Coming Off The Pill With PCOS (Episode 354)

Full Transcript: Episode 354

Lisa: 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.

Lisa: I’m really excited to share today’s episode with you. I know I say that a lot, because I aim to only share episodes that I’m really excited about, but in today’s episode I’m sharing my interview with Kate Kordsmeier. It’s interesting how we met, because she’s an entrepreneur and I was a guest on her podcast, and we were essentially talking about the menstrual cycle and how it can help you understand the different phases of your cycle when you’re trying to live life or run a business. But what came out of our conversation was Kate’s story. Kate came off hormonal birth control and had an underlying issue of PCOS that was being masked by the hormones, and she describes her journey coming off the pill and normalizing her menstrual cycles. What you’ll learn as you listen to today’s episode is that when Kate initially came off of hormonal contraceptives, her intention was not immediately to conceive, she was actually avoiding pregnancy, but she really wanted to figure out what was happening health-wise. So in today’s episode we talk about that and some of the challenges around hormonal contraceptives, because the hormonal contraceptives didn’t cause her underlying issue of PCOS, they simply masked it. One of the biggest challenges for women coming off hormonal contraceptives to try to conceive is that if you were put on contraceptives because of an underlying issue that the pill is now masking, meaning that you’re getting a bleed every 28 days or so, that can mask any underlying issues preventing the spontaneous ovulation required for a normal, healthy cycle. So without further ado, let’s jump into today’s episode with Kate.

Lisa: And I’m excited to welcome my guest, Kate Kordsmeier, today to the show. She is a writer, educator, and creative entrepreneur, and after almost a decade as a freelance journalist, she founded Root and Revel, a holistic wellness blog with a focus on mind, body, soul health. Once the blog blossomed into a six-figure business, she started the Six-Figure Blog Academy, a digital course dedicated to helping others start their own profitable businesses. Kate is also the host of the Success with Soul podcast, which is how we met. Her mission is to empower women to create a profitable, purpose-filled online business and build a life of freedom and flexibility without selling their soul. So then the question is, why is Kate on the show today, since I don’t typically talk about entrepreneurship on the podcast? Because when Kate and I did our interview together, we talked about the specific challenges women have navigating life, and how helpful it can be to understand your menstrual cycle throughout those periods of time. Kate also has a really compelling story, like most of us do with our cycles, so I’m thrilled to have her on the show to chat about it today. Welcome to the show, Kate.

Kate: Thanks for having me. I love that I had you on my show, and we were like, it’s kind of weird to bring somebody to talk about hormones on a business podcast, and now we’re saying it’s kind of weird to bring somebody to talk about business onto a hormones podcast. But the two are so inextricably linked, whether you’re an entrepreneur, or you work for somebody else, or you’re a working parent, meaning parenting is the hardest work of all, I think it all applies.

Lisa: I love it, yes for sure, and I’ve had so many interesting conversations over the years with women in all kinds of different situations, whether I’m talking to a university student in her early twenties, a high school student in her late teens, a woman who’s had three children and is looking for birth control options, or a high-powered business owner. One of the things that unifies us all is that monthly menstrual cycle, having to navigate how we’re going to not get pregnant when we don’t want to, and how we’re going to get pregnant when we do, across all domains of women’s lives. So with that said, I’d love to start by giving you an opportunity to share your own experience with your cycles.

