A Crash Course in Women’s Anatomy & Hormones

Hello and welcome to the Alkwoman podcast. This is an exploration of woman kind. Here we discuss what it is to be a woman in the modern world while utilizing ancient and modern modalities in tandem to create a bouncy of health for the body, mind and spirit. Good day ladies and welcome back to the pod. It has been a minute. I've been busy. I turned 30. It was really beautiful. I went on a bit of a holiday with my friend. It's been good. I released Arca Fatility. It's been productive. Now I'm back home in Tasmania and I'm loving it. I've just spent the past three or four days in the garden getting my you know late winter early spring crops in. Got some broad beans. Got some sweet peas, some calendula. It's been really good feeling about this year. It's going to be good. Apart from that, I have been re-listing to a few of my resources and interacting with a bunch of you online and have found over and over again that I wish that there was a free resource that I could point everyone to. That wasn't the red tent master class because some people just don't have the monetary means or just aren't sure if they want to invest yet. That is just all about the cycle. Cause I literally get hundreds of messages every single week asking questions that I wish I could put up. I have a point people to. So here is that resource. So you've probably DMed me on whatever social media platform and this directed you towards this podcast. So welcome. Welcome to my podcast. This is your first time listening. Hopefully you enjoy it. This is just all going to be about reproductive anatomy, female anatomy and its physiology and the cycle. So we have a really basic understanding of how these systems work, where they are in the body, what they look like and what happens when things are functioning as we'd like to see them. So let's start with female anatomy. So anatomy is terminology we use in human biology, which means the parts. And physiology is a word in biology we use. That means that how these things work together. So anatomy works within physiology and physiology depends on anatomy. They depend on one another. Before we really start and get into this, I want you to just level in and understand that a lot of women actually don't know the information we're going to be talking about. Most women don't know this information. So at some point you might go, oh my gosh, how do I not know this? Please do not feel guilty. Please do not feel shame. Please do not feel embarrassed. It's totally normal. I was just, I was like you years ago and then became very obsessed, as you can see. And here into this about 50% of women when they are shown a diagram of the internal and external reproductive areas of a female anatomy, they can't actually label any of it. Only about 15% up to 15% of women can go, yep, I'm fully confident and I can label all the parts of the vulva, all the parts of the vagina, all the parts of the internal reproductive tract. And only about 35% actually got that partially accurate. So this podcast is all about getting to know what's actually there. And before we do that, I actually as you're listening to this, if you're not driving or doing something else, if you can sit down on a computer or with a textbook that has diagrams that we can go through together. That would be really, really, really helpful. So let's start with the internal reproductive organs. The encyclopedia of Britannica is wonderful. There are generally a really wonderful resource. You can look up the internal reproductive structure over the female body. And you can find a really beautiful diagram that you can follow along with. Let's start with the ovaries. So there are two ball-like structures and they are on either side of our uterus. And they each carry about one million ovums at the time of birth. By the time we are 30, about 80% of that ovarian reserve is gone because we've been ovulating quite frequently. Because we develop follicles here. And if you don't know what I mean by that, don't worry. You will learn that in two time. We are making our sex hormones here. The estrogen and progesterone are our main female sex hormones and they are both made in the ovary. And the whole purpose is to ovulate, which is once we've ovulated, the ovum is in her journey, up into the next structure we're going to be talking about the fallopian tubes. The fallopian tubes are these arm-like structures that are on either side of the uterus and they basically connect the ovary to the uterus, but they're not actually connected. Not at all. There's actually a gap between the ovaries and the fallopian tubes, which I think is amazing. Because at one point in time, every single human you've ever met on Earth was in free-for-all in her mother's valve pelvis or in his or her mother's pelvis at some point in time, which I think is really interesting. On the inside of the fallopian tubes, we have something called microvili. We have microvili across multiple different parts of our body, our gut included. It's main purpose in the fallopian tube is to get jewel and to bring the ovum down because the ovum doesn't have anything that propels it forward like sperm does. She's just this amazing cell. She's actually the only cell that you can see with the naked eye. She's the biggest cell in both female and male bodies that are