51. Sync Your Cycle, Transform Your Day

Join Dr. Monica Minjeur on Cycle Wisdom as we explore cycle syncing—what it is, how it impacts daily life, and practical ways to implement it. Discover how aligning your lifestyle with your menstrual cycle can improve health and productivity. This episode focuses on syncing with your lifestyle, calendar, and daily activities. Next week’s episode will discuss more about syncing your food and exercise with your monthly cycles.

Transcript

Monica: 0:02

Welcome back to Cycle Wisdom, where we empower women to restore natural menstrual cycles to improve health and promote fertility. I'm your host, Dr. Monica Minjeur, and I'm so glad you're listening today. On today's episode, we're going to dive into a discussion about cycle syncing. We're going to talk about what this is, how cycle syncing can make a difference in your daily life, and practical ways to implement it starting today. Now this topic is actually going to cover two separate episodes. Today I'll be talking about how to utilize cycle syncing in regards to your lifestyle, calendar, and daily activities. Next week I'll be talking more about how to use cycle syncing to align with your food and exercise routines to help optimize your cycle health. So, let's get started as always with a patient story about a past client of mine who we'll call Claudia. Now, Claudia came in for her annual checkup, and as we talked about life in general, she relayed that she was frustrated with her inability to stick with an exercise routine. She also was having troubles focusing on getting tasks done at home, and had been challenged with meeting work deadlines recently. She thought that perhaps she was just being lazy when it came to exercise, or maybe she had undiagnosed ADD that was distracting her from the ability to get her work completed. Now, at this point in time, I had known Claudia for quite a few years, and as we began to sort through some of her symptoms, we identified that there did seem to be some cyclical nature to her troubles. For example, she enjoyed running, but not always. Sometimes when she started a running routine, she would stick with it for a few days, and then feel like she didn't want to continue any longer. Claudia was already charting her menstrual and ovulatory cycles at this time, so I asked her to add to her charting some additional information about her exercise, daily routines, and to identify where she was having any struggles. We also talked about getting Claudia working with a hormone coach to help with optimizing her lifestyle, food, and exercise to align with where she was at in her cycle. Now, this is one of the amazing things that our hormone coaches are very skilled at. They can work through symptoms that you may be experiencing and help to navigate if you need medical intervention or if you just need some guidance as to how to manage your symptoms more effectively. Claudia learned how to modify her exercise routine to best align with where she was in her cycle. She also learned how to improve her food choices and set her work schedule to optimize where she was in her cycle. Over time, daily activities became less challenging and when I saw her back after a few months, she was thrilled with her rotating cycle of exercises, no longer feeling like a failure for her ever changing activities. You see, women are constantly experiencing hormonal changes, and this is most obvious during the years that they're menstruating, but begins even before that and continues well after and well into menopause. Now I do want to offer a little bit of a disclaimer today in regards to cycle syncing. This is an art. It is not an exact science as of yet. There have not yet been scientific studies done showing significant improvements in menstrual cycle length. Number of days of bleeding, fertility or other things in those regards. However, I am an advocate for empowering you with more information and have had many patients experience a profound improvement in their overall symptoms with cycle syncing. More importantly, the deeper sense of understanding your cycles and being able to modify your activities and choices based on where you are in your cycle can be incredibly rewarding. Allowing you to avoid frustration and guilt from things that otherwise can be incredibly challenging to navigate. So, let's start off with what in the heck is cycle syncing? Now this is different from when you're talking about your cycles aligning with other people that you live with or with your college roommate. Cycle Syncing Cycle syncing is also known as biohacking. Now, in general, biohacking is going to be things that you're doing to optimize either your performance, health, or well being by making strategic interventions or changes in your daily life that are beyond normal daily medical guidelines from conventional standpoint. Now, there are a few different ways that we can do this, and most people will say with cycle syncing, We divide your cycle into roughly four different phases. Now, this may be more or less depending upon your particular focus, and it's important to realize that these four different phases are only going to be able to be identified by you if you are actively charting your cycles beyond just your menstrual cycle. So overall what we're trying to do with