency is the opposite of excess, and sometimes they can both affect each other. So we basically, as Chinese medicine practitioners, use acupuncture to get that flow, and then most of the time we use food, diet, and also herbs for deficiency and to tonify, and it’s almost the chemistry aspect are the herbs. So if somebody has too much heat, we cool them down, and vice versa. It’s also, if somebody’s too deficient, you want to really tonify their body. A lot of times with women it’s all about blood, I’m sure you’ve heard of that before, so a lot of women tend to be blood deficient. It’s interesting, you know, we do get our menstrual cycle, sometimes we have fibroids, we lose too much blood, and it could be so many different things, and it can also be blood stasis — the blood’s not moving enough — so we use herbs for that as well, plus acupuncture. So basically, just to wrap this into an easy way to understand it, we create homeostasis in the body by creating balance and looking at what kind of patterns people have, and the body is actually where the healing occurs. The body does the healing, it’s not us, we just make it easy for the body to get back to homeostasis, which is our birthright.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Yeah, it’s a lot different philosophy. It’s not about covering up a problem to make it look or feel easier — not that there’s anything wrong with taking a painkiller for pain or addressing some of those immediate things right away — but Western medicine typically approaches things a bit differently, because it’s not trying to solve the root, it’s trying to fix the immediate symptom instead of actually fixing the root.

Michelle Oravitz: That’s right.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: So when it comes to the menstrual cycle, and when you were talking about homeostasis — this is something in the work that I do with clients, I find that a lot of the work that I do is essentially — I don’t necessarily use the word homeostasis, but essentially it’s trying to help women start listening to their bodies again. And the tool that I use, of course, is the menstrual cycle, because you can say whatever you want, and you can think whatever you want, but it’s the menstrual cycle that is the physical sign, the reflection of what’s happening in your body. And so you can say whatever you want, you know — my diet is great, I’m eating enough food, I’m getting enough sleep, I’m not exercising too much —

Michelle Oravitz: It doesn’t lie.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Yeah, exactly, you can say whatever you want, but then when we look at that cycle, that’s what’s telling us. So what I found is that having that tool allows women — I know that Laura Bridgen, for example, refers to it as the monthly report card — but in my practice it really just forms the foundation, and it is the thing that connects women, often who’ve been very disconnected from their own bodies, back to their bodies, because again, it’s like you can say everything you want, it doesn’t matter, we have to start connecting to what our actual body is doing. So could you share with us how, then, Chinese medicine looks at the menstrual cycle? Because what I find to be fascinating whenever I interview a Chinese medicine practitioner is that the period is central — it’s everything.

Michelle Oravitz: Yeah, like it’s not this thing that we don’t talk about, that we just try to suppress — it’s like 100%, middle of everything. So everything, it’s everything, because before I specialize in fertility, before anybody specializes, you see everyone, and whenever you see women who are of menstruating age, you always focus on menstruation, it doesn’t matter what’s going on and what they’re coming in for. If they’re not coming in for their periods, it doesn’t matter, it tells you so much, because then you could tell if somebody’s blood deficient just from the menstruation alone, without even asking anything else, you can tell so much. You could tell if their blood is stagnant. They’re basically getting to see what’s happening inside their body, like it’s this diagnosis — and you don’t want to use that term lightly, because we’re not diagnosing, you can’t just, without a background, diagnose — but you can basically see what’s happening inside the body. It’s almost like when you look at the tongue, you can see what’s happening in the organs, because each area shows you different things. That is just such a great way to see — based on cramps, how long it takes you to get your period, if you’re spotting for a while, if you get dark blood — that means that the blood, basically what happens to any kind of blood, if it’s out too long, it dries up and it gets dark. So if you start to see it coming out of you dark, that means that there’s some kind of stasis happening and it’s not coming out quick enough. So it tells you everything, it’s really at the center of everything when it comes to women’s health.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Well, and so you mentioned that it’s used in a way as a diagnostic tool, and it is helpful to make the distinction that no, it’s not that you look at what’s happening with the period and make a firm diagnosis, but similarly, in my work, when you look at an issue happening in the cycle, it can give you — it’s like a map, so it really points you in the right direction, and it gives you all of this information so you basically know exactly where to start looking, which is really helpful. But then, so what are some of the things then for a woman who’s listening who’s like, well, this sounds interesting, I’ve been looking to improve my cycle and I haven’t been impressed or satisfied with what I’ve done so far — so what are some of the things that you look for? Are we talking about periods, the quality of periods, the color, the volume — are we talking everything?

