Transcript
Speaker: Hey there, I'm Krista Hernandez, 30-something bookish nerd living with my husband, our fur babies, and lupus.
Speaker: It took over 20 years, but I found my path to managing and healing chronic illness.
Speaker: Now, I'm here to help you find yours.
Speaker: Hello out there in podcast land.
Speaker: Today, ladies, we're taking a trip down memory lane to an event most of us remember, even if we'd rather forget it.
Speaker: For me, it was July 1999.
Speaker: Two of my male cousins were visiting for a week.
Speaker: One morning, we were going to a museum with our aunt and uncle, and with two extra kids to get ready for a day trip, the house was crazy.
Speaker: So, of course, that's when Aunt Flo arrived for the first time.
Speaker: A few months before, the school nurse had taken all the girls out of class to give us the broad strokes of puberty, and hey, I'd seen Carrie, so I didn't panic.
Speaker: I knew this was my period.
Speaker: But I didn't know what my period entailed besides bleeding from my nether regions every month.
Speaker: I got the basics with the sperm and the egg, kind of like finding the prize at the center of a corn maze.
Speaker: And TV taught me that if you get your period, that means you're not accidentally pregnant by your cute neighbor.
Speaker: That's all I really knew about my menstrual cycle for 20 years.
Speaker: Even though I'd get an annual exam at the GYNN office, even though I was often on birth control pills.
Speaker: Does this sound familiar?
Speaker: So many of us, even women who bear children, get all the way to menopause without really understanding how our bodies work and the role that hormones play.
Speaker: And we suffer because of it.
Speaker: So let's dive in to the four big reasons why we stay in the dark about our own bodies.
Speaker: And then I'll share ways you can address these issues in your own life.
Speaker: Number one, illogical misogyny.
Speaker: Ladies, if we had a nickel for every time a man blamed something on our periods, we'd all be millionaires.
Speaker: I've certainly imagined punching my husband after he says something snarky like, sounds like somebody needs some chocolate.
Speaker: But you know what really drives me nuts?
Speaker: He's usually right, especially about the chocolate.
Speaker: I have a dozen bars of Ugandan 85% Dark from Trader Joe's in my pantry right now for a reason.
Speaker: Like it or not, hormones regulate everything in our bodies.
Speaker: Temperature, weight, appetite, fertility, brain function, mood, growth, the list goes on.
Speaker: Women's hormones work a lot differently than men's.
Speaker: And when those hormones are out of whack, it can lead to or exacerbate chronic illness.
Speaker: The irony is that while all the knuckle-dragging men out there know how much a woman's menstrual cycle influences her life, doctors are clueless.
Speaker: Male MDs especially put no stock in how our hormones affect our bodies, and they have little respect for our reproductive organs, which so many doctors are quick to just remove at the first sign of trouble.
Speaker: So, what explains this disconnect between the everyman and the doctor?
Speaker: Reason number two why we're kept in the dark.
Speaker: Poor medical training.
Speaker: If you're my age or older, you've probably seen a waterbed, one of the worst ideas of the 80s, up there with new coke and acid-washed jeans.
Speaker: It was bad enough sleeping alone on a waterbed, but if you had a sleeping buddy, good luck breathing without waking them up.
Speaker: Because, hello, you're sleeping on a big bag of water.
Speaker: Every ripple causes another ripple and another.
Speaker: Everything's connected because it's all one system inside the bag.
Speaker: just like our bodies.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: You, my friends, are waterbeds.
Speaker: I am a waterbed.
Speaker: We are all waterbeds.
Speaker: But most doctors act like people are made out of fucking Legos.
Speaker: Medical schools train them to compartmentalize the body rather than treating it as a single system.
Speaker: So they end up just treating individual symptoms rather than looking for the root cause of illness.
Speaker: And it's so much more harmful to women, and particularly women of color, because physicians dismiss the effects of the very parts that make us women.
Speaker: Doctors also get relatively little training in women's health compared to other specialties, and there's not much research being done either.
Speaker: And now we come to the third reason we know so little about our bodies, stigma.
Speaker: So that first day I got my period did not go smoothly.
Speaker: I was afraid my cousins would find out and get weird, and I was super uncomfortable because no one ever showed me how to use a maxi pad.
Speaker: I didn't know you had to remove the wax paper and stick the adhesive side to your underwear.
Speaker: So I walked around a museum all day with the paper on, paper side up, because my 12 year old self didn't know any better.
Speaker: And since I needed to bring pads, I had to carry a purse, which offended my tomboy sensibilities and made me really self-conscious.
Speaker: I'm sure a lot of you have similar stories, especially if you grew up in a religious household.
Speaker: In my very Catholic home, saying the words sex or period was like yelling Voldemort in the middle of Hogsmeade.
Speaker: For me, the talk was a 30-second spew in which my mother could barely utter the word breast.
Speaker: And what little hush talk there was about girl parts was negative.
Speaker: I remember my grandma once referring to a woman's period as the curse.
Speaker: For her, being a woman was just something you had to grin and bear.
Speaker: And now for the final reason we don't know our bodies.
Speaker: You might be wearing one of them right now.
Speaker: Apple Watches, Fitbits, Garmins, Wahoos.
Speaker: I swear I'm not making that last one up.
Speaker: Don't get me wrong, wearable health tech has benefits and can provide valuable insights.
Speaker: But the more we rely on electronics for information about our health, the less connected we become with how our bodies feel.
Speaker: It's kind of like having a GPS, which I admit to using every time I get in the car.
Speaker: I've always had a terrible sense of direction.
Speaker: And now I live outside of Baltimore, so there's 8,000 roads that end in 95 that all somehow go north, south, east, and west.
