The Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast Episode #345 - Jolene Brighten

TRANSCRIPT

Jolene Brighten
There are still so many myths that get perpetuated that are really born out of controlling women. Sperm quality definitely matters for the health of the child, the health of the pregnancy.

Like, as we're coming to understand, like, we've been being like, oh, women, like, it's your old eggs and like, you're the problem. And it's like, oh, actually, men, you, you've been a big problem. Women deserve the truth. They deserve to have all the information. And they deserve to be supported in whatever they're saying about their health.

Melanie Avalon
Welcome to the Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast, where we meet the world's top experts to explore the secrets of health, mindset, longevity, and so much more. Are you ready to take charge of your existence and biohack your life? This show is for you. Please keep in mind, we're not dispensing medical advice and are not responsible for any outcomes you may experience from implementing the tactics lying herein. So friends, are you ready to join me? Let's do this!

Welcome back to the Melanie Avalon biohacking podcast. Oh my goodness friends. What an honor it was to sit down with the legend Dr. Jolene Brighton. I think you guys are really going to love this episode. She is the go-to person when it comes to all things women, sexual health and wellness, as well as the birth control pill. We talk about so many things in today's episode, including the current stigmas in the medical world against women, problems with doctor-patient relationships, when you actually can get pregnant. Yes, it is only one day. So what do we mean by fertility windows? Why we don't have male birth control. And it's quite a shocking reason the benefits of vibrators and yes, men, we do talk about how to make a woman orgasm. Definitely check out Dr. Brighton supplements, especially her radiant mind supplement, which is saffron based and which she swears by. You can get it at drbrightinescentials.com and the coupon code Avalon will get you 15% off site-wide. That's 15% off site-wide drbrightinescentials.com with the coupon code Avalon. Also definitely check out her free plans. So she has the perimenopause weight loss action plan. You can get that at drbrighten.com slash plan, and you can get her ADHD woman's hormone brain and sink guide at drbrighten.com slash sink. The show notes for today's episode will be at melonyavalon.com slash Brighten. That's B R I G H T E N those show notes will have a full transcript as well as links to everything that we talked about. So definitely check that out. I can't wait to hear what you guys think. Definitely let me know in my Facebook group, I have biohackers intermittent fasting plus real foods plus life, comment, something you learned or something that resonated with you on the pinned post to enter to win something that I love, and then check out my Instagram, find me Friday announcement post. And again, comments there to enter to win something that I love. All right. I think that's all the things as a brief reminder, you can get 15% off site-wide at drbrightinescentials.com with the coupon code Avalon. And now without further ado, please enjoy this fabulous conversation with dr. Jolene Brighton. Hi friends. Welcome back to the show. I am so incredibly excited about the conversation. I am about to have, it is with a true legend and I truly mean that on a topic, which is probably one of the spiciest and most interesting and intriguing topics to people everywhere and especially women.

Melanie Avalon
So I am here with dr. Jolene Brighton. She almost needs no introduction. So she is a hormone expert, a nutrition scientist, a thought leader in women's medicine, she is board certified in naturopathic endocrinology and a certified sex counselor. And you might know her from some of her incredible books. So she authored Beyond the Pill, a 30 day program to balance your hormones, reclaim your body and reverse the dangerous side effects of the birth control pill. And on Amazon, if you look that has almost 3000 reviews. And just as a side note, one of my prep habits for this show is I read the books, I take the notes and then the night before I like to go on Amazon and actually read like every single Amazon review. And so I like got onto Amazon last night and I was like, oh, I don't know if I could read all these reviews. And then she also wrote, is this normal judgment free straight talk about your body and friends, both of these books are completely mind blowing. I cannot recommend them enough.

So Beyond the Pill, as you might can guess hearing the title, all about the birth control pill, all about how it actually affects the female body, the history of it, how it came to be and how it's used way beyond just for birth control and what the implications of that are the side effects that women experience, how it can be a struggle to get off the pill, how it affects your fertility, all the things I cannot recommend it enough if you, honestly, even if you are never go on the pill, it's just a fascinating mind blowing piece of work to realize how a pharmaceutical that has helped women so much on the one hand has been super detrimental. And I would say misleading to women in society. And then is this normal? The, the one about what is normal is literally the Bible of any question you could ever have about your sexual health and wellness, anything you've experienced, the question is there. It will make you feel so not embarrassed about having questions and also not embarrassed about what you may be going through and just have you walking away knowing, I mean, pretty much everything can be normal. For the female body. I mean, not really, but you will feel better in the book is my, is my point.

So I have been looking forward to this for so long. I have honestly, some of the longest notes I've ever had for this show. So Dr. Brighton, thank you so much for being here.

Speaker 1
Yeah well thanks for that introduction I'm like man like whenever I get like a negative comment online I want to just go back and replay what you just said oh yeah it's all good.

Melanie Avalon
That's why I'm here, oh my goodness. The reason I am so, a reason that I am so appreciative for everything that you do is I was raised in a very, and I've talked about this on the show before, but I was raised in a very religious, like Bible Belt Christian South household where you didn't really talk about sex, like the sex education. Looking back, I'm like very shocked at some of the things we were taught. Like we were taught that condoms don't protect you from STDs, like period, which is just kind of wild. So there's that aspect of everything.

And then on top of that, like with the birth control pill, I actually went on the birth control pill in high school, clearly not sexually active growing up and what I was growing up in, but for acne. And looking back, I'm just like, what? Like, what was I thinking? Like why, no, just no. The whole thing is a like huge entry to me. And then I kind of flipped when I had epiphanies about, I don't, literally Dr. Bryan, it kind of happened overnight because I had sex and realized it was, a lot of what I've been taught was lies about like my worth being tied up in it. And then I was like, oh, I gotta like change my, what I'm doing here. I need to learn more. I need to help spread awareness about sexual health and wellness and help, you know, dismantle the hesitancy to talk about things in society. So the point is super grateful about for what you're doing. It's just like the resource that we need in society.

Speaker 1
Yeah. I mean, your story resonates with me. I also grew up in that similar household. Nobody talked to me about my period, really. It was something to be ashamed about.

Sex was something to be afraid of. Lies, lies, lies. Oh, you can get pregnant. All of these things. It was all fear-based lies. It was really shocking to me when I started going to doctors and realized they perpetuate the same lies. The same lies that we have been told that were about control of women, medicine has also embraced. It is, again, about control of women and this really harmful narrative that medicine has adopted, which is that mother nature broke you and made you the defective model and the male model is the default and what you should aspire to be. But because you're so broken and defective, the only thing we can do for you, for every concern you have, like having acne, is to pass you the pill or some form of birth control that stops your ovaries from working because they're just too problematic. That is such harmful rhetoric. I was very young when I started to question medicine in terms of how they're all about science and evidence-based and all of that. And yet, there are still so many myths that get perpetuated that are really born out of controlling women.

Melanie Avalon
Yeah, it's completely wild. I think one of the most, I mean, there's so many mind-blowing facts in your books, but one of them that's coming to mind is about the history of the clitoris and how it was discovered like a long, long, long time ago.

And then they suppressed it and then when did it? It was like not until like the 1990s, I think that it...

Speaker 1
Yeah, it was the 90s. So it was actually like the 1800s that they were dissecting cadavers. They were well aware of the anatomy of the clitoris. Not that it was just this little baby button on the outside, but it's like, I like to joke, it's like a four-legged octopus. It's just like massive structure diving deep underneath. Like the Titanic would have definitely crashed if it ran into the clitoris. It would have never seen it coming. And so it was well known, but religion was integrated with medicine.

And so that made it to where it actually got named the shameful member. I think it's like Membrément Entoir. It's like a French term. That was the term for it, was shameful member. And it was because they knew in the 1800s that it was solely there for pleasure. It served no other purpose but pleasure for women. And again, in medicine's attempt to control women, they made sure to cut all of that out. And now here we are in 2025, I believe there's only one medical textbook that has an anatomically correct clitoris in it. That's why in Is This Normal? There are three diagrams of the clitoris because I'm like, no, everybody will know. If I have control over, everybody will know what the clitoris is. But for people listening, I think sometimes the argument I get is like, well, what does it really matter? If it's just for pleasure, it's because people are operating down there. People are cutting you open, cutting open vulvas, doing all kinds of surgeries. And they don't know the basic female anatomy. It's dangerous. And it's leaving doctors to be quite frankly, incompetent in what they are doing to serve women because they need to have all that information to operate correctly. So I mean, that's just one facet of it.

The other is like, you deserve to know that you deserve to understand your clitoris. And so I mean, can I do like a little bit of like embryology education here? Oh, yeah, that would be great. Yeah. So everybody starts out going down the perfection, which is female anatomy. Okay, until early in utero in the first trimester, there was a wash of testosterone. And instead of becoming the clitoris, the carriers of the XY chromosome and the Y chromosome must have the SRY gene on it. When that testosterone surge comes through, it activates that and it deviates from the clitoris to the PNS and it deviates from the labia to the scrotum. And so there is a deviation of tissue. So I bring this up to understand that mom and nature made us the default. We are the default. We are perfection in ourselves. That's not to say men are not perfect in their own right. I'm raising men, I think they are perfectly built the way they are. But the message we always get is we are just basically small men. Even medicine was always like, oh, the male archetype is that that is perfection and women, here you are with like your other parts. Now, why is it important to understand all of this? Okay, because we don't have research on the clitoris and the way we have research on the penis, but I want people to understand we know cardiovascular disease and insulin resistance can lead to a flaccid penis.

