Biohacking for Menstruators

If the term "biohacking" conjures up images of Silicon Valley tech bros ingesting weird pills for dinner and plugging all their personal metrics into their iPhone apps, you'd be right. But it's also things like meditating, using medicinal herbs, and eating for your cycle.

The conventional way the wellness industry talks about biohacking, however, wasn't really designed for lunar bodies. This episode discusses what it actually is, examples you may or may not be familiar with, and what it can look like for you in a way that doesn't mess up your hormone health.

Mentioned:

• FREE WORKSHOP: The Patriarchy vs. Your Body on May 19
• What is biohacking? via Vox
• Mountain Rose Herbs
• Jam Haw Herbals sourcing list

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Transcript

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Hello and welcome to the Lunar Body, I'm your host, Kristen Ciccolini, period priestess, nutritionist, and the founder of Good Witch Kitchen. Also, recently fully vaccinated! That’s right, on the day this comes out I will be receiving my second dose of the vaccine, so good luck to me. I keep hearing about how terrible everyone feels after the second one so I’m taking the next couple days off in case I need to sleep it off. And if I feel fine, well I’m still taking the days off so I can watch the Price is Right in bed like you did when you were a kid staying home from school. It’s the little things, right?

In today’s episode, I’m going to talk about biohacking. If that word makes you want to puke and makes you think of tech bros talking absolute nonsense in Silicon Valley, you’d be in good company. I’m going to talk about what it is, examples, why conventional biohacking isn’t designed for lunar bodies, and what it can look like for you in a way that doesn’t mess up your hormone health.

Before that is this week’s listener question. For this, I actually want to share a question that I recently was asked in my SYNC membership program, because it’s a question I think we’re all asking right now and I thought it would be beneficial to share here as well.

The question was, How do you deal with burnout, particularly from work? 

And before I answer, my disclaimer: The information in this episode is for educational purposes only, it is NOT medical advice and it is your responsibility to speak to a qualified health care provider about your unique needs. The final decision when considering any diet or lifestyle changes, whether it’s discussed on the internet, in a podcast, or prescribed by your doctor, is always your own.

Ok, I’m sharing audio from our Q+A for the response to this question:

This is a big one. I feel like if you didn't experience burnout before the pandemic, you have definitely gotten familiar with it by now. And I'm right there with you. 

Burnout can feel like a lot of different things. It can be overwhelm, fatigue, brain fog, alienation or cynicism related to your work, headaches, stomach aches, digestive issues. It can appear in a lot of different ways.

It can also exacerbate depression or anxiety.

The underlying thing here though is stress. And I'm not going to go through all the things you already know to reduce that like meditation and all that, especially because you're asking about work burnout, which requires a different solution.

You can take a nice fancy bath but it's not going to get your boss off your back, right?

So I would recommend pinpointing what's causing the stress at work.

Obviously, there's the expectation of regular productivity in the middle of a pandemic. Does your job offer any mental health support? I know a lot of places have started connecting employees with services like Talkspace which is online therapy, or Headspace and Calm which are both meditation apps. Those won't solve everything but it's worth looking into what benefits you have there.

Communication is also really important, asking your manager for what you need. And of course, not all managers are actually supportive and they're probably experiencing burnout themselves, however just exploring those lines of communication could be helpful. Because you can't expect them to know how you're feeling if you don't tell them.

Other sources of stress, are there unreasonable deadlines? Are expectations unclear? Are expectations too high? Do you need support with a project? Are you being treated unfairly?

Ideally, you'll be able to discuss these things with a manager, and if your job is truly invested in creating a healthy work environment, speaking with human resources might be helpful. All of these things, I know, are highly dependent on your particular job and the workplace culture, because human resources exists, in essence, to protect the company, not to protect the employees, but if you are lucky to work in a place that takes a more holistic approach and does value employee wellbeing, it's an option.

Sometimes it may be up to you to come up with the solutions if you feel like your manager might not be supportive or receptive. After you pinpoint the problem, maybe you can start to develop a clear strategy that can help you manage your stress that you can then present to your boss as a possible solution. Maybe part of that solution is using vacation days if you have them.

I know there are people out there who don't use all of their vacation time. I can't relate, any time I've worked in an office I maxed out my vacation time, even though I knew I'd be coming back to a lot of stress after taking time off. But it's there for you, use it if you have it. 

