EP #138: Optimizing Your Hormonal Health with Lauren Papanos, MS, RD, CSSD, Functional Dietitian

Welcome back to another episode of Everyday Endorphins, a mental health podcast focused on the importance of finding joy and happiness in daily living. I'm your host Stella Stephanopoulos, and this week I had the wonderful opportunity to sit down with Lauren Papanos, who's a registered dietician to Olympians, board certified specialist in sports diatetics, and nutrition researcher published in the Journal of Women's Sports Medicine. She also holds a national championship title as a performance diatician for UCLA Softball. So Lauren is incredibly well versed in the nutrition and wellness space, and what we specifically talked about in this interview really focused on hormone and balances for women, and how to mitigate those issues, how to nourish yourself, to support your hormones, and how competitive athletics and sports can actually influence or impact our own hormonal balance. So in hormonal balances or imbalances, given how working with athletes is her area of expertise. I personally feel like there's not enough research around women's health and it's an area I'm really passionate about, which I get into in this interview, so I was really, really happy to get to sit down with Lauren and have her on the podcast. Hopefully you all take away something that's valuable to you, and that you can implement into your life, so without further ado, let's get into the episode. Hi Lauren, thank you so much for coming on to Everyday Endorphins. It's so great to have you here today. Thank you. I'm excited to talk with you. So this topic that we're going to dive into today is something that particularly interests me. I don't think that enough health and wellness podcasts focus on hormonal health and women's health in particular, and it's actually something that I've struggled with over the past few years. So selfishly, I'm really excited to get to sit down with you and pick your brain and learn from you about your background and what we can take away today from how to effectively balance our hormones and stay healthy. But with that being said, Lauren, I'd love for you to share a little bit more about your background as a registered dietician, a board certified specialist in sports diatetics and nutrition researcher. You've wear many hats, so please walk us through your background and how you kind of dove into the field of health and wellness and nutrition. Yeah, so I went to school, kind of did the conventional route of getting my diatetics degree and got my bachelor's degree in nutrition sciences and then ended up going on to get my master's degree. And that was an integrative nutrition, which we can talk about if you want some point with the differences between like an integrative functional approach versus a conventional approach. And this is really both seen in medicine as well as nutrition and other angles of health. But it really is just more philosophical in terms of how we address treating illness and dysfunction the body. So that was my master's degree and during that time is where I started to dabble in some research, especially in more of the sports nutrition and sports science side of things. And then ultimately went on to start my career working in sport. During that time, I was also dealing with my own hormone issues and was trying to heal myself and was going to different specialists. No one could really help me and give me answers. But I felt like I was just this unique snowflake that no one could figure out because I was so healthy and doing so many healthy things yet my hormonal function was completely non-existent. And all of the standard recommendations that would normally work for someone didn't work for me. And it was just really frustrating and just really depressing, honestly. I went through a lot of like emotional just turmoil during that time in terms of just feeling like so disconnected from my body. And so that was when I really set out to do more postgraduate education really learning from the experts in the area of under chronology and functional medicine so that I could really help myself. And then my second job when I was working as dietician, I had the pleasure to do research working with hormones in competitive athletes. And so we were studying how endocrine hormone imbalances impact injury risk and hundreds and hundreds of male and female athletes. And that was really where I started to see just how far reaching hormone imbalances affect people, how they affect us much more than even just your menstrual cycle and fertility. But they affect everything from like your performance, your bone, your heart, your, you know, your brain, so many different functions and I realized that it wasn't just young athletes that were dealing with this. It was women men of all ages that were experiencing this and it was impacting their quality of life and their health risk factors and that I wanted to help people in a greater, in a greater scale. And so that's where I started my private practice functional feeling and that's where I am today. Wow, thank you. It's really fascinating to hear like the trajectory of your career, but also your own personal struggles with trying to navigate what it means to be healthy. And you made a really interesting point around how you on paper, maybe we're really healthy and you were doing all the things, but you were still struggling with your health. And I think that's such a common experience. I mean, this is something I've experienced too in my life. The end of high school was diagnosed with PCOS and I had no idea what that was. And it was really jarring to me because I always felt like a very health conscious person and I didn't understand like