Elevate Your Women’s Health Practice With These 2 Specializations (Episode 562)

Full Transcript: Episode 562

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: This is the Fertility Friday Podcast, episode number 562.

If you’re a women’s health professional and you’re looking to elevate your practice this year, today’s episode is for you. I’m going to share two key areas of specialization that are absolutely essential to take your practice to the next level. So without further ado, let’s go ahead and jump in.

I won’t keep you in suspense. The two areas that we are going to be talking about today — two areas of specialization — are advanced chart interpretation and fertility. So we’re going to dive into why these two areas are key to your women’s health practice and the opportunity that you’re missing out on if you haven’t yet specialized in these two areas.

Now, a lot of people dabble and think that it’s specialization. So if you’re working in women’s health, you likely have some understanding of these areas. And you may have even had enough of an understanding to kind of work with your own cycle and have your own personal experience, whether it be with charting or with fertility. But when you’re working with clients, one of the things I always say is that most of your clients will have cycles or situations — especially pertaining to fertility — that look nothing like yours, nothing like what you went through. And in order to be prepared to support any client that comes to you with a variety of different challenges, this is where the specialization comes in. This is why it’s really key to go beyond our personal experience and to really specialize and receive that education and certification in those areas so that we can better serve our clients. I think that if you’re working from a place of, well, I charted my own cycles and so I can help others, you’re really missing it. It’s kind of like you just don’t know what you don’t know. So you’re really missing out on an opportunity to help your clients who are going to come to you with situations that you’ve never even seen before — you didn’t even know could happen.

So let’s dive into the first area of specialization, which is advanced chart interpretation. One of the things I think that is really key to just this piece of it is that fertility awareness is more than just tracking your cycles, knowing when your period is going to come, and being able to tell when you have mucus. There’s a much deeper potential when it comes to fertility awareness charting — the potential to be able to not only just identify which days are fertile or not and time sex correctly, which is also very important and which we’ll get to in a little bit, but to be able to use the menstrual cycle as a vital sign, to be able to look at the cycle and to identify cycle abnormalities and to be able to match those to certain issues that may be happening with your client so that you can gain a greater insight into their overall hormone profile before you’ve even run any labs. And this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the potential of what you can do when you have your clients charting their cycles in a standardized way.

So there’s kind of what we think of as cycle charting, which is just like tracking your period and stuff like that. And obviously there’s a lot of value even to just doing that. But as a women’s health professional, you can really take that to the next level. There’s a whole other level of cycle charting when we get into detailed, systematized, standardized charting, where we can not only just understand where you are in your cycle, but we can really understand what’s happening hormonally and get that snapshot and picture before you’ve even run any labs. So that’s something to really think about. And if that’s not something that you’ve specifically trained in and learned in a more standardized setting, then it is an area of missed opportunity with your clients. It goes far deeper than just looking at the cycle and thinking that you kind of know what’s going on, to really having a systematized approach to be able to assess what’s happening.

One of the things with advanced chart interpretation is that, like I mentioned, it’s not just simply looking at a cycle by itself. I think this is a common misconception — that when you understand advanced chart interpretation, you’re just going to look at the cycle, your client is going to give you their chart, and you’re just going to look at it and it’s going to be like a crystal ball and you’re just going to know everything. This is not how it works. There is a lot that we can gain from an individual chart within context when we have a system for how we’re gathering information about our clients and knowing how it relates to what we’re seeing in the chart. But if your client is charting in her own way, there are hundreds of apps now. There are so many different ways to chart. So when your client comes to you with their chart, it could look like 50 different ways. And also their interpretation of what’s happening — you could have five different clients who saw the same type of cervical fluid, for example, and have it show up in five different ways on the various charts that people use.

