So there's been this faulty assumption that it's fine to just switch off women's actual hormones

and replace them with these drugs and that that's going to be good enough.

That was the assumption.

That was the hope.

It was wishful thinking.

But one of the analogies I use, if you think about that for men, like just think about it for a minute.

If you were to say, look, men only need testicular function

when they're ready to make a baby. So in the meantime, we're going to routinely switch off

testicular function, switch off testosterone, because why did they need it? And we're going to replace it

with this contracept, this version, you know, synthetic version of testosterone that's kind of like testosterone, but also quite a bit like estrogen and quite different.

And so therefore, they're going to have altered brain structure and they're going to have, you know, mood problems and they're going to have suppressed libido.

But it's fine because that's what we do.

That's the paradigm.

I'm Cynthia Overgard, owner of hypniburthing of Connecticut,

childbirth advocate, and postpartum support specialist. And I'm Tresha Ludwig, certified nurse midwife and international board certified lactation consultant. And this is the down-to-birth podcast.

Childbirth is something we're made to do, but how do we have our safest and most satisfying experience in today's medical culture? Let's dispel the myths and get down to birth.

Hi everyone, I'm Laura Briden. I'm a naturopathic doctor and the author of a couple of books,

Period of Paranual and Hormone Repair Manual. And they're both books about how to have

healthier periods and hormones without the use of hormonal birth control.

And I wrote these books for my patients. They came out of, at that time, about 20 years of

Monday to Friday, 9 to 5, working with women trying to find alternatives to hormonal birth control. And then I wrote these books

to help my patients. And then I discovered that women all over the world also wanted that help.

...