The Mikhaila Peterson Podcast - February 03, 2026


Understand Female Desire, Attraction, and Partner Choice ｜ Sarah Hill EP 227


Episode Stats


Length

53 minutes

Words per minute

193.07

Word count

10,359

Sentence count

479

Harmful content

Misogyny

64

sentences flagged

Toxicity

7

sentences flagged

Hate speech

41

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 When you look at the differences between the sort of ideal male face when it's sort of created
00:00:05.360 digitally using a computer program that's used to test these things, what they find is that when 0.86
00:00:10.100 women are using hormonal birth control, they create a more feminized male face created by
00:00:14.740 naturally cycling women. I think women have been led to believe that the only way forward to promote 1.00
00:00:20.560 an egalitarian society is to deny our biological differences for men. 100%. And so most of the
00:00:26.680 insights that we have about what it looks like to have a heart attack, or what good nutrition looks
00:00:30.700 like, or what sleep requirements look like. A lot of that's based on research that was conducted in
00:00:34.660 men. I'm pregnant. Beginning to understand what your brain and your body are actually trying to do
00:00:40.640 as you move between different cycle phases. What are we, 50% of the population that's female? Even 0.98
00:00:46.160 if you're a man who's like trying desperately to avoid women, you're probably going to have
00:00:50.080 to interact with us at some point in your life. Sarah Hill, welcome back to my podcast.
00:00:58.560 So glad to be here. Thank you for having me. This is exciting. So we have a new book,
00:01:02.480 The Period Brain, which we are going to be talking about. But before we get started,
00:01:08.260 can you give people a brief introduction to who you are and what you do?
00:01:12.320 Sure. So I'm Dr. Sarah Hill. I'm an evolutionary psychologist, and I'm a researcher and professor.
00:01:19.180 and I've spent most of my career studying women's brains and women's psychology
00:01:23.880 and more recently sort of specializing within that area,
00:01:28.720 looking at women's hormones and the way that women's hormones
00:01:31.160 and hormonal changes influence the way that women think, feel, and experience the world.
00:01:35.820 And so I do that looking at women's naturally occurring hormones
00:01:39.580 and then also looking at the impact of hormonal birth control on women's psychology,
00:01:45.220 which is what we talked about last time.
00:01:46.600 Yes, which is fascinating.
00:01:48.520 and that's also what you taught a course for at Peterson Academy.
00:01:52.740 Yeah, so I just got done recording it.
00:01:55.040 Really fascinating.
00:01:56.100 Like I had so much fun putting the lectures together.
00:01:58.540 It is an intro to evolutionary approaches to human behavior
00:02:02.780 and then using that as a foundation to understand sex differentiation
00:02:07.540 and so understanding the biological differences between men and women
00:02:11.660 and then talking about, you know, knowing everything that we know
00:02:15.440 about women and men and about women's psychology
00:02:18.580 and about men's and women's hormones
00:02:20.520 and the way that those differ
00:02:21.800 and the way that those influence men and women
00:02:24.560 and the way they experience the world,
00:02:26.780 then what does that mean
00:02:28.000 when we give women hormonal birth control, 0.96
00:02:30.300 which flatlines their hormones 0.93
00:02:31.820 and replaces them with synthetics?
00:02:34.220 And so it's really a cool course
00:02:36.320 because it walks through all of these different areas,
00:02:38.680 walking through evolutionary approaches to human behavior,
00:02:42.400 understanding sex differentiation,
00:02:44.480 understanding neuroendocrinology,
00:02:46.480 so understanding how our hormones create sex differentiation,
00:02:50.340 and then what happens with the pill.
00:02:53.260 That was perfect.
00:02:54.180 I'm so excited for that course to come out.
00:02:56.060 After we talked on the podcast last year
00:02:58.400 and after I found out what birth control actually does to women,
00:03:04.360 I was like, this is information everybody should know,
00:03:06.700 including men who are going to be dating these women.
00:03:09.860 Because everybody needs to know this.
00:03:12.160 And anyway, you're doing a fantastic job of spreading that around.
00:03:16.580 Thank you.
00:03:16.780 We had like one of the clips from the old podcast went off on TikTok.
00:03:21.620 And I think it was about mate selection and the birth control.
00:03:25.140 Yes.
00:03:25.940 Yeah.
00:03:26.620 So, you know, and all of that is grounded in research on women,
00:03:31.900 the effects of women's endogenous or internally produced hormones
00:03:35.460 and the way that that impacts partner choice.
00:03:38.320 And there's a whole lot of research that finds that, you know, when estrogen is rising and high across the cycle, so during times when conception is possible, that this increases women's attunement to cues related to facial masculinity.
00:03:53.720 And the idea is that when conception is possible across the cycle, that our brains are really kind of dialed in to qualities related to good genes.
00:04:03.660 And, you know, it was only later that researchers asked, 0.72
00:04:06.860 well, what happens when you quash women's estrogen production?
00:04:10.480 You know, does that mean that it leads to less of a preference
00:04:13.360 for masculinized male faces?
00:04:15.540 And the research suggests that, yes, it does.
00:04:17.720 And when you look at the differences between the sort of ideal male face
00:04:22.540 when it's sort of created digitally using a computer program
00:04:26.200 that's used to test these things,
00:04:27.820 what they find is that when women are using hormonal birth control,
00:04:30.640 they create a more feminized male face 0.77
00:04:32.720 than what's created by naturally cycling women,
00:04:35.200 which is really fascinating. 1.00
00:04:37.640 Yeah.
00:04:37.840 It's like fascinating and terrifying.
00:04:40.760 Children are often the best philosophers.
00:04:42.760 They're always asking why.
00:04:44.740 How am I supposed to live my life?
00:04:46.420 What is good, right, correct, proper, best?
00:04:49.180 Beauty used to be considered sacred.
00:04:51.820 What have we replaced this ancient notion of beauty with?
00:04:55.620 Do you believe that truths are absolute
00:04:58.240 or are they all relative?
00:04:59.560 The answers are different than the leading intellectuals.
00:05:02.200 What is it that sets apart these thinkers?
00:05:04.280 Plato and Aristotle, Chrysippus, Diogenes and Marcus Aurelius.
00:05:08.520 Soren Kierkegaard, Ruth Benedict, Philippus.
00:05:11.560 Where Nietzsche is daunting psychologically.
00:05:14.680 He's like a motivational speaker.
00:05:16.280 He's practical in a way that philosophers seldom are.
00:05:18.920 Philosophy begins in wonder.
00:05:21.640 I hope that you can take it with you in a further philosophical quest.
00:05:25.800 And work out your own answers to the big questions.
00:05:29.560 What happens to women, say, who met somebody on the pill, got married, and now they're off the
00:05:45.340 pill and they want to have kids? Are there any stats around, like, is it hard on relationships
00:05:50.400 or does it sometimes not matter? Yeah. So, you know, it's really interesting because there's
00:05:55.280 been a couple of studies now that have been done following up on women who chose their
00:05:59.240 partners when they're on the pill and seeing what happens later. And we actually just did one that
00:06:04.560 we're about to submit for publication. So, I'll tell you a little bit about what's in the literature
00:06:08.640 and then I'll give you fresh off the scientific press the results of our study. But some of the
00:06:18.300 original studies have found that, yes, it can lead to differences in attraction. So, if you choose
00:06:23.300 your partner on the pill and then you go off of it, there was this really lovely longitudinal study
00:06:27.840 that was done that followed married couples over time and during that time of course some of the
00:06:33.380 women who chose their marriage partner when they were on the pill went off of it and what they
00:06:38.300 found was that it led to changes in attraction but whether it became that but whether it became
00:06:43.760 that women were more attracted to their partner or less attracted attracted to their partner
00:06:48.840 depended on how attractive their partner was and what they what they what they found was that women