Michelle Oravitz: Everything, everything. We’ll take through some of those things that you see. Well, the most common thing I see is something called liver qi stagnation. Basically it’s stress — your liver wants free flow in your body, it’s like the center chart that’s in charge of the free flow of energy. So over time, what happens when you get stressed, you constrict, so you’re actually giving the liver a hard time to do its job, because you’re constricting and you’re tensing your body, and your liver isn’t able to create that free flow. So what happens is it’s called liver qi stagnation — qi is like energy — so the liver’s energy gets stagnated, and over time that will cause PMS. It can cause headaches around your period, and you’ll get tender breasts, and you’ll get really irritable, because the liver’s energy emotion is anger. And a lot of people have that, so that’s where you know the whole thing with how women just get PMS and that’s just the way it is — not true, that’s not supposed to be that way. So I’ve had women who have come to my office with major, major PMS, she’s like, I want to kill myself, I can’t stand myself. And so I treat them, and after a couple months — and of course with women too it gets a little bit more, it takes time, it’s not something that happens overnight, we need a couple of cycles to actually normalize and see it — I mean, you don’t have a magic wand in your office, and like, every so often I’ll find it, but it appears on me a lot — two acupuncture needles and your PMS is gone tomorrow.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Exactly, that’s not what we said.

Michelle Oravitz: No, no, no, but I wish, I wish I could. So after about three months, this one particular patient thought she was pregnant because she didn’t feel any symptoms when she’s normally supposed to feel symptoms, and then all of a sudden just got her period, and she was like, oh my god, I wasn’t expecting to get my period because I wasn’t a witch that month. I mean, those are her words, not mine, but it was like — wow, you know — but that’s what it is, I used to have PMS, and so over time that gets resolved once we resolve the pattern of the liver. Another thing is cramps — cramps aren’t normal, really heavy bleeding isn’t normal, too light is not normal. So we basically look at all the different symptoms that women have and see what the pattern is and resolve them with acupuncture and herbs.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Well, so for the woman who’s listening who, when you were describing the liver qi stagnation, was like, that’s me — when you said angry, like, apparently my liver is mad — so she totally relates, she has the PMS symptoms and it’s consistent. Are there any things that you could suggest, or that you would say — I know it’s a little bit more complicated if it’s more severe, if it doesn’t go away, it’s always important to consider going to a practitioner so that you can get the support that you need — but for a woman who’s listening who has these experiences and is kind of curious, well, is there anything that I can do to support my liver, or to not be — what did you say, a witch?

Michelle Oravitz: Those were my words.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: I just want to say that she actually — I know, I know, yeah. And also, it’s very timely — I mean, I’m feeling pretty good energy-wise, but as far as my cycle is concerned, I’m about four days out from my period, so I’m right in the middle of that phase, so I’m curious if there are any suggestions that you have for the listeners who relate.

Michelle Oravitz: Yes, there are a couple of things. One of them is you can actually put a castor oil pack around your liver, on your liver, before you get your period.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: And where’s our liver, for anyone who —

Michelle Oravitz: Okay, so the liver — feel when you feel your ribs, it’s on the right side, right underneath, kind of comes out of the ribs, on the bottom a little bit. You basically can put it right underneath the ribs on the right side, and you could basically go online and find a lot of directions on how to do it — but basically, for castor oil packs, it’s basically you put castor oil, and then you put a heat pad over it, and it helps detoxify the liver, that’s one way. But another thing that I love doing, and this is Ayurvedic as well, is you can take hot water and lemon every day, and the taste for the liver in Chinese medicine is sour, so it’s really good for the liver. Another thing is de-stress — I mean, think about what caused it to be like that in the first place, and work on minimizing that. So creating breathing exercises, because when you’re calm you breathe slow and deep, so you trick the mind — when it’s stressed, by breathing slow and deep, it’ll think that it’s calm eventually, and then you’ll settle the mind.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Yeah, totally, it’s like a mind hack.