So when you’re working with the menstrual cycle in a specific way and you’re wanting to master advanced chart interpretation, it’s not just about interpreting whatever your client just gave you without any context or teaching. We want to actually teach our clients — welcome them into our standardized way of charting so that we can interpret accurately what they’re showing us. And this is a process that takes place over a few cycles, where we have to teach our clients: okay, this is how we’re charting, these are the types of mucus, this is how we track them. And then once they start tracking, we just clarify with them as part of that learning process. Okay, so you marked this down — tell me a little bit about what you saw that day. Maybe send me a picture so that we’re all on the same page. We’re all speaking the same language. We’ve got a standardized system so that now it’s not just guessing — we’re not in the dark. We can actually identify. Okay, so now that you’ve got the hang of this, I can see that what you’re noting is this, and now I can have a much better idea of what’s really going on.

So that’s the first step to advanced chart interpretation. But again, that’s kind of the tip of the iceberg. The second step — now that we have it standardized and you have your clients charting in a certain way — is to then use the cycle as a tool. Once your client starts implementing certain changes, once they start to make different changes and alterations to their lifestyle habits or their dietary patterns or whatever the case, we can now look at what is happening in their cycle and compare it to how their cycle started off. And that can be a game changer. I like to think that this is where the true science comes in. Because we may have preconceived notions of what’s going to work for our PCOS clients or what’s going to work for our HA clients or what’s going to work for our endometriosis clients. And when you use the cycle in this way, you get to see with your own eyes — and so does your client — in real time, what is actually working.

And what’s important about this is that it allows you to have a much more individualized and specialized approach with each of your clients. It prevents you from getting into this mindset that every single client is the same and all I need is this one protocol and then I’m just going to put everyone through it and everyone’s going to respond the same way. It doesn’t work like that. Anyone who has worked with actual human beings for a period of time will attest to the fact that everybody doesn’t respond the same way to everything. You can have one client who you create a protocol for and they respond beautifully, very promptly — their cycles change almost overnight. PCOS is a great example of this, where I’ve had clients who implement certain changes and quite literally the next cycle their cycles are in normal parameters. But I’ve also had other PCOS clients who implement similar changes and they don’t see this immediate cycle shortening. It takes a little bit longer for them, potentially because they have other confounding factors, other sources of inflammation, other health constraints.

So one of the things about advanced chart interpretation and using the cycle in a very specialized way is that it allows you to tailor your approach to your client. It allows you to see what’s working in real time and it allows you to get a lot of information about what’s happening hormonally without having to rely primarily on tests. So if you don’t have the cycle, you’re kind of blind until you get all of these tests as a baseline and then you can start kind of understanding what’s going on. But with the menstrual cycle, you have all of this information at your fingertips, and the testing can become much more nuanced and specialized. Instead of having to test for everything to get a picture at all, you already have a picture. So you can be very specific about what tests you are ordering and when you’re ordering them. In the long run, it can save your clients lots of money because the testing can become more targeted.

So if this is not something that you’re implementing in your practice, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity — not only to support your clients, but to differentiate yourself in the market. The landscape has changed very dramatically since I first started my online presence. There’s a lot more noise in the space. When I started this podcast in 2014, there were probably like five fertility podcasts. And now there’s probably over 500. And so one of the ways to highlight your skills and to attract the right clients is to specialize. What makes you different than all the other practitioners supporting women with their health and hormones? Having these types of specialized tools really sets you apart.

Many health professionals have a general understanding of women’s health and hormones, but how many can really dial in to the menstrual cycle in this way and support their clients to gain a deeper understanding of the connection between what’s happening hormonally and health-wise in their cycle in real time? Trust me when I say this is not a skill that most practitioners have. And so if this is not something that you’re able to offer to your clients, you are missing out on an incredible opportunity.

Also, when you’re in the women’s health space, more and more women are becoming familiar with their cycles and their hormones. There’s so much money going into the femtech industry. So many of your clients are using wearables now, whether it be an Oura Ring or something to track their temperatures or their sleep patterns. The space is really exploding. But more and more women are becoming aware of their menstrual cycles, so you’re going to get more of these kinds of questions. And having a specialization in this area not only sets you apart in the industry, but it also gives you the confidence to be able to answer these questions.

You’ve probably, if you’re a women’s health provider and you’re listening to this episode today, you’ve probably already started to get some of these questions — or seen certain things on charts that you just don’t know what to make of. You don’t have the ability to actually respond because you don’t know the answers, or you haven’t seen that particular thing on a cycle before, or you just don’t have the training to know what it even means. And so the more you find yourselves in those situations, the more it’s just evident that it’s time to specialize.

