Q&A

In our very first Q&A episode, I'm sharing my personal experiences and insights in response to your listener questions about the Stellar Cycles Podcast, my life, my career, women's health, including reproductive health, daily wellness routines and recipes, managing PMS symptoms and more! This episode is a great chance for us to get even closer. 

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Alina: 0:08

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the stellar cycles podcast, your hot girl database for all the things that we girls honestly should have been taught a long time ago. everything pertaining to your femininity, your cycle and your wellness and your walk in life. As a woman, I'm your host Alina and today we're going to be talking about listener questions. The goal for this episode is to answer the questions that our amazing listeners have been sending in things about stellar cycles, the podcast, reproductive information, my life, health recipes, the ultrasound world and a lot more questions. I finally feel like I'm getting to know this audience and how it sets itself apart. I think this episode will be a great chance for us to get closer, some current updates. We went to Austin, Texas at the beginning of this month for a live podcasting event, which just means that they sit on stage and they do their podcasts live in front of an audience. And I was very excited to go to see this dear media production because your media is one of my favorite broadcasting networks. And I really wanted to see those people in real life and see what they were like and stuff more about in today's episode, though, because that was one of the questions. So we are continuing on with home furnishing we're not quite yet done. We want to put up our fire in place and a bunch of other things. My mom's coming to visit me this weekend. And we're just kind of gearing up for summer spending more time at the beach, spending more time writing the boosted boards, doing a lot more exploring of the area, as well as maybe going south checking out Mexico since we're so close. And of course, just shorter domestic trips to Michigan to Washington to see family. Let's get into the questions for today's episode. I've compiled some questions that I've been receiving from you guys. They're both recent and a little bit older. I'm hoping that we can do this every month or so just a reminder to take everything I say with a grain of salt. And always be sure to do your own research. Alright, so let's get into our questions What inspired you to start the stellar cycles podcast, apart from being very into puberty and female wellness from a very young age, even before I got my very first period, I was really, really interested in that stuff. And then once I moved through college and went into my ultrasound field, I rekindled that interest because it's just something that grabbed my attention, I was noticing how many women were dealing with reproductive issues, menstrual issues. And the problem at hand apart from all the suffering that people are going through is the lack of talking about it. And the lack of talking about it, I think always allows the problem to persist and persevere. So I was like, You know what, I've always liked listening to podcasts. I really want to start my own because this is something that I can talk about for days with any person that I meet guy, girl, anybody if you want to get to know more about the woman's body, I'm the right person to talk to. That's really what inspired me to start the star cycles podcast, especially because I was still running into some discomfort when it came to talking about the cycle or talking about periods, which is something that as women we have literally been dealing with since the beginning of time. So how is it still such a taboo topic? Right? And yeah, that was the start of stellar cycles. How do you decide which topics to cover in your episodes? Honestly, it's kind of a mix and match of things that I find really interesting and that I really want to share with my listeners and things that I feel like I can fill in the gaps on in today's world. I'm looking up and I'm researching what are people struggling with? What are they Googling, what are they looking for, and also talking to people in my community. I'll meet let's say someone at book club and let's say they work in a very interesting field like sex education. And I'm like, you're coming on to the podcast, we're going to do an episode together. So that's how I decide which topics to cover anything that pertains as being helpful to women and to our health I put in this show. Can you share some insights into your personal daily wellness routine? Yeah, I would say it has taken a few years of work to get to the space for me a personal daily wellness routine consists of both a solid nighttime routine and a solid morning routine. The nighttime routine is essential because it sets you up to have a morning routine. Because I think Try as you might even if you have a really solid plan for your morning, but you go to bed in shambles and you didn't set up for your next day and you Don't drink, your team didn't do this, that and the other for you to succeed the next day, well, then your morning routine is also going to suffer. Absolutely. For me in my evening routine, I kind of start off with feeding