When all else fails, if you've communicated your needs to management, if you've asked for help, and things are still not going as you'd like them to, it may be time to start looking for a more supportive work environment.

But a more immediate solution is to go back to your basic self-care strategies. And also doing the bare minimum you need to get by.

So basic self-care: are you getting enough sleep, are you drinking enough water, are you eating in a way that makes you feel good and gives you energy, are you moving your body? Food, sleep, water, exercise. 

Cover your bases there, and protect them. 

Burnout can take a long time to recover from depending how long we're actively resisting rest. Boundaries are going to be really important to prioritize so you can protect first of all these basic things, and then anything else you need to do to care for your health and your nervous system.

If you can, schedule the lunch break that you are entitled to into your work calendar so no one can add meetings to it, and log off if you can. Protect your mealtime.

Drink lots of water and allow yourself bathroom breaks. It sounds silly but I often find myself having to go and being like "not til I finish creating these slides" or whatever project I'm working on. Give yourself a 5-10 minute break every hour even if it's just to go to the bathroom.

Protect your sleep. Leave time for a nighttime routine. Decline invitations that'll have you out longer than you want to be. Turn off the TV at a certain hour. Do what you need to to prioritize rest, this is one of the most important things for burnout is to REST.

Rest also doesn't just mean sleep, it means slowing down. If you can't slow down at work, what other areas of your life can you ease off the gas a little bit? Maybe you listen to relaxing music instead of podcasts on double speed. Maybe you read a book instead of watching an action movie before bed getting your cortisol up. Where can you draw out your experiences, get more out of them rather than multitasking and constantly moving your attention from one thing to the next?

It's similar to what we talk about with aligning with your cycle. Actually, it's the same thing. We are always going to have obligations, we can't change absolutely everything to fit perfectly within our cycle phases. So to adjust we double up on self-care in the times that we have to do things that go against our natural rhythms.

When you're feeling burnout it's a time to be selfish, to prioritize what you need.

So pinpoint the things that are contributing to your stress. If you can, determine what the solutions might be. Go down the list of your basic needs and see if those are being met. And draw boundaries around them. 

Once you have the basics down, if you're still not feeling great, that's when you can layer on things like focusing on specific foods we talked about in January for coping with stress, or herbs like Ashwagandha that help your body manage stress, these are often things we reach for first but they won't do much good if you don't have the basics in place. So really take stock and see where you can start making some improvements — not to say that burnout is entirely your responsibility because our capitalist society is the reason for this problem, but there are things we can adjust on our end as we navigate it all.

I hope this has been helpful. Thank you for this great question. 

This episode is brought to you by my upcoming free workshop, The Patriarchy vs. Your Body. 

It’s going to be a look at your hormone health through a more inclusive and feminist lens. We’re going to talk about:

• How our health and hormones are impacted by patriarchal standards of living⁠⠀
• The importance of body literacy and cycle consciousness⁠⠀
• The lack of education around menstruators' bodies in science and medicine⁠⠀
•  Why diet culture and emotional eating are feminist issues⁠⠀
• What you can do to break free from the patriarchy, live cyclically, reduce your PMS symptoms, and be empowered to take care of your body in a way that serves YOUR unique needs⁠⠀

The goal of this workshop is to help you understand how you can embrace your own inner power and align your life with the flow of your menstrual cycle. It's how you can discover your SUPERPOWERS, because, my friends, you are so magical and I want you to know it!⁠⠀

The class is happening on May 19, and if you’re not sure if you can make it live, that’s ok, sign up anyway and you’ll receive reminders and a replay.

You can RSVP at goodwitchkitchen.net/workshop . 

Hope to see you there!

Today’s episode is going to be a mishmash of science and spirituality, our faves. We’re talking about biohacking for menstruators, and as I was coming up with talking points for this episode I decided to pull a few cards to guide the conversation. So we’re going a few different directions with this.

First, let’s answer the question — what is biohacking?

Biohacking is basically the science of self-optimization. Performing experiments on yourself in order to create a desired outcome, which is to use your body at its highest potential.