Speaker 1
It cannot become erect because the blood vessels and the nerves have been destroyed. Well, not destroyed, but hindered. They can get destroyed completely. We also know that those conditions can lead to a loss of sensation.

The same is true for the clitoris. They're the same tissues, embryologically speaking. So it's really important to understand that the same metabolic issues that affect men's health can affect your health. And a man who can't get an erection or is having trouble orgasming or is having loss of sensation as penis, that's red flags. We're going to immediately work them up for cardio metabolic disease. In women, you might not notice your clitoris gets erect, but it does. There's not an engorgement there, loss of sensation, unable to orgasm. You get told, well, that's just being a woman. It's so hard to make a woman orgasm. I beg to differ. The clitoris exists solely for pleasure, and it has way more than 10,000 nerve endings. In fact, that 10,000 nerve endings come from a cow. It wasn't until a couple years ago they decided to actually look at a female clitoris and try to measure the nerves. But we have way more nerve endings. And why is that? Because the clitoris is tucked away. Unlike a penis, which has to pee, ejaculate, and live on the outside in a pair of uncomfortable genes, it can't be that sensitive. The clitoris is far more sensitive. It is very easy to make a woman orgasm if you know what you're doing. We just don't teach men that. I say men because the orgasm gap, which is the 30% differential between the man versus the woman orgasming in a heterosexual couple, that big discrepancy exists because we don't teach men about the clitoris or female pleasure and we don't prioritize it. But back to the point of cardiometabolic disease, you not being able to orgasm, you losing sensation or clitoris, that should also be a red flag.

But because of the medical misogyny that existed in the 1800s, really since the dawn of allopathic medicine, women's sexual health doesn't get taken seriously, and it can be as serious as a potential heart attack.

Melanie Avalon
Yes, this is all so, so wild. Some questions are coming to mind just in the moment.

One, what do you think is the evolutionary reason that because you're talking about the sensation that men and women feel and then the ability to lose the sensation and the problems that come with that. But like with orgasms, the difference in the refractory period and the ability for women to have like multiple orgasms versus a man where, you know, it's like one, you know, it's a little bit slower and you have to recover. Like what's the reasoning for that? That it doesn't go both ways.

Speaker 1
Yeah. Okay. So for people listening, the refractory period is the amount of time it takes the body to basically recalibrate, reset, and go again for an orgasm. So with women having multiple orgasms, like if you can have multiple orgasms, you're very incentivized to have sex, right?

So biology, mother nature, all of it does not care whether or not you want a baby. The entire system is set up to try to get you knocked up, okay? And that's why we have to like biohack it sometimes of like, how do we like keep our hormones awesome? And we like psych our body out like, yeah, sure, you could have a baby so that it has awesome hormones, but then we're also like, yeah, but psych, you're not going to have a baby. Like we're not doing that. So when it comes to men, you know, when it comes to like best quality of sperm, people who are trying to conceive, understand this, you want to have sex three days before ovulation and like the day of ovulation because it takes time. They're building up sperm over a 72 hour or excuse me, 72 day period of time. And then when they have an orgasm, they ejaculate and they introduce the semen. And so there's only like so much in the reserves. And so that's one of the theories is that it's all about trying to get you pregnant. And so it makes sure that the man knows I'm only going to have one orgasm. Let's make sure that like we're depositing sperm into the vesicle, but can actually accept it and have it meet an egg later on. And so that's one idea. When it comes to multiple orgasms, as I explained, and is this normal, the heightened time that women really are interested in sex and are often able to achieve multiple orgasms is around ovulation. So this is called the sexual phase of the cycle. And it's happening roughly five days before ovulation, the day of ovulation, and then maybe the day after. So you get about like seven days in your cycle when you're like, I'm really into sex. The rest of the time, it's not that you're not interested in sex. It's just you don't have sex on your brain and sex in your body parts. Because what is happening in this phase of your cycle is estrogen is up. Estrogen makes us think and fantasize about sex more. Estrogen plumps the tissues. It makes us more wet, more engorged, testosterone's there as well. And so that makes achieving an orgasm easier. Actually was just like having this conversation with my girlfriend who's in perimenopause. And she was like, oh my God, I cannot wait to be in menopause and never have to deal with my period again. And I'm like, girl, but can we talk about ovulatory cycle orgasms? Because I never want to be without those. You don't have to work hard for it. Super easy to get, super easy to have multiples, usually lasts a longer period of time. Why does nature do that? Because then you're going to... That's the most fertile time. Sperm lives about five days because your uterus chooses to let it survive. Well, not technically your fallopian tubes, chooses to let it survive. And because of that, then we are in the mood trying to capture sperm during that time.

Speaker 1
And then the day we ovulate, of course. And then the day after, it really just depends because once progesterone kicks in, that's where I say you'd rather get into sweatpants than get into their pants because the whole system shifts.

You're less sensitive to stimulation of the clitoris. You also have a drier period of time. So it's totally normal to be dry like three out of four weeks out of your cycle. That's totally normal because that's how your hormones are set up.

Melanie Avalon
Oh my goodness, now I have like 20 more questions. It's amazing.

I love that you had the exact answer for that. Okay, so that is so true what you were saying. I hadn't really thought about that much, but like in the, especially in the biohacking world and everything, it's like we do all of this stuff to support being really sexual and, you know, libido and all of that stuff, but then we actually don't want a, you know, a child possibly. Do you think that's problematic at all for our bodies?

Speaker 1
No, I think I mean if you're using fertility awareness method Like that's what you're doing that has an efficacy rate that rivals the pill when it's done Right when it's done perfectly when it's not like rhythm method or pull-out method That is definitely one way to you know, psych your body out where you're like, yeah, we're gonna let you cycle We're gonna support your hormones. Well, and then during that fertile window I'm not gonna have penetrative sex or if I do I'm gonna use a barrier method with it maybe I'm gonna have different, you know different types of sex during that period of time because that's like the Awesome thing about being a woman is that like you don't have to have penetrative sex to have an orgasm In fact research shows that only about 18% of women report that they can orgasm with Penetration and that is likely due to anatomy not anything you're doing.

It's just anatomically How is everything set up down there and odds are it's still clitoral stimulation It's just internal clitoral stimulation or there's actually stimulation on the outer side of the clitoris as well because of friction going on so, I mean that's like I think something women need to keep in mind as well and in fact like the Golden ticket to an orgasm is clitoral stimulation. It's not penetration. It's not like any anything else It's just stimulating the clitoris

Melanie Avalon
I think that may be the most common question that I ask all my girlfriends because I am, I'm like, what is this mythical G-spot penetration orgasm that people speak of? Like, I don't know, I'm like, does this exist?

And I always ask my friends, I'm like, can you actually orgasm from that? So it's possible that it's still clit.

Speaker 1
orgasm? The clitoris, like I said, you guys can like all Google it. You can look at it and is this normal? It has two legs on each side. So if you see that little button that's on the outside, then it dives deep within and then it splits off into two branches on each side and those line the vaginal canal. So if you're having penetrative sex, you're probably stimulating that. The interesting thing about the G-spot is every gynecologist out there will be like, there's no such thing and there's no evidence. Well, it's interesting to me. I have a good friend, Dr. Ana Sierra, who is a neuropelebiologist. So she's an expert in nerves in the pelvis and she is like the G-spot is absolutely real and you can absolutely fill it. In the vagina, there's what's called rugae and they allow for the expansion. Like they allow like an eight pound bowling ball of a human to pass through the vagina and the vagina comes right back because it's elastic. And she said it feels like it's like bunched together in one spot. She's like, you can absolutely fill it and I absolutely see it in patients. And I'm like, well, you are absolutely the expert on that. So I believe you.

Melanie Avalon
Do you know Dr. Lori Mintz by chance? She wrote Becoming Cliterate.

Speaker 1
I don't know her, but I know of her book. It was actually Ian Kern who coined the term clitorate, which I love. He wrote the book, She Comes First. His book came before like anyone else's. Basically, my cliff notes of it is, oral sex or rub the clit, and she will be all about you and want to have sex with you more often.

Melanie Avalon
That's, I love it. It's amazing. I remember I read, and so I've had Dr. Mince on the show a few times, and she was talking about a theory that the G-spot might be for birth because it releases, I don't know, certain hormones and makes them push outward versus the clitorate, which makes everything contract inward. I don't know if you've heard that theory before.

And so like the clitoris would be for sex and then the G-spot like with the babies coming out would be hitting it with their head. And so that might be involved. Huh, interesting. So who knows? Who knows? Okay, this is a really, really random question, but I thought about it during the book. And I thought about it when you're talking about the sperm and everything. You talk about how the fertile window and the timeline of when you're fertile versus how long the sperm lasts, like can be alive. So there's a certain amount of days that you can basically get pregnant. So well, A, what are those days? And then B, so like the sperm, do you think it makes any difference the health of the child based on sperm that was like day one sperm versus day five sperm? Like do some sperm die early? So maybe if you had a sperm that was like a day one sperm, it was like not as healthy of a sperm.

