Modern WisdomThe War Inside Women: How Hormones Influence Psychology - Dr Sarah Hill
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,055 words- 0:00 – 5:30
Introducing the Menstrual Cycle
- CWChris Williamson
Two books on the vagina. Congratulations.
- SHDr Sarah Hill
(laughs) I think it's a little bit more complex than that. I think it's a little more complex than that, but thank you.
- CWChris Williamson
Why this one?
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Well, you know, actually, you know, it, it was the biologist in me that kind of led me to this one. Um, so the first book was really more about my, uh, I ended up in a rabbit hole because of my personal experiences with the pill. And this one, I ended up in a rabbit hole because I couldn't understand why women feel so terrible during the last two weeks of their cycle. Um, you know, and from an evolutionary perspective, like, it doesn't make a lot of sense for women, like, to all have a disorder. Right? It just doesn't make any sense because generally if there's some sort of a trait and it's causing problems, it'll get selected out of the population, and there's been all this really wonderful work that's been done in our field looking at, you know, the impact of estrogen and how when estrogen is high and rising across the cycle, that it does all of these really amazing functional things within the human, you know, within the, within women's brains and then with their behavior and everything else. But, like, n- n- there's nothing like that about what goes on in the second half of the cycle. Instead, it just seems like women feel terrible. And so I was trying to understand why that is. So, like, what is the deep evolutionary wisdom behind self-loathing, (laughs) you know-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- SHDr Sarah Hill
... that tends to go on during the second half of the cycle? And, you know, so, like, why does it happen and i- is it supposed to, and is there some way that we can all feel better? So it was really sort of an evolutionary puzzle for me that I wanted to solve.
- CWChris Williamson
Like, crazy to think that that's, for some, maybe even most women, 50% of their life.
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Yeah, it is. It's, like, 50% of your life, and it seems kinda crazy that, you know, that we would be designed in a way that we're supposed to be intentionally feeling bad. And so I thought there had to be something else going on, right? That it probably didn't make sense that we're just supposed to feel terrible.
- CWChris Williamson
What actually happens in the brain across the month?
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Well, so to introduce you to the cycle, we just have to understand that, you know, the whole purpose of having a cycle in the first place is reproduction. And for a male to reproduce, all you have to do is one thing, right? And that one thing is have sex. Uh, and for a female, it's a little bit more complicated tha- than that because we're mammals, and that means that we need to do two things in order to successfully reproduce, right? One is have sex, and that means doing things like attracting partners, being able to tell the difference between high-quality and low-quality partners, wanting to have sex, looking sexy, you know, smelling sexy, finding men sexy, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And there's a whole bunch of research that finds that, in fact, that that's true, right? And that all of those things tend to, um, correlate to times in the cycle when estrogen is high and rising, an egg is about to be released, and sex can lead to conception, right? So that's job one for reproduction if you're a human female. Job two is implantation and pregnancy, right? And so this is where a female body has to allow this, you know, foreign genetic material, you know, half foreign genetic material, um, this, this embryo implant, um, and then, of course, um, be able to carry it to term for nine months. And this is the set of activities that's coordinated by our other sex hormone, progesterone. And this is the sex hormone nobody talks about, right? It's like we think, like, estrogen, and then with guys, we think testosterone, and there's really not a whole lot of talk about progesterone. And so I was kinda curious about, like, what actually goes on during the point in the cycle when progesterone is the dominant hormone, right? Are these things actually trying to guide our, our brain and behavior in a way that will help to facilitate pregnancy, right? Because we find that, you know, human, b- like, women are, become very much oriented toward men and toward sex, um, in the first half of the cycle when estrogen is high and rising. And so I was really trying to figure out, like, is there some method to our madness, right, during the second half of the cycle, um, when progesterone is dominant, and might it be, um, creating shifts in the way that we feel and experience the world that might be functional? And might they feel a little bit dysfunctional just simply because we don't really give voice to them? And, and by giving voice to them, I don't mean that we all need to sit around and talk about how we feel during the second half (laughs) of the cycle. But instead, it's this idea that, you know, the, the way that women have been handled by science and by medicine is that we're just like small, less hairy versions of men, and so nobody's really given too much, paid too much attention to the fact that our hormones cycle and that what our bodies need and, and the way that we experience the world and even the way that we experience symptoms of chronic diseases or chronic conditions like ADHD and, um, and things like, uh, diabetes and autoimmune disease, and that all of this might actually shift across the cycle with our shifting hormones. Um, and as it turns out and as I talk a lot about in the new book, The Period Brain, is these things do change across the cycle, right? And it turns out that women are a somewhat different version of themselves during the last two weeks of the cycle than they are during the first two weeks of the cycle and that a lot of the misery that we experience is a result of the fact that we've totally ignored that, right? It's just like nobody wants to acknowledge that biological sex matters when it does, and the result of this is that women have been absolutely mishandled by science and by medicine, and one of the results of that is PMS.
- CWChris Williamson
Right. Yes, a damning indictment of the medical industry and modern culture as well all in, all in one go there.
- 5:30 – 20:29
What Women Experience During Their Cycle
- CWChris Williamson
So, uh, categorize for me th- these, uh, multiple phases across the month. What's it, what's it like to be the female brain going through this? What's happening inside of the female brain?
