Getting an Endometriosis Diagnosis (Episode 483)

Full Transcript: Episode 483

Lisa: This is the Fertility Friday Podcast, episode number 483.

In today’s episode, I’m sharing an interview with FAMM practitioner Brittany. Brittany shares her experience with endo and the challenges of getting a diagnosis, and a number of really helpful tips in getting the support you need.

Before we dive in, I’ll share a little bit about Brittany. She is a reproductive health practitioner with certifications in nutrition, fertility awareness instruction, and cycle coaching. She helps women who feel like something is off with their cycles uncover and restore their reproductive health. And having battled through chronic period pain for years, Brittany is also an endometriosis advocate who has seen and felt firsthand the indifference to the condition. And without further ado, let’s go ahead and jump into today’s episode.

I am excited to be here today with Brittany. Brittany is a member of the inaugural class of FAMM, and we’re actually recording this towards the very end of our program. We have kind of officially finished, but we still have a few outstanding calls. It’s kind of fun to do the interview at this point because you’ve kind of gone through the whole program and out the other side. Without further ado, welcome to the show.

Brittany: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. I always love chatting with you.

Lisa: Yes, we were talking about that in the pre-chat. I was like, we could talk all day, we should hit record at some point. Well, I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to chat with you and to have you as part of this series. The series has been so fun for me to be able to obviously have extra time with everybody, but also to showcase and highlight the experiences.

After recording several of these FAMM episodes, it’s been a really interesting mix of the personal takeaways that each practitioner has had as well as how it’s affecting them professionally. Before we get into all of that, I would just love for you to share with us a little bit about your FAMM story and journey. I often start these episodes with the question of when did you have your first period? What were your periods like? How did you manage your fertility? Kind of what brought you into FAMM and fertility awareness method, and what prompted you to want to jump into the mentorship program to add this to your practice?

Brittany: Oh my gosh, I feel like I could have a whole hour just on that. When did I get my first period? I got my first period I think around — it was a little bit later than average. I think I was maybe like 15. I was very athletic and doing a bazillion things, so that probably slowed things down a little bit.

I didn’t have the best first experience, I will say, like a lot of people. There wasn’t a whole lot of chat before about what was going to happen or what to expect or what it would feel like. I don’t know if this has gotten more intense over the years, but all I remember is just kind of being very terrified when it did show up. I was just screaming in the bathroom and my sister ran down and was like, “What’s going on?” And I was like, “Get away! Go get Mom!” You know, it was just like, I don’t want to talk to you. Definitely a lot of shame. Then my mom was like, “Here’s what’s going on.”

I don’t know if we’d had a chat before that, but it certainly didn’t seem like it at the time. It was very intense. I think a lot of kind of moving forward of where I am now has actually come from that background and a bunch of other things. But it’s amazing, I think you talk about this all the time, how little we’re told about our bodies and what’s going to happen and that sense of having any kind of empowerment around what’s happening and then making choices based on that.

I feel very strongly about hopefully not creating that situation for other people in all different kinds of ways. That was kind of my first period experience. And then I remember I used pads forever. I didn’t even learn about how to use a tampon properly for like two years after I had my period. I would just avoid going in the water or stuff like that in the summer because my sister actually got her period before me. I think my parents just assumed that I already knew all that stuff because she probably just told me or something.

Anyways, long story short, eventually I ended up on a combined pill like most of the world for birth control. I kind of went into university and had a little bit more of a long-term boyfriend going on. It wasn’t even really a conversation of like, should we do this? What’s involved? None of that. It was just kind of like, this is what everyone does, it’s just easy. I just went on it without even thinking and was on it for a really long time, like 13 years I think.

I was pretty lucky that I didn’t have any — at the time what I thought — crazy symptoms or anything else. Looking back, I think it did change a lot. I ended up having a lot of painful intercourse and all these things that we now know can be very tied to those things. But at the time I was like, oh, this is just something wrong with my body, or you know, you blame yourself for everything instead of anything external. Just fascinating to look back on as well.

Why did I eventually come off the pill? I came off because I actually got diagnosed celiac out of nowhere when I was about 30. I had done the recommended cut out all the gluten from my life and everything will go back to normal situation, and it didn’t. I just still felt horrible. It was like a little bit better, but it was still really bad.

I was feeling horrible, got really painful periods out of nowhere that I had not experienced in my life at all — like debilitating to the point of not being able to function day to day. I kind of tried all this, I went down 100 food paths really being focused on the celiac side. When I kind of ran out of options there, I realized maybe there’s more going on here than just food.

That’s when I started literally searching the internet and I found all of the hormone gurus of the world. I found you, I found Laura Briden, I was reading This Is Your Brain On Birth Control. I just couldn’t get enough of all these kinds of books because all of a sudden all these things started checking off and making sense. All these people’s stories are my stories. All these symptoms I’m having are so similar.

I started talking to my doctors and nobody — they were just like, we don’t know what you’re talking about, you’re crazy. I just kept reading and trying to do my own research. I think I just got so enthralled with it partly to help my own health, but partly because I was fascinated. Kind of going back to, wow, how was none of this information shared with me or anyone else for that matter? I started talking to my friends and family and none of them had ever heard of any of this stuff either.

