094: Regaining Your Menstrual Cycle: Period Recovery Postpartum, Post-BC Pill & Beyond

Discover how to regain and optimize your menstrual health in this episode. From dealing with irregular periods my entire life, I share my own journey of frustration, hopelessness, and how I came out the other side.

This episode was created for women facing challenges with irregular periods, those recovering postpartum, or anyone looking to conceive in the near future. If you’ve recently stopped hormonal contraceptives and are seeking natural ways to balance your hormones, this discussion will provide valuable insights.

What you will learn:
- Understand the Impact of Lifestyle and Nutrition: Learn how your daily habits, diet, and exercise routines directly affect menstrual health and what changes can lead to significant improvements.
- Explore Natural and Holistic Approaches: Gain insights into alternative methods like natural family planning and Eastern medicine techniques such as acupuncture for nurturing your body’s natural rhythms.
- Empowerment Through Knowledge: Equip yourself with the knowledge to make informed decisions about contraceptives and their effects on your body, debunking common myths with evidence-based information.
- Personal Recovery Stories: Get inspired by personal anecdotes of overcoming period loss through holistic health practices, increased nutritional focus, and lifestyle adjustments.
- Expert Advice and Practical Tips: Receive practical advice on how to approach period recovery, including understanding the roles of stress, nutrition, and exercise.

Tune into learn all about how to reclaim and maintain a healthy cycle with practical, simple tips that you can start implementing into your daily routine today. Healing is possible for you, friend! If I can do it, so can you.

Xx
Katie

Other relevant podcast episodes mentioned:
 

086: Postpartum Recovery/Gaining Weight during Menopause/How to Lose Fat and Gain Muscle

https://www.buzzsprout.com/692539/13507219

083: The Power of Cycle Syncing and How to Have Symptom-Free Periods

https://www.buzzsprout.com/692539/13160649

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Real Ryu podcast. I'm your host, katie Duda, a certified nutrition and digestive health coach, sharing with you how to navigate the noisy wellness world that exists today by cutting through it with an anti-diet, science-backed approach. I'm so honored that you're here. Let's get into it. Hello everybody, and welcome back to another episode.

Speaker 1: 0:22

I'm so excited about this episode because it has been a topic that I have held near and dear to my heart for my entire menstruating career let's call it my entire menstruating life. Since I was 16 when I first got a period, I have dealt with very irregular periods and to the fact that I've only had real periods, maybe three or four cycles. So I'm so passionate about this topic. I have a deep history of secondary amenorrhea. So whether you are trying to recover a period postpartum because it has been a length of time and you're wanting to get a cycle back because you know how important it is to have regular cycles, or you are trying to conceive or hoping to conceive in the near future and your period has gone MIA, or you maybe had a history of being on birth control or any type of contraceptive and you're very curious around getting off that for living more in harmony with your body's overall natural hormonal balances and you don't want to have synthetic hormones. It comes with a lot of side effects that are not discussed and they need to be in terms of knowing what you're going on it for and knowing what the consequences are of that. A lot of people still today in conventional medicine-based world will prescribe contraceptives even at that six-week appointment postpartum.

Speaker 1: 1:58

I remember hey, what's your plan for birth control? Do you want to get on this pill? And that is wild to me because you have just gone through war with birth. You are still very much not sleeping. Your hormones are probably not even coming down yet from the roller coaster that it just went on. You are like fresh in the healing phase. And to think all of the impacts that birth and pregnancy have on our gut microbiome and then to know what the pill does to the gut microbiome robs us of essential vitamins and minerals like B vitamins and zinc, it blows my mind. And then, on the overall gut-brain access connection, how that it disrupts that access connection can lead to brain fog, anxiety, depression. It's not what we need for postpartum moms already with what we're dealing with. So there are many other ways to effectively prevent pregnancy if that is your goal. The natural family planning method is incredibly effective with 99% effective rate. Just getting to know your cycle is so empowering because you can then start to completely plan your days, activities and nutrition and sleep and your work, everything, social events according to the phase of the cycle that you're in.

