Recovering from Hypothalamic Amenorrhea and Eating Disorders

[00:00:00] Hello, hello, and welcome back to the Heal With Grace podcast. Today, I have Claudia, who she goes
[00:00:07] by nourished by Claudia, is a nutrition and dietetic consultant and published health writer.
[00:00:13] She's passionate about empowering clients to optimize their well-being through science-based,
[00:00:17] holistic, and non-judgmental nutrition and lifestyle strategies. She works with you if
[00:00:22] your period is missing or irregular, if you're battling disordered eating or overtraining,
[00:00:26] struggling with fatigue, stress, or body dissatisfaction, or facing fertility challenges.
[00:00:31] She's here to help. She says that nutrition is not about restriction, it's about finding the
[00:00:36] right recipe for you to thrive in a stress-free, pain-free, and healthy body. She specializes
[00:00:42] in hypothalamic and menorrhea, fertility, pregnancy, postpartum health, disordered
[00:00:47] eating, and more. This conversation that we had, I think, is so important, and I honestly
[00:00:52] want to have more around this subject because it's not talked about enough, and I meet women
[00:00:57] every day struggling with anything from picoast to endometriosis to fertility issues to disordered
[00:01:04] eating and amenorrhea, and it is difficult, and it's not understood in the medical community.
[00:01:10] And Claudia not only gives insights and educated around all of this, but she also
[00:01:16] really understands the core root of how we slow down, how we help our bodies from a
[00:01:22] nervous system state. So without further ado, I'm really excited to have her on, and here we go.
[00:01:28] Hey there, and welcome to Heal With Grace. I'm your host, Grace Secker, and I'm a holistic
[00:01:33] licensed therapist and nervous system coach who believes that the chronic and often unseen
[00:01:38] symptoms you're living with are a sign of something deeper going on. A sign that your
[00:01:42] nervous system needs attention. In each episode, I'll share the science behind the most common
[00:01:47] chronic health disorders plus holistic health tips using mental, physical, and spiritual practices.
[00:01:53] You'll hear what I've learned in my journey and the true stories from our trusted guests
[00:01:58] so you can feel less alone in your experience and give yourself grace no matter what you're going
[00:02:02] through. So without further ado, settle in and get cozy. It's time to Heal With Grace.
[00:02:09] All right. Hello, Claudia. I am so excited to have you here. Welcome to the Heal With
[00:02:13] Grace podcast. Thank you for having me, Grace. I've been looking forward to having this conversation
[00:02:19] with you today. I gave you your intro, but why don't we hear from you in terms of
[00:02:23] just a little bit about yourself, you know, what you do and how you came to do this?
[00:02:27] Absolutely. So I am an nutrition and dietetic clinician, and I started my own clinical
[00:02:33] practice a decade ago. And in the beginning, I was working with postpartum mothers,
[00:02:38] and then I realized that if I really wanted to support postpartum mothers,
[00:02:42] I had to look at their fertility journey. And that's when I stumbled across hypothalamic
[00:02:47] amenorrhea, which was something that I also experienced in my own skin. And since then,
[00:02:52] I've never looked back, and I've been supporting women that don't have a period
[00:02:56] that are suffering from disorder behaviors around food and training,
[00:03:00] and they want to become moms. It's a really important topic that I don't think is
[00:03:05] talked about as much, but it is very important. I mean, it's happened a lot,
[00:03:10] especially when we've gone through eating disorder treatment, which we've talked a little bit on this
[00:03:14] podcast about eating disorder and how it connects, but I'm really excited to dive in to the connection
[00:03:19] between eating disorder, nervous system, like feeling safe in our bodies and how that actually
[00:03:24] ends up leading to missing periods, regular periods, infertility. First of all, let's just
[00:03:29] actually define like what exactly is a missing or a regular period or amenorrhea?