00:06:53.680 who were married to somebody who was really attractive
00:06:55.580 that like received objective ratings of attractiveness
00:06:58.300 by outside people, 0.93
00:06:59.940 that women, when they went off the pill,
00:07:01.560 it was like the blinders came off
00:07:02.700 and they were like, oh my gosh, you beautiful man.
00:07:05.040 And they were more attracted to their partner
00:07:07.320 and had more relationship satisfaction as a result. 0.97
00:07:11.680 But then women who were married to men
00:07:14.060 who were less attractive,
00:07:15.480 rated less attractive by objective ratings,
00:07:17.900 they found that these women
00:07:19.140 were less attracted to their partner. 0.98
00:07:20.780 and it also went and decreased their marital satisfaction.
00:07:25.360 Yeah, so which is, you know, really scary to think about.
00:07:29.800 And yeah, and so we followed up on that
00:07:32.700 and we did a study.
00:07:33.960 We partnered with Natural Cycles, the tracking app.
00:07:36.300 Oh, yeah.
00:07:36.780 And so we were able to look at,
00:07:39.120 we conducted a survey on their users
00:07:41.640 and we were also able to look at some user data
00:07:44.300 and we found some really interesting patterns.
00:07:46.980 That's cool.
00:07:47.840 Yeah, so I'd love to tell you about these.
00:07:49.340 Yes.
00:07:49.520 So the first thing that we found that I thought was really cool was, and just to tell you a little bit about the sample, these are natural cycles users. 1.00
00:07:59.460 So these women are off of hormonal birth control.
00:08:02.180 But we got a sample of women who were all on it before, right? 0.90
00:08:05.660 So they had to have been on it sometime in the past. 0.95
00:08:09.180 And we did that just because we wanted to make sure
00:08:11.540 that any differences that we found between women
00:08:13.820 who chose their partners on the pill
00:08:15.400 or chose their partners off the pill
00:08:17.960 wasn't just because we're looking at differences
00:08:20.600 between people who are willing to use birth control and not.
00:08:22.980 Does that make sense?
00:08:23.760 Yes.
00:08:23.940 All right, so these are all former hormonal birth control users,
00:08:27.580 about half of whom chose their partners that they're with
00:08:30.700 when they were on the pill,
00:08:31.920 and about half of them had chosen them when they're off the pill,
00:08:34.400 and now they're naturally cycling.
00:08:36.720 And so one of the things that we had looked at
00:08:38.160 was just frequency of logged sexual behavior
00:08:40.880 over the course of cycles. 0.98
00:08:43.000 And what we found was that the women
00:08:44.640 who chose their partners when they were off the pill 0.66
00:08:46.680 were having more sex with their partners
00:08:49.000 than women who chose their partners on the pill, 0.87
00:08:51.260 which again suggests that if you choose your partner
00:08:54.000 when you're naturally cycling
00:08:55.820 and your hormones are able to detect these,
00:08:59.840 you know, differences in qualities
00:09:01.900 that lead to just physical attraction
00:09:03.860 and just sexual desire, right?
00:09:05.880 That this might be orienting them toward choosing those partners.
00:09:09.840 They choose them, they're more sexually attracted to them, and they have more sex across the
00:09:13.460 cycle.
00:09:13.860 So that was one thing that we found that we thought was really interesting.
00:09:16.900 And there were also differences in just levels of physical attraction to the partners that
00:09:21.220 we found between women who chose their partners when they were on the pill and off the pill.
00:09:24.800 So women who chose their partners when they were off the pill, right, so women who chose
00:09:28.940 their partners when they were naturally cycling reported being more sexually attracted to
00:09:32.820 their partners than women who chose their partners when they were on the pill which again suggests
00:09:37.700 that when you choose your partner when you're naturally cycling and your hormones are playing
00:09:43.280 a role in sort of helping direct your partner choice that is going to lead you toward those
00:09:48.960 people that you're most sexually attracted to oh my gosh because that's one of the things that
00:09:52.820 estrogen does is like estrogen primes our brain to be able to like sort of tell the difference
00:09:58.440 between really small differences between individual men
00:10:02.040 just in terms of, you know, qualities that influence
00:10:05.140 our sexual attraction and sexual desire.
00:10:07.280 And when you're on the pill, sexual desire is just, you know,
00:10:10.620 it's like the fire is put out in a lot of ways. 0.62
00:10:15.040 And so it's like women aren't prioritizing cues related to sexual attraction
00:10:18.400 when they're on the pill because their sexual desire is dampened.
00:10:22.380 And so when women are naturally cycling and are able to experience 0.54
00:10:25.300 the magnitude of sexual desire that women are capable of,
00:10:28.360 when estrogen levels are high,
00:10:30.000 then they prioritize those qualities.
00:10:32.180 They prioritize qualities related to sexual attraction
00:10:34.680 and sexual desire.
00:10:36.600 And it seems like those are the partners that they're choosing,
00:10:39.480 is that they're choosing partners
00:10:40.840 that they're sexually attracted to.
00:10:42.300 And when we look at our data
00:10:43.360 and show that we have these higher levels
00:10:45.700 of sexual attraction in those relationships
00:10:48.700 where the woman chose her partner
00:10:50.520 when she's naturally cycling compared to those
00:10:52.880 when a woman chose her partner when they're on the pill, 0.93
00:10:55.600 it's pretty provocative.
00:10:56.520 that's crazy yeah it's crazy i wonder oh my gosh well so so i know i want to say the thing that's
00:11:04.240 going to like make people because if everybody is like especially if they chose their partners
00:11:08.040 on the pill i want to i want to here's my caveat so like don't fall off the couch with anxiety
00:11:13.260 because the other thing that we did is we looked at changes in sexual desire from the time that
00:11:19.760 they went off the pill compared to now so like to what extent do you feel more attracted to your
00:11:26.000 partner similarly attracted to your partner or less attracted to your partner. And here's the
00:11:31.020 good news. About 40-ish percent of women reported that they have no changes in sexual attraction to 0.55
00:11:39.460 their partner, right? That they may have just chosen somebody that they may, you know, they
00:11:44.080 might like other things about them or they might have been really sexually attracted to them and
00:11:48.280 that just has remained unchanged. So about 40 percent of women experience no changes. So that's
00:11:52.380 good news about 20 ish percent 20 to 30 i don't remember the numbers of women report feeling more
00:11:59.440 attracted to their partner so again this deal where you like the blinders come off and all of
00:12:04.560 a sudden your sexual desire is like doing its usual thing and and you're picking up on these
00:12:09.060 fine-tuned differences between men in terms of qualities like genetic compatibility and
00:12:14.040 testosterone levels and these other things that female brains find sexy and um and all of a sudden 0.83
00:12:19.260 the blinders are off and they're like, yes, I'm so glad I have you in my life, right? And they feel 0.94
00:12:23.400 even more attracted to their partner. But about, I think it was 22 to 25% of women experience the
00:12:29.100 opposite. And so that is the effect where you have women experiencing the decrease in sexual
00:12:35.420 attraction to their partner as a result of going off the pill. And this is where there's a mismatch
00:12:39.940 where the women, when they chose their partners, when they were on the pill and their sexual desire
00:12:43.920 is dampened and their ability to tell the difference between men is dampened. And then
00:12:49.120 they go off of the pill and all of a sudden that stuff comes roaring back and they don't find that
00:12:54.680 their partner is the one they're most attracted to. That's where you get into trouble. And so it
00:12:58.820 is, as you know, it is a relatively small percent of women when we consider the totality of all of
00:13:04.100 the women involved, but it's enough where if I was a woman who is like in the process of choosing
00:13:09.540 a marriage partner, like I wouldn't be on the pill when I was choosing that marriage partner
