EPI 66 - Decoding Women's Health & Hormones

Welcome to The Habit Within! Quick life update: school's out, and we're off to summer adventures, including a unique canoe trip for my son in Northern Ontario – a true "trust fall" for us parents!  We're also planning a move to South Austin after 13 years in our current home. 

Before we dive in, let me know your summer plans! 

Today's episode is all about what's fundamentally wrong with how we approach women's health.  I'm passionate about advocating for a new, more understanding perspective. 

Don't forget my free 21-day series, "Feel Your Best: Holistic Practices for Energy, Vitality, and Confidence in Perimenopause and Beyond," for women 35+.  Join us!  The feedback has been incredibly positive. 

Here are some key points we get wrong:

• Women aren't just smaller men. We metabolize medications differently, yet most drug trials are done on men.  Our cyclical nature is a feature, not a flaw. 
  
  
• Women's health is more than just vaginas and breasts. OBGYNs are primarily surgeons, often lacking training in areas like sex hormones, adrenal, or thyroid function.  Hormones affect our entire body, including the brain. 
  
  
• Outdated exams can be traumatic. The speculum exam is archaic and often performed without consent.  Trauma-informed care is essential.  Notably, obese women face significant barriers to exams due to bias.  You can even perform some self-exams! 
  
  
• Labs are just snapshots. They provide data but don't tell the whole story, as hormones fluctuate constantly.  Trust your intuition and look for patterns, not just numbers. 
  
  
• Pain isn't "all in your head." Unexplained chronic pain in women is often dismissed but can be linked to stored trauma.  Your body is giving you information. 
  
  
• Don't ignore your intuition. The female brain is wired for interconnectivity, blending emotion and logic.  Trust your inner voice for clarity and vitality. 
  
  
• There's a lack of midlife education. Hormonal shifts are a normal transition, not a "broken state."  We need to honor our body's wisdom, including our menstrual cycles. 
  
  
  

Please share this podcast if it resonated with you and leave a review!  I'd love to hear from you! 

If you’re tired of feeling exhausted, irritable, moody, and just not like yourself, schedule a free 30-minute consultation so I can help you feel like YOU again
Fill out this brief application to schedule a free 30-minute call.

Love the show? Leave a 5-star review, and let me know what hit home for you.

Find me on Instagram @camille_kinzler and leave me a DM!

Transcript

(0:00 - 29:59)

The episode is all about what we get wrong about women's health. I am really in this. I am Now really wanting to become or I guess I should say I always have been but wanting to become more vocal about this being an advocate for Women's health like the new world women's health Welcome to the habit within this podcast is for high achieving women 35 and older who seem to have it All together but feel like they're constantly running on fumes Struggling to balance it all and losing sight of the woman.

They used to be i'm camille kinsler a former physician assistant Turned transformational coach blending science positive psychology and a metaphysical approach to habits health and vitality If you've ever asked yourself, why am I so exhausted even after a full night's sleep or I feel like i'm juggling so much But i'm just barely keeping my head above water. You are in the right place each week We'll explore the real reasons behind feeling overwhelmed trapped in the cycle of overworking and constantly running low on energy And how to break free from the patterns keeping you stuck in survival mode It's time to stop living on autopilot and to start feeling like yourself again Let's dive in. Hey, welcome back to another episode of the habit within Let me just catch you up on my life a little bit.

I would love to know what's going on in your world, too So hit me up email me message me. All of my info is in the show notes So yeah, what's going on in my world is we are wrapping up the school year we have Only a day left and tomorrow is a short day and then we are Adventuring into the summer where we do quite a bit of travel We are going to visit some dear dear friends in the pacific northwest in Oregon and then in washington then we're headed over to toronto and northern ontario for Some canoeing and also dropping my son off for a three and a half week canoe trip up in northern ontario It's fantastic. It is such a beautiful um camp for Kids who I think are around 12 13 years old.

It's a really beautiful coming of age Adventure for them. It allows them to have freedom it allows them to Work within a small group of people with two adults who are mentoring them and guiding them along the process It challenges them and they also get to be kids and have so much fun and they're completely disconnected from The world really they have no access to social. I don't even think there's internet access I think the uh, the counselors just have satellite phones and it's one of those camps where they let you know when the kids arrive so they You drop them off at the dock and then they take a little puddle jumper jumper plane to a small little island In ontario and then they let you know when they reach the main camp you get one email and then you don't hear From the camp at all and the main camp doesn't hear from the campers or the counselors The entire time they're out.

