Histamine Intolerance and Your Menstrual Cycle (Episode 313)

Full Transcript: Episode 313

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 I’m so excited to share today’s episode with you today I’m welcoming back Nicole Jardim to the show I think this is her third time on the show she was actually one of my very first guests so for those of you who’ve recently found the podcast make sure to head over to the show notes page for today’s episode FertilityFriday.com / 3:13 and you’ll see our previous two episodes so

Nicole and I go way back but today we are celebrating the release of Nicole’s new book fix your period and let me tell you ladies it is an amazing book make sure to check it out we’re gonna have details in the show about it but in today’s episode we actually focused on a topic that I haven’t covered I think at all in the podcast and that is the topic of histamines and the menstrual cycle this is a topic that I’ve had so many questions about so

many of you have emailed me and suggested that I talk about histamines on the show. I kind of touched on it a little bit in the interview with Dr. Ben Lynch but in today’s episode we really do a deep dive on histamines how it relates to your genes and how it relates to your cycle and so I know that you’re gonna love this episode so without further ado let’s jump into today’s episode with the goal and I’m really excited to be here today with Nicole Jardim

once again Nicole if you haven’t heard of hers on how is also known as the Period Girl. She is a certified women’s health coach professional period fixer and her mission is to empower women to take back control of their hormonal health in a fun and sassy way she’s outspoken and opinionated about women’s health issues and believes women have the right to be educated about their bodies and her goal is to provide women with the tools they need to make radical and long-lasting changes so they can

live their best lives and in today’s episode we are going to be talking about Nicole’s new book fix your period and I’m super excited to jump into that today so Nicole thank you for coming back to the podcast

Nicole: Lisa thank you so much for having me I’m really excited to jump into all of the things we’re gonna talk about today

Lisa: Yeah well I’m always excited what we have to jam together but yes before we delve into the topics for the day I just wanted to first of all congratulate you on the release fix your period so it’s just an amazing book and I’m really excited to be adding it to my library and my recommendations well done

Nicole: It’s it’s such a wealth of information and it’s one of those books where every it’s you’ve heard this all these years and I’ve said this a million times but all of my clients and women are always saying okay women need to know this stuff and this is one of the books where you wish that you could give it to every fourteen-year-old girl like on earth just like read this life will be so much better if you just read this

Lisa: Now I would certainly say the same about your books I feel like they go hand in hand and truly that’s how I felt when your book came out as well it was exactly that if we could just get this into the hands of every single girl so yeah starting from young right

Nicole: Okay life will be so much easier if you understand the stuff now and you don’t have to wait until you’re 35 and like how these issues and then discover it right so yeah

Lisa: I know I mean it would it would have been as you know for you to a complete game changer for us of course plate well so share with us then just a little bit of background like what prompted you to write the book now and what was kind of your vision and mission with fix your period

Nicole: So for me my period problems were a defining problem or issue in my life and it really started as a teenager I struggled for years with extremely heavy and painful periods you know the kind we all know the kind the ones that make you throw up the ones that make you have to put a towel on your bed go to sleep because you know that you’re gonna leak through your pajamas so that went on for so many years and it really disrupted pretty much every aspect

of my life and my mom also had terrible periods and so she just assumed that this was what was normal and we never saw a doctor about it because again it was normal and eventually what started to happen was they would come later so one month I skipped a period not unless a little strange but I’ll take it it’s fine with me and that went on for a couple of years and I got to the point where I was getting a period maybe every three or

four months and what ended up happening was finally my mom said okay we should go to the doctor and I went and she immediately said that I should just be on the pill because that was going to be the solution to all of my period booze so I went on the pill and I was psyched about that because everyone else is on the pill and and immediately I noticed a change I noticed that my first of all my period came once a month like I was

told it would and it started getting lighter and the pain virtually disappeared within a couple of cycles and so I thought truly I had found the silver bullet and it was not until a number of years later that I started to have a lot of side effects because I was not on the pill not ovulating and seeing all of these different doctors who really couldn’t tell me anything they didn’t have answers there was a lot of like oh let’s wait and see what happens or try

this estrogen cream or we can try this cream on your face for the melasma that’s happening because your hormones are all out of whack or like we need to probably do a colonoscopy to figure out what’s going on with your gut health because I got was a disaster my hair was falling out I just went to every single doctor I could find and nobody really could give me much and then I saw an acupuncturist finally I gave up on conventional medicine and that was really a

turning point for me and I do really credit acupuncture with saving my ass basically what happened and that really for me was the catalyst for the work that I do and and fast forward many years I completely changed careers I mean I was the unlikeliest period girl I can’t you know I did film production I was not at all on the health track so this was a huge 180 for me and not only in my life and my lifestyle but also in my career and and

that is really reflective of how passionate I am about this work and like we just said getting this work or getting this information into the hands of girls everywhere and women of course and anyone who has a period because it’s really it’s fundamental life altering if you have a deep understanding of what is happening in your body on a regular basis so that you’re not just feeling around in the dark all the time