[00:03:35] Absolutely. So thanks for asking this question. So hypothalamic amenorrhea is basically not
[00:03:39] having a period for more than six months, and that's quite frustrating because most of the women
[00:03:44] that come to work with me, they have seen a gynecologist, they have seen a fertility specialist,
[00:03:49] they've seen an endocrinologist, and sometimes they get the wrong diagnosis, sometimes they hear
[00:03:54] words such as PCOS or POI, which is premature ovarian insufficiency, and basically that sets them
[00:04:02] back by many years. And hypothalamic amenorrhea is a missing period caused by low body weight,
[00:04:10] but not all the time. Sometimes women can have a normal BMI and still suffering from
[00:04:15] hypothalamic amenorrhea is disorder behaviors around training. So training daily or training too
[00:04:21] hard for your body, really, or training to change your physicality, but sometimes women
[00:04:27] can also lose their periods because they're going through grief and periods of stress or
[00:04:33] autoimmune conditions and also chronic pain, which is why I wanted to really open up these
[00:04:39] conversations with you today. So normally when women don't have a period that they don't think
[00:04:45] too much about it unless they want to have a baby or unless they break their arm or the foot and
[00:04:50] so they have a broken bone basically, so they go down the rabbit hole of why do I have
[00:04:54] poor bone health? And normally the first step is going to the medical doctor and the medical
[00:05:00] doctor normally advises a couple of things, eat more, take the pill. So they're going to see an
[00:05:05] endocrinologist and the advice is sometimes not dissimilar. If it's a good endocrinologist
[00:05:10] they're gonna say okay maybe it's better to have a look at your lifestyle diary,
[00:05:14] which kind of exercise you're doing, which kind of food you're eating, but it's always a good
[00:05:18] idea to go on the pill or go on HRT to protect your bone health. And so these women they try
[00:05:24] to do it on their own, they try to follow these advices for a couple of years, so I call that
[00:05:29] period the quasi recovery period where they think that they're doing whatever they can,
[00:05:34] even though they're just scratching the surface, but very often they don't get to the core
[00:05:40] foundation, which is obviously sometimes gaining weight and changing their the behaviors around
[00:05:47] training, but it's also addressing the mindset, the mindset behind why am I so afraid of losing weight,
[00:05:54] why I'm not, I don't feel safe in being in my body, why don't I allow myself to simply slow down
[00:06:00] and be, which is where I've been seeing so many commonalities between hypothalamic amenorrhea
[00:06:06] recovery and also chronic pain recoveries. I also wonder how much you go into the femininity
[00:06:15] of someone, of someone going through this, right? Because I mean our cycle, our bleeding period is,
[00:06:21] I mean it makes us women. I actually just attended this training yesterday, which is why it's coming
[00:06:26] up around the emotions that sit within our womb and that happen like grief, guilt, anger, repressed
[00:06:33] like feminine embodiment that end up leading to things like amenorrhea and endometriosis and
[00:06:40] picos and like all of these things that women specifically go through. So I'm curious how much
[00:06:45] you see and work with understanding that connection to our feminine body.
[00:06:50] 100%. So first of all, the period is the fifth vital sign and I want everyone to be aware of
[00:06:56] that because if your blood pressure was high, then you will start being worried about it.
[00:07:01] If your heart stops beating, then you will get worried about it. But for whatever reasons,
[00:07:05] if you don't have a period and you are a woman in the fertile window, no one say much about it
[00:07:11] and yet it's still the fifth vital sign. We need not only for fertility purposes, but also to protect
[00:07:17] our heart, our lungs and our brain and our bone health. I'm very passionate about this topic,
[00:07:22] but in regards to the feminine energy, when someone is going through hypothalamic amenorrhea
[00:07:28] is completely suppressed because these women, they don't have that fluctuations of hormones.
[00:07:33] They don't see that beautiful estrogen rising to then be combined with the rising progesterone.
[00:07:39] They're basically flat line. And when I say that femininity suppressed is not only from a
[00:07:45] physiological standpoint, but it's also from an emotional standpoint. And you may recognize also
[00:07:51] you're going to see some commonalities once again with chronic pain. But normally women
[00:07:55] that suffer from hypothalamic amenorrhea, they tend to have a type A personality. They tend to
[00:08:01] go, go, go and they are very afraid of simply B and they're perfectionists. They're people pleasers.
[00:08:09] They give their all energy out and they never refill their own cup. So these women normally
[00:08:16] they suffer from anxiety, they're very dry, dry hair, dry skin, dry vagina. So even the sex drive
[00:08:23] is very, very low, which is it makes sense. They're not in a fertile type of window, right?
[00:08:30] They have problems sleeping because there is that constant fight and flight going on. So they
[00:08:34] hate the suffer from insomnia, they wake up during the night to go and pee, which is a very clever
[00:08:40] mechanism of the body to wake them up just in case that there is a problem. And then they're very
[00:08:45] controlling, controlling around food, controlling about what the body looks like and controlling
[00:08:50] when it comes to their exercise. Because if they control their environment,
[00:08:55] then they can feel some sort of peace inside. And unfortunately, that's a fake way of controlling
[00:09:04] themselves. The reality is that the more controlling you are, the less control you really have on your
[00:09:11] emotions and your psychology. Does that make sense, Grace? Yeah, I'm so glad you said that,
[00:09:17] especially that last part, because that's so true. The more we try to control, which by the
[00:09:21] way, yes, you just described someone with chronic pain, chronic illness, chronic fatigue,
[00:09:25] those personality characteristics of being highly anxious, controlled, rigid, perfectionistic,
[00:09:32] needing to get it right all the time, type A, it totally fits all of this. So it makes a lot
[00:09:36] of sense. And we always think that the more we try to do something perfectly, the better it's
[00:09:42] going to get. And especially when it comes to healing, too. And I'm sure you see this
[00:09:48] with the people you work with, where maybe they try to do everything you're trying to tell them to do
[00:09:53] with intensity, right? With a sense of control. And really, we need a little bit more flow and
[00:10:00] relaxed and surrendering, if you will, to the process, because it is a process. Do you see that?
[00:10:06] Yes, sometimes women come to me and they're like, okay, Claudia, I'm ready to go all in.
[00:10:10] So I need your accountability. I need your guidance, because I want to go all in. I want
[00:10:14] to eat all the food. I want to stop exercising. I want to get my period back so then I can get pregnant.
[00:10:18] And my reaction normally is like, okay, slow down, because you're trying to recover from the
[00:10:23] same mentality that gave you hypotalamic menorrhea in the first place. What is going on?
