Ep 142. Healing from Post-Birth Control Syndrome

Become aware of the common impacts of coming off of hormonal birth control:

• Adverse effects of hormonal contraceptives
• How to tell if you are experiencing post-birth control syndrome
• Why holistic treatment is needed to fully recover
• The 4 pillars for naturally healing from post-birth control syndrome

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You're at home with Kelly and Tiffany, and I will never hesitate on introducing the podcast again, last Kelly awkwardly, get in there and try to do it. Too little to no satisfaction for herself. I even press the record button thinking. Maybe I'll just do it quickly and see what happens when you think that is going to satisfy you. Do you think that is going to bring you ultimate comfort? No last week. The last time we recorded, it was it was a subpar experience. All right. So let's just, we'll stay in our own lanes. I'm Kelly. And I'm Tiffany and you're at home with us. Isn't it. Lovely. Two licensed midwives. From sunny San Diego. Arguing about how to introduce the podcast. Hopefully, this is not the first time you've tuned into us. Nope. But maybe it is because of this topic that we're talking about is going to appeal to a lot of people, because I feel like this is something that makes women or that people care providers make women feel crazy as they deal with it. Oh, right. I mean, even while I was doing a little bit of research to kind of like him in some of the pieces that I wanted to share here today. The first 10 things that come up on post-birth control syndrome are all of the ridiculous medical based websites that are like, this is something that has been coined by the alternative health community, but has absolutely no basis in research or diagnosing factors. Just delete, delete the wheat. That is insane. It's insane because we see women coming in. We hear like, whenever we share about this on social media, It is always like the comments are always just flooded. On how birth control coming off of birth control, sorting out the shattered pieces of doing that has been such a journey for women. And some women years later are still trying to hem those pieces in. So. Those people who write those kinds of articles. Can. I was going to say something mean, but they can go. What did my dad used to say, take a long walk off a short pier. I told that to my dog today. Oh, that's good. So I love research. I love evidence. I love. Scientific data. But. If that's the only thing that we're looking towards and we're passing over women's experiences and we're passing over Stories of real peoples. You know, Issues just to look at evidence, which is. We'll have to do an episode one day on how backwards evidence and science can be in certain ways. Then we're missing something in as we're caring for women in general. Yes for sure. And we all know there's not a lot of money. In getting women off of birth control, right? There's not a lot of money there, so there's not a lot of research there. The research is on or the focus and the, you know, the money-making is on keeping you on it, getting you on it quickly, keeping you on it for as long as possible. And heaven forbid. The, that someone takes responsibility for. Prescribing something without giving informed consent. Yep. She should we ish. Okay. Tomorrow is Halloween. Spooky. At the time that we're recording this episode. I don't know if you're going to have an answer to this question, but yeah, I do. Cause I know what question you're going to. Hey, so you're dressing up. Yep. And what are you dressing up as? So if you have, we introduced this sketch to Tiffany and her husband, but my husband and I have loved the Jimmy Fallon sketch. That involves Jimmy dressing up like a woman or a young girl, I guess that sounds really bad. That's not the greatest plug for my costume, but she dresses up as this girl named Sarah. Who's always like ill about stuff and it's, you know, her little teenage life, but she has the stepdad named Gary who is super embarrassing. And my husband just loves the character and speaks that way to like Tiffany's girls always whenever he sees them and whatnot. So anyway, we are being Sarah and step-down Gary, and you're going to be Sarah. I am. Yes. I'm going to be Sarah. And we're just thrifting or cost of putting it together as best we can. Yeah. Yeah. But it'll just be fun. Yeah. It'd be fun. You, my kids call your husband's stepdad, Gary. So when we're in a. When we're away from your family and my kids are talking about. Trevor and calling him stepdad, Gary. It's in a different circle. It's confusing. And for everyone to figure out who my children's stepdad is. This all tracks very much. What are you guys being? I don't know yet. Yeah. We have a couple different things. You know, my mom for my birthday last year made all of us. Kelly's family included. Surprise. Scottish. Colonial costumes. Like legit. So them all, even with like the little butt pillow situation happening at stellar, it was absolutely incredible. So my mom has some weird. Guilt leftover from something my childhood, probably that would, that would match. And so she really wanted to treat me. To a special surprise experience of my birthday last year. And threw me a Outlander themed birthday party. And I had no idea that she had spent nine months hand sewing costumes for everybody. And planned a theme to dinner and hired someone to come play bagpipes. It was, it was pretty epic. I do have to say that it was really funny because she planned it so early in advance, but she put the wrong date out to everybody. So it was on my, it