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Yeah. Well, so during the first half of the cycle, which, you know, starts on day one, which is the day that you get your period, and at that point, hormones are pretty low, and, you know, women are generally feeling a little bit, um, wrung out because th- they just got through this big hormonal shift in the luteal phase. And during the first couple of days of the cycle, um, women tend to be relatively tired. They're bleeding. They don't feel their best.Um, but usually after a couple of days, um, est- because estrogen starts to rise, um, egg follicles are being stimulated and as they get stimulated, estrogen gets released and it makes women feel amazing, right? They generally have more energy, they have higher sexual desire, they have more sex, they're more drawn to men. Um, you know, there's just a whole lot of fun things that go on during that point in the cycle and it's just orienting women to do the thing that their brains and bodies need to do in order to reproduce, um, at that point, and that is have sex, right? Because that's going to get, um, an egg in proximity with some sperm and then voila, you know, magic can happen. Um, after ovulation occurs, and that usually happens about two weeks in, so right around day 14 is when we see ovulation happen, um, that empty egg follicle actually becomes a temporary endocrine structure and it's called the corpus luteum and it releases women's other sex hormone, progesterone. And progesterone, like the experience of being in the state of this hormone is one where we tend to be more emotionally sensitive. So it actually changes the connections with the amygdala in the brain, which is our fear center, and it makes it more interconnected with a greater variety of areas of our brain, and it makes it more sensitive to threat. And so what we find, um, in research is that during, uh, the luteal phase of the cycle, so again, these last two weeks of the cycle, that it actually lowers the threshold that women's brains need to consider something a threat. You know, sort of like a smoke detector, right? Like you can have a really sensitive smoke detector where every time that you so much as, like, make a pizza, it goes off and goes crazy, or you can have one that's really insensitive, right, where your whole house would have to be on fire before it goes off. And what the luteal phase does is it kind of makes you have a more finely tuned smoke detector. And again, this is a period in the cycle when women are incredibly vulnerable, right? Um, progesterone is the, the hormone of pregnancy, right, and this is true whether or not we ever want to get pregnant or whether our sex life would even allow us to get pregnant at a given point in our lives, right, but our body's preparing for that. And part of that is that it does lower the threshold on what is considered threatening, right? So women do become sort of more socially astute to signs of potential threat. Um, you also tend to be sleepier and less motivated to go out and do things. And again, this is part of the fact that, um, progesterone is ushering in this, you know, state that is optimized for pregnancy, and this is a time that's really vulnerable for women. And especially, you know, throughout most of our evolutionary history, we were very much dependent on our male partners for provisioning. You know, if we were living out in the wild wilderness, um, and we were being chased by a, you know, a mountain lion, it'd be l- more difficult to get away. And so we tend to be more, um, sort of oriented toward being homebodies. So you actually find that women's, um, motivation to, like, do outward-facing approach type motivation where you, like, want to go out and do things and the idea of pursuing goals feels really good, that area, those, um, neurotransmitters get tapped, the brakes get tapped on them a little bit to make women a little bit more introspective, wanting to stay home, wanting to stay safe. Again, having a heightened, um, tendency to understand danger signals in the environment. You also get hungrier and sleepier, um, because progesterone actually intentionally, um, causes the brain to, uh, have an increase in what's called GABAergic activity. So it's just like activating the calming centers of our, it's this calming form of neurotransmission that slows the brain down and chills it out. Um, and it makes you, again, it sort of m- keeps you at home, right? It's a very sort of relaxing type of a hormonal state. It makes it so you don't go out and expend a bunch of energy unnecessarily. And, uh, throughout most of our evolutionary history, you know, there wasn't a fast food place on every corner and it was really difficult to get calories. And so maintaining sufficient calorie stores for pregnancy, um, was a, a very important thing for the female body to do. So you're sleepier, you're hungrier, your basal metabolic rate increases. So, um, a lot of times women report feeling hungrier during the second half of the cycle and that they're having these food cravings. Um, and it turns out that we're hungrier and have food cravings 'cause we're probably not eating enough. Um, because even though we've all been given sort of, like, one-size-fits-all nutritional guidelines about, like, you know, "Hey, Sarah, you, with your activity level and, you know, your height, you should have about 2,000 calories a day." And so if I'm a woman and I believe this to be true of every day of my cycle, I'm gonna end up feeling kind of miserable in the second half because research finds that basal metabolic rate increases by anywhere between eight and 11%. So, like, if you need 2,000 calories a day during the folicular phase or during the first two weeks of the cycle, you can need an extra almost, like, 150 calories, close to 200 calories a day in the second half of the cycle. And of course, women aren't told this, right? And instead they're just like, "Why am I so hungry and why am I having... Why am I craving food even though I already ate?" Um, and so that changes. We shift from a proinflammatory type of an immune response to an antiinflammatory type of an immu- immune response, and that changes the way that our bodies respond to everything ranging from medication that we might be taking for a chronic condition or even the symptoms that we have from a chronic condition. Um, so there's a lot of research showing that women, um, that women frequently experience, uh, premenstrual, they call it premenstrual worsening of symptoms like asthma and, uh, different types of autoimmune disease. Um, s- many women report that their ADHD medication stops working, um, at, at this time in the cycle as well, and it, and it appears, um, from the research that the way that we even metabolize drugs is different during this phase in the cycle. And so there's all these changes that go on, um, and because we're not told about them and we don't know what we're supposed to be looking out for and we're not told things, for example, like, "Oh, you know, you need to eat more. Um, your calorie needs actually change as your body temperature increases," um, a lot of times women walk around feeling pretty miserable.And a lot of that misery's kind of unnecessary, because if we actually knew what was going on and what we e- needed to do to optimize and, and feel our best, um, I think that for a lot of women, PMS wouldn't be a thing.
- CWChris Williamson
So that's, I guess, what's happening inside of the brain and body. Can you just dig into the adaptive reasons for that on both sides? Especially, I mean, you know, the, the obvious question here is how is PMS adaptive if it makes women so miserable?
- SHDr Sarah Hill
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
A- a- ac- across the entire cycle-
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... w- why are women predisposed to behave and feel all of the different ways that they do?
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Right. And again, it's, you know, it's because reproduction for us requires two different jobs. I mean, when you consider the fact that our body has to, in the course of... And l- let's just assume a 28-day menstrual cycle. Um, ac- ac- across the course of the 28-day cycle, a woman's body has to completely shift ge- gears from first being optimized for attraction and sex, right? And so, that's what estrogen does is it, like, pulls out all the stops to make us our sexiest, most energetic version of ourselves. Um, and, and, you know, sort of at the top of our game of being able to tell the difference between, you know, a really high-quality mate and, like, a slightly less higher quality mate. Like, we're really-
- CWChris Williamson
What, what's some of the, uh, what's some of the research that you've looked at around this that sort of proves that this is to be the case?
