Why Period Cramps Aren't Normal: 3 Natural Ways to Relieve Them

If you think painful period cramps are just something you have to live with, think again. In this episode, Danielle shares why period cramps aren't normal, what they're really telling you about your health, and the three natural changes that helped her go from debilitating monthly pain caused by endometriosis to completely pain-free periods.

You'll learn why inflammation, nutrient deficiencies, gut health, and hormone imbalances can all contribute to painful periods, and why simply masking symptoms with pain medication doesn't address the root cause. Danielle also shares practical nutrition and lifestyle strategies you can start using today to naturally support hormone balance and reduce period cramps.

In this episode, you'll learn:

•  Why period cramps are common—but not normal 
•  The root causes of painful periods and menstrual cramps 
•  How inflammation affects your menstrual cycle 
•  Three natural solutions that helped eliminate Danielle's period cramps 
•  Nutrition and lifestyle tips to support healthy hormones and reduce menstrual pain 

Whether you're dealing with painful periods, endometriosis, PMS, or hormone imbalances, this episode will help you understand what your body is trying to tell you—and what you can do about it.

Mentioned in the episode: 

EWG (Environmental Working Group)

Episode: Period Pain, Inflammation and Prostaglandins

Episode: Period Pain, PMS and Blood Sugar

Natural pad/tampons: Natracare, Honeypot, Rael, Salt cup

Interested in working together with functional lab testing? Check out my 1-1 program here. 

Click here to join The Period Protocol (option to add 1:1 session)

If you have questions, let's chat! You can contact me on Instagram or by email at info@thenourishedway.ca 

