In our 10th episode, “The PMDD Chick” Britney Marsden and I discuss Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD), a severe form of PMS that affects many women. Britney shares her personal journey with PMDD, including the emotional and physical symptoms, the role of neurotransmitters like serotonin, and the importance of tracking symptoms for diagnosis. We explore the connection between trauma and PMDD, the complexities of women's health - particularly focusing on autoimmune disorders and hormonal imbalances - and the impact of community support. We also discuss the role of genetics, particularly the MTHFR mutation. Our conversation highlights lifestyle changes that can help manage conditions like PMDD, such as diet, exercise, and stress management as well as mindset, the role of supplements and nutritional deficiencies. Britney emphasizes the significance of self-advocacy and education in managing PMDD, as well as the importance of blood work for a proper diagnosis. In closing, Britney shares her available resources, including a free PMDD support program and personalized consultations, to empower women in their journey with PMDD. 

IN THIS EPISODE: 

• [00:00] Meet Brittany: Her journey to becoming "The PMDD Chick."
• [02:41] What is PMDD? 
• [04:15] How PMDD affects mood, relationships, and self-identity.
• [07:07] Why PMDD is listed as a depressive disorder in the DSM-5.
• [10:10] The role of serotonin, GABA, and glutamate
• [14:46] Brittany’s personal story: Suicide attempts, misdiagnoses, and finding hope.
• [19:54] The impact of MTHFR, epigenetics, and trauma.
• [27:36] Unpacking the connection between stored trauma and chronic health issues.
• [30:05] The importance of vulnerability and community for women with PMDD.
• [32:15] PCOS, endometriosis, and histamine intolerance
• [36:52] Why symptom tracking and nervous system regulation matter
• [43:47] The role of diet, exercise, and stress management
• [50:17] Slowing down: How intentional living creates lasting change.
• [53:35] Shifting from “I can’t” to “I can.”
• [57:39] Iron, vitamin D, magnesium, iodine and other supplemental support 

PLUCK THIS! SEGMENT: 

• https://www.thepmddchick.com/pmddstartersupport
• https://www.thepmddchick.com/coaching
• @thepmddchick on IG 
• www.thepmddchick.com

TOP TAKEAWAYS: 

• PMDD requires a comprehensive understanding of both mental and physical health. Women are disproportionately affected by autoimmune disorders.
• Serotonin and other neurotransmitters play a role in PMDD.
• Understanding genetics can provide insights into PMDD management.
• Histamine intolerance is often overlooked in women's health discussions.
• Genetic factors like the MTHFR mutation can complicate health issues.
• Small, sustainable lifestyle changes, such as diet and stress management are more effective than drastic ones
• Vitamin D levels are critical for women's health.
• Optimal ranges in blood work are important for health.
• Access to information and community support are vital for women suffering from PMDD.
• Hope and resilience are crucial for recovery from PMDD.

RESOURCES

• Britney Marsden’s Her Health Confessions Podcast
• The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel van der Kolk
• Dirty Genes by Ben Lynch
• PMDD: 5 Interwoven Pieces by Marlene Freeman

ABOUT THE HOST: Spencer Moore is a creative professional, creative wellness advocate, and host of The Hairy Chin Podcast. Originally from Raleigh, NC, Spencer has resided in Barcelona, Spain since 2016. Her warmth, humor and authenticity bring light to tough conversations about female wellness. Drawing from personal battles with chronic illness and early-stage breast cancer, she is committed to breaking taboos and empowering women in their health journeys. Spencer shares insights across various platforms, including her Podcast, YouTube channel, Instagram, Blog and website, all aimed at inspiring independent thinking and creative wellness.

Instagram: www.instagram.com/thehairychinpodcast

YouTube: www.youtube.com/@chronicallycreativetv

Website: www.spencerita.com

END OF SHOW NOTES 

Welcome to the Hairy Chin Podcast. I'm Spencer Moore, your host, here to explore the good, the bad, the hairy and the fabulous of female health. Join us for eye-opening conversations, myth-busting insights, and relatable stories that celebrate the realities of womanhood. And don't miss our Pluck This! segment for tangible takeaways from each episode. Life takes a village, let's do this together.

Hi, Brittany!

Hello!

Welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for being here.

Thank you so much for having me.

Yes, I'm really excited today to talk about a really relevant health problem that many, many women deal with, and that is PMDD. I'm going to get into introducing you, Brittany, and then we will get into our very probably long podcast today. Brittany is known as the PMDD chick. She is a dedicated women's health coach specializing in Pre-Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder Drawing from her own experience overcoming severe PMDD, she has become a trusted source of support and knowledge for women facing this often misunderstood condition. As a qualified women's health coach, empowers women to identify and address factors that exacerbate PMDD symptoms, empowering women to identify contributing factors that may exacerbate their symptoms. Brittany offers holistic personalized solutions through her online PMDD programs, which provide practical strategies and insights to help women manage and alleviate their symptoms effectively. Brittany also hosts the Her Health Confessions podcast, a platform where she explores various women's health issues. Through candid conversations, she aims to educate and empower women shedding light on the challenges they often face in silence. Welcome.

Thank you so much.

That's a lot, but it's needed. It's needed. Women, women need people like you to help start this dialogue and talk about these issues. so at the beginning of the podcast, I always start with statistics. I really like to kind of give some numbers. think it's kind of a, a broader view of the topic, for the episode. And so we're going to start with PMS, which I think is quite commonly known among women. PMS is Pre-Menstrual Syndrome. It affects a significant portion of premenopausal women with estimates ranging from 76 to 99 % experience at least one symptom of PMS and there's a whole long list of them. Now, severe PMS, which is when symptoms impact daily life and relationships was observed in 54.6 % of female college students in a study. And now we're gonna go a step further into PMDD. PMDD, which is a severe form of PMS, where symptoms significantly disrupt daily activities can affect 2 to 10 percent of women. And I would imagine that that's probably a low number because perhaps not a lot of people know about it and know how to advocate for themselves to be diagnosed with it. So what I would love to do is let's start with what is PMDD? Can you talk about that?

Absolutely. So as you said, PMDD stands for Pre-Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder Basically, in really simplistic terms, it is a severe form of PMS that shows up in the luteal phase of the cycle. So that one to two weeks before your period. Now we do have different PMDD subtypes. So the symptoms for one woman could be that the first day that they start, they bleed, all the symptoms alleviate. For some women, it can be prolonged and go all the way through to the end of their period. So there are a couple of different subtypes, but it's always a cyclical disorder.

So you're going to notice a pattern every single month where the symptoms are showing up in the luteal phase. You're going to have severe emotional and mood related symptoms as well as physical symptoms. But the emotional side of PMDD is what can be extremely debilitating and can also warrant a much bigger investigation because it can become quite serious. Around 34 % of the women that are diagnosed have attempted a suicide. So we do know that's a very distressing disorder that does need a lot more attention involved with it. That's what PMDD is in a nutshell.

And I would imagine that it's quite scary to feel like you're just kind of outside of yourself and your body. I know that you did a really great interview with Dana Kaplan. She's an Australian actress. And she said that she felt like she had two personalities. She was diagnosed with PMDD She went through a lot. And she really said that it was like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. So let's talk about the emotional tolls of PMDD. What can people experience when they're dealing with these really severe symptoms?

Sure, so like as Dina said, it's really common that you'll hear from women, they'll say it feels like a switch goes off and then they just have these different personality that just comes alive and that switch will tend to be just prior to ovulation, like about a day following ovulation. So there's many different reasons and mechanisms that that can happen due to serotonin, progesterone, the high sensitivity to those hormones fluctuating. But basically those emotional symptoms can end up becoming severe anxiety, depression, feelings of severe fatigue, like you don't want to get out of bed.

For some women, they can have panic attacks. Some people can have bloating, diarrhea. Flu-like symptoms can be very, very common. For some women, they can experience symptoms of psychosis where there's an absolute distortion of reality going on. But those would be the main types of symptoms that have the severity that are associated and attached to PMDD.

this is kind getting into some technical things, but there's a manual called the DSM-5, which is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. There's a lot of information about the DSM and it's had a whole progression over a long period of time released by the American Psychological Association and it basically lists mental disorders. Now, The thing that's quite interesting to me is that over time, this book is getting thicker and thicker because there's just more and more mental disorders. Back in the day, know, 100, more than a hundred years ago, there were like three mental disorders. And I believe this DSM-5 now has about 300, like diagnosable disorders. But one thing I thought was interesting is that PMDD is listed now in the DSM-5. It is listed as a mental disorder. And for me, I think that You know, seeing the body as a whole is so important. You know, a female period is not just about that area of the body. It affects the entire body. There's a lot of things that are going on. So attaching this emotional part to the menstruation and with going with the hormones, I don't think a lot of people know that these are very interconnected. Yeah.