made. She's also tiny. She's the size of a grain of sand. But yeah, she doesn't have anything that's going to propel her forward. So the fallopian tube will do that job for her and they will cajule her down fallopian tubes into the next structure. We're going to be talking about the uterus, which is a really muscular organ, which is really, really important because we need muscles here to push out the endometrium, which is lined on the inside of the uterus. We need to do what we lead out every month or so with our period. And it's also really, really important for pushing out a baby because after all this is the reproductive tract. Doesn't matter what your contraception goals are. This is the reproductive organ of a female body. So it's going to be designed to push out a baby. This is where implantation and pregnancy occurs. This is also where we have that lining, that endometrial lining that comes and goes. And what allows it to go is the cervix. So the cervix is the gateway between the vagina and the uterus. And this is a really interesting part of the female internal reproductive organ. She's really funky. She likes to dance around. She likes to soften and harden. She produces different mucus according to what dominant hormone is around at the time, whether it be estrogen or progesterone. So that makes her a really great candidate for a biomarker so we can test and see what's going on with the cervix and we can attune that to where we are in our cycle and whether we're fertile or infertile. She will open up from 0.5 to 1 centimeter when we are menstruating and she will open up to 10 centimeters dilated when we are giving birth. A pretty amazing part of the female reproductive organ. Really, really fantastic. And then around her and surrounding her and moving down is the vaginal canal. So this is what we call the vagina. And the vagina in of itself doesn't really exist. It is the vaginal canal. So this is a canal that serves as a connection point between our external reproductive organ or not even organ, but our external reproductive system, which is the vulva, annawa internal reproductive organs. There actually isn't one word in Western human biology that really encapsulates everything we've just spoken about. When we look to the east in tantric traditions in yogic traditions, we have words like yoni or yoni that encapsulates this whole entire structure, but we don't have that in the west or at least in human biology terms. Let's go out. Let's go down the vagina, which if you don't know has a microbiome, which isn't diverse. It's actually dominated by one type of lactobacillus called lactobacillus crispitis. If you want to learn more about the vaginal microbiome, I have an amazing podcast with Dr. Moira Bradfield straight him that has her PhD in vaginal and also penis microbiology. If you have uti eyes or if you get bv or if you just want to learn more about the vaginal microbiome and how it changes throughout the life stages, so when we're a child, to when we're pre-pubescent teenager, if we're pregnant, when we get pregnant and when we go through parimenopause and postmenopause, changes a lot because our microbiome will change in accordance to estrogen. If you want to learn more about that, that whole podcast is there and it's really interesting and you can actually watch that on YouTube. I suggest you watch that on YouTube as well because the diagrams are really interesting. It's great if you're a visual learner. But anyway, we're moving on to the vulva. If you are looking at a textbook, you want to flip over your page. If you're online, you want to look up female vulva and try and find a good diagram. Unfortunately, the encyclopedia of Britannica is a little bit shy and at this point in time, last time I checked, they don't actually have a female vulva up there. I don't know why. I think it's ridiculous because they have a penis. But hey, that's being a woman. In 2025, still, just absolutely appalling. Anyway, let's have a look at the vulva. So right up the top, we have the clotoral hood. This is a photo skin that covers and protects the clotorous. Much like a penis has a photo skin that covers the top half of the penis. Underneath the clotoral hood is the external clotorous. What do you mean external clotorous? More on that later. It's a highly sensitive organ made for pleasure with thousands of nerve endings. It actually has about 8,000, up to 10,000 nerve endings in the end of this clotorous. And so it's good. We have a clotoral hood to cover it up because otherwise we'd get nothing done. Underneath that, we have the urethra. So this is a small opening where urine exits the body. A lot of people think that this is your clotorous or the clotorous in of itself is a gland. The clotorous is not a gland. it is a head of nerve endings. It has nothing behind it, has nothing that is going to be producing any fluid. So I think this is where a lot of people get confused and go, "Well, where does squirt come from? It doesn't come from a clotaurus dallengh. There's nothing there. It is just a bundle of cells or of nerve endings, really, that go elsewhere internally to the other part of the internal clotoral structure. But we have the urethra, which is connected to a urethra, which is a tiny little tube that goes up to our bladder, which is where we hold our urine. Then we're going to look