Kate: It’s kind of an interesting question, it probably only happens here on the Fertility Friday Podcast, where the first question is, how old were you when you had your first period, how did that work with your cycles, and how did you manage your fertility. I don’t think I’ve ever been asked, especially not publicly, to tell about my first period, so I’m excited to finally answer this, because I feel like people should be talking about it more, and I’m grateful for your work for that reason. I do remember my first period, I got it at Thanksgiving, which is actually interesting because this past weekend was Thanksgiving and I just got my period again for the first time after having two kids, so full circle. I was about 12 at that Thanksgiving, and I remember being so excited, because a couple of my friends had already gotten theirs, and it felt like, I am a woman now. There’s something cool at that age about doing things first or early, like getting your driver’s license first, I just felt so grown up, like, I have a period, oh my god. It was a positive experience for me, I remember going to my aunt and uncle’s house for Thanksgiving and telling my cousin, I got my period today, I’m a badass, and my mom gave me the whole spiel about pads and tampons. So it started off positive. I don’t really remember a lot about my period until later on in high school, when I started having really heavy cycles and breaking out a lot, and my mom took me to the gynecologist, and they said, great, you should just go on the pill. I was about 16 at the time, dating a guy, and kind of ready to maybe start having sex too, so it felt like this could kill two birds with one stone. So I got on the pill and stayed on it until I was 26. I came off the pill at 26 because I was having so many health issues, and it felt like if I didn’t know what my body’s natural state was without any medication, I couldn’t get to the bottom of things. I had also been on some other medication for digestion issues I was having, and it was making things worse. So I had this kind of come-to-Jesus moment, I’m going to go cold turkey, get off everything, I’ve got to get to the bottom of this, and I don’t feel like I can if I’m on something that could be altering my hormones. I didn’t really know much about what the pill was doing at the time, I just knew it didn’t feel right to be on it if I wanted to get to the root cause of my issues. So I came off, and my body freaked out. I gained a ton of weight, I broke out in horrible acne, I started having anxiety and panic attacks, my digestion continued to cause problems, and it felt like everything was going wrong and my body was failing me. I was in a really bad place, and then I started learning more about my cycle and tracking it, paying attention to what was happening in a way I’d never even considered doing in the past, and everything started getting better. There’s a lot of specific things I did that I’m happy to share, but I think the biggest thing was just paying attention to it and using it as a barometer for my health. That’s what led me to start Root and Revel, my holistic wellness blog, which was all about finding natural remedies for hormonal and digestion issues, mental health, and a lot of it really came back to my period.

Lisa: Wow, that is really fascinating, I love asking questions like this because you get to take us on a journey of a good ten-plus years of your life. A couple things stand out to me, one is that it was your intuition that led you to question if the pill could be related, or at least to know that as long as you’re on something affecting your hormones, you don’t really know the true picture of what’s happening, so taking a break might be helpful. I also think that starting to track and understanding, this isn’t normal, so what can I do to fix it, is important, because our medical system basically says the pill fixes it and doesn’t offer a lot of alternatives, so the biggest challenge is that it’s up to you to figure out what’s going to work when you want to fix the root cause. Another piece of your story is that this whole experience with your cycle led you to change your business orientation, and I think this happens to a lot of women, a lot of my clients have gone on to change their professional orientation or get different training because they realized what a huge impact a healthy cycle, or healing an unhealthy one, can have on your whole perspective. So could you share a bit about that journey, because a lot of people would call that experience post-birth-control syndrome, or a rebound? I don’t necessarily use those terms myself, but for many women coming off the pill it corresponds with your body sorting itself out, so it can look like acne or a rebound of symptoms, it gets worse before it gets better because your body is literally sorting itself out, hormones are being produced that weren’t before, some things are improving and some seem to be worsening. So take us through that, and how you got to the place where you no longer feel that way.

Kate: Yeah, it was hard, because, like you said, Western medicine is what I was raised on, and when I went to my doctors and said, I went off the pill and my body is losing it, everything is going wrong, but I know the answer isn’t to go back on the pill, they tried to convince me otherwise. I had several gynecologists and gastroenterologists, tons of people. The gynecologist said, are you ready to have children? I said, no, not yet, I’d like to have kids one day, and she said, well, it’s probably going to be an uphill battle, there’s probably going to be miscarriage involved, but until you’re ready to have kids, just get back on the pill. I wanted to report her to some board, what could I even do about this, because it felt so wrong, she wasn’t listening to me. I told her my mom has PCOS, I looked up the symptoms and a lot of them lined up with what I had, and she said, well, we can run a hormone panel and see. She did, looked at it, and said, no, everything’s fine, I’d just get back on the pill. Because I’m a journalist and researcher at heart, I came home and thought, I have no idea what these levels mean, but I’m going to google them and see what I can find, and it was almost unbelievable how this trained physician thought these levels were okay, when it was so clear, even on the lab’s own reference ranges, which are obviously outdated and very broad, that these levels were way out of range. It was so bizarre, and I was so angry that nobody was listening to me, and they kept acting like the pill would fix it, when it was clear, well, yeah, it did fix it, I had these issues at 16 and stopped having them when I got on the pill, but they came back as soon as I went off, and way worse than before. So again, it was my intuition telling me this is not the way, this is just a band-aid, this is not going to solve the problem. And then it was funny, because after I went off and started paying attention to my cycles, I went back to my gastroenterologist and said, I came off the pill and my digestion got worse at first but has really improved. She said, oh yeah, the pill has actually been proven to mess with our guts, and a lot of women find relief when they get off it. I said, why didn’t we start with that, I’ve been coming to you for a year and you knew I was on the pill, why didn’t you say maybe we should try going off it, it could be causing a gut imbalance? So I was upset with everybody, but thankfully I found some amazing books that introduced me to functional medicine and more holistic remedies, and I found an integrative doctor who really listened to me and worked with me to get to the root cause rather than just masking everything.