Absolutely. It's interesting because it was added to the DSM-5. So obviously that's more of an American type diagnostic manual. In Australia, we do model off of the DSM-5. In the UK, it's usually the ICD. And it's interesting, you'll usually have to meet five of the 11 types of symptoms. And the symptoms are usually behavioral mood-related types of symptoms. It is interesting that not every MD or gynecologist or endocrinologist, whoever's doing the diagnosis, will use the DSM-5 as a strict criteria guideline. many practitioners now because one, a lot of the MDs or the medical doctors are not actually having any training prior in medical school with PMDD. So they don't really understand it. So a lot of it is not hearsay, but it is being circulated through, you know, talking with other physicians and that sort of thing. And that's where a lot of the, we think it's PMDD. So a lot of it will just be a woman will present with those certain symptoms and then it's like, okay, it's PMDD. Many psychiatrists will tend to use more of that DSM-5. So it is listed as a depressive disorder, but it does have the reproductive element because it's cyclical in nature. So we do have that, you know, specification because it's not just a depressive disorder. We know that there is an association happening with those hormones in particular, the estrogen, the progesterone in a cycle. So that's really interesting, but it is, I have found it interesting that not all physicians tend to be using the DSM-5, even though it seems to be this kind of gold standard, but I think it's, we have to use it as some type of guideline to figure out if a woman's actually meeting that criteria.

Right. I know you had mentioned earlier about the role of serotonin and that serotonin could be affected. Now, I think that serotonin is kind of a buzzword when talking about depression, talking about kind of mood disorders like that. Can you talk a little bit about what is serotonin and how it could kind of play a role in this?

Sure. So it's interesting, right? Because serotonin is not the only neurotransmitter that has, well, again, I'm going to caveat this. No one has a definitive reason or answer at the moment as to what causes PMDD. We have we have theories, we have very minimal studies, and even some of these studies, we have very small study groups that are being used in the study. Sometimes there's only like 12, 30 women. So very small pools, right?

I was really interested when I saw some research about the relationship between serotonin and PMDD.

So, okay, so you have different neurotransmitters that are obviously associated with PMDD. The ones that are of more interest are actually GABA and glutamate. So if I go back, I go down a bit of a science-y route here, right? We do have serotonin. We know that estrogen definitely helps with the synthesis and availability of serotonin. So there is a theory that some women, the serotonin is lower in that luteal phase of the cycle and some women maybe don't have enough availability with that serotonin which produces more of the depressive like symptoms. But then you have also something called GABA and glutamate and also something called Allo. So if I try and break this down really simply there are two different mechanisms. I'm going to start with the first one. So once you ovulate your progesterone starts to rise and that progesterone is produced from the ovaries. It's broken down by two different enzymes and that makes them a tabulite called Allo. that allo can circulate through the bloodstream up to, crosses the blood brain barrier, and then it works with something called GABA. Now GABA is a neurotransmitter that's known as an inhibitory neurotransmitter. So it's gonna make you feel super calm, super relaxed. If that allo is not binding correctly to that receptor, you basically have less of that calming inhibitory neurotransmitter functioning. So that's one aspect. There's a theory that potentially these women either don't have enough, it's insufficient, or the binding isn't working correctly. The other thing is this glutamate. Glutamate is an excitatory neurotransmitter, learning, memory, that sort of thing. Some women have a genetic predisposition to potentially that variant not working correctly. So glutamate will convert to GABA. Again, calming, relaxation. If you have too much of the glutamate and it's not converting enough to GABA, you have more of an overstimulation happening. So this is where this anxiety, panic attack, feeling keyed up, irritable can come from. So there's a couple of different theories as to potentially what mechanisms could be happening. Again, it's not definitive, but those are the areas that we're tending to look at in terms of what could be happening with PMDD. What could cause that? Again, there are different theories. There could be trauma, there's genetic predisposition, lifestyle. So we can go down the whole route of, you know, what could be happening with some of those. But yeah, that's sort of the mechanism of the role of the serotonin, the GABA, the glutamate, and this metabolite of the progesterone allo

Right. And so I do understand that and we can kind of get into treatments for this in a little bit, but I do understand that antidepressants can be used to treat some symptoms of PMDD Xanax, Alprazolam, things like this can be used. But I do think that it's like we said earlier, It's looking at the whole body. So you've mentioned a few different types of physicians. You said a Endocrinologist, Psychiatrists, the gynecologists, who would women go to to be diagnosed and with these types of symptoms? I know that you have general health practitioners, but it just seems like it is just such a puzzle with pieces all over the place. How do you start to put that puzzle together?

The first thing I would ask is what's your outcome? So if women want to be potentially using the medication route for PMDD, then seeing someone that's like a gynecologist or a psychiatrist is probably going to be your best bet because the gold standard, the traditional way or so far at the moment, it's not actually across the board anymore, but tending to use SSRI and birth control pill. So if you're wanting to go down a medication route, I'd say psychiatrist, gynecologist. If you're wanting to just have a diagnosis, you could just go to your family doctor, general practitioner, you know, we call it different names in different countries, but they will be able to at least give you the diagnosis. Again, a lot of the family doctors don't necessarily have the full knowledge of PMDD. The other thing that I'm finding extremely frustrating is no one is even doing blood work, basic blood work for vitamin and mineral deficiencies. before they're even putting anyone on this medication. And we know that through these medications, birth control pills, SSRIs, there are long-term side effects for disrupting the gut microbiome, other hormone imbalances. So I think that's my frustration is that some of the women maybe don't have the advocacy or the education surrounding PMDD. So they're willing to just, again, I will caveat that. PMDD can be extremely severe. So some women are in such a desperate situation for those symptoms to alleviate because we're teetering on suicidal thinking and suicidal thoughts. So by no means am I saying this is an easy route. But my concern is, that when we're just straight out the gates, medicating without any inquiry as to, has the woman experienced trauma? Is there a gut dysbiosis issue happening in the body? Do they have potentially the gene cluster or gene variants? Like there's many other questions that should be being asked than potentially being put on some of these antidepressants or birth control pills, and which I will say don't always work for many women with PMDD.

Right, right. One thing that I thought was really helpful that you've mentioned in your content is to track symptoms. And it seems to me like that is more important than anything to be able to nail down, look, this is a systemic issue. It's with the hormones and with mental health and all these things, because I feel that it could be so easy to think I'm suicidal or I have these panic attacks and this is just a mental health problem. When actually the mental health is the side effect of hormonal problem or all of these other, this whole long list of problems. to me, I think that sounds like brilliant advice to really encourage people to track when these issues are happening with them.

Absolutely. is all of it is the biggest thing I hear from women to they'll say, I didn't know that this was not normal. They actually live like this every single month. That to me is outstanding because I knew the moment something was happening. This is not normal. I don't want to feel like this. But the amount of women that are living like this and actually thinking that this is normal, that to me is outstanding. It is in such a large number, especially from what I see on social media. So definitely tracking those symptoms to see if there's a that you know, pattern that's happening every single month where the symptoms show up. For some women it can be just prior to ovulation or on ovulation. For others it's just after. For some it's seven days before. But if you notice the same type of pattern happening every single month, it's usually going to be related to the menstrual cycle. And that's an indication that it could be heading into that PMDD territory.

Right. So I'd love for you to talk about your history and your personal story with PMDD and how you arrived here. You said that you yourself have experienced this disorder.