Michelle Oravitz: It’s a little hack, and you could do that every single day in the morning before going to work, maybe even five minutes of just quiet time, getting into yourself, having a little mindfulness meditation, just really becoming mindful — when am I stressed, what am I holding. And one of the big signs that you’re having liver qi stagnation is upper back pain, when your shoulders get really tight, and when someone massages you, you’re like, oh my god, that feels so good — that kind of feeling, that’s liver qi stagnation, when you feel stressed and you kind of immediately feel it in that area.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Oh, I see it all the time. Well, that’s really helpful, a lot of practical ways to get started with just supporting the liver and also relaxing. And it’s ironic that we need to hear someone tell us to take time for ourselves and to relax and to do these practices, but at the end of the day, that’s where we’re at, usually we do need to have somebody actually tell us that, or a practitioner give you that homework — like, your homework is to actually sit down for five minutes and practice, do something, be calm, listen to something, listen to a meditation or something like that. So you also mentioned heavy bleeding and cramping, which I’d love to just touch on for a moment. So I’ll just kind of tell a little story to meander into my question — so I posted a few times recently on various social media, particularly Instagram, about the pill, and I posted something really inflammatory a while ago, it was like, you know, the pill doesn’t cure or fix anything. And I got a lot of, like, what are you talking about, you’re crazy, the pill is the only thing that ever helped my periods. And that’s a valid experience — a lot of women have had the experience where their periods are horrible, extremely heavy, flooding to the point that maybe they’re concerned that they’re losing so much blood that they may not survive if they continue to have periods that heavy — so obviously a bit more on the extreme end — or women who have such severe pain that they can’t function, and that is on the extreme end, but it’s not uncommon for a certain percentage of women to have periods that are just that bad. So for a woman who’s listening who actually is in a situation like that, where she is on hormonal birth control right now because that was always her experience, can you share with us — let’s break it apart, let’s first talk about how heavy bleeding and cramping, if they go together, that’s totally fine — but what are some of the things — like, we have to recognize that if the bleeding is so heavy, you definitely should have a consultation with a doctor if you haven’t, a full workup, so this is not — these are, it’s a complementary approach that we’re talking about.

Michelle Oravitz: Yes, if you’re on that severe of an end, absolutely you need to be checked, because it’s usually not random, it’s usually — it could be fibroids, or there’s got to be other things going on. Your period’s a sign of health, so when you have an issue, that is the sign to look deeper into it. But with that said, for women who do have concerns about heavier bleeding, women who’ve always bled heavy and maybe didn’t even know it was a problem, because that’s something as well — the top end of normal for period volume is 80 milliliters, which amounts to like five menstrual cups, five regular sized menstrual cups over the course of your whole cycle, not over the course of one day.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Oh, god, but there are women who are listening right now who regularly feel like three to four menstrual cups on the first day of bleeding, and that’s just how it’s always been. So for women who do have concerns about heavier bleeding, tell us a little bit — what is it, why, what are some of the things that you would recommend?

Michelle Oravitz: Well, again, so we don’t treat the symptom, we treat the cause. So heavy bleeding can be a result of blood stasis — which is kind of confusing, because you would think it would be like something else, but blood stasis means it’s not moving. But blood stasis is one of the big culprits of why people have fibroids, because when blood doesn’t move for long enough, it’ll start to harden and create tumors, and then those tumors can cause more bleeding. So it could be blood stasis, that’s one of them — it’s a very common one, in Western diagnosis that’s usually typically what causes really excessive bleeding. And then another reason it can be excessive heat in the body — so if you think about a volcano, it shoots out stuff, but it’s like blood, you know — if you boil water, the liquid becomes finer and more liquid, and it comes out more easily. And so that can happen in the body, because the body is like this walking ecosystem that we have, and we all have our different climates, and that’s how I start to look at the person — what kind of climate you have. If you have excess dampness, you can have nodules and that kind of thing — a lot of times PCOS is a result of excess dampness, and that can come in many different ways, a different topic, I know. But it could also be hormonal — liver really does affect the hormones and the cycle. So it could be all these different patterns with the same exact symptom, you see what I’m saying, so it’s kind of an interesting thing. And then it can also be that the body’s not able to control the blood or hold the blood, so it’s not heat, it’s not blood stasis, it’s not even necessarily to do with the blood itself, although it is kind of in one way with the spleen — the spleen produces blood, but it also holds the blood, the energy of the spleen. And so if it doesn’t hold well enough, people get things like hemorrhoids, or things start to prolapse — your body’s energy is not able to hold things up, so when you get your period, you bleed excessively, you’re not able to hold that energy. So it’s kind of an interesting thing, I just gave you a bunch of different reasons for why the same thing can happen.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: I think that’s really important, because I often feel like that, because I get all these questions about the very specific issues — like, you get a two-sentence, you know, I’m having this problem with my cycle, I’m spotting on this day, like — well, let’s list the seven things that come to mind right now that could be responsible for that one symptom.