The only time they will hear from the counselors and the campers is if something is wrong So it is a complete trust fall and I think I actually had an episode last august about the camp and about the trust fall and the importance of just trusting that Everything is going to be fine instead of dress rehearsing pain and disappointment Which I talk about a lot as well how we can really get in our heads when we dress rehearse the worst case scenario Is actually just dress rehearse the best case scenario and it typically always goes in that direction So yeah, so that's what's happening. And then we're coming back to austin Just my son and my husband and I as we leave our oldest up in ontario And then we might go to colorado. It all depends on if we sell our house and buy a new house so that's in the You know, that's that's something that we're looking forward to doing we've been in Our home currently for 13 years and we've grown out of it.

I mean I have now two full-size men here I have one that's going to catch up very quickly and then there's me and our house is tiny and so we need We need more space So i'm really excited about that. So we're going to move to south austin and we are currently in central austin And it feels like a completely different city moving to south austin It has a different feel a different vibe so um, yeah, so with that, you know when you have to move a whole Home that you've been in for 13 years. It's not it's not uh It's not easy right it's not easy it takes a lot of preparation so Yeah, hoping um that it all goes smoothly.

And again would love to know what your summer plans are I Want you to know before we go into the episode the episode is all about. Oh my gosh I didn't even tell you guys the episode is all about what we get wrong about women's health I am really in this I am Now really wanting to become or I guess I should say I always have been but wanting to become more vocal about this being an advocate for Women's health like the new world women's health And so in this episode, we're going to talk about kind of what we get what we have wrong about women's health today and um And potentially, you know how we can look at it and change it for the future or maybe this will bring awareness to you In hopes that you're like, oh my gosh, that is right. That's why i'm not understood That's why I don't feel connected to my provider That's why I've never received the answer that I felt was adequate or right about what's going on with me So we'll dive into that um, but before we do that, I just want to remind you guys about the Series I have going on.

It's um, let's see. What is it called again? It is feel your best holistic practices for energy vitality and confidence in perimenopause and beyond so if you are 35 and older so 35 to 80 Plus you are welcome to join this series. It's absolutely free We are in day four of it right now.

There's 21 days. You have plenty of time So jump in go to the show notes access it for free And yeah, it's been phenomenal so far. I've received so much positive feedback I'm actually going to kind of look over some of the stuff that I have that people have sent me about the The series so far one woman said oh my gosh I was crying at minute seven of dr.

Tabatha's interview also at minute 18 Such a huge wave of gratitude and full body. Yes confirmation for trusting my intuition So when we hear from other women who have walked the path before us and illuminated the path Then it gives us permission to it also gives us permission to look back at maybe some decisions that we made that were Difficult or that went um outside of what was the recommendation and we can say oh my gosh I am so glad that i'm finally getting confirmation You know, sometimes we need that To feel like I made the correct decision and then somebody else wrote And said let's see here um Uh said oh my gosh, gab Bria is so fabulous. What golden nuggets i've sent it to four of my best friend groups and then we go into Like I asked her what were her golden nuggets and she mentioned stuff just about how pleasure can simply Just be something that you do for yourself for joy and for no one else We are asking our bodies to be olympians, but not treating them that way She had so many other ahas Those are just a couple of the feedback that i'm getting from this series So jump in it is so good.

It is so free And it's there for you. Yeah for you so many great nuggets All right So let's go ahead and we'll jump into today's episode about what we have wrong about women's health and we're going to start with This one is that first off. We are just we are not just smaller men That's not what we are Women are not just smaller men um, this is kind of similar to when I was in my medical school education and Pediatricians during my rotations would say kids aren't just small adults meaning you don't treat kids like they're just small adults Yeah, so children are not just little adults children metabolize drugs differently than adults and women are not just little men We as well metabolize medications differently than men do not to mention that Pharmaceutical trials are typically not done on women Because of our hormonal cycles were considered too complicated for clinical trials.

So most drug testing Is done on men and this still influences how medications diagnosis and treatments are delivered even today So our cyclical nature isn't a flaw. It's a feature of women and we It makes us definitely more Unpredictable, but we are rhythmic. So we do have some rhythm to the way that our bodies function But really y'all until medicine sees that It can't really serve us until we know a medication has been tried on women Then we can't really trust it.