Yeah, I had an extremely severe case of PMDD. I have tried. I've had suicide attempts in my early 20s, actually not knowing that it was PMDD at the time. I wasn't aware that it was PMDD till, you know, probably around my early 30s. And I'm 37 now. I definitely noticed that I had the very severe mood symptoms. So I would cry hysterically, like on a ball, a puddle on the floor. I couldn't get up. extreme confusion, suicidal thinking, was extremely distressing, panic attacks, just I did not, didn't want to be here. And that was happening. The reason it was most likely hard to pick up in my case was I had PCOS at the same time as well. Don't have it anymore, but I did then. So the cycle wasn't completely irregular. So no one really picked it up. It wasn't until I started getting more of a regular cycle into my thirties that I started going, my God, this is literally happening when I get a period. So what did I do at the time I went on to Google and I was like, why am I feeling suicidal before my period? PMDD obviously at the time we have a lot more information about it now, but at the time not many people had any idea what was as very limited even information on data on PMDD. So what did I do? I basically, I'd already been on an SSRI or an SNRI at the time previously and did not have any luck if anything, it had made everything a lot worse. So I decided to come off that SNRI at the time. So I ended up being admitted into a mental health hospital on four different occasions in one year with PMDD at the time I didn't know what it was. wasn't until I admitted myself on the third occasion and I got my period the next day. And I was like, holy cow, this is related to my period because all of a sudden I was sitting in the hospital going, why am I here? Like, but I feel okay. Like what's going on? So I left the hospital after that was a whole year of dealing with that and was like, what do I do about this? So I consulted many different doctors, the psychiatrist had confirmed, okay, yes, it's PMBD. We'll put you back on this antidepressant. I went on two different antidepressants again, I became more suicidal on those antidepressants. So I knew, okay, this is not working. I was also put on an antipsychotic called olanzapine. Absolutely blunted me and I ended up with more serious metabolic disorders from that drug, because we know that it has an ability to turn on insulin resistance type two diabetes. So I was left with like six kilo weight gain in a much dire state than I was when I started and actually had no idea where to go. I'd consulted many different doctors. I was seeing a of different psychiatrists, a couple of different psychologists at the time. No one really knew what to do. So I basically ended up in a situation where I was researching everything that I could on my own. I went to a really well-known endocrinologist actually, and I said to her, look, I have PMDD. Cause I thought, wait, she'll know she's the hormone specialist. And I said, I have PMDD. What else can I do? And she said, birth control, SSRI. And I said, I can't take the SSRI. I've been on four to five different SSRIs for 15 years. It doesn't work. And I said, I can't take the birth control pill because I have lesions on my liver. had a very infectious disease when I was a little girl and I was advised, do not go on the birth control pill. I had actually tried it for six months when I was younger. Again, severe side effects from that. So I just said to her, I can't take either one of my supposed to do. And she was like, I can't help you. She was like, there's else. Can't do anything else about it. I was furious for one. I was like this does not make sense. was like, how can there be no other avenue to treat PMDD? It just wasn't computing. So me being the stubborn person I am, I decided to go down even more research. Finally, just by chance came across a PhD geneticist, biomolecular physician here in Australia. So I sent him an email and I said, hey, I had this hunch that there may be this genetic component associated with PMDD in particular epigenetics because I've been through a lot of trauma. I have a very severe trauma background from a child. And I said, any, any chance you know anything about this? He didn't know too much, but was aware about it. And he said, look, let's have a chat. And basically ended up working with him and he was brilliant in willing to work with me to listen to what I had to say, my theories and what I believed could be, what was happening. And now we work together, we work in unison. send my clients to him and vice versa because he's been so instrumental in understanding the genetic component that was happening that no one had talked about. And then once I started on a specific protocol, understanding my genetics, addressing inflammation, mitochondria, whole plethora of different things, the symptoms started to reduce and started to reduce. And I was like, my gosh, this is not something, this is just not something I was ever told about. So that's what ended up putting me on the path that I did because I realized if I was such a severe case with suicide attempts and mental health stints and on all the medications and all the drugs and I reduce my symptoms to the point that they weren't impacting me like this, surely other people could do this. So that's what basically inspired me to go down the path that I went down now. And I've got, yeah, like thousands of girls that have gone through my program, hundreds and hundreds of clients that I've worked with, some that were actually just as severe as me that have dramatically reduced their symptoms without medication. So, and again, if you're someone who's on medication or you choose, of course, I'm going to support any woman, you pick what's going to be the best thing for you. But from the framework that I've learned, as you said, what else is happening in the body? What's contributing to those symptoms that you could reduce? Are there any coexisting comorbidities? That's the part that I'm interested in, especially the trauma side of things, how trauma can have the potential to influence a lot of the inflammation, the neurotransmitter pathways, especially epigenetics and Yeah, that's the part that I'm the most interested in. think that's the part that gives women the most hope.

Right. Yeah. And I'd love to talk about the trauma aspect of it because, know, I've dealt with chronic health, autoimmune, a lot of health complications throughout my life. And I think that there's a lot that happens with that. There's the trauma that has happened that then possibly aggravates the medical conditions. I mean, it is such an interconnected system. And I just think that a lot of Sometimes in modern medicine, we see the body in its individual parts. so realizing that stored trauma is really a thing that can affect a lot of physical health problems. It wasn't until I've been in therapy with psychiatrists since I was quite young, and it wasn't until maybe my late 20s, I'm almost 42 now, but in my late 20s, I finally started having psychiatrists say to me, Do you have a history of trauma? Have you had traumatic events happen to you? It was just never asked years ago. And I do think we're coming into an era now where we're really seeing that these emotional traumas and physical traumas that have happened, they do affect our health moving forward. There's a brilliant book that I actually mentioned yesterday in a podcast that is called The Body Keeps the Score. It's very, very well known. If you don't know it, please check it out because it's just so incredible to understand. the scientific facts that we know now about how trauma is stored in the body. I do think that for me, at least in my experience, and I'm curious about you, is that the more issues that I've had in my life, for example, the more auto-immunes that kind of start piling up, because once you have one, it's really easy to have a second, and the third diagnosis, and then you have the emotional factors of major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, these types of things. When I go to a doctor, it's very easy to feel completely dismissed. of, know, I mean, when I go through my medical history, it's so long that the doctors are like, they don't know what to do with me. You really have to fight to be heard. so I'm kind of getting off track a little bit, but let's talk about the trauma. Tell me about what you know about trauma affecting this disorder.

I think it's one of the major contributors, like hands out there. So there was a really brilliant article that was written by Marlene Freeman and psychiatrist at the time, and they had ended up hypothesizing five major contributors, one of them being HPA access dysregulation, that stress response system, and trauma, because it would cause an inflammatory response. So we do know there are also studies that are showing 83 % of the women that have been diagnosed with PMDD have reported early childhood trauma. So we know there's a really interlinked component. We now also have studies coming out showing that women who have PMDD have a history of PTSD. So I have a personal history of I had CPTSD. So I had complex post-traumatic stress disorder because I had multiple events that had happened over a prolonged period of, you know, 15 to 20 years of my life that had contributed to potentially what was occurring. So when we talk about trauma, it's really challenging because some women that I will work with will say, well, I haven't really experienced trauma. And I'm like, trauma with a capital T, right? So I'm like, well, what does that look like? and they're like, well, I didn't have the full sexual abuse or I didn't have the car accident. To me, it can be a little trauma, little T, where it's like, you could have just chronic stress that has kept your body in a state of hypervigilance and fight or flight. If your body stays in it fight or flight for a too long a period of time, you have inflammatory cytokines. Like you have things that your immune system tries to assist with. And if that can, if that prolongs for too long, you have chronic inflammation that develops in the body that can also end up circulating, crossing the blood brain barrier, creating neuro inflammation in the body as well. So we know that from prolonged even stress, but Petromia in particular, I think is the biggest one because a lot of women, I think what can happen is you can go through a traumatic event or multiple traumatic events and your body really does get stuck in a state of fight or flight hypervigilance. You develop coping mechanisms. And unless that trauma is really deeply dealt with on a somatic level, like, look, I'll put my hand up here the first, I did talk therapy for 10 years. And this is not to devalue talk therapy for some people, it could be very helpful. But what I've seen and from some of the studies that we do have coming out around talk therapy, that sometimes even through, know neuroscience and neuroplasticity, that by talking about the same problem over and over and over again, we're hardwiring it into the brain even further. And it's not giving us the room to be able to create new neurons, to be able to create new pathways on how we're thinking and operating, especially from a belief system point of view. So yeah, for me, trauma is, it's a fundamental piece. And I think women need to start to, if you have experienced trauma or you're someone who's been in a chronic state of fight or flight most of your life, learning to regulate the nervous system. The other thing that I've seen very countless times is most of the women have become so hypersensitive to their bodies. They're not even, so if you're recommending even like taking a supplement potentially, they're so terrified to even try a supplement because they're so hyper aware of the sensations of the body. So what does that tell you? That's telling you, and I know this because I've had personal experience that you have a hard time even coping with big emotions and sensations in the body. You usually suppress them and even the emotion of anger or sadness is way too much to cope with. So the body will go into anxiety or depression, shutdown, or you know, even polyvagal theory, this will explain it. So I think learning to address that trauma, whether it's a little trauma, big capital T or little trauma is going to be imperative, especially for your nervous system. Cause it's going to also be linked to estrogen, right? That estrogen that rises, that's going to trigger that ovulation cycle. If you have that imbalance or that potential sensitivity happening, that can also just regulate the nervous system. So again, it's a little bit chicken and egg, right? Is it the trauma that came first or the hormones? And in my case, I would say it's usually the trauma that will have usually happened that has created a very dysregulated nervous system.

Mm-hmm. Right. Right. And I think, you know, I like you talking about big T and little t trauma. I love that. I think trauma is very subjective to the individual. Two people could experience the exact same situation and one could, it could be a memory and the other, could be a trauma. So, you know, yes, we're not all living in really high stress situations like war, for example, or you know, severe physical or mental abuse, but there are things that can happen in our day to day that, that our brain then process as trauma and you don't realize it's a trauma. for me, I think that also, you know, when you, when you have things like PTSD, CPTSD, you know, the CPTSD is really interesting to me. And I think that it can really affect your confidence, which then can affect your health because when you kind of start having all these things that

you don't feel like you can handle the stress, you don't feel like you can handle what life is coming at you, then you start to really feel like, I'm not capable, I no capacity, I'm not capable. Your confidence plummets, your health implements, because maybe then you don't feel motivated or inspired to take care of yourself because you don't feel good about yourself. It becomes such a cycle and it really does spiral down. So I think that all of these things are connected.

Absolutely. As you said, the body keeps the score. The trauma is held in the body until it is addressed and felt and looked at.

Yeah, yeah, 100%. And you know, it's interesting. I did an episode about autoimmune in women, blew my mind when I was researching the episode because 80 % of autoimmune disease are diagnosed in females. Females are known to suppress, I mean, it's scientific. They suppress their emotions. It goes inside. And look, it's a biological thing. It's a psychological thing. would say it's. It's really just societies. There's so many factors. There's not just one that we can say, well, this is why, but women are known to internalize and it causes health problems. Four out of five people developed with autoimmune are female. That number blows my mind, but I find it to be so true the more and more I'm doing more of this health advocacy and learning about the female body. And so this is no different.