[00:10:29] Why there is this sense of urgency? What are you trying to control? Because if we don't get
[00:10:33] to the core beliefs, if we don't get to the root cause of why you have developed this
[00:10:38] condition in the first place, chances are that yes, if you eat enough, if you stop
[00:10:44] moving, if you sit in the couch for three months, your period is going to come. And if you're lucky
[00:10:48] enough, you're going to be able to spot a violation and get pregnant. But what's going to happen after
[00:10:53] you have the baby? Are you ready to go through this old journey many, many times in your life?
[00:10:59] Because I've seen that happening more often than not. Women that recover very quickly without
[00:11:05] addressing the mindset, without addressing the reasons why they develop hypotalamic menorrhea
[00:11:10] or an eating disorder in the first place, and then they go back to square one, which is not
[00:11:16] really square one, if you have already done the journey. But yeah, it feels like going through
[00:11:21] the same process once again. And the second time that you go through the same process,
[00:11:26] it feels quite, I don't know, disartened. You stop asking yourself, why me? What is wrong
[00:11:32] with me? Why other women have it so easy? Why other women can go to the gym? And whenever
[00:11:37] I go to the gym, I lose my period. Why if I eat a little bit less and I change my body
[00:11:41] then all of a sudden my period disappears. And I see that, really, that feelings of frustration
[00:11:48] and overwhelm, which is why I always go back to the questions of, what is your body telling you?
[00:11:54] Why has your body shut down? Why is your body telling you you're not ready for a baby?
[00:12:00] What are you scared of? What are you fighting for? What are you running away from?
[00:12:06] What are some of those, maybe, mindsets or emotional stances that you work with people
[00:12:12] with that root cause, right? Underneath the diet and less exercise and things like that. What are
[00:12:18] some common, maybe, example that you could give? Yeah, well, first of all, for example,
[00:12:23] let's think about the fear of weight gain. Women have this fear of gaining weight,
[00:12:29] but why is that? And where is that stemming from? What does that mean for them? Because if they were
[00:12:36] bullied in the past, gaining weight, actually losing weight, is a protective mechanism,
[00:12:42] and gain weight is loaded with fear. Or maybe they didn't get enough hugs when they were kids,
[00:12:50] or they didn't have that relationship with the body since they were young. They've never gone
[00:12:56] through the process of actually accepting the body for what it was when it was changing,
[00:13:00] when going through puberty and so on and so forth. So for them, gaining weight is actually
[00:13:06] very scary. And it all boils down to feeling unsafe. Because when you're not feeling safe
[00:13:13] of the person that you are, then you're gonna try to control your external environment.
[00:13:19] So if you were in a state of high anxiety, would that be easier for you to go to the gym
[00:13:28] and jump on the treadmill or actually sit down with your thoughts and try to understand where
[00:13:33] that anxiety is coming from and try to move through that, right? So it's very normal for
[00:13:41] some of these women, most of these women, to actually decide to go to the gym.
[00:13:46] It takes half an hour, the anxiety go away, I put a bandaid on it, and then I see what happens
[00:13:51] tomorrow. And instead, in the work that I try to do with them is, yes, let's have a look at your
[00:13:56] nutrition, let's have a look at your exercise, but also let's understand what's going on here.
[00:14:02] Why is your body, why are you afraid of gaining this weight? Why are you afraid of
[00:14:08] changing your lifestyle? What are you afraid that is gonna happen? I had this woman,
[00:14:14] for example, that she was very resistant in terms of doing this process, this recovery process,
[00:14:20] and within 12 months from saying yes, from committing to it, she changed her career,
[00:14:27] she broke up with her fiancé, she met someone else entirely, she got married and now she's already
[00:14:32] pregnant, she got her period back and she actually welcomed some much needed weight gain
[00:14:39] and she decided to work out in the gym and gain some muscles instead of running marathons
[00:14:45] like she used to do. So sometimes there is that fear of, if I say yes to myself,
[00:14:50] then I actually have to put some effort, I have to do the work, I can actually fail.
[00:14:57] And I think that that's very scary in itself and my job is to actually support them
[00:15:04] and guide them through this whole process, hold their hands sometimes so that not only they can
[00:15:10] eat breakfast when they wake up in the morning, but they are not in this state of constant fear.
[00:15:17] Does that resonate Grace? Oh, totally. Yeah, because you're talking about
[00:15:21] looking underneath the sometimes structural skills that we need like for you, like
[00:15:27] nutrition and exercise and understanding the skills to regulate your nervous system.
[00:15:31] I say this all the time, those are helpful things you can do, but really underneath is looking at
[00:15:38] how you're treating yourself, what your identity is wrapped up in. That's what I heard you talk
[00:15:42] about. We're asking people to look at who they think they are or really who they think they
[00:15:48] are supposed to be, what they've been following. And instead we're unraveling and saying,
[00:15:53] actually we should look at that because I don't think it's really working for you.
[00:15:57] And that's scary. Of course it's scary because you're changing probably a lot of what you know
[00:16:02] about your life or what you think you know about yourself. So one, it takes time and two, it takes
[00:16:06] courage. It's a lot of courage to do that. And that's usually where I find people get stuck
[00:16:12] is when they say they're doing all the things, but they may not really be looking at like what's
[00:16:20] underneath the surface, like who they are, what the relationships they're having, the career
[00:16:24] that they're in, those things matter. And there can be a lot of resistance to go there.