at the labia minoris. So this is the inner skin fold that protects the vaginal and urethra openings and its appearance varies quite a lot. And all of them are beautiful. Then we have the labia majori. So these are the outer folds that enclose the entire vulva, often have pubic hair on the outer parts of them. Down at the bottom of the vulva, we have the vaginal opening and this is the entrance to the vagina leading to the cervix and the uterus. Then we have something called the vestibular glands, also known as the bathoin glands. We don't want to call them bathoin because they're named after Dr. Bathoin, who was drumroll. Ah, man, we don't name female reproductive organ systems and glands after dudes. Okay, it's 2025. Maybe we don't have vulvas in the cyclopetia of botanica online in cyclopetia, but we're still not naming glands and organ systems in a female reproductive system after dudes anyway. It is called the vestibular gland. And if you hear anyone say it's a bathoin gland, now you know this information and you can correct them and be passive aggressively feminist. Okay, so these are small glands that release lubrication near the vaginal opening. And this is really, really important to know because sometimes it can get infected. And if you feel them and they feel round and they feel a little bit sore, or you can actually see them and feel them, then you might have an infection there. So an infection in the vestibular glands is somewhat common. It's just something you need to look out for and I think a lot of people just don't know that there are actually two glands here. And so when we see it, we're like, "Oh my gosh, I think when women have an infection here, it's the first time they find out about this part of their body and it's a little bit disorienting." So now you know what they're called, what they do. They release lubrication near the vaginal opening. And sometimes you can have squirts of lubrication from here as well, depending on how bulbous. And full, your clitoris gets, yes, your clitoris, it's more than just the tip. Most of it is internal. So it includes the glands, body, cura, which is also your legs, and the vestibular bulbs, not glands, bulbs. Yes, so the internal structure wraps around the vaginal opening in a wishbone shape. So we actually see that this engorges with blood. So we have the glands clitoris, which is that external clitorial part. That's filled with 8,000 to 10,000 nerve endings. And what that does is it moves down the crust clitoris or those two legs that you can see there. Hopefully you're looking up a diagram and following along with me. Sorry, I should have said that before. But basically we feel sensation in this area and that moves down our crusts or our cura. And then it will stimulate blood to fill into the bulbs of vestibules, much like a penis does. The entire clitorial network is a rectile and it swells with arousal. So no, if you're having sex with someone and you're super, super wet, but then you're like, "Oh, it doesn't feel as good." Well, you're not fully engorged yet, darling, so you've just got to wait a little bit longer. So most quote-unquote vaginal pleasure is actually clitorial stimulation. So the G spot, the A spot, all the other spots, they're all just internal clitorial structures. The interesting thing about the clitoris is that it serves absolutely no reproductive function. I mean, you could argue that it makes sex feel good, so it encourages people to have sex and therefore reproduce. And therefore it's still a part of the reproductive system. But its only role is pleasure. So already we know two really interesting things about the female body. One, number one, we make the biggest cell out of male and female anatomy and number two. We have way more of a reginist tissue than a manda's and its only purpose is pleasure. It actually serves no other purpose. Very, very interesting. So I want you to go and have a look at probably a cross section so you can see where your uterus sits. And I really want you to understand as well that when we're looking at reproductive diagrams of the female anatomy, we really want to understand that our two ovaries are not out. So a lot of women will say, "Oh, I can feel my ovulation pain and they're feeling out near their hip bone." And I'm just like, "Hang on a second honey, it's not there at all. It's kind of closer to your belly button and lower below." Kind of where your pubic hair will start to grow. That's where your uterus and that's where your ovaries will be. And the ovaries actually hug in so they sit on top of your uterus as well. We make reproductive diagrams to be easily understood. They don't actually always represent what it looks like on the inside of our body. And that's really, really important to keep in mind. Our uterus really is hanging over the top of our bladder. And so that's why a lot of women will say, "Oh my gosh, intercourse feels a lot better when my bladder is full and I really, really need to pee." Well, that's because your bladder is pushing up against your contaurus and it's pushing up against your vaginal canal there as well. So that's your internal and external reproductive anatomy. Really important to understand that before we move on to learning about the reproductive hormones and the cycle. So just to start off, I want you to understand that when we look