Moment 166: What Men (& Women) NEED To Know About The Menstrual Cycle: Dr Mindy Pelz

00:03some advice then because i'm in a relationship and i want to understand i guess this goes both ways i want my girlfriend to understand how hormones are influencing my behavior yeah and i want to know how hormones are influencing her behavior yeah what advice have you got for me well the first is do you know her cycle moving on we're going to talk about sugar again no no this is too good so sugar it's really bad isn't it who's to blame no seriously no tell me about your childhood no get to know her cycle i'm gonna give you i'm gonna give you gold right now let me give you gold okay so day one of her cycle day one to day 10 she's building estrogen first couple of days of her cycle just let her be like she you know that she's transitioning out of the back half of her cycle. She might be having some heavier bleeding. You know, she's moving into that extroverted place. So the first two days, give her some space. Now, day three, estrogen starting to build. So you're going to notice she's more verbal. She's going to be more present. She might feel more outgoing. She's going to feel like she wants to connect with you. That's going to go all the way through ovulation, like in the middle of ovulation, which is about day 12, day 13, where

01:20all of a sudden estrogen's at its peak if you have any conflict you want to resolve with her do it between like day two and day 12 of her cycle she's going to be so ready to handle any conflict with you between let me write that down day two and day 12 day two like literally my battles i had a i had a dad come to me and tell me that he was struggling to understand his teenage daughter and i said well do you know her cycle and he's like no i don't i said well you would never ever bring a conflict to her on day 18 or 19 of her cycle bring it to her on day 10 and now she's going to talk to you i'm going to say something which is really embarrassing here i know nothing about menstrual cycles at no point in my life did anybody teach me about menstrual cycles the only insight i have in my life to what a menstrual cycle is is overhearing my sister when i was younger talking about it yeah and when i say overhearing i mean maybe a sentence and then maybe my girlfriend once in a while she'll say oh i'm coming into my cycle or whatever she'll say i'm on my period that's for most men that's in fact the extent of the education we have about the female reproductive um menstrual menstrual cycles yep so talk to me like i'm an idiot about

02:36the menstrual cycle yeah how long is it oh i love this and do you know that most women don't know oh really so i mean most women are ignorant to their own cycles so it's 28 days anywhere from 28 days to 32 every woman has a different length okay and what day does the period come on day one so day one is the first day she bleeds okay then how long that lasts for what seven days uh everyone's different anywhere from three to seven days okay so day you said day between day two and 12 is when to pick my battles yes so day two you're gonna start to see her be emerge a little more gregarious she may be a little more outgoing so i mean as she get closer to day 12 you want to go party with her you want to take her out make her feel good like that's the time to wine and dine her okay cool we'll put all the dates then and other fights and then after day 12 what am i doing then after day well okay so day 12 is right when she's ovulating so you're gonna have to choose your battle there but ovulation occurs for most women between day 10 and day 15 there's a small little five-day window there that's if this is the one i once i figured this out i was like why why don't men know this um that's when she's going to be her libido is going to be the highest okay

03:48so we're having sex yes so if you want to have sex with her just writing this down yeah have sex with her around that time around that time she's willing yeah she's going to be more motivated because she has testosterone she's going to feel more like it okay then after she finishes ovulating him after day 15 yeah so then there's gonna be a crash of hormones you might see a change in her personality she might feel a little low so go stay in a hotel but you could ask you know like if she's having a bummer day like a low day ask her do you know what day your cycle are you on be really nice be really nice and then here's the gold here's gold this is so good you're gonna have to report back to me how this works okay uh when around day 17 or 18 progesterone's coming in this is where you got to give her foot rubs you got to be extra special and cater her like like she's the queen that she deserves to be okay so all my compliments that's where i yes pull out the notepad yes but what you need to know is she's probably going to be like if you're like oh you look so beautiful today she might at that time be like no i feel horrible i'm bloated i'm i don't feel beautiful but you know i should disagree i should say no no you you're no you don't you look

04:55amazing okay cool and you do that till she bleeds and you can take amazing care of her in the back the week before her period and you will get kudos like you you can't even imagine and then start it all over again and then start it all over again yeah yeah i mean just once you understand our patterns and then it also helps you understand that we're going to be more outgoing in the front half of our cycle we're going to be more introverted in the back half what about men you guys every 15 minutes you you're pretty you're pretty black and white really yeah you're pretty straightforward so if she was asking you the same question about me would you say anything to her about my hormone cycles at all you just say what it really depends on the issue at hand so if it's a a mismatch of libido then the best time to have sex with a woman is during ovulation because she has the most amount of testosterone.