Michelle Oravitz: Exactly, exactly, which is why I really want to stress this — diets, these fad diets don’t work for everybody. They could be like the golden key for one person — they’re like, oh my god, this is the best thing that’s ever happened to me, I feel amazing, they’ll tell their best friend about it, the best friend does it, and they feel like they can’t even move — or you’ll feel amazing for a period of time.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Correct.

Michelle Oravitz: I find that a lot with veganism, and I don’t mean to knock it or anything, because some people do really well with that, but some people feel really well in the beginning and then they get deficient, and it could be just not knowing what to eat — you have to really know what you’re doing to do that, because you can get very depleted.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Yeah, it’s interesting because the arguments around it are very much that, you know, if you know what you’re doing and you’re supplementing — but the average person that I work with needs support in terms of identifying what nutrients are required, and most individuals in general didn’t go to nutrition school.

Michelle Oravitz: Correct, you literally have to know what you’re doing. I’ve seen so many people who have gotten really sick from it, and then I get them on a bone broth soup, and sometimes liver pills, grass-fed liver pills, because the organ meats are actually much more beneficial for us than muscle meat, which is what most of us eat, and they do so much better.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Well, yeah, it’s something similar to what we were talking about earlier, which is — you can say whatever you want, you can think whatever you want, but when you’re looking at your actual body and how it’s responding — if you have a concern about your menstrual cycle, or your periods, or cramping, or whatever it is, if you’re doing everything that you can, if you seek support and it’s still not improving the way that you’d like to see, or your energy level, or whatever it is, at some point it is important to just ask the question — could this be related to what I’m eating, or what I’m not eating? And that’s the challenge, because anybody who says, okay, there’s this one diet and everybody needs to follow it — it just doesn’t work, because there’s so much individuality. For people, just like you said, some people do really well for a long time, some people do really well for a short time, and some people don’t do really well.

Michelle Oravitz: That’s why it’s confusing, yeah, and you can think, this makes so much sense, this has to be the right way, because it worked for this person, and because theoretically it can make sense and still not be right for your body and your cycle.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: That’s right, that’s why I always say chart your cycle, let your cycle give you the answer, you don’t have to think about it, just monitor what’s going on.

Michelle Oravitz: That’s right. It’s funny, because I got a call from somebody, a prospect who wanted to look into doing acupuncture for fertility, and she said, I’ve been using the app, and we try to get pregnant on the day that I’m ovulating. And I’m like, you really don’t — those apps are computer-generated with their own assumption, that you don’t have a longer follicular phase than luteal, it could just kind of shift things and you have no idea. But most people will think that that’s the way to go.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Well, I mean, yeah, there’s a lot we can say about apps, and it comes back to again paying attention to your body. So what I’m always trying to encourage the listeners and my clients to do is to throw away what I call rhythm method thinking — and instead of really thinking, okay, the menstrual cycle is 28 days, ovulation usually happens around day 14, like that may be an average — so when you look at the research on menstrual cycles, the average cycle length falls around 29 days. So when you look at all the different studies, but that average means that some women have 21 day cycles, some women have 25, some women have 36 — a healthy range is somewhere between 24 to 35, like a functional range is a little bit tighter than that — but with that said, it doesn’t matter what you think when you’re trying to get pregnant, it doesn’t matter when you think you should ovulate, or if you think, oh, this is too early to be seeing cervical mucus, or if you think, oh, I must have ovulated — like, everything you think doesn’t actually matter. What matters is, did you see cervical mucus coming out of your vagina today, and what was your temperature.