this cycle thinking is aligning different aspects of your life, like food choices, or exercise activities, work or home tasks, or other lifestyle choices with what's going on with your hormones and your body during each phase. So what are the four phases? Again, you're going to need to be tracking your cycles, knowing when you're ovulating, knowing that fertile window in order to be able to identify these four phases. So the first phase we're going to talk about is that menstrual phase, and this one is pretty obvious for most people. This is when you're actually having a menstrual flow, you're bleeding, you're shedding that uterine lining. During this time, from a hormone standpoint, we typically are going to see lower levels of estrogen and progesterone. Then we switch into the follicular phase. So this typically begins when the menstrual cycle is finished or sometimes even before that depending upon where you're at in your cycles. But really this follicular phase is happening as those follicles are being stimulated to prepare for ovulation to occur. From a hormone standpoint, during this time frame we're going to see an increase in both your estrogen and your testosterone levels. The third phase we talk about is the ovulatory phase. Now what happens during this time frame is there is an LH surge so that luteinizing hormone level increases, causing the follicle to burst open and release the egg. During this time frame estrogen and testosterone are generally at their peak levels. Now importantly with the ovulatory phase, this phase is typically only a couple of days from a time frame standpoint. And so it's sometimes challenging to determine which are the couple of days. So that's why some of this does become a little bit fluid. The final phase that I'm going to talk about is going to be your luteal phase. So again, this is the time from after ovulation until your next menstrual cycle begins. During this time frame, we see that your estrogen and your testosterone levels will decrease, but your progesterone levels will surge reach their peak and then if you're not pregnant then those levels will decrease again. So those are some of the different phases that we're going to talk about when it comes to different cycle syncing and we'll get into some details in a little bit. But I wanted to talk about when you should consider cycle syncing and is this something that it would be a good fit for me. So certainly we always recommend that if you are having severe symptoms that you should absolutely seek medical intervention because there are oftentimes things that we find can be done in order to help alleviate those symptoms. However, if you are noticing I'm having significant symptoms during certain times of my cycle, specifically around the time that you ovulate or in that premenstrual time frame which can be up to a week or more prior to the onset of your menses, cycle syncing may be something that you want to look at. If you are looking to help improve your general health, especially in regards to your stress levels, your mental health, and or your sleep, cycle syncing may be a good fit for you. Again, as I mentioned earlier in this episode, there is not scientific studies done showing the significant benefits from the overall science side of it. standpoint. However, we do know that being able to kind of take some of that pressure off of yourself and help you to realize that your body is changing every single day can really help to decrease your stress levels, take some of that pressure off of you and help you to feel more comfortable in your own body where you're at. Ultimately, this is going to help with eliminating the frustration with, you know, why can't I stick to an exercise routine or why am I always craving certain foods? It can also help you with achieving your personal health goals and creates an understanding and awareness of where you're at in your cycle, as well as lets you give yourself some grace with the phase that you are in. Cycle syncing does take some practice. It does take some playing around and some puzzling to kind of figure out what is it that works best for me. But really just being aware of how do I feel when I'm doing a certain activity during a certain time frame can really lead you to figure out what works best for me. The other great thing with cycle syncing is that it doesn't have to be the same every cycle. You need to learn how to listen to your body and know what your body needs and be okay with that. So let's talk a little bit specifically in regards to lifestyle syncing. And what I mean by this is how you plan your day, your week, kind of the general activities. Now, for some people, this is also going to include your work schedule. If you are working outside of the home, it absolutely will include any activities that you're doing in the home, whether that's That's navigating household tasks or other family commitments. And then I also want to talk a little bit as far as how this will be able to plan into your own personal schedule. Even if you're not married, even if you don't have an extended family, but being able to determine how can I use this in a way that honors my body and the phase that I'm in. So let's start again from the top as far as that first phase, the menstrual phase. Now, when we talk about