I think once I got past the book phase, I was like, how do I learn more? How do I keep going with this? Because it helped me with my healing quite a bit. I still had things to work out. I ended up self-diagnosing myself with endometriosis, then went for a bunch of actual consults and found out that I did have that. That was really great because it made me feel like there was a real thing there instead of me again just blaming my own body like, well, I guess it’s just me.

Then I found fertility awareness I think through all of those books and through all that research. Instagram was amazing for that too, kind of leading me down all those paths. I ended up doing an instructor training program to figure that out more in depth. I just always wanted more information to be able to chart my own cycles that way. I was starting to think about maybe wanting kids with my husband. I just figured it can’t hurt to know more about all of this and hopefully be able to teach it to other people too.

At that point, I also decided to change my whole life. I quit my job because there were so many health things going on that it was just like full rewrite of life at this point. I went back to school for nutrition and then was like, oh, if I can tie in somehow all this hormone stuff, that would be awesome.

Even through that instructor program, it was amazing, but I just didn’t feel like it was enough. I didn’t feel like I could tie my practice and the fertility awareness instructor together in a way that still made sense and that was really functional. That was literally when your program came up. I literally — it was just on one of my Instagram things. I was like, this is the perfect timing. It just seemed so perfect to be able to dive deeper on the FAMM side of things and then really have somebody as a mentor to help guide me into how do I pull that into my practice as well.

That’s how I found you, which was the best thing ever. Best decision. I was so nervous because I found it like a week before it started or something, so I had so many questions for you. But yeah, it was like the best investment I could have ever made. I just feel so much more confident now going through everything with my clients and seeing it through a totally different lens, which has been I think life-changing for me and hopefully for them as well.

Lisa: Well, thank you for taking us through. It’s fascinating to think about — was that like 20 years or more that you described? I mean, there’s so many pieces of your story that I think a lot of the listeners will be able to relate to.

What I think is interesting about your story is that in your case, one of the things that we were kind of working together to the best of our ability — you came to me having done basically everything under the sun for your painful periods and some of the challenges that you were having there. But that was obviously one of the topics that we were talking about quite a bit.

I think what’s interesting about your story is that you didn’t go on the pill because of painful periods. You just kind of went on the pill. I think you did share a little bit about it, but do you remember your periods pre-pill? Were they pretty typical? Do you remember anything about them that was off?

Brittany: Yeah, they were — no, they were totally normal for as long as I can remember. I do remember I had one really painful period before I went on the pill, but again, it was around the time that I was getting my period and everything was switching. It’s hard to know whether that was just a one-off thing. It definitely wasn’t a consistent thing.

Endo can kind of show up at any point. It was so interesting to me to be like, wow, I wonder when that started showing up symptom-wise and for how long I’d been covering that up without knowing it. Could I have done something sooner if I hadn’t been kind of in that situation? Possibly. And just very overwhelming to come off the pill and then have it be so extreme out of nowhere too, right?

Lisa: Yeah. Well, and I think one of the things I try to talk about as much as I can is as much as it would be easier to throw the pill under the bus and blame the pill for all of the problems that everyone experiences, I think that it’s really helpful to recognize that one of the issues potentially for many women is not the piece about causing the problem, but the piece about the masking of the problem.

But I mean, ultimately, you were on the pill for a reason. I think that’s helpful to remember. It did what you wanted it to do at the time. And as soon as you did — obviously part of coming off the pill was figuring out what was happening health-wise. As soon as you did figure out the issues, you obviously attacked it and addressed it to the best of your ability.

Brittany: Yeah, but that was also so interesting because it was like — like you said, I tried everything under the sun. I think I saw 20 plus different practitioners. I feel very lucky that I was able to do that. But it honestly wasn’t until I was able to look at my health through the lens of my cycle that things became clear and I was able to actually start to see things shift.

That’s even what you taught us in the course, right? It’s one thing to throw whatever magnesium or zinc at somebody. It’s totally different to be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what’s actually happening in the cycle? When would this be most effective? When should we start? When should we stop? Which nobody had ever kind of talked to me about before in that way.

Lisa: Something I just thought of — because I know that we had of course sessions on period pain, and discussion about endometriosis and things like that from the standpoint of this is how common it is and these are the effects it can have — but for you, you were living this issue. You had a lot of important insights into the challenges women face to get a proper diagnosis, to find a surgeon who is capable of potentially dealing with the issue in a restorative way, not causing more problems.

I know this just came to me, but maybe if you want, I’d love for you to take a couple of minutes and just talk a little bit about that. I feel like your story was incredibly compelling with the challenges that you faced. You’re highly motivated. And also, you have a background in nutrition. You’re a health professional in your own right, and it was still so challenging for you to find this. Ultimately, I feel like a lot of it was what you did on your own. I would love for you to share a little bit more about your experience there because I just can’t — it’s mind-boggling to think about how many women are going through this and not being supported.

Brittany: Yeah, it is, and it’s very frustrating. But I think there are more conversations happening now, which makes me hopeful for the long run. People are feeling a little more confident to talk about all these topics in general, which I think have been so taboo for so long. That’s going to be helpful in itself.

