Menstrual cycle

Search gatesfoundation.org/mosquito to learn more.

D- do you know what? I'm, I'm a huge, huge, huge advocate for the, um, menstrual cycle being seen as a vital sign and us all having access to this powerful piece of health data that we don't need to see a doctor for, and we don't need a wearable to have access to this data, and I will talk till the cows come home about the menstrual cycle being a, a vital sign, but your poo has not quite caught on.

It's a little bit less sexy, a little bit less glamorous, and I've never thought of it in the same way that I would think about the menstrual cycle.

So maybe the, the poo is your seventh vital sign, and your wee is your, your eighth.

Yeah.

If you haven't established care with an OB-GYN, it's great to do so in your early 20s.

One, because they are trained to ask you certain questions about your menstrual cycle.

They understand contraception really, really well.

Can talk to you hopefully about fertility and things that we're going to talk about or how we can highlight potential problems that your menstrual cycle might have that we want to explore further.

And just establishing care, sometimes in your reproductive years, they might function as your PCP or your primary care doctor because your OB-GYN can do an annual, which means they can screen for other preventive care diseases.

They can run the blood panel that your primary care doctor would do.

Taking the birth control pill does not accelerate or... slow down your rate of egg loss you're losing eggs from before you're born your entire life but you will notice at certain times when you're ovulating that's when your brain and hormones are communicating but those eggs that come out of the ball are destined to either ovulate or die no matter what is happening

so are they just coming out with just no period blood the period blood only happens after

So anytime you wanna step on the soapbox, please be my guest.

Any other myths that are out there or things that we need to sort of address here as we're winding down? Is there anything that you wanna talk about with, uh, women's, uh, menstrual cycles? You know, we had that on the notes.

That was on the table.

Anything worth mentioning on that topic?

as we head into the fall time.

And I was thinking about this from a traditional Chinese medicine lens, but also from an Ayurvedic lens, and then also from the lens of our menstrual cycle.

Because I think, to me, and I've spoken to this before, maybe even very recently, but to me...

I do feel like the luteal phase, which is that second half of our cycle, is often lumped into one phase.

But in my experience, just like the seasons of the year from Chinese medicine lens, I see five distinct phases in our menstrual cycle.

And in the wheel of the year from Chinese medicine, from the kind of the five element theory perspective, which is something that I learned about 20 years ago in healing arts school, kind of five element perspectives from the Chinese lens.

there are five seasons.

And so we actually see the season of winter, spring, summer, late summer as its own distinct season, and then autumn.