at a reproductive cycle and a whole cycle, a hormonal cycle, reproductive cycle, same, same. A lot of people call it the menstrual cycle. I really don't like this because we call it the menstrual phase and we centralize the entire hormonal cycle around mencies because that was the most obvious biomarker to men and male scientists. And if you can already tell, I really couldn't give a fuck what they think. What is easy for them. A lot of women will say, "No, when I finish menstruating, I feel like that's my first day of my new cycle." From a cycle-sinking perspective, I think that's really great. But for the purpose of this lesson and even practicing things like fertility awareness method, your cycle starts at day one of the menstrual phase. I don't like to call it the menstrual cycle. I like to call it the hormonal cycle because the menstrual phase only makes up one part of it. If anything, we should call it the luteal cycle because your luteal phase makes up most of your cycle. But I digress, when we look at menstruation, then follicular, then ovulatory, and then luteal, and then back into mencies, we have this cycle. And so we want to understand that these four phases, they overlap a little bit. There's no stop start to it. We also hear that women's cycle should be 28 days. And I think a lot of women get into this idea that something is wrong if the cycle is not 28 days. 28 days is a population statistic. So only about 15% of women have a 28-day cycle. This is really annoying because I have a 28-day cycle. And it's really frustrating because sometimes when we'll go, "Well, you have a perfect cycle." Well, no, not necessarily. If you have a 28-day cycle, which is quite not quite perfect and the average, but you have horrendously heavy painful periods, then something is wrong here. Going back to the length, though, I want you to understand that a healthy cycle is anywhere between 26 to 34 days. Give or take a day at most if you're always quite short. So 25 days is quite short, or you're always over 34 days, and that's telling you that something is wrong. And that's why it wasn't until kind of recently that this hormonal cycle that women have was known as the fifth vital signs. So we have vital signs like our nervous system working, like our central nervous system working, like our heart beating, that we can use as biomarkers to show us the health of the individual. And it didn't really include women's reproductive cycles and their innate hormonal cycle until recently. And so now we know the hormonal cycle is a fifth vital sign. And so it's really important for you to understand this cycle because it's continuously telling you about your health and when you understand these messages, you can collude that with what's going on in your life and connect the dots. When we look at the length of the menstrual phase, we usually like to see three to seven days of menstrual bleeding. Your follicular phase again is around four, five, six, seven days usually around there. Your ovulatory should at least be three to about seven days. We don't want it to be any shorter or longer than that because that can show estrogen deficiency or dominance, which we don't want. And then our luteal phase actually makes up over 55% of our cycle. So it's around nine to 18 days long. So if you're shorter than nine days, that's something we call a luteal phase deficit. And if it's over that, then we don't really ever see it over that. But if you do see it over that, then that just means that your progesterone is really great and she's doing her job. Throughout the hormonal cycle, we see a movement from follicle over and corpus leutium and then back to follicle over and corpus leutium in this cyclical motion. So the ovarian cycle moves through distinct phases to support ovulation. So your follicles, they will mature under follicular stimulating hormone, which will house the developing egg. As that developing over is developing, she is going to be producing estrogen. And that causes an LH surge, which then releases the ovum. And then we have this ruptured follicle that is the corpus leutium. The corpus leutium then releases progesterone. If no pregnancy occurs, it breaks down as the cycle resets. And then we go through it again. Our follicles develop and they produce estrogen. Then when it reaches a high set point, our brain sends down LH, luteinizing hormone and says, and said. ovulate. Once we've ovulated, the follicle is left over and it is called the corpusillodium. So let's connect that to the forefazers. So follicular is the start of a new cycle. It's known as your inner spring in the cycle syncing community and it's dominated by FSH mostly follicular stimulating hormone, no scientists are not very creative people and estrogen is dominant. So this is where the follicle matures. The follicle for an anatomy perspective is a cluster of cells are known on the inside it is the ovum. So the ovum doesn't just isn't just on her own in the ovary developing. She's been regulated, tightly regulated and she's being supported by a clump of cells, a cluster of cells around her called the follicle. Right? And so the follicle is the thing that is producing the estrogen alongside the ovum, which is on the inside. As this is happening, we are releasing more and more and more estrogen, which will lead to our next phase, the ovulatory