Speaker 1
We don't have any evidence of that. And what I would say is that the egg actually says who can pass. The egg decides what sperm can come in. So the egg does have some control in that. Sperm quality definitely matters for the health of the child, the health of the pregnancy. Like as we're coming to understand, like we've been being like, oh, women, like it's your old eggs and like you're the problem. And it's like, oh, actually men, you've been a big problem. And I love that because it means that we get to focus on supporting men's health and seeing that like your sperm is a marker of your health in the same way that us having fertile cervical mucus as ovulating regularly, that's a marker of our health. And so it really is a, I think at first some men were like, oh, this is such a negative thing to like say about men. I'm like, it's a really positive thing because for the first time medicine is actually saying like, we need to improve your sperm quality as in your reproductive capacity is a marker of your health.

And until then it was like, oh, men can just have babies until their seventies. And like, it was really a disservice to men overall. So in terms of when you can get pregnant, so let me explain those because this is always when people are like, nah, like, no, that's not true. Like, listen, you can only get pregnant one day, one day, and you're not even technically pregnant then. So what am I talking about? There's only one day that egg will live. It lives 24 hours and then the sperm can meet it. And this matters greatly because the lie of like, you can get pregnant five days out of the month or whatever. It really hurts women who are trying to get pregnant. Now, where does the fertile window come from? The fertile window doesn't say you can get pregnant five days out of the month. The fertile window says sperm can live up to five days should your reproductive tract allow them. So what happens is sperm gets admitted, let's say it's five days before ovulation. If they're healthy enough, if you have good fertile cervical mucus, if like your reproductive tract is healthy, they will hang out in the fallopian tube. The egg gets released. It gets caught by these little fingers escorted into the fallopian tube. That's when the sperm and the egg meet. You're not pregnant at that point. Like, you have fertilized an egg. Now, I know some people are gonna be like, I believe life begins at conception. That's fine. I don't care what your beliefs are. I'll support you in that. I'm just explaining this from an actual medical physiological perspective. So they meet, the cells start rapidly dividing. That little ball of cells is dividing, dividing, dividing, dividing, which is like such an amazing miracle in itself. And it's gonna travel. It's gonna take at least five days, maybe even eight days for it to make its way to your uterus and then to implant. Once it gets there, that little ball of cells is aggressive. It is gonna release enzymes and it's gonna chew its way into your uterine lining. Once it does that, it's gonna put out beta HCG. That's the little P stick, okay, to see if we're pregnant. That's that hormone.

Speaker 1
So up until that point, we haven't had implantation. Lutinizing hormone's been pulsing to keep your progesterone around. We need implantation and then the secretion of beta HCG in order to keep that whole progesterone cycle going. If we do not have beta HCG, one, I can't confirm if you're pregnant, but if we don't have beta HCG sufficient enough, then even if there was implantation, that is gonna be shed with your period. And so we're not technically pregnant until that little baby-to-be has actually implanted itself into the uterine lining.

And that is because we have to have that beta HCG without it where we lose our progesterone and then we have our period. And so again, whatever you believe, that's perfectly fine. This is just the science of how it all works. And I can't call someone pregnant until I can test a beta HCG. I can do it earlier in the blood often than I can with just doing a urine stick. But until we see that, we can't confirm a pregnancy. Does that make sense just in terms of the physiological perspective?

Melanie Avalon
Yeah, no, it does. So if somebody takes like the morning after pill, is that disrupting just that very, like what is that doing?

Speaker 1
Morning after pill prevents ovulation. That's the primary mechanism.

So a lot of people think the morning after pill is actually an abortifactant. It's not because there's going to be somebody in the comments right now being like, I have a morning after pill baby. There are all of these morning after pill babies because you took the morning after pill, but you had already ovulated. If you already ovulated, it's too late.

What we're doing with the morning after pill is trying to prevent ovulation. Okay.

Melanie Avalon
Okay, gotcha. Wow, yeah, I definitely thought it was killing something because that's what it sounds like. Totally.

Speaker 1
I know, like that and like plan B, I don't know. Like there could be better marketing.

I mean, Avia block or something, right? Like block ovulation. Like we could have come up with a better term for it. Ovulation stop.

Melanie Avalon
When people are on the birth control pill, what is it stopping?

Speaker 1
So the primary mechanism of an oral contraceptive pill is to flood your system with so many hormones that it stops your brain from talking to your ovaries. So your follicle-stimulating hormone and your luteinizing hormone, never get your estrogen up, never get your progesterone up, and never prepare an egg to be ovulated. And so the primary mechanism is you don't ovulate.

Secondary mechanism is that it's going to change the cervical mucus, so it is basically a blockade instead of a superhighway for sperm. So if you happen to ovulate, sperm can't get there. And then the third backup method is that it thins the lining of your uterus. That one is not, with the oral contraceptive pill, it's not as good as like an IUD in some cases. This is why there are the, I got pregnant on the pill stories out there. And so in thinning the uterine lining, which is what a progestin IUD does, if you ovulate and sperm and egg meet, the implantation can't happen. And so you can't get pregnant because implantation didn't happen.

This is where I think it's really important to disclose these things to people because this is again, where medicine is controlling women's bodies and they're like, no, but if you tell women that, then women who believe that life begins at conception, then they'll just, you know, they won't use it and we need them to use it. I firstly do not believe in lying to women, lying to patients. I think they need all the information. They get to make the decision for themselves, but you know, it is something that I think when you don't have that belief, it's really easy to be dismissive of it and not realize the mental, emotional ramifications of when that woman just like discovers what the mechanism of action is for that. And that I think is really problematic.

The progestin IUD is also supposed to be blocking sperm from even getting to the egg. But I always think about like Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park when he's like, nature finds a way. And I'm like, it sure does sometimes. And all of the, you know, the only like 100% tried and true method, and no, I'm not gonna say abstinence anyone, is vasectomy. And vasectomy after you've had a vasectomy and then you have, you know, submitted ejaculate to see is there, are there any living sperm? Once they're like, yep, no sperm there. That's 100% effective.

And then of course there's like hysterectomy, sterilization of women, things like that as well. But that's like way more invasive than a vasectomy. And to that point.

Melanie Avalon
Well, I asked listeners for questions for you. And one listener, Damon, he asked if you could talk about male birth control.

And I will say it was really, it's really upsetting to hear like in your book about the history of birth control and the studies done on male birth control and why, like, like basically the developmental process for that and why it was stopped. Could you talk a little bit about that?

Speaker 1
Sure. I'm like, sure. All right. Here's the thing to understand. We live in a capitalistic market. Every investment by a pharmaceutical company must have a return on investment. As much as you're going to get pissed off about this, capitalism is going to capitalism. What they did is they had this birth control trial for men. Men reported to Uptick and Libido, completely opposite of women, but men also had the same symptoms to a less severe degree as women when it comes to mood. Some of them felt depressed, lack of motivation. At the time they do this trial, they're like, men are not going to take this. We're not going to keep investing money on it. We're going to go ahead and halt this trial. The same quarter, they released a new IUD that had a higher side effect profile than what the men were struggling with, and it was deemed completely acceptable for women. Why? Because women will buy it. Because we've been conditioned and marketed to buy that we are the only ones who can control the fertility, prevent pregnancy, and that the burden lies on our shoulders if we do not want to get pregnant. Whenever I've talked about this, there's always at least one woman who comes in and is like, well, those men were really depressed. I'm like, sure, Jan, and in the first birth control trials, women died, but they didn't stop those. No, they didn't stop those at all. Women died. They were lied to, told that it would help them get pregnant. The Puerto Rican women, they were told that if they were in these trials, they would stop the forced sterilization of them. Following the birth control trial after they abused, neglected, and coerced these women into being in a nonconsensual drug trial, they then made it so unaffordable, these women couldn't have access to the pill, and then they went on to perform mass sterilizations on the women of that island, and it is the largest mass sterilization of any population that we've ever seen in the history of humanity. Those are the women who gave their lives for the birth control trial, but let's cry about men being a little bit sad.

Melanie Avalon
It's truly horrible and shocking. Yeah.

And I think some of the studies I, I went to USC in LA, I think some of the studies were happening there as well. Ah, so question, another question about birth control. So if the body, so the state that the body is in, when you are on the pill, and, you know, if you have like, I don't know what, what it's called, the withdrawal bleed, or, you know, like the bleed day that you have. So that state that you're in, what state does the body think it's in, if that makes sense.

Speaker 1
People will always say like oh the body thinks it's pregnant. No, it's not dumb Okay, when you're pregnant you're bathing in progesterone when you're on the pill. There's absolutely no progesterone whatsoever It's progestin. It doesn't have the same mood benefits brain benefits heart benefits bone benefits It's not the same stress somebody with a chemistry degree right here telling you structurally it is completely different And now we're seeing studies saying yeah And that might be what's increasing the risk of breast cancer in women who use the pill and who use HRT hormone replacement therapy and we give them progestin The other thing about being pregnant is you don't have estradiol estradiol is the primary hormone during our cyclical years When we're pregnant we switch into estriol or e3.

It's a weaker much more gentle form of Estrogen has tons of benefits side note It's also the one you use on your skin in your 40s if you want to keep the elasticity on your face Because it won't go systemic in the same way that estradiol will so the hormones being used in the contraceptive pill are Completely different but the mechanism is similar in that there are so so the placenta right first It's the corpus luteum, which is the temporary endocrine structure left behind in the ovary after you ovulate That's producing estrogen and progesterone Then the placenta gets hooked up and boy does that like go off with the hormones and all of those hormones tell your brain We are pregnant, but you also have things like beta HCG involved you have prolactin involved So it's it's much more going on. Whereas when you're on the birth control pill, it's not there's no fluctuations it's just on or off light switch a static estradiol and Proges stem and while you're on birth control.