Michelle Oravitz: Well, exactly, like, what did you observe today, that’s the only thing that matters.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: It does, it does, 100%. And so it’s interesting, because the general population doesn’t understand, because you get these apps, and they’re like, okay, we’ll estimate what it is, but how could they understand — I mean, we’re not taught about the menstrual cycle. And the reason that we’re having this conversation — I mean, if I hadn’t done a training in fertility awareness education, or hadn’t stumbled upon fertility awareness many, many years ago — I guess we’ll never know.

Michelle Oravitz: No, I know, we’re here.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: But yeah, anyone who hasn’t really come across fertility awareness, the concept of body literacy, the concept of cervical fluid and how it relates to ovulation and basal body temperature, etc. — anyone who hasn’t come across those concepts, yeah, an app that tells you when you’re going to ovulate makes sense, because it fits with our basic understanding — our basic understanding is that we’re supposed to have ovulation like clockwork, we’re supposed to have our periods like clockwork, and it’s supposed to be on a 28-day schedule, so apps fit perfectly into that. So the one thing about apps — obviously I have a lot to say about apps — but for many women, apps are the first kind of entrance, like the gateway drug, if you will, to fertility awareness. So for many women, they’ll rely on the app, and then they’re having sex on the day that the app tells them to, and then they’re not getting pregnant, and that prompts them to look deeper into this thing, and that’s what really gets them into listening to this podcast, or walking into your office, or whatever the case is. So yeah, we’re kind of app-trashing, but we’re also kind of acknowledging the importance of apps as a way to get more women in tune with their bodies.

Michelle Oravitz: Yes, absolutely, you should have a little disclaimer saying, you really want to know more about your body, you should chart and check your mucus, let the app —

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Yeah, so I mean, my perspective on apps is that in the best case scenario, you actually take the time to learn, so whether that’s you read books, you listen to the podcast, but whatever you do, you inform yourself about the menstrual cycle, the three main fertility signs, how it works, and use the app as a tool. In my perfect world, the app would be just a place to record data, and it would have no predictive information.

Michelle Oravitz: Exactly, yeah, because I find that it just confuses people, because if the app says you’re fertile and you didn’t see any of it, then that causes a dissonance — but if you’re not yet confident and comfortable in your ability to chart and your understanding, then sometimes women will kind of freak out about stuff like that.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Yeah, it’s interesting, because I think one day my daughter’s going to appreciate me — right now she thinks I’m gross — and one day she’s going to realize, wait, I actually know more than the people around me.

Michelle Oravitz: Oh, yeah, I think you’re planting the seeds.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: It’s the same way that I experienced — for me, I knew about fertility awareness and was teaching women from my early 20s, and I had a lot of friends in my life, and everyone was at varying stages, everyone kind of comes to things when they’re ready, so I wouldn’t force my opinions on people, but I’m here, and this is what I do, and this is what I’m doing. And then, over the years, many women come to me — friends, family members, and things like that — and it’s, you know, I had this issue, and how’s that chart going, and really, you didn’t get pregnant? Like, if you’re not on the pill and you really didn’t get pregnant all those years — like, really, you weren’t — what, so tell me how that works.

Michelle Oravitz: Right, so people come to you when they’re ready, it’s good to plant those seeds and just be there.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: I do want to, before we wrap up today, I wanted to also touch on cramping. I’ve had a number of clients who have experienced just such a shift in their periods after seeking acupuncture, seeking Chinese medicine support, and I’m curious to hear you share with us about the role of acupuncture in addressing pain, because what’s interesting is that there’s so much research on the role of acupuncture and how effective it is in removing pain. So two questions about that — but also, many women who I’ve spoken to, when they’re actively attending acupuncture, the pain subsides, and it’s great, but once they stop, it doesn’t always — so tell me what your experience has been there. Like, sometimes it comes back if they’re not so actively attending, meaning like once a week, and then they stop, kind of over time — is that what — well, maybe they’re attending weekly, maybe monthly, maybe they attend during their luteal phase, during the week before their period comes, and then they go like six months without it, and then gradually, pain comes back — yeah, so basically —

