Latest / From 9 to Mom / better periods & hormones
Transcript
- Catie: Welcome back to From Nine to Mom. Danielle: Where we discuss balancing the nine to five hustle with the beautiful chaos that we call motherhood. Catie: this month's episodes are brought to you by Social Med Consultants. They are a mom-owned social media marketing team helping medical and aesthetic practices grow with strategy that actually gets results. From social media strategy, branding to top-of-the-line filming and photography, they get they get what it takes to balance a running business and running a household because they're doing both. Check them out at social medconsultants.com and mention from nine to mom to get a free marketing audit. Danielle: And today we are gonna talk about chaos and a topic that ha is on Katie and I's mind constantly, but a lot of your minds too. We have an amazing guest today, Vanda Aubrey is a functional medicine nurse, board certified nurse coach, and a mom of four. Four kids, you guys, who helps women in their twenties and thirties finally get answers when their labs say normal, but their bodies say otherwise. She works with women on hormone balance, painful or heavy periods, and fertility, using a true root cause approach that's practical and personalized and doesn't require cutting out everything that you love, which is so important. So Vanda, thank you so much for being here with us today. Vanda Aubrey: Thank you all for having me. I'm excited to chat. Catie: Yeah, we were so excited when we first started talking with you because Danielle and I, and we'll get into all of it, have been talking about like postpartum periods. And even though I d can we still Danielle and I are three years out. Are we like can we still say postpartum? Is that it feels it? Right. Okay. All right. We needed I needed the validation there. Vanda Aubrey: I think a forever postpartum after you touch it, you know? Danielle: Perfect. Catie: but yes, we were so excited to talk more about this. But before we get into that, we need to hear about the chaos of four kids. So give us the rundown ages, genders before we kick off. Vanda Aubrey: Okay, so yes there's four. It is absolute chaos. We have a nine year old boy that we adopted, then we have a seven year old, almost seven year old little girl, a four year old little boy, and a about to turn to next week little boy. So three boys, one girl. She tells me all the time that she wants a sister. And it is chaos. Absolute chaos all the time. Danielle: Is a sister a possibility? Like is that even in an earshot of your life? Vanda Aubrey: I mean never say never, but I think that we're pretty tapped out at this point. Danielle: I'm so impressed. Catie: I mean Danielle: Four kids that with that age range in the job that you have, that's we're we're impressed. Vanda Aubrey: It's a lot, but I love it. Catie: And we're gonna have you give us like the grand secret because there's obviously one. but can you give us a little bit more background of how you got into what you're doing now? Vanda Aubrey: Yeah, absolutely. So I'm a nurse. I've been a nurse for over twelve years. But six years ago I got into functional medicine as a practitioner, offering it, you know, as a virtual practice. And my history with that really came from my own personal experience because prior to my husband and I even getting married, I decided it was time for me to come off birth control. I was having a lot of negative side effects from it and I wanted to transition off. And when I did that, I lost my cycle for over ten months. my provider that I was going to saying, like, I'm so concerned about this because my mom had some fertility struggles. he just kept blowing me off and was Well if you want to have a period every month, just go back on birth control. And I knew enough from like my nurse training at that point that that was not the answer and not what I was looking to do. And I found functional medicine as a consumer at that time. And then later just decided like I this is how I really want to help women and more women need this type of education. And it's just have grown from that and been such a wonderful journey. Catie: I feel like that's how a lot of women get started doing some, you know, what spins the ball to go in this direction is the personal experience and then not being able to find the answer they want or like not being complacent with the answer that they heard and wanting to do more. so I know you have the whole medical background too. What were you you kind of were like, that's not the answer I wanted to hear? And then Where did you go from there at that point? Vanda Aubrey: Think the beautiful part about me having both backgrounds is that I get to marry them together because I do still really appreciate like the medical side of things, the traditional route, because it definitely has its place and it's valuable. But then you get to see the functional medicine side of things where we're not just looking to quick fix a problem. We're really trying to figure out like why the problem happened in the first place, which is what I wanted. I knew that it