We see some women develop HPA dysregulation hypothalamic pituitary adrenal access dysregulation Some women we see increased inflammatory proteins like C reactive protein going on We can also see increased CRP in pregnancy as well But there can be also gut dysbiosis intestinal permeability. So now we've got Cortisol being disrupted. We see a rise in sex hormone binding globulin while you're on the pill now your testosterone That you managed to make from your adrenal glands because your ovaries aren't doing anything for you that gets bound up Now we also see thyroid binding globulin goes up. So that binds up your thyroid hormone So we see a lot of these changes and we see brain changes can happen as well That don't have the same positive benefits that we see in pregnancy Now someone will always argue what pregnancy is a huge risk for like clots Yes, it is and it's a bigger risk than the birth control pill for clots But you know the thing about pregnancy is often we're screening for those things like somebody who has gone through infertility I had all the screening done For clotting factors and then lo and behold found I had a clotting factor That I was heterozygous for but it was enough that when I was given estrogen We saw my clotting factors go up and I'm like,

Speaker 1
oh snap I'm so lucky I did not have a problem when I was on the pill and if I was here I am in my 40s I'm not a candidate for the pill now if I take oral estrogen, which is very specific to oral estrogen I have to inject lovenox like I have to be on blood thinners to be on that so Understand that it's estrogen as a whole when the system raises estrogen Significantly or you take it orally that can raise clotting factors and put you at risk Which is why both the pill and pregnancy are a risk for blood clots But you know, there's a lot of like we can compare and contrast with all of that But the bottom line is like whenever people say like oh the pill tricks your body into being pregnant I'm like, I don't think your body's that dumb. I really don't think it's that dumb. Yeah

Melanie Avalon
Yeah, and I was really concerned to read, because you're mentioning all the effects that happen when you're on the pill, and I think you were saying that, like with the effect on the sex hormone binding globulin, that it could possibly make genetic changes that might never, you know, go back to the way they were. I was like, that's really concerning.

Speaker 1
Yeah, so that's an area that needs a lot more research, but for people listening, your liver goes through first pass when you take an oral estrogen. And so, by the way, anyone who has thyroid diseases and on a thyroid medication, if you take the oral contraceptive pill or you take oral estradiol, you need to get rechecked because you might have to adjust your thyroid medication, but that estrogen goes through first pass in the liver.

The liver produces sex hormone binding globulin, and there is some research that says it's possible that that continues even after you stop the pill, that that sex hormone binding globulin stays elevated. And so, the thing about it is that's an epigenetic change of an input, which to me is always a very positive thing. It didn't mutate your DNA forever, it was an epigenetic change. That means that something in your environment influenced your genes.

Great, let's do the other things to influence those genes to help bring back down sex hormone binding globulin. Yeah.

Melanie Avalon
Do you think, because I hear, I've had different guests on the show and I've been told different things as far as whether or not the pill actually causes weight gain. Apparently like the studies say that it does not, but I just know like if I look back when I went on birth control pill in high school, I mean, I definitely, definitely gained weight once I went on it.

It's so clear if you follow my yearbook, timeline trajectory, so weight gain, is that a side effect or is it actually just like fluid retention and other things?

Speaker 1
If you tell me I took the pill and I gained weight, I 100% believe you because the studies that say no, it doesn't is taking an average of all of these individuals in the study and saying on average, no, it's not statistically significant. However, what that is is a bell-shaped curve, so everybody get a bell in your head and split it right down the middle and that is the norm. That's what we're looking at for the average. Well, to one side of that are people that gained a hell of a lot more weight than the average and to the other side of that are people who were so nauseous with the pill that they didn't eat and they weren't able to keep food down and so they lost weight. Understand that just because we're saying no statistically significant weight loss, there were outliers in these trials that skewed the data.

There are people who significantly gained weight and people who were losing weight. What is true for you is what matters so much more. What is true for you? Will it cause water weight in some people? Absolutely. That's a given. That's an absolute given that it can cause water retention in some people. With other people, they will actually experience weight gain. When women's hormones change, this is like a whole denialist platform that doctors stand on acting like you just lack motivation and you need to eat less and move more and your hormones don't do anything. When women's hormones change, our body composition changes and where we store fat and how we store fat can absolutely change. If you get on the birth control pill, that raises your C-reactive protein. Your inflammation going up enough alone can cause you to have extra water weight and to gain some weight. If your thyroid hormone is going down, some women have a loss of insulin sensitization that they once had when they're on the pill. In fact, there was a study showing that women who use the pill within five years of menopause had about a 30% increased risk of insulin resistance. This is how hormones interplay with all other hormones. It's just the same as mood. There's no study that's showing causation. It's a very hard thing to prove causation in some of these trials because women are complex biological systems operating in a very complex environment. What is important to understand is it is possible. There is an association of weight gain for some women who take the pill.

If that is true for you, then that is true for you. It doesn't matter what the studies say. That should be respected. Sometimes you just change pill formulations. Sometimes you go with a ring instead. You go with an IUD and things shift for you. I think the most disempowering thing that we hear is that often what researchers and doctors will conclude is that women just gain weight every year on average over their light time. It's not that they're on the pill. It's just that they were just going to gain weight anyways. Maybe that's true, but I am always of the mindset that if a woman says, I had this system input, which is the pill, and this was the output, my experience, we need to be curious as to why.

Speaker 1
For years, doctors have denied the association of depression and pill use. However, we saw it in the first birth control trials. We've seen it in every birth control trial. It lives in every pamphlet insert that says adverse moods can come with that. We had a huge study of over a million people come out showing that, yeah, sure enough, if you're on the pill, it's associated with increased risk of psychiatric disorders and not the kind where it's like, maybe you just go to counseling and therapy, like the kind that sometimes you end up hospitalized with. Even then, doctors lined up to tell women that it was still in their head and they were making it up.

Anyone who says that women might be telling the truth are obviously anti-pill, obviously just want to villainize the pill and must be part of some great conspiracy of Christian or right wing or whatever they want to name it that week agenda, rather than just recognizing that women deserve the truth. They deserve to have all the information and they deserve to be supported in whatever they're saying about their health. They deserve to be supported. We don't have to have huge studies to say, I believe the woman sitting in front of me and I want to make sure that I support her. Interestingly enough, it wasn't until in the last year that they finally decided to study neurodivergent women in the pill and not even neurodivergent women as old, just ADHD in the pill. What do you find? Lo and behold, very vulnerable to mood symptoms. We're talking about people who already have neuroinflammation, mitochondrial dysfunction, maybe disrupted tryptophan pathways. Here, medicine and science has been gaslighting lying to women about being like, I've never heard another woman having this experience. Yes, you have. All you have to do is listen to enough women and you've heard women say this. There's been all this gaslighting and they haven't even studied the populations to understand who's vulnerable. It wasn't until a handful of years ago that we understood increased suicidal ideation among teenagers. We deserve this data. We need to know who's vulnerable so we can protect them.

Melanie Avalon
The gaslighting is wild.

I keep having flashbacks now to taking Yas in high school because I remember I did it because I was taking Accutane and to take Accutane you had to take birth control and it was like all of the I don't know if this is still the way it works but it was a massive amount ironically of like education and you had to do this program and like to actually get the medication but no mention of like any of this stuff you know like no mention of the actual like mental health effects and what you're actually taking and putting in your body it's just absolutely crazy.

Speaker 1
you can't control an educated woman. You just can't, right?

And it goes back to what I said at the top of this, like so much of this has been to control us and as much good as the pill has done and how I'm like, I will absolutely fight for women to have access to it any day of the week I will throw down on that. However, the way the information is presented to us is to absolutely control our decision and to not make our decision fully our own. It's enough to make you think it's your decision, but not enough for it to actually be your decision.

Melanie Avalon
It's so interesting because I like to think that I'm enlightened and empowered and making these choices. And still, I struggle a lot with, and I'm curious what your advice is, on things like if I'm not taking birth control and the man doesn't quite understand why. I've gotten comments before like, why don't you just take birth control? And it's not said in an accusatory way, but the feeling of the system and the guilt, it would be easy to take birth control. Why am I being difficult here?

So it's like struggling with guilt around things like that, especially around things like condoms. I mean, men saying that it doesn't feel... How many men have said that it doesn't feel as good with condoms? And I'm like, I don't know what to do with that because obviously I want it to feel good for them, but I also want them to wear a condom. So I struggle with this. I'm curious how you advise women around all of this, the guilt.

Speaker 1
Yeah, well, why don't they just get a vasectomy? Like, why don't you just get a vasectomy then? But also this whole like, oh, it doesn't feel as good with the condom. It doesn't feel good to live in my body every single day when I'm taking these exogenous hormones.