00:13:13.520 just as an insurance policy because what would the you know if especially if you don't need it
00:13:18.000 what would the point be also that 40 percent of people where it's like oh there was no difference
00:13:23.060 yeah but then do you know that you chose right in the first place like maybe nothing's changed
00:13:27.760 but would it have led to different outcomes right oh my gosh do you think this has had an impact
00:13:32.760 like across society in any way like genetically it seems so risky to like mess with
00:13:40.700 Right, right.
00:13:42.000 Evolution's mate choice and then just be like, tweak it a little bit.
00:13:45.360 Right, right.
00:13:46.100 Yeah, you know, it's really interesting because I've wondered that myself.
00:13:49.560 And the thing I've wondered about in particular is, you know,
00:13:52.400 there's some research that finds that women who are naturally cycling
00:13:55.340 prefer the scent of men who are genetically compatible to themselves
00:13:59.560 and who have different immune genes than themselves.
00:14:02.160 And so I've always wondered about whether or not some of the differences
00:14:04.780 that we see in, you know, the changing fertility rate,
00:14:08.340 because we're seeing a greater number of couples struggle with infertility. 0.63
00:14:11.900 And part of the reason is that women are just delaying childbearing until later.
00:14:15.980 And that, of course, is going to create larger problems with infertility 1.00
00:14:18.860 because when you're older as a female, it's less probable to get pregnant easily.
00:14:24.580 But I do wonder whether there's a portion of that that isn't accounted for the fact
00:14:29.200 that women are choosing partners when they're on the pill, 0.98
00:14:31.660 which is sort of dampening their sensitivity to cues of genetic compatibility 1.00
00:14:35.980 and whether this might be leading
00:14:38.160 to some of the unexplained infertility that we see
00:14:41.500 because they're unable to get pregnant potentially
00:14:44.500 because they're just not...
00:14:47.160 Yeah, which I think is really interesting.
00:14:50.100 And there was one study that was done
00:14:51.420 that was actually consistent with this
00:14:52.860 where there was a study that looked at 0.84
00:14:54.980 whether women chose their partners
00:14:56.340 on or off of hormonal birth control.
00:14:58.600 And then they looked at the number of doctor visits
00:15:00.960 that their children had.
00:15:02.720 And this was only one study,
00:15:04.420 But they did find that the women who chose their partners on the pill, that their children had to visit the doctor's office more frequently than did those who chose their partners when they were off the pill.
00:15:14.580 And, you know, and this is just like one data point.
00:15:17.520 And obviously, we need a lot more research to know better than that.
00:15:20.920 But one of the things that I've been working on being able to test is working with another one of these cycle tracking apps because I've got research relationships with a couple of them now.
00:15:30.660 and being able to look at whether women choose their partners on or off the pill.
00:15:34.660 And then when they're in pregnancy mode,
00:15:36.880 when they're like trying to conceive mode in the app,
00:15:40.120 whether or not it takes them longer to conceive
00:15:42.780 based on whether they chose their partner on the pill or off the pill.
00:15:45.200 Because I think that it's a really important question.
00:15:47.460 And I think that it's one that a lot of women would like answers to.
00:15:51.160 Oh my gosh. I've never even thought of that.
00:15:53.560 I've always looked like I've had a number of people on the podcast
00:15:55.740 where I was like, yeah, you can increase the likelihood you'll have a baby
00:15:59.640 by like changing your diet, getting healthier,
00:16:01.680 doing all these metabolic changes.
00:16:03.920 Like there's things you can do to deal with infertility.
00:16:06.900 I'd never considered that though.
00:16:10.180 That would be crazy.
00:16:11.700 Yeah, it would be crazy.
00:16:12.680 But in some ways to me, it feels like it would be crazy
00:16:15.460 if we don't find it.
00:16:17.040 You know what I mean?
00:16:17.660 Because I just can't help but think, you know,
00:16:20.220 when there's a reason that estrogen,
00:16:22.960 you know, that estrogen when it's rising across the cycle
00:16:25.680 and is peaking at times when conception is possible from sex,
00:16:30.280 like there's a reason our brain is really attuned
00:16:32.620 to the differences between men during this time.
00:16:35.160 And presumably it's because it matters.
00:16:38.160 And so I would expect that we might see that you do get more difficulty.
00:16:42.980 And again, do I think that this happens with everybody?
00:16:45.300 Probably not.
00:16:46.460 It might be like the 20%, you know, or the 25%.
00:16:49.320 But that's like a 20% or 25% risk that most women wouldn't want to take
00:16:53.460 if they knew that this was a possibility. 0.65
00:16:57.480 That's crazy.
00:16:58.420 Yeah, no, totally crazy.
00:16:59.640 That's crazy.
00:17:00.540 It's a complete scam.
00:17:03.100 I'm from Canada too,
00:17:04.000 and I found out how much it costs
00:17:05.340 for like schools in the States.
00:17:07.160 Yeah, yeah.
00:17:07.540 It's almost unfathomable.
00:17:08.800 Peterson Academy,
00:17:10.020 if you want an actual education,
00:17:12.100 join up.
00:17:12.720 The progressives hope for universal education
00:17:14.720 at something approximating zero cost.
00:17:17.200 That's what we've got.
00:17:18.320 They're the best courses
00:17:19.840 that have ever been offered publicly
00:17:21.660 in terms of their quality of content.
00:17:24.400 Also, the production values are unparalleled.
00:17:29.560 The period brain.
00:17:31.140 Period brain.
00:17:32.040 So you went from the birth control pill,
00:17:34.040 and then now we're focused on the period brain.
00:17:36.440 So tell me, what is this about?
00:17:38.740 Sure, I would love to.
00:17:40.260 And why should people care?
00:17:41.540 Yeah, people, no.
00:17:44.240 Just to put it nicely.
00:17:47.300 Sorry.
00:17:48.180 No, I love it. I love it.
00:17:49.340 No, so the period brain is really about what a naturally cycling female brain is doing. 0.67
00:17:55.940 And, you know, there's, for a very long time, and this is one of the things that I talked about in my Peterson Academy class,
00:18:03.880 I think women have been led to believe that the only way forward in terms of minimizing sexism and to promote an egalitarian society is to deny our biological differences for men.
00:18:16.460 100%.
00:18:16.940 Yeah.
00:18:17.340 That is definitely what I learned.
00:18:18.840 Like at least dad was good, but that's what I learned growing up from everybody else.
00:18:22.400 And kind of internalized. 1.00
00:18:24.260 Right, yeah, no, this idea that the most feminist thing that you can do is ignore your hormones. 1.00
00:18:29.460 Basically, yeah. 1.00
00:18:30.240 Yeah, and so this book is sort of an antidote to that in a lot of ways. 0.63
00:18:33.800 So it's like, it's about embracing the female brain and the hormonal changes that women experience across the cycle,
00:18:40.940 beginning to understand what your brain and your body are actually trying to do as you move between different cycle phases,
00:18:47.740 and then being able to give you a language
00:18:50.680 to understand what your body and brain are doing 1.00
00:18:52.900 in a way that I think really is going to allow women
00:18:56.080 to feel more comfortable in their bodies,
00:18:59.020 understand their bodies better,
00:19:00.140 and also in the end, get rid of PMS.
00:19:03.600 And the reason that PMS even came into the picture
00:19:05.860 is when we look at what is mostly known
00:19:10.560 about health and functioning in the human body,
00:19:13.560 a lot of that is based on research
00:19:15.460 that was conducted in men, right?
00:19:17.420 We know that men for a long time were the only ones who were studied.
00:19:20.420 And so most of the insights that we have about like what it looks like to have a heart attack
00:19:24.280 or what good nutrition looks like or what sleep requirements look like
00:19:27.600 or what it means to age well, a lot of that's based on research that was conducted in men.
00:19:32.100 And then it was only more recently that women got brought into the picture,
00:19:36.180 you know, where they started including women in research. 0.99
00:19:38.900 But the only time that they were...
00:19:40.440 Yeah, I know.
00:19:41.600 The only time they were including women in research was in the early state,