Lisa: Well and I mean one of the things that it struck me as I was reading your book it strikes me every time I’m working with clients right and it just strikes me just in general there is so much nuance and complexity with respect to the menstrual cycle and the hormones and the hormone cycle and all of the different aspects of what has to come together for us to have a healthy cycle but at the same time in order to address a lot of these issues it’s

a lot less complicated than you think and and it always starts with the foundational basic are you taking care of yourself are you eating enough or like what’s going on how are you moving how are you sleeping and so I really appreciated how approachable and the complexity is there but also it’s the solutions are not necessarily like they’re not always easy to do and say consistent with but they’re fairly straightforward in many cases

Nicole: They really are I completely agree with that and I agree also with the fact that life can get complicated sometimes and you might stray from some of the practices or maybe even a lot of them but you’ll always know how to get back on track and that’s really what I wanted to provide for everyone because and I know you know this too I just feel like like you said our bodies are not that complicated and they definitely didn’t just decide to randomly rebel against your reason

yeah right I know the feeling of my body’s just done this to me I don’t know what’s going on and like why it’s doing this and that really should not be the rhetoric it should be something along lines of well I know what’s been going on and I’m not surprised that this is how my body is responding but we’re so in the dark about how endocrine systems work and how hormones work in general that we’re pretty much constantly surprised by things that happen when we’re the

results of when things go wrong

Lisa: Well I mean I would love to actually kind of go through like chapter by chapter but obviously we have a limited time today’s show and what I really wanted to focus on as I was showing with you was the issue of histamines in the menstrual cycle and how it can affect symptoms that can cause but also how it can change cyclically depending on where you are in the cycle so I’m just kind of jumping in in the middle and diving right into that and it’s because

it’s something that I’ve never actually addressed on the podcast before as I was mentioning before so I think may be a good way to segue especially for the listeners who may not have like listen to tons and tons of episodes if this is one of their first episodes listening to the podcast maybe you could just take us through the menstrual cycle and let that kind of guide us into a conversation but histamines

Nicole: Yeah for sure so I think that what for anyone who hasn’t really heard or doesn’t have a general understanding you know for on a high-level overview of the cycle you know what you want to think about is that first half of your cycle is known as the follicular phase and the first day of your period is marks the first day of that follicular phase and your whole menstrual cycle and what is characterized or what this phase is characterized by is a rise in follicle stimulating hormone

hence follicular and that will stimulate the follicles on your ovaries and eventually one of those will it’ll lead to ovulation but what happens is FSH is rising and with that when the follicles are being stimulated they’re starting to produce estrogen and so estrogen is also on the rise and that first half of your cycle really is dominated by that rise in estrogen as it gets ready to peak at ovulation time when that egg is released and then in the second half of your cycle when you

are past ovulation what happens is progesterone takes over and so that is also being released by that little follicle where the egg came out of and so progesterone starts to be released and that will dominate the second half or the luteal phase of your cycle and these hormones have very distinct effects on your physical health your and your emotional health and so in that first half of your cycle you will definitely tend to notice that you have more energy and your sex drive tends to be

higher and you are your mental acuity is definite more on point I wish I was ovulating right now but it’s all good and you know and then in that second half of your cycle it’s not to say that you’re Dumber necessarily although sometimes I feel like I am right before my parents like what happens to me but you will just notice that you tend to feel more introverted and a little bit more introspective and things are things feel a little bit more stressful I always kind

of joke that your estrogen blinders on aren’t on anymore progesterone is a little bit of truth serum and you’re just like okay I am NOT taking this today you know that’s that is ten that tends to be what happens so ultimately when we’re looking at this overview of the cycle it’s really interesting to see how these hormones and just the general cyclical nature of our bodies impacts other systems this is not only the endocrine system and you know one of them is this concept of histamines

and histamine and tolerance and so basically for anyone who doesn’t know histamines are chemicals that are stored in immune cells in your body that are all over your body called mast cells and they’re involved in immune response regulation and anaphylactic regulation so like when you have an allergy to something in particular anyway so what happens is when these mast cells are triggered they release histamines and they are you know these histamines then trigger the responses in our body that we know well right so it could

be like itchy skin or hives or you get puffy around your eyes or you have like post nasal drip or swelling or you get watery eyes things like that right these are all basically caused by your immune system and it’s a protection mechanism so it makes sense again like your body is definitely not doing this for no apparent reason so I always feel like I should reiterate that right because we tend to think that right we tend to think oh yeah you know like we have

we just have this thing that happens every year right hay fever or whatever but your body is definitely responding to something and in many cases it responding to it because there is underlying inflammation happening which we can totally get into

Lisa: Well so one of the questions that came to mind is that so you know we all have these mast cells and you know we all have these the potential to have these types of immune responses but obviously every woman does not struggle with the same issue so have you found or do you know of why it is and I’m sure the answer is pretty complex but why it is that some women struggle so much with this issue of producing excess histamine and other women do not