It doesn't feel good to know that like I'm, you know, well, some cancer risks are lower, like endometrial and ovarian cancer risk is lowered by using the pill. Other cancer risks can go up while slightly it still is something that lives in the back of our head of like cervical cancer and breast cancer. Like, you know, seeing those kinds of issues. I mean, and it goes beyond that. Like there can be gallbladder dysfunction there, you know, there's the entire hormone system. There's the gut. So I just really think that men don't understand what the pill is actually doing when I think it's very, you know, the first time it was ever said to me was by Dave Asprey and he said, men who love women wouldn't ask them to take the pill. And I'm like, Oh God, that hits like a Mac truck. Like that is so true. But I also think that men don't understand it because right, because we're one of two countries in the entire world that allows commercials to exist on the TV. So he's watching the game and then it's just like birth control makes your life so amazing. Okay. Thanks lies. Maybe, I mean, let me just say for some women, it does make their life really, really amazing. But for some women, it does not. But also I think that like, you know, there's always the option of a copper IUD. I think that can be a really viable option for someone who doesn't want to get pregnant, but also doesn't want those hormones. You're not a candidate. If you have a dental minosis, endometriosis, fibroids, or a history of heavy painful periods, but outside of that, it can be a really strong method. And it's about like 99% effective, which is fantastic. But it's also something too that like, you know, I've talked with other women where their partner is like, Oh, well, why don't you just get on the pill? And they're like, well, I hate it. And, but he, and then he'll say, well, I don't ever want to have kids. Then get a vasectomy. You're in and out in like an hour. It doesn't have like the major ramifications on your hormonal system that like the birth control pill can have. And like, they give you some pretty sweet drugs just by way of being a man. So you don't even have to be uncomfortable compared to an IUD, which we don't usually get really great pain management for in the United States.

Melanie Avalon
I'll be curious your thoughts on this. This was an eye opener for me because it made me realize, A, I think the patriarchal vibe that is even ingrained in things like AI today, but also maybe I was being too biased from my perspective, but I was researching HPV and why there is not a test for men. And approaching the topic in my mind, I was like, this is not fair for women because it stigmatizes women because women are the only ones that can get the test. So men can go around and have HPV and there's like no stigma, but for women there is. That was what I was thinking.

That was my first thought. And then I asked chat GPT, I was like, why is there no test for HPV for men? And it's answered. Literally, I think like the first thing it said, it was like something to the effect of, yeah, this is not fair for men that they can't get this test, like it led with that. And I was like, that's really interesting. A, that it's the complete opposite interpretation I had, B, that it brings that in rather than just like answer the question. But so yeah, I guess the question here is, what are your thoughts on these underlying perspectives of what may be patriarchal in society versus not? And also like with AI, do you think since it's fed on the content that is out there, is that going to be a problem in further promoting the issues or do you think it'll bring more equality?

Speaker 1
Yeah, there's a lot to unpack there. So firstly, I would say, so there are great dentists who do oral swabs and test for HPV, and then they also do anal swabs in same-sex couples. So there is testing available. It comes down to like insurance companies who are the puppet masters in the United States as well, right? And like what they're going to cover. And so what they're going to cover becomes the what is the standard of care in a lot of ways. And it's not always necessarily what's best for the people as much as it's best for the pocket strings, right?

When it comes to AI, it's funny because I've played her. I remember when chat GTBT first came out, I was like, I just want to see like, put together a protocol for like PCOS. And its protocol was so close to like stuff that I do. And I was like, whoa, whoa, like that's that's amazing. That's like who told you this? Oh my god. And so, I mean, one thing that comes up, I found is really problematic is Google's AI. So when I Google something, I just like I feel like one out of 10 is a lie. And I and I catch it in a lie. I will even go and like feed it back into like Gemini or my husband like how he's the AI guy. I'll be like, I want to ask the other AI models this question. And then I want to give it what Google's answer was. And they'll all be like, yeah, Google's Google's full of it. I'm like, don't trust Google. Do not trust Google's AI. Like I will say that like hands down because there's definitely stuff that I have. Because you know, you Google it and now it comes up at the top. And I'm trying to remember the example of what it was recently. But it was something health related. And I was like, that's not true. That's not true at all. Like, and there's studies, there's multiple studies. And I'm like, okay, well, you know, I think Google's in with like Healthline and like several other enterprises that like there, there is profit to be made in some of these answers that are being given.

So in terms of AI, I find that's like definitely more biased when I do think it's going to be problematic. As you were saying, like, you know, in terms of the patriarchy, I think whenever we use that it's kind of a loaded term where people just think like, oh, it's just a bunch of men who are trying to like hold women back. Patriarchy is holding everybody back except the people who have power. That's what patriarchy does. And there's a lot of men who are being hurt by patriarchy as well. And so, you know, case in point, HPV screenings, regular HPV screenings, like that, men get throat cancer, like they get other kinds of cancers from HPV. That's not being done standard because of the patriarchal system that is medicine.

Having children, you know, are having a wife that dies of preeclampsia due to sperm quality not being up to par that that was patriarchy always saying that women are at fault for anything that happens in their pregnancy and their baby and, you know, side note also like pregnancy and the pain of childbirth is also a punishment for like eating a theoretical apple in a garden kind of thing.

Speaker 1
All of that has fed in and yet men are being affected by that as well, right? They could have done something to improve their sperm quality. And so I think it is going to be really problematic.

I think rock is probably like hands down in terms of what I see people say online. I've never used it. I think that's like hands down like the worst in terms of just being fully like, and again, it's not patriarchy in just like how do we hold women down. It is that how do we keep people disempowered and keep the people with power retaining that power. And I do think that AI is going to be problematic in that to some extent. I think that it's really, it's a very interesting thing to consider how AI models were trained. And we don't have a lot of insight on that, right? Like, you know, I think to how many people have accused writers of using AI because they use the M dash punctuation. And I had somebody with beyond the pill be like, it's so clear that you used AI for this. And I'm like, how is it clear? And they're like the number of M dashes. And I was like, the book was, I started writing it in 2017. Okay, it went to the publisher in 2018. And then it was published in 2019. Do you know when, do you know when AI was the thing when it came out? Like it's not possible. But it's even stuff like that where people are starting to confuse like how the AI model was trained, it was trained on literary works, they use M dashes. And then they're confusing that for like, oh, well, that that means that like something is AI. But us not having insight into how AI was trained or who AI who was training AI, I've seen a lot of women talk about how they were involved in AI training models. I think that's a real positive. But I do think we need to start asking that because the way that we behave and more scary, the way that that badly behaved men behave in these AI like interfaces is going to train it in terms of how do you how do you treat women's medicine? How do you treat women as a whole?

Melanie Avalon
Yeah, we're at such a fascinating time and it makes me think of a few things. One, in the trajectory of your career doing all of this, what have you seen that has improved the most that was an issue just with all of this content that women struggle with and what is the slowest, like what is not improving?

Speaker 1
Oh, we could just take endometriosis in this one right here. So what has improved in the last five years, we can diagnose endometriosis with imaging. We can do ultrasound or we can do MRI and it's not invasive and that's amazing.

What's so slow? Doctors actually recognizing that they're not confident enough to be treating the endometriosis patient they need to refer and instead going in and doing a hack job surgery and being like, let's just peekaboo and like we can diagnose it that way, but they have no expertise in this therefore they miss it a lot of the time and so with endometriosis for people who are listening, this is where tissue that is similar to the lining of the uterus but unique in its own production of hormones, blood vessels and inflammatory cytokines and the way it behaves all together so not the same as uterine lining but a little like shares some similarities is growing outside of the uterus and in that it is a full body systemic inflammatory condition. Lots of pain issues, pain with urination, bowel movement, sex, periods, ovulation but also adverse mood changes, you know, having systemic inflammation means body aches all the time, fatigue all the time and the United States is only allocating about $2 per endometriosis patient annually for research so it's not moving fast enough.

The only thing we have right now is the kind of medicine I practice meets excision surgery but we have seen that we no longer have to do invasive procedures in every single woman to be able to diagnose her.

Melanie Avalon
Speaking of invasive procedures, this is a big question I have and I'm very torn because I definitely want to, I mean, as a biohacker, do all the tests, all the things. I want to take the best care of my health that I can.

And also, I'm aware of the insurance system and how the system may quickly jump to slightly invasive procedures that may not be necessary at the time. So, for example, I got at one point an abnormal pap smear and my gynecologist immediately wanted me to do a, I think a coloscopy. Coloscopy, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was dating a doctor at the time who is very much anti the conventional system. And he was like, that's just the system making you do that. You don't need that. You should ask, you've never had one before. You should ask to retest first in a couple months, see if it's going like gone away. So something like that, because I want to be super aware of my sexual health. And so if a woman was in a situation like that, should they get the test? Should they wait and see? How should we best take agency?

Speaker 1
Yeah. That always just depends on the scenario. In a lot of cases, we understand that the reason why we moved the age of pap smears and then we started to do them three to five years apart, just depending on if you test positive for HPV, you're going to do it more often. The reason why we did that is because we were doing too many invasive procedures. Coposcopies, they act like it's some little thing. I remember when I was being trained in coposcopies and I was like, the hell I'm never doing this. I'm never doing this to someone. I will refer out because I don't want to be that person who goes and chomps off a piece of your cervix that is highly innervated with nerves. It ain't going to be me. I don't want to do that to people. I know people right now are probably like, yeah, but some people need it. Yes. And I can refer to someone else because I don't want to be the torture queen because it hurts.