the dog dinner, getting her potty before bed, and then I'll do my skincare, I'll drink my tea, I'll tidy up the space. Something that's been really important for me is putting on my skincare a little bit earlier, so it has time to soak. So I'm not just putting it on 15 minutes before bedtime and smearing it all over my bedding. So I'll put on my skincare and then I'll continue on with my wine down routine. The thing that's very important for me and my evening routine is to set up myself for success the next day. So the next day when it comes time to do the morning routine. I don't have excuses like, oh, you know, but this isn't ready, or oh, I don't have this outfit. Or where's this or where's my gym clothes. So either set yourself up for success. And in the mornings I I know this sounds so basically can we've all heard this hack but the whole like lemon water with some ACV apple cider vinegar in the morning, especially a little bit warm. Wow, it does wonders it kind of like wakes you up makes you feel like you're ready for the day. I've been doing that. Tongue scraping, of course is really important. Usually when I get out of bed, as soon as I hear my alarm, I get out of bed because if I continue laying there, that's over, go into the bathroom, I will actually instead of sitting and like meditating and just only meditating, I will listen to a meditation while I'm getting ready in front of the mirror and kind of like absorb those thoughts and affirmations as I go through my skincare routine my teeth, brushing my eyes, rolling all of it. And then once I'm done with that, I kind of move into the rest of my day, my workout my breakfast, and then sitting down and doing my work. How did you manage to balance your personal life with your professional life while running the podcast? Well, when I started the podcast, my professional life wasn't that demanding. I actually had just walked away from my ultrasound job and had kind of all of the pieces lined up for this podcast already. So when I had started out this show, it was just more of a matter of like having a lot of free time to work on it. And within the past year, I've also been working as an ultrasound professor at a college and kind of balancing that with the podcast has been okay, because I've only had to work two days out of the week. So yeah, there's really not much to balance. This is kind of like a hobby that I like to do. But when it comes to like growth and social media and strategy, all that stuff really is work. And I understand now why people get paid to do that as a full time job. It takes a lot. Can you share some of your favorite healthy recipes, if I go into that, it's going to be a bit of a longer episode there on Instagram. So if you go on to at stellar cycles pod, on Instagram, you'll find a bunch of recipe info on there. What does your future in ultrasound look like? So for those of you who don't know, I worked as an ultrasound tech for about five years, including schooling, which was very rigorous, like two years in the hospital field for free, not getting paid. And then three more years outside of school. So my future and ultrasound, it's hard to say because with this type of job, it is something that your parents and your peers are kind of like yeah, that's a good solid secure job, you should go into that that's you know, you won't regret choosing ultrasound. And I do agree with that. Partly However, once you're already in the ultrasound field, it's can be really hard to move up, there's just not much room to move up. You're the ultrasound tech and if you want to like earn anything more than that or have more responsibility, the only option for you is realistically to go to medical school and become a radiologist at the doctor who reads ultrasounds. But radiologists aren't really known to open their own practice or really go off on their own. So it can be really tough field. Whereas like, imagine, I'll give you the example of a construction crew, right? Like the construction workers themselves. They're at the bottom of the ladder, right? They're getting paid per hour. But the responsibility on them isn't that much right. And their accountability isn't as much as for example, the general contractor who, you know, that's a step up, but he's making more he has more responsibility, but he also has more accountability, right. And then another step up from general contractor would be real estate developer. So there's ways that as you gain specific knowledge in your field, and you get better at what you do, there's room to you know, make more money and become more valuable. Whereas in ultrasound, I just there's really no pathway for that. It's a closed system. So what is my future for ultrasound? I don't know. I really don't know. I don't know if I'm gonna go back to scanning people all day every day or teaching but I'm open to anything to be quite honest. What are your favorite resources for learning about reproductive health? The internet is your greatest resource. There's so many amazing people on Instagram onto tick tock on YouTube on podcast that I'm not even going to give you guys really any suggestions because I want you to find for yourself the type of messaging and the type of person that you resonate with, because that's what's important when you're going to be taking in information, it has to come