Disclaimer: The information shared in this podcast is not individual or medical advice. Please consult your physician or healthcare provider regarding any medical conditions or treatment plans.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome back to the Nourished Weight Podcast. In today's episode, we're diving right into three things that I've implemented with my nutrition and lifestyle to eliminate the painful and heavy periods that I dealt with for a very, very long time. Before we dive into today's episode, if you haven't listened to episode six about period cramps and blood sugar, make sure you listen to that one and episode seven about inflammation, prostaglandins, and period pain. I would highly recommend listening to both of those. They are really deep dives into each of those individual topics. And there's lots of really juicy takeaways in there for you. I'll put the links to both of those episodes in the bottom of the show notes. It has been a long time since I've had a bad period, but I kid you not, every single period that I had from my very first one when I was 12 years old until I was around 30 was truly terrible. I remember thinking, there is no way I have to deal with this until I hit menopause. This is awful. I was so crampy, so bloated. I just felt like I had a basketball in my abdomen. Like I was so inflamed. I was exhausted. The cramps were so painful. I was literally in bed for an entire week every single month. When I was in high school, I was missing days of school. I was a competitive gymnast. I was missing days of training. And then I moved into coaching. And I was coaching at a pretty high level. When I was in my university days, and I was either missing days of coaching or I was coaching sitting on a spotting block in the gym, curled up in the fetal position with a heating pad on my stomach, and I was taking way too much leave, just doing whatever I had to do to make it through, just to persevere. I remember thinking this must just be the way that my body is. I just have bad luck. I have really unfortunate genetics. This is a really common issue in my family. So this was kind of the narrative that was always said was, oh yes, this happened to me. This happened to my mom. This happened to so and so in the family. So it was just this idea that this was just the way that we were built. This was just our genetics. We also have this narrative coming from society as well, right? Women have been led to believe that having horrible periods is normal, that having PMS is normal. There's a lot of negative depictions about menstruation in TV shows, in movies, right? Growing up, this was kind of what we were all told. These were the images of having a period that we were all given was it was just a really unpleasant experience. We were also given very little meaningful information or education about our periods. If you're anything like me, you were told you're going to have a period, it's going to come once a month, you need to wear a tambons or paz. You can take Advil for this, you can use a heating pad. And that was kind of it, right? We were just kind of told that these were normal symptoms that happen when you have a period, right? Um, and when we go to the doctor, we're also kind of fed this narrative and just given birth control or painkillers as options. Now, when we're talking about genetics, I definitely believe that genetics predispose us to certain things with our health. But genetics are just one factor. And the mindset I really want you to get into today when you listen to this episode is that your genetics are not setting things in stone for you. So just because you have a genetic predisposition to have painful periods or to have PMS or to have acne or to have gut issues, whatever it is, that doesn't mean that that has to be something that plays out with your health. There is so much beyond genetics that shapes your health. And when we're talking about periods specifically, there's so much beyond genetics that determines what your periods are going to be like. So having period cramps, having heavy bleeding, having PMS, having that miserable luteal phase, that kind of week or two before your period. If it's miserable, these are all common, but they're not normal. Your body was literally designed as a female to menstruate every single month, right? It doesn't make sense to have something that occurs every 28 or so days to be so awful for no reason. Cramps are a sign of underlying inflammation and they're a sign of hormonal imbalances. And we can manage the pain that comes with these, but also question why it's happening, right? We can question why do I have these painful periods? Why do I have this underlying inflammation? Where is it coming from? If my hormones are out of balance, that's causing my periods to be so awful. Why? What is causing my hormones to be out of balance? So this is the kind of work that we do with clients is we are peeling back the layers. I literally in my head picture an onion. We are peeling the layers of the onion to really get to the middle, which is going to tell us the root of what is actually going on. The problem with the mainstream approach to period pain is that it is typically just prescribing birth control. So prescribing the birth control pill or the IUD, which has a time and place, right? If your periods are taking over your quality of life, sometimes we have to do these things so that we can get through. The problem with this approach is that it is only managing pain. And I am all for managing pain. I can remember so clearly what that anxiety felt like, knowing that my period was coming. Like I'm going to have this pain, I'm not going to be able to cope, I'm not going to be able to sleep. I remember being up for, you know, entire nights sometimes if my period pain was so bad. I just couldn't sleep, right? Or I had to take so many painkillers just to take the edge off. So I'm not against by any means. I'm all for managing your pain. But the problem with the mainstream approach is that it is only managing pain. It is only managing symptoms. It is not this, and I'm speaking typically, right? This is most women's experiences. If you've had a different experience, that's incredible. I'm so happy for you. But I'm speaking about what is the typical experience. So it is only managing pain. It's kind of like you notice that the check engine light is on in your car. You go to a mechanic and they just shut the light off. And