Nicole: Oh yes girl we have a couple of problems and I think that there first of all there is I there is a condition that’s it’s sort of like a an add-on to the histamine intolerance issue and that is mast cell activation syndrome or MCAS and that has become quite common these days or it’s an increased in this population I feel mostly this again this is a population I work in work with but we’re seeing a rise in mast cell activation syndrome and it’s just really interesting

because I think it’s a combination of sort of the assault on our gut health our guts are just not where they used to be 50 100 and 200 years ago and we also are exposed to so many other things like mold is a big problem for a lot of people now I mean like mold exposure is becoming very prevalent it’s something that we’re really starting to see a lot of and then environmental toxins and chemicals that are just we’re just under a barrage of of those

and so I think that ultimately what we’re running into is sort of like a perfect storm where we’re having all of these external environmental factors that are affecting us and then also internally too so from a genetic perspective where you talk about you know certain people having these issues we have a gene called the DAO gene and it creates the DAO enzyme and there are genetic mutations that can happen on this DAO gene I’m pretty sure I have one I definitely have histamine issues and it’s

been something I’ve I’ve had to work on for a long time but what happens is if you have any kind of genetic mutation or genetic variability what will happen is you won’t make the DAO enzyme sufficiently so you might not have enough of it and interestingly the DAO enzyme lives in your gut and it’s responsible for breaking down histamine contained in the food that you eat so there’s also food that contains histamine too and for anyone who doesn’t know you know typically one of the biggest

sources of histamine would be fermented or cured foods so things like you know pickles and sauerkraut and anything that’s been really fermented and then aged cheeses sadly also I tend to be high in histamine and unfortunately bone broth those to which pains me but for whatever reason bone broth doesn’t affect me so they’re you know an alcohol in particular wine and beer again, like fermented and aged, so those tend to be the highest sources of histamine and so if your if your DAO enzyme isn’t working

the way it’s supposed to you might not break down histamine effectively in your body and so you have the situation where you’re eating these foods and you don’t realize it and then this the histamine sort of reaches the threshold and then you start to experience these symptoms it almost feels like allergies in a way and so what’s interesting about this DAO enzyme is that it’s actually naturally supported by progesterone so this is why women who are in a low progesterone State or high estrogen estrogen dominant

type state might experience more histamine issues than women who are regularly ovulating and producing sufficient progesterone

Lisa: Well that is very interesting so some women would be more susceptible to histamine issues in general because they have this DAO gene mutation and therefore not making enough of this DAO enzyme which actually helps our bodies to process histamine am I getting that correctly

Nicole: You are good that is essentially the gist of it I mean like you said earlier this is far more complicated mast cell activation syndrome it’s complicated too but generally speaking that’s that’s one reason why some of us might experience histamine problems whereas others might not and then other possible reasons because not everybody that has issues with histamine necessarily has the DAO gene so there could be other influences that have been reducing your you know gut health and making it harder than for your harder for your

body to make that enzyme

Lisa: So it sounds like it this is really helpful because I think I recently recorded an episode with Dr. Ben Lynch we did not talk about histamines but they are in his book which is really interesting the DAO genes specifically and one of the interesting things that I took from the interview with him is that so some people will have this genetic mutation and that’s you know it’ll correlate with their symptoms and what they’re experiencing but other people will not have the genetic mutation but their lifestyle

has triggered it anyways and they’ll still experience those symptoms so having the gene doesn’t mean that you will necessarily experience those symptoms

Nicole: I completely agree with that and that’s you know so important is a key tenet of what Dr. Ben Lynch talks about that you can have these variations on your certain genes and it doesn’t mean you’re gonna have the symptoms that are potentially associated with those gene variants it’s just that again your lifestyle and you know everything that happens in your life generally externally and you know internally what you’re eating and all of that is really going to either turn off or turn on those those genes

and start to contribute to the effects that you that are associated with those gene variants

Lisa: Well in so question for you how would someone know then if I mean I think that many people would have a sense of it anyways given the symptoms but how would someone know if this issue with histamines could be impacting them what are some of the most common symptoms

Nicole: I think one of the things that we should pay attention to is do you first of all do you have seasonal allergies I think that’s that’s a sure sign that something’s going on with your histamine or with your histamines and/or histamine production at least and your body’s ability to clear it and secondly do you respond to foods that might be high in histamines so like I had said before any fermented like sauerkraut or any of those kinds of fermented vegetables like pickles and then any kind

of fermented dairy possibly aged cheese even you know even eggplant and avocados and chocolate sadly so painful it’s like all the good stuff and then of course alcohol particularly wine and they’re so are you having any kind of these symptoms that I described earlier right so that do you start to notice any kind of flushing or sneezing or itching and hives and do you get headaches or migraines and do you notice any kind of emotional symptoms like anxiety or your heart races things like that after

you’ve eaten these foods or in close proximity to eating them that’s it that’s a sure sign that something’s up

Lisa: Okay well and then to take it a step further than because with if you are cycling naturally so you mentioned of course when you took us through the menstrual cycle that in the first phase of the cycle we’re producing significant estrogen and then second phase of the cycle we’re producing progesterone and you mentioned that progesterone supports the DAO enzyme and so could you take us through then from a cyclical perspective how this histamine issue could be affecting women based on their cycles