Lisa: Well, there’s actually a lot of evidence to show that women who have gut issues, whether it’s IBS or Crohn’s, can have those conditions worsened by the pill, because we know it disrupts the gut microbiome. It’s not just anecdotal, when you have your own experience it’s not hard to find that data, and I’ve certainly cited studies showing this link. It’s hard to say whether the pill causes IBS or whether someone just has a propensity toward it that the pill worsens, but either way it doesn’t make it better, so for women with a predisposition or existing gut issues, it certainly can worsen it, and that’s shown clearly in the literature. I’ve also spoken to many women who went on the pill and started getting yeast infections, and the doctor doesn’t say, did you just get on the pill, we know it can cause dysbiosis, instead they’ll put her on antifungals, then she gets a bacterial infection, gets antibacterials, and it swings back and forth until either it goes away or she gets fed up. It makes you wonder what’s in it for these doctors to keep us all on the pill, pushing it as if it’s the only medication in the world without side effects, when there are so many known side effects. It makes you question and lose faith in the conventional healthcare system.

Kate: Yeah, and that’s the next logical question, why is this the way we handle it? I’ve interviewed a number of doctors, and when I ask what they learned in med school about how the menstrual cycle relates to the pill, why the pill is presented as the solution to everything, it’s because that’s how it’s presented in medical school. I didn’t go to medical school myself, this is coming from my interviews with doctors, which I’ll link in the show notes, but so many of them say that in medical school they’re taught the menstrual cycle is supposed to be 28 days, and if it’s ever outside that range, the pill is the solution, for every possible issue.

Lisa: Exactly, so you can’t really blame the doctor, because if you think about what allopathic, Western medicine is, it’s basically, problem A, provide drug B, that’s the actual modality, it was never designed to find the root cause and fix it. That’s why you had to go to an integrative doctor to get to the root cause, they go through a different education process. But then the other thing is that the pill is something like a 22 to 30 billion dollar industry, and who funds medical school training? If you look at who’s getting what out of it, it’s a lot of money for drug companies to have over 100 million women worldwide on the pill.

Kate: Yeah, and here’s a half-formed idea that’s come to me recently, because I got the copper IUD implanted a couple months ago, and it hurt like hell to get put in. I came home screaming about the patriarchy, and how there’s not a single method of birth control that puts the burden on men, well, you could argue condoms, but I won’t go down that path, but the pill puts the burden and responsibility on women to uphold that status quo.

Lisa: What did it feel like when you had the IUD inserted?

Kate: I had just given birth six months ago, so this is pretty fresh. It felt like the most intense contraction, that lasted about seven minutes straight, the entire time they were implanting it, and it did not let up until it was done. Afterward I asked, can you show me what you did to cause that feeling, because it wasn’t what I expected, and she showed me this foot-long pair of tweezers with spikes on the end that go up and spike your cervix, pull it down, and put the device in before releasing it. It was awful, and nobody told me. I called some friends who had IUDs afterward and said, thanks a lot, because if you’d told me what to expect I don’t know that I would have done it, especially so close to giving birth. I came home screaming about the patriarchy, how I had to go through all of the pregnancy stuff, the childbirth, the nursing, and men can’t even worry about getting us pregnant.

Lisa: Well, you’re in the right place for this discussion, because a big part of it is that science and medicine was based on the study of the male body, and a lot of medications are only studied on men, even in animal studies they’ll use male animals because the female cycle is thought to be too complex. It’s highly problematic for women, one example is heart attacks, since men and women present very differently, and up until fairly recently doctors weren’t trained to identify the different ways women present with heart attacks, so many women ended up in much more serious condition. So yes, to the patriarchy. I’ve interviewed a fair number of women who’ve had IUDs, both hormonal and non-hormonal, in my Pill Reality Series, I’ve never personally had one, since I’m typically working with women after they’ve come off birth control, but one of the questions I’ve started asking as a default is about insertion pain, and it’s real, a high percentage of women experience significant pain, and the frustrating part is that doctors have the ability to numb the cervix but often don’t, because of this prevailing attitude that women don’t have nerve endings there, or that it’s just a small pain. I’d imagine if they were inserting a device into the penis, men would get numbing agents.