- SHDr Sarah Hill
There's, there's some really great research that finds that women's ability to pick up on, on different, uh, thresholds of, uh, uh, t- a testosterone metabolite actually differs across the cycle, and that, um, when estrogen is high and fertility is high and conception is possible, women can actually distinguish between very fine-tuned differences in levels of, of testosterone based on scent-based cues of this metabolite that it releases when it's broken down in the body. Um, at other points in the cycle, women aren't able to tell those differences, right? It's kinda like the difference between, like, s- you're drinking wine with somebody who's, like, a really, you know, like a, like a wine connoisseur, right? They can tell the difference between a, you know, 2020 and a 2021 Cabernet, right? Whereas somebody who doesn't have a lot of experience with, with wine, you know, might not be able to tell the difference at all. It all kinda tastes the same. The same is true for a woman in the estrogenic versus progestogenic phase of the cycle. When you're in the est- estrogenic phase of the cycle, it's like women can tell clear differences between very fine-tuned differences in testosterone levels based on scent and also based on physical appearance of facial features. So they've done, um, some research. This was actually, uh, some research that was done by one of my, uh, honor students where we looked at women's ability. We just, like, morphed faces by little, tiny, minute differences. Um, and then we asked women, "Tell us when you start to notice that these faces are changing." And what we find is that near high fertility when estrogen is high, women, it lowers their threshold for where they're able to s- see the differences, right? It's like they're more attuned to the fine-tuned differences in testosterone levels in male faces, and you don't see this going on in the second half of the cycle. Because being able, you know, keeping all of that, um, cognitive architecture sharp is really metabolically expensive. And, and, and what we tend to see in the cycle, I mean, just at the level of the brain, is that at high fertility when you have high levels of estrogen, that it causes our, our neurons to sprout new dendritic spines and actually makes our brain more sensitive to the environment, right? And it's because our brain, you know, it's in, in, in our eyeballs and our noses. I mean, that's like the, the communication pathway between our brain and the rest of the world, right? And so our brain becomes very sharp on the ability to be able to d- distinguish these fine-tuned differences in the quality of partners when estrogen is high, because this is the time in the cycle when, uh, sex can lead to conception. Then during the later phases in the cycle, it's like having that ability is, is a waste, because sex can no longer lead to conception in the second half of the cycle.
- CWChris Williamson
Why would distinguishing levels of testosterone through smell or through face be something useful or important at all?
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Yeah. Well, it's important because it's a hypothesized good genes marker, right? And so the idea here is that, um, testosterone provides a proxy cue to a man's genetic quality. And, and usually when people are making this argument a- and the evidence that's been, uh, proposed, um, in support of this general idea, um, i- is... It has to do specifically with, um, immunological e- uh, immunological quality. And the idea is this. Um, we know that testosterone is immunosuppressive, right? It actually tamps the, breaks down on the immune system. And the reason for this is because testosterone, like, shifts the body toward all things sex and mating, right? And that takes energy away from being able to fuel your immune response. And so if a person has a lot of testosterone markers, it indicates the fact that their immune system is well enough put together that their body allowed high levels of testosterone to be released during development, leading to the masculinization of these features, like masculinized facial features, masculinized vocal chords, and so on, um, ba- a masculinized brain, um, that, you know, that their bodies were in sufficiently good shape that they were allowed to release this high level of testosterone despite the fact that they were also having to manage, you know, whatever types of, um, pathogens and, uh, parasites were in their environment.
- CWChris Williamson
That's so interesting. So testosterone is not necessarily the marker that women are looking for itself. Testosterone is an indication that the physiology of this particular man is sufficiently robust that he has surplus immune system capacity, so much so that his body could suppress some of it with this additional testosterone, and he would still survive and still not be sick. Therefore, high T equals good immune system, not necessarily high T is what we're after directly.
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Right. Exactly.
- CWChris Williamson
... that might be true too.
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Yeah. No, I think that is both things, honestly, but yeah, so you, you hit the nail on the head and then, obviously, there's some other benefits from high T directly. I mean, just in terms of somebody being able to, uh, be a good protector and a good, you know, um, provider of resources because we know that those things are correlated. But in terms of the developmental markers, I mean, it's like whether somebody has a masculinized face or a masculinized voice or a masculinized build or a masculinized personality, I mean, all of that's, you know, determined during childhood. And so that's the story of their immune system being able to withstand, you know, reliably being able to withstand all of these threats while also releasing high levels of testosterone, leading to this masculinized phenotype.
- CWChris Williamson
Right. Okay, and then... So the argument here is women are more discerning of these sorts of traits-
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... they're able to see with kind of a higher resolution-
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... during the first, during the first two weeks. Um, they are being more gregarious, being more outgoing, being more sort of socially, uh, adept, I would guess, and, and, and-
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... more out there. What was that s- wasn't there a study about strippers make more money during-
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... the first two weeks of their cycle as well?
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Yeah. No, so it, uh, yes, there's this really great study that was done where they had women keeping diaries and they, they would just like indicate, "Did you get your period today? Yes or no?" Um, they, you know, obviously put down how much time they spent at work and then how much money they earned, and what they found was that even after you control for the number of hours they worked and so on and so forth, what you found was that those strippers who were naturally cycling, so meaning that they were not on birth control and they were able to enjoy, uh, the nice estrogen rise that you get prior to ovulation, that those women earned significantly more money at high fertility in the cycle when estrogen was high relative to what they earned at other points in the cycle when estrogen is low. And they also earned more than women who were on the pill because women who were on the pill, of course, don't ovulate, and so they never got that big earning bump, um, periovulatorily, right, or right before, um, ovulation, um, and so they were sort of missing out on, on that, like, free of cost, um, hotness surge, uh, that women are able to get from estrogen.
- CWChris Williamson
Wow. Okay. So
- 20:29 – 44:05
The Ovulatory Shift Hypothesis: Researching the Cycle
- CWChris Williamson
what's... I g- I wanna dig into... I wanna know what's happening with the ovulatory shift hypothesis stuff-
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Okay.
