Transcript EP 318 – Dr. Taz’s Take on Cycle Syncing

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Dr. Taz: As estrogen rises, here’s what’s happening in your body. Your skin becomes more sensitive. You actually have many high estrogen symptoms if you’re vulnerable to them. So this could be everything from bloating, migraines, feeling really tired.

Hi, everyone, and welcome to Super Woman Wellness. I’m Dr. Taz. I’ve made it my mission throughout my career in integrative medicine to support women in restoring their health using a blend of eastern medical wisdom with modern science.

In this show, I will guide you through different practices to find your power type and fully embody the healthiest and most passionate version of you. I’m here for you and I can’t wait to get started. This is a Soulfire Production.

Welcome back everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Super Woman Wellness, where you know I am determined to bring you back to your superpower self. All right, we’re going to dive into a topic that you may not have heard about before, it’s called cycle syncing, and it’s all about honoring your hormones and really changing everything you’re doing from what you eat to how you exercise, even what you use on your skin, depending on where you are in your cycle.

Now, look, I’ve talked over and over again how we are hormonal creatures, how our hormones dictate so many different aspects of your health. Well, this is something that I learned not just from the books or my own personal experience, but to be a hundred percent honest is something that eastern systems of medicine truly believed in.

A woman’s cycle was something to be revered, and it was important that she adjusts what she was doing in other systems of medicine, such as Chinese medicine and Ayurvedic medicine, rather than powering through and pummeling through and doing the exact same thing, eating the exact same thing, exercising the same way all throughout her monthly cycle.

When we dial into the chemistry behind this, we understand it much better. Let’s think about it for a second. What’s happening? Well, first of all, how many of you really, truly count your cycle, track it, are aware of it, know when it’s happening? There is definitely more awareness around it now, which is so exciting. There are apps and all kinds of great trackers. But for so long women were often like, “Whatever. Here it is, here it’s not. I think it’s regular, maybe not, not sure.” Again, we understand now that that’s simply not going to cut it.

We need to know where we are, and we need to know where we are in terms of where our cycles are, but also where our hormones are. So I’ve been advocating now for a while that we all need to be checking and measuring our hormone levels.

So where do we begin? So let’s talk about day one. Day one is the first day you bleed. Let’s consider day one of your cycle, and all things sort of count out from there. So day one begins the cycle, begins what we call the follicular phase, where the follicles are producing, they’re producing a lot more eggs. Estrogen is slowly coming up. As estrogen rises, here’s what’s happening in your body. Your skin becomes more sensitive, you actually have many high estrogen symptoms if you’re vulnerable to them. So this could be everything from bloating, migraines, feeling really tired. I have women tell me that all the time. And the telltale sign is that these symptoms begin on days one through seven of their cycle, or this follicular phase.

So what does that mean for you? So during this phase, you want to make sure you’re staying away from high sugar, high salt foods, and too much alcohol. You want to make sure you’re drinking a lot of water. And the reason for this is because in a high estrogen timeframe, we don’t want to do things that are going to increase more estrogen. So even your processed foods and fatty foods, all of those just make estrogen symptoms worse.

In addition to that, the skin is more sensitive. So we want to moisturize and we don’t want to exfoliate harshly because that is again going to disrupt the skin microbiome. And when it comes to exercise, as the hormones are rising, it is a great time to do weights, but not really the best time to do aggressive cardio.

Now, many of you that have been listening to me over the years know that I place a lot of importance on gut health, and there’s a very simple reason why. We know gut health is the foundation of health in many eastern systems of medicine. And without a good, healthy gut, your immune system and so many other areas of your body suffer.

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All right, moving on. As we move towards ovulation and heading into where we have that peak, which for most women who are on a 28 day cycle, that peak is right around days 12 through 14. Well, as we move towards that cycle, cardio might be helpful because hormone levels are rising. Getting in more high fiber foods because we’re seeing estrogen levels come up, we’re seeing progesterone levels start to come up as you get right around that day, 12, 13, or 14 or so. Those are things that make a difference. You can exfoliate now, but very lightly, and you can moisturize too.

And then as you get on the other side of ovulation, then again it’s important at least initially to stay on a high fiber diet. Lots of fruits and vegetables. Again, you can do a little bit of cardio. But once you’re passing about three or four days past ovulation, the body’s needs actually change. We want more carbohydrates. We want more satisfying foods to keep serotonin levels low to keep our anxiety down and to keep our moods stable.

So as we get into days roughly 16 through 28 of your cycle, making sure you’re getting more high fiber foods in, making sure you’re getting carbohydrates in, staying hydrated and even getting those healthy fats in becomes an important part of your diet for this particular phase of your cycle. And then when it comes to exercise, not the time to do a bunch of marathons or heavyweights, the body is in a resting state, it’s fatigued, it doesn’t have a lot of reserve, so more so this is a time to maybe embrace things like yoga, walking, swimming, even Pilates, things that work with the body but are not stressing the body out further.

Remember, this phase is where cortisol gets really wonky. Blood sugar gets really wonky, because progesterone levels are going up and down and eventually declining. So that’s why we need carbohydrates. We need the rest. We need sleep, and we need exercise that works for us.

This is also a time where we might see more oil production, so using things like charcoal or clay masks can be helpful for the skin. And doing things like toning the skin with a little bit of tea tree oil to help prevent breakouts can be helpful as well.

All of this has been spelled out in Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine for centuries, women always were conscious of where they were in their cycle, and would cycle sync to keep themselves optimal and healthy. In western medicine, we let go of that and we assumed a cycle was a cycle and all the nuances didn’t really matter.

As we all rise into our power and continue to focus on being the strongest and best versions of ourselves living this crazy Superwoman life, it’s important to understand that we are hormonal creatures and understanding hormone balance is a key determinant of our health.

All right, that’s cycle syncing. Would love to know if you guys do this on your own or have tried it, what’s worked, what’s not worked for you. And if you want to share your story, any healing journey, wellness story, or dilemma that you’re having, please reach out to me. Email me at hello@drtaz.com and we’ll come on air and talk through it and see if your story can be an inspiration and agent of change for someone else. Thanks for watching and listening to this episode of Super Woman Wellness. Don’t forget to rate and review it and share it with your friends. I’ll see you guys next time.