[00:16:30] It's the identity piece is letting go of your old self and welcoming a new self when you don't
[00:16:36] know what the new self is going to look like. That requires a lot of courage. And sometimes
[00:16:42] it's so much easier to stay in the comfort zone, which is not comfortable, but it's just familiar
[00:16:48] when knowing that if you want to grow, you have to go through that
[00:16:52] part, that level of discomfort. And it's okay if someone is not ready to do the work. Maybe
[00:16:58] they're not going to be ready now. They're going to be ready in three months. But in the meantime,
[00:17:02] it's very important to open up our ears, our hearts and actually welcome new opportunities.
[00:17:10] Otherwise you can be stuck for a long time. And that's also very true. If I look at my story,
[00:17:15] I was stuck for 10 years simply because it was much easier for me to go and see another
[00:17:20] fertility specialist and another gynecologist and accepting a diagnosis of PCOS instead of
[00:17:25] sitting down and realize that I needed to change my life. So I had to let go of my running. I had to
[00:17:32] let go of my running friends. I had to let go of my four coffees a day. So I had to do all of that
[00:17:38] and to embrace a different personality, someone that was slower, someone that didn't have to
[00:17:46] be productive all the time and someone that was just okay for simply being instead of always doing.
[00:17:54] And finally enough, once again, personally speaking, I was very prone to burnout. And once
[00:18:00] I recovered my period, that's when I stopped burning out. Because once again, there was that
[00:18:06] identity piece of I am worth it only if I'm productive. But the reality is that I'm worth
[00:18:12] it simply because I am a human being. And I am currently breathing and I'm living in this
[00:18:16] wonderful planet that is teaching me to do the opposite of what I actually do for my body to thrive.
[00:18:23] That piece, the worthy piece, that's super important. Because that is what we're really
[00:18:28] talking about, especially with this population, when if you're listening to this and you
[00:18:32] resonate, you might be one of those people who are constantly doing and going, I mean,
[00:18:37] that's our society perpetuates that and like pats us on the back and gives us,
[00:18:40] you know, a gold star for doing more and being more and running more and all the things. And
[00:18:45] that's not most of how us human beings are really meant to be and to live. But we learned that the
[00:18:52] more we do the more worthy we are. But it's false. It's false truth. I'm really glad you
[00:18:58] said that. Yeah, like we are worthy just as we are, you know, 100%. And lately, I've also
[00:19:04] seen this crossover between women suffering from hormonal imbalances, missing periods,
[00:19:10] apothalamic amenorrhea, and once again, burnout and pain. And sometimes they come to see me and
[00:19:16] they said, oh, Claudia, I need somehow to get my period back. And then just in passing, they
[00:19:20] speak about their trauma or they speak about the fact that they haven't food for the last seven
[00:19:25] days, or they've had to deal with an with an autoimmune disease for decades, or they had
[00:19:32] chronic back pain, chronic neck pain, chronic gut pain. And it's fascinating for me to see that
[00:19:38] as women or as human beings, we are okay with suppressing all that pain, all that discomfort,
[00:19:47] just to get to the next thing, just to manage to to get to the next level in our career,
[00:19:54] to get to to that place that we have been taught that is the right place for us to go to.
[00:20:01] I don't know if I'm even making sense right now, Grace. I'm just rumbling a little bit.
[00:20:06] Oh, you totally are. You totally are. I have a specific question for you if you're open to it.
[00:20:10] Along your journey, you mentioned PCOS and and coming to the realization that, oh,
[00:20:15] you had to let go of your lifestyle of, you know, kind of what you thought you were supposed to be
[00:20:19] doing. What was that moment for you? What helped you realize that after those, I think you said
[00:20:24] 10 years? Yeah, well, unfortunately, when I went through my recovery journey, basically Instagram
[00:20:30] was not present. So it was just the beginning state of Instagram. So it's not that I could
[00:20:36] actually check in what other people were doing. YouTube was non existent. So I had to do
[00:20:41] most of the work on my own. And I tried, I tried very hard to find that support net. I went to
[00:20:46] see a psychologist, I went to see a naturopath. And I remember that this naturopath, she was
[00:20:51] a fertility specialist. And I was so looking forward to that appointment, especially because
[00:20:56] it was gonna be $300 for just half an hour. And we're talking about 10 years ago. So $300,
[00:21:02] 10 years ago, like $600 nowadays. And I walked in with this diet that I had filled in
[00:21:09] for the past seven days. And I was just waiting for her to tell me, Claudia, you just need to
[00:21:14] eat moon. Just sit down, enjoy your breakfast, enjoy your meals, allow yourself to have a
[00:21:20] croissant and muffin whenever you crave one. And instead, she went down a rabbit hole of DNA
[00:21:26] testing supplements. And I left that day with $2,000 worth of supplements. And I kept going back
[00:21:34] to similar specialist and I tried kinesiology and obviously go, go gluten free, go dairy free,
[00:21:40] you know, you're very inflamed when I was not inflamed at all. I was just depleted. I did
[00:21:47] acupuncture. I cannot even remember all the modalities and mind you, these modalities are
[00:21:53] wonderful. And now I love my acupuncturist, but not because I want her to fix my period,
[00:21:58] but simply because it's such a nice moment for me to, you know, let it go and just be present
[00:22:03] and be with my body. So I don't want to dismiss any of those modalities because they have
[00:22:08] a place. It's just that they weren't not working for me because no one really told me
[00:22:15] where the core problem was. So I had to sit down with myself. I had a long conversation with my husband
[00:22:23] and he mentioned in passing, well, do you think waking up at 4.30 every single morning just going
[00:22:29] for a 5K run and having breakfast at 11 o'clock in the morning is actually helping us to have a
[00:22:34] baby? And that question was so very stupid, but it really opened up a window of opportunities
[00:22:41] for me. I was that kind of person that I was always wearing a feet watch. Like if I was at a wedding,
[00:22:46] I was like wearing a beautiful dress with the fitness watch in it because I couldn't let it go.