Yeah, absolutely. I was told many years ago that I had fibromyalgia, mast cell activation syndrome, chronic fatigue. I got diagnosed with all the things as well due to potentially suppressed emotions. And I do have a hunch that the reason some women might be more prone to autoimmune, as you said, is definitely suppressed emotions, but we also have hormones. So we're cyclical. We have hormones that are cycling. And I think that also can make us a little bit more susceptible to the way that we're handling potentially traumas that could be occurring, especially in specific phases of the cycle.

Exactly. And I find for me at least, because like I say, the chronic illness has just kind of been a constant in my life. But as I've gotten older and I've kind of embraced more talking about it, going on social media, I've found my tribes of people. And I'll tell you, I have multiple tribes of people because I have multiple things that I connect with different people. And that has really helped me so much in realizing that I'm not alone. I'm not this super over complicated person that has all these problems that I'm causing myself. Because I've had doctors say like, this is an anxiety, but your physical problem, for example, eczema is anxiety and you need to get your anxiety under control and your eczema will go away. It's not as simple. Sometimes it can be so simplified by doctors and it can make you feel like I'm doing this to myself. Like I'm the cause of all of it, which can really just make you spiral again. But I find that, you know, communities like what you have for PMDD, they're so important for people to engage with. And look, it takes a lot of bravery to get vulnerable and talk about, you things that you're, you feel scared to talk about, but I think it makes all the difference.

100%. Like, look, I'll be honest, for years, I covered over how much I was suffering. I was terrified that if anyone found out, especially even up until five years ago, when I had, I mean, as I said, I don't experience the PMDD. It's not even in the same realm. It's like reduces at 95%. But when I was, I would have to cancel, like my husband would have Christmas parties and I would cancel going and he would have to make up excuses and reasons why I wasn't going because I was so embarrassed and ashamed that if anyone found out they would think I was so weak because it made no sense, right? She has this weird thing where she gets hormones and it fluctuates. So I would say for a good 15 years of my life, I was mortified that if anyone found out, I would be abandoned, rejected, and I wasn't lovable then. That means there's something wrong with me. It took me a lot of, like, as I said, therapy and deep work to really just knock that belief system out the door and just be like, absolutely not. And then I realized through the process that there were so many other women, if I wanted to help and actually move forward in the direction that I want to do with other women, I had to be vulnerable because if no one else was going to do it, I was like, well, I'll put the video up of how bad it used to be or I'll talk about how bad it used to be because it's then going to give at least those women permission to do the same thing, which is going to be a massive weight off their shoulders.

Yeah.yeah, it's a massive weight. And I do think that there's such a stigma around women needing to be strong and present themselves as this woman that can do everything. There's a stigma around women being weak, and that we're expected to be strong, we're expected to kind of handle everything. And it's really important to be honest about how you're feeling, because that honesty is also part of what releases these feelings and emotions that then when we pretend to be strong, when we really don't feel well, or when we're really struggling with so many things, that goes inside of us, that masking, that facade, it can become part of the problem,

Absolutely, couldn't agree with you more.

Yeah, yeah, one of the questions that I had for you was what other symptoms can present with hormonal imbalances and inflammation with PMDD? And we've kind of scratched the surface, but I'd love to go further because like we've said, this is a systemic issue, right?

Yeah, so it is interesting, I have seen there are definitely obviously coexisting, there are many women that will have PCOS that coexists with PMDD. Obviously, like a lot of people, PMDD is not a hormone imbalance. However, I will say that I see many women with a progesterone deficiency or high estrogen or high progesterone, there is sometimes is a hormone imbalance, again, not causing PMDD, but it's going to exacerbate those symptoms. other things that I have seen, so coexisting can be PCOS. Endometriosis, I've also noticed is something that can be very coexisting. And again, both of those disorders are inflammatory in nature or metabolic in nature as well, right? So there's something to address there. And then also you'll sometimes see women with a histamine intolerance teetering onto mast cell activation syndrome. Now, I get very frustrated because with social media, what's happening now is you're seeing a lot of women start talking about using Pepsid for PMDD, the management of PMDD. So a H2 blocker.

Really? wow. Okay.

all over TikTok if you're on TikTok. and whilst I am in grievance that if you have a histamine intolerance, right? So histamine intolerance, could end up having this histamine in the gut and the brain. So you could have a genetic predisposition where you don't break down histamine enough with your DAO enzyme. Like there's multiple different reasons what could be causing that. And the histamine issues could be itchy skin, hives, swelling, know, just certain wheezing.

Mass cell activation gets into much more serious territory. Like there's even specific foods that you can't eat. So that's when you sort of notice it might be histamine intolerance. But again, histamine can affect the brain. So you can have severe brain fog, anxiety, those sorts of things. So a lot of women will trial this thing called Pepsid, the H2 blocker, and say, all of my symptoms got so much better. And in some cases are like, that is fantastic. But that then is also pointing to that you have a histamine intolerance, which needs to be addressed because Pepsid long-term is just going to do the same thing as some of the other medications. It's going to mask and it's not going to treat and it's going to have other long-term implications. Again, if you have mast cell activation, sometimes you are going to need something like Pepsid in Australia, we call it for Modidine. There are more cases where you are going to have to get that immune response under control to be able to do the other things to heal, but it's a real as a real pet peeve that I see a lot of women doing because everyone's talking about it now and everyone's doing it. I'm like, whilst it might reduce your symptoms, it still is not addressing what might be happening under the surface if there is a histamine intolerance. Even if there's a genetic susceptibility, finding out why and what you could do potentially then to improve that gene that's the variant that's expressing itself incorrectly.

Yes. So I really resonate with what you're saying. I have histamine intolerance. have very severe eczema. I started when I was 11 years old when I was going through puberty. So it was very hormone and I never really understood the link between estrogen and eczema until lately. Normally my eczema gets worse during different parts of my cycle. And look, I have been on steroid creams for years. I'm actually currently in an eczema program with, with practitioners who are in Australia actually. And it's a brilliant program. love it so much. And I'm excited to do an episode about that in time. But these medications for types of things like these antihistamines and these medications that you can take, I have found in my experience that they are a band-aid solution. And that typically then coming off of these medications in the future can be very, very tricky. And you can have these really severe rebound effects. I know from experience at antihistamine use, it does become less and less over time. So you build a tolerance to it.

No, absolutely. That's exactly right. It's the same with an SSRI. Like you build a tolerance to the drug and then you end up needing a higher dose. So yeah, you're absolutely spot on.

Yeah. Yes. Right. And like, for example, Xanax, Alpraslam, you can really build a tolerance quite fast with that medication for an anti-anxiety medication. So for me, I think what you're saying is spot on of the root cause, you know, and that's such a trending word now, find your root cause. And look, it's a really complicated thing. from me being a doctor and trying to find my root cause for years and years, sometimes you kind of have to let go of just you know, finding, sometimes there's not an answer to the question, you know, sometimes it's just, it's, it's a lot of different things going on and you just need to take some steps to regulate your nervous system, process your srored trauma. I mean, I've definitely taken time off of, okay, well what's causing the hissing and tires? I just, my knife just said, you know, it's time for me to work on my mindset. I need to just get into a calm place. So whatever's going on with my body can at least calm down a little bit. So I can then move forward and get back into the doctor's appointment and get back into kind of doing some more searching. It gets very overwhelming.

Absolutely. I'd say check your genetics. might have, there's a couple of genes that literally will show a reduction in the ability to break down histamine. Again, you know, some people say, why no genetics? And I'm like, it's important because there's other gene clusters that can potentially all interact with one another. It's a very complex interplay. Like Dr. Valeria Vittoni here in Australia is an absolute, you know, PhD whiz in it, the best I've seen. And I definitely know it is highly complex and there are multiple things happening, but I've also seen the power of understanding some of your genes and what you could do to improve those genes, that has been an absolute game changer that I've seen countless times with myself as well as clients.

Yes. Speaking about genes, there is a genetic mutation that is quite prevalent among a really high percentage of the world's population. But for some people, it really does cause some major complications, and that's NTHFR. And I was wondering if you wanted to talk about that for a second. Actually, I'm mentioning it from personal experience. have a homozygous, I have a double mutation in that gene. And we have found it to connect to a lot of issues that I've had. And I will say, I've been very dismissed by doctors. Some doctors I go and I mention this to them and they say, We don't really work with that. We don't really believe that's the problem or the issue. And then I have others that are just real experts in it and really want to work through it. yeah, let's talk about that.

look, I'm not going to do it justice because Dr. Valerio Tony is your man. Same with Ben Lynch there in America. know he is an absolute, I, he's dirty jeans. His book is absolutely phenomenal. He very much knows his methylation cycles. Now what I will say is the MTHFR gene again, it doesn't cause PMDD, but I have had, I'd say 98 % of the clients that have been tested have the MTHFR gene. What since if it's one copy, two copies.