Nicole: Yeah I you know I talked about this a little bit because what I was noticing a couple of years ago is that multiple women are coming to me and saying something along the lines of I don’t feel good at all a ssin like I don’t believe if they were you when you say that you’re supposed to feel really good at ovulation and I was like wait what and so this started me down this whole path and I you know they were saying things like I feel

tired I get hives I feel anxious I feel like I’m just getting all of these PMS type symptoms so I even wrote something in my book saying do you feel pms E at ovulation here’s why it might be and I started to realize that it could very well be linked to a histamine intolerance or even possibly mast cell activation syndrome which like I said it’s sort of a more serious version it’s your mast cells are just being activated for multiple things not just you know certain

foods and it’s not just the histamine that’s playing a role in this it’s multiple areas and what I was noticing is that when these women who were working with me at a time would take some of these foods out and also start simultaneously working on cleaning up their gut health they would start to see a major improvement in their ovulation symptoms and so that’s what I was really surprised by this that this idea that estrogen actually triggers the release of histamine from mast cells in the

ovaries and the uterus and of course the more unopposed estrogen we have roaming around in our body the more histamines are going to be produced and unfortunately the more histamine we have the more estrogen is produced yeah they’re there in a whole cycle these too and this is why it’s so important for anyone who has or who is in the estrogen dominant state or is not ovulating consistently someone like Polly who has polycystic ovary syndrome for instance would really want to know and understand what’s going

on here and and how to start to deal with it and like I said this is why you know we might feel terrible at ovulation and then actually start to feel better in a second half of our cycle when progesterone starts to rise and then you might not feel so great again because there’s another estrogen bump towards the end of your the second half of your cycle and then of course progesterone crashes as well at the end of your cycle so it’s not helping to mitigate

the effects of the estrogen on your mast cells so ultimately you might not feel so great at the end of your cycle as well which tends to make sense because a lot of us feel that way it’s also a kind of an inflammatory time in your cycle anyway because progesterone is an anti inflammatory type hormone so it’s it’s exacerbated by those two hormones and what they’re doing those fluctuations at the end of your cycle so you might notice that as you approach ovulation you don’t feel

so great ovulation time when estrogen is high you don’t feel so great and then when progesterone kicks in things might start to improve so that’s one way to look at it

Lisa: Well and one of the questions that is coming to mind I mean so you’re approaching ovulation and you have this huge estrogen surge could you talk because there’s two potential things more than that probably but two potential things that could be happening obviously one is that you have this influx of estrogen estrogen like the peak of estrogen the most estrogen that you’re making over the course of your cycle but also in order your body is always processing and clearing those hormones from your body so that

your you know your liver would naturally be processing and getting rid of the estrogen detoxifying not so could you talk a little bit about that kind of double whammy like if maybe or let me try to pose this as a question is it possible that if someone did have like really adequate estrogen clearance that it might not bother them as much whereas on the flip side if someone wasn’t clearing their estrogen very well would that just kind of sustain this problem and make it just go

on and on

Nicole: Yeah I would imagine that that would be the case and that seems to be what I’ve observed in myself and in some of the women I’ve worked with for me I have multiple genetic variants on it’s on so many of my detoxification genes my quote unquote detox genes so MTHFR the DAO one for sure I’m almost positive I have like a multiple I have a double mutation on that and and so many others that are you know the CBS gene like multiple ones that are involved

in in liver detoxification are just your body’s detoxification pathways in general and so for me yes like I have really had to support my detoxification pathways my liver health I for a really long time to make sure that I don’t break out in hives because I have a tendency towards hives like that’s how a histamine issue might show up for me and so what I would say is that yes like if there are if your genetics are playing a role in this and you’re not you

know you don’t have your body is not detoxing estrogen properly it’s so it’s not processing it and then removing it properly that can certainly contribute to this issue as well so clearly it’s multifaceted right it so depends on what first of all what you’re eating and secondly what’s going on with your microbiome third what you’re exposed to environmentally so are you living in a moldy house that’s not gonna help of course and then forth like what’s happening with your liver detoxification pathways so there’s you know

there’s it’s multifaceted you know everyone kind of says to me oh you know what do I need to do to fix my period I’m like well do you have all day you know it’s not that complicated but it definitely does take multiple steps I think

Lisa: Well so for the woman who’s listening who’s like yes to everything you just said oh my gosh I’ve been taking notes and you’re describing me this is outrageous so where does she start because I mean on the one hand and so I said a similar thing in my interview with Dr. Ben Lynch on the one hand it’s sounds are very complicated and yeah I have the possibility of having multiple gene mutations that are then interacting with each other and having all of these various effects on

your ability to detoxify and your ability to process histamines and all of these things combining together it just feels so impossible almost like there’s nothing that you could do about it but when you actually break down the actual steps that you can start doing trying to formulate this into a concise question but where do we start one of the things that I hear a lot when it comes to histamines is kind of just like just cut out all of the histamine foods and so maybe just

start there talk to us a little bit about that and of course my question is like does that mean you can never have fermented foods again or like what does this mean

Nicole: Yeah I know right it does totally seem overwhelming and I always sort of liken it to it for me because obviously I’ve been doing this work for a long time and I know the ins and outs of my body and hormones in general and I know you do too but I kind of try to put myself in the place of what I’m like with my accountant trying to understand my taxes and bookkeeping and I know that that’s where most of it wouldn’t be first start working