[00:22:51] And if I didn't get to the right amount of steps at night time, I had to go to the bathroom,
[00:22:56] hide from everyone and jump jacks. So there was that obsession. But once again, it's because
[00:23:01] I was feeling so anxious and plus I wanted a baby so much. And so the exercise and controlling
[00:23:07] my food was actually kind of a way of suppressing the anxiety around not being able to become a mom.
[00:23:13] And then after I had that conversation with my husband, I met another wonderful nutritionist
[00:23:21] and she actually went through the same thing. And she said, why don't we work together?
[00:23:26] Why don't you just book in with me for the next three months? So we go through the core
[00:23:31] foundations, we do some inner work and let's see what happens. And that's when my life unraveled
[00:23:37] completely because I finally got in touch with my real needs and I finally got honest with myself
[00:23:43] because it was like the five stages of grief. And first you are in denial and then you fight it.
[00:23:50] You just don't want to accept it. And then you start making changes but not enough of them
[00:23:55] until you get to the level of acceptance. And I had to learn that I had to let go of
[00:24:02] all the beliefs that I had acquired since I was a little girl because obviously I am a baby of the
[00:24:08] 80s, early 80s. So I grew up in that environment where everyone was going low fat, low carb. Everyone
[00:24:16] was weighing themselves. Everyone was talking about the weight. There were so many magazines
[00:24:21] like Weight Watchers, Living Wars, The Kellogg Diet. And so for an eight year old kid that just
[00:24:28] being brought up in that environment is very natural that you have your own disorder beliefs
[00:24:33] around food when growing up. So I had to unlearn all of that. That was a long journey. It took
[00:24:39] me longer than three months for sure. But it was definitely worth it, especially being a mom
[00:24:44] now of two kids that can finally change the conversation and break the intergenerational
[00:24:49] trauma and changing the life of all of the other women that stumbled upon my word.
[00:24:56] Thank you for allowing me to share this. Yeah. Do you still struggle at all with PCOS?
[00:25:03] Never had PCOS. So that was a wrong diagnosis. Yes. And that's also something that I invite
[00:25:10] women to really think about. Is that really PCOS or is it something else? Because PCOS and
[00:25:17] hypothalamic amenorrhea that have so many crossovers and if you don't have a well versed
[00:25:23] practitioner, he's not going to pick up on the difference between the two, which is a shame,
[00:25:28] is a real shame. So never had PCOS. In reality was hypothalamic amenorrhea all the way through.
[00:25:35] And no. So I regained my period. I managed to get pregnant with my first one,
[00:25:42] got my period back, managed to get pregnant with my second one,
[00:25:45] got my pregnant six months after he was born. And that's it. That's my life. And I'm still having,
[00:25:54] I'm still blessed with the regular periods. I don't know for how many years in front of me,
[00:25:58] but for now I just keep them, all of them. Yeah. And that's a really big shift too. I mean,
[00:26:04] there's a lot of negativity around having periods, right? Around the bleeding period.
[00:26:10] And you just mentioned the notion of wanting to hold on to them in a way.
[00:26:14] Like it's being, it's special, right? That's a big shift that I hear.
[00:26:18] Can you tell me more about that? Absolutely. So if we look at what it means for a woman to
[00:26:24] have a period. So first of all, it's fundamental for our born health. If you want to avoid
[00:26:31] brittle bones early on or later on in life, I have clients that are 23 and they're suffering
[00:26:38] from severe osteoporosis, which is a shame because the only solution in the long term,
[00:26:43] if they don't get the period back as soon as possible, is going to be medications.
[00:26:47] And the medications for bone health are extremely aggressive and they come with
[00:26:51] horrible symptoms. Not to mention breaking a hip, which by the way I had to go through,
[00:26:56] and breaking a bone is not pleasant, extremely painful. So first of all, whenever I get my
[00:27:02] period, whenever I actually see blood, I think I'm protecting my bones, which is something
[00:27:08] that to me is very precious. Secondly, I'm protecting my productivity. I'm protecting my
[00:27:14] creativity. I'm protecting my brain because most women in a menopausal age, they die because of
[00:27:22] a cardiac attack. Once again, because that levels of estrogen dips, so the heart is not
[00:27:28] protected. And they are more prone to experience dementia and Alzheimer. Because once again,
[00:27:34] those hormones are not protecting our brain cells and enonga. So just from that standpoint,
[00:27:40] I think that a period is just a miracle and something that I really feel blessed to have
[00:27:45] every single month. Not to mention that ovulation goes hand in hand without having a period because
[00:27:50] ovulation is another beautiful way of our body to tell us you're doing well, you're
[00:27:56] nourishing well, you're moving well, you're sleeping well. And if you wanted to, you could
[00:28:01] have a baby because here it's feeling pretty safe. So just go ahead and have some fun time with your
[00:28:08] partner so then we can procreate. And it doesn't matter if you don't want to have babies any longer
[00:28:12] or if you have never wanted a baby in the first place, still knowing that your body is working,
[00:28:18] that's a miracle. Once again. And then there is that feminine part that comes in.