00:19:45.280 Like the first couple of days of their menstrual cycles when hormone levels are low, and they're 0.98
00:19:49.900 doing that to make women most like men, right? 0.92
00:19:52.640 And that makes the data easier to interpret because you don't have to worry about the
00:19:56.360 messiness of women's cycling hormones, but it also means that a lot of the things that
00:20:01.100 we think that we know about what our bodies need and like what our bodies are trying to 0.99
00:20:05.380 do is based on the first half of the menstrual cycle, and it doesn't always work in the second
00:20:09.980 half of the menstrual cycle. 0.95
00:20:11.060 and that's the reason a lot of women feel so terrible 0.98
00:20:14.360 during the last two weeks of the cycle 1.00
00:20:16.040 is because we've been sold a bad bill of goods
00:20:18.940 about what our bodies need at this time.
00:20:21.520 Oh my gosh.
00:20:22.220 Okay, okay.
00:20:23.120 So what...
00:20:25.040 I think I said why should people care
00:20:28.420 because I know nothing about this really
00:20:30.440 which is shocking because I know quite a bit about health
00:20:32.580 but I was like, hormones, eh.
00:20:34.660 Yeah, hormones, whatever.
00:20:35.840 They'll do whatever the hormones are doing.
00:20:37.200 I'm not on medication, so whatever.
00:20:39.900 So tell me what happens throughout the cycle 1.00
00:20:44.360 and what are women doing wrong in the second half to lead to PMS? 0.71
00:20:48.380 All right, absolutely.
00:20:49.320 So first, let's just talk about a cycle and what it looks like.
00:20:52.500 And on the first day that you get your period,
00:20:54.460 that's the first day of your cycle.
00:20:56.220 And on that day, hormone levels are really low.
00:20:58.880 And when hormone levels are low,
00:21:00.100 that tells the brain to start stimulating the ovaries
00:21:03.220 to stimulate egg follicles
00:21:04.980 because your body's going to start to prepare for ovulation.
00:21:08.900 And so egg follicles will start maturing, and as they're maturing, that causes the release of estrogen, which is women's first primary sex hormone.
00:21:16.740 And estrogen is orienting the body, like its job in the body is to orient the brain and the rest of the body toward attraction and sex, right?
00:21:27.180 Because this is a hormone that rises and peaks at a time in the cycle when sex can lead to conception.
00:21:32.780 and so essentially you can think of estrogen in your body as just like getting every cell in your
00:21:39.300 body oriented toward being optimized for attraction and being able to tell the difference between good
00:21:44.960 partners and bad partners and then sex and so what we tend to find is that when estrogen is high and
00:21:50.240 rising across the cycle women have higher sexual desire they have more sex they're more interested
00:21:55.660 in men like they're more easily distracted by men they're more easily distracted by flirtatiousness 0.84
00:22:00.900 I mean, it's just, they feel sexier.
00:22:03.060 They have more energy.
00:22:05.080 I mean, they smell sexier to men.
00:22:08.340 They move sexier to men.
00:22:09.720 Their voices sound sexier to men. 1.00
00:22:11.640 I mean, it's essentially just like getting women optimized for sex. 0.98
00:22:15.820 And so that happens, you know, we get estrogen rising during the first 14 days of the cycle.
00:22:22.760 So we're just assuming a 28-day cycle, which isn't true for everybody,
00:22:26.240 but we're just going to use that to make things easy.
00:22:28.580 and generally ovulation will occur on day 14, right?
00:22:33.420 So estrogen rising, rising, rising, rising, rising,
00:22:36.200 it peaks and then you ovulate, all right?
00:22:38.520 And the five days prior to ovulation
00:22:40.380 and then the day of ovulation itself
00:22:42.600 is the time when sex can lead to conception
00:22:44.460 and that's when estrogen is high.
00:22:46.560 And then estrogen drops.
00:22:49.160 And the empty egg follicle
00:22:50.620 that just released that egg after ovulation
00:22:52.740 actually becomes a temporary endocrine structure,
00:22:55.660 just meaning that it starts to release hormones.
00:22:58.180 And so it releases women's second primary sex hormone, which is progesterone.
00:23:02.780 I didn't know that.
00:23:03.980 Yeah.
00:23:04.500 That's where the progesterone comes from?
00:23:05.800 It comes, yeah.
00:23:06.400 So if you don't ovulate, no progesterone for you.
00:23:08.820 Which is also another thing I talk about in the book is about how easy it is to disrupt ovulation
00:23:13.680 and why so many women's hormones are all out of whack because they're not ovulating.
00:23:18.200 And so they're never getting this really nice influx of progesterone,
00:23:22.760 which is really good for the brain and really good for the body.
00:23:24.860 Wow.
00:23:25.260 I can't believe I didn't know that.
00:23:26.760 Yeah.
00:23:26.900 That's crazy.
00:23:27.560 Yeah, it is crazy. So you have this thing and it starts releasing this other hormone, progesterone, and that gets released for 12 to 14 days generally. And during the release of this hormone, this is optimizing our body for implantation and pregnancy, right? And so it's like women have to cycle because our bodies have two jobs they have to do for reproduction, sex and pregnancy, right? Men only have one hormone because their bodies only have one thing to do. It's just sex, right?
00:23:54.880 And so the first half of the cycle is about sex and attraction.
00:23:58.340 The second half of the cycle, which is coordinated by progesterone, is orienting your body for implantation and pregnancy.
00:24:05.360 And this causes immunological shifts.
00:24:08.580 It leads to metabolic shifts.
00:24:10.180 It leads to sexual shifts. 0.99
00:24:12.040 And a lot of these things aren't things that women are told about.
00:24:14.800 And the result of it is that a lot of times we feel worse than we need to.
00:24:18.140 And just to give you an example of this, our resting metabolic rate increases between about a 7% to 11% in the second half of the menstrual cycle because your body is working harder to differentiate cells and build the endometrial lining.
00:24:32.800 And this makes our body temperature increase, which I'm sure you probably have heard about because when you get pregnant and everything, they tell you about how your temperature rises in the second half.
00:24:41.280 Oh, I need a break from pregnancy.
00:24:43.400 Yeah.
00:24:44.360 Many months pregnant in the last couple of years. 0.94
00:24:46.620 Yeah, seriously. 1.00
00:24:47.860 And yeah, it makes your body run hotter
00:24:50.020 and your metabolism increases by, like I said, 7% to 11%.
00:24:53.400 And what this means is that for a naturally cycling woman,
00:24:56.400 when she's in the second two weeks of her cycle, 0.98
00:24:58.700 she needs an additional like 140 to 200 calories a day. 1.00
00:25:02.880 Now, women aren't told this. 1.00
00:25:04.800 Do they burn through that? 1.00
00:25:05.940 You burn through that.
00:25:07.120 Yeah, you burn through it.
00:25:07.900 So your body's working harder and it's burning more calories
00:25:10.400 and we're not told about it.
00:25:11.760 And so what happens,
00:25:12.660 we're following one-size-fits-all nutritional guidelines
00:25:15.220 and then we're feeling hungry and angry and having food cravings
00:25:18.840 and thinking that there's something wrong with us.
00:25:20.560 But the problem is we're just not eating enough
00:25:22.860 because our body is telling us to eat more.
00:25:24.820 But the nutrition guidelines that we've been given tell us not to.
00:25:28.580 And then the result of that is that we feel terrible.
00:25:32.000 And same with like our recovery needs also change.
00:25:35.440 And it's harder for our bodies because our respiration rate increases
00:25:39.280 in the second half of the cycle along with our temperature.
00:25:42.460 And what that means is that our body has always got a,
00:25:45.280 like its baseline is working harder.
00:25:47.420 And this means that recovery is going to take longer
00:25:50.500 because the body is working harder.
00:25:53.560 And so recovery oftentimes requires more time
00:25:56.980 when you're in the second half of the cycle compared to the first. 1.00
00:26:00.320 And again, women are given one size fits all set of recovery and sleep standards. 0.99
00:26:04.760 And then if they apply that to their life, 1.00
00:26:06.980 they're feeling tired and like they don't have a lot of energy
00:26:09.360 in the second half of the cycle,
00:26:10.460 but it's because they're not giving their body what they need