how could this happen? And I was just going on in my body, what's this label of me being unhealthy or having some sort of hormonal imbalance when I am a healthy person. I was a competitive athlete in high school. I was on a crew team. I always ate well. My parents made sure that we didn't have a ton of like processed sugar in the apartment. And so I always was very active and I just didn't understand like I'm living this very healthy lifestyle. But I am not technically healthy. So can you kind of talk a little bit more about like your own struggle with that or just kind of elaborate on this experience that I think so many women in particular have where we are on paper healthy, but there's some sort of like mysterious illness going on in our bodies or, you know, these struggles that we may face actually, you know, point to some sort of health issue. Yeah, it's a common problem I see and unfortunately the way society awards people is through the way we look physically right it's through how clear and glowy and do your skin is to how you know lean you are. It's all about physical characteristics, but I'll tell you just from being in practice eight years is that the people that look the best externally tend to be struggling a lot internally, maybe not so much with skin health, but especially with physical health like their physique and things. Those people tend to really be struggling internally in terms of what their biomarkers are on paper and how their body is functioning. And especially with women because it's really stressful on the body to be in such a like a lean body fat and to have very little body fat, and although that again might be something that's like awarded it's not necessarily something that's conducive for the best hormonal health. I think that that's definitely one piece of it in that same breath we can take things too far and anything in excess becomes unhealthy for us. So like in my example, I was exercising, which is technically healthy and I was eating a whole foods diet. And I wasn't eating a lot of sugar and you know grains and things of the sort that is what I learned in school that people most people don't need because I'm learning about conditions like diabetes and cardiovascular disease and things. But for me, I was also exercising three hours a day. So there was this mismatch where these healthy things I was doing was actually making me more unhealthy because my body actually maybe needed more of those resources because of how much physical exercise I was doing. You know, at some point I had to scale that back with my exercise. I had to reimagine what that looked like, but when I was in college, I didn't have the choice to do that because it was a college athlete. And it just tell my coach, hey, I can't practice today because I'm trying to get my hormones back online. I didn't have that ability to do so until I was out of school and they were no longer paying for my tuition. So it was really until that point that I was able to have more control over this. So sometimes the things that we do that we think are healthy can be actually unhealthy before us because they're in extremes, they're in excess. And as I mentioned, anything in access can be unhealthy. Secondly, I think that there's also a lot of, I guess, kind of misconfusion around what is healthy. And so people tell me that a lot. They're like, oh, well, I eat so healthy. Like, why would I work with a dietitian? Right? And I'm like, well, what does healthy mean to you? Because to me, there is really no definition of healthy because healthy means something different for every single person. What is healthy for you is different than what's healthy for me because we have different genetics and we have different lifestyles and we have different needs. So they're two completely different healthy definitions, right? And it's really not until you can understand your body's own individual needs are through things like genetics and through doing lab testing that helps us understand where are these imbalances? Where is your body kind of naturally drawn to be lacking in certain areas? Then then we can really paint the puzzle pieces as to what is your unique body need to be healthy? The maybe is different than what the average person's needs are. And when I think you can do that, it's much easier to put tunnel, to be in tunnel vision and to really put the blinders on to what you're seeing on social media, all of the confusion that there is around what to eat, what to do for exercise. We don't have to remember. that so many of those recommendations, they are made for a certain population. They're made within context, or not something that should be a one-size-fits-all. This works for all women of all backgrounds. They really should be individualized to what someone's unique needs are. - I love your comment around there being no single definition of what it means to be healthy. Something that I really advocate for on my podcast is this idea that health is super nuanced and what might work for one person doesn't necessarily mean it's going to work for another. It's so important to learn how to filter out from the noise, which we can talk a little bit more about later, because I want to hear about how to do that from a nutrition perspective, because there's so many different diets out there and protocols and things that are just thrown into our faces around what we should be doing in our day-to-day lives to be healthy. I think it's so critical to learn how to filter out all of that noise in order to figure out what works for me, what feels good in my body, what's going to provide me with some sort of balance. You made an interesting point as well when you were sharing how being a college athlete, you couldn't just go