was not normal as a twenty-five year old woman to not have a cycle every month. And I wanted to know why. And my provider just kept acting like it was the most normal thing he'd ever heard and that the solution was the birth control. So, you know, it just really helped me to be able to dig in and find why that was happening and know that I could do something about it to fix it. Catie: Yeah. And could you kind of define functional medicine for us? Vanda Aubrey: Yeah, so I when people are like, What is functional medicine? What do you even mean by that? I kind of try to describe it. and you other people that are kind of familiar with functional medicine have probably heard this before. If you had a bucket and it had water in it and it was leaking the water out of the bottom of the bucket, would you try to fix it by putting more water in the bucket or by fixing the hole in the bottom? Functional medicine is we're gonna find the hole and fix it, whereas contrast to that, a lot of times traditional medicine is we're just gonna put more water in, or we're just gonna put a slight little band-aid over the hole and hope that it holds. Does that make sense? Danielle: That's a great analogy, honestly. Because Catie: yeah. Danielle: I think that that's something we all feel when we go. And with Katie and I too, just having personal experiences with fertility. And even before, like you did, I skipped a period once for like nine months, and they just same thing. Katie and I were talking about this. Someone in our life was told to go right back on birth control. And it's like that just doesn't seem like the answer. So and they do all these tests, right? So Let's get into that a little bit. You work with women who've been told that their labs are normal, whatever normal means, and still feel bad. So, like how is that even possible? Why do the labs come back that way if there's really something going on? Vanda Aubrey: There's a couple different reasons that this can happen. The most common reason is because there is a difference in a normal range for a lab result and an optimal range for a lab result. When you go to your traditional provider, they are looking at that normal range. The normal range has been determined by a like census and an average of the population. But that population that they're using to determine that includes people that are sick and have chronic illnesses. And when you are really wanting to fix something in your body. You want your body to work optimally and work at its best. You don't want to be okay with the range they've developed that includes sick people. Like I wanna know what my range should be if I am at the top tier of my health. And that's where when we look at labs and we compare them to the optimal ranges, we can gain some more insights and find things that are maybe just slightly off from the normal range that really are causing a problem. And then the other reason that we see this happen is because and I don't want to seem like I am just gonna dog on traditional providers throughout the whole episode because I I don't mean to come off that way, but we also have to remember that they are so like overwhelmed with the number of patients that they are cycling through and the very little amount of time that they spend with you when you're in a single appointment. So they don't really get to sit down and have a full conversation with you and start connecting dots between like, okay, maybe she's having this symptom because of these three different things. they get very little just a snapshot into okay, what are you here for today? What's your biggest concern? Okay, I'm gonna send you for these labs. Then when those labs come back, a lot of times we you know a a provider is checking those line by line at a time. Is this one level within the normal range, okay, good. I'm moving on to the next one. With a functional medicine lens, we are looking at multiple different markers as a whole and connecting dots between them and looking at like, okay, we might still be in technically within the normal range or even sometimes the optimal range right now. But do we have any labs from the past we can compare that to? Are we trending one way or the other? And looking at it as a whole, you know, are we connected to like this thing's going on with your cholesterol? But then we also see these like liver things going on in your CMP and knowing that they both are contributing to the issue or to the Catie: Yeah. Vanda Aubrey: symptom. Things aren't just happening in a silo. It's not just about one single lap. Catie: And I know you work across multiple like, you know, fertility that I know we wanted to talk a little bit more on the postpartum side of things as far as like what's normal, what are some of the symptoms that people are coming to you with maybe postpartum that they're just like, This doesn't seem normal, like I wanna talk to you, have you look at my labs and and that type of thing. Vanda Aubrey: Yeah, fatigue is a big one. Feeling like run down all the time, regardless of like, am I sleeping? You know, when you have a newborn, you're just all over the