I’m sorry but like you’re the only person on earth that’s going to compare accounting to your periods understand right because you’re trying to figure this out with every ounce of brainpower you’ve got and you’re like no can you just tell me what to do please that’s all I need you to do so I find that that’s the case with my clients they’re just like tell me what to do so anyway that’s just a silly joke and apparently it’s not that funny oh it’s totally funny anyway

the point of all of this too is to first enlighten everyone and let them understand that this is what is potentially going on and definitely not to overwhelm and I think the first place to start if you want to just see for sure if this is what it might be is to cut out those high histamine foods and see in your next cycle if you notice a difference and so I would say cutting out anything fermented like we were talking about before anything aged so I

would take the cheese out that’s a big one there is just a big one I know everyone’s like don’t take away my goat cheese but just for months and see what happens and then also alcohol which I know is a hard one too but wine and beer in particular and any of the other foods I mentioned so like avocados and chocolate are the are some of the big ones and you can find a list of high histamine foods online and and do a quick search and

see you know which ones that you’re gonna try but those are the top ones and I would also say too leftovers are tossed because they tend to be high and histamines too and I’m a big batch cooker and believe that we should be doing that so again like if you can’t do that that’s fine but these major ones I would consider so that’s the first step so try that and see if you start to feel better during that ovulatory time and in the time right when

your your period is coming on a couple of days before you get your period if those are the times that you’re noticing symptoms and so make a note I feel like we should be tracking this information right this is important so make sure that you’re you’re looking to see what symptoms might be improving right so is our your is any kind of itching or hives or sneezing after you eat watery eyes anxiety any of those symptoms that you experience continually improving so I would just have

everyone start there and then in my book and this will be a bit of a shameless plug but I’m really walking you through all of those systems that I was just talking about right because at the end of the day our bodies are an entire cohesive ongoing project and they are you know that’s with all of these systems in your body working together nothing is separate at all and if you are taking the stress off of your gut off of your microbiome off of your gut

lining there you know you’re not gonna be as inflamed as you would be if you just continue to eat these foods that are potentially triggering this response from these immune cells the mast cells every single time you eat and so when you take when you start to put out the fire suddenly your body’s like oh okay we don’t have to be all over this anymore we can actually get back to doing the things we are supposed to be doing like focusing on liver detoxification and getting

these cutting chemicals and things like that there are potentially harmful to the body out of the system and so that’s where resources are now diverted or are no longer diverted and you will start to feel better overall so I really encourage everyone to start there that’s a basic step

Lisa: Well I think that’s such great information and when you’re charting your cycles which of course is central to who everything I thought about but when you’re charting your cycles and you you have the opportunity to then make do these types of experiments and take something out for the whole cycle but also pay close attention to the symptoms specifically that you were looking at shifting you get your answer pretty quick if that could have been what was causing it or what was contributing to it and so

I mean it’s also related so that’s the first step and then you figure it out okay this is the problem and I know one of the things that you mentioned that can contribute to it and potentially make it more likely is gut issues and one of the things that you said in your book it’s not like a profound quote or anything but it’s just you said the book two most common ways that the gut malfunctions are gut dysbiosis and leaky gut and then he went on

to describe those and so I’d love to just kind of shift a little bit into gut health because it’s such a huge issue for so many women and I think many women underestimate the really specific connection between gut health and cycle issues and so maybe take us through that like what is gut dysbiosis what is leaky gut and how can that how can having G issues also play into issues with histamine and I know we could have had a whole podcast about gut issues but let’s

just get into it to the extent we can

Nicole: Yeah totally I mean I feel like we you know we’re in a bit of an epidemic when it comes to the the state of our guts and we are at the point where I think that everyone needs to be paying attention to what is happening with their digestion their GI tract and even if you don’t have digestive issues it does not mean that you don’t actually have digestive issues basically it’s so it’s really important for us to remember that you know something like celiac disease for

instance that doesn’t you don’t necessarily or you won’t necessarily have GI problems you know the the usual ones like diarrhea or constipation or IBS like symptoms or abdominal pain things like that you might have a missing period and that might be because the villi the little finger like projections on your gut lining are so damaged that you’re they’re not absorbing nutrients anymore because of this basically this response to gluten and so I think that we have to understand this and we have to know this information

as far as I’m concerned to really start to try and figure out what route we have to take but coming back to your gut health it’s just so critical and you know we’ve got the like I said gut dysbiosis and leaky gut and I feel like that’s vastly oversimplified when talking about the gut but I wanted to make this as easy as possible for people to understand and so when we’re talking about those gut dysbiosis this is basically an unhealthy gut microbiome and it shows up

in different ways and then we have the leaky gut side of things and this is when your gut lining becomes too permeable and so I think that it’s important for everyone to understand that your gut lining is actually meant to be a little bit leaky people are like wait what and it actually is and the reason for that is because you want nutrients the pasture you just don’t want the undesirables to pass through I kind of joke that our bodies are like a tube within a

tube because whatever you put in your mouth goes all the way down through that tube and it exits on the other end and it never is in contact with anything that’s outside of that tube and you’re in the rest of your body which is fascinating inside but outside exactly right I know it’s the outside inside it totally is and so we I think that when we think about the gut we have to remember that it’s it’s kind of delicate like it will it’s gonna get things

done but over many years of eating foods that are you know not that just do not work for us we’re going to start to see problems and that started for me at a really young age I am clearly a delicate flower and everyone else I knew around me was just fine but as a teenager I started having acid reflux and like major abdominal issues and I just know again it’s like I couldn’t even get help with my period much less the stomach issues that I was

having and I was I was just plagued by chronic constant and all of these issues and you know and again of course the hormonal health issues pretty much one hand-in-hand with that and surprise so my point with all saying all of this is that when your bacteria or your gut bacteria become imbalanced we will start to see big issues and I think one of those is you know with the quote-unquote estrobolome and that is basically the part of your gut or it’s that there are certain