phase in cycle syncing communities. We call this the inner summer. This is when the ovum breaks out of the ovary and the dominant hormones around this time is estrogen and luteinizing hormone. Luteinizing hormone is a hormone released from your brain that causes the rupture of the follicle and it liberates the ovum and she goes on her journey down the fallopian tubes. How great that you know all of this anatomy so you're connecting all of the dots, right? Once we've ovulated, we have the luteal phase. So it's also known as your inner autumn. This is post ovulation. This is where we have the corpus luteum. So that follicle that previously housed the ovum has now ruptured and it becomes this kind of cells that now produce progesterone, which is associated with the luteal phase. And so we usually like to see far more progesterone. So around 10 to 15 times more than estrogen. Then if we don't have any pregnancy tape place, then we head into the menstrual phase and this is because that corpus luteum doesn't get any positive feedback from HCG being released because we have an implanted sigote and we don't have that. So we're not going to produce progesterone anymore. We're going to disintegrate and as we do that, that's going to lower the cervix, that's going to open the cervix as well. And it triggers our inner winter that menstrual phase. So both progesterone and estrogen plummet to trigger the cervix to open and we bleed again. Let's go into each of the four phases and what's going on from an anatomy and its physiology and also look at the hormones that are associated with each of these four phases and how they flux and wane and have this harmony between one and other. First, I need to teach you about a gland in your brain called the hypothalamus. So your hypothalamus, she's like the grandmother gland in the brain. She regulates so many different things, breathing rate, pH, she keeps an eye on what we're eating and when she keeps an eye on our stress hormones, she regulates our blood pressure so so much and she also has a lot to do with our reproductive hormones and she releases something called GNRH, Gnato trope and releasing hormones stay with me. She goes next door to a different gland called the pituitary gland. The pituitary gland releases follicular stimulating hormone. Pretty obvious what that's going to go and do, right? Travels through the blood and it says what it's going to do. It's going to stimulate the follicles to grow and it's going to stimulate multiple follicles to grow. We actually develop not just one but we actually develop around a thousand every single cycle which is why we go from two million to around three hundred thousand by the time with thirty which is pretty amazing. And they're all in a race. So follicular stimulating hormone travels down attaches to the receptor cells of the thicker and the granulosa cells which is what makes up the follicle so that cluster of cells surrounding the ovum in the middle and it stimulates them and basically says it's go time baby. Grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, who's going to be the fastest who's going to be the best. And so in your follicular phase we see that all of these follicles are developing but not at equal rates because some follicles are better than others. So your ovary also has regulatory processes in place that also goes who's more likely to develop the best and lets invest our energy there. And as these follicles mature they begin to produce estrogen. Estrogen starts to rise. This also builds the urine lining so the estrogen will pack on blood onto the endometrial lining. So does progesterone but not as much as estrogen. Estrogen is a really really really dominant hormone. She likes to grow things. She likes to stimulate dopamine and serotonin. She likes to make you feel confident. She likes to make you feel horny because in the ovulatory phase we are at peak fertility right. So this is when estrogen levels peak. This triggers a surge of a different hormone from our pituitary gland. This is called luteinizing hormone. Luteinizing hormone breaks down the thicker cells so the outer cells of our follicle and it also breaks down the ovary as well to a certain degree. And it's going to bubble up basically the follicle, the dominant follicle, the chosen one. So the ovum that's developed the fastest and the best is going to bubble up to the surface of our ovary and LH is going to break down the membranes in our follicle and in our ovary membrane and we are going to ovulate. Once we've ovulated what is left over we have our corpus leutium and the corpus leutium now is producing progesterone. Progesterone does a few different things in the body. I could talk about estrogen and progesterone forever. I mean that's probably what this whole podcast is about honestly. Progesterone, very different personality than estrogen. She's cool, calm and collected. She likes to release GABA to keep you very calm. She likes to stabilize the endometrial lining. So instead of just packing on all of the endometrial lining like estrogen did, she's going in there and thinking very differently. How can I vascularize this area? How can I make this a calm, beautiful hot bed that's going to be great for possible pregnancy and implantation? If we could put this into building terms, estrogen is going in, she's putting down