One other thing about advanced chart interpretation is that it does allow you to go far beyond what your clients can know and understand through tech alone. Tech has to be programmed. It has limitations. Often period tracker tech specifically — the tech that promises it’s going to predict your period — will flat out tell you that it works best for women whose cycles fall within a certain range. If you have a client whose cycles are irregular or who’s struggling with some hormone imbalances, they may still benefit from those tech options, but there are often limitations to what those tools can do. There’s always going to be a place for the actual knowledge of advanced chart interpretation, especially when we’re taking it to that next level of assessment and using it in a diagnostic way.

So now that I’ve kind of gone through the first area of specialization, I want to talk about the second area, which is fertility. What I’ve found over the last several years of running the FAM program is that many of our practitioners are joining because they want to specialize in the field of fertility. When we look at some of the stats around fertility, one in six couples is estimated to struggle with fertility issues — that’s 15%. That’s a lot of people. And regardless of which women’s health field you work in, if you work with enough women, these topics are going to come up. And as a clinician, if you don’t have a specialization or background in fertility, it’s really going to start taking hits at your confidence when your clients are coming to you asking questions, or you just feel like there’s this missed opportunity — I have nothing to offer you because I don’t have this area of specialization in my wheelhouse.

So there are two aspects of this. One, of course, is the fertility awareness piece. If you are trained and have a certification in teaching fertility awareness, that allows you to support conception clients to have a much more nuanced understanding of correct timing. One piece is simply timing. We have to understand how the cycle works and we have to know how to identify the best days for sex when you’re trying to conceive, even in situations that are outside of the normal. In some ways, it’s easy to tell your clients when to time sex correctly if their mucus patterns are normal and their cycles are regular. But how do you support clients who have limited mucus or cycles where they’re not seeing any? You can still use fertility awareness techniques to show clients how to time sex correctly even when their mucus patterns or temperature patterns are erratic. There are still ways to do that.

And I have an episode coming up — actually the next episode — where I go into this question. A practitioner recently asked whether fertility awareness improves the chances of conception even without any other changes — just timing alone. And the short answer is yes, it does. Although timing isn’t the only factor, without timing you have nothing. That’s why fertility awareness works as birth control. So although there’s often more to the fertility story, especially in couples who’ve been trying for a significant amount of time, without timing you have nothing.

Now, for the fertility awareness piece — if you’re a regular listener to the podcast or if you yourself have charted your cycles using fertility awareness for a long time, what can happen is that we can start to forget that no one else knows this stuff. Although the fertility awareness world is getting bigger, we still haven’t hit critical mass. Your average person does not know anything about charting. Your average friend who is trying to conceive might know about ovulation strips. But in terms of the deep dive into how the cycle works, how the mucus plays into this, the temperature shifts, and even the fact that there’s a six-day window for conception that ends on ovulation day and you can identify what that is by tracking these signs — this is not standard knowledge. So don’t take for granted that your clients know this stuff.

When we look at more stats, this is something I’ve talked about on the podcast quite a bit — male sperm counts have declined more than 70% over the past two generations. This trend seems to be continuing in a downward direction. We know that the quality of food has significantly changed, we’re eating a significantly higher percentage of processed food, soil nutrients have been depleted, and there’s a huge influx of chemicals — I think it’s between 5,000 and 8,000 new chemicals a day, some of which mimic the effects of estrogen. So we do have these bigger issues as well.

When I talk about specializing in fertility, it’s marrying that base of fertility awareness knowledge — giving clients practical strategies for optimizing their chances of conception, understanding how the body works, when to time things, and what it all means — with the nutritional and lifestyle strategies to really support egg and sperm quality. Instead of the typical advice, which is like, just have sex every other day or just have more sex — that is not evidence-based. In Real Food for Fertility, in the conception chapter, I shared a research study that showed there’s about a 3% chance of getting pregnant if you have sex on just a random day of the cycle, compared to up to 30% chance of conception if you have sex on the peak day or ovulation day or the day closest to ovulation.