- CWChris Williamson
... because it seem, it seems like this is suggesting women would almost certainly have different partner choices across the month-
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... that if-
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... you're able to detect cues of testosterone during the first half, then you're able to discern, and if you're unable to detect them in the second half, then that's definitely gonna have some sort of an impact on you. But it seems to me, looking at different things that come across my Twitter feed and my Substack feed, uh, that every week there's some replication crisis around ovulatory shift2. So given that you've been-
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... knee deep in this w- where do you-
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... come to sort of sit? I know this is kind of a spicy topic in the world of EP at the moment.
- SHDr Sarah Hill
It's, it's always a spicy topic, and I mean, and I think one of the reasons that it's a spicy topic, honestly, is because, um, becau- I, I think that any research that's done on things that are related to women specifically, I think get unduly scrutinized, um, in a way that I, I don't really think is fair. But that being said, um, yeah, it is, it is a spicy topic, and, uh, there's definitely been some, um, issues like with replication. I mean, there's just no question about it. Where some research wills, some researchers will find, for example, that, uh, near high fertility in the cycle that women do exhibit a heightened preference for masculinized male faces, voices, and behaviors. Other, um, research finding using maybe different methods or, you know, different types of, um, ways of assessing whether you're at high or low fertility, um, finding that they don't find this effect, or they find it for some traits but not other traits. Um, and so I think when you look at the tota- like the totality of the evidence, I think for sure, um, there's something there, right? So, like one thing that I can, I can say for absolute certain that I know is true because it's just been replicated a zillion times is that yes, women have an increase in sexual motivation at this time, right? So women feel sexier. They smell sexier, um, you know, et cetera, et cetera, and, and there's pretty robust evidence on that. In terms of women's partner preferences, the best studies that I've ever seen looking at this topic, so looking at how women's hormones change across the cycle and looking at this within women longitudinally find that there is a preference shift in, in that women do have a heightened preference for these, um, cues related to testosterone. And so to me, I think that... I mean, in some of the stuff like, like, you know, whether it's also symmetry, that one's a little bit up in the air. I'm not really sure about that one. Um, and in, but, but with the, the, uh, masculinization and testosterone, I feel confident that there's something there, um, and like I said, there's, there's been, you know, there have been some failures to replicate, but oftentimes when I've seen those failures to replicate, the methods are a little bit of a mess, and I think that this is definitely something that you have to look at longitudinally within individual women because trying to make comparisons between women... I mean, when you look at, like, levels of hormones, and, uh, and I mean, this is something that frustrates women no matter where they are. Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Like if they're trying to get pregnant or they're, think that they're going into menopause or whatever, but when you look at the range of like what's normal for estrogen, it's almost like the difference between like if I were to say what's normal for a range of earning is like between $30,000 a year and about a million and a half-
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... you know, and you're like, "Well," so then you get a test result back and it says you're normal, right, and it's like, well, what the fuck does that mean (laughs) you know? Yeah, plus receptor s- receptor sensitivity and-
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
... your psychological profiles predisposition which gets enhanced or tuned down based on where your homo- Yeah, I, I, I can-
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Yes. I mean-
- CWChris Williamson
I, I can totally see how that would be the case. What you mentioned there, um, women have high libido, uh, feel more sexy, smell more sexy. W- how's that been tested?
- SHDr Sarah Hill
So that's really interesting. That's been tested in a variety of different ways. Um, one of... So they've done t-shirt studies, and with the t-shirt studies, they of course have women wearing t-shirts that they wear at night, that they sleep in, and they can't wear any scented soap and no perfume and no deodorant, right? And then they have men, um, smell the t-shirts. And what research tends to find is that, um, when men smell the t-shirt of women near high fertility, so when estrogen is high across the cycle, that they prefer the scent of women at that time relative to the exact same women, um, in, in the later phases of the cycle when conception is not possible. Um, they've also studied this looking at, um, panty liners. So in one particularly provocative study, they had women wearing panty liners across the cycle, right? So they would wear this panty liner for a full day, and, um, and what the researchers did is they actually put the, the panty liners and they, they had them in groups, right? So they had one group that was a high fertility panty liners. So these were panty liners worn by women, um, right near ovulation when conception is possible. And then they had another group... Uh, then they had another group of panty liners that were worn (laughs) by the exact same women during the luteal phase, and then they put them in a nebulizer. And a nebulizer-
- CWChris Williamson
Are you kidding?
- SHDr Sarah Hill
No, I'm not. No. And, and they did this in South America 'cause I don't think that we could get away with this in the US.
- CWChris Williamson
You... The ethics board wouldn't be keen on that, would they?
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Yeah. They'd be like, "Mm, I don't know." Like, "These things-"
- CWChris Williamson
What, you want me to vaporize the smell-
- SHDr Sarah Hill
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... of a woman's panty liner and get men-
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... to breathe it in so that you can walk upright?
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Right. Yeah.
- 44:05 – 56:27
How Do Men and Women Differ Hormonally?
- CWChris Williamson
It doesn't sound to me... Yeah, there's, you know, you need more calories and you don't wanna hang with your friends and go to brunch with the girlies and put- put heels on or whatever and yeah, maybe you're a little bit more sensitive to your partner staying late at work or not giving you a cuddle before he wakes up in the morning but, you know, largely this just feels like a- a sort of relatively gentle swing between two different types of womanhood.
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, and yet PMS reliably makes lots of women miserable so what's the disconnect here? Is this just my male brain? Am I unable to see it or- or is there- is there more when you put this sort of suite of traits together that makes for a particular type of existence?
