In the FLO

Life in the Boys’ Club

There’s no denying it: we have been living in a man’s world—although, thankfully, with more women in leadership positions in the private and public sectors, this reality is bound to change, and soon. Our cultural values prioritize masculine energy of individuality and linear progression at the expense of all else, which is reflected in the breakdown of our communities and the disregard for the health of our planet. In addition, our foundational beliefs about our own health are largely informed by research done by men, on male subjects. Even our daily routines are all based on the 24-hour male cycle. Yes, men have a hormonal cycle too! We just never talk about their cycle, because we cater to it every day. We’ll learn more about our own hormonal symphony soon, but for now, let’s look at a day in the life of male hormones.

Male 24-Hour Hormonal Cycle

• Morning: Testosterone and cortisol levels are at their highest when he wakes up, making him energetic, communicative, laser-focused, ready for sex (cue the morning erection), and super-efficient at getting stuff done.

• Afternoon: Declining testosterone puts him in the mood to socialize and connect with people. This is when he wants to pitch ideas to clients, network with colleagues, and meet up for a date.

• Evening: Testosterone levels wane, making him more sensitive to his estrogen, and generally more interested in cocooning on the couch or finding other ways to quiet his mind.

Notice anything? This schedule lines up almost perfectly with the way a typical day in a typical life—male or female—plays out. We wake up early and immediately start fielding email. We spend the early part of the workday tearing through our agenda. Then in the afternoon we continue to work through our to-do list, though our productivity has already peaked. After work, it’s happy hour—time to commiserate and blow off steam! Finally, we collapse in front of the TV, ready to relax after a day full of ups and downs.

Just hit repeat on this cycle day after day, 365 days a year. It’s that simple. Or is it? Women’s 28-day cycle bears no resemblance to this 24-hour schedule, but we have been forced to live according to the male hormonal rhythm for so long we don’t even question it. Have we ever stepped back to ask if it makes sense to operate our lives this way? Hormonally, each day is a new start for men, so we structure our workdays and social lives thinking only about the day of the week or the time of day. But women’s bodies don’t work that way. Our energy is not static day to day and week to week. Our productivity could be completely different depending on where we are in our 28-day cycle. The time we feel most social isn’t dictated by the time happy hour starts. And while men tend to recharge in the evening, our cocooning period is tied to a certain time of the month.

We’re overlooking a crucial component that governs the moods and emotions of half the population—it’s no wonder women don’t feel that they are thriving as much as they would like to be. The lack of knowledge about women’s biochemistry and cyclical nature extends to the medical community too. As far back as 1995, a paper in Epidemiological Review noted that medical research basically ignores women’s hormonal cycles. This ignorance plays out in the care and treatment we receive.

All too often when we visit the doctor for our symptoms, we are told, “it’s all in your head,” and are sent home to suffer in silence. This treatment is especially common for menstrual issues like fibroids, endometriosis, and dysmenorrhea. As a result, women often are not properly evaluated or diagnosed until years after their symptoms begin. I know. For me, this process took seven years, and I had to bring the diagnosis myself to my doctor to confirm my PCOS, because she never considered it! Sometimes, we’re labeled “chronic complainers,” as evidenced in a study by the American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association, which found that nearly half of people who were eventually diagnosed with an autoimmune disease (remember, 75 percent of people with autoimmune diseases are women) were initially told they were “too concerned about their health.” Think about that phrase for a minute. A 2010 analysis on chronic pain in women found that health care professionals were more likely to dismiss women’s complaints of pain as “emotional, psychogenic, hysterical, or oversensitive.”

Instead of your health issues being taken seriously, you’re told that you’re “hormonal,” that you were dealt the short end of the biological stick, that your treatment options are limited to taking the pill or possibly having surgery, and that ultimately you should just accept that suffering and feeling crappy is your genetic destiny. Can you imagine men being told to be passive, do nothing, and just learn to live with their symptoms? It’s unacceptable that women are relegated to suffering. In her book, Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick, author Maya Dusenbery summed it up succinctly: “Women’s symptoms are not taken seriously because medicine doesn’t know as much about their bodies and health problems. And medicine doesn’t know as much about their bodies and health problems because it doesn’t take their symptoms seriously.”