cycle thinking in the menstrual phase, We want to talk about things that will allow you to rest, rejuvenate. Typically, this is going to be more alone time. It's likely going to mean you're going to limit more of your social activities, getting some more sleep during this time. Honestly, what we're looking for is allowing your body to recover from the menstrual activities that are happening. Now, left to our own devices, Most of us, if we kind of look and see how we feel during our menstrual cycle, a lot of times we're going to want to be alone. We're going to want to kind of take it a little bit more easy. So we say honor that phase that your body is in. Examples of activities that you may want to do during this time may include journaling. Meditation or prayer or reading. And so if you know, and if you've been saying, Hey, I want to read more. I just have a hard time sitting down and picking up a book, set it aside and tell yourself, Hey, next time I start my period, that's when I want to pick up that new book. Chances are good. You're going to be more able to stick with that during that timeframe because your body is in that space where it is wanting to just take that time to rest, read, recharge. Next is going to be your follicular phase. So again, this is as your follicles are getting stimulated to prepare for ovulation after your menses has stopped. So typically during this time when we talk about cycle syncing, this is a great time to work through starting new projects, brainstorming activities, problem solving, planning for social events. This is one of the times when you are at your most creative. So some examples of this may include planning a birthday party for your family member or maybe creating a process improvement for an issue that you've been having at work. Trying to solve some of those problems during different times of your cycle may feel really overwhelming, but generally when we see that surge of estrogen start to set out, that's a great time to start working through some of these new problems. The next phase is going to be the ovulatory time frame and this is again when that LH surge causes that follicle to rupture, to burst open, and release the egg. Now this is typically when most people have their highest energy for social events, date nights, or work events. There's actually been a lot of amazing studies done showing that during the ovulatory time frame, we actually dress differently. The way we present ourselves to the world is different, and the way that partners perceive us is actually different, all based on that ovulatory time frame. To best utilize this time frame, this is a great time if you are somebody who records videos or posts on social media. You're going to feel your best, you're going to feel like you look your best, you're going to have lots of energy for being more social. This is also a great time to pitch a new idea to your boss or your team or a family member because you are going to be more outgoing during this time. Final phase we're going to talk about is your luteal phase. And again, this is after ovulation has occurred. So your estrogen and testosterone levels are starting to decrease, but you have this lovely surge of progesterone that happens. So during this time frame when it comes to cycle syncing is a great time to get stuff done on your to do list. Organizing is a lovely thing to do during this time. Or nesting, just working on cleaning your house, tidying things up, getting things ready. Self care is also really important at this time. So that might look like going for a massage or engaging in a skin care routine. Other things to kind of think about on that to do list, finalize the plans that you made for that birthday party a couple weeks ago. Create a flow chart, make the actual action steps for that new idea you had at work. In this way, you're not feeling so overwhelmed with feeling like you have to do all the steps all at once, but you can really utilize the different hormone levels and how your creativity and how you are overall feeling in order to optimize your cycles to their fullest. Imagine if you had a better understanding of your cycles and how you could sync up your lifestyle choices to improve health and promote fertility. This way forward is possible. Our hormone coaches would love the opportunity to work with you and help you better understand your next steps forward. Make sure to tune into next week's episode where I will dive into how to use cycle syncing to improve your exercise routine and make food choices that align with and support your hormones during each of your cycle's different phases. If you're ready to work with our elite team of healthcare professionals, go to our website, radiantclinic. com, to schedule a free discovery call with me and learn more about our package based pricing for comprehensive care. We are currently able to see people for in person appointments in the Cedar Rapids, Iowa area, or can arrange for a telehealth visit if you live in the state of Iowa or Illinois. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Please share this podcast with someone in your life who would benefit from our services. Remember to subscribe to this podcast for more empowering content that I look forward to sharing with you on our next episode of Cycle Wisdom.