And in the United States, there's just not adequate pain management happening in a lot of cases. So with that situation of HPV, we often can retest in six months. And then there's things that we can do. So there's certain protocols of upping your full eight, making sure your vitamin D is up to par, making sure your vitamin A, getting all of the immune supportive factors in place because with that, it's possible that you might clear it. Your immune system can clear it in like six months. It's when we get into our thirties and that our immune system starts to decline that we're less likely to clear HPV. And if we have abnormal cells there that are showing to be precancerous or maybe even cancerous, taking a larger sample can be really important to make sure that we are screening for cancer and not missing it because in the United States, really good. I mean, it's one of the cancers we're really good at catching is cervical cancer. Not a lot of people die of it because of the regular screening exams and the way we give people access to it. So it is just one of those situations that it always depends. But I always ask the question to my providers, what happens if I watch and wait? What happens if I wait and I try these other things? When would you want to see me back? And I always challenge them to think more, more creative ways. What if we went this route? What if we do this route? And then I always do my own research and things. We were supposed to record earlier, but I had to have knee surgery. And I knew when it happened, I had finished working out. And it was later on that I was sitting on the ground. And all I did was move my heel towards my butt. And I suddenly felt my knee lock. And I'm like, Oh my god, I thought I had a misniscus tear, which I was crying about because that's a very hard recovery when you're active and you have a toddler. And then you speak on stages all over the world. But I saw one provider. He told me he was like, I'm going to do an x-ray. I was like, no, I need an MRI. He's like, no, we'll start with an x-ray. We'll see what it shows.

Speaker 1
We get the x-ray. He's like, your knees look like that of a 70 year old. This is just osteoarthritis. You need to keep walking on it. I was like, no, no, I would. And then I was like, okay, so how do I prevent further degeneration of my joint? And he's like, well, you need to eat well and not gain weight. And I was like, well, that's my whole freaking life. That's my whole freaking life. So say more, say more because this is not enough. Anyhow, we left there. And I just told my husband, I was like, F that guy.

I'm getting a second opinion. I ordered my own MRI. I was like, I'm going to order my own MRI. I go get an MRI. I get it back. And the interpretation is something's lodged in her joint. I'm like, okay. So then I nested all my friends. I'm like, I need a referral, which is the best way to find doctors is word of mouth. And I go see this other guy. And I'm like, okay, so Bro did an x-ray. He's like, why would he do an x-ray? I was like, exactly. Okay. We're already friends. I was like, he said my knees look like 70 year olds. He's like, your knees look like 20 year olds. Your knees are the healthiest knees I've seen. And I was like, yeah. And he told me to keep walking. He's like, if you keep walking, you're going to destroy your joint. You have to get in a wheelchair right now. And then I was like, okay, so what do we do? They thought it was a piece of bone. So the first MRI was less sensitive. It looked like a piece of bone. And he's just like, yeah, we got to get this out. We got to get it out as soon as possible. I'm like, okay, what if I wait? We go through all this stuff. He's like, your knee's already super swollen. You have a history of autoimmune disease. If your immune system gets hip to what's going on there, it may start destroying your knee joint. I'm afraid of that for you. And we go through everything. And I'm like, okay, this makes sense. And then I'm in surgery like the next day, which was not the way I intended.

But I got a second MRI, which actually showed that randomly, a piece of cartilage just fell off my kneecap. But I tell this story to illustrate that I had an opinion. It was a bad opinion. My gut said this was a bad opinion. I was in a lot of pain. Trust me, I did not want to go get a second opinion. I didn't want to go get an MRI myself. I didn't want to do any of that. And yet I had to advocate for myself within the system. First guy knew, it was a doctor. Still didn't care. Still told me what he told me. And so I think it's just really important for women to always question their doctors. Be a troublemaker. Make sure you're comfortable before the appointment is over with the decision that's being made. Somebody who's short on time is going to be irritated with you. But you know what? This is the job they signed up for. This is the job they signed up for.

And I would never go into I would never go into having a biopsy or a surgery or any of these more invasive things without having all of my questions answered first and always asking, is there another way?

Speaker 1
Is there another way? Is there another way? You are not going to die of cervical cancer in the next week. Odds are really low of that for you to take a week, do research, have a follow-up appointment, have that conversation again.

I'm not dissuading you from having medical care. I'm encouraging you to feel very satisfied in the care that you get. There was a Dr. Melissa McHale on my podcast and she said something that was just so profound to me where she said, no surgery is better than bad surgery. And I think often no procedure is better than a bad procedure. And she said, once that bell is wrong, you cannot unring it. And if somebody does more harm than good, then that's the rest of your life. That's the rest of your life you're dealing with that.

Melanie Avalon
What I ended up doing I actually talked with Dave Asprey we're talking about him earlier and he was like do like I did vaginal Ozone I did that for like three months the gynecologist was okay with me waiting and when I retested three months later It was back. It was completely normal.

So no colops whatever is called colopsk Well, how do you say colpos could be and I think it's so interesting how they just there's like, yeah You're gonna get this like they don't like warn you that it cuz then I looked it up and I was like Oh, this looks not fun like not fun

Speaker 1
No, no. And just like, I just think it's so funny, like with the IUD placement, like it wasn't until 2025 that the American College of Obstetrician and Gynecologists were like, Hey, yeah. So yeah, we know we talk about evidence based medicine all the time, but maybe we should actually like practice what we preach and investigate. Is Advil enough for, you know, having an IUD placement? And sure enough, it wasn't. Oh my god, like every other country in the world already told you that and gave pain management. And every woman screaming on your table told you that. But you decided to ignore them.

You decided that your white coat meant that you knew their body better than them. And you continue to place those. But at the same time that you say this lie, this disinformation, which is meant to dissuade people and to make women get coerced into procedures without adequate pain management, you say there's no nerve endings in the cervix. It's just totally false. But then you tell them they're going to feel just a pinch. Just a pinch when you take the claw. And that's something else. Like when I was trained in IUD placements and I'm like, God, this is important. But this is horrific. And we did more of like, I remember my attending would actually give stronger pain meds. But in other countries, it's interesting because people will be like, oh, I was under a conscious sedation or I had a nerve block. And I'm like, what? I had to have an endometrial biopsy and I was in Mexico. And I was like, okay, so can we talk about pain management? And they're like, oh, you won't be in pain afterwards. And I was like, no, but during the procedure. And they're like, you're going to be under. And I was like, wait, what? You're going to put me under, I'm going to be sedated. And they're like, yeah, what else would we do? And I'm like, you would tell me just to pinch and just to bear it. And they're like, who does that? And I was like, that's what they do in the US. And they're like, no, that is barbaric. That's the worst thing I've ever heard of. This hurts so bad. And I'm like, thank you. Thank you for saying it hurts so bad because I know it's going to hurt that. And they're like, no, afterwards, we're going to give you some stuff. But by the time you wake up, it's not going to be how it was during the procedure. But I was like, oh my God. Women surviving healthcare in the US is next level.

Melanie Avalon
I know. This is wild. This is absolutely crazy.

I actually got – so normally I feel like I'm the one leaving the doctor because I am not – like you did with the first doctor who did the x-ray and told you that you had 78-year-old knees, but I actually got fired by my doctor once. It was my GI doc and I was having – oh, I was struggling with anemia. I'd recently just gotten a colonoscopy and the new GI doc I saw was like, we need to do a colonoscopy. I was like, well, I just did one. I was like, so can we do the pill cam thing that will look at the small intestine as well and it's less invasive? And then I got a letter from the hospital being like, your doctor has removed you from their care. I was like, whoa.

Speaker 1
That's like when the bad boyfriend breaks up with you and you're like, oh, thank god. I dodged that one

Melanie Avalon
I was like, oh, that's okay. Yes.

Speaker 1
I mean, every doctor's had to dismiss patients before. I mean, like, I think about the patients I've had to dismiss. I had one woman like swing and hit me with her purse in the waiting room because she had gotten her appointment time wrong and like was screaming at the at my assistant at the front desk and I was like, Look, your appointment is just in an hour. Like you like the like we sent you the email like it just got confused and then she like hit me with her purse and I was like, I absolutely cannot see you. I absolutely cannot see you because she started screaming like you will see me. And I'm like, I can't be objective anymore. Like you just hit me. Like other people would call the police on you, but you're a perimenopausal and I'm giving you a break here, but I like cannot objectively see you. I'm not interested in your wellbeing as much as I'm interested in my safety. And so therefore, sorry, we can't be in a relationship anymore.

It would be unethical for me to continue treating you. But like, yeah, I'm like, I haven't, that's like, yeah, I've never fired someone just because they asked for an alternative treatment.

Melanie Avalon
Man, yeah, it's completely completely crazy and speaking of pain down there again Like I said for listeners reading isn't normal. You'll realize just well I'll tell you it made me grateful because I realized all the potential things I could be experiencing that I'm not experiencing So that's good But I will say the thing that I think I had chalked up for me personally that it's just normal is Pain like you feel like putting in a tampon is a little bit painful for me and it always has been as long as I can remember but the weird thing about it is I I don't know Like I don't know how to fix it because it's just if I put anything up there it it's like painful temporarily

Speaker 1
Have you gone to pelvic floor physical therapy? I have not. There you go, come on. How many times I say that and is this normal?

So it's really common for women to have trigger points in their pelvic floor in the same way that like, you can get trigger points in your shoulder, right? Like we all know that shoulder tension and then someone's massaging your shoulder and you're like, oh my God, what is that? We can also have those in our pelvic floor. This is why, you know, endometriosis women tend to have a lot of trigger points and it's why they say their periods are less painful when they don't use a tampon and they use a pad instead. They often are like, it's because of all the toxins in the tampons. I don't know anything about that. And I haven't seen substantial research about that, but I do know that a tampon can be aggravating trigger points and that will definitely make things a lot more painful. So if it's the tampon going all the way in, that can be trigger points. If it's at the introitus, the opening, it could be vaginismus, which is like basically the tightening down of the muscles, but that can also be trigger point related as well. And so, you know, anyone who's listening to this that has like, you know, pain with sex, pain with inserting a tampon, pain with their periods, pain when they're sitting, they have urinary incontinence, they have pain when they pee, they have pain with bowel movements, or maybe they have like fecal incontinence. Meet with a pelvic floor physical therapist because it's only going to make things better. Even, you know, it's gonna make the condition better, but even if you need a more invasive procedure, something else done, it will also make the outcomes of that better.