00:26:12.840 because our bodies need different things
00:26:14.900 as we're in different hormonal states.
00:26:17.340 And another example is the changes that we get in sexual desire.
00:26:21.680 So women's sexual desire is cyclical,
00:26:24.720 and it peaks with estrogen in the cycle,
00:26:28.160 and then when estrogen falls and progesterone begins being released,
00:26:32.580 sexual desire gets the brakes tapped on it.
00:26:35.480 And this is something that actually happens on purpose,
00:26:37.540 And it happens on purpose because when you're having sex, A, it's, you know, unnecessary physiological activity and your body's trying to conserve energy during this time because it's working harder and your metabolism is up.
00:26:50.300 And so, your body's trying to conserve energy.
00:26:51.920 So, there's that.
00:26:53.060 But it also, when you have sex, because you're introducing non-self, like, material into your body, it's somebody else's DNA, that's something that your immune system is going to notice.
00:27:04.720 And it can cause inflammatory activity.
00:27:07.200 near the cervix and the side of the vaginal canal and that's near where the implantation
00:27:11.760 all takes place in the uterus and having inflammation during times of implantation
00:27:18.880 isn't an ideal setup for an embryo to implant and so one of the ways that our body deals with this
00:27:24.840 is it turns the volume down on sexual desire during the second half of the menstrual cycle
00:27:29.500 and when we do have sex during this time in the cycle it tends to be more about connection
00:27:34.880 and creating the connection between yourself and your partner
00:27:39.240 and reinforcing the pair bond
00:27:41.580 than it is about just needing to scratch a sexual itch,
00:27:44.660 which is what sex is more about in the first half of the cycle.
00:27:47.560 And so there's this really, you know,
00:27:50.260 there's so many women out there who feel broken
00:27:53.160 and feel like there's something wrong with them 0.97
00:27:55.480 because, you know, their sexual desire is cyclical
00:27:58.160 and they don't understand that, right?
00:27:59.620 They're not told that this is actually the way 0.98
00:28:01.740 that it's supposed to happen for women.
00:28:03.380 and there's a lot of women who feel broken 1.00
00:28:06.260 because they're having food cravings 0.94
00:28:07.940 and they can't understand why they feel hungry all the time
00:28:11.000 and they feel like their body is the enemy.
00:28:13.160 And a lot of that is just because we've never really been given a good idea
00:28:16.400 of what normal looks like for a woman. 0.99
00:28:18.940 And that means cycling. 1.00
00:28:21.260 That's crazy.
00:28:22.540 Yeah.
00:28:22.980 My experience, so I started birth control when I was like 14 for skin issues
00:28:27.320 and I took whatever the pill is that like you kind of bleed every three months.
00:28:32.540 although it's not like an actual cycle yeah anyway I was on that for like quite a long time
00:28:39.940 so all throughout my teenager teenage years and then like early 20s 22 or 23 when I started to
00:28:47.780 get healthy I was like I need to get off of everything I'm taking right and what is the
00:28:52.560 pill doing right um which is horrifying so people should definitely know what I was gonna ask what
00:29:01.080 about people who just have messed up hormones right like that aren't going through these rise
00:29:07.560 and falls of like estrogen and things right do are there solutions is that mostly a metabolic issue
00:29:13.960 or is it just too complicated to figure out well and I think that there's I think that there's some
00:29:19.160 you know there's some recurrent players in having messed up hormones you know it's it's a lot of
00:29:27.000 times when women have and we're just going to put like menopause and perimenopause on the shelf
00:29:32.080 for right now because you do get a lot of hormonal variability that goes on during that time
00:29:37.420 that is i mean it's healthy and normal it's just unpleasant and um and so there's not like a real
00:29:44.860 solve for that except for managing the unpleasantness with um you know hormone therapy or 1.00
00:29:49.260 whatever um it is that women want to do to try to iron out some of the the issues they get in 1.00
00:29:54.600 perimenopause but for like a health you know reproductive aged woman with like a messed up 1.00
00:30:00.820 cycle I mean if you have something like PCOS it's usually a metabolic issue usually due to insulin
00:30:06.860 resistance and so anything that you can do to try to get insulin resistance taken care of usually
00:30:12.700 leads to a normalizing of cycles and the same is true for a lot of irregularity in cycles is that
00:30:19.300 a lot of it is just a matter of not having good physical health. And when you do things to promote
00:30:25.200 the health of your body, and it's not just about like, oh, you know, eating healthy foods and
00:30:29.860 exercising, although those things matter, but it's also about finding ways to actually manage
00:30:34.700 your stress. Yeah. How much does stress actually matter for hormones? Huge. So yeah, yeah. Sorry.
00:30:43.080 It's like tough, you know, tough, tough luck for you.
00:30:46.760 Tough luck for all of us.
00:30:48.580 Yeah, no, it's like both stress and then having social relationships are incredibly important in successful ovulation.
00:30:59.180 And the reason for this is our body is so freaking smart that, you know, our brain and our body wants absolutely nothing to do with ovulation if it's not in a context in which pregnancy would be a good idea.
00:31:13.080 And so our brain takes in information about what's going on in our environment on the outside, which means do we have a village?
00:31:22.040 Do we have social support?
00:31:23.920 Are we able to manage our stress as well as our internal environment?
00:31:27.820 Am I getting enough energy?
00:31:29.740 Does this person have chronic inflammation?
00:31:32.980 Is there an immunological event going on right now?
00:31:36.200 And if you're sick or you just get a vaccine,
00:31:39.260 those things are going to cause an immunological event
00:31:41.420 which will prevent ovulation or at least delay it
00:31:43.940 until the immunological event is over.
00:31:45.640 This isn't to say that vaccines cause infertility.
00:31:48.160 They do not.
00:31:48.860 It's just that it will usually make your cycle later by a couple of days
00:31:52.140 because your body doesn't want to be releasing an egg
00:31:55.020 when it's got an inflammatory event going on.
00:31:58.020 And so our body is really smart.
00:32:00.480 It listens to the inside of our body and the outside of our body
00:32:03.480 and then makes a determination, you know, about ovulation.
00:32:07.100 And if it's not a great idea,
00:32:09.380 if this is not the type of internal or external environment
00:32:12.300 that's going to be supportive of pregnancy and childbearing,
00:32:15.380 then ovulation oftentimes will get suppressed.
00:32:18.780 And then if it is, if we take steps to do things like
00:32:21.980 spend time building community, right,
00:32:24.800 and having people that we feel socially supported by
00:32:27.340 and making sure that we're getting enough healthy foods
00:32:30.600 that are nourishing our bodies
00:32:31.860 and that we're taking steps to minimize stress
00:32:34.660 so that way our brain doesn't think that, you know,
00:32:37.120 we're in the middle of a saber-toothed tiger den
00:32:39.680 because our stress response is going off all the time.
00:32:42.460 When we do these things, it really does help to normalize cycles.
00:32:47.020 And just to tell you what, like, how big of an issue it is,
00:32:50.200 like failure to ovulate within a population of healthy people,
00:32:54.660 I'll tell you about my experiences as a researcher,
00:32:57.700 which was really surprising to me.
00:32:59.400 But when I first started in, you know, doing research on the effects of women's cycles on their motivational states, we would have women come into the lab and we would only invite to participate women who don't have endocrine disorders, women who are healthy, women who report having a regular, you know, like 20, 26 to 35 day menstrual cycle.
00:33:23.380 that's predictable and we did this because we wanted to be able to isolate ovulation and then
00:33:28.840 look at how the hormonal changes around ovulation impact different types of motivational states
00:33:34.440 well we started doing this research and when i was doing the research and we're trying to confirm