was on my calendar for months. And then like the week before I was like, oh, oh, we changed that. Okay. Great. We made it work. No pressure. No, not at all. Anyway, so we have these, we have these costs, these really great costumes leftover, and I, I just truly can't think of any other time I would ever use them. And my husband's really excited about the kilt thing. He really embraced that wants to do it again. So we might, that's probably what we'll do because we already have it, but I also, there's also some other fun ones. Like I'd love to do a Royal tenon bomb. Costume and family costume, or like an eighties rocker cost. I don't know. There's lots of great options out there. How many fun ones. All right. So tomorrow's Halloween, everybody be safe out there. We had a birth. The day after Halloween, once we were called on Halloween to someone's labor and they didn't give birth till technically the next day. And we showed up in our Halloween costumes because it was just moving quickly. And you were dressed as poppy from trolls, literally my hair up and like a top knot, like crazy top knot that was sprayed pink. So I show up trying to be a professional. Bright pink hair. Yep. Also we did a transport at that birth. So when the paramedics came, we were still in our costumes, which is making us look even more professional. Ah, content, ah, Such good times. Those were the days. Oh, my word. All right. I have a review to read and then we are going to jump in. Great. Go ahead, Kelly, tell us the, tell us the name of the person who's left this review. Okay. It is. McCardy. Mick McCarty MC or a McCartney. Or like it's looks like kind of short for microphone. So like maybe Mike McCarty, Mike. I'm going to go with mic mic sounds maybe a little more feminine. Okay. So the title of this review is favorite midwives and everything that McHardy mix says in the review is very positive. Very sweet. Very affirming. There's only one problem with this review. I think she accidentally gave us four stars instead of five McCarty mic McCarty mic. I'm going to read your review because I just trust and believe that you've made a mistake that you will fix. You're your free drink is awaiting your five-star. As soon as you correct your, your rating, you can claim your free drink. But this is, it starts out like this. I would give them 10 stars if I could, but I won't. From before, but so far. So I trust the shipment to give us five. Yeah. Right. So then I will go ahead and read it. I'll allow it. They have hearts of gold and not only are they wise and funny, but they love Jesus. I've learned so much from them, everything, birth to overall health of women. If they lived in Florida, I would 100% use them as my birth team. Thank you for all that you guys do. It's truly appreciated. Love your postpartum doula, Michelle from hot Florida. Hey, hot Florida. So all signs point to five stars. Yep. She would have 100% habits at her birth. She probably wouldn't have a four-star midwife at her birth. I wouldn't know me. Diamond doesn't out there. Let me tell you. The five stars where it's out. Well, you reach out to us. McHardy mic. If you hear us sharing this. And you come with a heart of repentance. And a humility to change your review. Then we can continue. With the arrangements. Oh, that's great. Okay. One exciting announcement. We have a new resource in our shop. I know it seems like that is happening in every single episode because it is. This is the tiny year where we like to release all of the things that we've been working on throughout the year and get them in people's hands for the end of the year. So that next year we can start a whole nother little group of resources. That was our goal. This year. So, in haste and. Expedience. We are pushing some resources out there for you. And this one is an at-home hormone handbook. It is only $10 and we formulated this handbook because. We're slowing down on our consult offerings. And so we created a resource that we could give to women to start working on their hormone health. At home on their own. And we have listed out the framework inside of this handbook for how we walk women through our virtual or in-person consult process. And so we. I lined everything up to like, this is what we would share with you in person. These are the things we would consult you on. This is the way that you can design a hormone balancing plan for yourself and how to walk that out over a three month period of time and exactly what to do and changes to implement and how to know if it's working or not. And some benchmarks for making changes and all of that. We, we put that all inside a resource because that was the most common thing that we were seeing. Women for, and knowing that towards the end of the year, we're slowing things down. We're not offering. Those types of consults as much. We wanted to get these into women's hands who are interested in going through that process and do $10 in comparison to the money that it costs to have a consultation with us and all of those things. A steal of a deal, for sure. So, we hope you get to. Jump in on that. Enjoy it. And what's really awesome is you literally can have your own individualized care plan from home. And then you can assess your own. Progress. Yeah, pretty awesome. Absolutely. So. Symptoms like fatigue, extra weight, mood swings, gut problems. Regular or painful periods. Mental overwhelm that is all included and how to kind of sort through those pieces and tailor a hormone balancing plan for yourself. Yeah, for sure. All the herbs, supplements, nutrition, detox, all the things all in there for you, stuff that