Transcript: Christine Garvin 0:02
Hey everyone, and welcome to this week’s episode of hormonally speaking, I have a really fun and special guest today who is going to cover some areas for those of you that are essentially becoming leaders in really whatever field that you’re stepping into. But you know, particularly in the sort of health world that so many of us are, through our own experiences, you know, in healing our own bodies, and then really stepping up in order to help others in their process in their healing journey, and how to do all of that work without burning yourself out, right, because we certainly know that culturally, all around the world, really, you know, women are pushed to do it all. And that’s not working for our bodies. So I’m really happy to speak with Jenn Pike, who is a medical exercise specialist and Functional Diagnostic Nutritionist specializing in women’s health and hormones. She’s the best selling author of three books, including the simplicity project, the simplicity kitchen, and the simplicity body. She is the fiercely driven founder of The Hormone project synced and the audacious woman, potentially powerful programs dedicated to empowering and teaching women what they should have known about their bodies all along the incredible healing abilities, wisdom and power they hold and how to bring them to life. Jen sits on the advisory board for strong Fitness magazine and serves you up weekly doses of education, wisdom and inspiration on the simplicity sessions podcast, which has been in Apple’s top 200 and health since his debut in September 2018, and her channel simplicity TV on YouTube, as an inspired wife and mom of two, she understands that true well being as a woman is a journey to be enjoyed and not a struggle to be forced here here. She will inspire you to cut the BS and create more simplicity and ease and all you do. Welcome, Jen. Jenn Pike 2:05
Thank you. Thanks for having me. Christine Garvin 2:06
Absolutely. Well, you do a lot. So let’s back up because as we were talking a little bit before we came on here, you know, I don’t think simplicity was always the name of the game for you. Right? Jenn Pike 2:24
No simplicity was the goal. Yes, yes. Christine Garvin 2:27
So in in the beginning, before you started doing all of this work, were you in this overwhelm state that so many women find themselves in? Jenn Pike 2:37
Yeah, for sure. And part of it is that you know, it, it sounds like like when we read it out like that, it sounds like a lot of stuff. But there really is this way to marry our passions, and our you know, zone of work of genius that we’re in in a way that it’s not like you have to, you know, do seven different things. It’s like you can blend your seven different passions, or whatever it is and show up like when I’m teaching about exercise. Well, I’m talking and teaching about that, as I’m teaching about hormones, as I’m teaching about this out of the other, but many years ago, I mean, I’ve been in the industry now this is my 25th year in practice. I’ve been in the fitness industry teaching since I was 17 personal training since 19. Working with athletes, you know, on a high level, energetic space in my early 20s. And then moving all of that over to focusing on women’s health and hormones specifically for about the last 13 solid years in practice. And before then, like before I had my babies before I had kids who are now not babies, they’re 14 and 16. I just chased after my paycheck and I said yes to every single opportunity. And then I created every single other opportunity that I desired that didn’t exist out there. So I I’ve never been afraid to work hard. I’ve always enjoyed work, I’ve always enjoyed money and earning. I’ve always enjoyed teaching and creating impact. So none of those things were hard for me when it was just me didn’t have to, you know, raise a family and take care of a home and all of those other things. But when I had my first daughter at 26 That was like, Oh, this is now very different. And it was a beautiful lesson for so many reasons but it not only helped me see myself in a different light but the women I was working with and I feel like when I had my first child I actually started to really hear what the women were telling me as opposed to just like you know when they would say I’m so tired I’m so this I’m so that may be like a hot let’s keep moving. We’re here to work out so it’s gonna like pack the fatigue away and still show up. Yeah. When women started to communicate that with me, I would just be like, tell me more like why do you like are you physically tired? Are you like, is your soul exhausted? Are you spiritually exhausted? Like what like, tell me more and when When I created that opportunity for other women to hold the space and to be heard and truly feel seen, everything started to change. And I very clearly can remember these moments of, I am now going to be doing everything different. And so in the beginning, that didn’t help my own burnout. And it made it actually worse for a period of time, because I opened up my own brick and mortar studio space. And it had a team and overhead, and it was wonderful, and so hard all at the same time. Because, you know, I tend to, I just want to help everyone, you know, very driven by community, and I just want to support everyone. And I was doing that at the expense of my own health and my body and my family. And so when I had my second child, things shifted again. And then I hit like, probably my my bottom burnout, which I’ve talked about a lot, like I moved onto the couch for four days, essentially. And I couldn’t, I just