Kate: Just a hunch, and shocker, there isn’t ever really a time men have anything inserted into their penis, catheters aside, but there’s no equivalent burden on men. I go to a midwife practice and was very intentional about not having anything hormonal as part of my birth control, but the irony is that I was told I was going to have a really difficult time getting pregnant, might not even be able to, and would probably miscarry, that my fertility journey was going to be really difficult. But I’m so glad I healed my body naturally without using the pill or anything synthetically hormone-based, so that I could get pregnant easily and keep the pregnancy, which I did twice on my first try. That’s part of why I now have the copper IUD, since it turns out I’m super fertile, and I don’t have the capacity right now to be so diligent about tracking to make sure I absolutely couldn’t get pregnant, two kids is good for me right now, so I needed a non-hormonal solution to help me not get pregnant, when most of my journey was spent in fear of not being able to.

Lisa: Funny how the tables turn. You mentioned that when you were going through your post-pill stuff there were certain symptoms the pill had taken away that came back when you came off it, and you mentioned PCOS. Did you have some of the classic PCOS cycle-related issues, like long, irregular cycles? Could you share what some of those symptoms were that made you concerned you might have PCOS?

Kate: Yeah, absolutely, so some of it was my hormone levels, I started getting them tracked every month for a year or two, and in the beginning I had really high AMH levels and was high in the male androgens, and then I became estrogen dominant, so I had really high estrogen and low progesterone. So there were some things that were just factual, based on my hormone levels, but symptom-wise, my cycles, it took maybe two or three months to get my first period after coming off the pill, and then from there it was at least six months of having 45 to 60 day cycles. It took a while to get them shorter and more regular, sometimes I’d have a 22-day cycle and then a 63-day cycle the next month, no consistency. There was definitely irregularity, though I wasn’t somebody who really struggled with cramping, which was one reason I also considered the copper IUD. And my period would sometimes last over a week, and sometimes it was all over the place. After about two years I started having very consistent cycles, five-day periods with 32 days in between, and I was able to stay there for several more years until I started getting pregnant and having kids.

Lisa: I just want to interject, because for women listening who are at a stage looking for birth control, or who had an issue with hormonal contraception and are planning ahead without urgency around conceiving, versus other women who discover this podcast in the midst of their fertility journey, hearing that it took two years for your cycles to sort out is important context. And this came up on my episode of your podcast too, that thank goodness you did it when you did, because you weren’t in a rush to get pregnant. What if you had waited to come off the pill until you were ready, and then it took two years, that would have been so devastating, and your doctor would have felt proven right if you’d stayed on the pill, because you probably would have miscarried with such low progesterone, or had trouble getting pregnant in the first place. So it does take a while, though every woman is different, I’ve also had friends who come off the pill and just get right back to cycling. But I think your thing was that you always had PCOS, you just didn’t know it, so it was a matter of treating something that had been going on for over a decade, and it was going to take longer.

Kate: And I’m so grateful my intuition told me when it did, because I feel like I saved myself and my husband from a lot of heartache trying to heal my body and get pregnant at the same time.

Lisa: This is essentially one of the reasons I was inspired to invite you on the show, because it’s a real-life case study of what this can actually look like. There are times people say I just bash the pill, or that I’m anti-pill, but I feel like your experience helps clarify this, because the pill did not cause your PCOS. I’ve worked with women in a similar situation who come off the pill and have these long cycles and signs of PCOS, but there are other women I work with whose cycles weren’t really an issue before they went on the pill, maybe around 19 or 20 when they were ready to have sex, but their cycles were normal and consistent, and they weren’t put on the pill the minute after their first period, so their cycles were able to mature. I always use the example of breast development, it took a couple of years before my breasts fully matured, and the same thing happens with the cycle. So the takeaway is that every woman’s experience is different, the pill doesn’t cause these fertility issues, but it can mask them. I often say that if you’re on the pill and want to conceive at some point in the future, if you have the ability, it makes sense to consider coming off it 18 months to two years ahead of time. Some people think that’s too much, so the caveat is at least a year if you’re able, but if you had cycle issues beforehand, if you were put on the pill because your cycles were irregular or you stopped cycling altogether, the pill didn’t fix that, so you’re in a category of greater risk. You fell into that category, though we don’t know how long it would have taken you to conceive, but looking at the cycle as a vital sign, when your cycle normalized, did that align with the other symptoms clearing up too?