Melanie Avalon
Awesome, yeah, I definitely, it feels like it's right at the entrance and it's just like, I always say if I can just get past that one spot, even putting in like, like I love the brand for ya, I don't know if you've used their products, but they had like these CBD melts. Those CBD, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I put those in every time I go out, but even like putting those in, like they're tiny, but like there's like pain just right at the beginning, I just have to like get past that point. So it feels very structural to me. So it's interesting that, okay, I will do this, I will do this pelvic floor exercise. And then, oh, just really quickly, cause I'm thinking of putting things up there. I laughed reading your books so much. Now you can know that I think about you every time I travel, like with TSA, I love your story about having the vibrators.

Speaker 1
I was at the biohacking conference like right before that happened

Melanie Avalon
It's so funny.

And actually, I think, and I think it was the biohacking conference I went to, it was the first time that when I opened my suitcase, because I packed my vibrators, I don't put them in my carry-on, I put them in my luggage. But when I got my luggage back, it had been opened, you know, like it had the note on it, and the vibrator was going off. I was like, oh, that's... I wonder how often they experienced that down there.

Speaker 1
Yeah, there was I was on a plane and there was a woman next to me and her vibrator was like clearly going off. And yeah, and people were like, Oh, what is that? And like, and she like was really embarrassed and flustered and like, took care of it was like, it was their electric toothbrush. Like you guys know, it was like, you're not brushing your teeth.

Like it's electric toothbrush. And she's like, Oh my god, thank you. I'm like, girl, we've all been there. And like, you take your batteries out before you try.

Melanie Avalon
Oh, wait, no, mine's like a rechargeable one. Yup, exactly, right?

Yeah, well, and speaking of vibrators though, this is something I fascinated by. I am still, so I mentioned earlier, I had my epiphany about what I've been told about sex and I literally, like Jolene, the next day changed my mind, which it's very crazy to have that big of a paradigm shift that you've had your whole life overnight, but it happened for me. And it's funny because I remember I had the paradigm shift and I was like, I'm gonna talk about vibrators. I'm gonna talk about sex. I'm gonna talk about it all the time. And I was really interested to realize, oh, it's not just the Christian community that there's this sense of shame around it. Like it's still pervasive. I'm really intrigued by, like just talking about vibrators still is like shameful, it seems, in society. But even though I kind of like lost my shame about it, do you sense that as well? And do you think that will change or do you think we're just gonna like stay like that?

Speaker 1
think everybody is taught to be ashamed of their body from the moment that they're aware of their body. And I think this starts as like, you know, it's like two and three year olds, right? Like, you know, the comments that get made about our bodies, like, even if it's like, Oh, that's a stinky fart, and you're so stinky, right? Like, that is something that your body does. And like, you have no control over it, right? Like, that's, and then that becomes something shameful. And so I think like, literally every aspect of our body just being is something we've been taught to be ashamed of.

And so when it comes to sex, that's a whole extra layer because sex is supposed to be something you don't talk about, you don't see that is, you know, female pleasure is not something to be embraced. Like, you know, I see these like men on threads that will be like, women, men are not interested in women who like, you know, basically are able to like achieve their own orgasm, or who like know what they want in bed and like all this kind of stuff. And I'm always like, men, we don't care what your opinion is. Like, why do you think we care? You know, to your question of like, do I do I think this is gonna change over time? I do not think in the United States that we're gonna see like a big paradigm shift in our lifetime, in terms of like people feeling ashamed of sex or sex being something we talk more openly about. You know, my husband and I were we're gonna watch something with my son. And my husband was like, Oh, it's pretty violent. But no, I don't actually don't want him to see it because there's this sex scene. And I'm like, why are you more comfortable with a boy seeing a sex scene? And it wasn't even like a sex scene. It was just like, oh, they alluded to them having sex like they didn't show this not pornographic by I mean, it's like on Netflix. So it's not I'm like, I don't know if I've been on that side of if there's that side of Netflix. But just for people are clear, it was just a like they're making out and then you know, it's like the innuendo of like they had sex. I'm like, why are you more comfortable with a young male, like be seeing violence, seeing like horrific violence than you are with a married couple, people who are in a committed relationship and who love each other, like it alluding to them having a pleasurable experience. And he's like, Oh, my God, that's like my Christian background right there, like that's like, I'm like, Yeah, and we wonder why we find ourselves in a society where men in the United States, they there is a subset of men who are incredibly violent, incredibly violent towards women, incredibly violent towards children. And like, we cannot normalize that. But it's a weird thing that I'm like, I would rather my son know that like, people in a committed relationship have this pleasure, and it's normal, and it's okay, then for him to be desensitized to people getting shot in the head, like, that's weird.

Speaker 1
That's just strange to me. But I mean, when we look at other cultures as well, I think that there are other cultures where, you know, I was talking about like, we have like a home sauna. And my son is, he's 12 now. And he's like, Oh, are you going to get like, are you in the sauna? Could I get in the sauna with you? I'm like, Yeah, but I'm naked in the sauna. And he's like, I don't have to look at you, right? I was like, No, you don't have to look at me. Like, what do you mean? Like, no, bro, that's weird. And he's like, Okay, like, whatever, like, and then he decided he ended up decided he didn't want to go in the sauna.

And I was talking to friends about it. And they were like, Yeah, but like, that's what like the Finnish do, like the Swedish, like there's all these cultures where like, it's super normal to be naked with your grandma. Like, it's just normal. And I'm like, that's something that we've always tried to do in our house is just like a body's a body, right? It's just a body. Like, it's it's it's a vehicle getting us through this life, doing amazing, fantastic things. But like, it's not always this sexual thing. And I think that's also kind of the problem with the US perspective that would have to change is that women's bodies are always sexualized. It's why like, we had to fight to be able to breastfeed in public, right? Because your breasts were for men, they weren't for babies. And if you're putting them out there, then like, oh my god, you're so obscene. You're so raunchy, like, bro, you're feeding up. That's what they're made for. Like, literally, you have udders, okay, you have udders on the front of you, like they produce milk, like they do other wonderful things too. But like, that's their basic biology. But we were made to feel ashamed, even by the fact that our breasts can sustain the life of another human. I mean, that's freaking amazing. But we're made to feel ashamed about even just basically that. Yeah.

Melanie Avalon
I think a lot about the thing about the violence versus the sex in movies, like it's wild. It's crazy that one is so censored and the other one is like something that's about like love and pleasure is censored and then something where you're literally killing people and blowing their heads off is fine. It's super weird to me.

But yeah, so the, and personally for me like habit wise, one of the most beneficial habits I found out of like, and you know what, I should bring this up more is it escapes me because it's just so part of my life now, but I have my like one, I have my every night orgasm habit. So it was after I interviewed Dr. Stephanie Estema and she had like a seven day orgasm challenge and I was like, Oh, I'm going to do that. And that was a couple of years ago. And then I never stopped. I was like, I'm gonna have an every day orgasm challenge. And the benefits I feel from it are profound, especially for like relaxing at night. You literally, you know, feel the feel good hormones and everything. So I am team, team vibrators, team masturbation.

Speaker 1
What's crazy, I wrote about all the different types of orgasms in Is This Normal? And I wrote about corgasms ever since I had my endometriosis excision surgery and I've been doing pelvic floor PT. I annoyingly have corgasms now, which I was telling my husband the other day, especially if I'm around ovulation and I was doing tricep extensions and so my arms are going back over my head as I'm laying on my back and I'm tensing my core. I know it's awesome of like, oh, you got to have an orgasm while you're working out, double endorphin hit there, but it's also distracting and annoying because I'm like, I'm just trying to build my triceps here and I don't want to drop the weight on my head.

There's a lot of studies, surprisingly, about benefits of orgasms and some of them are on men, but those can still apply to women again because same tissue, same organs, same hormone release during that, but we know it increases cardiovascular health, longevity, it's better for your mood, better outlook. I think orgasm challenges are great with the caveat that if you can't get there, then it's fine because where you're at in your cycle, so if I was going to do the challenge, I would say to everybody listening, seven to 10 days after your period, start a seven-day challenge then and you're going to have a really great time. If you do it like seven days before your period, you might be like, this is really frustrating. Also, some of us get in our head about stuff and when you set out that the definitive goal in the purpose of this is to have an orgasm and then it's not happening, it's not happening, it's taking longer. In your luteal phase, it can take a good 20 minutes. In your ovulatory phase, it might take you four minutes or less to orgasm and in your luteal phase, it might take you 20 minutes or more. There can be that discrepancy and if you don't know that, you can get down on yourself, think that things are broken or you're just so in your head that you can't actually be in your body, which is where you have to be. You have to be completely mindful to have an orgasm.

Melanie Avalon
that's really good to draw attention to. And also for me, sometimes I feel like it becomes a thing that I have to do now, even though I experienced benefits. Although I will say, I was really interested to hear that that's the amount of like, those are the average times to orgasm because I mean, I mean, I can do it like really fast, like within the song that I listened to.