But yeah, it was very tough. Like mentally tough, I would say, to feel like you’re in that much pain and nobody believes you a lot of the time. I would say I had multiple years where I was going in telling people that things were definitely wrong, were definitely not feeling normal, that I was not able to function properly, and still just getting pushed to the side. Like, “Oh, just drink some wine.” Literally, I was told just drink some wine. I’m like, what? And then you think of endo, right? It’s like, this is the worst thing you could possibly do — inflammation and alcohol. What?

I think another big one that FAMM helped me with eventually to feel so much more confident going into a doctor and just saying, no, I’m not putting up with this until you help me with a solution, was even understanding cervical mucus and how that works. Because I was getting all types of strange bleeding and spotting in the middle of my cycle. It was not progesterone-related necessarily, but there was inflammation and all types of weird stuff going on.

As much as I would get a thousand tests — just your average pap test or whatever — they’d be like, “Everything’s fine. Sometimes people just get bleeding all the time. Go home and relax.”

I think just having all — what helped me so much was eventually having all of this knowledge. Having that knowledge empowered me to then go back into these doctors in a way where I really had a lot of anxiety, like sitting in the waiting room feeling like no matter what I would say that someone was about to shut me down. Which is a really hard thing when you’re feeling really bad already.

I found having an advocate was super helpful — whether it was a close family member, friend, or my husband coming with me to appointments. That was really helpful because you’re just not always in a mental state to be fighting back constantly with somebody. Just another person to kind of be like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, we’re not drinking wine. What other tests can we do? What other things can be going on? This is serious. This person has all of these symptoms and you’re just brushing it off.” Right? And a lot of the time it’s because they don’t always know. It’s not that they’re doing it from a malicious place.

What else really helped me? Keeping all of my medical records in a binder or a chart. That was also something that — if they couldn’t find a record or they didn’t have all my past history, then again you just kind of get brushed off to the side. That was a huge one. Just bringing everything with you so that you can just pull it up to a page and be like, “Nope, I already tried that,” or “No, I don’t think that’s the thing because of this.”

You also have to be a little careful with that because doctors don’t always love you managing your own care or asking for certain tests that they don’t want to do or things like that. But you realize you are your best advocate and no one else is going to advocate for you in that same way, as much as they may care. They’ve got a thousand people they’re seeing a day. I had to try and remind myself of that every time I went in.

Then surgeon-wise, I was looking into possibly doing surgery for endo at one point. That was another whole research hole of just what are the differences in different countries. I’m in Canada, and a lot of our surgeons don’t get a lot of time in the OR for endo surgery — for laparoscopic surgery. And then even a lot of surgeons are not even doing laparoscopic surgery. They’re still doing ablation, where they’re just burning off the top layer and leaving the root, and wondering why people come back a year later still in pain.

Just understanding, really having to do your research, which can be exhausting. But finding a community to be able to reach out to as well and ask all of your questions, see who’s gone to what doctor. Anyways, I just found out for me, I didn’t feel super comfortable in the end doing surgery in Canada at all because I found out most surgeons have like 50 hours a year or something of surgery time, which is not enough for me.

Lisa: To give the listeners a sense of that — so 50 hours is kind of average in Canada. But what were you comparing that to in the States?

Brittany: Yeah, I was comparing to the States. They were in the hundreds — easily, easily in the hundreds. And that was all they would do every day too, right? They were specialized in that. Where a lot of people here, they’re kind of like general surgeon, gynecologist, so they do all types of anything to do with reproductive area kind of. Endo is so specific and very nitty-gritty that you definitely need somebody who’s just focusing on that, in my opinion. So yeah, those are some of the things. And yeah, community is huge. Just having other people that get it.

Lisa: Well, thank you for sharing that. I feel like your insights on the surgeons and obviously the general insights as well were so helpful. It’s just so sad that we’re here, that we have to have that conversation. When you were saying about the alcohol, like just have a drink — I mean, that’s the culture, right? It’s like, oh, you know, but that highly minimizes it, potentially makes it worse, and why are you here? My girlfriend could have told me that. I came to a doctor to try to get support. I know I can drink wine if I want to get drunk because the pain is bad. I know this already. What are you adding to the conversation?

Brittany: Right. Although for me, I was like, alcohol actually makes it worse. I get more pain from that. So it’s so funny.

Lisa: Well, there was that study that I cited in The Fifth Vital Sign in chapter 13, the lifestyle factors, where consuming — just to pull it back from the joke part — consuming quote “binge drinking” (binge drinking is usually defined as like two or three drinks, by the way, from a research standpoint) but quote “binge drinking” can increase your estrogen levels by like 30 to 50 percent that day. So it’s like, yeah, of course it has the potential to make it worse. Of course it does.

Brittany: Yeah. And I just think the thing you always talk about, which I love, is you can look at all the data, you can look at all the lab tests — all those things are so helpful in a lot of different ways — but you also have to listen to the individual. I feel like that’s what was missing in my entire experience for the most part. Kind of, “Oh, well, all your results come back normal so everything must be fine.” Especially for endo, that’s not how it works. You can have totally normal blood ranges for everything and still be in a state of constant pain and inflammation.