Kate: Oh yes, I was symptom-free, and I’ve lived mostly symptom-free since my period normalized and my hormones balanced out. Everything in my life got better. I’ve struggled with mental health stuff, and I still do sometimes, but I can tell when I’m out of sync. I have no digestion issues anymore, and pretty normal skin, my only complaint now is scarring from when I had bad acne. I have friends I’ve had this exact conversation with, one recently got married and wants a baby right away but is on the pill, and I told her to get off it now, and she said she wants to wait until they’re officially ready to start trying, because off the pill she has horrific periods and terrible PMS, and I said that’s exactly why you should come off now. She heard it as, are you saying there’s something wrong with me, and I said, well, yes and no, it’s not that there’s something wrong with you, but there’s something going on in your body, and I love your book for that reason, because our period really is a barometer of our health. It’s going to be devastating either way if there’s something going on, but it’s treatable, just not while you’re on the pill, so let’s start the process now, because the problem exists whether you start addressing it when you’re exactly ready to get pregnant or not. But there’s something so ingrained in us that the pill is what’s keeping us from having these problems.

Lisa: Similar to how Advil often keeps you from having a headache, that’s the way of Western medicine, to reduce the symptoms, and somehow we’ve been convinced that takes care of the issue. There’s nothing wrong with managing symptoms, as someone who experienced horrific period pain for years starting from my first period, I’m anti-pain, I don’t think we should have to deal with that. But at the same time we have to understand that if you had really horrible periods and bad PMS, that’s not normal, it’s a sign something’s going on beneath the surface. Anybody who had certain cycle challenges should consider that when planning to come off hormonal contraception, and in an ideal world, when you have the lead time, it makes complete logical sense to let your cycles normalize, identify any outstanding issues, and address them, ideally having a minimum of three normal cycles in a row before trying to conceive. I’m not trying to push perfectionism, there’s also an argument that your body will conceive when you’re ready, and if you carry a baby to term it means you were healthy enough to do that, so I’m holding both of those at once. But it makes logical sense that we want to be healthy, you deserve to be healthy. One last question before we switch gears, since this probably illustrates for a lot of people that it wasn’t overnight, and you had to work at it for a while, but looking back, what were some of the biggest factors in helping you regulate and normalize your cycle, and reduce the acne and digestive issues?

Kate: For a long time I felt like it was my diet, and what I realized is that it may have helped in the beginning and gave me a sense of control, but it ultimately led to a very unhealthy relationship with food. So I don’t like to lead with that, even though I think some foods can be really nourishing, I now take more of an approach of adding in more good rather than taking things away and getting into deprivation or restriction, diet culture isn’t my thing. What I found is that self-care and managing my stress was the biggest factor, and when I was eating healthy I was also taking better care of myself as a whole, slowing down to prepare healthy meals, so it was more about my mentality around food than the specific food itself. I also did yoga, meditation, therapy weekly, and acupuncture, at least one of those four things every single day, and now that’s all I do, I eat whatever I want and don’t worry about it, and none of my symptoms have come back, which has been proof to me that it’s more about taking good care of myself than any specific food. Along with that, I cut out toxic chemicals in my life and environment, things in shampoos, face wash, deodorants, toothpaste, everyday products with hormone disruptors, and relied on products made without parabens and other known disruptors. I also relied on supplementation a lot, and doing regular lab work was a big part, because then it wasn’t guessing where I was deficient, it was, you’re low in vitamin D, let’s add vitamin D supplementation. Vitamin D and vitamin B deficiencies are super common in women with PCOS. I tried a lot of things, different adaptogens, mushroom coffees, ashwagandha, reishi, and some other supplements like vitex and evening primrose oil, and a few others. I feel like those each helped get me to the next level, but they weren’t things I needed to take long term, now I don’t take any of that and just take better care of myself overall. So I’d say the biggest thing for me was self-care, slowing down, being present, and being aware of my cycle, cycle tracking was the most powerful thing I did.