then you leave thinking the problem is fixed, right? No one would pay for a mechanic who's going to perform business that way, right? Because that problem with your car is still there. You just don't know it anymore because the light is not on. But it's still getting worse as you're driving your car, right? And then that problem is just it's brewing beneath the surface. It's getting bigger and bigger until it becomes a really big problem that now you have to go to a better mechanic to get fixed. So we're going to dig into some of the deeper root causes that are underneath your period pain in today's episode. But like I said before, make sure you go back and listen to those two episodes because those are both deep dives into the topics of blood sugar and inflammation. These are really important topics because they are big drivers of period pain. Inflammation is a big driver of period pain, and blood sugar imbalances are a big driver of period pain, which we are going to start our chat today all about that. So let's get into it. The number one thing on the list of things that I have done that has dramatically reduced my period pain is balancing my blood sugar. So blood sugar balance has become a little bit of a hot topic on social media over the past couple of years. So let's talk about what exactly blood sugar balance is and how this connects to your painful periods. And then we'll talk about some things that you can do to support blood sugar stability or blood sugar balance. So blood sugar is the amount of glucose that's in your bloodstream at any given time. And this is your body's primary fuel source or primary energy source. That glucose comes from carbohydrates. So when you eat carbohydrate foods like fruits, vegetables, oats, dates, bread, pasta, et cetera, they break down into glucose. And this is what your body uses for energy. Your blood sugar should stay within a pretty tight range. And when it either rises too high or it drops too low, it's really common to experience fatigue, to have brain fog, to have energy crashes, especially in the afternoon, to have some anxiety, to be irritable, to be moody, to have trouble focusing, to crave sugar. You are probably familiar with the 3 p.m. slump. We have all been there where you just feel tired, you have brain fog, you could take a nap, you're maybe sitting at your desk and you are just reading the same line over and over again on your computer because you can't actually retain what you're reading, or you're you're just really struggling to focus. Maybe you need a coffee or you're craving something sweet around this time. The 3 p.m. slump is a pretty telltale sign of a blood sugar crash. So, how do we end up having a blood sugar crash? When you eat a balanced meal that has enough protein for your body, fiber, and a little bit of fats, your blood sugar should rise slowly and steadily. So picture the slow rolling hills of the prairies. And this is because protein, fat, and fiber help to slow down how quickly those carbohydrates break down into glucose in your bloodstream. And this keeps your energy steady and prevents blood sugar from going too high. When meals are not balanced, so when we have meals that are too high in carbs, and I love my carbs, we need carbs, but when we are eating meals that are too high in carbs, for example, a big bowl of pasta without enough protein, or you know, a big sandwich, like a thick bun without much protein on it, or you know, a bag of chips, a chocolate bar, a cookie, something like this, where we are eating just a carb, we don't have enough protein alongside it, we will typically see blood sugar spike and what comes up must come down. So when blood sugar spikes, usually we end up with a crash shortly after. And when our blood sugar crashes, when it dips, we're going to crave sugar because we don't have enough sugar, enough glucose in our bloodstream. So our brain is going to send signals for us to eat carbs that digest quickly. So that would be something maybe like crackers or chips or a cookie, a granola bar, a you know, something like this. And I call this the spike crash cycle because once our blood sugar has spiked, it crashes. And then we crave those foods that are going to cause a blood sugar spike again. So it literally is a cycle. It's kind of like a roller coaster. A lot of people call this the blood sugar roller coaster. So that's a really good visual. If you are a visual person, you can picture roller coaster hills going up and down, up and down. And this is what it can feel like when your blood sugar isn't stable. Now, when you go too long in between meals, we can also have blood sugar dips, or we can experience blood sugar dropping. So maybe you're not eating breakfast at all. Maybe your first meal of the day isn't until noon or 1 p.m. Or maybe you do have breakfast in the morning, but you are working, you're really busy throughout the day, and you miss lunch, right? When this happens, we literally run out of fuel. We run out of energy and we can end up with a blood sugar crash from underfueling, undernourishing. When this happens, this actually stresses the body. This is a main source of stress for the body, and our adrenal glands will release cortisol to stabilize blood sugar. So our adrenal glands will release cortisol when blood sugar is too high and when it's too low. So I know there's also a lot of talk on social media about cortisol. And this is something I always start with when I'm working with clients, is balancing their blood sugar because it's such an easy way to prevent extra cortisol from being in our system, right? If we can keep our blood sugar stable, it's one less reason for our adrenal glands to be producing too much cortisol. Those blood sugar spikes and the crashes are also very inflammatory to the body, and inflammation is a big source of period pain. So, what can we do? Where can we start? Number one, if you don't eat breakfast, please eat breakfast. We want to nourish our bodies in the morning. We've been fasting overnight, right? If you eat dinner at five, six, seven o'clock, we want to be eating something in the morning. We want to be fueling our body, we want to eat something nourishing. Preferably, we're eating something that has some protein and some fiber. So this could be eggs, it could be Greek yogurt, it could be, you know, turkey sausages, turkey bacon, it could be literally leftover dinner. There's no rule about what you have to have for breakfast, but