the concrete slab. She's putting down the timber frame. She's putting in the roof and the walls and the insulation and that's about it. Whereas progesterone will go in and go great, this is a beautiful foundation. This is making up the bulk here. That's awesome. But let's put in some plumbing. Let's put in some electrical wiring. Let's put in a sink. Let's put in beds. Let's paint the walls. That's what progesterone is doing. And progesterone is waiting around for a message from a possible implantation. So when a zygote implants or a blastocyst implants at that point, it releases something called HCG. And HCG basically goes over to the corpus leotimen and says, "Hey, can you please make progesterone, pro pregnancy hormone for me until I have a placenta that can make its own?" And the corpus leotium says, "Bet, babe, I can totally do that for you." But if we don't get that message, what happens? The corpus leotium will start to disintegrate. And so a average luteal phase length will reflect when your progesterone stops being produced because when progesterone starts disintegrating, because it's not being made from the corpus leotium because it's disintegrating in our ovary, that's when we get our periods because that's when estradiol, so estrogen, and progesterone plummet. And when they plummet, that basically tells the cervix, "Okay, this cycle, we haven't fallen pregnant, better luck next time. Let's open this puppy up. Let's open up the cervix, let's lower her down and soften her a little bit, and let's start menstruation, let's clear out this old endometrial lining, so we can build another one that's fresher, and hopefully we'll get pregnant next cycle. Maybe you don't want a full pregnant, but that's the whole purpose of this cycle." In a nutshell, everything I've just explained to you is something called the HPO axis, also known as the hypothelamic pituitary ovarian axis. Say that 10 times fast. Hypothelamic pituitary ovarian axis, hypothelamic pituitary ovarian axis, I can't do it, I can't even do it. The HPO axis, so the hypothalamus pituitary ovarian axis, it's this connection between these three parts of our body because really our cycle doesn't start in our ovaries, it doesn't even start in the uterus, it starts in our brain. So our hypothalamus is the thing that is starting off this cascade of hormonal events, and then that's impacting our anatomy and our physiology throughout the cycle. So as I said before, the hypothalamus is going to release a gannatotropin releasing hormone that goes next door to the pituitary gland, and depending on where we are in the cycle, we are either going to release FSH or LH. If we're at the start of a new cycle, say we're menstruating, we actually start to see some GNAH being released from the hypothalamus, and that's stimulating the pituitary gland to release FSH. And once FSH has done its job, we actually see a high set point of estrogen, and estrogen is basically telling the hypothalamus, hey, we have a lot of endometrial lining around, we have a dominant follicle that's doing really well, the chosen one, we're ready to ovulate, and the hypothalamus goes great. I'm going to release GNRH again, that's going to go next door to my friend the pituitary gland, and that's going to release luteinizing hormone. Luteinizing hormone then travels throughout the blood system, and then goes down, and weakens the thicker cells, weakens the membrane in both the follicle and in the ovary itself, and that liberates the ovum that goes on her hopeful journey. So we see this connection, so we see the hypothalamus connecting to the pituitary, we see the pituitary gland connecting to the ovary, we see the ovary coming back and talking to the pituitary and the hypothalamus, so that's the HPO axis. But this isn't the only axis that impacts our reproductive system. There's multiple actually I could talk forever about this, but one of the other really important ones you need to understand is the HPO axis. The hypothalamic, adrenal axis, not the adrenal glands, the adrenal glands are amazing if you are fearful of the adrenal glands and you want to to stop the adrenal glands because you're afraid of cortisol then go and listen to my cortisol podcast. So you can understand the most misunderstood endocrine gland in the body and even more on imisunderstood hormone. At the adrenal glands and cortisol, we need them. They're doing a great job. They regulate not only our reproductive system but our immune system and our central nervous systems as well and our sleep wake cycle as well. So please don't demonize the adrenal glands. Please don't demonize cortisol. They need to be regulated. They need to be in a cyclical nature. And we need them to regulate our reproductive cycle. So what is the HPA axis? So hypothalamus is constantly scanning for danger, physical or emotional. So your body sees danger as danger. So if we see danger and we detect stress, we are going to release something called CRH. It's called corticotropin releasing hormone. So this is coming from your hypothalamus. And so CRH goes next door to your pituitary gland and it releases ACTH, a adrenal corticotropic hormone. ACTH travels through the blood system. It reaches the adrenal glands. So adrenal glands are two endocrine glands. So endocrine glands are hormonal glands. They release hormones into the blood