Lisa: Thank you for taking us through that, I think it’s always important to note that something that works really well for one woman isn’t necessarily going to be the thing for another. For all the women listening who are struggling with PCOS, your journeys may look similar in some ways and different in others, because certain things that worked well for Kate might not be the biggest factor for you. I’ve had conversations with clients who say, I did this thing, everyone with this problem should do it, and it’s like, well, I’ve had clients who did that and it didn’t affect them the same way, which is why I think using your actual lab work matters, since if I have high estrogen and low progesterone but you have high testosterone, the same things aren’t going to work for both of us. Along with regular lab work, finding a practitioner who is versed in women’s cycles and health, and not just going to push a pill, someone who can recommend things specific to your body, is really important. I spent a lot of money on doctors, acupuncture, and chiropractic during this time, and it was worth every penny, but it took money and time up front, there was no annual checkup, it was monthly visits to get to the root cause.

Kate: Yeah, that’s the tough part.

Lisa: Because the menstrual cycle in and of itself reflects what’s happening in your body, and when it’s significantly off or outside normal range, the cycle isn’t the actual issue, it’s the messenger, don’t shoot the messenger, but the real issue is the underlying health concern. Western medicine doesn’t have a cure for PCOS, since it’s a syndrome, a collection of symptoms, and women can certainly improve their cycle length overall and get their body to a more regular cycle, but when you have that disposition, you always have it and learn to manage it, learn what contributes to it, what makes it worse, and deal with it, which can take time, a bit of trial and error, and support specifically geared to help with that. Another theme worth pointing out is that you went to doctors who told you there was nothing you could do, that this is just going to be hard, you’re just getting older, and you’ll have to eat less and exercise more.

Kate: Yeah, and that’s unfortunate, because if you look at the literature about PCOS, there’s an acknowledgment that a woman’s weight isn’t necessarily directly correlated with it, some women with PCOS are overweight, but many are not.

Lisa: I’ve spoken with clients who were on the slim side who literally had all of the textbook signs, two out of three, polycystic ovaries, hyperandrogen issues, plus irregular cycles, and looking at their chart it’s clear, totally irregular, really long cycles, hair growth in unusual places, but doctors are looking at whether she’s overweight, and if she’s not, they think it can’t be PCOS.

Kate: I did gain a lot of weight, but it’s all relative, I’m five foot six, I was 130 pounds, went off the pill, and was 145 pounds within six weeks, with no other reason for it. But at five-six and 145 pounds I’d walk into a doctor’s office and they’d say, you’re thin, you’re fine, you don’t have this. So I’m glad you said that, because that was definitely my experience.

Lisa: It goes to show this isn’t specific to you, even though it can feel like it. After almost 20 years of having these conversations with women, both in my work and in my life outside of it, these experiences unite the vast majority of women, going to the doctor and not being listened to, having symptoms minimized, having to fight to be heard, having to see several doctors before someone actually pays attention, having to understand that you may need to go to different modalities if you want root-cause type medicine. I wanted to share that thought about your story, because it’s not easy, your cycles did not magically get better, and you’ve given us a window into the amount of time and work involved. That doesn’t mean it’s the same for everyone, some women come off the pill and just start cycling again, because the pill isn’t masking an underlying issue for them, but this conversation gives a picture of what it can look like, and why, if you’ve just come off the pill and it’s been three months, which can feel like an eternity, there is hope, but it can take time and effort to get the right support around you. I wanted to end on a more positive note, one of the things we talked about when we first met was how understanding your cycle can help in your day-to-day life, organizing your work. I’d love for you to speak to that.

Kate: Yeah, I’m so glad you asked. Just as you were saying that men are the ones studied and tested for drugs, our work culture is built around a man’s biological clock, which is 24 hours and the same every day, and obviously women’s cycles don’t work that way. What I’ve found is that trying to do certain tasks when you’re on your period versus when you’re ovulating is kind of like waking a man up in the middle of the night and asking him to perform his best work. So I try, though there’s a balance, because you could take it to a perfectionist level and say I’m never going to do anything public-facing when I’m on my period, but our culture isn’t set up for that either. There’s a balance, some of it is just being aware, okay, I’m on my period today, so ideally I wouldn’t be a guest on a podcast, but since I am, I’ve built in time afterward to do yoga, rest, and refuel, whereas if I were ovulating I might have back-to-back interviews and be out and about full of energy. I’ve found that scheduling certain activities to coincide with different phases of my cycle, when I have more energy, when I’m feeling more forward-facing, and vice versa, means things are easier and take less time because I’m naturally in that headspace. Cycle syncing my work schedule as much as I can, within reason, has been really powerful.