Speaker 1: 3:20

So if you're not familiar with cycle syncing I have many episodes on that I'll link a few up in the show notes below and we will just continue to march down the beat of our own drum, saying that healthy periods are the cardinal sign of true, optimal health for a woman. And when periods go away unexpectedly, when periods become really heavy and painful or when they become very, very light and you just get a light bleed, or an anovulatory period where you are getting a bleed and you're not actually ovulating, that's not a real period. So the spectrum of what we call hypothalamic amenorrhea, which is HA it's an access disruption between your brain and your ovaries and we'll talk about why. There's a wide spectrum so you can get anything from really light periods and to the extreme of periods going completely away. But wherever you are on the spectrum and you're here, you have an interest in normalizing your period. I'm so glad you're here. I'll share a little bit about my story and then we'll dive into what specifically are the main reasons why periods go and how to look at your current lifestyle to assess what is maybe causing the period to go.

Speaker 1: 4:35

Mia, I suffered from a really severe eating disorder for the better part of my early childhood, into my early 20s, and at the height of it was when I almost lost my life due to malnutrition. I was under 90 pounds. I'm five foot nine and I was 20 years old and was told by a cardiologist that because my heart rate had dropped to the low 30s at night which is essentially dead I would need a pacemaker. And that was a really rock bottom, faith defying moment for me where I really found the Lord and everything changed. From there on out. Recovery became a breeze because I surrendered and found faith and a relationship with Jesus. But it wasn't an easy road and because of that it really disrupted my cycles.

Speaker 1: 5:25

I had one cycle before I was put on the pill at 17, just to start quote, unquote get periods, even though it's not actually a period. It's a false bleed. So that was frustrating. I didn't realize that until I was almost 30 years old, but I had thought I was getting periods but I wasn't. So one cycle then, at 17, was on the pill for almost seven years and then when I really discovered naturopathic medicine on a journey to heal myself years after healing my eating disorder but having digestive issues and really on this quest for healing my health and transforming my life through a holistic lens and transforming my life through a holistic lens I realized the importance of getting a cycle. And I was on a pill and was engaged.

Speaker 1: 6:13

At the time. New kids were in my future so I was really curious around what my cycle was going to be like without the birth control pills. So got off the pill at the time. Still was really obsessive about exercise, never skipped a workout up at 5am every day, really intense, high, intense, high volume, high output training. Still very lean, certainly not to the degree of what I was in my teens and early 20s. But I still look back and I'm like, yeah, I was very, very lean.

Speaker 1: 6:39

So it made sense why the period took almost four years to return. It made sense why the period took almost four years to return and I felt during that period of time so alone, confused and frustrated. I was bouncing back and forth between all sorts of different naturopathic doctors and basically spent my entire tech salary at the time in San Francisco on doctors and testing, only to just be told take all of these supplements and you should be able to get a period back. So it was a very frustrating time where I wish that I would have had this information and support desperately, because I wanted children so bad. I knew, above all, that I wanted to be a mother someday, and I didn't know when, but I knew if I wasn't getting periods that I wouldn't be able to, and so I always tell people, for whatever reason of why your period went away.

Speaker 1: 7:31

Whether you're trying to heal a period or any health issue that you're working on, to balance there has to be a big enough why and a reason, and normally that why has to be tied to something bigger than yourself in order to heal. For me, the pain of knowing that I was potentially foregoing the opportunity to be a mom and bring other life into this world was big enough for me to say I'm willing to throw up the white flag and do whatever I need to do, which resulted in putting on a lot of weight and really turning around my life and lifestyle habits, because I needed that bigger why so I say that? Because whether your goal is weight loss, whether your goal is probably getting a period, while you're listening to this episode, you really need to think deeply around why you're trying to do what you're listening to this episode. You really need to think deeply around why you're trying to do what you're going to do, because period recovery isn't always as straightforward and as you start to go down that healing journey, if you don't address that why at the jump it's going to become really challenging for you. Because it does involve almost always a radical change in your current lifestyle, slowing down, and it might mean putting on more weight than maybe you're comfortable with. And so some previous food fears that you didn't realize still existed are going to come up body image issues that you haven't yet addressed or thought you were fine, but yet you've been able to kind of control them and keep them at bay because you're actually still having quite a bit of tight grip on control with food and exercise. So period recovery is so important. It's so vital because menstrual health is full body health, is a woman's cycle being consistent and almost getting a period without any debilitating symptoms, that you don't even know your period's coming. Other than that you're so in tune. You know, hey, my period's coming soon and oh yeah, hey, I noticed a little bit of water retention, energy dipping, but otherwise you get a period. It would just be another normal day. That's the sign of full, optimized vitality. So we want cycles. Cycles are a beautiful thing.