couldn’t function. It was at that place that so many women get to where I went from over caring about everything and everyone to, I don’t give a crap about me. Yeah, I do not care, I don’t care if my teeth brush, I don’t care if my hair is washed, I do not care, I can’t. And that was very much for me, like, Who is that I’d never known that side of me. And that is where I had to, you know, after four days of being in that energy, sit up tall, and just be like, you have two choices, you can either continue suppressing how you really feel and just suck it up and keep serving for everyone and do what you’re quote unquote supposed to do. Or you can realize this is your life. And you actually get to design this, and you this is your business, and you get to create that. And this is your family, and you get to raise them and do the things that you want to do. So which way are you going to choose Jen. And that’s where everything completely shifted for me. And that was in 2012. So you know, 10 years ago, and it’s been this journey of in that moment, I decided to do everything differently, I throw out the old business plan, I started to get to work on my own, I had to heal my relationship with energy and time and money. And, you know, this belief that as women, we just had to be at all for everyone. And I think that, you know, for everyone that’s listening, none of us have had the exact same background. But we all grew up in a time where, you know, as women, historically, we watched our mothers or grandmothers, our great grandmother’s be the, the, you know, the matrons of the house, take care of the home, take care of the children, like they, that’s what they did. And then we fought to have the opportunity to have our babies and our careers that we didn’t want to some do. But we made a lot of us didn’t want to be stay at home mothers, we wanted to have a career and we wanted to be stimulated in different ways. And we wanted to contribute. And that’s all great. But we also still then had the children and the home and everything else to take care of. So as women, we tend to have a disproportionate amount of responsibility that societally is put on us. But then we also put on ourselves. Or, you know, it’s like, if you grew up in that household where that was the woman’s job, well, then that’s everyone’s expectation of you. Yes. Or, you know, maybe you grew up in an environment where you had to survive in a different way. That was very much you had to shoulder all of it yourself. I work with a lot of women were there, like, I had to raise my siblings, I was a mom, when I was a teen, you know, I was I’m a single parent i. So it’s so different for all of us. Yet, at the end of the day, there’s not a woman I talked to, who, when she’s being really honest with herself, doesn’t admit that she’s losing parts of herself, and that she is feeling really worn down. And that’s when symptoms start to show up. Absolutely right, that that’s when we think our hormones are a mess, or, you know, our body is breaking down and whatever it may be, and there’s oftentimes just so much more to it. Christine Garvin 9:07
Absolutely. And I want to there’s so many good things that you said in there. But I want to go back to the, you know, time that you have that kind of complete burnout. Because I think it’s really important for women to understand when if and when they hit that point, there is a way out, right? And it doesn’t have to be, you know, you are going to have to be in bed for a year. You know, it doesn’t have to be this. I have to just sort of be in this and still push through and just take every last little bit of juice. I have to take care of everybody else. It’s really I mean, I think what you said is so important is that we are the ones that are in control. Ultimately, you know, we are in control of our lives and we have to decide, how am I going to move forward and that’s actually what Here’s the burnout more than anything else, right? Once you take back that power, because you know, I look at, you know, I don’t people still call it adrenal fatigue, but we’ll call it adrenal dysregulation, right has so much to do with that feeling of lack of power. And with that feeling of I have to do these things for other people all the time, right. And I’m not getting enough in return. Exactly. And, you know, I personally, everybody who’s listening to podcasts for a while knows about my own fibroid experience, you know, and I had a, I had the fibroid removed, and they unknowingly burned me in three places in my intestines During that surgery. And I ended up in the hospital sepsis two weeks later lost half my colon, you know, on and on ostomy bag for six and a half months. But you know, when it came down to my healing, I went back to why did I have this fibroid in the first place? And it’s this exact same thing that we’re talking about, right? Yeah, considering 70 to 80% of women will experience a fibroid by the time they’re 50. You know, we have to start asking why it’s not as our bodies hate us, Jenn Pike 11:07