Yes, Ben let Dirty Jeans, right? Didn't he write Dirty Jeans? Yeah, it's great.

Yes.

So most likely when they have that gene, they're gonna have potentially the other cluster of genes like an ESR1, an estrogen receptor or comps like catecholamine breakdown. Do you do it too fast, do it too quick? Usually there is this very similar pattern amongst the women with PNBD that have this complex sort of gene interplay that's occurring. And same with the MTHFR. So I've noticed that some women when they find out if they have, now this is where it's interesting, right? If you're a slow comp, sometimes you don't do well on methyl B12 and methyl folate, which is sometimes the thing that'll be used. The part that I find extremely frustrating, especially when it comes to PMDD is it has not been looked at whatsoever. And as you said, I think it's because some medical doctors, again, is a very specialized field unless you have really done extensive work, research studies, worked in a lab around it. I don't think they have the extended knowledge to know what to do. Like I have many clients that will get tested. They come back with one copy, two copy. And again, the doctor says, I don't, genuinely don't know what to do with this. I don't know how this is corrected. So I think it's a very specialized field. Not many people know about it, but again, as you said, MTHFR gene, there is an absolute huge list behind it in terms of what can end up happening because it's affecting your methylation cycle. It's affecting your ability. Even hormones can be affected. Neurotransmitters can be affected. It has a cascade of events that can occur from it. And I think it is very silly to dismiss it. I'll give you a story, right? So a lot of clients that I've had that have come to me that might have not presented with PMDD symptoms prior to pregnancy did not know they had the gene. Were consuming a high level of folic acid during their pregnancy. And then post pregnancy found out that their PMDD just skyrocketed. Why is that the case? Potentially because they were consuming folic acid, which is the synthetic form. Your body is not able to break it down. Can't detoxify it properly. So it can potentially build up and you can end up having potentially this trigger event of PMDD symptoms occurring. And again, we don't have enough studies to back this. It's very hypothetical and anecdotal, along with most of the things that are happening with PMDD. But we are seeing a very clear pattern that is happening with the women that have the gene, took folic acid and then ended up potentially getting worsening of PMBD symptoms. Because again, if they have that MTHFR gene, they're most likely going to have this cluster of other genes that's also occurring as well as histamine genes that are also occurring. exactly. I'm like, for me, I think it is, and it was one of the game changes for me. And I know that hands down. And I definitely know it's also been one of the game changes for a lot of my clients. So I'm huge advocate for understanding your genetic profile.

Yeah, I I think it's very important. mean, look, I do think that if you if you test everything, you will come back with positives here and there. And, know, I mean, it's not you don't need to test everything. I think that's the thing that's important. But I do think that educating yourself, learning about what is good to know and what maybe you don't, you know, you don't need to test 500 things. It's very empowering. gives you a lot of information. I will say it's It's been so interesting to me learning about the MTHFR since I was found to have the mutation because it's an issue where you can't process folate, folic acid, like you said, it's a methylation issue. And folic acid folate is given to women in prenatal vitamins or in Pisces to prevent neural tube disorders, which can be like quite severe disorders for the fetus. so the government in the United States, a long time ago, started enriching bread with folic acid. I mean, this is like in the 60s or 70s maybe, don't quote me on that, but they started putting folic acid to help people just have more folic acid to kind of prevent the issues that they have with low folic acid. But like you said, it was a synthetic version. And for somebody that has an MTHFR mutation, those breads enriched with folic acid are just making the problem worse. You shouldn't take folic acid, you should take a methylated folate.

Or phylinic, if you can't take methyl, take phylinic.

There we go. So this information, I do understand that if you're new to kind of learning about this, because you and I, think, like we've been in the trenches with this for a long time, but if you're new to this, it can be very overwhelming. But I think what you offer is so great because you have these really clear, the information is clear and it's in a structure that somebody can come and learn about it. you're not having to put the puzzles together. You've already put the puzzles together for them. And that is brilliant because there are a lot of women that are suffering for all of these things combined And they just need to learn a bit about it Yeah

Absolutely.

So I would love to talk about lifestyle changes I mean we just talked a little about food and I know diet probably plays a big role as it does in everything it's the worst I mean look we all want to eat pizza and pasta and you know, drink our wine and whatever. But you know, sometimes when you're really doing these things, some major lifestyle changes are necessary. and my experience have realized that it's kind of a small step at a time or outside end up going backwards. take five steps forward and think I'm so great. And then I just have a weekend where I just eat and drink everything and I feel terrible for two weeks. So slow and steady for me really does win the race. do you want to talk about those lifestyle changes that you see to be beneficial?

Yeah, for sure. So the thing that I see the most, that's been very interesting with most of the women that I work with is they're not even doing the basics to look after their health, right? So if you're not even doing the basics to look after your health, you're having an uphill battle, you're pushing a massive boulder up that hill, and it's going to make your job so much harder. So and again, I don't think it's necessarily always the fault of the woman sometimes we just don't know what we don't know at the time. So Lifestyle changes surrounding PMDD definitely diet is going to be a big one. We know that caffeine, processed food, sugar is all going to exacerbate inflammation. If you've already got existing inflammation, we have studies to show that many women have inflammation in the body already that have PMDD. Most of the women that I also work with, their biomarkers in their blood come back with high CRP, which is C-reactive protein or ESR. So they have high inflammation in the body that's happening, whether it's been chronic or acute. So I think that by changing your diet, and again, as you said, it's to go out and say to someone, you know, Monday morning, clear out your fridge, buy all this new food. It's not sustainable. It is going to be so overwhelming and it's going to set you up for failure. So what I like to say is, especially for women with PMDD, if there's someone who has had a really high processed diet and they eat a lot of takeout, maybe drink a lot of Red Bull and have a lot of sweets, I would say just in the luteal phase. try to cut it by 50 % just for the first month. That's going to at least give you set you up for a potential slight win as you said, so you don't take a full back step. And then the next month you try a little bit more and the next month you try a little bit more. But having a diet that is ruling out a lot of the processed food, because we know there's just, there too many studies now that are showing by consuming high levels of processed food, what it's doing to your body. So the processed food, drinking clean drinking water, that's going to be your first thing. The process for it, the caffeine as well. Now I will say there is a lot of women that are diagnosed with PMDD that have coexisting ADHD. So some women are going to actually though do well still having caffeine in the morning for that dopamine. So I'm not fully opposed to like, cut out caffeine if it actually helps you. Like I have ADHD, I need the caffeine. I am aware. Yeah. You're going to have the exact same genetics. can already tell.

I know I do I've had them tested everything you say check check check Yeah, yeah

There we go. Funny, it's always the way you just gravitate to the same people with the same genetics. And I laugh because all the women that I ended up working with, I'm like, you all have the exact same genetic profile. We're all in this together. but yeah, to cut it making sure that you know, so that don't you don't have to cut out the caffeine, but just maybe limit it. Like I do notice there are phases of my cycle where if I have, I'm not a massive caffeine drinker, like I don't have two cups a day, I have like half a shot sometimes because I'm that sensitive. But I do notice that it does help. So again,

Right?

Sustainable, try and really sustainably. Now what I also like to say is low histamine diet can be really beneficial for sometimes three months. Low histamine or low inflammatory diet. Low histamine, would be the one that I would usually say, hey, try this and Valerio Vittoni here does that with every single one of his clients, put them on an anti-histamine or a low inflammatory diet to try and minimize that inflammation. Most women also have a gut health issue that will have PMD, they'll have gut dysbiosis. Gut dysbiosis is when the ratio of bad bacteria to good bacteria completely out of balance. So that's the first thing, right? Lifestyle is going to be your diet. Second thing I usually like to say is try doing a little bit of movement or exercise. The amount of women that I speak with that do not even move their body, that live a very sedentary lifestyle is quite large, surprisingly. So when I say that again, I don't want to set someone up for failure. I'm not going to say get into the gym every single day for the next like three months. Like you're not going to do that. It's going to be so overwhelming. So what I like to say is just walk. just go for a walk, even if it's 10 minutes and you've never walked before, try 10 minute walk every day. Chunk it down into small achievable bits that are going to make it that eventually you're gonna wake up in a couple of months down the track and be like, my lifestyle's changed and it was so slow and so effortless. And now it's just part of who you are and it's not hard anymore. The beginning can be a little bit hard and tedious when you're trying to implement these new strategies. And then the third one I would say is stress management. A lot of women are not doing things to slow down. We as women, especially in the society I think that we now live in is we are racing around all the time. It's busy, busy, busy, go, go. Women with PMDD tend to also have a very type A personality type. So push through, want to be a perfectionist, want to do everything right. Whether this also comes from coping mechanisms with trauma, know, debatable, but that push, push, push, go, go, go, don't slow down. What is that doing? It's keeping your nervous system completely activated in a state of fight or flight all the time. So the third one I like to say is incorporate things to slow down. If that's even taking, if you have kids, five minutes in the morning where you have to get up a little bit earlier just to go outside, put your feet on the ground and have your cup of coffee, you've got to do it. It's like, I notice if I don't do it and if I'm really busy with all the podcasts that I'm doing and all the clients, I pay for it. If I don't learn to slow it, if I go too busy, I notice it. So slowing down, incorporating stress management techniques and even therapy again, big, big one. lot of the same pattern that I also see with lot of women with PNDT is negative self-talk. There is a tremendous amount of negative self-talk that women are, the dialogue that is going on within them. Again, where it comes from unresolved trauma, as you said, belief systems, confidence. Like, look, I used to have a belief system of I couldn't cope. So when there was a lot going on, I would get very overwhelmed and the belief system would come straight and say, I can't cope. What's that thought gonna do though? That thought is going to put me in more stress. less resilience, less confidence, and I'm going to absolutely break down. even being able to do those minor things during, and not everyone is going to be a good candidate for therapy. I said, talk therapy, I don't think is useful for everyone because you're ruminating on the same thing over and over. you know, therapies that have a somatic element, I think can be really, really helpful. There's a thing called ISTDP, Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy. I think it's incredible. It's very specialized again. Not too many people do it. Amazing for you to learn to be able to tolerate and understand and even be aware of what you are feeling in any given moment. Because I think most people are not even aware of what they're feeling. An emotion comes and goes and we just shut it down straight away. We're not even aware. my God, wait a minute. My stomach's feeling a bit funny. I'm not liking this interaction. Like we just shove it down and keep moving. So I think nervous system regulation therapy. stress management techniques are definitely a non-negotiable in that sort third domain of lifestyle changes.