to your coach and be like, "Hey, sorry, I need to balance my hormones." You didn't have that kind of freedom and working with Olympians and working with athletes. How do you coach them? How do you advise them when they're pushing their bodies to the extremes, which I don't think can always be the best for our hormones, actually, having such high-impact workouts for women in particular. How do you coach athletes, hurting their bodies under extreme pressure to find that kind of balance within their hormone and their hormonal health? Yeah, can we be really tricky with that population? Because, as I mentioned, there's only so much that's in their control. And athletes are also glorified as being the pinnacle of health because of the way they look and their physical performance. But in order to be that elite, your body is going to be unhealthy. When someone gets to the final weeks before training for a marathon or a competition, they are not healthy. Most of the time, they're no longer having a menstrual cycle for that last month prior or they are struggling with a lot of internal pain and injuries and things. And so it really is about management at that point. The biggest thing that I always teach any athlete I'm working with is that it's all about seasons and just like with anything in life, right? There's seasons, think about in nature, right? There's winter and there's spring. And each season is something different for what it does. Spring is about growth and it's about new growth happening. Winter maybe is more about rest and hibernation. And so it's the same thing with our bodies, especially for an athlete who does go through a training season is that in the off season, where we have a little bit more flexibility, there is a little bit more wiggle room within their training. That's where we really put in all of the work nutritionally and through supplementation, lifestyle practices that ever might be to support their healing, to be able to restore hormonal function, to restore nutrient deficiencies, basically to pick up all the pieces of what was broken from when they were at the final stages of competition, right? And to put their body into a stronger place so that next season, when they get to that place, hopefully they're just 5% stronger. And maybe that next season, they don't lose their period or they only lose it two weeks before competition, right? And so it's every year just trying to incrementally get a little bit closer to optimal health all 12 months out of the year. But that could take years to be able to get there. But that off season period is so important to be able to really build the foundation. That's really where I can do the most work with someone because that's where we really have the most wiggle room. That's where we can do the most healing support for the body. And then during competition season, especially as you get to those end stages, it is a little bit more about maintenance and about performance and just helping the body recover and kind of get through each and every day. And the focus becomes less about health and more so about how does this athlete recover and be at peak performance every day? Yeah, that's interesting that you kind of segment it into seasons. And I like how you brought up this idea how there's just seasons in life. We have winter, we have spring, summer, our bodies have different types of energy levels that coincide with the seasons and learning how to kind of live seasonally too. I think actually really does support this idea of holistic health as well. It's something I've been trying to implement too is learning to kind of live with the seasons in a way. Like eat seasonally, lean into activities that are conducive to each season. And I think that also helps me feel more connected to my body and to the world around me. But going back to this topic of hormonal health, why is it that so many women in particular experience hormonal imbalances? It's extremely common in women and really any hormone or endocrine condition even autoimmune diseases, they are the most common in women. Women are much higher risk than men are. And PCOS in particular, which stands for polycystic ovary syndrome, it's the number one cause of infertility in women of reproductive age. And these hormonal imbalances, they are rampant in women that are in those reproductive years, which is really that time frame from menarchy, which is your first period all the way up until it's been a year since you've had a period which is defined as menopause. So from let's say 12 to 15 all the way up until 45, 50, right? That's a big chunk of your life. Those are like your prime years. And that's where these women in general are really struggling with hormone imbalances. There's a lot of ideas as to why has there been an uptick and why are they more prevalent than ever before? I really do believe that from the research and just from my clinical experience that our food system plays such a big role in this. And it's not just so much about what we are eating, but how the environment is to how we are eating and what our life looks like that it never did before. We know that the women's reproductive system is incredibly sensitive. I always think of it and explain it to people as the body needs to feel like it's in a safe place to reproduce. And if the body feels that there is not safety, that it's not going to get food when it's hungry, that it's not going to get the nutrients and building blocks that it needs to do all these different systems to make hormones to make a baby, all these things that our body wants to do, it's going to shut off the reproductive system or that signaling between our brain and our ovaries is going to be diminished. There's going to be much less signaling