There are different levels to biohacking, and Vox has a really great article highlighting different examples of what it looks like that I’ll share in the show notes. To mention a few, it’s things you’ve heard of in the wellness world like intermittent fasting, keto, and drinking celery juice, or all the things that Gwyneth Paltrow does or all the products that Moon Juice sells. On another level, you have the Tim Ferrises and Dave Aspreys of the world who quantify everything they do so they can find ways to improve their personal metrics, through Bulletproof coffee and ice baths and infrared saunas. And then you have people who are editing their own DNA through CRISPR technology. So yeah there is a broad range of biohacking strategies and you’re likely doing some of them, because dieting and supplementing are such a large part of it. Cycle syncing is biohacking. Eating foods for their nutrient content is biohacking. And so is something called young blood transfusion where people are literally trying to drink from the fountain of youth and pump their bodies with young people’s blood in order to combat aging. It’s a big umbrella term.

You’ll notice when you read about biohacking advice, there are a lot of cis white men involved. And this is not without reason. A lot of biohacking advice is just bullshit, but much of it is based on research, albeit somewhat loosely for some things, but research nonetheless.

And what do we know about research? Well, we know that cis white men are the standard test subjects. Not only are they willing participants, but they also don’t have a pesky menstrual cycle to muck up the results and make things more difficult.

I’m being somewhat sarcastic, but it’s true that menstrual cycles are often not accounted for in this research, or that menstruators are even included in the studies at an appropriate rate. I’ve mentioned before that a lot of diet research simply isn’t performed with us in mind, and so when it comes to biohacking in terms of nutrition and certain lifestyle factors, a lot of the advice simply isn’t for us.

I personally find the biohacking conversation, aside from it being privileged and elitist and ableist — you know, I’m not inherently against a lot of the things that are considered biohacking, it’s more how they’re talked about as if they’re the only thing and the advice just leaves out so many people — aside from that, I also find it a little reductive, to lunar bodies in particular, because it interprets the body in a very literal way and uses simpler logic than our bodies actually require.

It essentially looks at the body as a machine, and X input will create Y output. The input is things like certain foods, certain exercises, mindfulness practices, supplements, and so on. The output is the desired outcome — better sleep, better metabolism, more energy, more productivity, more mental clarity, stamina, efficiency, longevity. The ultimate goal is to make your body a well-oiled machine.

But we are not machines, and to treat our bodies like machines is to actively resist our natural cycles. Machines operate the same way every single time you use them. That’s what they’re designed to do. As you know by now, lunar bodies generally have four to five weeks of hormonal fluctuations that mean we don’t necessarily operate the same way every single day. So the typical advice out there simply isn’t meant to take that into account.

Also, can we talk about how biohacking is just, diet culture that works at Google? Silicon Valley loves to take age-old concepts and cloak them in fancy branding and marketing, give it a new name and call it disruption.

A lot of what’s masked as biohacking is actually just disordered eating. 

We have the CEO of Twitter restricting his food for 23 hours a day and calling it intermittent fasting. We have the company Soylent making beverages that claim to have all the nutrients you need to function, everything but actual enjoyment. This is the ultimate in using food as fuel only, despite pleasure being a really important part of your health and wellbeing. Not to mention that it’s expensive and unsustainable, and there’s very little fiber. So good luck with that.

My point is — if you are in a lunar body, the conventional biohacking advice out there doesn’t take your needs into consideration.

Following this advice is how we lose connection to our bodies.

Long before the internet’s neverending distractions and the constant communication of our current culture, it was common to feel connected to your body. Intuition was strong because it had to be. There was no WebMD or Google search to tell you something was wrong, and no apps to identify a mystery plant and tell you if it was poisonous or not.

We listened to the signals from our bodies, and more importantly, we actually understood them.

These days, there is a strong mind-body disconnect. A lot of clients tell me they don’t feel “in tune” with themselves. They want to learn how to hear what their bodies are telling them. But how can you decipher a language you don’t recognize? When you’re so used to the biohacking language and diet culture talk, it’s hard to know what to look for or listen for or to feel in your body.

Being “in tune” with yourself means you understand the messages that your body is sending to you. This doesn’t have to be some supernatural thing (although it totally can be).

It’s a strong awareness of how your body feels (your baseline “normal” feeling), what affects that feeling, and how.

For example, I have new clients keep a food journal, if it feels comfortable to them, where they describe the food they ate and their mood. This gives them insight into how certain foods make them feel or how their feelings may have influenced their food choices and how that made them feel.

