In my first book, The Fifth Vital Sign, I argue that the menstrual cycle is an important vital sign

that we should be paying attention to. I argue that your menstrual cycle is important regardless

of whether or not you're actively trying to have babies now. And I also argue that charting your

cycle using fertility awareness method tools is an essential step in truly understanding what's happening

in your menstrual cycle. If you haven't ground a copy of the fifth vital sign, you can read the first

chapter for free over at the fifth vital sign book.com. And did you know that you can listen to the fifth

vital sign for free when you sign up for a 30-day trial with Audible, head over to

fertility friday.com slash audible for details. That's fertility friday.com slash audible.

This is the Fertility Friday podcast, episode number 547. Today I'm sharing a brand new episode in my fam research series.

And the topic of today's episode is genetic compatibility and the role that cervical

mucus may play in this.

This is a topic that I've covered before in a different way.

In the fifth vital sign in chapter 7, the pill chapter, I have a section called, will the pill cause you to choose the

wrong partner? And this section, when I wrote it, was highly controversial and I had people kind of

coming out of the woodwork from time to time suggesting that it wasn't a

good idea to even talk about this stuff. But the fact is that there is this whole area of science,

evolutionary biology, where they are looking at some of these factors. And the hypothesis is that

we are designed in such a way that we select our mates based on genetic dissimilarity.

So if you look at several individuals, you are more likely to choose a partner under normal circumstances

whose genetics are a lot more dissimilar to your own.

And this is where the pill comes into this conversation.

So a lot of the research suggests that when you're choosing a partner, your sense of

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