system. And they will activate and they will release different hormones. So for the purpose of this lesson, they're going to release cortisol and adrenaline. These two hormones are amongst a host of hormones that will regulate and drive our fight, flight, freeze and fawn responses. So cortisol raises our blood sugar. It suppresses inflammation. It slows digestion and it shuts down reproduction. A adrenaline increases heart rate. It dilates your pupils. It tenses your muscles. It also changes where we direct blood flow. So we actually see vasoconstriction. So a constriction of the blood vessels to our internal organs. So our reproductive tract being one of them, our digestive tract being one of them. And it causes vasodilation in our muscles. Because right now we don't want to digest that amazing Buddha bowl you had a lunch. We want to run away from this fucking tiger. So this is how your body works. Your hypothalamus goes danger. Your body goes stress. Okay, we're going to tell the adrenal glands to release these hormones. So we can run away or we can protect ourselves or we can fight this perceived threat. Okay, so how does this connect to the cycle? So that HVA access is designed to protect you. It evolved to pause reproductive systems during times of stress. And we see this in both male and female anatomy. When we have cortisol around, it actually suppresses GNR H. If we don't release, ganada tropin releasing hormone, we can't release FSH or LH, which can delay or block ovulation. So it's going to delay FSH and it's going to delay ovulation. Or if you're ovulating already and you experience something stressful, your cortisol is going to switch off those LH pulses releasing as well. And that's going to block ovulation. So it puts your cycle on pause. And that means your FSH and LH are going to be low, which means your estrogen and progesterone are going to be low, which means you can't fall pregnant in a time of stress. This is also why that first half of your cycle, so that follicular and ovulatory phase is far more irregular than your loose your phase. So how can this show up in our cycle? So women can notice fertile cervical fluid or an LH surge if they're doing fertility awareness method. And this means, okay, we're preparing to ovulate, but you might also return to non-fertile biomarkers. So you might start to see, you might see that you have stretchy, lubricative cervical fluid that is associated with estrogen, 'cause that's what estrogen does. And then you see that you return back to dry and then you see ovulation come back again. And this is where people get really confused and they think that they've ovulated twice in a cycle. Look, it's totally possible twins do exist, albeit they are quite rare. But this is where women get very, very confused. You're not ovulating twice in a cycle, it's highly unlikely. What's happening probably is that you're experiencing stress and that's stopping your ovulation and then you're restarting again. So it's like a failed ovulation and we're coming back later when we feel safe. We also see that we can see a shortening of the luteal phase overall if you experience systemic, low grade, chronic stress. And so that might mean you have a stressful job or you're a young mum or you just have a stressful part of your life right now, whatever it be. We don't have this stop start, so it might be a car crash. You know, that's really stressful in the moment, but then you calm down afterwards. Or maybe you bump into someone, you really don't like and you're like, "Ah, fuck, how am I going to get through this?" You do have a stress peak there. Maybe it might not be enough to stop your cycle, but you see that these stresses are designed to stop and start. Humans aren't designed to live through chronic stress. So stress over a long term period that isn't enough to result in a huge fight, flight freeze or foreign response. It's this low level stress. So we're releasing this low level of cortisol all the time. That's negatively impacting our cycle. That type of stress is going to shorten your luteal phase because our cortisol and our progesterone are both made from the same mother hormone, something called progenolone. And so what our body does in the luteal phase is it has this last system in place to protect us just in case we have a full and pregnant. So say we haven't experienced any stress throughout our menstrual, follicular and ovulatory. Body's thinking hell yeah, we have ovulated and saying that cycle you had intercourse when you were fertile and you actually have full and pregnant. So you had implantation. What is your body going to do in a time where we're perceiving stress in the luteal phase? What's going to happen is we're actually going to produce more cortisol than we produce progesterone, which means that viability of that pregnancy is far lower. And so that's why women are more likely to miscarry in the eight to 12 weeks after implantation. Because your body loves you and wants to keep you safe and if it perceives stress, it's going to go, okay, the priority is not making progesterone for fertility, which is associated with a calm, abundant state of life. We are perceiving stress. This environment is not safe to bring a baby into the world. So we are going to deprioritize that and we are going to prioritize ourselves. So we have this last