00:33:39.900 ovulation in these groups what we were finding is that about 30 percent of these women with these
00:33:45.960 regular menstrual cycles weren't ovulating and i was like i must be really messing 30 percent and
00:33:52.400 this is women ages like 18 to 25 with regular cycles with regular cycles no endocrine yes we
00:33:59.700 were not like failed to ovulate on that cycle hold on wait pause how so if you don't maybe 0.97
00:34:07.120 this is a really stupid question but if you don't ovulate I thought you didn't get a period right 0.54
00:34:10.960 no well sometimes you do without ovulating yes so here's the yes yes yes it's just that it's just 0.99
00:34:19.040 not going to be like a a real period yeah yeah but you still bleed you'll still bleed what yes 1.00
00:34:27.120 because oftentimes what will happen when women fail to ovulate is that they they start their 0.98
00:34:33.040 body starts the process and it's maturing egg follicles and doing all the things and so the
00:34:37.780 endometrial layer is starting to proliferate and then hormone levels will kind of you know struggle
00:34:42.980 and cough along at a high enough level
00:34:46.100 where the endometrial layer will be supported
00:34:48.820 for long enough to seem like you had a regular cycle.
00:34:51.940 And then when it starts to fall,
00:34:54.120 then you get your period.
00:34:56.600 But it's not like a full,
00:34:57.720 you can have like something that's not a full
00:34:59.940 or complete cycle and still get a period.
00:35:03.800 That's crazy.
00:35:04.660 Yeah, no, it is crazy.
00:35:05.780 And you said 30, so was that happening to 30%?
00:35:08.420 Yeah, so we found in our sample
00:35:11.140 that 30% of the women were failing to ovulate.
00:35:13.360 And so we said, wait a minute,
00:35:14.580 we have to be doing something wrong.
00:35:16.380 And so I called my colleagues in the research area
00:35:20.320 because there's a lot of us
00:35:21.460 who study the same type of stuff.
00:35:23.640 And so I called some of my colleagues and said,
00:35:25.400 I'm finding 30% of women in our samples failing to ovulate.
00:35:29.040 Like, what am I doing wrong?
00:35:30.060 Here's our procedure.
00:35:31.460 And they came back and said,
00:35:33.320 oh no, that's typical.
00:35:34.640 It's usually about 30%. 1.00
00:35:36.120 And these are college women 0.79
00:35:37.760 and a lot of them are under intense stress. 1.00
00:35:40.480 Right. And there was some research that was done looking at the social isolation that occurred with COVID. And that led to there was a really cool sample that was collected of data looking at women's cycles during isolation. And what they found was that a lot of women were suppressing ovulation in that context as well.
00:35:59.380 because it's like the body just wants nothing to do with the, yeah, exactly. It was like, why,
00:36:05.140 why get pregnant right now? This is not a good idea. Pregnancy for women is so costly, as you 0.97
00:36:09.800 know. I mean, it's, it's risky. It's like thousands of women still die in childbirth every day around
00:36:14.980 the world. I mean, it's like not something that your body takes very lightly. And so your body's
00:36:19.860 like, eh, we'll just wait a cycle. Like this isn't a great time. Like we'll just cut this off at the
00:36:24.020 pass. And then, you know, like I said, and sometimes the cutting off at the pass happens
00:36:28.680 at different points in the cycle.
00:36:30.060 Sometimes it might be, you know,
00:36:31.800 you're halfway through the follicular phase.
00:36:33.560 Sometimes it might be you're halfway through the luteal phase
00:36:36.620 and hormonal disruptions will happen on purpose
00:36:40.160 because your body is trying to cut ovulation off at the pass
00:36:43.380 and prevent pregnancy from happening.
00:36:46.020 So this is also why in relationships, 1.00
00:36:50.040 the female feeling safe in that relationship is so important.
00:36:54.620 I didn't realize it doesn't just go to like,
00:36:56.940 because you get I've had this you meet people and you're like the vibes off I'm getting danger
00:37:02.060 vibes and I think a lot of like young women too when they start dating they'll confuse
00:37:07.120 danger with excitement they'll be like this person's really exciting but you're just getting 0.77
00:37:12.660 danger vibes you just don't know how to differentiate right and then there's like
00:37:16.140 safety with some people and I didn't realize that goes all the way down to being important
00:37:20.580 hormonally as well no just in the relationship it's like your ability to have children potentially
00:37:25.540 is how safe you feel.
00:37:27.680 Yes.
00:37:28.220 Wow.
00:37:28.880 Yeah, and what's really interesting about that
00:37:30.620 is another thing that I talk about in the period brain
00:37:32.800 is about how during the luteal phase of the cycle,
00:37:36.620 one of the things that progesterone does
00:37:38.620 is it actually increases our attunement
00:37:41.240 to signs of lack of safety in a relationship.
00:37:44.560 And if you think about your brain as like a smoke detector
00:37:47.600 when it comes to threats,
00:37:49.280 where if it senses a threat, the smoke detector goes off,
00:37:52.600 our brains are the same way.
00:37:54.080 And the sensitivity of the smoke detector to the smoke of lack of safety becomes more deeply attuned when our body's preparing for the possibility of pregnancy during the luteal phase of the cycle.
00:38:06.580 And so during this time in the cycle, our amygdala, which is the fear center in the brain, actually becomes more interconnected with other areas of our brain.
00:38:14.380 And it makes us more sensitive to even slight differences in the environment that may signal that we are not safe.
00:38:21.640 And this is why a lot of women will become more emotionally sensitive in the second half of the cycle. 1.00
00:38:27.040 And they think that they're just being crazy. 0.99
00:38:28.920 But essentially, it is their safety and security mechanisms, right?
00:38:33.240 Just becoming extra sensitive to the outside environment.
00:38:36.900 And so one of the things that I talk about in the book is just this idea that recognizing this in yourself.
00:38:42.840 And when you're in the second half of the cycle, if you're having one of those moments,
00:38:46.000 and we always, most people recognize, even if they don't recognize it in the moment,
00:38:50.760 they'll recognize it after the fact, where it's like you get really upset about something that
00:38:55.020 may not have upset you two weeks earlier. Like, let's say that your partner loads the dishwasher
00:38:59.220 the wrong way and the way that you know that, you know, they know that you don't like it that way
00:39:03.240 and they do it anyway. It's like during the luteal phase of the cycle, the brain is like,
00:39:07.560 wait a minute, does that mean that I'm not safe? Does that mean my partner, like that they don't
00:39:11.840 value my needs? And it really does become, you know, and when you ask yourself the questions,
00:39:18.220 when you're looking at how you're responding to something
00:39:21.440 is like, am I feeling this way
00:39:23.960 because I'm worried about my safety?
00:39:25.720 Am I feeling this way
00:39:26.700 because I'm worried about my security, right?
00:39:28.680 And usually it's one of those two things.
00:39:30.520 And that allows you to be able to have better conversations
00:39:32.540 with your partner.
00:39:33.480 So that way you can actually ask
00:39:35.060 for the thing that you need,
00:39:36.160 which is generally just reassurance
00:39:37.900 about safety and security.
00:39:39.960 And once you have that
00:39:41.200 and are able to have those conversations,
00:39:42.640 it really does change the nature of relationships.
00:39:45.400 And I think that one of the things
00:39:47.800 you know even though the book is like about you know a period brain there's so much in there that
00:39:54.940 makes relationships better when you have the conversations with male partners about you know
00:40:01.080 changes in sexual desire changes in the sensitivity of your smoke detector in your brain with things
00:40:06.640 related to security and safety and and then being able to recognize together when you know certain
00:40:14.180 dynamics are taking over. And so that way it really can lead to, I think, more intimacy and
00:40:19.500 then also just better relationships. Yeah. You have a manifesto for women on here, but like
00:40:25.340 part of the reason we wanted you on board for the course was because I think everybody needs to know 1.00
00:40:30.140 this stuff. If you're going to have a relationship or be friends with a female as well, or marry one
