Hey there, welcome to the root cause medicine podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Carrie Jones. And on this

podcast, we go in depth with leading experts from all walks of life to understand and improve your

health and well-being. Today, I'm talking with Lisa Hendricks and Jack, all about the nuances of your

menstrual cycle and the fertility awareness method. Basically,

she covered the info we wished we got in high school. Lisa is a certified fertility awareness educator,

holistic reproductive health practitioner, and author of the fifth vital sign. Master your cycle

and optimize your fertility. She's also a frequent speaker on the topic of menstrual health and

hosted the Fertility Friday podcast, which I highly recommend. It was an absolute pleasure talking

with her today as she busted myths around when you can actually get pregnant, how long the egg

actually lives, and what does all that cervical mucus mean? Here's a clip from today's conversation.

I can't say I created this concept. It's starting to be more well recognized in medicine.

But generally speaking, a vital sign is simply a bodily response that you can monitor.

And the most common ones are the heart rate, body temperature, respiratory rate, blood pressure,

those kinds of things. And what was missing out of that junior high sex ed class is that our

menstrual cycle can also be used as a vital sign. It's a real-time measure of what's happening

in the body. And we can kind of break it down into these different phases and talk about what's

normal in each phase. And interestingly, there's a lot of information you can gather. So something as basic as could you have a yeast infection if you're seeing mucus all the time outside of that short window when we would expect to see it? Or could you have a more serious issue? We're kind of taught that our ovulation is like that. We're kind of taught that, well, it's fine. It doesn't really matter. Okay, we'll put you on the pill or whatever. But we're not really taught, like, what does it mean if you're a woman of reproductive age and you literally stop menstruating? And so even if you don't want a baby, like, that could be one of the signs of like H.A. Hypothelamic aminorea. And in a case like that, if you are going without a period for six months or more, it can increase your lifetime risk of osteoporosis.

So we should just, it's a basic, basic information that we should all have. Unfortunately, we don't. But the menstrual cycle does act like a vital sign and something really important that we can pay attention to. That's just a small taste of the amazing show that we have for you today. Hey, before we get started, I want to talk to you about something that comes up pretty often

on this podcast, and that, of course, is lab testing.

You see, testing is one essential way to understand the root cause of an illness.

And if you're an integrative or functional medicine practitioner, chances are you are placing a ton of orders with a ton of different labs.

The Root Cost Medicine podcast is created by Rupa Health. And Rupa is the best way to order, manage, and track results from over 25 different labs in one single place. Thank goodness, no need to

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