On the flip side, some physicians are quick to dole out prescriptions—synthetic birth control that hijacks your natural hormonal cycle, antidepressants that alter your neurochemistry, and the list goes on. More than half of all US women are taking at least one prescription medication, and about twenty-six million are taking five or more doctor-ordered meds. And that’s not taking into account the billions and billions of over-the-counter pills, tablets, caplets, gels, and other remedies we take to try to heal the side effects of neglecting our cycles—acne, headaches, exhaustion, weight gain, insomnia, bloating, and more.

Even the new trend toward biohacking—using food, supplements, and more to optimize our well-being—falls short because it doesn’t take our cyclical nature into consideration. Just look at the diet and fitness industry. Can you show me one trendy, well-known diet or workout that’s based on women’s hormonal cycle? That’s because most diet and exercise research has been conducted on men, not women. Check out these sad statistics:

• Women account for only 39 percent of participants in exercise studies.

• When the XX-chromosome crowd does make the cut in sports and exercise research, we are often studied only during the first half of our cycle, when hormone levels are low, or only if we’re taking hormonal birth control.

In fact, women have been historically underrepresented in all health, drug, and biological research. Here’s a quick timeline of some of the most foundational health research and the shocking absence of women.

• The year 1958: A trial on the physical and cognitive changes and chronic diseases that come with natural aging called the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging was launched; for its first twenty years, it included more than one thousand men and exactly zero women. It wasn’t until 1978 that women were added to the roster of participants.

• The year 1973: The first study looking into the effects of estrogen on the prevention of heart disease included 8,341 men and—you guessed it!—no women.

• The year 1982: The landmark Physician’s Health Study reported the now widely held belief that taking low-dose aspirin can lower the risk for heart disease. The only problem? The study tracked 22,071 men and not a single woman.

• The year 1985: By this date, the Public Health Service Task Force on Women’s Health Issues concluded that “the historical lack of research focus on women’s health concerns has compromised the quality of health information available to women as well as the health care they receive.”

Today, we’re still trying to catch up. Why did women get left out of scientific research while men became the standard human representative in clinical trials? There are many reasons, but here are a couple of biggies:

• Men are preferred research subjects. Men have only one biological clock—that simple, rhythmic 24-hour hormonal circadian pattern—while women also have the more complex 28-day cycle. Researchers have argued that it’s easier and less expensive to facilitate for experiments for the male pattern than for women’s hormonal fluctuations.

• A major drug trial on women went tragically wrong. Another factor that played into our exclusion was a sense of needing to protect women’s reproductive processes. Birth defects from the drug thalidomide in the 1960s resulted in the FDA adopting guidelines in 1977 essentially banning women of “childbearing age” from participating in clinical research. These guidelines effectively cut women who weren’t postmenopausal out of the research game.

It wasn’t until 1993 when the National Institutes of Health Revitalization Act attempted to change things by requiring researchers to include women in human studies and to note any results that differed in women compared with men. We’ve made inroads since then, but “progress has been painfully slow—stalling for long periods or sometimes reversing direction—and, consequently, not nearly enough progress has been made,” according to a 2015 review in BMC Women’s Health.

When you realize that our culture’s foundational health research has largely excluded women, it’s easy to grasp why our health issues are sometimes misunderstood and misdiagnosed. The fact that many of the diseases that affect women in greater numbers receive less funding for research compounds the problem. Trying to fit into the boys’ club actually prevents you from being oriented to your own body and from doing self-care in a way that supports your biochemical needs.

The lack of understanding of women’s health issues can feel isolating. In our sessions, when we talk about the issues my clients are having, women often start by saying, “I must be one in a million, because I have this symptom.” And it’s a symptom that I know is actually very common. I let them know they’re not one in a million with their period problem, they’re one of millions struggling alone and unnecessarily confused. The fact is that your problems are not the result of a deficiency in synthetic hormones. The problem is twofold: (1) we don’t talk enough about the epidemic of women’s chronic hormonal problems, and (2) the one-size-fits-all health care, fitness, and life management advice we’re getting doesn’t fit all—it’s designed primarily for the male hormonal ecosystem. The solution is to redefine women’s health care, time management, and our concept of success from a totally female-centered standpoint. That’s the only way you’re going to live your best life. Even if you don’t suffer from any hormonal health issues, honoring your cyclical nature is the only way to take advantage of all the gifts your body inherently offers.