happening. And it's that signaling that from our brain to our ovaries that's actually how then we make things like estrogen, progesterone, antestasne, we're also working and doing way more than we've ever done before thanks to things like technology and Uber Eats and all these different ways to make our lives more convenient. But with that, there's been a lot more stress, a lot less sleep, a lot higher cortisol levels that we're seeing amongst young women and all of that stress on our adrenal glands, which are these little glands located on top of our kidneys that regulate stress hormones like cortisol and such. Heavily impacts our sex hormones. And especially with PCOS, the adrenals play a really big piece in PCOS and we know that a lot of women with PCOS have some level of cortisol dysregulation we call it where there may be two high cortisol levels or two high levels at certain points of the day where there shouldn't be. We also know that with PCOS that long-term exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals is a big cause. And it's thought that maybe that's even starts when the babies in womb and the mother's womb and then can progress all the way through childhood through your reproductive years. And in the last 20, 50 years, the uptick and how many endocrine disrupting chemicals are utilized is extremely, it's so vast. Endocrine disrupting chemicals are what is used to make a plastic water bottle, to use for a lot of our makeups and our beauty products, our household cleaners, even all of the furniture that we buy nowadays, it's not made out of real wood, right? It's made out of fabricated wood. Our floors are made out of fabricated wood. Our carpets are sprayed with endocrine disruptors to help protect them. So there's things all around us, they're ubiquitous, and these endocrine disrupting chemicals are called that because they have the ability to bind to receptors where hormones should go, displace the ability for our own hormones to do so, and then ultimately cause these hormone imbalances and even cause things like cancer. There's been research on that too. So those are two really big aspects of what's going on and why there's an increase in hormone imbalances. But as I mentioned, the overall food system and our lifestyle, I would say is probably one of the biggest things and is one of the biggest things it's also in our control. - Yeah, there's so many factors that are at play here. Let's start with food, for example. So I remember hearing that people with PCOS or any sort of hormonal imbalance should eat like a diabetic. So low glycemic index, limited sugar, the whole thing. And it felt really restrictive to me. And it was really stressful because I felt like there was nothing I could eat. And I remember feeling like carbs were the enemy. And like I should completely stay away from sugar, like no dessert none of that. And the irony, like when I reflect on the past few years, the times where I felt like the fittest, the leanest, like the most confident in my body, actually was when I wasn't like super anal about what I was eating and I wasn't controlling everything. I also reflect on those times, and I think I was actually not very stressed. which is interesting because of, you know, us speaking about how stress and cortisol impacts our sex hormones. So when we talk about diet first and foremost, like looking at our food system, I know that there isn't a one-size-fits-all health is very nuanced, like we've been speaking about, but generally speaking, what are some guidelines or mindset shifts, approaches that people can take if they have some sort of hormonal imbalance to properly fuel their body? Do we do intermittent fasting? Do we do low sugar? Like again, kind of back to the point around all this noise around us? How do we filter through that to figure out what the right protocol is for our bodies and to feel good in ourselves? Yeah. So just a first kind of backup your point about the PCOS and eating like a diabetic. And it is a very common, you know, educational recommendation or kind of misnomer that's out there. And the thing with PCOS, it's really important for women to understand is that there's really four types of PCOS and they all require a different treatment approach. So yes, and about 70% of women with PCOS, they are insulin resistant. Insulin resistant is the same thing that causes diabetes. And so they're going to see improvements to sex hormones by improving blood sugar control. And so it's the same thing that would help improve diabetes control. But there's a lot of other things because PCOS is not just about a ball of condition. It is also hormonal condition. So really that only takes care of the metabolic piece. It's not going to significantly address the hormone piece. There's still a lot that has to be done outside of that. And then we have to remember that there's three other types of PCOS. And there's a lot of women with PCOS that go untreated. They because they have one of those other types that's less common. It's only in that 30%. And they are maybe following the recommendations of something like that, like eat like a diabetic. And it's not working for that. Maybe it's even making things worse because their PCOS is driven by inflammation, which is caused by their immune system because they also have an autoimmune disease like Hashimoto's or because they also have long COVID or whatever it could be that's activating their immune system. So there's so many different variables that trigger or that are the root causes of PCOS. It's so important that we identify what is the root cause. And we can do that through deep dive assessments to testing to really be able to help piece that together. Unfortunately, this isn't something that is