I just did an interview with a body therapist and she talked about how the biggest change she sees in her clients, which 98 % of her clients are female, is going from this I cannot to I can. It's actually an internal shift. It's not a physical shift. It's not like, they're more flexible or they can stand longer and not get tired. It's an internal shift because I think also you know, we can get into kind of body image and all these types of things, but I don't really know that females are really in touch a lot with their bodies, you know, and body therapies, somatic therapies, body therapies, it's so much more than, it's so much deeper than just the skin. I mean, it really kind of permanates inside. I was reading an article lately about a woman who in the shower was really present when she was washing her body, like all of the parts of her. I mean, she was just really like, okay, you know, maybe we have insecurities, don't like my stomach, I don't like my legs. And so she was like, okay, I don't like my stomach, I'm gonna really massage my stomach when I wash myself and really touch it and feel myself touching my body. And she said within a month, her body image completely did a 180. And she started really being like, my stomach is good, it's great. know, I don't, things shifted. And so I think that, you know, like you said, talk there became really beneficial for people. I think, you you can do… all of it or none of that. mean, it's an individual choice. But I also think it's just, you know, one thing I've noticed for myself, I have ADHD, I have quite bad anxiety. I mean, I'm always kind of on a healing journey. I'm not trying to eliminate anything, but you know, I'm kind of like a scientist, kind of like doing the levels, you know, and trying to kind of adjust things. But I find just slowing down. And it's like a physical slowing down. Like when I go to make my coffee in the morning, because I have a cup in the morning, I just do it slower. You know, I don't need to do all of these big changes, but just literally like walking down the stairs instead of running down the stairs and take it step by step. You know, call it more intentional, call it whatever you want, but I just know that and slowing down my body breeze more. My nervous system is less activated because over time, those small changes make such a difference. And I see the same with food because I have a history of disordered eating and the food changes for me have been so challenging because diet is so important to our overall health. But when you have all these health issues and then you have disorderly eating history, going gluten free or going dairy free or cutting out sugar, it can be so triggering. It can be so challenging. And so for me, think that a lot of the things that I do in life are the small choices in that moment. It's like an in the moment thing of like, what do want for dinner? Pizza or salmon? I'm gonna have the salmon. I just make the decision. I don't give myself time to think and think, and then feel bad because I the pizza. No. I just make the choice and I move on, right?

Yeah, absolutely. It's a it's an interesting way. As you said, I think the slowing down thing is, is fascinating because it's definitely something I see time and time again, where I had to do it with myself, I had to learn to slow down. Because as you said, it's calming, the brain is going to slow down, making the coffee. As you said, I intentionally do the same thing where sometimes if I'm really busy, I have to, okay, breathe, okay, make this really slow. And as you said, over time, you're gonna retrain your body, but you're also gonna retrain your brain. And then that's how you create neuroplasticity. You're gonna rewire different pathways from the repetition of doing something a different way over a period of time. And that's how change happens, which is amazing.

Yes, it's amazing and it works and I think that's also the thing is that in you know, we're talking about these kind of belief systems but believing in yourself that you can change, right? And having that real like deep down like you are your biggest cheerleader like I can do this and a lot of times it these you know, I think we try and make these really big changes and then when they don't stick because big change is always so hard to stick you go backwards and you think well I'm just not capable but it's like no no but if you take Ten small steps within that one big jump that you try to take, you'll get there. So it's a lot I think of a mind frame, right?

Hmm, 100%. I think we default to what we know or how we've been training our brain for so many years. And I see that time and time again, isn't with PMDD. Now, of course, when you have the hormonal fluctuations and those different, you know, estrogen, progesterone and how that does affect, you know, glutamate and gab out, there are a propensity, obviously, to potentially have more anxiety and these sorts of symptoms. But if you have a dysregulated nervous system and a way that you have potentially that is in hypervigilance and you have a mechanism of self-talk and you've wired your brain to behaving in a specific way, again, you're pushing a massive rock up a hill, it's gonna make the job a lot harder. So that's where I see when women address a lot of these issues. And again, lifestyle, I'll say two supplements I also think are an incredible tool if you don't wanna use medications. They're also something that, you know, there are some incredible studies that are being shown, but yeah, again, you know, I'll go on and on about trauma and nervous system, because I just think it is such a key contributor.

Huge, huge. And one thing I would love to just touch on with the supplements is vitamin D. Because vitamin D, when I was diagnosed with early stage breast cancer last year, my vitamin D levels had been low for a while. And now my oncologist points my levels to be between 70 and 100. I mean, really, really high. Now, like the limit now, I think, is around 40. But they are seeing correlations between low vitamin D levels and a lot of health problems among women. So I think that, you know, for years when I saw the doctor and I saw your vitamin D is low, everybody's vitamin D is low. Maybe get some more sun. Maybe you can take a supplement if you want, but it was never really prioritized. And then also it wasn't explaining to me how to take a vitamin D supplement and what type of supplement I needed to look for. So I'm a huge proponent for women to learn about the vitamin D levels, talk to a doctor that prioritizes their vitamin D, and also learn about how to take the

Absolutely, I see it across the board. most of the women that will come to me that have with their biomarkers will be a deficiency in iron first and foremost, that is something that's very common. Yeah, iron deficiency and magnesium deficiency. Yeah, they go.

Yes. Very hard and it's hard. Right. The iron is very hard to increase. These are challenges and you have to stick with it. You have to really be consistent. Yeah.

Consistency, such a big thing. It's something that I really notice across the board, a lot of women, because the frustrating part of supplementation is that it's not an overnight fix. Obviously when PMDD is so distressing, you want it to be immediate. I just want to get out of this state immediately. And sometimes supplements can take, you know, two, three months for their efficacy to really start to flourish. And that can be this patient waiting game that you sometimes have to have. definitely, iodine is another one that I see deficiencies in with women B12, especially if they have the MTHFR gene mutation, now that's not across the board. And I will caveat that too, just because you have an MTHFR gene or a comp gene or an ESR1 doesn't necessarily mean that it's even expressing incorrectly. Like my mom has the same genetic profile as myself. She has a propensity to be low vitamin D, sorry, B12, but she doesn't have any of the mental health disorders or issues that I've got. And I'm like, it's because of epigenetics, she hasn't been through the same issues that I had as a child. So it goes to show you can have two people with the exact same set of genes. As he said, why does one go on to be potentially different lifestyle, what they experienced, how they talk to themselves, whole different issue, like a whole, whole different ball game that we can talk about. But the other thing that I'll tend to see with women deficiencies will be, yeah, it tends to be B12, zinc, zinc can be another one and iron. It's definitely the iron that's across the

That's so interesting.

bored that I say so I'm always like, make sure your vitamins and minerals and again, this is the other frustrating sometimes that we see is with your blood levels, the amount of women that will also come in their blood levels are sitting on the very low end of the range, which again, I understand most of the family doctors, they're dealing with patients day in day out, it's not necessarily something you know, they're happy if the patient is not presenting most general practitioners or you know, family physicians are just treating symptoms. And if you have something that's quite serious, that needs to be escalated. So they're not really and this is I love GPs, know, family practitioners, but the issue with the bloods is that if you're dealing with someone who has a lot of mental health related issues, sitting on the low end of the range is not necessarily ideal, you want to be sitting in that optimal in the range, know, nice, nice in the middle, again, depending on the woman, some women are going to respond differently. And some women are going to feel different when they're sitting at a higher vitamin D level than someone else. But I think that one is a very important key piece is having all vitamins and minerals tested. And if there's anything on the low range, supplementing that to boost it, just so you've got that better fighting chance for your body to repair itself, mental health issues, you neurotransmitters, the whole thing, it all, as you said, it all's interconnected.

all interconnected and also think it's important to learn about the supplementation that you're taking. So for example, iron, you can't take iron with caffeine. It just completely cancels out taking the pill. It's a waste of money. Vitamin D, it's fat soluble. You need to take it with food. If you don't take it with food, it doesn't absorb correctly. I think it's also, and like I say, it's a lot. If you're not used to having to dig this deep and learn this much information, I do think it can be overwhelming, but I think it's finding somebody that you trust that you can learn from and then just slowly start to kind of piece together your individual puzzle, right? Because everybody, like you say, everybody's gonna be different.