Speaker 1: 9:48

My cycle took four years after coming off the pill to finally come back and it wasn't until that last full six months of surrender where it was like, okay, I had tried the supplements, I wanted to piecemeal. Okay, I'll hold my grip still really tightly on exercise diet, but I'll add in all these supplements and then let's see if that does it. I'll tweak exercise just a little bit and add on these things and then we'll see if that does it. But God was like no, I want all of you and I need you to completely let go of the wheel, and I need you to do all of this. I need you to lean into more carbohydrates, I need you to add more warming foods, I need you to stop doing cardio, I need you to add more calories, I need you to sleep more, I need you to stop working out in the mornings and I need you to do the supplements.

Speaker 1: 10:32

A couple of reasons for why your period has gone MIA could be that you have maybe you just recently had a baby in your postpartum. So I've had two babies in three years and my first son we got pregnant After four years of my period coming back. I got one cycle back and then that following cycle, what would have been a cycle we ended up conceiving. It was a huge blessing and it was a total, faith-defying surrendering moment. Had a very healthy pregnancy, so blessed, and postpartum fed my son, nursing until 18 months and my body was probably perceiving the nursing, and then, on top of exercising and working, that was just too much of a energy expenditure to also think about getting cycle back, and so I did not get a cycle back until 19 months postpartum, once I had completely weaned and that was by choice on my end, because we wanted to conceive baby number two and I felt pretty alone in that time because I felt that everybody, at least in my sphere, was getting periods back between three and six months postpartum while nursing. So again, I felt this talk track that I had oh, of course me, my period's not coming back, I'm broken. That all came back up for me and that was really challenging and I really had to work on my mindset to know I am fully capable of getting a period my body has done it before it's carried to full term a healthy pregnancy. It's nursed a child for 18 months. It knows exactly what it's doing. It's just saying that it's not the time for you to conceive right now, and I say that because our society is so quick to just bounce back in every area.

Speaker 1: 12:25

But on the eastern side of medicine, so Chinese medicine, I swear acupuncture helped me so much with recovering my periods and getting pregnant. And my acupuncture, she's amazing and she always tells me that Eastern medicine says the woman's body takes at least two years to recover from postpartum, for the organs to go back to their normal size, for everything to reorientate, and we put so much pressure on ourselves to have babies two under two and like these really tight age gaps. But a lot of women really struggle to have their bodies heal and also give their bodies enough time. Just because you can get pregnant doesn't mean you should. You want to make sure you're setting up that next baby for the most viable, successful pregnancy and opportunity for thriving. And our bodies take almost two years to fully heal because of the nutrient depletion we go through. And then if you're also working, if you're exercising and then sleep deprived and also breastfeeding, it is with almost 85% probability that you're going to be experiencing postnatal depletion if you're not intentionally replenishing. And even when you are intentionally replenishing, sometimes it's still not enough.

Speaker 1: 13:41

So postpartum is a huge reason for why periods go and, depending on where you're at in the spectrum in terms of still nursing or not, that could be also another contributing factor as to why your cycle has not returned. You are still nursing or not. That could be also another contributing factor as to why your cycle has not returned. You are still nursing. So for me, I'm now postpartum with my second baby and 14 months postpartum and she still nurses Like if I let her honestly, she would nurse all day, every day, but we're probably down to five to six feedings a day and I do not have a period back and I've really been working on my mindset here because I've noticed it's starting to like the first 12 months. I wasn't worried at all. I just knew she was nursing so much and we co-sleep and just nurse on demand, and so I just knew nope, my body is not ready to cycle again, totally fine. But after 12 months I don't know what it is, but you start to think like if you do want more kids, oh, maybe I should start thinking about this again. And so I've started to notice that old talk track coming back. Of course I don't have a period back, and the mindset is so important that a healthy body is a healthy mind. I've now gone through two pregnancies. I have no proof or no validation that my body is broken in any way, other than a history of not having cycles, because at that time I wasn't nourishing it and I wasn't feeding my body, so it wasn't getting a cycle. A missing cycle is simply a symptom and your body crying out for help, saying, hey, something is going on here.

Speaker 1: 15:20

In the world of breastfeeding, you can test your prolactin levels to see how high your prolactin is, to see if that is contributing to suppressing your sex hormones. You can also do full panel sex hormones, looking at estradiol, progesterone, testosterone, dhea we should also be looking at thyroid, for sure and cortisol. And you can do all of that at home with a simple finger poke and saliva test through a really cool company called Nimbus Healthcare. I partner with them for all of my private concierge one-on-one private practice clients, but I also have just a 10% off discount code if you wanted to just purchase that and then run the test and do it on your own. I can't recommend it enough in terms of the price that it costs relative to the information you get.