done at your conventional doctor. They're just like, okay, you have PCOS and they don't really give you anything beyond that, right? So that is something that you would have to pursue outside of your doctor to really be able to kind of understand what that management looks like. But, you know, just kind of going back to your question about what we should be eating and what that looks like. Really, I don't think that there's even though I'm a dietitian, I don't believe in a diet for anyone. I mean, you know, diets are really just a short term solution, if you will, short term bandage. Just like if you were taking a medication, that's really what a diet is, you know, think of diets as like intermittent fasting or the paleo diet, all these things. They're not lifestyles. They're not long term individualized ways of living and of thinking about food. They're not philosophies. And the way that I really see food is it's more about fundamentals as to what are the core things that you should be focused on every day and being flexible on how you get to that those end goals, right? There doesn't need to be rigidity in how we do so. We just need to get clear first and foremost as to what are the main things I'm focused on. So I would say across the board for all women that have whether it's PCOS, hypothyroidism, hypothermic ameneria, any of these very common hormone conditions and women, we first and foremost know the role of antioxidants. Antioxidants are what are found in things like dark leafy greens, berries, green tea, vitamin C rich foods. We know that those are incredibly important because they do something called block oxidative stress, which basically stops the inflammation process. And we know that oxidative stress is one of the causes of PCOS that causes infertility, oxidative stress is a cause of hypothyroidism. Yeah, so flooding the body of antioxidants, we know that oxidative stress is correlated and is one of the causes of PCOS as well as hypothyroidism and that the more antioxidants that we consume, the more essentially blocks that process, think of like anti-oxidant anti-blocking oxidative stress from happening. And then oxidative stress is actually what causes the aging to the ovaries. So a lot of women worry about, okay, I'm getting older, like I'm probably not going to have babies. It's not so much about how old you are in terms of your egg quality. It's more so about how healthy are those eggs and antioxidants are one of the best ways to be able to protect your egg quality and really to be able to supercharge your egg so that you're not having to worry about that as you get into your late 30s. But these are things that we should start on even before then, especially if you have a hormone imbalance. So as you can see, that's not a diet, right? You're not going to go on Google and be like, "Anti-oxidant diet." And if you are, you're like, "Great, I get to eat berries every day." That sounds awesome and chocolate and all these things. So it's not a diet. It's just a paradigm. It's a fundamental practice that we're trying to incorporate every day that when you go somewhere, it's like if you got the option between blueberries and strawberries or blueberries and canelobe, we're going to the blueberry route because that's going to be the highest in polyphenols, which are an antioxidant to be able to support your variant function. So that's just one example. Another really important aspect is looking at the way that you're structuring meals together. And this kind of goes back to your comment about the diabetic eating or like blood sugar. Is that blood sugar control is important for all women with hormone imbalances. We know that women that have conditions like hypochlorism even, that they don't metabolize sugar as well. And so they're more at risk of high blood sugar issues. Women with PCOS are more at risk because like I said, 70% of women have a condition called insulin resistance. And what happens when you're insulin resistant is that when you eat anything that house carbohydrate in it that ultimately breaks down to sugar, even if it's a piece of fruit or it's a grain, whatever it might be, that sugar can't get out of the bloodstream because insulin is what gets it out. Insulin takes sugar and gets it out of the bloodstream and into cells like our muscle cells, our liver cells, our brain cells. And so when you're insulin resistant, that process isn't working or it's not working as efficiently. And then that's when the blood sugar kind of collects and then you start to deal with blood sugar imbalances. And then those are what cause the elevated antigens like the high testosterone levels that lead to things like acne and irregular cycles and fertility, hair loss on the head, weight gain, all of those PCOS symptoms for those women that have insulin resistance. So that's really important. And then on the amenorrhea side, a lot of women, they actually are in more of a low blood sugar situation. So typically they're either not eating often enough throughout the day or when they are eating, there's not enough to be able to really provide a like blood sugar boost. And although we don't want to have these big skyrocketed blood sugar, we want to have enough sugar in our bloodstream and we want it to be stable throughout the day. When our body senses that blood sugar is really low, our body does not like that. It releases that cortisol, that stress hormone because it's like, this is very dangerous. This is not safe because the brain depends on sugar. It runs off about 98% of sugar. So when it senses that sugar drops too low, our body has mechanisms to help us get that back up. And so it releases cortisol. And you know, what cortisol does is that it takes what we have in storage and it