you know. And that is, it is, you know, in my whole ethos of everything I’ve created has been what is the why behind the what I think that I believe that physically, our bodies break down as women because we weren’t educated on how to actually, you know, step into their superpowers and their ability, we don’t understand the body that we’ve been born into. And that is not our fault. That is by design in the lack of education that we’ve been provided, you shouldn’t have to be a detective and a seeker to go get the information about your body, that is something that should have been fundamental in learning about ourselves from day one. The second side of that as well, too, is that we are so detached from listening to our body, we just keep shoving it down and shoving it down. We’re afraid of what other people think we’re afraid of appearing weak, we’re afraid of, you know, someone’s going to take away the thing that we fought so hard to have, we admit that you know, what, we just don’t have it together all the time. And it’s like, we are not designed like that period. We are not men, we do not have a 24 hour rhythm like men are hormones are in constant fluctuation, when we go through different things like but we have to understand that so that when we start to feel or recognize these early warning signs that we actually do something in response. And you know, me having this burnout wasn’t because I wasn’t giving my adrenals enough B vitamins, vitamin C, or because any of those things, it was because I was pushing and pushing and pushing and what I wanted to say no ice kept saying yes. And the things I was saying yes to weren’t actually in alignment with any of the core values that I had. And I was more afraid of letting people down because they won’t like me, they won’t love me, they’ll leave me I won’t be successful, that I didn’t realize in those moments that I was creating this, you know, low grade level of inflammation that was building for years, until my body was just like, we have knocked on the door quietly, so many times and tried to send you the message, you just keep ignoring, we’re going to knock the fucking door down. And until you pay attention, that door is gonna literally lay on top of your chest, that you can’t get back up. And that it might sound dramatic for some people. But again, I work with women every single day and hear their stories and listen and it it doesn’t matter where they are in the world. What is going on in their life, on some level, every woman is in that moment right now where they’re either coming out of that experience, or they’re like, I’m on the precipice of I feel like if I don’t change something now, that’s what’s going to happen. Christine Garvin 13:53
Absolutely. And as you just stated so beautifully. It is these whispers, right for years and years. And then it gets a little louder and a little louder. And most of us whether it’s just human nature, or what we don’t listen, unfortunately, until something big happens, right? Whether that’s the burnout, whether for me it was the fibroid situation, you know, it showed up in this way. And, you know, I’m always trying to share with women like how wonderful it can be when we start to listen to our bodies earlier before it gets to that place, right? And go back to just these foundations of taking care of yourself. You know, it’s like there’s so much power in the foundations that we miss out on. And so, you know, it’s it’s a struggle and I get it, you know, women are just they’re so deep in their stuff for them to understand how much they need to follow the rhythms of their body to you know, check in to just listen to the More paintings and things that come up along the way. But really, you are going to have a breakdown. If you don’t get there, you know, if you are don’t start listening. And, you know, just another quick point of what you were saying too. I was actually just at the gynecologist yesterday because I go get my yearly vaginal ultrasound now and make sure that I’m keeping fibroids at bay. And you know, my doctor knows very much what I went through. And, you know, she’s just like, well, it’s amazing that you can do this work now to sort of help other women. And I said, you know, How amazing would it have been? To actually know all this information? When I was younger to understand my cycle, you know, I was actually ovulating while they were, you know, in the middle of ovulation while they were doing the ultrasound and like, how cool is that, right that now I understand these ups and downs that my body these ebbs and flows, and my body goes through each month, and how friggin awesome it is. Your body dough Jenn Pike 15:59
is amazing. Our bodies or our bodies are so cool. And yet the average woman is walking through life understanding less than a percent of what is going on, you know, it’s like you get into a brand new car. And they include this thick owner’s manual with every single detail about how to operate your vehicle. Yeah, this is your vehicle of life, your body. And it is the bare minimum basics, a lot of which is actually incorrect information that is taught to our kids in school that is taught as you get older that is available. I mean, there’s two things that happen right now. Number one, our foundational education is really not designed and taught to keep us healthy. I mean, what we see in the food guys, and it’s garbage. It is horrible, what is approved, what would it people are available to go and purchase in their grocery, like, they’re not setting us up for health, which is the frustrating part. But also when you know it and you see it, you’re like, Okay, this is like, I have to take it into my own hands and my own responsibility, right? I’ve gotta be, I have to be bad for me. But, you know, it’s also we live in a time now where we have over accessibility to information. So there’s so many books, there’s so many podcasts, there’s so many YouTube channels, there’s so many Instagram people to follow. And so, you know, if we have too many options, we shut down. Yeah, because we have like, you know, analysis paralysis. Yeah. And then it makes it difficult to even know what’s right. What like, can I have carbs? Can I