Michelle Oravitz: We’ll start with the first part of cramping in general — it could be a lot of patterns like we mentioned, it could be having too much cold, it could also be more blood stasis, which can obviously impact the flow, and then the body needs to cramp more because the blood isn’t as easy to move. So it could be a bunch of different scenarios on that as well. But acupuncture — so our body actually has endorphins, it has painkillers naturally, we have our own pharmacy to be able to release whatever we need in order to help with pain. It actually happens with childbirth as well — I know that when I didn’t have any epidural, like nothing, I was high, I felt high, my eyes were rolling behind my head, I looked like I was on drugs, and the doctor pointed out to my mom, you see how her eyes are like — and I remember feeling it. But yeah, your body actually produces those, so acupuncture, doing the needles even locally, will have that response and pretty much amp it, and give your body signals to increase that flow. Not only that, it also increases the flow of energy, and whenever there’s any contraction — even when I was preparing for childbirth, they said you need to do what you don’t want to do, which is let go of your muscles and relax your muscles. You don’t want to relax your muscles when you’re in pain, your first initial tendency is to contract, and the contraction is what causes pain. So what you need to do is, when you do have acupuncture needles, that helps the energy flow easier, therefore you’re going to feel less pain and you’re going to relax your muscles. So when people stop doing it, they must have needed more of it, because ultimately if the issue is resolved completely, they could go for six months and not feel it again, but it must have not fully gotten resolved. And for us, what we like to test is, if I treated somebody for pain, for example, like shoulder pain or whatever it is, and if they’re starting to get the symptoms, they say, how often should I come, and I say, well, we’re going to start off with two times a week until the pain subsides and you start to feel more relief, and then once a week, and we’ll watch it — but if they start to feel really good for three days, we decide to do it once a week, and they feel really good for about three or four days and then it comes back before the next time they see me, then we’re waiting too long. And so what happens is you want to kind of knock it down — you know those games when things pop up and you’re hammering them down —

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Whack-a-mole.

Michelle Oravitz: Yeah, whack-a-mole, it’s like whack-a-mole, you want to whack them before they come up, and if you whack them long enough and keep them down, over time the body will realize, okay, this is my new normal, and it’ll go with that. And what you ultimately want is to encourage the body to keep it at that status, and it will, if it gets the right reserves to do it and keep it at that place. And then, if the energy’s flowing — so the reason why they’re getting the pain after six months of not going is that the body’s kind of going back to this imbalance, or they’re doing something in their body or their lifestyle to create the imbalance that started in the first place, and they’re not changing that root habit, root cause and root habit — you also want to change the root habit that caused the cause in the first place.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: So for a woman then who experiences, let’s say, moderate to severe — so hers are pretty significant, she can’t really go without some sort of painkiller, and that’s basically her normal, she might have sometimes a little lighter or a little heavier pain, but she basically needs at least the first day or the second day to use painkillers — so if she’s attending acupuncture, what can she expect? Should she expect that it’s going to take a couple of cycles, should she expect that she’ll see a little bit of improvement and then it’ll gradually increase — like, what have you seen in your practice?

Michelle Oravitz: I always say look at the stock market — if you look at it every single day, you’re going to go crazy, and you’re going to be like, oh my god, this isn’t working, and then you get really excited one day because you feel amazing, and then the next day — so it’s about sometimes three steps forward, one step back. So you feel really amazing one cycle, you’re like, oh my god, this is the best thing ever, and then you’re like, why am I not feeling as good this cycle as I did last time — and I said, well, even though you’re not feeling as good, are you better than when you first started? Yes. And so you go back and forth, and you ebb and flow, it’s like the body sometimes, and especially if it’s an old pattern, it will always kind of bring it back, it doesn’t want to change, it’ll resist a little bit, and you just keep encouraging it, and over time the balance will happen. So it’s like anything, it’s not going to work like Advil, where it’s really fast — it’s slower, but Advil is fast and temporary, I have to add the temporary, because Advil works fast if you get it in the window.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Correct, if you don’t take the ibuprofen in the window, then it just may not even do anything for hours, but if you get it in the window — but it’s like I would have to have a timer on, because it would be like six hours or four hours, depending on the day and the strength, and that would be it, and the pain would come back rampant, and then I’d have to take another one.