00:40:35.780 and live with one. Yes. No, no, a hundred percent. It's like, what are we? 50% of the population is
00:40:40.860 female. And so even if you're a man who's trying desperately to avoid women, you're probably going 0.99
00:40:47.660 to have to interact with us at some point in your lives and really understanding this stuff.
00:40:52.420 And I've told a lot of people this, but when my first book came out, I have one chapter and it's
00:41:00.760 just about sexual desire and the way that estrogen and estrogen changes across the cycle influence
00:41:05.820 sexual desire and attraction and so on. And it was like maybe a third of the chapter was
00:41:10.820 talking about women's, you know, the cyclicity of sexual desire. I have gotten more emails from men
00:41:17.440 who read my book and read about that and were like, oh my gosh, you know, this is so helpful
00:41:23.120 to me because anytime that my partner didn't want to have sex with me, I was feeling like bad about
00:41:28.420 myself. And then I would feel like I needed to pester and persist with sex just to prove something
00:41:33.180 to myself because I'm feeling insecure about the relationship because they don't want to have sex
00:41:36.760 with me. And so then I'm feeling like, you know, and then I found that I was chasing my partner
00:41:40.860 down and then they would turn me down and then I'd feel worse and, you know, lead to these loops
00:41:45.140 because men are sensitive, you know, even though they don't want to admit it. And if they're,
00:41:49.200 you know, pursuing sex with you as a partner and you're saying like, no, you know, and not right
00:41:55.600 now that they usually think that it's because there's something wrong with them or something
00:41:58.480 wrong with the relationship. Because for men, that's oftentimes the only time that they don't,
00:42:03.040 You know, that they're not, like, interested in sex.
00:42:05.520 And so to have that lens where they're actually able to understand it is so helpful to a lot of men
00:42:10.400 because it allows them to recognize that they're not undesirable to their partner, you know,
00:42:17.600 and that there's nothing wrong with their relationship and that they can relax on that.
00:42:21.560 Because most men, especially in long-term relationships, you know, they can have a little, you know,
00:42:26.760 they can have flexibility around women.
00:42:28.520 And a lot of the feeling like, no, I have to have this right now,
00:42:31.260 even though my partner is saying
00:42:32.980 like she doesn't want to do it
00:42:34.500 a lot of it is just internal ego struggle
00:42:37.400 where they're just needing to feel better
00:42:39.420 about themselves because they're worried
00:42:41.040 that their partner is turning them down
00:42:42.140 because there's something wrong with them
00:42:43.300 you know what I don't even disagree with that
00:42:46.300 it's definitely true
00:42:47.560 I realized so I was going to say
00:42:49.120 when I went off the pill
00:42:50.540 I was shocked because I went on it
00:42:53.500 at such a young age
00:42:55.040 like which is just a bad idea
00:42:58.660 I hadn't like had cycles
00:43:00.980 really naturally and I was shocked at like I realized for the first half of the cycle I could
00:43:06.680 smell people so that was weird whereas I'd be walking next to someone and be like I can smell
00:43:11.520 them more than I used to like I didn't realize I could smell people I felt like a dog I was like
00:43:15.940 whoa that's weird so that happened but I also started getting the mood fluctuations but in like
00:43:20.760 it was better yeah so I was like oh I feel great right but like maybe not that interested in work
00:43:28.140 Right, yeah.
00:43:28.940 And then for the last half of the cycle, it's like,
00:43:30.720 okay, now I don't really care about anything and I can work.
00:43:33.000 Right, yeah.
00:43:33.380 So it was like this cyclical of like, fine, and then, okay, work, fine, work.
00:43:38.080 It was like, oh, that's weird.
00:43:39.780 No, that's so funny.
00:43:40.700 No, I very much notice cyclicity in my scent detecting, and I always have.
00:43:47.100 Oh, yeah, for sure.
00:43:48.320 And there's research on this. 1.00
00:43:49.600 So women actually become their sense of smell, 1.00
00:43:52.040 and particularly to things that are related to masculinity. 0.83
00:43:55.140 So, for example, there's been some research done looking at sensory thresholds for metabolites of testosterone, and women become more sensitive to that.
00:44:04.040 Like, their sensory threshold lowers, so they're able to tell the differences between these things in ways that they're not at other points in the cycle.
00:44:11.200 And, you know, for women, scent has a lot to do with, I mean, that plays a role in partner choice.
00:44:15.820 It just does.
00:44:17.960 And during the times in the cycle when sex can lead to conception, this is when it's most attuned.
00:44:23.060 It's most, like, finely tuned.
00:44:24.280 And having those, you know, the cycle-based differences and, yeah, just like sort of the degree to which you're externally facing and, you know, like not really wanting to do work and wanting to go out and have fun and then like being able to buckle down.
00:44:39.880 Yeah, that's so normal.
00:44:41.480 I mean, it's so common to experience those shifts.
00:44:44.500 And I know in my own life, I definitely have.
00:44:46.540 And, and for me, when I went off the pill, I remember thinking to myself that when I was on it, I was kind of like a, like an ant drone, you know, like, like where it's like you're a worker drone, where it's like, I just be like, keep my head down and like move forward and like nothing was distracting and nothing was fun.
00:45:03.940 Nothing was pleasurable, but I thought that I was enjoying my work, but it was just like work, work, work, work, work, work, work.
00:45:10.100 And then when I went off of it, I was like a worker aunt.
00:45:16.140 And now I'm not.
00:45:17.180 And it's so much more fun, you know.
00:45:19.320 And I'm still able to get just as much done as I did.
00:45:21.720 It just has a different rhythm, you know.
00:45:23.920 And so I also think that, you know, I think that there can be a fear
00:45:27.600 if women are like, oh, no, I don't want to lose my productivity. 1.00
00:45:30.360 You don't need to lose your productivity. 1.00
00:45:31.560 It just becomes different.
00:45:33.200 It's just you ride the cycle, and it's just a totally different experience.
00:45:37.780 Oh, yeah.
00:45:38.160 I don't think it makes you less productive at all.
00:45:40.460 No, me either.
00:45:41.060 If anything, like I'm sure it was contributing to me being depressed
00:45:44.120 because like everything was, but like I'm sure. 0.93
00:45:46.740 And so if that's what it's doing to you, but you're a worker aunt,
00:45:50.580 you're definitely still less productive than you would be
00:45:52.580 if you were not depressed, period.
00:45:54.580 Yeah.
00:45:55.060 Plus, yeah, it's more fun.
00:45:56.320 Yeah, I know.
00:45:57.260 So I had the same experience and it took me almost 10 years
00:46:01.380 being off of hormonal birth control to like actually rewrite the narrative
00:46:04.980 I had about myself.
00:46:05.920 But I had a belief about myself where I believed that I was somebody who was a little depressed and a little anxious.
00:46:11.540 And I thought that's who I was.
00:46:13.200 And it took me being off the pill for more than 10 years to realize that that was never me.
00:46:19.220 You know, it's just because it wasn't.
00:46:20.320 That's just not my personality.
00:46:21.680 I'm not somebody who gets...
00:46:22.580 That is such a shame.
00:46:23.860 It's like I'm not somebody who gets depressed by things.
00:46:27.300 I'm a pretty gritty person.
00:46:29.320 And so when something sets me back, I'll feel sad for a day and I jump back up the next day and I just keep moving forward.
00:46:34.700 Yeah.
00:46:34.980 And that was not me when I was on the pill.
00:46:38.200 And yeah, it was really crazy to have to rewrite my internal dialogue that I had.
00:46:43.940 I had that same experience.
00:46:46.420 I had some other medications like mixed into it.
00:46:48.420 So it was like, who knows what was going on?
00:46:51.980 But it was the same thing.
00:46:53.080 So I went off of, I think antidepressants were like the big one,
00:46:55.780 but antidepressants and birth control kind of at the same time.
00:46:58.320 And I had to rewrite like, oh, I'm actually extremely stress tolerant.
00:47:02.160 when I didn't think I was stress-tolerant at all.