not? Should I be keto? And not keto? Do a fast do I not fast? Can I have this or Mike? Like, all of those different things. And that’s where it’s like, having conversations like this, you know, investing your time and energy into understanding those roots. You know, it’s like, I will oftentimes say to people we get, we get so over focused on, you know, go tell me the adrenal supplement to take today, and I’m just gonna go by it, it’s like the number one thing, and then I’m gonna take it. And I’m like, Well, you know, it, that wouldn’t be how I would recommend it. Number one, you can think that you have a certain situation like, you could think you have low cortisol, when you actually have high cortisol that’s just being deactivated and bound up. And now you go by a product that is going to give you more energy and cortisol, and it’s actually going to make you feel worse, because that wasn’t the situation, which is why we don’t guess we want to test. The other side of that is that supplements are to supplement your lifestyle, they are not called replacements. Yep. So if you go and take something to support an area of your body that’s under stress, okay, that that may offer some support right now. But then you have to go work on the underpinning. So it’s like, if you look in your home, and you’ve got like, cracks everywhere, and like the door jams, the window casings are separating. That’s not a deficiency of pretty paint, and like patchwork and all that that’s the foundation, like you gotta go underneath. And it’s harder, it’s longer, it’s more labor and cost intensive, but you do it. And now everything up top sits and is supported the way it needs to be. And that’s like our bodies, you know, so it’s, I understand it can be frustrating for people because it feels like it’s hard. But if you start in one area, you know, if all you were to do is focus on supporting your digestive system, oh my gosh, so many other things are going to improve. If all you focused on right now is getting more rest so many times, man, yeah, you know, hydrate more, so many things are going to improve like, so instead of feeling like we have to do everything. Pick one, maybe two things right, and just anchor yourself into that That for me is really where the simplicity lives. Christine Garvin 19:50
Absolutely. And, you know, it’s two things that came up for me as you were talking, you know, one that sort of, we have to take Like the power and really empower ourselves in our health first and foremost, and understand that we know our health better ultimately than anyone else, and we know our bodies better. But we also have to get within that same, you know, framework, we have to get out of the mentality of going and getting a pill for our ales, because a lot of times people are like, Oh, I don’t want to do medication. But I’ll take supplements, you know, and I’m a big proponent of supplements. So most people need some level of supplements, but a, they’re just taking whatever has been said to be a good thing without actually knowing what’s going on in their body in particular, but also be they’re choosing to have that same mentality of just give me the pill, essentially, right. And like you said, I mean, I absolutely adaptogenic herbs, things like that can be super helpful in the process of working on your adrenals. But you got to get the lifestyle stuff in place that absolutely has to be, you know, the sleep, your circadian rhythm, these are the things that are naturally again, our foundations of health, that our body needs in order to thrive, right. So it’s, it’s, you know, think about those supplements as taking you to that next level. But as you mentioned, you got to get those foundations in play for it to work at all, you know, really, you know, people sometimes are like, I don’t understand why these supplements aren’t working. And it’s like, well, because you’re not doing the things. Yeah. Jenn Pike 21:32
And are you taking them, you know, it’s great to say to people just because you own them, just because they are in your house? Yeah, if you don’t actually take them and you don’t take them the way that you’re supposed to take them in and see this is again, why the other thing of the difference of trying to self supplement and self you know, support versus when you work with a practitioner is that in order for a product to be approved through all the regulations and be on the shelf. What that means is the dosing they give you on that bottle, they don’t Nothing about you any other medical issues going on anything. So the amount that’s in there is the minimum slash maximum amount that they can safely give without knowing your history. And that is under the RDA. It’s not a therapeutic dose, right. So if you have someone who is like in a position where their body needs more minerals, and more micro nutrition, if that’s it’s going to be better than nothing, but therapeutically, it is not going to move the needle Yes, in the same way as if you were to understand and see based on different functional testing, like, Okay, this is really where we need to double down and focus on right now. Let’s increase this for a period of time and then titrate down based on you know, how your body’s feeling. But again, we’re not taught that we’re just taught this is the supplement of the week. And in the magazine, they said this, and on this show, they said that so we just were like collectors, and then we open the cupboard. And we’re like, I don’t even know what that’s for. Christine Garvin 22:59
Exactly. I mean, every new client that comes to me has their bag of supplements, right? Gosh, they don’t know what majority of them are for, you know, half of Jenn Pike 23:09