I wish that I had. A lot sooner than I have had it in my adult life. And I also think just what we're talking about today in our podcast is something that I wish I had. A lot earlier as well, just being somebody who got put on birth control very early in life, not specifically for actual birth control, but for. Periods that were heavy or wa I forget actually what the real driving will cause was, but it was like, I don't really want to talk about it or deal with it. We just want to like put a cap on that and let's just contain it here. Having only like, I don't know, maybe six months worth of cycle experience and then changing everything about what my body was doing. Not much. Advocacy. You know, as like a 16 year old or 15 year old, however old I was. But we don't want that for other women. Yeah. I mean, informed consent is severely lacking in this space. For example, here are 10 most common side effects of being on birth control. And I'm telling you that this is about 40 to 60% of women. Aren't going to experience some. Degree of these. Spotting between periods, nausea, breast tenderness, headaches, and migraine weight gain mood changes, missed periods, decreased libido changed vaginal discharge and eye changes. Like your vision changes on birth control. So we're taking something that like your body is supposed to be doing and we're shutting it down. So most medication is like trying to help these different systems in some way. Birth control is basically shutting it down and no one really talks about those side effects when discussing. With women, like here's an option of something to get on. So those, you know, that you just listed. There's like lesser studied risks of more long-term issues, right. That we even see in women coming into our practice, gut health issues, blood clots stroke, especially if you're over the age of 35, that is like a much higher risk there. Adrenal issues, thyroid disease, anxiety, depression. There's a tripled rate of suicide. For women in this category, that's mindblowing. I had to go verify that in several different locations, because I had read it in an article that cited it and then I was like, there's absolutely no way that that's true, because I've heard that statistic floating around. It is. And it's a big study too. Yeah, it is. It is absolutely terrible. And women are made to feel like they are crazy for thinking that these things are linked. It was interesting national geographic posted something on Instagram about like how great birth control was. And I'm not kidding, women's showed up, but a lot of the comments there were about this in particular and struggles with mental health stuff. So it doesn't even stop there. There's increased risk of certain cancers and nutritional deficiency, especially things like magnesium, vitamin B, zinc antioxidants. It's very depleting. Hormonal birth control is very depleting. We also don't actually really. We know the long-term effects of, like I was saying, it actually literally shuts down your reproductive system for years, potentially decades at a time. So we don't, we don't fully understand the full vision of what that is doing to women. So the benefits may outweigh the risks for a particular woman at that particular time. But you have to be given all the information like you just, you simply have to. I mean, we, you need to know that this is a potential possibility for you and not in like a, oh, I want to terrify you and demonize. This particular medication? No, it's just the reason there's an uproar about it is because that is not happening at the time that it's being prescribed. So women are being prescribed a medication that they have. Absolutely no idea what the implications might be. And a lot of women don't discover what a sham it can be until they're trying to get off of it. Yes. And then they're like, what the heck, man, this is a disaster. Yeah, for sure. So, the whole idea of post-birth control syndrome. It's basically a term used for symptoms that happen after you stop the hormonal birth control. Right. So it can last weeks. It can last months. For some women, as I'm sifting through stuff, just online, some women are on the long haul journey because of this. But that can include some of the symptoms of it can include acne, no menstrual periods, right months, potentially year at a time, right. Hair loss, anxiety. It's thought to be triggered because of those deficiencies that happen. W just how depleting hormonal birth control actually is. But also, obviously there's a really abrupt change that's happening in your body and your hormones, right? Trying to return to that baseline, to that homeostasis while the root cause of potential previous hormone imbalances, maybe Y Y you got on the pill in the first place. All of a sudden those are starting to be activated again and maybe more upset than they were. You know, beforehand kind of coming back with a vengeance. And so, the idea is that this is a real thing that women are, are dealing with, but there are steps to actually heal. These symptoms heal from a root cause space. And the ideas behind it is really about replenishing, right? Birth control is very depleting. So we're all about replenishing these different spaces. So replenishing nutrient stores. Replenishing gut health, detoxing, excess hormones, holistically addressing some of those hormone imbalance issues. To help your body just start communicating better again, everything's been shut down. So it really has to sort of come alive again. And we need to, or we can step in and help it do that. The best that it can. Yeah. And the reason that we're sharing on this in