species in your gut bacteria or that make up your gut bacteria known as this estrobolome and they will regulate what the whether you are estrogen dominant or even estrogen deficient to a degree which i think is so fascinating and so they help to break down estrogen when it comes into your intestines and so this bacteria in the estrobolome how they do this is they they produce an enzyme called beta glucuronidase and this has the ability to convert estrogen back to an activated state so say we

have estrogens it’s all used up by your body it’s now coming through the liver the liver is packaging it up nicely and again your liver of course needs nutrients to support that process and it’s sending it to the digestive tract where it’s got this final processing and then it’s basically going to be flushed down the toilet literally and what happens is when there is an imbalance and again I’m simplifying this but when there’s an imbalance in that estrobolome bacteria the the estrogen can be reconverted so

there’s this higher level of beta glucuronidase and what happens is we end up with the beta glucuronidase producing bacteria converting more of the estrogen back into it’s it’s active state and so then it can go right through that leaky gut and back into your bloodstream and cause further exacerbate the estrogen situation which will further exacerbate the histamine problem so it’s it’s all really connected and like I said it’s kind of a complicated process of course but generally speaking we can all understand that livers supposed to

break down estrogen your gut is supposed to do a little bit more of that and then it’s supposed to be excreted and if there are imbalances along the way or there roadblocks then what will run into you is a recirculation of estrogen and that of course is not good so from kind of a the most basic perspective way of looking at it is that if if things are not balanced if there’s dysbiosis if there’s leaky gut if there’s these issues these GI issues then it is

fully possible that you could your body’s trying to get the estrogen out and trying to remove it but it’s just being recirculated so it’s just kind of like the the friend that wouldn’t leave and you’re trying to get them out of the house but they just keep coming back and I keep triggering the problems sharing the problems that’s hilarious yes that’s exactly what it’s like exactly the houseguest that will not leave I know I’ve never had a situation like that houseguest that is estrogen I have

I mean it’s crazy and you know what’s even worse for us and this is you know something that I found just fascinating over the last couple of years learning about this and especially doing more research for the book is the you know my understanding or my I would say my limited understanding of something called lipopolysaccharides, which are LPS, for short so don’t don’t worry you don’t need to pronounce that word but basically they are potent toxins that are released from gram-negative bacteria those are just disease-causing

bacteria basically the bad ones and you know one of those for instance would be something like e.coli and if got again the dysbiosis is happening and our gut is populated by these pathogenic bacteria an opportunistic bacteria that are not going to be great for your overall health what will happen is the LPS will be released as these bacteria die and you tend to have higher levels of LPS with gut dysbiosis and what I found fascinating is that this can cause an inflammatory response throughout your body

in fact it can impact your corpus luteum it can actually cause inflammation in the ovary particularly the corpus luteum where that follicle came from which produces progesterone and it can ultimately disrupt progesterone further exacerbating this estrogen progesterone seesaw situation that many of us find ourselves in and so this can cause a lot of the problems that are associated with you know lowered progesterone like a luteal phase defect or short cycles or PMS heavy periods and breast pain and things like that so it’s fascinating to me

that all of this is connected and it sounds very complicated but really if you’re following just the basic foundational steps that I’ve outlined in the fix your period book then you will start to see a noticeable difference

Lisa: Well one of the other things that you mentioned so within that under the umbrella of gut related issues was that there is a specific link between gut related problems and chronic pelvic pain did you want to share with us like why those things are linked

Nicole: Oh my gosh yes okay so I find this all so fascinating because I was thinking about this when a client came to me a couple of years ago and she she had terrible gut health issues and I suspected she had endometriosis because of the symptoms that she was experiencing and again for anyone who has doesn’t really know what endometriosis is or is not familiar with the symptoms one of the main symptoms might one might experience is you know either chronic pelvic pain or just severe pelvic

pain during your cycle so really bad period cramps in the first couple of days of your period and then also like debilitating to the point where you’re on the bathroom floor and you’re like okay I’m not going to work there’s no way and or heavy very heavy or yeah very heavy menstrual flow in many cases but one of the main signs of endo also is bowel and urinary disorders and she also had vulvodynia so I was like okay something’s going on here and so that’s you

know I did some research and I discovered that interestingly histamines back with the histamines again they actually seem to play a role in endometriosis so mast cells are actually present in high quantities in endometriosis and in those endometriosis tissue for women who have endometriosis versus women who do not and so there is definitely a correlation between this abnormal immune response that endometriosis is associated with and higher than again like gut dysbiosis and histamine intolerance and what is all happening in that process so it really is

I think important for us if someone has endometriosis to be focused on healing their gut and and really working with someone I think personally to address any kind of gut dysbiosis or if there are parasites and leaky gut as well with working with the specialists who can help you heal that because that will certainly help improve in most cases your endometriosis symptoms or your pelvic pain in general like I said involve vulvodynia or interstitial cystitis also known as painful bladder syndrome well it’s so interesting because

throughout the years I’ve noticed that a lot of women that do suffer from the endometriosis and painful pelvic pain and chronic pelvic pain unexplained pelvic pain also have digestive issues and it’s quite consistent quite common they just seem to go hand in hand and within my client work it’s something that you always always see so again it always sounds so complicated and I’m thinking of that saying all illness starts in the gut right and it’s so and when you’re a research head and you go and

look at all of these connections and really have those explanations for what is going on on a really granular level it can feel again really overwhelming to the person who’s still stuck on like lipopolysaccharide and it’s like it lost you yes