Food isn’t the only thing that has an effect on your body. Emotions do as well, and being in tune with yourself means knowing how certain situations will impact you. So does tracking your every move to self-optimize feel good? Are you having fun with it or are you finding yourself becoming anxious if you miss a day or frustrated when you don’t hit certain targets you’ve set for yourself? Does the behavior feel good or bad?

Knowledge of how these things feel in your body allows you to make informed and intentional choices throughout the day. When you have a better understanding of how your body feels, it’s easier to know when something’s off. This is your intuition talking — the knowing without knowing how you know, you just do!

Being in tune has its benefits, and some of you are more in tune than you think. Particularly if you’re someone who has gone to many doctors without any diagnosis — all the tests are fine so the doctor says it’s all in your head. But you KNOW it’s not! This is how many people end up seeking holistic health practitioners. Some symptoms simply can’t be addressed with a test and a pill.

You are born knowing how to listen to your body. When you were a baby, you cried out for food when you were hungry and stopped eating when you were full. You didn’t care that there were three more bites left, you were done. You cried when you felt sick, when your tummy hurt, when you had a fever.

But diet culture severs that connection, and then it dresses up as fancy biohacking to hack at it some more. So you stop listening to your body’s signals. You ignore the hunger pangs because your fasting app says it’s not time to eat yet. Or you tell yourself you should be satisfied with the portion someone else decided on for you. You ignore the fact that you don’t actually like any of the food that you’re eating. You are convinced the Euro-centric cisgender model is the only way to look, start comparing yourself to every other person, and lose perspective on how your own body actually looks and feels.

So here you are, trying so hard to do something that wasn’t made for you, which impacts your hormones, causes further stress, and when the results don’t come, who do you blame? Yourself. Then you move on to the next diet, or the next strategy, following rules that take you further away from what your body actually wants.

Aligning with your cycle is the biohacking advice that’s meant for your body. And I don’t love the term, but if we’re talking about this concept then yes, that’s our version of it. Following your cycle phases, keeping track of how you feel, giving your body what it needs in each phase in terms of food and exercise and relationships and personal care — that’s self-optimization that can work for you, and that can give you better energy, sleep, productivity and more. But in a way that actually feels sustainable and enjoyable and more peaceful.

I always say this but developing your intuition is foundational to this work, in my opinion. I think it’s one of the first steps, and there are lots of ways you can do it ranging from the practical to the more spiritual. I mentioned the food journal that can give you an awareness of how food makes you feel, you can also keep a regular journal and just note a few sentences about your day, the day of your cycle or what phase the moon is in, and keep track that way so you have information to look back on and notice patterns. Intuition is information, that library of experiences, and you can actively fill that library by journaling. 

You can also meditate, pull tarot cards, repeat mantras, practice reading your akashic records — spend time with yourself so you have the space to get your intuition talking.

The first card that I pulled for this episode was Strength, and I laughed when I pulled it because it felt really on the nose. In the traditional Rider Waite Smith deck, there is a woman in a white dress with flowers in her hair, and she has her hands on the mouth of a lion. She seems to be gently closing its mouth or stroking its face, depending how you look at it. She also has an infinity symbol above her head.

The Strength card is about strength, obviously, and tenacity, determination, persistence — but not in a hypermasculine way. She is calmly and confidently taming the beast, which happens to be like, bright red in this depiction, which is why I say it’s pretty on the nose. But that’s what aligning with your cycle gives you. You aren’t biohacking in the solar-body centered way that can have an impact on your hormone health. You’re honoring your cyclical nature, taming your own body. This is encouragement to find strength within yourself, and not from men in power who don’t know what it’s like to be in your body.

And this information, the knowledge you come up with, that you explore and retain related to how your cycle works and how to care for your body all month long, this is information that can be passed down for generations and shared with other menstruators in your life. Since it’s not taught in schools, it has to be shared by word of mouth, like many women’s stories throughout time. And not all women menstruate and not every person who menstruates is a woman, but in general, our wisdom is not passed on through textbooks.

The second card I pulled is the 10 of cups, reversed. The first thing that popped into my head when I saw this was “the call is coming from inside the house!” The 10 of cups is such a positive card, but reversed and in this context it seems like you kind of already know the deal. You know things don’t feel like they’re in alignment, so what is the way out? Sometimes I interpret the cards a bit literally and maybe some people see that as reductive, but sometimes the simplest answer is the right one, so if this feels like it resonates, keep it, if not, leave it. When this card is upside down, what do you see?