00:47:05.580 I was like depressed, volatile.
00:47:08.680 Like, I'm not.
00:47:11.080 Yeah.
00:47:11.980 Yeah, it's really—
00:47:12.820 Especially during your developmental years, if you're on that,
00:47:15.160 then it's like, who am I afterwards?
00:47:16.760 Well, no, I know.
00:47:17.620 And so many women don't get to figure that out until so late in life 0.99
00:47:21.360 because they're on it for so long. 1.00
00:47:23.080 And a lot of them, if you ask them, it's like,
00:47:25.140 so how do you feel on the birth control pill?
00:47:26.360 Because if you would have asked me, I would have said, I'm fine.
00:47:28.160 I'm great.
00:47:28.760 Like, this is good.
00:47:29.720 I'm good.
00:47:30.220 Yeah. And then it was only after I went off of it that I realized, no, like I missed out on this whole, you know, other aspect of life that I in a totally skewed view of who I was. And like I said, it took 10 years of being off of it to finally actually rewrite the narrative. Because, you know, when you go through young adulthood, you're figuring out who you are and what your personality is and everything else.
00:47:52.640 And all of that was developing for me.
00:47:54.760 And it sounds like also for you when you're on a medication
00:47:56.900 and that your identity gets built around the medication.
00:48:01.120 And how you act and how you respond to things.
00:48:03.780 Yeah, of course.
00:48:04.900 Yeah, and so it takes a long time then to grow into the new identity.
00:48:09.800 And like I said, for me, it took about 10 years
00:48:11.600 and I'm finally starting to rewrite the narrative.
00:48:14.320 But yeah, like you, I felt like I didn't have good stress tolerance.
00:48:17.100 I felt like I would get easily depressed
00:48:18.860 if things weren't going the way that I wanted them to,
00:48:21.000 that it would really, you know, sideline me and that's just not who I am.
00:48:27.800 Yeah. Yeah. Crazy. Do you think it took like 10 years of recovery?
00:48:33.940 Was that mostly like a psychological thing, having to figure out who you were
00:48:38.760 as opposed to like hormonal things?
00:48:40.700 Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, generally what we tend to find is that after women go off of birth control,
00:48:46.440 that within one to three cycles that their hormones are doing, I mean, that they're ovulating,
00:48:51.000 and they're producing hormones in the same levels that they should be.
00:48:54.300 And there are still a lot of adjustments that have to go on
00:48:56.940 just in terms of the receptors for the hormones
00:49:00.640 have to become more sensitive to hormonal changes
00:49:03.180 because when you're on the pill
00:49:04.700 and you get the same daily hormonal message every day,
00:49:07.360 your body doesn't become used to having to adjust, right?
00:49:10.660 Like, oh, there's lots of estrogen.
00:49:12.200 We better dial back the receptors.
00:49:13.980 Like, oh, there's not a lot of estrogen.
00:49:15.480 We better increase the number of receptors.
00:49:17.140 Oh, my gosh.
00:49:17.680 Yeah, and so thankfully, I know,
00:49:19.060 thankfully our brain is is very plastic but it can take some time for you know for our bodies to
00:49:24.780 adjust when we make big changes like that but i think that the bigger change for a lot of people
00:49:29.880 and certainly for me was really it was the it was the identity thing because it's like you know we
00:49:34.680 don't have and this is like this crazy psychology thing um but it which sounds dumb but it's like
00:49:40.340 so interesting when you really think about it you know we don't have any special insight into
00:49:44.580 ourselves you know we have to learn who we are by watching ourselves the same way other people do
00:49:49.620 that's funny yeah yeah but it's but it's true you know it's like um we don't have nobody gave
00:49:53.720 us the guidebook like you don't say like oh like Michaela likes this and Michaela does not like
00:49:57.360 that wouldn't it be wonderful if we did have that yeah but we don't and so we just have to figure it
00:50:01.740 out based on experiencing life and what's good and what's not good and um so our identity takes
00:50:07.140 a really long time to build you know it takes years of experience and observing yourself and
00:50:11.660 saying like, oh, I respond in this way. And after having 10 years of not having resilience to stress
00:50:16.780 or 10 years of going into a depressed hole when things aren't going my way, you know, it takes
00:50:22.740 more than a couple months of observing myself sort of responding in a better way and in a more
00:50:29.340 adaptive way to rewrite the self-narrative that I had. I think that was the craziest part of like
00:50:38.420 my experience getting better and kind of out of autoimmunity
00:50:42.680 and mostly the psych issues and, like, putting them behind me
00:50:47.240 was there was a period, and there were some other variables at play
00:50:50.740 with, like, some medication withdrawal and stuff like that,
00:50:54.180 but I didn't know who I was at all
00:50:57.300 and, like, bounced around to different things,
00:51:00.800 being like, well, I seem to be acting in this way,
00:51:02.560 so am I like this?
00:51:04.060 And when I first stopped taking antidepressants,
00:51:06.320 um i spent a year maybe in kind of a hypomanic first i got really depressed then i went into
00:51:13.040 like the hypomanic period which was a fantastic year they got a lot done for me i felt great
00:51:18.960 but i was like i i wasn't feeling guilt and it was misplaced guilt when i said no to people
00:51:24.760 because i used to have bad boundary issues so i stopped having any guilt with saying no so i'd
00:51:29.260 just be like no you know i'm not doing that and i was like maybe i'm actually just a terrible person
00:51:33.900 so then I spent a year being like I'm a terrible person but I don't seem to care
00:51:38.360 and then that kind of but I went from like super depressed to like way too many boundaries in
00:51:45.360 maybe a rude way too much positive emotion and I think part of that was all me being like
00:51:50.700 I have no foundation for like what's my actual personality like right wow having to just figure
00:51:57.520 out who I was anyway it all stabilized it worked down the end but like yeah but I mean think yeah
00:52:01.820 Your brain, I mean, especially with, you know, with antidepressants,
00:52:05.500 it's like when you're messing with neurotransmitter, I mean, levels,
00:52:10.180 there's receptors for those things all over the place in the brain.
00:52:13.960 And so you're having to like rewrite the whole script. 0.98
00:52:16.220 And so, yeah, I'm sure that that's a real bitch to get off of. 1.00
00:52:20.580 It's really, really, really bad. 1.00
00:52:23.080 Would not recommend.
00:52:24.540 Yeah.
00:52:25.740 Yeah.
00:52:26.600 Wild.
00:52:28.080 Okay.
00:52:28.460 Well, that was amazing.
00:52:29.460 That was so informative.
00:52:31.820 People should definitely check this out.
00:52:34.420 Your last book was amazing too.
00:52:36.400 Thank you.
00:52:37.520 This is very exciting.
00:52:39.220 Thank you so much for coming on.
00:52:41.020 That was amazing.
00:52:42.160 I can't believe I didn't know about your ability to get a period even if you don't ovulate.
00:52:47.660 I didn't know that the body could do that. 1.00
00:52:49.000 Some women will still bleed, and they have no idea that they didn't ovulate. 1.00
00:52:53.560 Yeah. 1.00
00:52:53.960 None.
00:52:54.820 Because they start to release estrogen, proliferation.
00:52:58.480 Yeah.
00:52:59.240 Wow.
00:52:59.960 Yeah, I know.
00:53:00.800 People should definitely know about this stuff.
00:53:02.500 Yeah, no, yeah, for sure.
00:53:04.100 And so in there, we also talk about ways to identify
00:53:06.880 whether you're ovulating,
00:53:07.900 given that you can still get a period
00:53:09.180 and also talking about ways to support ovulation
00:53:11.820 and ways to support your changing self across the cycle.
00:53:16.600 And yeah, I think it's good stuff.
00:53:19.020 I think it's good stuff too.
00:53:20.600 Thank you, Ken.
00:53:21.280 If people want to follow you,
00:53:23.080 obviously they can buy the book,
00:53:24.260 but where should they go online to follow you?
00:53:25.780 Sure, they can follow me on Instagram.
00:53:27.540 That's where I'm most active.
00:53:28.540 and it's Sarah E. Hill, PhD.
00:53:31.400 And that's Sarah with an H.
00:53:33.120 And you can find me online.
00:53:34.400 My website is sarahehill.com.
00:53:36.980 Perfect.
00:53:37.660 Well, thank you again.
00:53:38.580 Thank you for having me.