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Well, so I think it's a combination of things. So I think one of the reasons that it feels worse than it needs to is just simply because women haven't been given a blueprint for themselves that's anything other than a- just a smaller, you know, sort of sh- pinker, you know, ver- like less hairy version of a male way of being, right? And so I think that, like, we've kinda downplayed the impact that our hormones have on creating different types of physical and psychological states and so I think that, you know, the things that we do aren't necessarily gonna be optimizing ourselves during that time and that can make us feel worse and just to give th- the example again, you know, we need more calories, um, if we're not eating those calories, we're gonna have food cravings, we're gonna be hungry and we're gonna be cranky, right? Another example is that, you know, our recovery needs change during the luteal phase and if you're just expecting that you're gonna go and do like a really hard HIIT workout and then you're gonna go for a run and then you're gonna get, you know, X amount of sleep, um, and you're gonna feel great the next day, um, it- that's not necessarily going to be as true in the second half of the cycle as it is in the first because your HRV gets lower because your heart rate increases, your body temperature is higher, your respiration is faster. It's like, so it's harder for us to get, you know, calmed down during that time and, um, and- and so tha- that too, it's like a- a lot of women are, you know, by doing like a one size, one cycle phase, like, fits all, like set of like workout activities or, you know, their- their self-care routine. If all of that is treating themselves as the same version of themselves every day of the cycle, it can make them feel pretty terrible in the second half of the cycle because it does require more care, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- SHDr Sarah Hill
It requires more food, it requires more rest. It's harder to work out. You build less muscle from resistance training during that time because progesterone is catabolic and estrogen is anabolic and so is testosterone which tends to get co-released at the same time that, um, estrogen does in the cycle and so it's like we have all of these changes and the fact that we aren't a- acknowledging them, right, is culturally, it's just like, "Oh, hormones don't matter," you know? Whatever.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Like men and women are the same. Women are just small men, um, so these don't matter and so I think part of the reason that we feel bad is because m- if we just made small adjustments in the way that we treat ourselves and understand what our body is trying to do, I think that we can feel a whole lot better and the other thing is that, you know, there's a lotta things just because of an evolutionary mismatch between the environments we spent most of our history and the ones that we live in now that can really erode at our, um, ability to be able to sort of wi- uh, ride the wave of hormonal change in a smooth, comfortable way. Um, because being able to, as a woman who cycles, be able to go through these wild hormonal swings that happen especially in the luteal phase, because the rise and fall of progesterone, um, peaks at levels that are 10 times higher than the peak levels of estrogen rising and falling in the first half of the cycle. So you have these huge hormonal swings and being able to, um, have all the cells in your body that, um, pick up on sex hormones, be able to adjust to those things in- in a sort of rapid fire way that allows you to kind of smoothly transition through the cycle. Those things get eroded by things like bad diets, not enough sleep, not enough sunlight, you know, um, not getting exercise, all of these things that increase, um, and cause inflammation in the body erode at our resilience to hormonal changes and that also has a tendency of making these things feel a whole lot worse than what they need to.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. Is it right to say that women are more hormonal than men? Like whose behavior is more hormonally mediated?
- SHDr Sarah Hill
No, I- I mean it's not. You know, it's like our hormones are different but we both have hormones, um, and our hormones cycle, right? So for a man, you know, testosterone, uh, lives, um, on a 24-hour cycle so testosterone peaks in the morning hours and then it decreases over the course of the day and then, of course, uh, testosterone, unlike women's two primary sex hormones, changes dynamically in response to things in the environment, right? It's a reactive hormone. So if you see a beautiful woman or you smell a pantyliner that somebody (laughs) -
- CWChris Williamson
Condensed and nebulizing by a South American researcher.
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Yes. Yes, a nebulizer. Um, your testosterone will increase but men's testosterone levels, um, I mean they- they change and- and, you know, and- and that affects men's behavior. Women's sex hormones change in very predictable ways across the cycle and that changes women's behavior. Um, and they're supposed to do these things. You know, it's like women's bodies, we have two jobs to do to reproduce. Sex, pregnancy and so a cycle is just s- orienting our brain and our body toward those goals, right? And so for a man, you just have, you know, the- they have the primary sex hormone testosterone and it has that, you know, nice circadian rhythmicity where again it peaks in the morning and then is lower at night but then it also changes in response to anything in the environment...... that changes the benefits from sex, you know? So if a man wins a competition, it's like, "Oh, yeah. No, I just won a competition, so I'm at the top of the heap, so now is a good time to go find a girl," 'cause, you know, women like winners, and so this is a great time to mate. Or you see a beautiful woman, like testosterone will go up, like, "Oh, yeah. I know this is a good time to mate 'cause look at her."
- CWChris Williamson
Well, it's, it's also the same if, if you were in a room with weapons, and then it goes up-
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... even more if you pick the weapons up. So, look-
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... I, I, I, I've already kind of swallowed the uncomfortable, like, real... Maybe this, this is like the testosterone pill, which is that men's behavior is hormonally maybe even less predictable than women's in that-
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Well, y-
- CWChris Williamson
... it responds to the environment in ways that you can't... At the start of the day, I don't know if I'm going to be in a room with a ton of axes, right? I don't know if I'm gonna get-
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... to wield one and pretend that I'm a, a mage for a small amount of time. Whereas at least women have got this idea, "Across the cycle, I think I know where I'm going to end up." Uh, at least in my experience, it's easier to lay it at the feet of hormones because it is more predictable. Like, w- why-
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... was that guy cranky that d- Why was I, why was I cranky today, or why was I aggressive today, or why was I feeling a little bit passive today? I don't know. Um, and, you know, if... I, I would have to guess though that given women have got multiple hormones acting on them, uh, more so than men, that means that the swings in behavior, I would expect them to be more... Progesterone is not going to be impacting men in, in the same way as it does for women. But, I don't know, maybe testosterone is so powerful that it, it causes swings in behavior that are greater than simply estrogen/progesterone. I'm not sure. I just, um...