Lisa: But you know you know we talk about all kinds of stuff on the podcast so most of my listeners are also you know many of my listeners are also I thought you know what I mean like are totally fine with it but I’m just making the point that it always sounds so complicated when we break it down to that level but so similarly when we were talking about histamines and we you shared with us the first step that you can take to start improving things and

start to get some answers around what’s happening for gut health I mean it’s a huge topic obviously and there’s no one answer that’s gonna fix anything for the listeners it’s like within the next ten minutes but what would be for someone who is resonating with a lot of these gut issues and a lot of these symptoms what would be the first step to starting to address gut problems

Nicole: You know I would say that it’s something that I’ve spoken about for years with the clients I’ve worked with and what I have put in the book and if you go to the gut health section of the book so I think that’s week three if I recall correctly that’s really what I meant for everyone I talked about this idea of eliminating certain foods and then reintroducing them at a certain time later usually 28 days to see whether those foods are potentially impacting your gut health and

overall the and the inflammation in your body right so are they triggering an inflammatory response that is then you know having this trickle-down effect on your microbiome and your gut lining which by the way it’s technically only one cell thick there’s a mucus layer and then there’s this one cells thick layer it’s unbelievable that you know our bodies are incredible so remember that – that your body has an incredible capacity to heal if you take away the offending factors like certain foods and so with that

said you know I recommend that you know everyone try this and again it requires a little bit more research than just what I’ll be able to say here but I’ve outlined it in the book and I also have it in my programs too but essentially what you’re trying to do is eliminate the things that are stoking the fire and those include you know the main things like dairy for instance kind of gluten-containing grains sugar of course any kind of industrial seed oils and by that I

mean canola oil any kind of genetically modified oil seed oils generally like peanut oil anything really that’s cooked in a restaurant and I know this is not easier for the not necessarily for the faint of heart but I think ultimately we have to decide you know what we’re willing to live with and what we’re willing to put up with and for most of the women who come to me and I imagine for you too they are at the point where they’re like okay I’m willing to

do whatever it takes because this is legitimately disrupting my life and it’s preventing me from living I mean literally for lack of a better term my best life

Lisa: Yeah right digestive issues I’ll do that because they’re extremely disruptive to living your best life they are right running your either like running to the bathroom or you’re either not able to go to the bathroom for days and days on end either and there’s others all in between there but neither of those are appealing and if you have the the resources and the tools to address that I mean wouldn’t you well and so I have kind of like a tricky question that you’ve probably faced as

well so I’ve had a number of clients who they’re all gung-ho and they are willing to do everything and then they do they find a practitioner who says that they specialize in gut health and they get all the testing done and they cut out everything that they’ve ever loved eat and then they go through through it and maybe they see improvements for a bit but then they get back slides and so I have had a number of clients who have sought out specific support for got

issues who have not reached a resolution in kind of an acceptable period of time so have you seen that as well and then what would you what would you want to say to that listener who’s like yeah yeah yeah I’ve done so much already but I still haven’t seen those improvements

Nicole: Yeah I you know I agree with you and I have definitely had that that kind of situation arise as well for the most part of people do feel significantly better and they’re able to resolve things and so what I think is that there’s got to be some kind of stealth issue something flying under the that is not being caught as yet and I one of my friends Dr. Jesse Petros she actually does a lot of work with with Lyme, with Epstein-Barr, with mold and mycotoxins and

also with parasites and I am just fascinated by that work which I am I wish I knew more about it but I feel like what needs to happen and this is what I’ve been able to do with those clients who have struggled is refer them to someone like her because something clearly like we’re missing something that’s that to me is what’s going on so usually one of those issues whether it’s an underlying infection of some kind like a chronic infection like Lyme disease or Epstein-Barr that’s

that’s causing some issue downstream or its exposure to molds that we don’t even realize and we might have you know mold issues and we need to have mold testing done then to me or parasites which are traditionally very hard to find in even in some of the good testing that we might recommend then you know really it’s finding a specialist who is going to be able to look into that I find more and more what I’m learning about is that parasites tend to be one of

these these underlying issues when you are getting better and you feel like you’re about 75 to 80 percent and things have drastically improved for sure but you’re not quite there you cannot get to that hundred percent and so I always say that you should find and find and work with a specialist who has experience with testing for parasites and treating them

Lisa: Well about such important advice because I know you can just for all the women who I’ve worked with who have kind of found themselves in a similar situation I mean many women do find that solution and feel better and conceive and you know achieve everything that they wanted to but there are a handful who don’t and are left several thousand dollars poorer with no answers I agree

Nicole: And it’s really challenging sometimes especially if you’ve had symptoms or a certain condition for really long period of time sometimes years on end and you will try pretty much anything or you have tried everything and you’ve spent thousands on doctors and testing and supplements and it’s something a little bit more on that like I said it’s something that’s flying under the radar that really isn’t a condition or like a factor that most doctors might be considering just because it’s again something that’s not widely acceptable something

like Lyme disease for instance even something like your thyroid if you don’t get the proper testing for thyroid you might not know that maybe it’s your thyroid that’s causing your constipation or your acid reflux because when you think about your thyroid it’s like when it doesn’t work properly everything slows down and so of course your stomach is your stomach acid is affected your peristalsis is affected so you’re not able to your digestive function just doesn’t work the way you would like it to so there’s you

know there are multiple factors that are would contribute to your digestive health and I but I hear you it’s it’s definitely an ongoing challenge in our current medical paradigm because we don’t really have the right solution for everyone because you basically have to spend a humongous amount of money in order to get the right testing and even then it might turn up it might turn up you might turn up empty-handed