place. But then you get to this point where you're like, okay, well, my kid's sleeping pretty good now. Why do I still feel so terrible? Why do I still feel so tapped out all the time? So that's a big one. Periods, once they return postpartum, that's gonna be at a different point for everybody because you know, we're all unique little flowers. But also things like whether or not you breastfeed and what that does to your hormones makes an impact. But when those periods come back, there's oftentimes a lot of symptoms that come with that that the person may have never really dealt with before. They may have had perfectly fine periods prior to their pregnancy, but now they're dealing with like really heavy bleeding or a lot of cramps and they're like, what is going on? Because in their like day-to-day, as far as what they eat, their exercise habits, a lot of times that stuff hasn't really drastically changed. So they're left wondering, like, well, is this just how it is? And is that what do I do? Because I'm miserable and I don't wanna be like this. Catie: No, I think that's the biggest question everyone asked because I remember in between my two kids, I was only like I was he was Jack was just it was his first birthday and we found out I was pregnant again like the day after his birthday party. So I don't even like really remember that time frame. But after Kelvin, like I was just like, you know, six weeks later, I had an emergency C-section, had a terrible period. Everything I looked at online was like that's normal for like a C-section that you're gonna have terrible bleeding because, you know, everything's getting back to normal. Like my doctor was like, Yeah, it might be a few months still before things are normal. I didn't breastfeed either. so I kind of was right back to periods right away. And it was like a year and a half before I'm like, is this like my life now? How my periods are? Like they were just so bad. Like Danielle and I still joke. Danielle: Feel like it happened to you and I at the same time because I breastfed for Daisy for 18 months. So I feel like we kind of got our like back into getting our periods at a similar Catie: Yeah. Danielle: time. And we the amount weirdly from afar, I don't know if it's like osmos, I don't know. We both tend to cycle at the same time together, even though we live in two different states. So we'll be like, my God, I'm dying. Like we talk about it all the time. I feel like I am in eighth grade again. Like They put me on birth control back then, before they knew I had PCOS or whatever was going on, because I had such bad cramping, I was out of school for three days a a month because of it. And it all Catie: Mm-hmm. Danielle: went away in my older age, like, you know, whatever. And then after kids, it came back and came to your always and I have gone to the doctor multiple times. And they're like, It's just part your choice is birth control. Like that is what both of us have been told at this point. Catie: Yeah, unless you do something else and like I was having other issues and that and I should have I wish I knew about functional medicine like and was way more educated like two years ago, but I, you know, have made adjustments and we're we're on the uptick, but I think that's a common theme from everyone we talk to is that postpartum periods are just crazy. But Danielle: Horrific. Catie: what would you say to somebody that is feeling the same thing we've been feeling? Vanda Aubrey: Yeah, well, number one, like I do want to always let people know that there are other options and other ways we can investigate, like what is causing this. number two, I like to encourage people that there is a lot you can do with just very basic things. And sometimes it's so easy, especially in the midst of motherhood, especially early on, that we might be letting a lot of the low-hanging fruit fall by the wayside. You know, making sure that you're fueling yourself with enough food. are you hydrated? Are what does your self-care look like? And not in the sense of like, I'm going to get a massage to get my nails done type of self-care. Like, did you take five minutes today to give yourself a break and not have someone touching you or asking a question or depending on you? you know, there are very basic things like that that we do need to make sure they're in check because they do have a big impact. The good news is is that those are typically like free and easy things. Well seemingly easy things to fix, then you just gotta have like some strategy of like, okay, how do I make all of this work and still juggle all of my other responsibilities? So we definitely want to start there. But then I don't recommend for people to like delay testing. If you're miserable, there's no reason to continue to just like wait in misery. Let's get the testing and let's see what's really causing this. Because specifically with postpartum Your body has just been through like a huge event, a very nutritionally demanding event. And your your body will prioritize giving like nutrients and minerals to the baby over yourself. So women are often coming out of