we want to get some protein in there. It could be a protein shake. If you are not used to eating breakfast, get a good protein powder, whatever milk you prefer to drink, or make a smoothie. You could do a smoothie with some coconut water, some protein powder, some frozen fruit, and some Greek yogurt. That would take literally three, four minutes to make and it would be really nourishing in the morning. The second thing we can do is avoiding naked carbs. So I consider a naked carb to be any carb that is on its own without protein. So this would be thinking back to some of the examples I gave before. This could be, you know, speaking of breakfast, maybe you're having a bagel with butter. I would consider that to be a naked carb because the meal is heavy in carbs without any protein to balance it out. Protein really helps to balance out carbohydrates so that we get that slow breakdown of carbs into glucose, which is what we want. We don't want them breaking down quickly unless we're doing, you know, intense exercise then, or I mean any kind of exercise. If we have carbs that are breaking down really quickly, that's okay. Our muscles are gonna use them. But for you know, average everyday kind of living, we want that those carbs to break down nice and slowly. So um avoiding, you know, things like 3 p.m. hits and we're a little bit tired reaching for cookies, right? It's gonna bring our blood sugar back up, but what goes up must come down, right? So we've got the bagel example, cookies, having a big bowl of pasta without enough protein in there is probably gonna set us up for a blood sugar spike. So we always want to put some clothes on our carbs. We don't want them to be naked. So putting some protein with our carbs, putting some fiber from vegetables with our carbs. So if we're gonna make pasta, for example, we want to maybe put some chicken in there or some ground beef, throw some broccoli in there for some fiber. So that helps to balance out the carbohydrates. Next one would be not going too long without eating. So this can definitely take some time to kind of figure out your sweet spot for meals in terms of building balanced meals that are going to keep you full for a good amount of time. For me, the sweet spot is about four hours. So if I eat breakfast around eight o'clock, I'm getting hungry. Well, I guess about 12:30, I'm getting hungry. So about four and a half hours. If I eat breakfast at eight o'clock and I'm hungry by 9:30 or 10, I know that my breakfast was either not enough calories or it wasn't enough protein to keep my blood sugar stable, which is why I'm hungry so quickly. So eat breakfast, avoid the naked carbs. Always put protein and fiber with your carbohydrates so that they have some clothes on and avoid going too long without eating. We don't want to be skipping meals. This is going to cause our blood sugar to drop. So, as I said in the beginning, make sure you go back and listen to the blood sugar episode if you feel like this is an area for you to work on. And this is an area for most people to work on. I start with blood sugar with every single one of my one-on-one clients. And the amazing thing about it is it doesn't require supplements, right? This is just nutrition and lifestyle, learning how to make balanced meals, learning how to time your meals properly. And once you learn it once, it becomes second nature. You really quickly know how to implement these things into your daily life. And the awesome thing is that we see pretty quick wins in terms of energy, in terms of mental clarity, moods, sleep, PMS disappearing, and periods getting a lot easier. Okay, number two on the list of things that I have done is supporting my liver. So we all have hormones like estrogen, for example, that our body uses, but our bodies need to get rid of them once they've used them. So this process happens through the liver and through the gut. So the liver metabolizes our hormones, it packages them up. I picture the liver packaging up our hormones into a little present with a ribbon on the top, and then it ships off those hormones to the gut to be excreted. So we need to be having regular daily bowel movements in order to get rid of hormones like estrogen. If that is something you are not doing, I do have a lot of other episodes that talk about gut health. I would definitely recommend prioritizing bowel movements. We need to be pooping every single day to get rid of things like estrogen, to get rid of toxins and waste in our body. I want you to think of your liver as the busiest employee at your company. So imagine you own a company and you have this really superstar employee who is super busy. They have a very important job, but what ends up happening is because they are so good at their job, other people start giving them extra tasks, right? Or they start taking on all of these extra little projects. What happens over time, right? They are going to get overwhelmed. They are going to be tired, they are going to start dropping the ball on things because they are just one person. And even though they are a superstar, they can't do it all. So this is what happens with our liver. Our liver has over 500 functions that it has to do every single day. And one of those functions is getting rid of our hormones so that they are not recirculating in our body, because that's what happens if we don't get rid of them. They recirculate, and this is a big contributor to things like PMS and painful periods. So if our liver is busy excreting or detoxing things like alcohol, ultra-processed foods, fragrances, if we're, you know, spraying perfume on our body every day, or we're cleaning with a lot of bleach and washing our clothes in tide, and you know, things like these toxic products that are so common in a lot of people's households, our liver has to take care of those things. And what ends up happening is it prioritizes those things because our liver doesn't want us to have all those toxins in our system. And tasks like getting rid of our estrogen, for example, can get put on the back burner, right? And then estrogen, for example, starts to recirculate in our body. So we can have the perfect storm situation here, which is really common if we have this congested liver or overwhelmed liver because our liver is so busy and then we're also not pooping, then we end up with a lot of extra hormones, a lot of extra estrogen in our body. You might be familiar with the term estrogen dominance. This is just where