My Hormone Story

I know firsthand how stressful hormonal problems can be. I struggled with them for a decade, and my journey with a debilitating hormonal condition changed my career and my life. My issues started in junior high school. I was a very late bloomer in the puberty department. Even though I was the president and founder of the Period Club, I was the last one in the club to actually start my period. I was almost sixteen when I got my first bleed, although it was brown and not healthy. I went to my gynecologist annually but was offered no diagnosis or explanation for the laundry list of issues I was having. Meanwhile, my symptoms worsened throughout high school and in college. At one point, I tipped the scales at 205 pounds; my face, chest, and back were covered in severe, painful cystic acne; and I hadn’t had my period more than a handful of times in a decade. Things got so bad for me, I couldn’t sleep, I binged on food to deal with fatigue and anxiety, I felt depressed, and I struggled to do basic things like be on time for appointments and stick with plans to go out with friends. I was a mess and felt trapped in my own body. One night when I was suffering with my usual insomnia, I headed to the library at Johns Hopkins, where I was a student, and I came across a brief article in an obstetrics journal about Stein-Leventhal disease, which is now called polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). As I scanned the symptoms associated with this condition, I recognized myself immediately. “This is it,” I thought!

In my book WomanCode, I described in detail how that discovery prompted me to demand that my gynecologist give me a test to diagnose PCOS—a transvaginal ultrasound along with bloodwork. When the test revealed the telltale signs of PCOS—multiple cysts on both of my ovaries—I finally knew what was causing all of my issues. It suddenly made sense to me that all the diets, exercise, and skin care treatments hadn’t worked for me. My symptoms weren’t caused by my not trying hard enough; my hormonal system was so severely out of tune that no ordinary diet or skin cream was going to help. My prognosis was grim—a lifetime of cystic acne and an increased risk for obesity, diabetes, infertility, heart disease, and cancer. As I sat in stunned silence, the doc dispassionately informed me there was no cure, only a litany of prescriptions—birth control pills to artificially regulate my period, Accutane for acne, Glucophage for insulin problems, Aldactone for hirsutism issues, blood pressure medicine, Clomid when it came time to conceive, and on and on—that I would likely have to take for the rest of my life. The message was clear: go home and suffer quietly.

As I was reeling from the notion of a lifetime of pills and problems, a voice welled up from deep inside, calmly reassuring me: “That’s not your path.” My body was sending me a strong message that there had to be a better way. I didn’t realize it in that moment, but looking back, my body was letting me know I had the power to do something, to change my hormonal situation and create a better future for myself. In that moment, I made the switch from having a passive relationship with my body to becoming a champion for my health and well-being. I was in a fight for my quality of life, literally, and if traditional medicine was going to leave me unsupported, I’d look elsewhere for a remedy. For the next two years, I embarked on an exploratory journey to learn as much as I could from experts in a variety of health specialties, including naturopaths, herbalists, and acupuncturists. I tried elimination diets, candida diets, herbs, and supplements, and nothing worked for me. Although these therapies can provide relief for many conditions, they didn’t heal my hormonal problems. In fact, my condition continued to worsen.

Out of desperation, I went on the pill, but after just ten days I temporarily lost vision in one eye from an ocular migraine and suffered a cardiac episode of low blood pressure and heart palpitations. After medical evaluation, I was told to avoid synthetic birth control. Finally, after exhausting all of the existing treatments, I tapped into my inner strength as a researcher (I had studied biology and wanted to become an ob-gyn) and began looking into the endocrine system, epigenetics, circadian patterns of the body and hormones (chronobiology), and the five-phase theory from Chinese medicine. My findings encouraged me to experiment and create a revolutionary new way of eating that ultimately put my symptoms and condition into remission naturally. This is the basis of the FLO protocol I described in WomanCode, which includes using food to stabilize your blood sugar levels and insulin, reduce cortisol levels, restore microbial balance in the gut, and improve the breakdown of estrogen in the liver.