Speaker: I don't have the brainpower to keep them all straight, so I delegate the job to Waze.
Speaker: But I'm aware that if I keep relying on Waze, I'll never learn my way around.
Speaker: Wearable tech creates the same problem.
Speaker: If we rely on devices to tell us how we feel or what's happening in our bodies, we lose that internal awareness.
Speaker: Beyond the dependency that wearable tech creates, it can give us tunnel vision for certain metrics.
Speaker: For women with chronic illness, it can also do more harm than good if we're trying to follow templated programs designed for healthy people, or more specifically, healthy men, because most things in this world are designed for them.
Speaker: Wearable tech can also inadvertently gaslight us if metrics say we should feel good, but we don't.
Speaker: These issues I've just listed are cultural and systemic, and we've only scratched the surface.
Speaker: But there are simple actions you can take to start reframing the narrative around our bodies and getting to know them better.
Speaker: And we have to, girls.
Speaker: Hormone imbalance is an epidemic among American women, and it's likely causing a lot of your pain and other symptoms.
Speaker: There are two things you can start doing today to reclaim some power.
Speaker: First and foremost, start tracking your cycles.
Speaker: We're going to be talking a lot about hormones on this show and tracking your cycle is going to come up again and again because it's fundamental to understanding your body.
Speaker: I strongly urge you to go old school on this.
Speaker: Use pen and paper, or if you really prefer digital, use a journal or notes app or even a Word doc or spreadsheet.
Speaker: I know there are lots of cycle tracking apps out there, but they can be overwhelming and restrictive at the same time, especially when you're living with chronic illness.
Speaker: When I tried certain apps in the past, I felt pressured to fill out every section every day, which stressed me out because some of them got really detailed.
Speaker: But there wasn't a way to include other symptoms or things that were relevant to how I felt that day because the app didn't support them.
Speaker: When you track your cycles by hand on a blank page, magic happens.
Speaker: You become more mindful about how your body feels throughout the day, the month.
Speaker: As time goes by, you start to see patterns, which can help identify imbalances and potentially allow you to plan out life a little easier.
Speaker: I'm using my tracking journal to plan our vacation this fall because the last thing I want with me on Chesapeake Bay is my period.
Speaker: And that blank page also gives you the flexibility that we need with chronic illness.
Speaker: You may even realize that certain things you just dismissed as a weird quirk are actually hormone related.
Speaker: And if you're fortunate enough to find a good doctor, they do exist, they may glean some important insights from that data.
Speaker: Make tracking a habit by keeping your journal somewhere you can't miss it each day.
Speaker: Your nightstand is an ideal spot if you want to sum up your day at bedtime.
Speaker: But if you're too tired to review by then, keep it somewhere you'll see it when you have more energy.
Speaker: And keep it simple at first, especially if you're just starting out with it.
Speaker: At minimum, just track the days of your cycle and mark your period.
Speaker: Now, there's some debate over which day is actually day one of your period.
Speaker: Western doctors will tell you day one of your overall cycle is the first day of your period, and that's how they expect you to count.
Speaker: I subscribe to a different school of thought where day one of our cycles is the day after your period ends, since menstruation is the culmination of a process, not the beginning.
Speaker: It's up to you.
Speaker: But if you want to count my way, be sure to share that with your healthcare provider.
Speaker: Over time, you can add more information to your journal entries.
Speaker: Symptoms, energy levels, exercise, sleep, and whatever else you feel is important.
Speaker: Just don't overload yourself.
Speaker: There is such a thing as too much self-care.
Speaker: Okay, once you start tracking your cycles, what's next?
Speaker: Start talking about it.
Speaker: Talk to your friends, your sisters, your mothers, your daughters, the women in your yoga class or at PTA meetings or in waiting rooms.
Speaker: The more we talk about what's going on with our bodies, the more we normalize the conversation and the more comfortable we all become with sharing information and experiences that could be life changing.
Speaker: And don't worry, men aren't wiggling out of this one.
Speaker: The next time a man in your life says something like, you're in a mood, that time of the month must be coming, don't get pissed.
Speaker: Lean into that shit.
Speaker: Say something like, oh my god, I know.
Speaker: I feel so down right now because my estrogen and progesterone are dropping like a stone and my serotonin's in the crap or two, so you know what?
Speaker: Some chocolate might do me good.
Speaker: One of two things will likely happen when the man regains the power of speech.
Speaker: Either he will never make a snide comment about your hormones again because that was TMI for him, or something even more incredible might happen.
Speaker: The man in question might actually learn something and be more understanding and curious about how you feel in the future.
Speaker: We have a pretty good success rate for learning in my house.
Speaker: And on the rare occasions, Pete bristles.
Speaker: I just say, hey, I have to deal with your farts.
Speaker: You have to deal with my period.
Speaker: That's marriage, buddy.
Speaker: So there you go, ladies.
Speaker: You're all set to start tracking your cycles and taking back some power over your bodies.
Speaker: I'd love to see what you decide to use for tracking.
Speaker: So show me a picture on Instagram at Krista H. Des or email me at Krista at KristaHernandez.com.
Speaker: Check out the show notes for those links and the link to my website.
Speaker: There, you can get my free weekly sanity planner, a task manager tailored to the challenges you face with chronic illness.
Speaker: It'll help you prioritize your to-do list and be more efficient with your most precious resources, time and energy.
Speaker: So go to kristahernandez.com and get your free weekly sanity planner today.
Speaker: Your body will thank you tomorrow.
Speaker: Thanks for joining me here on SheLived.
Speaker: See you next time.