Just listening to people’s real lived experience, I think, is so important. And in charting, it’s the same. It would have saved me so many years — literal years — if people had actually listened. And even if they didn’t know, tried to send me to somebody who might have. I just took it for a really long time where people were just like, “Yeah, that’s fine.” Then I would leave it for six months at a time before going back because it wasn’t bad enough to really need to follow up. And then you realize you’re losing like half a year at a time in between.

Lisa: Well, maybe share with us some of your kind of personal and also professional insights after having gone through the FAMM program. For example, when I think about our initial cycles together, there was a lot of different themes that came out. Obviously we extensively go through the normal cycle parameters. Although, the one thing about your cycles is that overall, generally speaking, many of the parameters did fall into quite the normal range — the overall cycle length, the luteal phase length. There was a lot of things that actually did fall into normal parameters.

But obviously there were also some problematic issues — the spotting, the mucus patterns and things like that, obviously the pain. Which again is actually a parameter when you’re utilizing the menstrual cycle, whereas for many of these practitioners who are looking at the lab work, they’re not necessarily evaluating the pain as being an abnormal parameter. I’m curious what your insights were.

Brittany: It’s so subjective too, right? I think that’s the tough part with pain. When that’s one of your main symptoms, you go in and say you have extreme pain, one person will think, “Oh, this person’s just got regular period cramps,” which is a totally different level. That’s why they’re telling you to just try and relax or use a heating pad. They don’t understand necessarily. I love your story of like, labor was less painful than some of your periods. Just like, how do we convince the doctors of this?

But yeah, my cycle parameters — it was really interesting. Like you’re saying, a lot of it seemed kind of normal. Especially as I was learning, I was like, I don’t see too much that’s off. That’s why I loved your program, because it just went two layers deeper than that to really see so much of the specifics.

I think because I am a little A-type personality and was already eating very well and trying to manage a lot of those lifestyle pieces, that helped my cycle look a little bit better even though I was still getting a lot of this pain. I would be so fascinated to see if I was eating a standard American diet, what my cycle would have looked like.

But yeah, bleeding and irregular cervical mucus at times that you wouldn’t normally see it were my biggest indicators, I think, that I had always kind of intuitively known were wrong but I didn’t understand why or how the different hormones or what was actually happening in my cycle to possibly be creating that, or how inflammation impacts a lot of those kinds of things — it’s huge in endo.

Those were really neat to work through with you to better understand that those can be very clear signs of what I was experiencing. And just the fact that you had so many different options to try from pain perspectives as well, that I kind of mentioned earlier, where it was much more about, hey, let’s try eating these things and maybe adding in some supplements, but at these very specific times. That was something nobody had talked to me before about either, and was so helpful.

It was kind of cool because before I started your course, I’d been — like you said — tried 10 billion things. I’d been on 10,000 supplements. I’m not even exaggerating. I probably spent my life savings on supplements from all these different practitioners who convinced me each time that this was the way that it was going to all get fixed. And nothing did anything. It literally sometimes made me feel worse because I’m on 2,000 supplements and who the heck knows what I was even taking half the time.

I think coming into your course, learning all of this, and then — for me, it was actually taking a lot out. It was like, oh my gosh, why are you taking like 25 different things at once? This is so stressful in itself. So backing out of a lot of stuff and instead just really looking at the foundations, really looking at what does drive all these different markers we can now understand and see in the chart for you, and how can we really time those appropriately and use them well instead of just throwing everything on you at once.

That is what started kind of really shifting things for me personally, I think. I still didn’t perfectly heal everything because we didn’t have enough time, honestly, before I got pregnant — which is also great. But I don’t think I would have gotten pregnant if we hadn’t gone through all of those things.

My husband and I hadn’t been in a mental place to feel comfortable even trying to get pregnant with how I was still feeling, because I was feeling so horrible that even if my body could have possibly gotten pregnant, I didn’t feel like I wanted to bring a child into the world feeling like that.

Backing out of all of that, taking some things off — which I think is the opposite of what most people’s approach would usually be — I think is what got me into a much more stable, better place where I was feeling better and then felt mentally able to take on that kind of next step of thinking of a kid.

Lisa: I remember you saying that — that it was that kind of shift. From the perspective that I aim to teach in the FAMM program, it’s not about chasing symptoms. For example, knowing your history with celiac and knowing the issue with the endo, it’s not a surprise when we see these patterns of abnormal mucus and bleeding, because those things align themselves.

Typically when I’m seeing those types of patterns, I have had a number of clients who do have a variety of digestive issues that are linked very closely with inflammation, that are then correlated particularly when you’re having a flare or something like that.

The protocol that you’re referring to — just for the listeners — when it comes to period pain, it’s interesting because there’s a number of research papers that talk about a variety of anti-inflammatory nutrients. It’s interesting because the studies are often the drug companies, like the ibuprofen — they’re trying to figure out, should we make one that also contains zinc? So there’s these studies that are basically looking at if these nutrients can also improve period pain. What’s interesting about those studies is yes, it’s timed with the cycle.