And I think it was like not until the early 90s and I could be wrong about this but Not until the early 90s where pharmaceutical drugs tested on on women. It was just considered like just too complicated So they didn't Number two is women's health is not just vaginas and breasts Obgyns, okay. This is really interesting.

So obgyns are primarily trained as surgeons I don't think that very many of us recognize that so while it's really important during childbirth and Gynecological surgeries like colposcopies and leaps and such And you know c-sections and all of that. It's is very limited when it comes to sex hormones Very limited or adrenal function or thyroid function or let's just not even you know Mention midlife and the changes in the brain and in the body that happened during them during midlife. So So often even when we go to a female Obgyn the their education just isn't there and it isn't their fault.

They just weren't trained. They're trained as surgeons They're not trained in endocrinology per se. So it's very good to remember that they're human too.

And so you can come with your own uh experience your own education your own Um Resources and help educate your obgyn and I think even the recognition that we have estrogen receptors All throughout our body isn't as well known either And so you're not just your uterus and your hormones do affect other organ systems including your brain So if you have been told that your symptoms aren't related to your hormones that you should go to somebody else Number three is the trauma of outdated exams who can raise their hand and say that they Hate getting a speculum exam So the speculum exam hasn't evolved for I don't know 180 years or so public exams are often performed With either these plastic speculums or metal speculums and there's usually no consent process no awareness of what's going to happen no awareness of the trauma that The exam itself might have on you. So What is trauma-informed care? So let's talk about that really quickly if that doesn't sound like a familiar term to you It's a model of care that assumes people May have experienced trauma in their life. You don't ask you don't have to dive into it You just assume that maybe they have and therefore what you do is you prioritize safety and consent And body autonomy and emotional support And every single interaction so it's less about telling somebody what to do and asking their consent Asking if it's okay if I touch your leg, is it okay that I use a speculum? Is it okay if I insert it this way and actually step by step explaining what the process is going to be? And this is so important, especially Since nearly one in three women have experienced some sort of sexual violence or violation And this isn't even to mention obese women they are 40 to 40 to 50 percent less likely to receive Pelvic or breast exams due to shame Provider bias and trauma and this is just a personal story when I was a provider There was a obese woman who would come and see me She would always come at the very last minute the very last second of the day and she would always just want to connect and talk and tell me about her family and and then also she would always have a something that was really hard to pinpoint diagnose, so it was always typically vague like abdominal pain or um, she would have fatigue or She would just feel a little bit dizzy.

So things that took more of a workup So she and I became quite close over the years that I provided care to her and then one day she came in And she was telling me that she felt a mass in her breast And so when I asked if I could do a breast exam on her I walked through this trauma-informed care There was indeed a breast mass and I asked her about This how long she had had it and she said that she had had it for quite a while But no one asked to take off her shirt when she would go to the er and other places they wouldn't do a thorough breast exam on her and she said It's because that it was hard for her to lay back on the table and they would always ask for her to lay back on the little You know narrow hard exam tables Which not only was hard for her to lay back and stay steady on but also to get up from And so she said that no one really wanted to do a breast exam on her So they would just kind of do it through her clothes and say everything was fine Um, yeah, so it's real. It's true. It's there.

It's out there. It's not something that's being Um Dramatized it's it's um, it's a reality So anyway, if your healthcare experience has felt unsafe or triggering triggering that is completely valid trauma-informed care Is just not a luxury. It's basic requirement I believe and so important for true healing you have to trust and believe in your healthcare provider in order to receive Uh, you know the healing of the people around you and the trust it's it's very important when we're on this path Um, just to let you know that you can do your own pap smear like it is actually I think in 2022 and maybe it was before that.