[00:28:24] Back in the days, I thought that I was my rhythm was a circadian rhythm, like my husband, wake up
[00:28:32] in the morning, plenty of energy, go to sleep at night, completely exhausted. And then I came to
[00:28:38] understand that we go through the infraradian rhythm. Thanks to the beautiful work of Alissa
[00:28:42] Vitti and Dr. Aviva Rom, they explained to us that we have a 28 day cycles that it's
[00:28:50] very similar to the lunar cycle, where we go through phases that we are very productive,
[00:28:54] very creative, more extrovert than we normally are. And then periods where we are meant to actually
[00:29:02] sit in a quiet space, just be on our own and recharge our batteries. And until I learned that,
[00:29:09] of course I was going through these periods of burnout because I'm never completely rested.
[00:29:14] And what I normally see with women with hypothalamic amenorrhea is that they wake
[00:29:18] up early in the morning, they go to the gym, they have a coffee, they go to work,
[00:29:23] then they have breakfast at some point while going through the emails. So can you imagine
[00:29:27] like the level of cortisol eating while you're going through the emails? It's like so not great
[00:29:32] for our nervous system. And then all day they are at work, they come back from work. If they
[00:29:37] are a mom, they have to rush to pick up the kids. If they are no moms, then they have to rush
[00:29:41] to go somewhere else. And then you get to the end of the day and you sit down in your
[00:29:45] couch, you scroll through social medias, once again, cortisol inducing, or you watch like
[00:29:51] something on TV, maybe even the news. I stopped watching the news 10 years ago, my brain cannot
[00:29:57] handle that. And then you try and go to sleep. And for whatever reasons, you have vivid dreams,
[00:30:02] or you can't fall asleep, or you wake up in the middle of the night. And now it all makes
[00:30:07] sense, but it didn't back in the days when my knowledge was very limited compared to now.
[00:30:13] So your question, Christ?
[00:30:15] Yes. Yeah, but it's very normal these days for women to be on a birth control or be on something and
[00:30:21] their doctors say like, it's fine not to have period. This one just doesn't make you have a period.
[00:30:25] You know, and I always, I never understood why, but I always had a felt sense of even before I
[00:30:31] knew all of this, I just had a felt sense of like, I don't know, that can't be good for
[00:30:35] you. You know, I didn't understand why or what it would mean. But I was like, I don't,
[00:30:40] aren't we supposed to, you know, we're meant to do this? So there's, I just think about that often
[00:30:45] because I hear it a lot, you know, like it's just normal. Oh, yeah, I don't have periods.
[00:30:50] People that I guess in no way choose not to. And there's people that like that you work with
[00:30:54] it that have irregular or can't. And I think it's really important. I'm glad you mentioned
[00:30:58] that topic of just actually, what does it really mean for our bodies to go through this
[00:31:03] cycle? It's sacred. It's, you know, makes us women and who we are. And yeah, so that's
[00:31:08] really what I wanted to hear about because I think it's not talked about enough.
[00:31:12] And then, oh yeah, sorry, didn't mean to interrupt you. But in regards to the pill,
[00:31:17] I was wondering, have you ever heard of the post pill divorced?
[00:31:21] No, but I know there's a lot of movement around getting off the pill.
[00:31:25] Yeah. So basically, women, especially back in the 80s and 90s, they were put on very heavy
[00:31:31] heavy pills like Diana and other names. And they will come off the pill just to have a baby.
[00:31:37] And when they came off the pill, because the pheromone changed so dramatically,
[00:31:43] all of a sudden they realized that they were not attracted to their life partners. And so
[00:31:48] back at the time, so many women, so many couples went through divorce because of that.
[00:31:53] And that can give you an idea of how much the pill can actually suppress your reproductive system.
[00:32:00] The pill does not regulate it, doesn't fix it. It's just suppress it. If you look at someone
[00:32:05] that it's on the pill, you will see that everything is flat line, ovulation is not happening.
[00:32:10] And that progesterone that you're getting is progestin, which is a chemical version of
[00:32:15] progesterone that is not really welcomed by our body. And so when everything is flat line,
[00:32:20] then obviously, you cannot really understand who you are and what you're attracted to.
[00:32:26] I had to add that because I still find it so incredibly fascinating.
[00:32:29] That's, yeah, that's super fascinating. I mean, when it does, it completely shifts.
[00:32:33] How could it not change? Our hormones make up so much of who we are, how we see, how we feel,
[00:32:38] and the cycles that we go through. So, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
[00:32:42] You were talking about a normal day, right, of someone waking up, working out, not having
[00:32:46] breakfast till later, going through emails, like that whole thing. A normal day, if you will,
[00:32:50] for many, many human beings right now. What do you help people shift? Like,
[00:32:55] what would you shift during that day? How do you change that?