- SHDr Sarah Hill
I, so I don't know. So I'll say this. You know, it's like, like, we have these, and as you noted, I mean, women's hormones, they change in this incredibly predictable way. And the thing I always say is that if you tell me a woman's age and when she had her, the first day of her last period, I can tell you with a pretty decent degree of accuracy what's happening with her primary sex hormones. Whereas with men, I couldn't do the same thing at all, you know, 'cause I have no idea. It's like, did you just see a beautiful woman? Yeah. Were you in a room with a bunch of axes? Like, I have no idea. And so you get a lot more volatility in male hormones, just meaning that they're less predictable than, than women's, right? Just because our primary sex hormones change in a predictable way, men's primary sex hormone changes in a relatively unpredictable way. But yes, we do have two primary sex hormones, and men have one, right? And so this does mean that we d- that we cycle, you know? And it's because, again, we've got two jobs our bodies need to do in order to reproduce instead of just one.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- SHDr Sarah Hill
And, you know, and, and, and that's been used to argue that there's something wrong with us, right? Like, "Oh, well, you know, women are just more hormonal, and you don't know what you're gonna get." But, you know, the fact of the matter is, the only reason that we have that narrative is because men came first, you know, just in terms of understanding what it means to be a human. And it's like, we could very quickly imagine a world where women's biology was understood first, right? Then we would look at men and we'd say, "This is too simple." Like, "These guys, like, how can we know that he can make a good decision when he only has one hormone? You know, he can't even look at something from two different angles because he's just got this one primary hormone?" I mean, it's, it's, it's the idea that we think that there's something wrong with our way of being is just an artifact of the fact that men were studied first. And so that was like, all of our assumptions about what it means to be normal and that w- for things to be done right are, are based on a male standard, and it just doesn't work for women.
- CWChris Williamson
How many women understand what their cycle does to them, do you think?
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Ha, not enough. You know, it's like w- we... I didn't, I didn't learn about any of this stuff until I was in graduate school, you know? And at that point, I mean, I guess I got my period when I was like 12 and a half, and so I'd had it for a really long time and I had no idea what was going on except that I knew that it was, you know, related to the ability to reproduce. And I know that it meant that I had to buy tampons. But other than that, I spent zero time thinking about it. Most women aren't taught anything about any of this stuff.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- SHDr Sarah Hill
And the result is that, um, a lot of people are feeling, you know, either confused, um, or, you know, feeling bad.
- 56:27 – 1:05:58
How Does the Pill Effect Women on Their Cycle?
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... and you mentioned the, the pill. Um, talk to me about how the pill impacts the period brain. Like, tying together-
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... book one and book two.
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Yeah, so the pill essentially takes... You know, we've been talking about the fact that women have... our bodies have these two jobs we have to do to reproduce and the result of this is that we wax and wane between these two hormonal states, right? With the estrogenic state, which is like the wild sex kitten version of ourselves, and then, you know, progesterone and the luteal phase which shifts us into kind of our earth mother, you know, mom jeans, uh, side of ourselves. And so for a naturally cycling woman you're kind of waxing and waning between these two, um, these two different but complementary states, uh, and wh- when you take the birth control pill it shuts all of that down. So essentially what it does is, um, the progestin which is the money-maker, I mean just in terms of the action that prevents, um, pregnancy in, uh, different types of hormonal birth control. But that progestin is mimicking the acts of progesterone which again is that hormone that's released during the second half of the cycle, um, and it, it activates progesterone receptors in the brain, and when the brain is reading... when the progesterone receptors are reading a signal, so they're getting signal, that tells the brain not to stimulate the ovaries, to not produce an egg, and then of course you don't produce estrogen, and then if you don't ovulate you don't produce progesterone. And so, um, by virtue of these synthetic, uh, progestins, which are very different from progesterone by the way, so I don't... we don't need to get into the weeds on all of that but just, um, for listeners to understand that the way that you feel on a progestin, which most women feel pretty awful, is not the same as the way that you feel on progesterone. They actually are completely different molecules and they act very differently in the brain and very differently in the body. But the progestins do get picked up by the progesterone receptors in the brain sufficiently enough to, you know, inhibit, um, the brain from telling the ovaries to release an egg. And so what this does is it flatlines women's hormone production. So women are no longer producing high levels of their own endogenous or internal sex hormones and instead they're getting the same daily dose of a relatively high level of synthetic progesterone known as the progestin, and then a relatively low level of estrogen. And what this means, of course, is that when you're on the pill you don't get that nice big beautiful bump in estrogen that makes women feel so sexy and alive, um, and instead you're living in this state of hormonal deja vu where you have a relatively high level of progestin and a low level of estrogen. And this of course, you know, i- it, it has all kinds of sweeping effects on the way that we think and feel and experience the world because our hormones of course, um, play a really integral role in, in what that means for women.
- CWChris Williamson
So is it kind of like permanently being in the final two weeks?
- SHDr Sarah Hill
It's kind of like being in the final two weeks, um, but with a caveat. And so I- I'm... I'll just quickly without getting into the weeds too much, um, just say that, you know, on the one hand it's like the last two weeks of the cycle because you do see decreased sexual desire, for example, and you do see less of a preference for masculinized male faces, voices and behaviors, right? And so you do tend to see some of those, um, changes in, uh, sexual psychology that are similar to the second half of the cycle, but you also get a bunch of other stuff that, um, that nobody's really bargaining for when they're taking hormonal birth control. And, and the reason for this is that the synthetic, uh, progesterone that, um, is used in most commercially available, uh, birth control is not synthesized from progesterone, and in fact no progestins that are used, um, on the market are synthesized from progesterone. They're, um, they're all either synthesized from, um, from testosterone, most of them are synthesized from testosterone, or they're synthesized from, um, spironolactone which is a diuretic. Um, and this is important, this distinction between something... you know, this progestin which is synthesized from not progesterone, right, either testosterone or spironolactone, um, and progesterone ends up being really important because when the body is breaking down actual progesterone it releases this, um, really calming, uh, metabolite, it's a neurosteroid called allopregnanolone that's really good at promoting mental health and, uh, mood stability and a bunch of other things that, um, help women function and feel pretty good, um, whereas these progestins when they're being broken down in the body, because they are not made out of progesterone you don't get the release of allopregnanolone. And so women who are on the pill actually have a, a... really low levels of this really calming neurosteroid that does help to promote, um, mood balance, mental health and other things like that and, and it's actually been argued that, you know, this is probably one of the primary mechanisms, um, by which hormonal birth control has been linked with mood disorders and anxiety disorders. It's because-
- CWChris Williamson
Oral contraceptives raise depression risk by 40% in teens and women.