It’s a completely different approach when you’re utilizing the cycle as a vital sign, because if you think about it logically, then the time of this inflammation when you’re having all this pain — yes, I’m sure that in general it can help a lot to take anti-inflammatories all the time, which you should be doing when you have a serious inflammatory issue. But addressing that more specifically alongside the timing of the cycle makes a lot of sense. And in the research and in real life, there’s often some really helpful specific benefits of doing it in that way.

I think for me, because I’ve been in this world for two decades, I don’t always think about how kind of transformative that is, because this is just what I do. But then again, it wasn’t magic. I don’t do magic. There’s no magic that I offer to anybody.

But by addressing some of those factors, I think that we kind of started on a good path. But what I think is also a really important message that I try to share — and I showed it in your case — is that when we start looking at the cycle parameters and we start to understand, okay, this is what’s normal and this is what’s not, and then obviously you can — for you, I’m just going to call it out, you tell me if I’m wrong — but for you, you’re looking at all the things that are wrong. You’re looking at the spotting, you’re looking at the pain, and you’re seeing all the problems and saying, “Well, how could I ever get pregnant? Look at all these problems.”

And for me, I’m looking at the whole cycle. I’m like, well, you know, you still have mucus, you’re still ovulating, and you still have a strong luteal phase. Pregnancy is possible in any cycle with ovulation. But for me, I always have to try to reassure clients and practitioners alike that you don’t actually need a perfect cycle to conceive. There’s a little bit about conception that’s a bit of a mystery in a way.

Brittany: Exactly. And especially because — I mean, by the time we felt mentally ready to even think about kids, we were very lucky in that it didn’t take us very long at all. Like you said, I was really surprised. After kind of seeing what my cycle still looked like in the cycle where we did conceive, I didn’t have the five to six days of cervical mucus and I didn’t have all of these perfect parameters. We didn’t have sex like 23 times — I mean, we learned that in the course that that’s not helpful anyway. But you know what I’m saying — it was literally just kind of like, oh, that all just worked out, and it didn’t have to be perfect.

Lisa: So, oh yeah, there it is. So the listeners can’t see the chart. I just pulled out the chart. But even if — maybe I think one of the things about me is that because I’ve seen so many charts, I’m typically quite encouraging about the charts because I don’t just see all the problems because I’ve seen a lot of charts. Like, I’ve seen highly problematic cycles.

When you put that into context, when we look at your chart, what I would say is — I can’t remember, there’s two temps, was the red one — I don’t know, do you remember if you were using the TempDrop and the oral?

Brittany: This is why I’m such a nerd. I’m like doing nine different temperatures. Yeah, the red one was oral and the teal one was TempDrop.

Lisa: Okay, I’m going to write it down. Red equals oral temp. Okay, but no, that’s helpful. Okay, so when we look at the temperature — when I’m analyzing the chart, I do see there’s a lot of things that are great. The temps are in the normal range where we would want them to be. You are ovulating regularly.

I think for — especially in your case — that was never your problem, right? You never had an issue with the cycle length and ovulation. So it’s easy to take that for granted as being an important thing when you’ve always had that. But when you — particularly in your practice — when you’re working with different clients, some of whom might be on the PCOS spectrum or otherwise do not just ovulate every 30 days or so. So for me, I look at that as significant. Yep, the cycles are ovulatory.

Although the mucus patterns — in this particular cycle, we’re seeing a couple days of non-peak, and it’s not like we’re seeing such a high quantity — but for me, I still see a mucus pattern that leads up to ovulation. For me, it doesn’t actually look as bad as it does to you.

Brittany: Yeah, which is so funny. Even with my practice clients, I feel like that’s something that comes up every time. They’re like, “This is all chaos.” And then you’re like, “No, no, no, let’s decipher this together. It’s actually not as bad as you think.” And I mean, sometimes maybe it is, but a lot of the time it’s not.

Lisa: Well, let’s talk a little bit about that aspect of it. Like I said, I think it’s really interesting when we have — in your case — a conception you didn’t really expect it to happen so soon. And also, like you said, what we have on your chart — you had sex twice.

Brittany: Exactly. Because we were just like, let’s just try this this month. It was the first time. We’re like, there’s no way this is going to happen. But that’s why fertility awareness is so amazing too, right? Because number one, with the cycle lengths like you were saying — until I learned all this stuff, I didn’t know that my cycle length was normal, because sometimes I would have like a 36-day cycle, which to me I was like, maybe that’s kind of long. A lot of my friends are in the late 20s or whatever.

And then even just knowing how to kind of time things, my husband was like, “This sucks.” It’s like, you just knew how to time this too perfectly.

Lisa: Too perfectly. “I wanted more trying time. The trying is fun.”

Brittany: Exactly. The fact that so many people don’t know these things — it could save people so much heartache and stress too.

Lisa: Well, I think something else that’s important about your story is that you had gone off the pill for other reasons, and you had been off of it for a while. That also is important to keep in mind, because you had then been working on your health and working on your cycle for quite some time. By the time — it’s not that you had been trying this whole time with issues. You hadn’t been, because you had been working on all these things.