postpartum super depleted in minerals and they don't even know it because again it's like just not talked about a whole lot. And once they can start to correct that depletion and build those mineral levels back up, they're able to, you know, mitigate those symptoms rather quickly. Danielle: some of the minerals that like are related to hormones? And because we people do not talk about that often, so it'd be interesting to hear what they are. Vanda Aubrey: Yeah, when we evaluate minerals, there are like between twenty and thirty that we're looking at, but there are four big ones that they are the most abundant in the body and they're responsible for the most amount of like jobs that they have to do. So that's going to be your calcium, your sodium, your potassium, and your magnesium. So we really focus there first to make sure that those are kind of in line and then we can worry about the others, you know, a little later. Catie: I think it's also something to start diving into is the hormones. So how much they're changing. But can you kind of go into all the talk about I'm so uneducated in this, so like forgive me. Like like, but it's like go to show you you have two kids and you still like most people don't you can go through this whole thing and not really know much. but like you talk a little bit about like estrogen dominance and and that. Can you kind of dive into some of that? Vanda Aubrey: yeah, of course. So when you're postpartum, it is true when our providers tell us like it's gonna take a while for your hormones to like regulate again. There is some truth to that. anytime that we're talking about a cycle, we have to remember that the egg that's being released during that cycle, the development of that egg really started 90 to 100 days prior. So sometimes the frustrating thing with like hormonal work. is that it's not an instant fix. It's not a instant improvement across the board. We have to give the body time to adapt and then rebalance those hormones. But if we're talking about like estrogen dominance specifically, you know, that means that there's an imbalance between our estrogen and our progesterone. It might be that we just flat out have too much estrogen. It can also be that actually our estrogen normals are our extra Our estrogen levels are normal and where they should be, but for some reason our body is not making enough progesterone to keep that balance. So testing there is also very important so that we can identify which issue we have, and that kind of dictates how we tackle it. Because if we just have way too much estrogen, then we need to support the body in getting rid of the excess that we don't need. If our issue is really that we are not making enough progesterone, then that's where we need to focus and help the body to be able to make more progesterone. And sometimes some very lucky women have both issues going on and and then we know that and we, you know, then we have to tackle both. Catie: And where would you suggest someone to start as far as labs? Like, how do you go about requesting the right things? Vanda Aubrey: So it's definitely worth having a conversation with your provider, your traditional provider, and telling them you would like some hormone labs done. The key is knowing when to go get them from the lab so that you're getting information that is valuable to you. In order to do that, you can't really be on any birth control because the birth control would be controlling the hormone levels at that point. But as long as you're not on any birth control and you are fairly certain. and like fairly confident with your cycle tracking because they're often going to send women to the lab on day three of their cycle to get things like estrogen and LH and FSH checked and testosterone because it doesn't really matter for us women like when exactly we get the testosterone drawn. But then you don't want to go to the lab in the first half of your cycle. So like when you're having your period and before you ovulate to get your progesterone checked Because that's when your progesterone should naturally be at its lowest in your cycle. You want to then like go back to the lab to get a second draw, which I I know some people don't like that, but that's how you get the information that you need. you would like to do that five to seven days after you've ovulated, because that's when progesterone should be at its like peak level. So kind of getting those basics is a good place to start. The only thing about that is That's only one day or one point in time that you have gotten those levels drawn. And studies have shown that there's obviously big variations like day to day in a woman's cycle, but there are some studies that show that like with estrogen or progesterone specifically, that level can even vary a lot in a in an amount of hours. Danielle: Yeah. Vanda Aubrey: So I Catie: Wow. Vanda Aubrey: like to use a testing method where we can track estrogen. progesterone, LH, and FSH throughout an entire cycle. So that we're not making decisions based off just one time. Catie: Well, that's really smart too though, because it's it makes total sense