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Yes. Yeah, it's pretty si- it's pretty si- uh, pretty substantial. It's a pretty substantial increase, and it's something that, you know, un- until recently, and- and- and it's even now, it's like only the Europeans are actually stating this. Like, like their, their, um, their group that, you know, uh, does the licensing for OB-GYNs finally, you know, acknowledged that yes, you can get mood-related side effects from hormonal birth control. The American group is less to, um, less quick to, um, accept that and like make that something that they communicate to their patients. But yeah, it's a- it's a real issue for a lot of women, especially teenagers. Um, teens are the ones who are asymmetrically hit with the mental health side effects from the pill, and so it's likely the result of those funky progestins and the fact that they don't metabolize like a regular progesterone.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm, interesting. Okay. Women on the pill show a 10% to 20% lower relationship satisfaction. Where's that coming from?
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Yeah, that's really interesting. So, um, my guess is that what's happening with that is- is twofold, is that one, anytime that you have some sort of a mental health-related thing, like something like depression or anxiety that might be caused as a result of the- the lack of allopregnanolone of pill users, um, that can just decrease your satisfaction with everything, right? So it might not necessarily just be about your partner. It just might be that you're more critical about everything. And so that's one possibility, and another possibility is that I think that when you aren't able to experience yourself as a naturally cycling woman who's going between these phases, you know, of estrogen being high and then progesterone being high, um, it's like when you're naturally cycling, you get the full bandwidth of, like, what's good in relationships, right? Like, you're able to, like, really, you know, feel sexual satisfaction and desire, and you're able to feel, you know, this, like, emotional closeness and- and desire, and, um, and I think that that is part of what creates within us, like, the feeling that we have a satisfying relationship. And for women on the pill who generally have lower levels of sexual desire, right? And they've also- tend to report lower sexual satisfaction, less attraction in their relationships, and not necessarily because they chose the wrong partner, right? Although there's some research that indicates that that might be a risk too.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- SHDr Sarah Hill
But instead because they're not experiencing sexual desire, it's just like turning the volume down on what is a r- like a really important aspect of a romantic relationship. And so not to really have much of a libido and then not to really feel that much attraction to your partner just because, you know, attraction and sexual desire is all fueled by estrogen, you know? And so...
- CWChris Williamson
Which is suppressing.
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Yeah, and it's suppressing that. And so it's like women are missing out. It's almost like you have a jigsaw puzzle and you take out, like half of the pieces-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- SHDr Sarah Hill
... and then you're like, "How do you like the puzzle?" And you're like, "I don't know. I guess it's okay." (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Is it right to say women on the pill lose an authentic part of themselves?
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Yeah, I do. I- I do. I think that it's masking an authentic part of yourself, you know? And this could be for better or for worse, right? The same way that we could say, you know, that taking an SSRI or an antidepressant is masking, you know, a person, like a real essence of a person as well, um, which I think is true, but, you know, some people prefer the way that they feel on it, and so they want that to be masked. But it is nonetheless masked, right? And the same with the birth control pill. It's like it's not... you know, you're not really yourself when you're on the pill. And- and like I said, and that could be for better or for worse. Some women feel better when they're on it and- and they like that version of themselves and- and, you know, and if that's- if that's how they feel, uh, godspeed. (laughs) You know, you can be on it safely, and it is, um, and it's effective, so...
- CWChris Williamson
Could oral contraceptives be the biggest unexamined mental health experiment that's ever happened?
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Yeah. No, I think so. I do. I think that and, uh, teenage antidepressant use. I think that both of those things are a big-
- CWChris Williamson
And a lot of those are gonna be happening in collaboration with each other as well.
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Yeah. No, they are because the risk of being prescribed an antidepressant goes up significantly after you start hormonal birth control.
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, man. Well, look, I remember the first conversation that we had. When you came out, it was episode 550. Remembering that episode-
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Oh, really?
- CWChris Williamson
... 1,000 comes out next month, right? So...
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Oh my gosh. Yay.
- CWChris Williamson
I know. I was early. I was early to the Dr. Sarah Hill party. Um-
- SHDr Sarah Hill
I love it.
- 1:05:58 – 1:11:31
Does Female Hormone Suppression Effect Male Hormone Levels?
- CWChris Williamson
A b- a bunch of things have sort of come to mind as you've been talking. First one, you mentioned, we'd both spoken about how men's hormone levels are environmentally mediated, uh, so local ecology, wherever you are that day, what's going on. Did you just win the lottery? Did you win the sports game? Did you get to touch an ax? Was there a hot girl? Like, how big were her boobs? That big or bigger? Wow, like more testosterone. Um, (laughs) and one of the things that we came up with, which I've still never heard anybody actually put forward as a theory, but I still talk about this all the time, there is an X factor that appears to be missing from the decline in men's testosterone, that it's the microplastics, it's the fatness and obesity, it's the lack of sunlight, it's the buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh all the way down, and still a lot of testosterone researchers are going, "This can't be the whole picture." What we said last time was, well, given that men's testosterone levels are mediated by the fertility of the women around them, if men who smell panties during the fertile phase get more testosterone than men who smell the panties from the second half phase, that means that if you chronically globally suppress female fertility signaling, whether it's through smell or touch or the way that they walk down the street or the size of their boobs or how much makeup they put on or how outgoing they are, whether they come up and talk to you in the bar- all of these things, right, this big suite-
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... um, there is absolute- it is... I- I would put all of my money on the line that it is a nonzero effect on men's testosterone. So not only...... is birth control impacting female hormone levels, but it is 100% impacting male hormone levels as well.
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Yeah. No, I totally think so. I, I think so, and actually in two ways. So it's so funny that you say that, because I talk about this all the time too, and no, and, and, and there's still no research on it, and I talk about it, I talk about it constantly.