Lisa: I love the example of waking a man up in the middle of the night and asking him to do his best work, because that is so true, and I love the balance you shared, because it’s not that you can’t do something, there are women who run marathons on their periods, I used that example in The Fifth Vital Sign, and I’ll cheer you on, partially because I’m not doing that myself.

Kate: No marathons happening on this end either, maybe day four, but not day one or two, absolutely not, and it’s not that I couldn’t, it’s that as I get older I have less patience, I just need to do what’s best for me because life is better that way. A lot of entrepreneurs and high-achieving women struggle with giving themselves permission to rest more, it’s been life-changing, though I don’t always follow it, when I can say, this is what’s happening in your body this week, maybe don’t overdo it, it’s okay, you’ll get up off the couch again. I know we joke that if you give yourself permission to rest you’ll never get off the couch again, but it’s not going to happen, don’t catastrophize, even if you laid on the couch for your whole cycle, once those hormones start rising again you’re going to want to get up and do something. So trusting my body, giving it that permission, and having that awareness, even when I don’t always act on it, has been really powerful.

Lisa: One of the topics that came up in a recent interview I did was thinking of your cycle, or how you organize your life and work, in terms of a cycle instead of a day. Instead of every day being the same, if you think about your productivity over the course of a month, you can give yourself a couple of days when your energy is down because of the cyclical reality of having a menstrual cycle, and recognize you’ll make up for it on the days you have high energy. If you start tracking that, even charting your productivity alongside your cycle, you can stop feeling guilty about needing to take a break.

Kate: Exactly, I still chart on paper, I’m working on a book so I track writing and check when I’ve been productive to see how it aligns with my cycle, just out of curiosity, but it helps you stop feeling guilty about needing that break, I think that’s the biggest thing.

Lisa: This conversation has been so great, I really appreciate you coming on the show and sharing so many intimate details of your cycles and your history, it’s so powerful and helpful, I’m sure you can appreciate how helpful it is for women to first hear, I’m not alone, other women are experiencing the exact same thing, it’s not unique. This is one of the things I love about having a podcast, I have conversations like this all the time, it’s literally been my life for two decades, and I know regardless of whether you’re looking at some high-powered woman in the public eye or the mom in the grocery store, we all have stories like this.

Kate: It’s so true.

Lisa: As we bring our interview to a close, is there a main takeaway you’d want listeners to take from everything we’ve talked about today?

Kate: Get off the pill. I think it comes back to taking care of yourself, and recognizing it’s not your fault, there’s not something wrong with you, this is the way our culture has been built, the way doctors are taught in med school, but we can reclaim our power, even just within ourselves, by harnessing the power of our periods. I texted my friends when I got my first period back after two kids, I was so excited, and they said, you’re crazy, why would you be happy to get your period, and I don’t know, there’s just this joy I have from this connection to my body now, and I think it extends through everything else in my life. I’m proud to be a woman now, and I feel like I couldn’t always say that.

Lisa: That’s amazing, and it made me think of something. Before we started recording we were talking about how you just got your period, and it’s Thanksgiving, and it also happens to be a full moon. I’ve certainly found it interesting over the years to notice if I’m ovulating or menstruating around the full moon, it’s not a huge part of my charting, but I’ll look up and notice. We’re recording this at an interesting time in the world, and on top of that it’s a full moon, and I certainly felt affected by it, my energy felt a bit shifted, and a few girlfriends mentioned feeling off too.

Kate: And it was a lunar eclipse too.

Lisa: Right, because we needed that in November 2020 on top of everything else. But I wanted to throw that out there, because many of us, if not all of us, are affected by cycles outside our control, like the moon, and it’s helpful sometimes when you’re charting and having an off day to take a peek at that, because you might find you’re affected by some of these other cycles too.