[00:32:58] So, if someone is listening and they are going through hypothalamic amenorrhea and they just
[00:33:04] want to really focus on their reproductive system and to get in touch with their femininity,
[00:33:10] there are a few things that they really would encourage them to do.
[00:33:12] The first one is if they can to sleep in the morning. So, if they want to go to the gym,
[00:33:17] if they want to exercise, just do it after breakfast, lunchtime, after work, as a way to
[00:33:24] distress. But if that's possible, and I do understand that every single life is different,
[00:33:29] but if it's possible, see if you can sleep in the morning instead of going to the gym on an empty
[00:33:34] stomach. Then make sure that when you wake up, you don't check social media, that you don't check
[00:33:39] your emails. Allow your nervous system to have that half an hour when no match is actually
[00:33:45] happening. Give a hug to your pet, give a hug to your partner, give a hug to a family member,
[00:33:49] give a hug to yourself, we're going to say, we never hug ourselves or speak kindly to yourself,
[00:33:55] maybe having a job next to your bed and just picking up a thought that you can think about
[00:34:00] for the day and obviously an inspiring thought. Even better, sitting meditation, do some visualization,
[00:34:07] do some of that before having something warm, before having a tea, before having a coffee,
[00:34:13] and then make sure that you have breakfast. Make sure that you have a warm breakfast to
[00:34:18] support your womb. After that, I think that a woman has much more capacity to deal with the
[00:34:24] outside world, to deal with the demands that she's going to be exposed to. Because as a mom, she's
[00:34:31] going to be left with very little energy for the rest of the day as a business worker,
[00:34:36] especially if you're working on your own. Well, I think that you're a solopreneur as
[00:34:40] well. And you are pulled on so many directions every single day. You're the CEO of your
[00:34:46] business, you're the marketing manager, you are the sales manager, you are the
[00:34:51] podcaster and all of that. So you're pulled in so many different directions. So having that first
[00:34:56] part of the day where you can actually settle your nervous system, settle your body and
[00:35:04] also nourishing yourself from the inside out with a nice warm, decent breakfast and just
[00:35:10] being in the state of peace can be a game changer. So if I had to invite someone to make one shift,
[00:35:18] it would definitely be that, focusing on the morning practice. And then if that's available,
[00:35:24] to being in a very parasympathetic state every single time the food is present,
[00:35:30] allowing our digestive system to do its job. Because we have so many of us nowadays,
[00:35:36] we are experiencing IBS, bloating, constipation, passing winds, burping,
[00:35:43] carbon. And on most cases, we can actually fix that by slowing down and just having
[00:35:52] some time to simply eat, which does not mean listening to a podcast, answering an email,
[00:35:57] speaking with someone else, just be present with the food.
[00:36:01] Yeah. It makes me think of, have you read the book, The Slowdown Diet by
[00:36:05] Mark? Ooh, I forgot his name, but I'll put it below. It's not a diet. And I don't,
[00:36:09] I don't like why they named it that, but I think it was back in the 90s when, you know,
[00:36:13] diet, you need that word to mark it, I'm guessing, I don't know. But it's a great book because it,
[00:36:18] I mean, it talks about exactly what you're, what you're sharing, right? It's not a diet.
[00:36:22] I think it has maybe one chapter around just like eating whole foods and a variety,
[00:36:26] you know, and that's about it. The rest of it is truly about how we eat
[00:36:32] actually changes the digestion of the food, right? How we eat, what we're thinking about it,
[00:36:36] how we're slowing down. I mean, everything that you just talked about. And I think it's really
[00:36:41] powerful because it makes such a difference. We have digestive enzymes, right? They start in our
[00:36:47] mouth, salivary enzymes, they're meant to break down particles of food. They're meant to shoot
[00:36:52] them from one part to the other of the body. If we don't produce enough digestive enzymes,
[00:36:57] salivary enzymes, and hydrochloric acids, we are not going to be able to break down the proteins
[00:37:03] within the food. We are not going to be able to ship the nutrients to the right parts of our body.
[00:37:08] So so many people think that gluten free, for example, is a way to fix their gut. And for some,
[00:37:14] some people, yeah, absolutely, that's valid, especially if you're a celiac. But sometimes
[00:37:18] it's simply that our body doesn't have enough time to process the protein of gluten, which is
[00:37:23] a hard one to digest. So the problem is not the gluten, it's actually how you eat and when you eat
[00:37:28] the gluten. And if you're thinking of fertility as well, you have to teach your body that you're in a
[00:37:33] safe place, in a place where you can actually welcome a baby into your life. Because if you're
[00:37:39] constantly in that state of fight and flight where you wake up in the morning and you have
[00:37:43] to run, when you cannot even sit down for a meal for five of 10 minutes, how is your body
[00:37:48] gonna perceive that it's okay for a baby to come to the world? How are you gonna take care of the baby?
[00:37:54] And so these changes can can be great also for someone that is thinking about fertility
[00:38:01] and is looking at a different way to live life than it's available to them. Because the changes
[00:38:07] that we have discussed, they're not really dramatic. It's not completely changing the way
[00:38:12] that I eat or completely changing the lifestyle. It's just making small tweaks that can lead to
[00:38:18] great results, like a domino effect. And I definitely need to read that book, Slow Down Diet,
[00:38:25] because I didn't come across it, but it sounds very pertinent. Yeah, I'm guessing there's a lot
[00:38:30] in there. You probably already practiced, but yeah, it's a good one. It's a short good read too.