particular is because we see a ton of women in our office who are coming off birth control and trying to get pregnant. And there's a lot of other great reasons to get off birth control, but I would say that's probably number one is women. At some point after being on birth control for maybe 10 or 15 years are like, okay, now I'm finally ready to get pregnant. I'm going to go off the pill. And my doctor said that my fertility should resume. Immediately, and now it's been a year and a half and I barely just got my P my cycles regular again, and I'm not getting pregnant and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so at that point, we step in and help out a little bit. But when somebody is coming off of a hormonal contraceptive for the concept of getting pregnant, we recommend at least nine months. Of being off of your hormonal contraceptive before you will be wanting to get pregnant, because that is the average amount of time that it takes for things to regulate for most women. Yeah, which some women may be like that sucks. I didn't really want to hear that. And of course, women get pregnant earlier than that, but this is in terms of like, if you want to have a thoughtful, intentional preconception period where you use that time to replenish yourself. So a lot of these things can be done that we're going to talk about while you're still on birth controls. You're like trying to, you know, prepping to come off of it or something. But no matter what, you're still taking something that is messing with your hormone balance, your like the depletion, all of that. And so. It is it's unfortunate, but it is just, it's near, it is actually impossible to fully hormonally balance yourself while you're still on the pill or any hormonal contraceptive. So it's all about coming off of it. Certainly preparing yourself well for that, but then supporting your body after the fact. Yeah, we got four main ways that we want to equip you ladies with. And the first is liver support. So to help your body process, the synthetic hormones and get them out of your circulation, you need to support your chief detox organ, which is your liver. Some of the ways to do that are nettle dandy, lion milk. Fussell. Those can all be taken in tinctures or capsules or herbal infusions. You can also benefit from 70 plus. So the minimum of 70 grams of protein that is a liver support. Supported option for you and three to four liters of clear fluids every single day. Is optimal for liver function. You need to pay special attention to keeping detox pathways open during this time. Like sweating. Pooping. Lymphatic drainage. And a lot of women find castor oil packs and dry brushing to be some of those detox supporting elements that just helps to get into some of those. Self care rituals for a lifetime, make it sustainable. In order to continue to process hormones, whether they're synthetic or happening organically in your body. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, I keep kind of harping on the idea that hormonal birth control is so depleting. So supplements usually need to come in and kind of fill in the gap. Of course, we always talk about nutrition. That's sort of like the basis of things. But because this is such a depleting medication. We really do consider supplements to be an important part of healing from these type of symptoms as you've come off of hormonal birth control. So it's, you know, it can be depleting to nutrient stores damaging to your gut health. So, things like zinc, magnesium, selenium, those minerals are all depleted by hormonal contraceptives and can be a huge help in boosting by taking them. By taking supplements with them. A quality pre and probiotic just to simply set the ground. Rules for your gut health. And then you can add in essential vitamins, like a methylated vitamin B complex, vitamin C vitamin E adaptogenic, herbal blends with like Rhodiola and ashwagandha. They helped to really ease the transition on the nervous system as well. And so we actually do have and we can put it in the show notes. A protocol on our Fullscript dispensary. For those of you who are like, I need everything that you just said, because this is a struggle for me. We have the entire protocol. Living in there. It's wonderful. So good. Okay. So Kelly mentioned nutrition, of course. I mean like that probably should have come first. I wish that that could have, that could be the biggest consideration, but I know that that's not necessarily the case for most women. No cause they don't care about nutrition, but because that's the biggest piece to fold in usually as nutrition changes, but some things. To keep in mind when you're coming off of hormonal birth control, your body is in a state of healing and recovery while it transitions from synthetic hormone metabolism to biological hormone, manufacturing, and production. And that can just be a bit of like a sputtering point for your body. You want to concentrate on foods that artist's specially dense in nutritional content. And if you go back to our traditional foods episode, you were going to find all the information. That you could have ever wanted about nutrient density, but we're talking like pastured animal products, organic fruits and vegetables, high quality fats. And foods that are designed for repair and fighting inflammation, really leaning into bone broth. Anti-inflammatories like ginger and garlic. Fermented foods and those types of things that are just really going to be nourishing, nutritive, supporting this is the time to really emphasize that. Yeah, for sure. I mean, we, we talk so much about how the gut. Just manages