from someone that you're like, Oh, I could listen to this person. But the minute that you detect any sort of BS, or fakeness, you're like, not gonna believe anything they say. So, number one, the internet is your best friend use it while it's free. And literally, all you have to do is use a search bar, whatever it is that you're struggling with, put it in the search bar of Instagram, tick tock YouTube podcasts, and you will find literally so much free material that you can use to kind of get you started. That's what got me started, I was literally listening to one of my podcasts that has nothing to do with reproductive health. And the girl that was hosting it was like, Hey, I read this book, Woman Code by Lisa Beatty, and this is insane. This changed my life. So that's kind of what started everything. For me. All it took was just one book. Oh, yeah. And I don't think I mentioned books. But books are fantastic. Fantastic, especially more. So I think the Internet can be really helpful because it can like show you visually how people do things or show explanations like that. But books take a lot more work to put together a lot more research. So a lot of them are richer and information so to speak. How do you handle negative feedback or criticism from listeners? Honestly, I wish I would get some, I really wish I would get some, please give me some feedback in the comments here. Because anything helps for me to continue to mold and shape the show and to exactly what is needed for you guys to enjoy it. And for you guys to gain something from it. So any sort of obviously, like don't bully people, but I don't. I don't see any criticism as negative feedback, because any sort of feedback is going to be helpful and useful in some sort of way. If you can manage not to take it personally. Best ways to manage PMS symptoms and menstrual cramps. Yes, number one is movement. So even if you're moving towards the end of your cycle, you can feel your period coming. Resist the urge and the temptation to stay sedentary and not move around because movement number one will help you feel emotionally better and it will help your body feel physically better. Now when it comes to what kind of movement you're going to pick that depends on you because you want to pick something that you can stick with that you can enjoy. And for me, I always encourage the girls in your PMS week do yoga, dance, do something that gets your hips involved and gets all that tension out of your hips. They say a lot of the reason why Western women have such reproductive issues is because we don't move our hips enough and we're not in positions enough where our hips are flexible or stretch so I found that to be really interesting. You guys also know I swear by red raspberry leaf tea. So it's made from the leaves of raspberry plants. What it does is it's going to help your uterus not cramp up so much when you are bleeding or experiencing PMS, cramps, just any sort of uterine cramping is just going to sue that and help you have an easier period and magnesium, magnesium. It is a muscle relaxer your uterus is a muscle so magnesium is also going to really really help during menstrual cramps PMS symptoms, it's gonna help you sleep a little bit better too. Can you share a memorable moment or episode from your podcasting journey? I would I would say it was when we decided to hold our webinar and it was my it was my understanding that we were doing it for female employees of this company but when we logged on to the zoom it was like mostly guys. And I was like well like what how is this gonna go like they don't care to hear about this but and some of them didn't you could see the light going out from their eyes immediately. But what I really liked was there was some guys in there really taking notes and they were really just like, oh yeah, my girlfriend deals with this. Like, how can I how can I be more of helped like how can I understand this better? And I was like, literally sir bless your heart like I hope everything good in life happens to you because that's amazing that even though like this has pretty much nothing to do with your interests as a man but just you wanting to take on more responsibility and more knowledge to make things easier for you woman I was like yes, there are that men. What has been the most challenging part of hosting a podcast doing everything yourself and I don't mean like editing because I do have a great editor Her name was joyous and she makes the audio sound so great and she does incredible. But I would just say a kind of having everything restaurant you and not having anyone pushing and poking and prodding you to do something like they will But in let's say, a normal nine to five. So everything really entirely rests on you, you have to want it you have to want to get on this mic every time you have to want to crank things out for people even it feels like you're just throwing things into the abyss. That's probably the hardest part. Because at a job at school or work, you kind of know if you're doing good or not the results, there isn't much of a lag to the results, right? You take a test, do you see your score? In something like this, you might not see results for years, and a lot of people give up and they drop out because maybe they're not seeing the results that they wanted to as quickly but it's all