I'll also say that the biggest thing that I noticed what can end up happening is some women will go and have all of their blood work run, do some supplementation and then leave it, never think about it again. And I'm sort of like, it's best to test again your biomarkers to see if there's any changes. The issue that sometimes can happen is women will take B6 for PMDD. I prefer the active form P5P, not B6. But what can happen is if you take really high doses of B6 over a period of time, it can end up having a lot of other symptoms and side effects that can come with that. And you can end up developing really high levels of B6, which is going to have other detriments. So that's where I'm sometimes a real fan of like having your bloods run, you know, three to six months post supplementation, just to see, there been any improvement? And am I becoming now too high in something? Because supplements can have just as much of a side effect as a drug if you're taking it in a really high dose.

Yes, and there's some that can be very like vitamin E, for example. I just recently learned that high levels of vitamin E, which some people take for like skin and nails and things, it can get toxic. I mean, you can really damage organs with high vitamin E. So it's just important to learn, you know, and I do think that we have this mentality of don't Google it. You're going to see worst case scenarios and you're going to see like the, you know, the worst thing that will scare you. it's like, but Google with be responsible. Don't click on the worst case scenario or you know education is good. It's empowering. So knowledge to me is so empowering to be able to feel more in control of a lot of things are going on that you might not have a lot of control in unless you learn about it. you know like

I think a lot of people tend to Google as well because unfortunately we mean we are seeing a shift in the medical industry, but especially around PMDD, they don't know where else to get the help. So you're seeing a lot of women in, know, Facebook groups, you know, conversing together, trying to work it out or people going to Google because they know something's not right, but maybe they're treating physician dismissed them or invalidated them or just sort of said, it's nothing. So as he said, it's a really fine line of being able to be proactive enough to go and look. But then at the same time, taking it with a grain of salt because there's a lot of, you know, myths and disinformation all over the internet with some of this stuff as well. I see it in PMDD groups. I see a lot of the women putting information in there that is very much not accurate. And then there's other women that are, you know, riding on the coattails of what's happening with that woman and then doing the same treatment. And that's where I'm like, this can get really dangerous and messy quite fast. But I also understand that it's coming from a place of they have nowhere else to go. So they're trying to at least find a place to get some answers where they're not getting them with their treating doctor.

Right, right. And I think that is where people need to be responsible of who they take their information from. Right. So these trends, like you're saying on TikTok of doing stuff, you know, it's interesting to know about, you know, like write it down and put like a question mark next to it, but then go the step further. You don't just start taking some medication because somebody on TikTok tells you to do it. Right. It's these are, and like you say, you work with women, you do blood testing, you do, you get a whole host of information about the female before you put in the protocol, I would imagine. So it's not just, you're just not blindly saying do this and you'll feel better.

Absolutely, the body is a hole.

We're getting to the point, the episode's winding down, which is very sad, we could talk for hours, I think. And we are at the Pluck This! closing segment of the Hairy Chin podcast. This is where we offer tangible takeaways for our audience so they can do something now with the information that we've learned from Brittany, lots of information. So Brittany's Pluck This! closing segment today, she offers a free PMDD Starter Support 2.0 program. Now I would love for you to tell us about what this program entails.

Yeah, sure. it basically what was happening is I was getting too many inquiries, DMs where I wasn't able to service everyone that I was wanting to service. I also was finding it really disheartening that a lot of women might have not had the financial ability to be able to afford to potentially, you know, psychiatrist, gynecologist, these can be quite expensive. And there's also a long wait list time. So I had started with a program that was actually a paid program. And then eventually it switched about you know, a year or so ago over to free, because I was like, it's to the point where these women need to know this information, they need have access to the information. So they can then know what they can actually do moving forward. So the PMDD status support is exactly what it is. It's your status support. It's going to go through all of the contributing factors that contribute to the development of PMDD and all of the things that you can do for it. I do include segments in there in terms of What are the standard medical treatment options that are being used? If you do want to make that choice, you know, there's a lot, there's not just birth control and antidepressants, like there are hysterectomies, chemical menopause, like there are many other routes post that that can actually become more definitive. But so I will go through those, but majority of this program has been designed so you can understand the full scope of what is actually contributing to PMDD and what you can actually do about it going forward. So I will tell you exactly what blood work you should go be asking your physician to test for. Do you look at these genes? What is mitochondria? How does that impact it? How does chronic inflammation impact in the body? How does trauma impact in the body? So it's really a huge education list that's going to give you feeling like you know what to do. It's gonna have an action list. So you feel like you walk away and you're like, I really now understand PMDD. I identify with probably, I haven't had one person who hasn't yet, identify with areas of this that my symptomology is very similar. and then they'll know what to do post of it. So, and again, I've made it free because I want everyone to have access to it. I don't want anyone to be in a position where they are limited to healing because they couldn't afford it.

Right. I think it's amazing. I think that's so incredible because, like you say, these women are suffering. They don't have anywhere. They don't know who to go to. It's a complicated issue. so I think it's an incredible resource. Now you do also offer one-on-one consultations. You are a certified women's health coach. So what would those consultations look like?

Yeah, sure. So I do limited because I like to work with my clients. So I'm very in depth and very hands on. So when someone comes to me, I'm not just doing a quick little, okay, great. This is this is and then on your way, I actually usually end up conversing with my clients like long term, because I actually want to know how they're going. If you went and did this, did you actually see a change if you didn't? Okay, great. What other investigation path can we go down? So women that tend to come to me are the ones that literally have either tried everything and nothing's working. They've tried the birth controls, the antidepressants, they're not getting any alleviation of symptoms. So then that's when they sometimes find me somehow on social media or through my podcast and they're like, okay, I now want to hear what you have to say. So during those consultations, what I'll usually get you to do is bring your entire background, tell me when were you diagnosed? Some women don't even have a diagnosis because they can't even get one. So in that case, and this is the other thing, right? I'm I'm fully for you having a diagnosis if it's going to provide you a level of validation for what you've been experiencing. At the same time, sometimes having a diagnosis is then going to pigeonhole you into a category. And it's also going to make you cling to the identity of that and that there is no way out of this, which can also hinder your ability to heal. So a bit of a to and fro, right? I'm sometimes like, get the diagnosis, but don't don't be super clung to the identity that I have PMDD and this is it. And this is how it is the rest of my life. I'm like, that's not going to help you. So we'll then go through like that whole history. Then I like to know like, have you had any bloods run? What other things have been happening? First thing I'll ask you is have you had trauma? Is there a background of trauma that has occurred? So I'll tend to find the little, the little nerdy side of me tends to find I work in like a bit of a puzzle piece and I look for the gaps of where things potentially have been missed or haven't been brought to the surface and then give them a bit of a roadmap of like, Hey, this is

what contributes to PMDD, if you can have a better understanding of what's contributing, it's going to empower you to be actually be able to make the informed advocate decision of what you need to do going forward. Because many women then will leave and go, okay, right. So I might have an issue with my GABA. Great, I'm going to trial this, this and this and see if it improves or okay, great. We know that there might be vitamin and mineral deficiencies. They now have the empowerment to then go to a doctor and if the doctor says, no, I'm not treating that they then have the confidence to go find someone who will. And that's what I find will also end up being helpful for them. So that's how I tend to work. It's really, I'm a nerd. I know the studies, I look for the gaps, I find all of the areas and I use the same type of protocol that I used on myself now with other clients to notice the reduction of symptoms. And look, I will again caveat this. Many people say, can you cure PMDD? I really don't like the word cure because it sounds like there's something wrong with you. PMDD is a development that happens, again, we do not know what definitively calls it. We have theories and we have hunches, right? My hunch is there's definitely trauma and genetic susceptibilities. I truly believe those are the two things that are driving it. But again, it's not something I think you have to live with the severity of those symptoms for the rest of your life. If you can learn to look after your health. understand all of those existing conditions, those contributing factors, you can reduce those symptoms so significantly that it's not impacting your quality of life and your ability to function, which is that difference between PMS and PMDD.

Yeah, I think that's so wonderful. It's such a great perspective. And I love what you said about kind of labeling. Because I do think people can get quite stuck, put themselves in a box and say, this is me. you know, the illness is not who you are. You you may have a diagnosis of an illness, but it is in no way who you are. And I think, you know, making that distinction is very important in healing.