Speaker 1: 16:06

It's such a solid view of everything that's going on. Especially if your period is missing, we're going to want to see exactly why and it almost always is because you have low progesterone. You might also have low estrogen and stress hormones are also probably at play. So just having that information is so useful, because then you have a solid roadmap for where to course correct. I love having data to help dispel any narratives that you think or don't think about yourself. So many times we're like no, I'm not stressed out. Well, then we look at your cortisol, your stress hormone, and your cortisol says otherwise. So the labs don't lie is what I always say. The labs don't lie.

Speaker 1: 16:50

So if you are nursing and are wondering if that is contributing to your lack of period, you would just want to run prolactin to see how high your prolactin is, because when prolactin is high it will suppress sex hormones and for some bodies it really just truly takes until you fully decide to wean. Some moms can nurse and get pregnant and still nurse while pregnant, no problem. And some of us we need to normalize just can't. The body says I can do one or the other, so not beating yourself up. You can use lab work to help remove some of that anxiety and guesswork, to say where are things at for you.

Speaker 1: 17:29

If your prolactin levels are low or, let's say, you're not feeding, or maybe you're down to one feeding a day, or you're not feeding at all anymore, you're within that two-year range still of postpartum and your period hasn't yet returned, then we need to look at other reasons as to why so. Another very common reason is just overall energy expenditure relative to what you're putting in your body. So that means you are expending more energy than you are putting in For period recovery. I don't count calories, but I do for the first couple months with period recovery clients because it's so important, and a lot of times we think, oh, I'm eating so much and maybe that is true, like you're eating more than you were, when maybe you also have a history of an eating disorder and so you compare yourself to days when you barely ate anything other than steamed vegetables, and so it does really feel like you're eating a lot more and I can relate to that so hard. But period recovery for most patients is at least 2,500 calories, if not up to 3,000. And so I know that probably feels like a ton of calories and it's probably way more than you're eating, but that is just the truth and that is where we start to see period recovery happening relatively quickly. So, really making an honest overall assessment of what are your overall nutrient intake needs for the day and what are you actually giving it At a minimum, we of course need three meals a day In order to achieve 2,500 plus calories.

Speaker 1: 19:07

You can certainly not be getting it through just two meals a day if you're intermittent fasting, which is a whole, nother separate, reason in and of itself. In bold explanation, mark Intermittent fasting is a huge stressor on the body and if you have a loss of period you should not be intermittent fasting in any way, shape or form, because the only way that women can kind of squeak by and get fasting in is through a very small window of the cycle when that follicular ovulatory phase is when a longer period fasting is acceptable. But if you're not having a cycle, then you don't even know where you're at in your cycle. You don't have a cycle to track and it's too much of a stressor. Any type of stressor that we can try to remove is gonna be so beneficial in helping us get a cycle back. So intermittent fasting has to go.

Speaker 1: 19:54

Getting enough calories 2,500 plus huge, super important Three meals a day has to be done. On the calorie note, making sure that your macronutrient range is in the right range as well. You need carbohydrates, you need protein, you need fat. A lot of women are eating way too many vegetables so they genuinely fill up from so many vegetables that they don't have enough in their stomach for carbohydrates or fat. Fat is the backbone to our cholesterol, which makes our sex hormones. So if you're not eating sufficient fat, protein and carbohydrates as energy we need energy it's going to be really tough for you to get a period back. The next reason would be too much high intensity interval training or just too much running. Anything that expends a lot of calories in the cardio range is too much.

Speaker 1: 20:46

And again, it's important for you to reframe on. If you keep comparing yourself to where you were, maybe in a period of time where you were really under eating and overexerting yourself. Exercise wise and we're super thin. Please don't compare your current state to where you were, because that can keep you stuck in saying this is why I should be getting a period, because I'm so much better than where I was. Because you are a new person now. You have different stressors, you have different needs, and so you can't compare your current state to your past state. It's only going to keep you stuck.

Speaker 1: 21:23

So with exercise I love exercise I'm the first to say it is so hard for me to actually live this truth because I'm walking with you, sister. I am also trying to get a period back. But any type of exercise that is going to tax your body, where you feel like hit interval training, sprinting, cycling, running, boot camp classes that's going to be just too much. Even in 20 minutes intervals, it's going to be too much for you right now. The way to know how you're overdoing it is if you are eating 2,500 calories, if you are getting enough fats, proteins, carbs and you are moderately exercising, but you still don't have a cycle back, then we have to say the exercise is likely too much. So, depending on how quickly you want a period back. It can be as it sees, all exercise except walking and walking, even like.