Like I said, even though there’s a few parameters out of the ordinary, we’re still able to systematically look at the cycle and identify that it’s actually not as bad as you think. Maybe share — after going through the process — of course I teach protocols and a step-by-step way of going through the cycle, step-by-step way of teaching and having all those things go together. Maybe share a little bit about how you’ve been able to apply this to some of your clients so far and kind of some of your thoughts about the future. I know you’re heavily pregnant right now, so it’s a little bit murky in terms of immediacy. But share with us a little bit about how this has changed your practice and how you approach clients.

Brittany: Yeah, sure. Clients right now — the future is murky as I’m about to have a child. But once I’m past that, I’m so excited to get back into all of this.

Where do I even begin? Honestly, I feel like I have totally shifted how I work with everybody now just because of this course. I used to go in and kind of be looking at, okay, where’s blood sugar at? Where, what are people eating, when, how much? Still foundational things. But I find this technique so much more motivational for the clients and so much more empowering. That has been, I think, amazing to be able to bring that from your course.

I think what’s amazing about your course is it covers every topic you could imagine under the sun in such detail. If anyone has read Lisa’s book, imagine that book but like times 10 in a course. She’s so amazing at sharing so many pieces of information you wouldn’t have known where to grab at all and putting it in an easy-to-read kind of format.

What I love about your course too is that anything that you teach us about, you have like 29 studies to back it up. I think that’s really rare these days, and I really appreciate that. I just felt like I took on an entire course that could have been two years but in a six-month program in a really amazing way, as far as the information that I learned and was able to take on.

You made it really practical too — having so many handouts for each massive topic that we went through that we can practically now use with our own clients. That’s been really helpful for me as well instead of having to create all of our own resources from scratch. The amount of time that’s saved me — I’m just thinking of two clients that I’ve been on calls with this week where I could easily just send them a handout you’ve already fully created on the period pain protocol and options for them with the studies referenced and all those kinds of things. I’m not having to spend an hour talking through that with them, and then we can answer questions afterwards on the next call if it comes up. That’s been amazing.

And just this whole new lens of looking at health for everybody that I work with. I would say in the past when I was just working from a nutrition perspective, it’s really hard to keep people motivated. It’s really hard when they don’t have any way to measure or see change other than, “Oh, I think I’m feeling a little better,” or a lot of people try and measure success through weight, which is what I’m constantly working against, but it just comes up a lot as well.

Using the cycle gives you so many parameters that they find really exciting most of the time to track, because it’s this whole side of their body that nobody has taught them, that they didn’t know anything about. It’s like, whoa, I’ve opened this vault of knowledge about myself. It gives you a baseline, and then as you are working on different health parameters, you’re able to see things shift in real time without having to do millions of labs.

They learn it in a way where once I’m gone, they can still interpret all that information for themselves and continue healing and continue making choices for themselves in that way as well. I think that’s what’s really cool — it’s empowerment for the rest of forever, instead of just kind of like, “Oh, you always need me and we’ll be on calls for the rest of our lives.”

Lisa: Oh my goodness, the way that you described it — I should have just asked you to try to describe what I do. I feel like it’s sometimes really hard to describe why it’s so transformative for women to use charting. Obviously I’ve been talking about this stuff for a long time, but sometimes it’s hard to put into words.

What I found, especially lately, is that because I’ve been doing it so long, there’s a lot of it that I just take for granted. I think that happens with anything. There’s a lot of things like when I see people talking about online, like, “Oh, PMS — steps to reduce it,” and I’m thinking, what’s the big deal? It’s pretty straightforward if you look at the chart. For me, I think sometimes it’s hard to put that into words.

But what you said about that — that’s what — I mean, I’m biased here because this is what I do, but I can’t imagine working with clients without it. There’s nothing more — and what I love about it is it doesn’t require — of course I do everything I can to have as many resources as my client wants. I do everything I can to have all the data and all the research.

But at the end of the day, what I love about charting is that I don’t actually have to — it’s not about me and what I say, because at the end of the day, it’s about the cycle and whether or not it falls into normal parameters, and whether or not the protocols and strategies that we’ve put together for the client are actually causing the changes that we want to see. And so it’s either it works or it’s not and we have to reevaluate.

Brittany: Totally. And yeah, you can’t just be like, “Oh, well, I’m sure it’s working because you kind of feel better.” There’s a tangible thing there to be looking at, which is so neat.

I think what’s also really cool is that it’s very client-driven, if you let it be. I’ve had some cool experiences even in our course with practice clients where they come in thinking they’re wanting to learn one thing — maybe it’s birth control specifically — and then the more that they learn about charting and their body and how all those pieces work together, the more they realize, “Actually, I’m way more interested in health stuff now, and seeing like, oh, some of these parameters are a little off and I want to work on that.” And I didn’t even know that that was something that was important to me until I saw that, like, oh, my metabolism is super low, or whatever the thing is. You kind of just work with them on what comes up and then helping them interpret that and work through it.

Lisa: Well, what you said about — that’s really interesting, your experience obviously as a nutritionist. Because you’re saying sometimes there’s all these things, but how do you keep the client in the game?