Yeah, look, I used to do it. So that's why I used to identify with it so much. was like, it's PMDD. That's why. And I noticed after a period of time how much it was hindering. Even as you said, with chronic illnesses, it's the same analogy that can be applied. It's when you really start identifying with it, can really hinder the ability to move forward. So I think that's where with PMDD, I like to say, look, you can definitely regain control back of your life. Does that mean though, that you can then go back to being an absolute stress monster? not potentially looking at improving your genetic pathways, eating processed food, not working out. No, that your that propensity could put you back into the similar state that you used to be in. So for myself, I have to manage my life going forward. It is my lifestyle now that like it is easy. It's simple. I don't think twice about it. It is just my normal now. But I know that if I put myself back into extremely high situations, if I go through another really traumatic event,

If I eat so much takeaway and processed food, it's going to absolutely upheaval my methylation, my comp, all these genes that are also susceptible. So I do have to be mindful, but do I live with PMDD like I did? Absolutely not. Absolutely not.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's like understanding that it's a give and take, right? And you just, can't, I mean, we can have it all, but it depends on what's in your all, right? Because if your all is eating and drinking and you know, not moving and things like that, if that's, if that's having it all, then you're not going to have it all because you're going to have a lot of health problems. But if you can find your balance, then you can absolutely have it all. Yeah.

Absolutely.

I wanted to ask you as a health practitioner, talking about PMDD, but I'm just kind of curious. You see so many female, your female clientele, what are the main struggles that women are having right now that you're seeing with your clients?

Good question. I I specialize in PMDD. So I do not work with women outside of that scope of diagnosis anymore. It's purely PMDD. I will work with women that have PME, which is Pre-Menstrual exacerbation. So they might have an existing mental health disorder and it gets worse around their period because it tends to be the same protocol that will be used for both. There will sometimes be on the odd occasion women going through perimenopause because again, it can be looking at addressing similar things, but it tends to be strictly PMDD women that I'm dealing with because that's what I specialize in. It's my bread and butter. I know it to the cows come home. The thing that I know that I find over and over that women seem to be struggling with is one is misdiagnosis. That's something that I'm noticing is very common. Is they commonly misdiagnosed or they can't even get a diagnosis? Though, again, and as I said, they don't always need a diagnosis to improve symptoms. That's the other thing that I do see women. They say, I need a diagnosis to improve the symptoms. Diagnosis can be great, but if you do not want to be on medication, you do not need the diagnosis because you can start implementing some of these things tomorrow. You don't need to wait for that physician to give you permission to start implementing lifestyle changes and start doing your own investigative route. It's only if you want to be on a birth control antidepressant that of course you're going to need to see a treating physician for that prescription. Again, even like bioidentical progesterone, it's something that we have noticed with studies that is seeing a great improvement with MMD-PMDD that you will have to get a script with as well. So misdiagnosis is something I commonly see, but again, the thing that I see the most head of all of it is, is you said it's belief systems and it's negative self-talk and they're not doing the bare minimum just to look after their health. Most of the women that are coming, I'm seeing the same pattern where absolute high stress, a lot of processed unhealthy dietary habits dysregulated nervous system, trauma background, potentially viruses, COVID, which has also contributed to inflammatory responses. So a lot of it is they're just not even doing the basics to look after their health. And then when they find the education of, look, maybe I should be doing X, Y, and Z, they start seeing improvement of symptoms already. So I think those would be the most common struggles that I am seeing with women specifically around PMDD.

Right. getting into kind of some final thoughts and you had sent me that you had for women kind of moving I would love for you to talk about them Yeah.

sure. So this is if you're looking for a diagnosis, or you want to understand if it's PMDD. So a difference between PMS PMDD, right? Your symptoms with PMDD are going to be much more severe and debilitating. So you're going it's going to impair your ability to potentially work and function, it gets into a very severe territory. PMS you can tend to sometimes it can sometimes be moderate, but you can tend to still function. So that's when you know, okay, there might be something wrong. Then what you would want to do is be tracking your symptoms. So some women say I don't have a regular cycle either. What I would say in that case is track every day. Because if you track every day over a period of a couple of months, you're still going to see whether there's a cyclical nature happening to your symptoms. So that's what I say to women that have PCOS, just at least track every day then if you don't have a regular cycle. If you do have a regular cycle, track those symptoms as soon as ovulation starts until you have your period over usually two months is going to give you an indication if something is actually happening with those symptoms that's classifying as PMDD. Next thing is obviously you can present those findings to a treating physician and say, Hey, I've really tracked my symptoms. I'm very aware that there is a mood shift that is happening around this part of my period. If the treating physician's like, don't know what PMDD is, that's okay. Some of them are willing to be educated. If you kind of, you know, print out a piece of paper and say, this is what I know it is. It is listed in the DSM-5 and the ICD. It's a real disorder. They're willing to work with you on it. If they don't understand what it is. I would potentially go to a different physician if you're looking for a medication route, because you need someone who's going to be really understanding about how that disorder works and what those medication pathways are going to look like. And then finally, what I would say too is blood work. First and foremost, it's the thing that I, it's a non-negotiable for me. you have to do your blood work, especially before taking medication to find out what your vitamin, your mineral levels are. Do you have an MTHFR gene? Do you have high cortisol? lot of different biomarkers to test for before taking medication just to make sure there's not going to be an issue or that potentially you might even have severe vitamin and mineral deficiencies and they are potentially even mimicking PMDD, which sometimes can be the case. I have many clients that they corrected all of their vitamin and mineral deficiencies in their cortisol and all the symptoms went away. So it was mimicking PMDD symptoms. So again, blood work, I'm just a massive fan and everyone's like, but I did my bloods two years ago. Your bloods can change within a week if you've had a virus. So again, getting regular updated blood work is I think very important. And if you have a treating physician who won't do it, I would find someone who would. There are many online platforms now to companies that will do it privately, which again, sometimes a little bit more expensive, but yeah, massive advocate, you need to have your blood work run. And I always like to say the MTHFR gene, just check that one gene. If you have it, it warrants further investigation into the rest of your genetic process.

Yeah, yeah. And in terms of tracking symptoms, do you have a favorite app that you recommend that somebody could use?

I love Flo It's just everyone knows Flo. Most people do. it was an app that I think I still use it today. I'll just sort of track in cause it'll give you just a bit of an idea of when you're going to ovulate, when you're going to have your cycle. So it's, think you have to pay for a subscription for Flo there, but I'm a big fan of it. It's just simple. It's really easy to use. other types of tracking. If you really want to go down like in depth tracking is you can wear like a thermometer on your arm called Temp Drop I love them the best that will actually so your temperature will rise once you ovulate. So that and it's really got amazing algorithm to it as well. So it will actually be a smart temperature. You just wear it, you don't have to do this whole thermometer thing when you get up that people used to do back in the day. And that will also give you an indication whether you've ovulated so that you can then know when your period's most likely going to arrive because once you ovulate, it's usually around around 14 days after that LH spike or that temperature rising that the period will show up. Another really, really in-depth one, and this one's expensive, it's usually used more for fertility tracking, is called Mira. But the reason I love it is it gives you actually a reading of your progesterone and your estrogen levels. It's done through urine. Again, a very expensive little device, though I'm not sure what it costs anymore, but I had it in the first generation when it first came out. You just pee on a little stick, you put it into a device, and it will give you a reading of what your estrogen and your progesterone levels are sitting at as well as when you have an LH spike. So you have a very accurate reading of what is happening. It also gives you like the general average median. So you can see if you're actually sitting below or above the average. Again, I don't want women to freak out when they see this though, and then you can get really obsessive over it. But if you want like really in depth and you're someone that, you know, wants to really start tracking and understanding that progesterone and estrogen rising, I was able to determine I had an estrogen dominance through this device way, way back in the day because I was like, my estrogen is sky high on this device, shouldn't be sitting that high. So again, that's another device, but again, it's really in the expensive territory. But if you're someone that wants to go absolute full throttle, I would say Mira is the next one that I love.

Yeah. That is so fascinating. This has been such an amazing chat. my gosh, we've covered so much. I wasn't sure we'd get through all of it. It's been wonderful. Do you have any final thoughts, any last things you'd like to share?

I think advocate for yourself first and foremost. And my second thing would be that you don't need necessarily medication to heal with PMDD. If you really understand the contributing factors, there is a whole world that can be opened up to you surrounding what you can do to reduce those symptoms. And I really want women to have hope that if I'm talking, I was so severe, like on the floor crying, mental health hospitals, suicide attempt, very, very severe PMDD. I was utterly distressed. I also had multiple coexisting PCOS, endometriosis, all of the, know, Mast Cell Activation I was someone that technically, you know, in doctors eyes shouldn't have gotten to where I've gotten today. So I know that if I can do it, it's, it's 100 % possible for others. And I want to instill that level of hope that I'm just a regular person that just was resilient enough and didn't want to give up. I was willing to at least cling onto the hope that I didn't have to stay this way. It could be better.

It's really inspiring. It's really inspiring what you're doing to help these other women. I hope you know how amazing it is because it's really amazing. It's incredible. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for your time today. I've loved this conversation and it's been great. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Spencer Moore:

Thanks for joining us on The Hairy Chin Podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, please head over to www.spencerita.com to join our creative community. I'm Spencer Moore reminding you that knowledge isn't just powerful, it's empowering. When you know better, you do better. So stay strong, keep going, and I'll see you next time.