Lisa: Well I mean I could obviously keep asking you questions for the rest of the week but we are gonna have to wrap up at some point I really want to thank you though for taking us through and taking us through histamines and gut health and just really sharing just such valuable and important information it’s really the tip of the iceberg as far as your book fixed your period is concerned and so just given everything that we’ve spoken about today what is one thing that you’d want

to leave the listeners with

Nicole: I would really just want to say to women that there is hope and there are answers and it’s just a matter of starting to do a little bit of research on your own to figure out you know what could be going on with you because your body is not some mysterious overcomplicated thing that you just have to deal with it actually is contrary to what I’ve said today it’s quite simple in how you know and how it works and what you can do to start to

feel better in a pretty short period of time

Lisa: Well in some cases because it’s so complex the actual action steps in comparison to the complexity of the problem don’t really align up and I find that a lot of women are looking for a pill they want to supplement they want to know like what is a supplement I can do to you know get rid of my histamine problem or whatever it is yeah and and so it seems almost too simple to make certain lifestyle modifications it seems like that couldn’t possibly shift everything for me

Nicole: And it does yes I agree completely I mean there are a few supplements people can take and I don’t know if we shouldn’t even go down that road but I feel like there there are things that people can do to help with the symptoms in a moment and that I have that run on my blog as well by the way just so someone can find that on my website you can find a couple of different options that I recommend when I’m talking about histamine intolerance in

your period

Lisa: Well we’ll be sure to link that in the show notes page and so thank you so much Nicole can you let us know where we can where the listeners can go to get your book and find out more information about you

Nicole: Yes of course thank you you can go to FixYourPeriod.com I made it easy for people and if you go there you can click on any of the options to purchase Amazon Barnes & Noble all of those good ones and then come back to that page and I have a series of bonuses available for anyone who pre-orders a book which would be incredible I would be immensely grateful for that I’m giving away multiple things my Fix Your Period cleanse I have a huge period tool kit with

all of these different bonuses in them all of these handouts that are gonna help you address a lot of the issues that I’ve been talking about today and also the two I have the chance to win a spot in my Fix Your Period 12-week a live program so yeah lots of different ways to to get connected with me and then also you can find me and my blog on NicoleJardim.com

Lisa: Awesome I’ll be sure to link all of those goodies in the show notes page and just you know what wanting to thank you once again for coming on the show it’s always fun to chat with you and just this conversation was so informative that I’m really excited to share with the audience

Nicole: Thanks Lisa so much I really am immensely grateful for your support and for having me on the podcast

Lisa: Again 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 slash 3:13 I hope that you enjoy that my interview with Nicole today such a treat having her back on the show once again and I just loved having the opportunity to pick her brain about these topics particularly histamines as I mentioned at the top of the episode because this is the first time I’ve really dived deeply into it on

the show and how it can affect the menstrual cycle so this information and so much more is in her book Fix Your Period so definitely head over to FixYourPeriod.com and grab a copy it is the book honestly that we all wanted when we were teenagers it just warms my heart to see so many amazing resources coming out to really support us on our journeys this is information that should just be taught it should be in our mainstream school systems and all that but it’s not so

I suppose one of the questions we could be asking is why it’s not I think it’s intentionally excluded but that’s just me but if you look at the history if you look at the history of medical science if you look at the history of medicine if you look at the history of the world in general you’ll see this trend of really suppressing the feminine so whether that was you know the Salem witch trials and the literal burning and executing of healers individuals particularly women who were

involved in the healing arts whether you look at medical science and the historical practice of of studying only male animals and males in general and not even studying female animals or the female body however basing theories and practices on the male body only there is a history of this a history of suppressing the feminine so I don’t necessarily think it’s an accident that these important topics are excluded our main stream system and that is why it’s even more important for us to have access to this

amazing information when I look back at what information I had access to about 20 years ago what I started on this journey myself I mean compared to the information that you have access to now it’s incredible even when I started this podcast there were only a handful of fertility podcast I remember seeing just a couple and now there are hundreds if not thousands I don’t even know how many there are and in terms of resources there was a few books of course there have always been

amazing books but now there are just so many resources available to you so definitely head over to fix your period com grab a copy of Nicole’s book you will love having this book as an addition to your repertoire of books on period health and so with that said I want to thank you for spending some time with us today for tuning into the show I appreciate all of you for spreading the word about fertility awareness and fertility Friday for sharing podcast with your friends I mean

really and truly the growth of the podcast over the years is because of you it’s because you keep sharing it and talking about it and that helps so many women to find it so let’s continue to spread the word and share you’ll find the show notes page for today’s episode over at FertilityFriday.com slash 3:13 so if you have a friend who you know would really benefit from hearing this information today make sure to share it with her and of course I hope you have an amazing

week weekend whenever you listen to the show and as always until next time be well and happy charting you