- CWChris Williamson
It's our secret little -
- SHDr Sarah Hill
It is, it is, it is, I-
- CWChris Williamson
... I mean, not, not that secret that we've spoken about it tons of times -
- SHDr Sarah Hill
I was gonna say, yeah, no, I think that, I think that we need to like, we just need to put this to, to bed. We need to have a study. We need to do the, we need to do the research and, and get it done so we can, um, we can work on collaborating on a project on this.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- SHDr Sarah Hill
I'm, like, fascinated by this. So, and here's another piece of that, right? So one piece being that, um, and this was something that just occurred to me last year, so I don't think that this made it into our last, our last conversation. But with the, um, as you were noting, it's like, yes, we know that men are sensitive to fertility cues, right? And, and that men's testosterone responds to fertility cues. And so there is, like, almost no way, like I can't imagine a universe in which men's testosterone levels are not being impacted by the fact that so many women are on the pill, right? Because you have all this surpri- like suppressed fertility. Of course, of course men's hormones are gonna respond to that. And of course that has to be contributing to the decrease in testosterone that we see in men. Another piece of it is, and I think this is interesting and it's also related to birth control but indirectly, and that is, you know, there's this really great research that has been done now for a couple of decades now looking at, um, looking at male parental investment and testosterone levels. Are you familiar with this work?
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, no. Teach me.
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Oh-
- CWChris Williamson
Teach me.
- SHDr Sarah Hill
... okay. So are you ready? You ready for the depressing facts? So it's actually not. No, it's actually brilliant. Like, this is a brilliant design of the human. This is how brilliant our, our bodies are. So when men have, like get into long-term relationships for example, their testosterone goes down a little bit.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Right? And it does this because it's obviously very adaptive to stop paying attention to the next door neighbor every time she's out watering the lawn, right, if you're trying to maintain your pair bond, right? And so you get this little bit of brake tapping that goes on with testosterone levels. Well, when men have children, brake gets tapped a little bit more, right? And again, it's counterproductive if you're a man who's trying to in, you know, who's in a long-term pair bond that you care about and you have children that you care about. It's counterproductive to have all of your energy focused on looking at beautiful women, right? You should instead, you know, have your energy focus elsewhere. There's also research showing that the more time you spend caregiving, the more the brake gets tapped, okay? So your brake just keeps getting tapped. And, um, so they've done these really great longitudinal studies on fathers, and they find that, you know, over time men who become father, like you get this decrease in testosterone that corresponds with fatherhood. It's the greatest for men who do the greatest amount of caregiving. And so one of the things that the birth control pill has done has allowed women to enter the workforce en masse, right? So women are into the workforce en masse, working, working, working. What are women doing if they have children with their partners? Are they saying, "Well, I'm also gonna do all of the mothering"? No, right? Instead, we've become more egalitarian with parenting. And now even though women still do the majority of childcare, um, and even though, you know, men have kinda come a long way in terms of being willing to chip in, women are still shouldering most of it, but men are doing more than they used to.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- SHDr Sarah Hill
And with greater male childcare, tap, tap, tap, goes testosterone. And so, um, I think that the common-
- CWChris Williamson
God damn it, ladies. Come on.
- SHDr Sarah Hill
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
We just wanna be able to gain some muscle. Leave us to it. Stop making us get into relationships and stop fucking tamping your fertility down and walk, walking in unsexy ways and making us hold babies. Yeah, it's-
- SHDr Sarah Hill
It's terrible. Yeah, we're, we're a really, we're a terrible group. I mean s-
- CWChris Williamson
Well, what it shows, what it, what it shows is kind of how, um, global this impact is, uh, how sort of macro and h- i- i- it's lots of different things happening all at the same time.
- 1:11:31 – 1:17:50
Are Career-Driven Women Going to Burn Out Faster Than Women Listening to Their Cycle?
- CWChris Williamson
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
I guess something else which is kind of an implication here is that in the past, the waxes and wanes of how hard women worked and how much they did ancestrally, that must-
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... have tracked more closely with, or at least this is what I'm reading as your implication, that women don't understand that they need to kind of have a different lifestyle setup in the final two weeks versus the first two weeks. But by building a, uh, work environment 9:00 to 5:00, five days a week, four weeks-
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... per month-
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... then that, um, doesn't exactly allow for the flexibility, and we need to sh- like the meeting is happening next Thursday whether you're on your-
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... period or not, whether you're fertile or not. Like, these things are happening-
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... because, again, men's changes in hormones, uh, don't occur with the same sort of regular swings in that kind of a way.
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
And because m- maybe in that way you could argue they're more predictable or at least-
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... sorry, less subject to change, like across a month-
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Right, right.
- CWChris Williamson
... uh, but less predictable within a day, something like that-
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... might be an interesting way to put it. Um, I, the, I guess the rough question here is does this mean that the high-powered superwomen boss bitch career ladies who are chasing down something that they really want to do, are they going to be subject to burnout more quickly because they-
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... are pushing themselves and putting themselves into a world that they weren't designed for in that kind of a way? They're not designed for this, uh, like 28/28-
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... always on, uh, workflow style in the same way that a man with his testosterone level might be.
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Right, right. And I mean, uh, there's, there's a lot of research evidence that suggests that women are, uh, are suffering from burnout at a greater rate than men. Um, and I, I do think that that is part of the picture, right, is that, is that, um, is that, uh, it's easier physiologically for us to get burned out than it is for men just simply because we do have those, um, cycling hormones. Now the good news is for women, you know, it's like you do at some point go into menopause.... right? And then at that point- (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
There's a finish line ladies, it just happens to be menopause.
- SHDr Sarah Hill
Yeah. Yeah. No. And, well, no, and, and, and, you know, and these things don't need to be, like, it doesn't need to be the sort of thing, like when we're experiencing these changes across the cycle, it doesn't need to be the sort of thing where you're, like, having to have, you know, ask your boss to, like, schedule your meetings around your period or whatever, because I mean, that's, like, bullshit and totally, you know, not the way that the world works and it's, and it's not even necessary. I mean, instead, it's just about making sure that you're taking care of yourself, you know? And, and especially during the second two weeks of the cycle. I mean, it's j- it's j- it is easy to get burned out during that time. I mean, it's your, your heart rate is up, your HRV is low, your, um, it's harder to get into deep sleep. I mean, there's all of these-
Episode duration: 1:36:27
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