In addition to the fertility awareness piece, what about supporting clients to optimize their fertility nutritionally? How do we use the menstrual cycle as a diagnostic to identify areas of opportunity? How do we identify hormone imbalances, issues with progesterone production? There’s a huge issue with this concept of unexplained infertility, where couples are not necessarily being investigated in a holistic or functional way, where no one’s looking at the menstrual cycle. In a world where no one is looking at the menstrual cycle, and you can have clients who have gone to multiple providers and not one of them has asked them anything about what’s going on with their periods — this is an area where if you’re not specialized, it’s a huge missed opportunity.

One of the reasons I have such a strong emphasis on supporting sperm quality and getting that foundational nutritional and lifestyle piece there for both parties is because when you are tracking your clients’ cycles, and timing is confirmed, and you’re still seeing them have sex in the fertile window cycle after cycle with no pregnancy — it makes you question the very nature of reality. Because based on everything you were taught, the pregnancy should be happening. So this is why the charting piece is so essential. It really clarifies that timing is essential, but it’s not everything. There’s more to the story.

One of the last aspects of these two areas of specialization that I want to highlight is cycle charting as a motivational tool with clients. When I’m working with a client who didn’t magically respond in cycle one to all of the things I recommended, how can I encourage them to stick with it for the longer term? Cycle charting is an incredible motivational tool because it’s a process of teaching a standardized way of doing it and then monitoring how the cycle responds. This may be the first time in your client’s life where they realize that they have the power to improve their hormones and their cycle in very tangible ways.

Although it’s not likely that you’re going to go from 55-day cycles with all kinds of mucus abnormalities to just this perfect cycle in one cycle, what happens is when you’re actually addressing the issues contributing to the hormone imbalance, you start to see the shift. You might see the cycle go from 52 days to 42 days. You might see a difference in the luteal phase. You might see a change in the cervical mucus patterns. You might see an earlier ovulation. And although it’s not like the first cycle where you’re going to see the whole change — because the story has to unfold — as your client sees those incremental shifts, it becomes a lot less about you being this magical expert who just tells them what to do. It goes from that to a totally different way of working with clients, where they can actually see whether or not the menstrual cycle is shifting. And it can be incredibly empowering to actually see those results.

So to recap: the two main areas of specialization that I feel are essential when you’re working in women’s health are advanced chart interpretation and fertility. And of course, this is the reason that I created the FAM program — our Fertility Awareness Mastery Mentorship. After decades of working with clients, the most common question I was being asked in my emails and DMs was, “I work with women, I want to be able to do this. Can you teach me how to teach other women fertility awareness? How do I add this to my practice?” This program really came out of that need. And although there are a variety of fertility awareness training programs, their primary focus is to teach you to teach fertility awareness — not to deepen your knowledge of advanced chart interpretation strategies or the concept of using the menstrual cycle as a vital sign, and providing you with the specific tools and protocols to manage a variety of different situations.

We have a really solid curriculum, a solid list of protocols for a variety of different situations for our practitioners — everything that we talked about today in terms of mastering advanced chart interpretation, using the menstrual cycle as a vital sign, supporting clients with fertility challenges, combining the fertility awareness knowledge to be effective, supporting your clients to get that timing right regardless of whether or not their cycles are irregular. So even if they have PCOS cycles that are 50, 60, 70 days long, we can still help them to optimize timing. In addition to that, we have a variety of specific protocols that take it deeper to really optimize fertility through nutritional and lifestyle means, supporting egg and sperm quality and all of the things that we spoke about today.

One thing to consider as well — it always astounds me — there are thousands of new peer-reviewed research papers published every single day. However, it takes on average anywhere from 10 to 20 years for the original research to be adopted into routine medical practice. So if you’re ever wondering why there is a need for this type of information, it is because it takes decades for the latest research to become part of practice.

So with that said, I hope that you have an amazing week, weekend, or whenever you’re tuning into the show. If you have any questions about the program — if you’re wanting to know if you’re a good fit based on your professional designation — you can email us at [email protected] and we’d love to chat with you. So I hope you have a wonderful week and as always, until next time, be well and happy charting.