Speaker 1
You can do it faster than you can with a partner. And science shows it time and again. That's why whenever men are like, it's just too difficult to make a woman orgasm. I'm like, really son? Cause she could do it in 30 seconds. Like literally like, and I'm like, and that's the thing I think with socks that like, men have this huge pressure where they're just supposed to be like, you know, the sexual stallion, the womanizer. Like there's all these pressure. And what nobody tells them, well firstly, this is what I would say to men is, stop taking advice from other men about what women want or what pleasures women. They're not women. Stop listening to them.

Second is no two women are the same. You need to actually ask her. And when you have that communication with your partner, you're more likely to have a better sexual experience. And then this is where people are like, oh, but talking about sex is like, you know, going to be awkward. If it's too awkward to talk about sex, maybe you shouldn't have sex. I don't know. Maybe you should rework that. But, but they'll say like, oh, that'll get me out of the mood. Actually, no, there's a huge percentage of the population that is really into dirty talk. So there's ways to do it. And like for women, you know, the fastest thing to make a woman fake in orgasm is pain with sex, right? And this is altruistic deceit. It is because you want him to feel good and you want his ego to be taken care of. But at the same time, you're in a lot of pain. Like, right, you got to end this. And so having the, like, instead of being like, no, ow, I don't like that. Instead, reframing it is like, ooh, I love it when you do this. Can you move here? Oh, that's the spot. That's the way I like things are like, you know, when you start to make it really positive and just lean into like it is sex and it's messy and it is like awkward, right? Like, and just lean into that. People get really turned on. And the research shows that like most people, like you start framing things in that dirty talk kind of way in directing your partner and it is really going to be a pleasurable experience. And, you know, I would like to think that if men are having sex with you, then they care enough about you to want to make sure that you're comfortable, you're not in pain, but that also things are pleasurable for you as well.

Melanie Avalon
Yes, I, I could not agree more and confession I have faked an orgasm. I was, I was, it was good to hear the staff that when the, not me, not good, but It's like

Speaker 1
almost 90%. It is good and it is bad. So, again, women fake orgasms primarily for men's egos. That's the most important thing to understand is that they fake it because they want men to feel good about themselves, but often why they will fake it is one, it might not be good sex. That's just possible. It's not good sex and you don't know how to save the situation. But a lot of times there is pain, there is discomfort, or you just know, I'm not going to get there. I'm just not going to get there and I know that he's going to keep trying until I do. And it's just like, I'm just like, whatever it is, I had too much stress in the day. I'm about to have my period. My hormones are just not feeling right. I don't feel comfortable in my body. There's a whole host of things that come into play when it comes to women being in the mood and being able to achieve an orgasm. And we don't have to judge ourselves about it.

And I think we do need to just normalize conversations of like, and for everyone, why I'm talking so much about heterosexual couples is because when it comes to what research and medicine terms sexual dysfunction, it is between primarily heterosexual couples. And so that's why we harp on them so much. Lesbians, they are orgasming at higher rates than heterosexual women are. That's just the reality. But heterosexual women can orgasm just fine a lot of the times when men are given a little instruction. You know what? I've said this enough time. Men, if you're listening, it's medium pressure on the clitoris. Not too firm. Definitely not too light. Too light is annoying. It's medium pressure, circular motion, and consistent. Just consistent. Stay consistent. Start there. Let her guide you the rest of the way. Then she'll tell you what else comes next. But that comes from the research. That's what the research says time and again, what women report they actually want. So do that as your starting place.

Melanie Avalon
I think this is one of my favorite conversations to end an episode on. That's amazing.

I don't want to be judgmental, but it is really always interesting to see what men think they're supposed to be doing there versus what you just described. And it's like, where did this come from?

Speaker 1
Here we are. There's too many men with podcasts telling men what women want. And I swear that is at the crux of the male loneliness epidemic.

Melanie Avalon
Oh, man. Oh, man, which apparently now, which is so interesting to me, apparently, the younger generation goes out and has sex less now than in the past. Because we're all just at home on AI. So I guess until we get AI robots, that'll be interesting.

This has been absolutely amazing. Just thank you so much for what you do. And listeners, again, I cannot recommend Dr. Brighton's books enough. We only barely scratched the surface. So you have a Dr. Brighton essentials line. Would you like to tell listeners a little bit about that? Because we do have a code for 15% off, which is the code Avalon. So what line is that?

Speaker 1
Let me just say if you are struggling with low libido, cyclical mood swings, or your focus memory mood feel like they've gone downhill, Radiant Mine is my latest product and I'm absolutely obsessed with it. I unfortunately did a trial of Lupron which is a chemical castration and put myself into menopause and went through absolute hell for two months and figured out a formulation that can help women at all phases of their life with brain energy, with mood support, with hot flashes, and with getting in the mood.

It has clinically studied and backed ingredients including a form of saffron called Afron that has been clinically shown to do all of what I just promised. The Dr. Bright and Essentials line is my supplement line that I have formulated personally working with thousands upon thousands of women over the years to optimize their hormones. They're third party tested. They are screened for things like heavy metals. What we say is in the product is in the product. We use sustainable ingredient sourcing so we're not raping and pillaging the earth. We are very much being conscious of the ingredients that we put in and we are manufactured within the United States. We have an entire line, I say we because I have a whole team who supports me with this, from prenatals, trying to get pregnant, being pregnant, postpartum, through just dealing with cyclical hormone problems that you don't want to deal with, adrenal dysfunction, or maybe you are struggling through perimenopause. We support women from menstruation through menopause to optimize their hormones because I very much believe that your hormones and your body should work for you, not against you and that you absolutely deserve to thrive in this life.

Melanie Avalon
It's amazing. Okay. That's everything I love in the supplement world. So listeners definitely get that.

For that, you can go to Dr. Brighton Essentials.com. The code AVALON will get you 15% off all the products. And then you also have, are these plans free or how does this work? You have the perimenopause weight loss action plan and also the ADHD woman's hormone brain and sink guide. Like, how do those work for listeners?

Speaker 1
Yeah, okay. So here's the secret, everybody. The perimenopause weight loss plan is an anti-inflammatory meal plan. It's a guide to exercise, sleep, stress reduction, and everything you need to thrive with your hormones through your entire life.

But what women asked me for is what is the key to weight loss? So I was like, I will make this plan. However, this plan is literally what all of us needed to start doing in our 20s. So you can grab that Dr. Brighten dot com slash plan. It's 100% free. And then we didn't even get into talking about ADHD and hormones. Maybe I'll have to come back. We'll do it another time. But you can go to drbrighten.com slash s y and c that's sync. And it's about learning how your hormones affect your brain, your cognitive function, how to work with your hormones, and how to support your brain as the cyclical creature you are.

Melanie Avalon
amazing. So listeners definitely go snag those resources now.

And oh my goodness, this was absolutely amazing. Yes, I would love to have you back in the future and dive into more things. And so the last question that I ask every single guest on this show, and it's just because I appreciate more and more each day the role of mindset. So what is something that you're grateful for?

Speaker 1
Oh gosh, we actually do this every single night at dinner with my family of what we're grateful for. I am actually so grateful that we are in the holiday season.

I'm dating this episode now, but that I'm getting time with my children. So I just turned in my fourth book last weekend, and I've just been so, so grateful to do crafts with them and baking with them and just getting to just soak up so much time with them. You only get so many holidays in your lifetime with your kids. So I'm like, I've been just so grateful for the time we're getting together.

Melanie Avalon
I love this part of the season too, and the childhood memories of it are the best, like everything that you just mentioned. When does your next book come out?

Speaker 1
It will come out in October of 2026.

Melanie Avalon
Awesome. I would love to have you back on for that. If that's of interest, that'd be amazing. Yeah, for sure. Let's do it. Awesome. Can you say what the topic is?

Speaker 1
about neurodivergent women and their hormones and how we have to approach everything completely different from them for them and that we can't just be using all these cookie cutter approaches like birth control or even the way we do hormone replacement therapy or even the way we do eating with women. We have to make a very tailored plan to support their brain and to support their hormones to help them with regulating neuroinflammation.

Melanie Avalon
that's amazing. I love when it's a book that's a very, you know, specific topic like that, which will affect so many people, but I really, really appreciate that.

Speaker 1
It's so much easier to write than like, is this normal? I'm like, is this normal with such a beast to write?

But also it's like the guide that like every, it's been so amazing how many moms are like, I read your book, I give it to my teenage daughter. Like it's exactly everything I needed when I was a teenager. I was like, these are the books I write. I write the books I need that I'm like, me 10 years ago would have really have loved this.

Melanie Avalon
This would have been helpful. Oh my goodness. You even answered the question. I remember when I put in a tampon, took it out, and then there was another tampon behind it. And I like freaked. That memory is never going to leave my psyche.

And that's even in the book. Everything is in the book. So yeah. Well, thank you so much. This was so incredible. Can't wait to talk again next time and just thank you so much for all that you do. Yeah, thank you. Bye. Bye. Thank you so much for listening to the Melanie Avalon biohacking podcast. For more information and resources, you can check out my book, What Win Wine, as well as my supplement line, Avalon X. Please visit melanieavalon.com to learn more about today's guest. And always feel free to contact me at contact at melanieavalon.com. And always remember, you got this.