when you explain it that way and like every cycle's different. So like your levels are all over. curious too, do you have any recommendations on tracking your cycle? Like what do you usually recommend to people to track? Vanda Aubrey: Yeah, so tracking is tricky because there are so many different options out there. And we really want to find an app or a system that is not set to the traditional twenty-eight day algorithm. We want to find an app that has technology built into it that is going to learn your cycle and basically like the more data you give it, the better it's going to be at predicting when you're going to ovulate, when your period's going to come, and all of the things. From a just like traditional standpoint, women need to be more aware of their cervical mucus. And that really freaks some people out. It sounds gross. I know it's like not what everybody wants to talk about, but but Catie: Yeah. Vanda Aubrey: we how many times a day, you know, do we go to the bathroom? Just look when you wipe, look, check your underwear. Catie: Yeah. Vanda Aubrey: When you see that that discharge is changing, that is signaling to you that there are shifts going on. with your hormones. And like making note of that can be really, really helpful to even just like validate what the at prediction is telling you. Catie: Yeah, I think it's something I'd never you don't think about till you get into this like stage of things because the other thing is is that I felt like after postpartum saying, like going to your provider saying, your periods are bad, they always seem to ask like, Well, how were they before? And I'm like, I don't remember. I didn't even know what what ovulation like I didn't even know how to track my ovulation beforehand. Like that's how some people go through it. And I know like fertility brings a whole nother piece into that. So like I had a missed miscarriage prior to my first. So like then I started going deep dive into all that. And the first thing was like making sure you know how to track your like your discharge for the the cycle. Like I just had no clue about that. And it was very interesting. Do you have any apps that you would recommend to anyone? Vanda Aubrey: So I use the Mira app with my clients because that's how we track and test their hormones. You can use that app even if you're not doing the actual testing. honestly, the health app within like an iPhone, if you have an iPhone device, you can track in there and it is very good at like learning your data and your averages. Natural cycles is another one. Other than that, you know, I can't say that I've like tested every app because I kind of have the ones I use that I like. but you can with a quick Google search, you can usually find out is this set to a standard 28 day algorithm or is this going to learn and then predict based on averages. So just for anybody that's tracking with regardless of the app, I would quick Google search that and find one that you're able to also like input more data than just like I'm on my period, I'm not on my period. I like to be able to have something where you can track symptoms, your mood, the cervical mucus, your basal body temperature. Even if you're not doing all of those things every single day, the ability to do it. Danielle: The aura ring, I don't know if you've used that with anybody. My r this ring is amazing Vanda Aubrey: Mm-hmm. Danielle: because it literally tracks my like bait like your body temperature. It changes the cycle based on you. It take and it tells you it takes some time to figure out what your cycle is. But like all the things you're saying, like it asks to track way more than just like I got my period, like or how heavy was it, right? Like it's like all these other factors that go into it. And I found, and I don't know, I'm not a doctor. But I have always had issues with, you know, my period. Like it's not a secret. But this has made my life so much easier because it's way more accurate. Like I know it can prepare. And I wish I had it for when I was like trying to get pregnant and or like just trying to plan my life and figure out what was normal. That was like always the issue. I was I'm like, I'm Catie: Yeah. Danielle: so not normal. Like my periods are never not like that unnormal, but according to the twenty eight day cycle, they were very like So like made me feel Catie: I think that's a Danielle: good. Catie: I think that's a good point. So I started and I since doing I've looked at a few other apps, but it's been eight years now that I've used the flow app. And I know some people are like, I hate that one because it is based on like a twenty eight day cycle. And you can input some stuff, but I don't have the premium plan where it's actually taking any of that into account. But now I'm like I'm sentimental about it. I tracked my pregnancies through it. There's so much data in there. It's not telling me anything, but it's Like it it's just the one I've used and I'm like I I have all the data in there. I don't wanna like I should see if AI can export it for me and like put it into a new one, but Danielle: A new use of