we have too much estrogen, not enough progesterone. But this is a really common scenario when our liver is overburdened, right? So one of the main things you can do to support your liver is lower your toxic load. So I am personally a believer that if we have hormone issues like painful periods, at least temporarily, alcohol should go because this really does burden the liver. And then the liver is not able to get rid of our hormones. So that's not a black and white, all or nothing type of thing. I will have, you know, a drink here or there, especially in the summertime, if you know, we're out on a patio or on the dock or something like that. Um, it's not like a hard and fast rule for me, but I have definitely significantly decreased my alcohol consumption over the years. I used to, you know, drink most weekends in my university days and in my 20s, and my periods were so horrible. Now I had other things going on for sure that were contributing, but I do think that if you have painful periods, alcohol is probably not your friend. And sometimes we need to just take things out temporarily so we can bring some balance back to the body, and then we can, you know, add it in a little bit more mindfully. Um, something else we can do to really reduce our toxic load is just avoid things that have synthetic fragrance. So if you're washing your clothes in laundry soap, for example, that has synthetic fragrance in it, use what I would call the ditch and switch method. So finish up the soap that you have because things are expensive and we don't want to waste things. And then find an alternative that maybe uses essential oils as the fragrance. That's a really good one to start with because most of us are going through laundry soap, you know, every couple of months. We're buying something new and we are, you know, wearing clothes most of the day or we're, you know, washing our sheets in laundry soap. So if we are, you know, breathing in those fragrances, that can really add up. So that's a really good one to start with. If you tend to burn a lot of candles that use synthetic fragrance, that might be something to reevaluate. If you use perfumes, I'm talking on a regular basis. You know, if you're using a perfume a couple of times a month when you go out, your body is resilient. It can handle it, it can detox, right? But if we're doing that on a daily basis for washing our hair with synthetic fragrance, it can just really add up and it tires out our poor little liver. You can go on to the environmental working group's website or app called the EWG. I'll link that in the show notes as well. This is a really great, I was gonna say starting resource, but I still reference this from time to time. So it is a website that essentially rates products based on their toxicity. So if you use a particular shampoo, for example, you can pop that into the app, like search it in there or on the website, and it will give you a rating and it also breaks it down. So if it doesn't give it a good rating, out, I think it's out of 10 on a 10-point scale, it will tell you why. So it will highlight the specific ingredients that are a little bit more toxic to the body. So it might highlight fragrance or, you know, whatever else is in there. Um, and then you can use that to help you find products that are going to be a little bit more supportive of your hormones. So that's a starting point for liver support. A second thing you can do is castor oil packs. I love using castor oil packs over my liver. Castor oil has been used for centuries, literally dating back to Cleopatra days. Castor oil is rich in something called ricinoleic acid, which is an acid that is very anti-inflammatory. It's something that you do topically. So you put the castor oil over your liver. You can YouTube a video of how to do this. And this helps to enhance blood flow, to enhance circulation to the liver, which helps the liver to do its job, detoxifying. So it's a really gentle way to support the liver. If you are not pregnant or breastfeeding, you want to avoid it. Um, if you are pregnant or breastfeeding, castor oil packs are also really helpful for constipation. So you can put the oil over your liver. You can also massage a little bit on your lower abdomen. It doesn't work like a laxative, so don't stress if um that's what you were thinking. It's just gentle detoxification support. But I will say the majority of my clients who are doing cast oil packs regularly say that they notice an improvement with their bowel movements. So you need a bottle of cast oil and you need the pack or the wrap, which you can get on Amazon, you can get on Etsy. It's just a basically a piece of cotton that has either strings that you tie or it has a piece of velcro. So again, look up a video. It's going to be a lot easier to understand than me trying to explain it without a visual, but you are essentially putting the cast oil over your liver and then you wrap the pack or the wrap around, which prevents the oil from getting onto your clothes and it also helps it to be absorbed. So I do this three nights a week typically. I will usually increase it during my luteal phase. So about 10 days before I'm expected to get my period. This is when we really want to up the detoxification. We want to help the body get rid of estrogen at this point. I'll go up to four or five times a week. I usually wear mine overnight, but you can also just, you know, throw it on for an hour if you're watching TV or reading before bed and then take it off. The last thing I would suggest for liver is something called NAC, which is a supplement. Now, I do want you to remember I am a nutritional therapy practitioner. I am not your nutritionist. So if you are looking for supplement guidance, you do want to work with someone who can make sure it is the right supplement for you. But NAC or N-acetylcysteine is an antioxidant that is really incredible for liver detoxification. Our liver loves antioxidants. There have been some really interesting studies that have found NAC supplementation has significant benefits for women with period pain and endometriosis. I can tell you I notice a big difference since being on an NAC supplement consistently now for a couple of years. Being an antioxidant, it's also really great for the immune system. And a lot of people will actually supplement with this when they get a cough or a cold or something respiratory because it can be really helpful for issues like that as well. Okay, moving