Um The if you if you read the instructional component of a pap smear it does say that self-exam is as accurate So you can look that up and you can give it to your primary care provider your ob-gyn Your family practice doctor whoever does your pap smears and let them know that hey, I can do this on my own especially if you have Um vaginal discharge you want to see if it's a yeast infection or if it's bacterial vaginosis You can also do self exams The other thing that I want to mention about that is there sometimes like if you're having like irregular bleeding or abdominal pain They'll still want to do a pelvic exam and that's just good practice and good medicine But for other things that are routine, I mean girl you can do it yourself and it's super easy It's like less invasive than putting a tampon in number four Labs are a snapshot not the whole story. Okay I know that we've heard all about the importance of getting A labs done when you're looking at your hormones specifically, but this is goes for everything I mean, these are just little snapshots in time if you take them an hour later or an hour after that it can change That's when if you ever go to the er and you have lab work done. They typically will check it again in 24 hours if not sooner because it changes so quickly So just remember this And this goes both ways if your providers rely solely on labs so let's say that you're coming in for perimenopausal symptoms and And they're like well, we just want to check and see what your estrogen and testosterone and progesterone are doing and they're normal And so they don't do anything even though you're having all of these symptoms then that can be an issue or It's the other way around That if they only look at labs and they don't look at you that's a problem too so you can't rely fully on labs I you know, this is really delicate I'm kind of of the camp if you're in a certain age range If you have these symptoms if we've ruled out other things then we can call a spade a spade we can get Baseline labs to see how they've changed they change over the years But I wouldn't necessarily only depend on the lab values that you receive in that moment You know, it's more of historical data that I would refer to Because babe, you're not a number your hormones fluctuate daily If not hourly your labs provide some data, but they do not tell the whole story.

So true health is Pat is a pattern you want to look at your patterns that you have. It's cyclical you have to kind of experiment with What's going on in your world and how your symptoms fluctuate and then also how your hormones can fluctuate? So we must reclaim the right to trust our own inner knowing It's very important and that's going to be one of our our tips here and you need to pair that with How to interpret the data like really interpret it well with somebody who knows how to interpret data Along with symptoms so in tandem and not just take one without the other and I think most importantly I just want to give you the power to Interpret your own cycles and symptoms and signs and really not wait for a provider to necessarily validate that You can go in and say, you know This is what i'm noticing when this happens this happens when i'm under extreme stress This is what i'm what happens where I have this symptom and you know That was related to this and that will really help you come into partnership with your provider number five pain being dismissed is completely psychological, okay, so Women with chronic pelvic pain or abdominal pain or pain with urination without Infection and then you're told that it's in your head or that you need to take some sort of antidepressant because you're depressed It was really interesting. So when I was in my medical school program This is the first time I had really heard about this idea of mind body Medicine or mind body connection.

Okay, an interesting story is when I was in my medical program I had heard about this gastroenterologist and I can't remember his name because the story felt really inconsequential at the time But I so wish I remembered it because this was ingrained has been ingrained in my memory about this mind body medicine piece or how our mind and our bodies are connected, but there was this gastroenterologist and He would see a lot of women would be referred to his clinic for unexplained abdominal pain and they would do Exploratory surgeries and imaging and tests and all of these things and nothing would be found So it would still be considered unexplained And then he just had this idea that he would start asking women about their trauma history So diving even a little bit deeper into their medical history their past history And he also noticed that when they started to speak about their past experience with trauma Then their abdominal pain would resolve or improve and so What he ended up doing actually is hiring a psychologist Who is on staff at his clinic and so it was kind of one of the requirements to go through this um To go through Kind of the stepwise approach in order to really figure out what the abdominal pain was about And what he noticed is is that there was a connection between the mind and the body and Then you know there's been a lot of work done since then and a book that was written that you guys definitely should read if it's If it interests you it's called the body keeps score And this really explains how trauma really gets stored in our bodies and often can be Can present itself as pain or fatigue? or chronic illness and women Um again another plug for this series I have a couple women who talk directly to that about autoimmune disease and illness and women and how that can be Related to trauma and some other stepwise approach in order to help cure yourself of that So the message here is that pain without a visible cause is not imaginary. Okay. This is just information Your body is giving you information.

So listening to your body's wisdom can be profound It can really create relief so Don't let your provider provider just dismiss you As just something that's psychological or something that's in your head that you know It's this mind body connection. Your body's trying to tell you something and so it's really trying to decode it Number six is don't dismiss your intuition and the way the female brain actually works the female brain Is built for interconnectivity. So with more communication between the hemispheres allowing for Emotion and logic to coexist.