[00:38:35] Question that might take might take a while. I don't know. We'll see how we'll see. But
[00:38:40] what do you think of IVF then from this approach? I think that IVF is a blessing.
[00:38:47] But it depends how it's approached. Because I'm going to give you two examples. You have a woman
[00:38:54] that hasn't had a period for three years, and she's like, effort, I'm gonna do IVF. Or she hasn't
[00:39:00] had a period for four months. And once again, effort, I'm gonna do IVF. In that case, I think
[00:39:05] it's the reason that rushed energy. Once again, that type A perfectionist personality,
[00:39:12] I want to do it now, and I want to do it well, and I want to control, control the outcome,
[00:39:17] control the process. If IVF is approached from that perspective, I get it. I tried it.
[00:39:24] The chances of working are actually not that great. So research shows that if you start IVF,
[00:39:32] when you are in a state of rest and adjust, let's call it, where you have already regained your period,
[00:39:38] where you have already slowed down in the morning, where you have already ate all the nourishing foods,
[00:39:44] your chances of getting pregnant, but not only that, of maintaining the pregnancy in the first
[00:39:50] trimester and having a healthy baby and having a better postpartum phase are completely
[00:39:56] different. Because when women go to IVF, when couples go to IVF is because they want to have a baby.
[00:40:04] But they never think about the next three months what that pregnancy is going to look like. Also,
[00:40:11] I've noticed that the chances of suffering from hyperamnesis, gravidarum, is actually heightened
[00:40:16] when you go through IVF simply because of the extent of hormones that get pumped into your body.
[00:40:22] And secondly, they don't think so much about the first three months, but also making sure that
[00:40:28] the pregnancy is a viable one that it sticks. You don't want to get pregnant. You want to have a
[00:40:33] baby. And that's a shift in mindset that I would like women to welcome. You don't want to get
[00:40:37] pregnant. You want to deliver a healthy baby. So in a nutshell, I will say that I'm pro-science.
[00:40:46] I think that IVF is a blessing. So many people are in this world because of IVF,
[00:40:51] but I always question why you're doing it if you have already tried everything else before
[00:40:58] approaching that. And if you have already done the work because doing a few months of preconception
[00:41:03] before approaching IVF, I think that it makes the whole process easier and safer.
[00:41:09] That makes so much sense, the balanced approach, right? The way we do something,
[00:41:13] the intention we go in with changes so much. Yeah.
[00:41:18] And I don't want people or couples to think, oh, I'm doing IVF, so I'm a failure. Not at all.
[00:41:27] In certain situations, honestly, IVF is the only way. There are women that get into menopause and
[00:41:34] ovarian insufficiency at the age of 30. So in that situation, I will say freeze your eggs
[00:41:39] as soon as you can. And let's see if we can get some beautiful embryo working for you.
[00:41:46] I would never tell them to do some work together for five years and then try naturally. That would
[00:41:52] be a disservice to them. But if you're in good health and your hormones are a little bit all over
[00:41:58] the shop, and if you have six months in front of you, I will say let's see if we can do it
[00:42:02] naturally. Let's see if we can save you 100,000 bucks. And then if not, then let's go with
[00:42:08] IVF as an option. Thank you. I just, that came to me because that's a big part of
[00:42:13] plenty of people's journeys. Okay, so I've loved this conversation. I think it's going to be really,
[00:42:18] really helpful to our audience. Is there anything else around what we've talked about or just in
[00:42:22] general about what you do that you feel like is important to know, like what you want people to
[00:42:26] know? I would just simply say to someone that is listening, that is going through these challenges
[00:42:31] to really focus on their body, like supporting the body, but not only from a physical
[00:42:36] perspective because that's the one that we can control. That's the first one that we
[00:42:40] can go to, but also do that emotional and spiritual work, or just finding yourself in a place where
[00:42:45] they can feel safe within their environment, within themselves, because if they do that work,
[00:42:51] everything else is going to become so much easier and so much more manageable
[00:42:56] and approachable in the future. And I think that I'm happy to leave you just with this
[00:43:02] sentence. Yeah, okay. Well, thank you so much again. Really appreciate it. And
[00:43:07] we'll link everything below, but you can just let people know. How do they find you? What are you
[00:43:11] doing right now? What are you offering? Yeah, absolutely. So if you are looking, if you are a
[00:43:15] big fan of Instagram is HA.fertility.nutritionist. HA stands for apophalamic menorrhea. Otherwise,
[00:43:22] I'm on Facebook and everywhere else with the nourished by Claudia. But thank you for linking
[00:43:29] everything down below, Grace. Yeah. And I saw your YouTube, I think, right? You have a lot
[00:43:33] of great information and videos out there. So absolutely. I forget about that. And I'm looking
[00:43:38] forward to have you on my YouTube, by the way. So YouTube channel nourished by Claudia.
[00:43:43] Awesome. All right. Thank you. See you all later. Bye, Grace.
[00:43:49] If this podcast means something to you, it would mean so much to me if you could
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