Within nine months of following this protocol, my period came back, I lost sixty pounds, my skin cleared up, and my mood and life were transformed. I was beyond thrilled with this transformation, but my journey wasn’t over. I needed to find a way to maintain the changes I had made, and I wanted to get in touch with my cyclical nature by reclaiming a female-centered way of living. The Cycle Syncing Method™ was born from these two fundamental needs. The method is based on the extraordinary blueprint for self-care, biohacking, and optimization on every level provided by our cyclical hormonal patterns. The method allows us to stay connected to our feminine energy despite the cultural conditioning that dictates a linear, repetitive way of living. I certainly wish somebody had taught me about my cyclical nature when I was a little girl. Where was the textbook that had this description of our female process?

On the day when you start your first period, you’ll be entering a wondrous, cyclical phase of your life. Your second biological clock becomes activated. Your body’s cyclical nature empowers you with an abundance of gifts and offers a clear road map to take advantage of each of them at the most opportune time. Syncing with your cycle is the simplest, most effective way to enhance your hormonal health and create sustainable success in all areas of your life—career, relationships, sex, and motherhood.

Can you imagine reading something like this when you were a preteen, and the influence it might have had on your self-esteem and sense of how you could thrive in our society? How might information about syncing with your cycle have shaped the way you think about your body, your period, and your hormonal patterns? How might that information have impacted the way you approach every aspect of your life? I’m convinced that living in tune with our cyclical nature is the key to optimal living for women. Honoring yourself as a cyclical being isn’t just about achieving better hormonal health; it can boost every area of your life. I’ve seen this transformation happen to thousands of women around the world. This book is based on the work I’ve been doing for the past two decades at the FLO Living Hormone Center, a first-of-its-kind company dedicated to modernizing menstrual health care. The FLO Living Hormone Center gives women around the world virtual access to products and programs like the MyFLO app that help them evaluate their hormonal problems, track their symptoms, and naturally address their hormone imbalances. And women can talk at length with a hormone coach about their issues and learn about the benefits of getting in sync with their cyclical nature.

SIDE EFFECTS OF SYNCING WITH YOUR CYCLE

• Finding yourself building energy, not draining it

• Finding yourself in the right place at the right time more often

• Feeling really good about who you are

• Feeling good in your body all month

• Feeling powerful and confident

• Having time work for you, rather than twisting yourself around for time

• Feeling less stress, but getting more done

• Effortlessly maintaining a healthy weight

• Deriving more enjoyment from your work

• Feeling aligned with the process of creation

• Not feeling so much pressure to be perfect

• Feeling like your body is a clear channel for your passion and purpose to come through

Living in harmony with your nature makes you healthier, happier, and symptom-free, and allows you to pursue your creative and career passions more successfully and sustainably. Syncing with your cycle is the ultimate biohack for women’s health and success. Like your cycle, this biohack is efficient, elegant, and direct. All you have to do is access what’s already inside you.

Biohacking, Functional Medicine, and the Cycle Syncing Method™—What’s the Difference?

Most women I connect with all have a similar adverse reaction to the term biohacking. There is something about the word that feels invasive, and I think that our collective unconscious wounding around our physical safety has us balk at this term on an emotional level. We don’t want to be hacked into or hack into ourselves. It feels intrusive and violent, acting against the body’s propensities and—possibly—its permission. However, biohacking really is a term that can be used to describe a proactive relationship with your body, its systems, and your health. Let’s reclaim this term, which has tremendous positive advantages, and understand the different types of biohacking available.

Biohacking, in the wellness community, is using devices, supplements, food, and lifestyle modifications to change the performance of an already normally functioning body system with the aim of enhancing physical performance and achievement in other areas of your life. Its goal is to push the limits of what can be achieved in the 24-hour window. On the positive side, biohacking is about trying to increase the performance of the body beyond its points of natural limitation or to respond better to its environment—for example, using caffeine to increase energy or concentration, or using adaptogens to improve its stress response. It can go as far as genetic modification and device implantation in the body. Some of these are necessary, like artificial valve replacements in the heart or robotic limbs, but I’m talking more about the nonessential versions of these, like chips implanted in the body to track your activity. I think it is part of our nature and our culture to continue to figure out how we can outsmart nature’s processes and succeed in spite of our body’s limitations.