on to our third and final strategy that I have implemented to get rid of my terrible period pain. This is switching away from a period cup or tampons to pads. Now, this was not something I was happy about when I had first dug into some reading about this, or I might have heard it on a podcast several years ago. I thought, oh, that sounds so annoying. I loved my period cup. It was so convenient. I could just pop it in in the morning. I didn't have to worry about it for the rest of the day. It was not wasteful. I bought it once, you know, for maybe $30. And I knew I would have that for probably 10 years. But when you have a lot of period pain, if you have endometriosis, you know how inflamed you are. I can, you know, remember my whole pelvic region just being so inflamed. And when we already have a lot of that inflammation, putting something up there in the vaginal canal can add a lot of pressure to the pelvic region. So this is something I would suggest giving a try, right? I went in when I first learned about this, I thought, okay, I'm just gonna give it one period. I bought a pack of organic pads, and I thought this is giving me vibes of, you know, being 12 or 13 years old before I learned how to use tampons or a cup. And I remember hating it. It was just so, I felt like you ring a diaper. But I thought I'm gonna give it one period. And if I don't notice, notice any difference, I'm gonna go back to my cup. And I have not touched my cup since. And that was probably three or four years ago. It really made a big difference not having that in there. That being said, I can put in a tampon. If I'm on, you know, day three or four of my period where you know a lot of that inflammation has gone down, we are going to have a little bit of inflammation on our period. We are literally shedding an organ. So a little bit of inflammation is normal. But once it's kind of subsided at that point, if I'm, you know, traveling or going out and I don't want to deal with pads, I can wear a tampon now and I'm fine. I don't have any pain. If I were to put one in on day one of my period, which I did on my last period, actually, I noticed immediately I had cramps, like significant cramps. Like there was nothing else to attribute it to, other than the fact that I put this tampon in. So this will vary from woman to woman. Give it a try. What do you have to lose other than feeling like you're wearing a diaper for one cycle? Give it a try. See if it makes a difference for you. If you are going to stick with tampons, I definitely recommend using organic. Conventional tampons have bleach, they can have pesticide residue, phthalates, fragrances, dioxins, all kinds of toxins that we don't want in our vaginal canal. It is a highly absorbent area, meaning it's absorbing everything that we're putting in there. And we're not putting it in there for an hour or two, right? We're wearing it pretty consistently for four or five, six, seven days, right? So definitely something I would suggest switching if you are going to stick with tampons. There's some really great companies out there now that are really accessible in Target, Walmart, online. Um, Amazon has them. So I'll put the names of those in the show notes as well. I personally use Nature Care. So I have their pads and I do keep their tampons um on hand as well. You can use Rayelle, Honeypot. Um, if you do prefer to use a cup and you feel okay using a cup, I have the salt cup and I really like that one as well. Okay, so those are my top three things that I have done in a nutshell. I will link those other podcast episodes in the show notes. If you are looking for deeper support with your periods, check out the period protocol. This is my six-phase system for addressing the root causes of PMS and period pain. So this is a self-paced course that walks you through my anti-inflammatory framework. It teaches you how to eat for your cycle. There is the whole first module blood sugar balance. I walk you through liver support, liver health, liver detoxification, supplementation. There's a whole module on supplements plus a guide to go with it. And then I also teach you how to make everything a lifestyle so that you are not feeling like, you know, you are restricted and can only, you know, eat certain things. I want this to be very realistic for you, as it is very realistic for me, right? To eat in a certain way that supports my cycle. I don't teach cycle sinking in terms of, you know, doing seeds at certain phases of your cycle or eating certain foods at certain phases of your cycle because it's not something that I think women have to do to have pain-free periods. We just want to be nourishing our bodies all cycle long. We want to be eating an anti-inflammatory diet all cycle long. For me and for my clients, this looks like an 80-20 balance. So 80% good quality, nutrient-dense, really nourishing foods that are anti-inflammatory, 20% foods that are for fun, right? I like my chocolate, my ice cream, my brownies, etc. I like my sweets. Sometimes I want to have some sighette chips, for example. So the goal is really for it to be a sustainable lifestyle because that's what it's all about. So it's not a quick fix, it is a sustainable lifestyle. So the period protocol walks you through the exact strategies that I used to fix my period pain. I have walked hundreds of clients through this protocol. And when you sign up for the protocol, there is also an option to add a one-on-one session there as well. If you are looking for a deeper level of support, we also have our one-on-one program that includes functional lab testing. So we do HTMA or hair tissue mineral analysis testing. We also do gut testing and deep dive analysis of functional blood work. Inside our one-on-one program, we are working together for six months and everything is very personalized for you. And you also do get access to the PIRI protocol. So those are the two options if you are looking for a deeper level of support. And I will put the links to both of those in the show notes. If you have any questions after today's episode, make sure you connect on Instagram. My handle is at NourishedWay. I will link that as well. Um, and also just reach out if you've listened to an episode on the podcast and you have, you know, something that has really hit home for you or a really good takeaway. I really enjoy getting those messages from you guys. So thanks so much for listening today, and I will see you on the next episode.