mobilizes that into our bloodstream. And so you can imagine that if your body's having to do that multiple times per day, what signal is that sending to the brain about if this is a safe place to reproduce? The body's not going to want to reproduce. If it's like, I'm barely getting the sugar I need to feel my brain. The reproductive system is voluntary. It doesn't have to happen. And like reproducing is just a nice to have. It's like, you have enough resources for all of your other organs, if your brain, your kidneys, your lungs, your heart, have everything they need, then we can reproduce. And so if those boxes haven't been checked and the body's not getting the resources for that, it's going to shut down that reproductive system until it feels safe enough for that to happen again. And once that reproductive system has been shut down, it's much harder to get things back online. So as you can see, those are just three different hormone conditions. There's many more. There's things like endometriosis and women that deal fibroids and so many other things that are all driven by hormones and other factors, but hormones play a big role. And their recommendations would look different. So it really just as depend as to what is the hormone imbalance that's at play? Where do we need to focus more of our energy for you, both within food sources and how you're pairing those foods together, how often throughout the day, how much you're consuming to really be able to send the right messages to the body and give the body the resources it needs? Yeah, there's so many factors at play here. And there's this one account that I love following called glucose goddess. She's also a dietician, I believe. And she talks a lot about to your point around like timing and pairing your food, like focusing on, I think it's like protein first and the new pair of protein with the carb and like the way that you pair food in the order in which you eat it can really impact your blood sugar levels. So there's a lot of factors at play when it comes to how we properly fuel our body and not necessarily what we're eating, but how we're eating the foods that we're consuming. And sometimes when it comes to our diets, it can feel really overwhelming. Like there's all these rules that we have to follow or there's all these things we have to keep in mind. But I think there's just like a few simple strategies people can implement. Like taking really small steps, I think is one way to break down these like big lofty goals or things that we have to do to take care of ourselves. Like for example, when I'm My goals in the past few months was to just not have dessert after dinner. So I wasn't going to like restrict having a piece of chocolate or a little sweet snack or something during the day. But what gets me is like needing to have something sweet at night. Like every time I'd finished dinner, I'd be like, okay, I want like dessert now. And so just kind of helping myself curb the sugar desire like late at night. And by limiting that, it has been really helpful for me and has helped me actually feel less addicted to sugar. So I think there's like really small steps you can do that work for you to better impact your health and well-being. And I know we talked a lot about food just now, but I want to shift our focus to cortisol and stress because we've spoken about how stress can incredibly impact the imbalance of estrogen, testosterone, progesterone, everything going on in our bodies. So when we think about cortisol in our bodies, it's hard because life is inherently stressful. It's rare that we're in periods of time, extended periods of time where things were just like not stressful whatsoever. So how do we kind of reconcile with trying to naturally limit our stress levels while living in a very stressful, hectic world, especially in the times that we're living in right now? What are some strategies or practices or tips that we can try to lower our cortisol every day and keep it at a low level to the best of our ability? Yeah. So the way that I like to explain cortisol is that it really is like a bucket. So think of a bucket that you have, you know, like a Home Depot paint bucket, right? And imagine that there's all these cups of water. And so you have one cup of water that is your work stress, you've got another cup that is your personal life stress, you've got another one that is nutritional stress, like you, all the things we just talked about within diet that makes up that. You've got another one that's exercise stress, all these different types of stressors are all cups of water. So when we pour all those cups of water into the bucket, you can imagine that that bucket would overfill because that's a lot of different fluids that are in there. So what we want to think about is if there's one cup of water that we are dumping in more water from, how do we dump less from another cup so that we don't overfill that bucket? So if you're dumping tons of cortisol or tons of stress, all of that fluid from that cup of water from the work life cup, and that's not really in your control, you're like, I have this project, I have this timeline, I'm just doing my best, it's going to pass in a week, whatever it might be. And all of that is dumping into that bucket. Well, then you need to pull out cortisol from one of those other cups that is in your control. So we need to look at, okay, what are the controllables? My controllables are how much I'm sleeping, what I'm eating, how I'm eating throughout the day, what I'm doing for exercise, you know, maybe those are the big controllables, and we can pour half as much from those cups of liquid than we normally would. And now that we've balanced that out, we've got a full cup coming from the work