Michelle Oravitz: And so I think what’s interesting about these modalities, and also addressing pain in a different way, addressing the inflammation, addressing the underlying factors, is that it might not be the same as Advil, snap your fingers — however, if you take the whole level of pain down several notches for the whole cycle, it’s a different experience, and it can be a lot more powerful.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: So as we wrap up our call for today, we’ve really gone through a lot, and I feel like the listeners have had just a good sense of the difference in philosophy when we’re looking at Chinese medicine. So given everything that we’ve talked about today, what is one thing that you’d want to leave the listener with?

Michelle Oravitz: So one thing that I’d love to leave the listener with, and it actually goes along the lines of what you do — I actually consider it body awareness, it’s almost like mindfulness.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Yes, it’s mindfulness, really, I mean, I love that word, it’s just a nice word, and I think it really connects with a lot of people, and it’s something that people are into these days.

Michelle Oravitz: So I will say become mindful of what your body is telling you, and that is a practice, it’s like an everyday practice — you can become a mindful eater, listen to your body. If you just start listening to what your body is telling you, whether it’s that you work with Lisa, decide to start learning your cues, whatever it is — and it doesn’t have to be just with the menstrual cycle, it could be with sleep, it could be with eating, it could be with being around certain people — it could be anything in life, just begin listening to yourself, and sometimes just the mindfulness will give you all the answers you need.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: I love that. So thank you so much for coming on the show, Michelle, this was a great conversation, and really important, and I’m glad we were able to dial in on some — not all — of the common period issues, but those, as you know, so common, and so many women’s struggles. So it’s really nice to have a good and informative conversation to empower us, especially if we’ve experienced those challenges. So for the listener, where can the listener go to learn more about you and what you do, and could you tell us again where you live, for anyone who may be living in your area who may be able to come to you directly?

Michelle Oravitz: Yes, absolutely, so I live in Miami Beach, and I have a practice there, and my website is www.thewholesomelotus.com. And I’m usually more on Instagram than Facebook, but I have — it’s @thewholesomelotusfertility — and the Wholesome Fertility Podcast is my podcast, but yeah, thewholesomelotus.com is really where everything is, that’s my center.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Okay, awesome, well, I’ll make sure to put a link to all of the different places in the show notes for the listeners who are on the go. And so thank you again for coming on the show, this was great.

Michelle Oravitz: Thank you so much. And as you know, but I don’t know if the listeners know, I’ve been a fan of Lisa’s for years, and I’ve gotten so much amazing information from your podcast, I love your podcast, so this is really a pleasure to be here.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Oh, thank you so much, I’m so happy to have you here. Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it with a friend. You’ll find the show notes page for today’s episode over at fertilityfriday.com/326. I hope that you enjoyed today’s episode with Michelle, what a treat it was to have her on the show and to really get into Chinese medicine and how it looks at the menstrual cycle. And whenever you hear Chinese medicine practitioners talking about how they view the menstrual cycle and how they monitor different aspects of the menstrual cycle as it pertains to overall health, it really makes you wonder, why isn’t this just done, why isn’t this just standard. And for those of you for whom this is a relatively new idea, for those of you who’ve recently started tuning into the podcast and listening to these great episodes, it’s kind of like, how could I not have thought that, why didn’t this ever occur to me — of course it’s a vital sign, of course it’s a sign of health, and of course if my menstrual cycle’s off, that would mean something — I mean, why wouldn’t it? Our bodies are incredible, and we should really have more reverence for them and all that they do for us. So I think after you hear information like this, it seems so obvious, but I guess it’s what they say, that hindsight is 20/20. So I do hope that you enjoyed my conversation with Michelle today. I want to thank you for tuning into the show, for being a part of the Fertility Friday community, and if this episode really resonated with you, or if you know some friends who could really benefit from hearing this episode today, the link to share is fertilityfriday.com/326. And so thank you again, I hope you have a wonderful day, a wonderful week, a wonderful weekend, whenever you’re listening to the show, and of course, as always, until next time — be well and happy charting.