class. Vanda Aubrey: Yeah. Catie: it's better than nothing at this point, right? Vanda Aubrey: Definitely. Danielle: Really? Catie: so I think the other thing you you touched on was a big symptom people coming to you with was fatigue. And I feel like new moms especially have a hard time figuring out what's normal and not. What would you say is like like you said, don't wait. If something's feeling off, you should go. But what do you think's that like tipping point or any extra advice you can maybe give to to a new mom that's like this Danielle: Mm. Catie: might not be normal versus normal? Vanda Aubrey: Yeah. my advice for them would be to start incorporating at least one mineral drink a day. That's gonna make a big difference for them. That's something that's pretty safe for anybody to start doing without any testing. just based off symptoms alone and the fact that like they've been pregnant, we know that they've just probably lost a lot of their mineral reserves. and it doesn't have to be any particular electrolyte or mineral drink necessarily. There's a lot of good options out there. I just tell people to try to avoid one that's like really packed with sugar because then you're almost like counteracting the benefits of what you're doing. There's lots of sugar-free options out there that have, you know, some good amounts of electrolytes and minerals in them. And that is going to help your energy kind of the quickest. Catie: And so the other thing we saw that we wanted to ask, and I don't know anything about it, but different testing that you can do, the H T A testing. Can you go into that more? Vanda Aubrey: Yeah, HGMA stands for hair tissue mineral analysis. So it Catie: Okay. Vanda Aubrey: is a test that you can do from home. Like you clip it yourself. some people get really freaked out about having to clip their own hair or having their partner clip a sample for them, but I I promise it's painless and it's a really small amount of hair. So especially for women, you know, you like kind of pull the f the top half of your hair up in a ponytail, you clip from the back of your head, and it's a small amount. You do have to send the root. So you can't like clip off the ends or just get some from your hairdresser when you go for a haircut. and the reason for that is our hair is dead cells. So we don't want to clip off the ends that died years ago or or many months ago, depending on how how long your hair Catie: Yeah. Vanda Aubrey: is. We want to be giving the most current sample so that we, you know, we get a window into current data on our body. And the cool thing about this test is that when you go to the lab to get lab work, kind of like I mentioned earlier with the hormone labs, you're only testing at one specific point in time. Same thing with some type of mineral blood labs. You know, you it anybody that's had like a physical or anything within the last like year or two, they've probably had a CMP or a BMP done and they've seen reports come back and say like, okay, my sodium level is this, my potassium levels this. And that's good information to have, but it's only checking it again at that one point in time that you had your blood drawn. With the hair testing, we get to see the average over the past three to four months, depending on how fast your hair grows. And that gives us a much more accurate depiction of what your levels truly are and have been. You know, there's so many things that could affect your level to make it high or low on that one day you went to get your lab drawn. And then we're actually also looking at two very different things. When you go to get your labs drawn, we're looking at what what is around the cell in your bloodstream. When we do hair testing, we're actually looking at what is inside the cell. And that is very, very different and more accurate in my opinion. Catie: I had never even heard of that before. But that's very cool. Vanda Aubrey: It's very cool. Danielle: Mm-hmm. Catie: Do you do that frequently with a lot of people that you work with? Vanda Aubrey: I do. I do it on every one of my clients. Catie: Okay. Vanda Aubrey: it's not a test that you have to have super often. You know, it's kind of like you do it once, we might repeat it in six months, we might just wait and repeat it once a year. Like for myself, right now I'm at the point that I do one about once a year or or maybe once every nine months or so to just check in. Catie: yeah, that's super interesting. So I do wanna switch gears because you do so much with women and fertility in that. Can you give us a little bit of insight on how you maybe work with someone in that fertility realm of things? Vanda Aubrey: Yeah, it's funny because so a lot of the the content that I put out, a lot of what people hear me talk about all the time is fertility focused. Catie: Mm-hmm. Vanda Aubrey: But I do have clients that just come to me because their periods are miserable. And I I try to regularly put content out there that explains even if you're not trying to get pregnant, our goal still should be for you to be fertile. Like when if you think about it like when you are working on