mechanism in place to keep us safe and to keep any possible offspring in the future safe as well. So hopefully you understand the HPO and HPA access. And so that explains a lot of different things that explains the regular cycles. That explains also why some women have heavy cycles over others because they might produce more estrogen. That might explain why you have a really short follicular phase. Maybe we're producing too much estrogen. Maybe we're really, really stressed out and our cycle doesn't have a lot of harmony. You can also connect other biomarkers like spotting mid-cycle, spotting mishcycle is associated with estrogen being higher than progesterone. And then also we can see spotting or excessive brown blood. So multiple days of that before or after your period is also associated with low progesterone because progesterone stabilizes the lining. So hopefully now you really understand your body that HPO and HPA access. And this gives you a bit of a baseline of foundational understanding about how to go forward and understand your cycle and even how to track your cycle as well, which is the next most amazing thing that I think most women should be learning a little bit more about. So if you enjoyed this and you wanted to learn more, my retent masterclass is a really great resource that's going to teach you anatomy, physiology, that's going to teach you about the pleasure system in the body, it's going to teach you about the forefazers and a little bit about cycle syncing as well. There is a whole chapter about pleasure in the retent masterclass as well. So that's an amazing resource, it's two hours long. You get lifelong access to that as well. So that's my website, it's called the retent masterclass. That's where I usually send most women. Then we have the archifatility course. If you wanted to learn about your entire cycle in a very, very detailed way and you wanted to learn about fertility awareness method because probably listening to this, you're thinking, "Can I own a second?" I'm only fertile for a very short period of time. Absolutely you are. Because that over is only viable for 24 to, I think even 36 hours is pushening and then it disintegrates in the fluopian tube if we haven't had fertilization take place. So if that doesn't take place, we can't for pregnant. So it's all about avoiding your fertile phase and knowing how to read those four biomarkers. So luteinizing hormone, we spoke about that. You can pick that up in a urine test and so that's going to tell you whether you're close to ovulating within four days. You can learn about cervical mucus. So remember that cervical mucus is going to change according to whether estradiol or estrogen is around or progesterone. So when you see estrogenic fluid, you're thinking, "Okay, I'm in my ovulatory phase. If I don't want to for pregnant now was not the time to have intercourse." And then you can also look at cervical placement. Remember how I said how she dances and she moves around according to the dominant hormone? That's an amazing biomarker that we can use. If she's soft, if she's high and if she's open, we're going to think, okay, we're in ovulatory, let's avoid intercourse. Your temperature also changes according to where you are in the cycle as well. Estrogen likes to keep your temperatures relatively low, but then once we've ovulated, we have progesterone around. Progesterone, she will increase your vasovody temperature. So you can use vasovody temperature throughout a cycle and we have something called the bi-phasic [BLANK_AUDIO] which are pattern change that we see. So we see pre-ovalatory, really, really low temperatures, and then pretty much overnight, we see this stark change. And so that's really great if you're using something like a superhuman ring or a temp drop, or if you're just using the mamata underneath your tongue every single morning, then that's going to give you a really great visual cue of when you've ovulated and when you're most likely going to fall pregnant. And it also is a biomarker in of itself. I want you to understand that this is a fifth vital sign and tracking your cycle is something that I think most women should do, whether or not they're using it for a contraceptive mean. So whether or not you're practicing fertility awareness method, or women will benefit from tracking their cycle because it is a fifth vital sign. If you go into any good doctor and you say, hey, my cycles have always been 32 days, and now they are 24. They're going to go, yes, let's do some labs. This is a biomarker that we need to pay attention to. You can pay attention to a lot of different things that change as well. And I just think that body-mind connection is such a beautiful thing for you to understand, ah, yes, I had a stressful exam. Or I had something at work come up that was really stressful. And my cycle is in 28 days. Now it's 34. I didn't get my period late. I've ovulated late because my luteer phase is almost always going to be the same length. It's that body-mind connection to understand where you are and not feeling disconnected with your body. Having that deep mind-body connection is such a beautiful thing. I hope you really enjoyed this podcast, and you learnt something new. Those resources are there if you want to continue your learning. And I will see you on the next podcast. Bye. [MUSIC PLAYING]