stress, but we've only got half a cup coming from exercise and nutritional stress, that bucket doesn't overflow. And it's when that bucket overflows that then we start to see hormonal dysfunction happen. So that is a really helpful way to think about the way that you approach your life and to really kind of assess things on like a daily, weekly, monthly basis. I personally do this where I literally will like kind of check in with myself, like, okay, how have you been feeling, like how have things been landing, what is your like resting anxiety level, how much stress are you under, are you in like a big work season, is there something in your personal life that's going on really stressful? Okay, what adjustments do I need to make within my nutrition and within my exercise this month? I'll just reevaluate next month and see if my body can handle a little bit more. And when I do that, then I don't have issues with my cycle. I don't ovulate, lay, I don't have a late period, those things don't happen. But it's when I try to push through and be stubborn and think that I can do all of that at once, that then my hormones become dismantled. And all it takes is just doing that for a couple of months and those hormones and cycles becoming a regular for then not to cause a loss of cycle and what we call something, a metaria, which both women PCOS and hypothalm that are a metaria deal with. And once that's occurred, it's much harder for you to get your cycle remormalized again and get those hormones back online than if you can catch things in that three month time period as things are starting to go a little bit haywire. Yeah, something you said really resonated with me. I think one of my favorite qualities and fatal flaws is the feeling and desire to do everything all at once. And I've had multiple root awakenings that you just can't do it all. You just can't. You can want to do it all, but you just can't be in 20 places at one time or do 20 different things at once or split your attention across 20 different tasks. You just can't. And I think learning to be okay with that reality that you can't do it all all the time. I love that analogy that you share around these different buckets of water and different areas of your life and learning how to balance. I think is so important and learning that it's okay that sometimes your priorities can shift and you can give energy towards one thing and pull back in another. And that's fine because you need to do that to keep yourself healthy. And I think it goes back to some conversations I've also had on the podcast around setting boundaries. We set boundaries for ourselves so that we can prepare for the things that maybe are kind of out of our control that are causing stress in our lives. So I think that's a really helpful way to kind of distinguish where like stress is coming from in our life and how we can attempt to minimize it at certain points in our lives. Sleep is so important too. I found that when I get a restful night's sleep, I feel so much better the next day. I make better decisions. My mood is more stabilized because I'm not cranky, tired and cloudy. Like I feel very on top of things. And then that's like a ripple effect. It's like this positive upward spiral. So I love that analogy that you bring. I think it's something that like a lot of people should think about and like think about maybe how they can implement that into their lives. I want a transition to a different topic that I speak about on this podcast and that I ask every guest that comes onto the show really about happiness because the show is called everyday in Dwarfins and it's about finding things in life that bring you joy. So Lauren, when we think about sparking joy in day to day life and after this conversation on looking at how our health is very nuanced and how all these different lifestyle factors can contribute to our wellbeing from a holistic perspective, how do you define happiness and how does happiness play into the ways in which we try to balance our stress levels and create a healthy internal ecosystem in our lives? I think happiness is about presence and contentment, right? And happiness can sometimes be a fleeting feeling because you can feel like really happy for 10 seconds because you just saw a friend you haven't seen forever. But then when you step away from that interaction, do you still feel present and content and positive about your life in that moment? And so I like to look at happiness as I think for so long in my life, I was always trying to be so happy, right? And trying to find what was going to make me happy. Really, it was more of like a dopamine rush of like what's going to give me this dopamine response right now? And I think when I was able to take over that pressure off for myself and really try to find what's going to make me feel like the most present and content that's going to lead to happiness, that's when I was able to find happiness more naturally. So one of the things we talked about was like that balance within all those factors to build a manager core to those levels. And I think that that's something that has really been instrumental for me as I've gotten older is that just not overextending myself, you know? And even though maybe sometimes now I don't see friends quite as much as I would love to and don't go do things as much as I would like to because I have more family responsibility and things of that sort, I feel more happy and content because I'm not spreading myself then feeling constantly depleted. And I'm able to show up for each of those things or when I do see friends I'm able to show up better because I'm not spreading myself then. And so I know that there's so much pressure to like always say yes to everything. It's