Speaker 1: 22:19

Let's put some parameters around it. We do not need to be doing 10,000 plus steps a day right now. We claw back to walking, stretching, maybe doing strength training a few times a week and assess. If you don't start to get signs of period recovering cervical mucus, sex drive increasing, basal body temperature spiking then it's still a sign that your body is still too stressed. So you really have to lean on the cycle recovery and those signs as okay, the body is starting to recover and therefore periods coming, as a way of knowing how much exercise is right for you, because I can't tell you that I don't know where your current state is. If you're running marathons, it's probably too much. You know how much your body can handle and if you're not getting a cycle back, it's a sign that your body is too stressed.

Speaker 1: 23:07

So you have to really start to assess and be surgical around where and why is it too stressed out? Is it from nutrition? Is it from exercise? Is there an emotional stressor that happened in your life? Is there trauma? Is there work demands and stress where your body is just constantly overworked? Do you have healthy boundaries around work and do you shut down by eight o'clock at night and just truly allow yourself to have proper wind down time with no screens, with no stimulus? How do you feel around just giving yourself days of doing nothing If you're a current parent, you might not have that luxury but even 10, 20 minute increments of just even when the kids go down, do you allow yourself to just sit and do nothing or do you feel the need to constantly be needing to be productive? Right, that's a sign of an overdrive nervous system, and an overdrive nervous system is constantly seeking stressors to keep themselves busy. So it really comes down to period. Loss is a sign that something deeper is going on. It's almost always because the body is saying I'm too stressed, I don't feel safe. Always it's not feeling safe. For some reason, it doesn't feel safe to reproduce. So we have to understand why.

Speaker 1: 24:24

Nutrient deficiencies is also quite common, especially if you have a history of being on the birth control pill or any type of contraceptive. And so, replenishing, getting your minerals tested, working with a functional integrative health practitioner or your current primary care provider to look at your zinc, looking at your vitamin D, looking at your B vitamins, magnesium, those are going to be really critical to making sure that you have iron also magnesium those are going to be really critical to making sure that you have iron also, that you have sufficient micronutrients so that you are able to cycle back. Last thing would be acupuncture has really tremendously helped me. I think it's worth every single dollar. If you can reallocate funds to even carve out it to go once or twice a month, I think it can help you tremendously.

Speaker 1: 25:07

I really believe in Eastern medicine and what they're doing and with that, if you go to a good acupuncturist they're going to tell you also on the nutrition component, they really don't believe in a lot of cold foods. So when we're looking to get a flow back, we really want that body to be warm and nurtured, and so things like raw salads and cold smoothies, iced beverages they're all a no. So if you're going to do a smoothie, they want you to add some ginger, to add heat to that and not a ton of frozen things. And if you are going to have one, to have it at noon or lunchtime rather than the morning, as a digestive fire is strongest at that time. So those are just a few of the key fundamentals of why a period goes away.

Speaker 1: 25:49

I can't give you specifics without knowing your history, of course, but I hope this framework was helpful in guiding you and potentially playing a little detective on what potentially could be going wrong, for why your period has gone MIA and, most importantly, above all, working on your mindset, my friend, to reframe, that you are not broken, you are not sick, your body is fully capable of healing, given half a chance, and that when you continue to tell yourself that over and over, until you start to believe it, you will start to see things in a whole different light and your body will start to receive that truth and a period recovery will happen for you. My friend, I'm sending you so much love and I will see you next time. Thank you so much for listening to the Real Ryu podcast.

Speaker 1: 26:35

Hey, if you enjoyed what you heard today, be sure to check out more episodes and consider subscribing to my weekly newsletter where I share the latest cutting edge research, tips and tricks, all to help support you on your healing journey. You can sign up in the show notes below to join in on my community so that you can get that exclusive content, discounts on packages and so much more, and if you're ready to take your healing to the next level. You can learn more about my individual one-on-one health coaching packages at therealraocom. And lastly, I would love it if you left a review of the show. I read every single one of them and deeply appreciate all types of feedback, as it helps inform the type of content that I create here for you on a weekly basis. Thank you so much for tuning into the show. I hope you have a beautiful day.