Can you imagine those two both coexisting together? Yes, they do and we experience it every single day So this idea of brain coherence is when our brains are in a state of coherence So when thought feeling and psychology are all aligned We experience more of clarity peace and vitality And when we have hormonal shifts and trauma and stress when all of that disrupts our coherence Especially while the in midlife this can feel very disoriented but we Are super powerful and we're powerful portals of healing if you will so Your intuition isn't just sort of like kind of this fringy concept like it's neurologically Neurobiologically built in your reality. So really recognizing again that brain body connection too that There is something more that we might not recognize is there but we need to learn to trust that intuition That is telling us that something is wrong or better yet that something is right and we want to keep doing it so Really building that brain body coherence again to where you feel the sense of clarity peace and vitality and if you don't then knowing that something is off and Maybe that means that you need to get a little what I like to call bridge medicine to support your your hormone Hormonal shift so you can get back into that coherence or maybe it's resolving some underlying trauma or stress That's in your life And again, this is your opportunity to really look and see what's helpful. What is your medicine for the moment? Is it breathwork? Is it sound healing? Is it talk therapy? Is it taking a trip with your girlfriends only? What is it for you? Is it listening to great music and driving in your car with the windows rolled down? I mean figure out what that is for you and um and Recognize if you have that calm Calmness and peace and vitality that comes through when you actually check in with your intuition and say, you know Maybe i'm feeling a little bit anxious or off because i'm ignoring something within So start doing that and that's also so important when we go in to see our provider and we Have the confidence to not just say I'm anxious and then somebody's saying that oh, it's just a chemical imbalance like no There's something else in there inside something else that needs to be maybe Adjusted and again, that could be with just some bridge medicine for a little bit maybe it's a A slight hormonal imbalance or something else that could be going wrong in the body Maybe it's a release of some of the stored energy that we have in our bodies Just really just start to listen and not override your inner voice or let anybody else tell you that it's not important number seven is the lack of midlife education, so We are changing and evolving as women once our hormones shift down Then we actually go into this different phase of our life and if we're not aware if we don't have the support from others, then that means that um If we don't have the support from our providers or from other people who know that this shift Isn't a problem like you're not in a problem moment.

You're just in this transition phase in your life That's like kind of reverse puberty in a way. It's also what happens during pregnancy, you know, we can have all of these shifts in perimenopause and menopause that shifts our brain chemistry and our metabolism and our albedo emotional clarity, but it's okay Like we can we can have the support that we need in order to move through this stage And it's also completely normal and I feel like that's what is not being spoken about enough But yes, it may feel like our body is is betraying us in a way, but it's actually not Can we just say that it's actually not It's telling us that we need some adjustments that we need to look and see where in our life that we might Not be the happiest or that we could Listen to our own to our own intuition more or that we could get some of that bridge medicine to support us with But that this isn't a broken state And it's nothing that we actually do need to fix That we just need to really find out where kind of the fear is or where we're suppressing Who we really are and I mean i'm hoping the people who are listening to this know now that um that this is This is very true to me this is um Gosh, how can I say this that? I don't even like using the word woo anymore because I feel like that's so outdated like we're just not there as a culture and society anymore that We understand that there's more more to us more to the world Um more to our bodies these intelligent Beings that we are um so Yeah, so really being aware of all of these Parts of us right that we are not only our body but we are Our mind that we're not only our mind that we are spirit and we're energetic beings who are affected by what is around us, so sometimes we have to Stop scrolling and get off the news and so we can come back into balance into homeostasis so just Recognize that This lack of midlife education is a real problem when we're looking at women's health because we're looking at it as a problem and it isn't Yeah, that felt really good to say it felt it feels really healing for me to say it and for me to hear it And it also as we're talking about midlife education also the education around our cycles when we're growing up Gosh I so wish I would have known the power of cycle thinking of really looking at My cycle as something that was powerful and that sometimes I was going to feel more outgoing and sometimes I was going to feel more introverted and sometimes sometimes I was going to feel sad and and I was going to have kind of my Confidence was going to waver and then sometimes I was going to feel on top of the world and that All happens within a month every month and it's completely there to be honored That would have been life-changing So that's another thing that we have wrong and women's health is not really honoring our menstrual cycle Especially when we have it regularly. Oh my gosh to go back in the day where I could be more in sync with that would Is I feel like would truly have been a gift.

Okay. Let me know if there's anything I missed I actually feel like I could have gone on and on and on about this, but I will leave it here Please please please share this podcast if you find it at all interesting or inspiring or Anything because that really just helps with the algorithm or leave me a review. That would be really awesome too five-star review review would be great and and You know, they always say just give one action item, but just pick one of these