about time in the game and skin in the game. Right. Next question, what is your advice for someone wanting to start their own podcast? YouTube is your best friend, everything that I learned about podcasting, I learned on YouTube for free, you don't have to pay anybody to teach you how to become a podcaster. Number two, make sure that what you're picking to speak number one is interesting to you. Because if it's not, you're gonna give up like eight episodes into it. It's a lot of work. So you have to be really passionate and interested about what you're talking about. The other thing is, in addition to finding an interesting, passionate topic for yourself, make sure to somehow make that topic evergreen. So if you want to think long term think of like, How can I keep putting out these podcast episodes and keeping my content fresh, right? So focusing on things that are constantly reoccurring, something new, you could always be talking about, right? You don't want to pick a podcast that's based on a series of books. And then as soon as you're done talking those about those books, like where's podcasts gonna go? Right? So I would say try to tie it into more of your personal brand and talk about what you want to talk about in intercrossed, with what people want to hear about, you don't have to spend a lot on equipment, this mic was like$90. Get some equipment on Amazon, start learn, the best thing that you can do is just start, there will never be enough information I every single day. I feel like there's not enough information that I have to be doing this. But every day I persevere. Let's move on to our next question. Do we know the common causes of infertility there's a whole list right of like diseases, conditions, all sorts of things that cause infertility, but I would distill those down to four disease so if you let's say got an STD and you didn't manage it right and that's the kind of overgrown your body and took over now it's too late. Disease, environmental factors nowadays, we know that pretty much everything is pitted against us in the United States, our food, our water, our air, our screens, everything that we're consuming is meant to poison us. So environmental, it's also been proven that with the amount of plastics and microplastics in the food, the water, everything, how much it's impacting our fertility. The third cause is genetic. A lot of people have genetic mutations that they may or may not know about that impact their fertility and the only way to know this for sure is to get genetic testing. And the fourth and sometimes most difficult one to wrap your mind around is the unexplained infertility and you know, we can we can sometimes nail it down to disease, environmental factors, genetic factors, but sometimes they can't find a reason. And that's that can be the saddest one and the hardest one to deal with. Because if you can't find a reason, and it's very hard to find a solution, what are the most sustainable and healthy options for period products? Honestly, with the whole tampons versus pads, debate, cups, whatever, I don't think either one is better than the other necessarily for the body. It's just what works best for you. However, the materials that these products are made of is what matters. For the past few years, I've only bought organic pads, organic tampons, organic liners, organic wipes, even because if you think about it, we're spending so much time with those things in contact to our bodies. And if they're sprayed with chemicals with God knows what like then all that time that it's adjacent to or contacted to your body, it's going to be leaching into your body. So just not something I've ever really wanted to play with. Few years ago, I switched back to organic products, they work just as great and they're safer for you. Another thing too that I've tried in the past is period panties. So just honestly underwear that you can like bleed into it'll like collect the blood and you can rinse it out and wash it out. Not for everybody but it works for some people. Could you share more about your experience at the Austin Texas deer media IRL conference? Yeah, so I was very very excited to go in my mind I was like this is like my first podcast event I can't wait to like meet these people that I've listened to their shows every week. I'm you know, I love their content. So excited. Maybe ask them some questions from a young podcast or get some get some insight, you know, and like tickets were literally like four or $500 for the day, just for you to sit there and listen to them podcast on stage. So my sweet husband, he took me to Austin, Texas for this and our dog traveled with us. She was so sweet, but we get to the band and it was very acutely done and everything but the vibe that I got was that it was just like how do you even say this without sounding mean? It was just a way for these podcasters to continue to like glorify themselves and regurgitate everything that we hear them talk about anyway, week to week to week, both me and my husband looked at each other. And when we were leaving, we're like, do you feel like you're leaving with anything new and like, No, we absolutely are not. So the goodie bags are really good. So thank you, dear media for those. But as far as Lauren Bostick, Michael Bostick, I kind of did expect them to mingle and mix with the people