fertility and you're trying to get pregnant, you really want all the things to be at their best. You want your hormones to be balanced. You want your periods to be regular. Well, even if our goal isn't for you to get pregnant, when we're working on balancing your hormones or correcting a hormone imbalance, replenishing these minerals, our goal ultimately still aligns with like making you fertile. I'll teach you how to not get pregnant if that's, you know, if you want to avoid it. But you know, that's the cool thing about what I do. So the the work that I do with clients, regardless of the reason they come to me, is very similar. Like we still do the same type of testing. They all get HTMA tests so that we're evaluating those minerals and looking at heavy metals. They both also get the at home hormone tracking that I was talking about earlier, where we track things over a whole cycle. With my clients that are fertility focused, we're testing a little more frequently because we have to be so careful that we don't miss anything or we don't miss their ovulation. With my clients that come to me who are just trying to improve their periods and their symptoms, it's not as you don't have to be as like nitty gritty detailed because we're looking at an overall picture as opposed to I'm trying to get really, really precise with this fertile window. Catie: That's interesting too, 'cause you talked about that it's yes looking at that, but you're also teaching in that Vanda Aubrey: Mm-hmm. Catie: aspect too. So like can you give an idea of some of the like education side of things that you do on top of the testing and the that, you know, more functional Vanda Aubrey: Yeah. Catie: medicine side. Vanda Aubrey: There is a lot of education involved in it because, you know, I think we alluded to this earlier, like there are so many things about our bodies as women that nobody is teaching us. You know, there's not like yeah you get sex education in middle school and again in high school, but they are not teaching us really anything about our cycle, what's normal. so there's a lot of that. I am Catholic and so when my husband and I were getting ready for our marriage, part of what they Have you go through is like a natural cycles and natural family planning class. And they teach you all of this stuff. Like they teach you how to chart on paper the changes in your cervical mucus, your basal body temperature. And I wish that everybody had to take that at some point because you learn so much. Like women need that foundational information. So I'm not saying that I teach that exactly the same way that they did, but essentially. I'm teaching like a natural family planning type of approach to Danielle: Was that part of your pre paina or was that like a additional that you signed up for? Vanda Aubrey: What'd you say that again? Danielle: Pre Cana, like did was that part of like cause I got married in a Catholic church too and grew up Catholic, but we had Precana, which basically like was required, you had to take a Scantron test, they gave you your results. But then they all they did for the natural family, I'm only laughing because I can't imagine like what the course was like. They gave us at the very end it they had a cake and it was like they talked not they did not talk about that at all, but they gave us a gift. And the gift was the natural family planning book and they gave us a cake and they were like, You got this, fine. But like they didn't talk about it at all. Vanda Aubrey: no. Yeah, it definitely Yeah. It it was a required part of it. And we were the only couple in our church at the time that was getting married. So we met one on one with the lady local to us that like teaches, taught this, and we had to meet multiple times because she would like we would get education about it, me and my husband, who was so like I didn't know I needed to know any of this. but Danielle: yeah. Catie: Yeah. Vanda Aubrey: she would talk to us about it and like give us a lesson and we would go home for like a week and I was supposed to chart. for a week and bring my chart back and then we would talk about it. And we did that for about a month and a half. And it was Catie: my gosh. Vanda Aubrey: yeah. Danielle: Follow up. That's wild. Catie: Hey, talk about a crash course if you get the info somewhere. We gotta get it somewhere. It is a huge piece that's missing though. I feel like the apps are starting to do a little like you can kind of Vanda Aubrey: Mm-hmm. Catie: learn a little bit through there. Like I've seen some things there, but unless you know about resources like you or you know, are following stuff and have done the extra research, like you might not know about all these different things and things you can do. so we have to ask too now on like the hormone side, there's so many like trends and like people promising quick fixes with like all the different things. What's like one like myth that you just wish would go away or like one trend that you wish would go away? Vanda Aubrey: This is tough to answer because there's a few that come to mind. But I think if I could like teach all the