All of the positive things below the cups, below the rainbow when it’s right side up, when it’s flipped, it feels like the answer is holism. All those positive things flow into the cups, into your internal realm, and the cups encapsulate it all. Whatever feels out of alignment requires a holistic approach. Right side up you are witnessing the fruits of your labor, but reversed feels more like there’s an action to take. You have to work towards bringing those things into your world.

So what’s the resistance? Where are you feeling held back? 

The final card I pulled is The Heirophant, which again, is more emphasis, that the call is coming from inside the house. You are the key. No one else can tell you what being in your body feels like, no one else can tell you what’s going to be best for you. I am here as a guide, as support, as a teacher and a peer to help you navigate your needs and become an expert in your own body, but do realize, you are the expert, not me. The answers live inside of you and developing your intuition and your relationship to yourself is how you find them. Leaving the cis male-centered biohacking diet culture world behind and instead cultivating a deeper knowledge of yourself is the path forward.

Ok, so we went from bullying tech CEOs to reading tarot. I hope you’re still with me, because I want to talk about a few herbs that may be helpful for intuitive connection.

You already know about meditation and how that’s helpful, and that might be the only thing you need. You never need to spend money on anything related to your intuition unless you want to, remember you energy is the only thing you need. However, there’s no harm in seeking out a little boost from our plant friends. Which can also be free if you like to garden and if you have a green thumb. I for sure have a black thumb and have not had any success so I stick to supporting my local apothecary and buying herbs from them.

But anyway, let’s talk a few herbs that can be helpful for accessing your intuition.

I recommend trying out herbs that are classified as nervines, which means they calm nervous tension. Especially when you’re first starting out, whether it’s with meditating or with reading cards or however you’re practicing developing your intuition, you don’t want to be in an agitated state. 

Linden is a safe option that helps with anxiety and nervous tension and is particularly helpful for balancing out stimulating medications like Adderall. It is supportive of the emotional self and has heart-opening qualities, which might be nice to have so you can feel more open and receptive.

Lemon balm is also gentle for anxiety, it helps elevate your mood and is relaxing, especially if you feel tense from stress and worry. It’s a very gentle herb for people of all ages. Skullcap is another one with these qualities that’s safe and effective as well.

And sage can be great for the type of nervous stress that comes from overwhelm, or if you’re a tightly wound, type-A personality. It’s helpful for relieving headaches and lifting brain fog too, both of course are important if you want to keep your mind clear and open to receiving messages.

Out of those, lemon balm and sage are probably the most accessible. You can find lemon balm in tea form at the grocery store, or maybe it’s even growing in your backyard. Sage is used as a culinary spice so it may be even easier to find.

All of these make a great cup of tea that you can sip on and start to relax before doing any of your intuitive practices.

If you’re buying online, Mountain Rose Herbs is a great resource with a lot of options if you’re not able to find a local herbalist or apothecary to support. They often get their products from smaller farms so you may still be supporting smaller businesses through Mountain Rose. 

Other options, Jamesa Hawthorne’s website, jamhawherbals.com has a sourcing guide for you if you want to and she notes places that are Black-owned, queer-owned, and what types of products they offer. I will link to that in the show description.

I think that’s enough for today. Now you know why biohacking in the broad cultural conversation isn’t designed with lunar bodies in mind, how aligning with your cycle can be your own sustainable and personalized form of biohacking, and some herbs to help you develop your intuition as you work towards building a stronger relationship with yourself and your mind and your body.

I’d love to know what you think of this episode. If you liked what you heard it would make my day for you to leave me a review or star rating in Apple Podcasts. And feel free to send me a message on Instagram at @goodwitchkitchen with your thoughts on today’s topic if you like. I love the conversations that I end up in about the culture of wellness right now, it’s so interesting how we all are like, railing against it but it just insists. And persists. I think we are a small group of people who are aware of the giant holes in the conversation and I’m so glad that we’re talking about it more and more, so that we become a bigger group that helps everyone to be more caring and mindful and really change the paradigm. I love exploring these things with you so thank you for being here. I’ll talk to you next week!