and the fans more because it did feel kind of like a fan event. And if people are paying $400 apiece to come to this, we don't want to hear about how you do mouth tape every night, we already know like, we might want to talk to you or get a picture with you. But they will just kind of like come on to the stage, do their bits and pieces. Tell us what we've heard already 100 times before and then disappear off the stage. And then we just sit and wait. Of course they launched a brand new product. So very good for them. Yeah, I wouldn't say that. I would go as someone who wants to network and actually learn something getting something from this event. If you want to go and feel like a fan. It's for you. How am I supposed to know which phase of my cycle I am in? Well, it can be difficult for people who don't have regular periods. Because if you have regular regular periods, it's a lot easier to kind of track and see where you're at. Whereas if you're kind of all over the place, well, that doesn't really give us a baseline that we can go from. So what you want to do is kind of take stock of how you feel, first of all, just close your eyes and be like okay, do I feel energetic? Do I feel tired? Do I feel social? Do I feel anxious? Do I feel like feeling bad about myself low self esteem, and just kind of tap into like, write that down. And then you can go into your apps, if you track your period. And during your period, that's your menstrual phase. Once your period ends, that's your follicular phase right smack dab in the middle of the month is your ovulation phase. And then after you ovulate kind of for the second half of your month, that's your luteal phase. So the luteal phase can be the longest one and kind of the most miserable one. So it's kind of crazy that the girl is only get like 15 working days out of a month that we operate our best at. How do I accurately see if I'm ovulating when trying to conceive? Well apart from other bodily hens, such as your basal body temperature going up your cervical mucus. So the stuff that comes out of you being more sticky, you can actually do ovulation kits, like testers. So it's kind of like a pregnancy test. Except for you pee on it. You start usually 10 days after your period, day 10 day 11. And it kind of tracks and lets you show where that spike is and when you're ovulating. So that's kind of the best way. If you're conceiving if you're not conceiving, it's the best way to pinpoint your ovulation and be like, okay, my peak is today. That means I'm ovulating tomorrow. Next question, why is my menstrual cycle irregular? And what can I do about it? Welcome to life as a woman. Why is my menstrual cycle irregular is such a loaded question. But it boils down to one thing, and that is the fact that a lot of our menstrual cycles as women have never even got the chance to become regular because so many of us at age 14 1516 are put on birth control, like any first inkling of a discomfort or something not feeling right. And we want to go to the doctor and get some help. We get told that oh yeah, the birth control pill, here you go, this is going to make everything better. So because of that, the birth control it actually suppresses whatever menstrual irregularity or cycle regularity you had, which means that for years and years and years, that underlying issue is just being suppressed, it's not actually being dealt with. So a lot of our menstrual cycles are irregular because they've never had the chance to become regular number two, again, disease so certain conditions can lead to irregular menstrual cycle, your environment. So endocrine disrupters, things that are bad for your hormones, chemicals, toxins, what's constantly leaching into our foods, our air our water. After that can lead to irregular menstrual cycle and then lead to infertility see how these things kind of stack up together. And genetic you can have menstrual irregularity because of genetic things. And of course, there are some things that we just simply can't explain what is the best piece of advice that you've ever received? Oh my goodness, there's a swan that I read in a book recently. This is the book actually that we're reading for book club, the almanac of navall Raava. Khan. And it said, inspiration is perishable. act on it immediately. So don't expect to think that just because you have this inspiring thought that you can kind of like shelf it and come back to it. That's not how inspiration works. If we don't act on it, immediately, we will lose the juice the ideas, and it just won't be the same as when you got that idea. And you became obsessed with it and you want to do it, you know what I'm saying? How has been a podcast host changed your perspective on life and wellness. It's shown me that as much as the internet and technology can subtract from our wellness, think about how much we've also gained for wellness for life, just because of people putting out and sharing information sharing the things that they're passionate about sharing about health, every day that I get on tick tock, there's someone putting something out there that nobody had anything about. And they said, Hey, I went and I got tested for this and it changed my life. So being a podcast host has shown me how important it is to talk about things, how important it is to talk about the things you're