women in the world one thing, it would be that the belief they're having while they're on birth control is not a period. There's so many women that do not know that, do not realize that. And in the work that I do specifically with fertility clients, that's really important for them to understand in terms of like timing when am I gonna come off birth control versus when is my goal to get pregnant. and doctors like you're going for your yearly visit and they're like, you want to continue your birth control and they're writing that prescription for a year. Like there's no point that they're like, I just want you to know and realize you're not actually having a period. Even in conversation with you, they will talk about it as if it is a period and it's not. And I just wish that that was more widely talked about and known and that women weren't finding that out. kind of after the fact, either when they're struggling to get pregnant or when they've for other reasons decided to come off birth control and they're like, Well what happened? I've been having a period regularly for years now. Why all of a sudden did it stop? And it's like, Well actually you weren't having a period. You were having a withdrawal bleed from the medication that you were on. Catie: Interesting. Danielle: I feel like an absolute idiot at 40 years old because I did not know that until right now. Vanda Aubrey: I mean that Catie: I didn't know. Two people that Vanda Aubrey: don't feel silly because you're not alone. Catie: I think some other people had Danielle: Mm-hmm. Catie: just had that epiphany too, Danielle. But think about it though, like Danielle: looking at you being like should I should I know this because I feel really dumb but then I'm like if our listeners are listening they're also probably somebody out there other than you and I can Catie: We can't pretend that we we can't pretend we knew. Well, I think the other thing is is that like you think that and you're on birth control from like I mean, most people are getting put on it in a young age, Danielle. You just said eighth grade. Like that's crazy even before so you went all through high school, all through college, like on birth control, like thinking this. Like it's crazy to think about. And then it makes me think even more like I was I was just like that. I was on birth control, you know. medicated as soon as I said my periods were bad. They're like birth control it is. And on that through college, like so basically you never I bit never had periods. I had periods for one year. They were awful and then had was on birth control all the way up till I got pregnant, got pregnant, not on it. And then they're like, what were your periods like before? I'm like, I don't know. Danielle: What in that? Catie: I guess I didn't have one. Like I don't it is Danielle: Ha. Catie: like crazy to think about. But are there any other like major contributors that you're seeing to like people having issues, whether it be postpartum or, you know, normally, like are there things just now that are trends or things that you're seeing that you're just like, my God, why are we doing that? Vanda Aubrey: Yeah, I think that the whole low carb keto trend that is still just ever going on, that's really harmful to our hormones. We've we've gotta have carbs as women to support the production of our hormones and people don't realize that it's it's causing harm and throwing those hormone levels off. So I think that would be that'd be the biggest Catie: Huge. Vanda Aubrey: one probably. Catie: Pro carbs. I like that. so I feel like Danielle: Yeah, I'm gluten free, but they use my gluten free card. Catie: we definitely need to have you back on to dive more into the fertility side of things, but we appreciate all the info on hormones and such a good conversation. Can you give everyone a little bit of an idea of where they can find you and some of the coaching programs that you do? Vanda Aubrey: Yeah, absolutely. So I have my own podcast. It's called the Hormone Health class. You can find that anywhere that you like to listen. So you can always hang out there. I love to hang out on Instagram. I'm wellness with Bandit there. I do take, you know, one-on-one clients to work through these things. Like I said, regardless of what reason you come to me, we're kind of gonna do the similar workup that we've talked about today with all that testing. so information about that's available on my Instagram, through my podcast links, all all the things. Catie: Amazing. And yes, we'll have her podcasts and everything linked. We also saw you have a free minerals and fertility guide on the website. So we'll have all those things linked in the description here for you guys. That was a loud voice. I'm gonna start that over. I'm gonna cannot crop it out because everyone knows it was Danielle. Danielle: Yeah, it's definitely. Catie: we'll have all those things linked in the description here for wherever you guys are listening to us. Make sure you check. Vanda out on all those and thank you again for coming on. Vanda Aubrey: Yeah, thank you guys so much for having me. Danielle: Thank you.