05:46Day 10 to 15 of her cycle. Yeah, yeah. It would be really handy, wouldn't it, just to have a little menstrual cycle chart on the wall at home. I know that sounds a bit strange, but just so I know what's going on inside her body. The first time I discovered this, I started using an app called the Clue app. Yeah. And it shows you in a circle. It kind of shows a little cloud and then it shows you where PMS clicks in. And it actually has a button that you can share it with people in your life.

06:13And I thought, not only does my husband need this, but my staff needs this. They need to understand where I'm going. And what if all the women on my team actually shared it with each other and we could see where each other was at in the menstrual cycle? We would understand why a woman's moods can be so up and down. It's really, you know, because of these three hormones, our moods are much more volatile than yours. You guys are pretty steady, Eddie.

06:41And this is general. You know, this is I hate to be sexist in this conversation, but this is hormones in the way they work. It's actually really helpful to know this because without this insight, it's very easy to fall into the trap of just assuming your partner is moody or that they are they have like mood swings or that they're, you know, people say things like they're too emotional or they're whatever it might be. But with this, I actually think it creates a ton of empathy.

07:11Yeah. that's certainly the reaction that i get from hearing that there's a there's significant hormone fluctuations in my partner and they happen at certain periods it actually now would change my behavior the way that i receive certain times where i come home or i'm i notice that my my partner is just different yep and it's almost it catches me off guard sometimes i've actually we've spoken a lot about this and we're very open we're very much the same person in terms of our willingness to talk about everything um and very difficult things as well yeah and there will be times where um i come home or we go through a patch where just a week you know things are making her upset which wouldn't normally make her upset just tiny things that i'm doing and i go what that's it like yeah you know so see if you can track that to a certain part of her cycle i'm gonna so like the week before our period we're pretty we're irritable and every time I say that, men go, well, you said it. I didn't say it. Well, but that's because progesterone, we're meant to be more inner. We're meant to sit on the couch. We're also meant, believe it or not, glucose goes higher the week before our period. So we crave carbs. There's a reason we crave carbs

08:21because we need to bring glucose up to be able to make progesterone. So we crave carbs. We're irritable. We don't want a lot of cortisol. So generally we're a little bit slower. We don't want to, you know, we don't have the desire to push through stress and push through exercise. And so we're going to be, we're a little, we're different that week where, so if you come up and you just put your hand on our shoulder and you're like, I love you. You're amazing. I'm here if you need anything, that's all you got to do. But if you're trying to resolve a big conflict or you're trying to come at us in, in too aggressive a way, we will shut down the week before our periods.

09:00so interesting whereas if you have something you want to resolve with us make sure estrogen's there because estrogen makes us great great verbal our verbal skills are incredible when estrogen's around ask any menopausal woman she'll tell you what it's like when she loses estrogen and i have to say this is because you know women have this incredible power to create life that us men don't have it's like women are superheroes for being able to carry a baby for significant amounts of time and then give birth to this baby it's just the most magical thing that i can think of in existence and women have that superpower and with that comes this cycle yeah so it's a wonderful thing it's beautiful and in in the book i called it the manifestation phase ovulation because when all of those hormones come in, we can manifest anything we want. But it's not just a baby. This is a great time.

09:58Ovulation is an amazing time to start a new business project. Interesting. It's a great time like as an author, like I'm going to write during those five days because my creativity is going to be at its peak. So we're highly creative. If you want to like, you know, talk about something about life and how to create something with us do it during ovulation your husband is behind that wall here in my home and does is he aware of your menstrual cycle he is until i started to lose it i'm 53 so i'm starting to go um but yeah we talk like this all the time and and the way i like to I like to take ownership over my hormonal moods.

10:42So I will say to him after a long day of work, I will say, hey, it's been a testosterone driven day for me. I don't feel like I have a lot of estrogen right now. I can't handle a lot of stress. I'm going to need to just take some time to myself. We literally talk like that.