like, okay, I'm going to hang out with my friend on Saturday and then on Sunday I'm going to go to this event and then I'm going to go to my parents and do all these things in one weekend. And then you get to Monday and then you're unhappy Monday through Friday because you didn't leave any time for yourself to be able to think about what are you going to eat this week? How are you going to eat good nourishing food? How are you going to set up your exercise this week? Like how are you going to manage your stress and all these work projects, right? So then yeah, you were happy on Saturday and Sunday but then you were so unhappy Monday through Friday because of that. And so instead like one of the things that I do is I really try to not overextend myself on the weekends and really try to be present for those things that are going to make me happy, you know, those one or two things I've committed to so that I do have time to be able to really get myself squared away for the week so that it's not just Saturday and Sunday that I'm happy but that it's all seven days that I can find that contentment, that peacefulness, that joy. And I really find that that then contributes to a greater happiness level overall. I love that. You're like speaking my language and directly to me because I tend to spread myself then especially on the weekends and it's not always the healthiest honestly because I felt very similarly where Monday rolls around and I'm like, did I even rest this weekend? Like do I even feel rested at all? No, I know because I did so many things and it is definitely an art to finding that balance, to learn when to say no, to factor in time for us for rejuvenating so that you feel that you can show up very present to your next commitment. And I think it's something I'm still learning and still working through. So that's a great reminder. And I will try to actually take that advice and commit to less things on the weekend. Because I think that would actually be very helpful for me. And I'm sure a lot of people who are tuning in to the episode. Lauren, as we wrap today, it was so lovely to have you as a guest. I want to leave you with one final question that I ask everyone that comes on to the show. What is something that brings you a bit of endorphins every day? Physical activity is so big for me. It's always been a really big piece of my life. And so every day I do something. You know, most of the time it's always at least walking, getting outside, like getting sun or if it's cold, not getting sun, but just getting outside and getting fresh air. So that's always kind of a non-negotiable for me. But then doing exercise of some sort most days at the week is something that helps me feel strong. And, you know, as I mentioned earlier, like about focusing so much on like the physical of what things look like externally, you know, I think one of the big things for me is I don't focus on that. I focus on like what's going to make me feel the best, like what's going to be endorphins, what's going to make me feel strong, what's going to make me feel the most balanced, do this type of exercise I'm doing. And I find that that is what Ben contributes to the better endorphin response, right, is when we focus more on how is this making me feel rather than like what is the external outcome of whatever I'm about to do. I love that. That reminds me of a post that I saw on Instagram that I used as inspiration for a newsletter that I had released a few months ago. Because I also have a substack with everyday endorphins where I talk about episode recaps, any events I've done in New York City that month or in the past few months and things that are just kind of ruminating on my mind. And there was this graphic that said once you start prioritizing how your life feels rather than how it looks like you'll become happy. It was something to that extent and that'll never lose my attention. It's going to stick with me. And it's to your point like prioritizing how you feel instead of how things look or whatever outcome you want to achieve or however you want things to look on the outside. It's not going to necessarily bring you joy. Maybe it brings you that immediate joy or happiness like the dopamine we were talking about, the dopamine hit, but learning to what it means to prioritize how you feel is really I think the path. And it's an art. So find those things that bring you endorphins every day. And don't really care how it looks on the outside. Just focus on how it makes feel on the inside. I love that. Lauren, where can my listeners connect with you and follow along? So my practice is functional feeling. Our website is functionalfeeling.com. You can learn all about the different services and things that we offer there. And then I'm over on Instagram @functional.feeling. And I also have a podcast which is called the Strength Informance podcast. Thank you so much, Lauren. It was such a pleasure having you on the show. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Thanks for tuning into this episode of Everyday Endorphins. If you liked what you heard and you want to continue to follow along, make sure to like, rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on whichever listening platform you prefer. If you want to stay plugged into Everyday Endorphins outside of the podcast, I'm on Instagram, I'm on TikTok and you can also drop your email to subscribe to my newsletter. It's the Everyday Endorphins sub-stack where I talk about the interviews that I've done that month. Any events happening in New York that I've hosted and just a stream of consciousness of my thoughts. Thanks again for tuning in and reminder to keep spreading endorphins and finding the things in life that bring you joy. Until next time.