them are expired. Yeah, half of them have like, you know, they’re not great quality, not good. So yeah, I always say to people just just slow down on what you’re going to purchase. And you know, just be a little bit more patient try to understand more than go and get what you need. Christine Garvin 23:26
Yeah, absolutely. And I just want to really reiterate how wonderful this is one of my favorite parts of functional medicine and functional health is that we can test and see levels, you know, different nutrient levels, you know, even utilizing the basic serum labs, that people, you know, get done each year, there’s so much that we can do within that so we can actually see for you what your body is deficient in, and then we can retest to see if things have changed, you know, after the chin, whatever supplements you’ve included and other changes that you make. And that’s you know, I mean, otherwise, it’s just so much guessing. You know, and it Jenn Pike 24:17
can be damaging. Yeah, you can get diminishing returns cost you more take a longer period of time. Yeah, absolutely. Christine Garvin 24:24
Yeah. So when you ended up starting the simplicity project, that was sort of what you know, all these lessons you had learned in your own experience. And then you found your way into the hormone project, right that you’re focusing on now. Jenn Pike 24:45
Yeah, well, the hormone project, we’re in our eighth year of it. So the simplicity project was birthed in 2012. So I opened up a brick and mortar space. It was simplicity, yoga and fitness Therapy Studios. I had, you know, six other practitioners Instructors members, it was amazing. And in that journey, it was, you know, taking the previous like, at that point, 17 years of experience that was all in my head. And I was just like, I gotta get this out. And so I wrote a book called The simplicity project. You know, which now it’s interesting, I look back and I’m like, oh, I need to go rewrite that customer information has changed, right? Everything’s always changing. But that was like a birth place of, of, you know, just watching what it created for the women in our community and all the women and you know, it ended up it was best seller and Amazon but it became a Canadian best seller, which was huge, because that is like, you can’t buy your way onto that list, like the, you know, New York Times bestseller their strategies behind that. And it was, it happened very organically. And that really in the journey of working women with women and the simplicity project, which I took the book and created an online program, taking women through every chapter and teaching them like not just the, you know, the the reading aspect of it, but the tangible so it was like the practical and the theory and bringing it to life that then birth the hormone project. Because what I recognized in so many of the women I was working with is their hormones were showing up as these messengers, these microphones have imbalances, whether it was their adrenals, their thyroid, their periods, they’re getting rocked in perimenopause, whatever was going on fibroid cyst, all the different things. But I’m like that that’s not actually where it started. So the hormone project was an opportunity to go in. And now I created another online and we spent six months with these women, and we work with them one on one, and in a group, and we run blood serum and urinary test for their hormones. And we run stool test. And we really look across the board at like, what is going on in your ecosystem, what’s going on in your body. And then every week, they are essentially in school with me, they’re in class with me every single week learning everything about their body. And the hormone project has become literally like the the program in school that we all should have had our body love it have moms that come in, and then their daughters come in, and you know, families and friends and all of that. And you know, and then that’s expanding even more. So we launch our simplicity women’s wellness clinic, which is a global virtual clinic that is going to be supporting tweens all the way through until menopause. You know, I’m raising teens, my oldest is my daughter who’s 16. And, you know, I started teaching mother daughter hormone project workshops when she was nine, you know, in our home and in our community, all of that, and they would be packed. And it would be you know, girls as young as eight, 910 years old, with their sisters, their moms, their grandmothers, like generationally. And it’s so fascinating when you witness at the youngest age and the oldest of age learning information for the first time about a body that you’ve been born into. Yeah, yeah. So you know, it’s like, I feel like we’re just getting started. Christine Garvin 27:55
Oh, my God, and I’m so excited that you’re doing it from tween, you know, all to menopause. Because, as we mentioned earlier, you know, I’m like, Well, how, how different would my teenage years? My 20s Right, and my 30s had been had would have been had I have that information. Right? Exactly. And I I’ve talked about this on the podcast before, I think the empowerment around your body as a tween also shows up in so many other ways, too, you know, if you’re concerned with you know, your child being sexually active, too early, for example, like giving them the power to understand their bodies and understand their boundaries. You know that Jenn Pike 28:40