When I’m working with someone and they’re charting and they’re consistent with the charting and things like that, it kind of takes on a life of its own. You’re not really there saying, “You have to do this and you have to do that.” Obviously you’re motivating, you’re coaching, you’re encouraging. But ultimately, what I love — I think one of my favorite things is that when your client is dealing with something like low metabolism or progesterone issues or something like that, or period pain depending on the severity — if you’re able to share with them a strategy, the evidence base that you have, some of the protocols that I teach in the program, and your client is able to actually see from one cycle to the next a significant improvement on her chart, then we have moved from theoretical to literal.

Once you have that little taste of success and that like, wow, I actually can change something here — like this is actually, with the mic — every practitioner I went to told me that it was in my head or that there was nothing I could do or whatever, and here I am actually making a difference. I feel like if I didn’t have that, I just don’t really know. I just feel like I’m much more effective with that tool because I’m not convincing people of things. It’s not really 100 percent me.

Brittany: And also, I think the part outside of the empowerment piece and the knowledge piece that people take away forever — where they can interpret all of their own charts without us in the end — is the hope piece, which I think is so missing in the medical world, especially with so many people who are just getting pushed aside when it comes to reproductive issues in general.

Seeing that it’s there, that it’s real, that this isn’t something that’s in your head, and that you still have options that nobody else has talked to you about before — just the amount of people already that I’ve worked with who’ve literally been in tears because they were at their wit’s end, they felt like they’d tried everything, they felt like they’d seen everybody, and the options that were left to them were just like, “Be less stressed.” Which is like, okay, great, you don’t think I’m already trying that when you’re telling me that I might have cervical cancer?

That part has been so cool to see too — just people having this lightbulb again of like, whoa, I still have options. I still have things that I can control, that I have choice over, that I can kind of monitor. Like, I’m just thinking of one specific client who had a lot of cervical dysplasia issues. And just some of your protocols that we learned through the course and options were never even suggested to her. Whether it ends up working out perfectly or not, it just was so amazing for her to be like, wow, someone’s giving me another option and I have hope again. And that’s huge.

Lisa: Yeah, I mean, it’s very powerful work. And as you were talking, I did a separate interview earlier today that will not be aired around the same time — I think it’ll be aired actually quite a bit later than yours — but in that interview, one of the things that she was talking about was how she would go from practitioner to practitioner, and it’s like, as a woman, she just felt like they don’t know what to do with you. Like, this is a mystery. You’ve got these hormones.

I think that’s how a lot of women feel. We talked about on the podcast, a lot of the science is done on men and male animals, because sometimes to add in a female animal — I mean, man, you’re adding all these hormones and all this stuff, so it’s complicated. So let’s just leave them out, let’s just study the template, which is the man.

What’s I think really unique about charting, and very gendered — I obviously get some feedback around the fact that I talk in a gendered way — but at the end of the day, this is very specific to women. If you are a male person in a male body, there’s tenets of it we could pay attention to, but there’s just nothing like this really available for men. So I think that’s also — it’s this unique way to tap into something that’s very inherently female in a way that we’re not really getting supported in our traditional system.

Brittany: No. Not at all. And it’s just — I think that’s what can be frustrating, right? It’s feeling — especially, I don’t know, I think most people when I start teaching them FAMM at this point, they’re just like, “Why did no one tell us this before?” You know? Like, why could I not tap into this innate energy that I had and just not given the option? That’s the thing. It’s fine if you want to go in a different route, but I didn’t even know this existed, and that’s insane.

Lisa: Yeah. Well, especially how transformative it can be, how powerful it can be. I could talk to you all day, but I know that you have your things to do and we can start wrapping up. But before we go, I want to ask you a couple of questions. One, for someone of course who’s thinking about the FAMM program — so they’re thinking about the mentorship, weighing their options — what would you want them to know about what your experience was in the program and how it can transform your practice?

Brittany: Just stop thinking and just sign up. That’s what I would say. Because I definitely overthought about it for too long, and I’m just so, so, so glad I did it. I don’t think there’s anything out there that exists like your program at the moment. So if you are a practitioner, you’re wanting to add this into your toolkit, you’re going to get 20 times more out of it than you could possibly imagine at the time.

I think I asked you a million questions like, “Are we going to cover food and how it impacts the cycle?” And you’re like, “Yeah.” And I’m like, “Okay, but is she just going to talk about the most basic things ever of like, make sure that people have a well-rounded plate?” And it’s like, no, no, no, we dove into extreme topics.

I would want them to also know that at least in our program, it was really amazing that there were all different kinds of practitioners. That was kind of neat and not something I had expected for some reason. There was so much to learn from other people in the course too and their experiences.

That’s a part of the program I really loved — we had our own case studies where we shared our charts to learn from each other, but then we also anonymously shared client case studies as well to be able to learn. People came in with so many different interesting charts that are very real world. It was so helpful to learn in that way.

Instead of in the certified instructor training I did, for example — it was all very, they did show us charts that were out of the average or normal, but not nearly as many. It was much more learning kind of the exactness of everything. I think your course was so great at bringing everything into the real world and being like, this is complicated, this is tricky, let’s work through how all this would go down. It’s not as easy as just checking off a quick list, and everybody is not a robot, and we need to be thinking of all those things.