every thing. And the fact that hormonal birth control depletes so much of our gut microbiomes there's so much work that can be done nutritionally to support that. And another piece that also can be supportive in both that gut health aspect, but just all of this, as you are working through your own post-birth control syndrome stuff is all about stress management. So that sounds kind of silly cause they're like. Okay, cool. What am I supposed to do? Like just not be stressed or take out the stressful things in my life. It's not necessarily. Like yes, if you can set up boundaries and those types of things wonderful, but we can't actually just decrease all types of stress in our lives, but how we respond to them. We do have control over, right? So one of the most powerful tools that we have for fighting inflammatory processes like detox, Is to care for our nervous system. Well, and so to calm that in the different spaces where you can changing your habits and your sleep hygiene, to ensure that you're getting adequate sleep super important, focusing on more gentle exercise, rather than going all out all the time that in and of itself can be stressful for your body. Right? So focusing a bit more on that gentle movement, intentional movement, regular time outside in nature. Gratitude prayer practices surrounding yourself with healthy relationships, healthy boundaries. All of those pieces really goes a long way. In supporting your body during this time. But that's just good. These are all just good life lessons or like, you know, kind of life foundations to take you during this, but certainly beyond as well. Yeah. And so that's really the thing that I hope that Lee's take away from this information is that. Yes. Post-birth control syndrome is real. Yes. It needs attention and validation and support. However, the type of support to bring in right away is again, falling back on all of those pivotal pillars that are going to. Enhance your health in every single area. And so that was, that's the beautiful thing about holistic health is that. We're constantly coming back to foundation supporting foundations. There are rarely side effects. When you approach health. And treatment options from that perspective, because it's just all around. Good for everything. So although it is treating a specific type of issue in. Basically do you talk thing from birth control? These are all just beautiful, helpful, good things for women to be reminded of in practice in general. Yes, for sure. So hopefully this is this serves as an encouragement to you. If you are either on birth control, considering coming off. Or our Offit and our trying to find your grounding in what your body is doing and how it's responding that no, you are not crazy. And that coming off of birth control has many positives, right? You don't have to be on birth control to prevent pregnancy. I know that may ruffle some feathers, but like you actually really don't. There are many other ways to assess what's going on in your body and connect with your body which we have plenty of resources for on our website. And you don't. I don't have to be on birth control to balance hormones, because it's not actually going to balance your hormones. It may take away some of the symptoms that you're having, but we're not talking a root cause. Healing here we are talking. Band-aid. Over a gaping wound situation. So it may work in the interim, but it is not the longterm, right? So we have a whole host of resources and support for things like balancing hormones coming off of birth control, preventing pregnancy without using hormonal birth control. And all of that lives inside of our membership, which you've heard us talk about before, but that is a monthly membership where you have access to. Us to ask us questions. You have access to a ton of wise women who are sharing their, you know, see. Stories and things that they've learned in our community forum, but you also have access to all of our protocols, all the information. All the guides, all the balancing things, all the, all the, all the, all this. Every single thing. And if you're not ready for that commitment, I understand I'm commitment-phobic with most of these things. So I always want to leave. Space for my fellow commitment-phobic ladies. You can all the cart, this type of care, and this type of support in our holistic fertility handbook, we have mentioned it before, but we just jammed packed one handbook full of all this type of fertility supporting information. And these strategies that we talked about today have really specific protocols and information. It's 41 pages of natural approaches to all things fertility, and yes, we talk about preparing for pregnancy. Tenancy preconception getting everything. As squared away and prepared as possible in your body for the healthiest conception. But we also talk about medical self-advocacy. Trying to conceive and how to maximize conception. We talk about early pregnancy. We have a bunch of miscarriage protocols, and then we talk about how do you actually avoid a pregnancy on purpose without being on hormonal contraceptives? It is $22 inside our shops. So if you are that all the cart girl, and you want access to all of this information, it is available there for you as well. I just want this information in the hands of more women. So however you get there, you find yourself there, right? And that's what, that's what we want to see for you. So thanks for hanging with us for this last half hour. We hope it is encouragement, and we hope that you lean into the hope that there is in healing ahead for you. Woo. Check in next week. Bye.