Kate: I’ve been pregnant or nursing for the last three years until this weekend, when I got my period again, so I’ve only been able to track the moon, since I haven’t had a cycle to track. I do think there’s a lot of truth to it, we’re pulled by the moon just like the tides, we’re mostly water, and there is actual scientific evidence to it, even though it can sound kind of woo. It’s helped me too, and I learned this from Kate Northrup, who I’d recommend following if you’re interested in moon cycling, and she talks about menstrual cycles too. I started using an app called Stardust that told me I’m a “red witch” because I tend to bleed with the full moon, I think you’re a “white witch” if you bleed at the new moon, it helps you combine those methodologies.

Lisa: It’s all very interesting, and over the years I haven’t been consistent, sometimes I bleed with the full moon, sometimes I ovulate with it, but it does seem to happen around that time for me more often than not. When I actually looked into the research, there was a correlation that was more significant than chance, where women do tend to ovulate with the new moon or menstruate with one or the other, not everybody, and not all the time, but there’s a correlation that exists if you want to look into it. There’s also cool research about full moons and hospital visits, ER visits going up, and women giving birth more at night during full moons. So the bottom line is that when you understand these rhythms and cycles within yourself, and pay attention to the moon cycles too if you’re curious, noticing those patterns can help make life more manageable, instead of being hard on yourself for not feeling the same every day, since our lives are modeled on a circadian, not cyclical, pattern. I hate to think my emotions aren’t fully mine because of the moon, but at the end of the day it does happen sometimes, I definitely felt off during that lunar eclipse. So as we wrap up, I wanted to give you the opportunity to share what you do, your podcast, and where people can find you.

Kate: Thank you so much. My podcast is called Success with Soul, and Lisa was on it, so you can go listen to her episode first. My blog is Root and Revel, where I share that holistic wellness, mind-body-soul well-being content, and because of the blog becoming a full-time business, I now have a course called the Six-Figure Blog Academy, and 21 Days to Impact is a new course I just launched, helping women create profitable online businesses that align with their souls and fulfill their purpose.

Lisa: That’s incredible, what fulfilling work, to support women building their businesses. I feel like it’s a bit different when we’re able to support our families financially in that way, though of course it also changes a family when men make money too. I’m thankful for you and what you do, and we’ll be sure to link all of those places in the show notes page, so thank you so much for being here today.

Kate: Thanks for having me.

Lisa: Thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed today’s episode, I really loved this conversation. This is one of those situations where it’s obviously not ideal to come off hormonal contraceptives and have a long delay before your first cycle comes back, or an extended period of time for your body to normalize, but it is the reality for many women. Of course, it’s not all women, and I’m always quick to point out that the pill does not cause fertility problems, it did not cause Kate’s PCOS, that was there to begin with, but when you’re on hormonal contraceptives, if you were put on them because you never knew when your next period was coming, if you had irregular cycles, long cycles over 35 days on a consistent basis, and there was obviously some sort of underlying issue that the pill was used to quote-unquote regulate or normalize, you’re at a higher risk of certain challenges when you come off, because the pill doesn’t fix the underlying problem, it simply gives you a bleed every 28 days. If you’re listening to this episode and you fall into that category, it’s not always convenient to reassess your birth control choice as you get older, but if you’re planning to start a family within the next year or two, and you’re on hormonal contraceptives, and you think you may fall into this risk category, it’s extremely important to consider the implications, whether you have the ability to come off of them. If you have an actual issue you’re aware of, I’d recommend 18 months to two years, or at least one full year, and when you come off you’ll need another form of birth control, whether that’s barrier methods, or combining barriers with fertility awareness. As you heard in Kate’s situation, it took about two years for her cycles to normalize, which isn’t uncommon when there’s an underlying issue, since there can be a delay in the return of your first cycle, and a delay in the return of ovulation, especially if you were put on the pill for cycle issues in the first place, or if you developed those issues while on it without realizing, since the pill was masking it. So if you fall into that risk category, the first thing is that it can take a while just to start menstruating again, and the second is that once you do, the underlying issue is still there, so it often takes time to address it if you’re looking to do so naturally. The good news is that you can achieve healthy cycles, since your cycle is a reflection of your health, so if you’re in a similar situation right now, restoring normal cycling naturally is possible, though not necessarily easy, and you often need the right support, ideally someone coming from a functional health perspective. But it is possible, because once you restore your overall health, the menstrual cycle follows suit. Hopefully this episode has been helpful, informative, and has given you hope that it’s possible to achieve normal cycling, even if it takes some time. So that said, I hope you have a wonderful week or weekend, whenever you’re tuning into today’s episode, and of course, as always, until next time, be well and happy charting.