Bringing all that experience in, all those different charts and clients, and getting to work through them all together — I think was, at least for me, how I learn best, because it’s just very real world. It’s a nice comfortable safe place to start practicing all of that instead of just trying to throw that on your clients right away and hoping that it works out.

I just loved everything about your program. I wish I could just take it forever.

Lisa: Oh, you’re so sweet. That’s an amazing testimonial, so thank you for that. I think that as you were sharing, that’s really what I was trying to bring. Because that’s all I do — I just work with real humans. When you work with real people, it’s not like the textbook. Sometimes you see all kinds of parameters, cycle issues, differences. You do see trends over time after you’ve seen quite a bit.

That’s one of the reasons why I found it invaluable to have that sharing of charts and all, because that’s really where we’re seeing more. But ultimately, this is one of the challenges for anybody out there who has tried to do chart interpretations or that kind of thing without training, because it doesn’t take long before you realize that you don’t know what you’re looking at and you don’t know why that’s happening or what you could even do about it. It really doesn’t take long before you get to that point.

I think for anyone who’s listening who is a professional and has actually been trying to incorporate it, you realize very quickly that you don’t really know what, why, what, or how to help.

Brittany: Yeah, it’s a whole profession and experience in itself. I think a lot of people come into it thinking, oh, well, I know — even if I’ve done it with my charts, then I kind of know how it works. You start to realize when you’re seeing all these different scenarios that that is the opposite of the truth.

I think that was really helpful with you as our instructor and mentor as well. You just have so many more years of experience than the average on this specific topic, because I mean, it has become a little bit more widespread now, but you’ve been doing this for a really long time. There are so many situations where even if there wasn’t a perfect study, you could really pull from a lot of client experience over the years. I think that was invaluable as well, to learn from that.

Lisa: Well, thank you for that. On that note, yes, it was a pleasure having you in the program. I do fondly — I think we talked about this in one of our last sessions — I do fondly remember when you were asking about the program. I think the questions are really important. It’s a significant investment, and I would be asking the same questions. You want to know, how is this program different to the others, and is it going to be practical in real world? Because ultimately, that’s what a practitioner is looking for — not a whole bunch of, like, yes, you need the theory, you need both of it, but ultimately it’s like, I’m working with clients now, so how is this going to help me with my clients now?

That was really important to me when I was designing, because I’m a busy person too. I don’t want to waste anybody’s time. That’s not what this is about. I don’t like when people waste my time. I don’t want to. And there’s a lot of bad online courses out there. I’ll tell you, I’m taking some of them. So you have to be careful.

Brittany: Yeah, it has to be based on what is literally happening right now and how you can help women. At the end of the day, the other thing is that these women really need support. That’s what it really boils down to at the end of the day. That’s what this is all about — so many women who are not getting support in the most basic way.

Because a lot of when it comes down to it, the foundational factors are a lot of — it’s foundational, it’s basic, but no one’s really — for many of your clients and your future clients, that’s not what is happening when they go and seek out support.

Lisa: It’s been a pleasure having you in the program. It was super fun. It was amazing. This year was fantastic. I could gush, but I will stop myself. It was just such a wonderful experience for me as well to have all of you in the program.

Before we go today, could you tell us a little bit about you and your practice, where the listeners can go to learn more about what you do, and if you have anything exciting coming up, maybe now or later on in the year or two?

Brittany: Sure, yeah. I’m kind of on a bit of a hiatus at the moment, and I’m also, after your program, kind of reshuffling my practice in general because I’m mostly working through a fertility awareness lens now and then using nutrition as kind of my foundational background instead of the other way around.

That’s pretty much what I’m doing. I’m a certified fertility awareness educator and then using my — I’m a nutritional therapy practitioner as well — so using that as a foundational guideline to help all different women with their cycles, whether it be from a health perspective, whether they want to understand using natural birth control, or whatever else they might be coming in for. It’s amazing how many ways you can use your cycle.

My website is under construction, but you can find me for now at Brit Cornish — B-R-I-T-T-C-O-R-N-I-S-H — on Instagram is probably where I live the most. So come on there, say hi, send me a message, and go from there.

Lisa: Awesome. Well, I’ll make sure to link that in the show notes page. And when your website is up, you can always email me and we will update that on the show notes page. And thank you so much for coming on the show. This was super fun.

Brittany: Yeah, thanks for having me.

Lisa: 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/483. I hope that you enjoyed today’s episode — so many great insights from Brittany, especially related to her experience with endo.

For those of you who are looking for more information on endo, whether it’s getting an accurate diagnosis or managing — trying to look for a surgeon if you’re choosing to consider a surgical route — certainly some of our previous episodes, I can think of our previous episode with Jenna Riche, as well as a couple other episodes. What I’ll do is I’ll make sure to link our previous endometriosis-specific episodes in the show notes page, and you’ll find those over at fertilityfriday.com/483.

So have a look over there. There’s several endo episodes in our back catalog that I feel are really helpful in zoning into some of those challenges of not only diagnosis but treatment. With that said, I hope you have a wonderful week, weekend, whenever you’re tuning into the show. And of course, as always, until next time, be well and happy charting.