struggling about. Because if you can talk about those things, you make other people feel a little bit better, and you make them feel like they're not alone. And just hosting the stellar cycles podcast has shown me that you can draw together a random group of 300 people who don't know you, but they fuck with your content. And they feel like they can take something from it. And they keep coming back and showing up. And that's amazing. So I love doing solar cycles for you guys. Oh, not me getting emotional Jesus Christ. Okay, how do I recognize and address hormonal imbalances in my cycle? Well, this one can be a little tough because I think that hormonal imbalance is this buzzword that's just been thrown out and thrown out and thrown out on social media. I don't think our hormones could ever be fully balanced. But I think we all know when something doesn't feel right in our bodies. And that's how you can recognize it. Okay, like, do I feel like I should be able to do this workout, but I can't do it. And I feel really bad about it. Or I feel like something's broken about me. Or let's say like, how come my menstrual cramps are always plaguing me, right? So you recognize hormonal imbalances by recognizing frustrations or problems with your cycle. And from there, you can find solutions because right you can use the search engines you can use tick tock, you can use Instagram, YouTube, whatever you want. And go from there. See how other people are dealing with it? Can you share some of your future plans or goals for the podcast, I can share a little bit. I definitely want to keep this going. And I really want to get picked up by a broadcasting network. Get some sponsors, start monetizing the show make some money, make it better that way for you guys be able to pay my producer more be able to pay for a video studio. And yeah, just grow it put out more content for you guys more maybe like ebooks, free things that you guys can use for your cycle tracking? What are some of the best apps and methods for tracking your cycle? I don't really know many people who use the paper to pen method but apps kind of our the best way to track especially because we always all have our phones on us when I used to work in the ultrasound field and I asked a woman Hey, when was the last date of your menstrual period. The ones that had their phones on them knew the ones that didn't like them and I was like, okay, that's not helpful. So knowing the first day of your last menstrual period so when did you last period start super important in this world to find a way to track that you can track it using the health app in your iPhone. However that one's like not very comprehensive. It just kind of is built into the health app. Stardust is really cute. It's good Q has like cute Moon artwork and neon it's very, very cute stellar cycles had our own app it would be Stardust, so try out stardust. If you are tracking your ovulation, you are going to want to use pre mom so you can buy their ovulation strips on Amazon. And then it comes with an app that you can download and you can track your cycle track your values every single result that you got for your ovulation and then if you do become pro admit it turns into a pregnancy app. So it's kind of nice. And what other one um 28. Wellness is really good because they have exercise ideas and recipes, which the other apps don't really do. So those are going to be your apps you can track on your health app 28 wellness, Stardust and pre mom, those are kind of my favorites. What's the most interesting thing you've learned from a guest on your show? I had my coworker on the show. And the most interesting thing that I learned was that your ovary can explode inside your body and cause crazy internal bleeding. So that episode is called when your ovaries act up with Shawna dettol. So go back and listen to that one super interesting story about how she almost lost her life and how she came back from that. And lastly, how can listeners support and get more involved with stellar cycles? That's that's a cute question. You guys are so sweet. Well, the best thing that you guys can do is follow the show follow on iTunes follow on Spotify. It's called stellar cycles. And what else you can do if you really want to make my day is go to the show on your phone, you're going to scroll to till you find some stars till you find writer review, and you're gonna fill in those stars. And please leave us a review. I really love to read whatever you guys like to leave for us. So with that this episode of Star cycles is coming to an end, our very first q&a episode, which I really, really enjoyed, because this makes me feel like I'm getting some feedback from you guys. And I'm getting to know more and more of like what you want to hear more about. So super useful to content creator. And I will see you guys over on our Instagram page at stellar cycles pod. You can download a free grocery guide that I have for you in my bio, if you want to know what kind of foods you want to eat for whatever phase you're in, what days those phases are, go ahead and grab that grocery guide for free in my bio at stellar cycles pod on Instagram. And until next time, spread the good word about stellar cycles to your fellow women. And let's all elevate our lives, our cycles and our dreams together. Till next time stellar cycles out