right? Like, maze it, you’re under them to understand what are some of the changes, they’re going to feel physically, mentally and emotionally before they even get a period? Yeah, like, why their underwear all of a sudden, wet. You know, why they smell different, why the shape of their body is changing, why one minute, they’re happy, and the next minute, they’re crying and want to be alone in their room, why all of a sudden, they don’t want to talk to you anymore, right? Like, why their skin is changing, like socially things to happen, all of that. And then when they do get their period, how to understand how to track how to have how to have cyclical awareness at such a young age to understand like, this is what literally your body’s going through. We’re going to track it and then like, do you notice like, does your chest hurt at certain times a month? Okay, so we want to note that down this is why does your back hurt? What’s happening with your mood? What about your appetite? Do you know like all the deer do your bowels change and digestion make it so normal? So normal for her? That she’s just in touch with that and then automatically when you empower young girl Latina woman boundaries automatically show up because she is more knowledgeable. Yeah, and if we’re more knowledgeable, we’re more confident and if we are confident we can create that for ourselves. So we will, you know be responsible for our body autonomy. Yeah, and for like, this is for me, this is not for me. And speaking up and using our voice and so, you know, it’s just I’ve, I’ve watched it over the years, I’ve explored all that. And I’m like, you know, I sit here as a 43 year old mother, and I’m entering that Peri menopausal, you know, period of time in my life. And I just think, what if all these young girls knew what was going on in their body, and then Mom was more empowered with her so that when she had an irregular period, painful period, she was throwing up from cramps. They go to the doctor, and the doctor says, well, let’s just put it on the pill. Yes, yeah. But wait, can you just press pause for a second? Can you bring her on over to us first? Can we spend some time educating you both asking more questions? Can we put together can you give us like four to six months to just implement some of these suggestions? What if we could reduce her discomfort by 50% and improve her connection to her body by 50%? What would that mean? What would it mean to have six months less on synthetic hormones in that young girl’s body? What would it mean for her to potentially not have to go on the pill at all? Because we balanced out some other things in her system, and she wasn’t in that same situation that changes the trajectory of that girl’s health moving forward Christine Garvin 31:10
ever yet. Jenn Pike 31:11
You know, like the birth control pills shuts down pituitary function, we do not stimulate, you know, FSH and LH we do not ovulate, it binds up our testosterone, sex hormone binding globulin goes to the roof, it changes our gut microbiome, it impacts our neurotransmitters. And listen, I was on the pill for seven years. I’m grateful for that period of time that I you know, I’m adopted, my mom was 16 years old when she had me, I understand very clearly what can happen, you know, having sex when you are young. But that being said, I also wasn’t educated. And so yeah, it’s, I just, I look out there into the world. And I see all these young girls and all these moms, and it literally breaks my heart. When I hear story after story of Well, the doctor said that, you know, the only thing we could do was to put her on the pill to regulate, right? Give her her pure, Christine Garvin 32:00
right there’s to regulate her hormones. Jenn Pike 32:03
And then that poor girl stays on it for however long and she comes off, and now everything comes surging back to the surface. So yeah, it’s yeah, I just I like I said, I feel like we’re just getting started. And I feel like we’re sitting at a time in the world where these girls are hungry for the information. They want to know, they’re asking the questions, but if we as Mom aren’t educated, or I don’t, we don’t know how to answer them. Christine Garvin 32:32
Right? You know, on that point, when I first smile, probably not the first year my period. But you know, year two was when the cramps the horrible cramps kicked in, for me, the, you know, having to go home from school on the first day of my period, the throwing up the like having to cry myself to sleep kind of situation. And my mom had had the same thing, right when she was young, too. And she kind of always had bad cramps. And So case in point, right, she didn’t understand why that was just something that was sort of put on her, you know, it was something that her body did. And then we just thought, well, genetically, I had the same issue, you know, and it’s so incredible to me now, because neither of us had to go through all that pain for that long, you know, and, and I was put on birth control eventually, you know, I didn’t go on until college, but I did it because of that, you know, and it’s just like, Oh, my God, I mean, the acne that I had in high school, all of those things that could have been so different. I have I have that knowledge, then. Jenn Pike 33:34
Yeah. And it’s like, if we looked at it from a functional perspective, you as a young girl with the discomfort, it’s like, Okay, is there hyperplasia in place? Like, do you have an extra thickened lining, which is going to increase your risk for fibroids? And for endometrial changes to happen? And so then, okay, can we support your liver and your gut so that you are breaking down metabolizing and detoxing those hormones? And then could we give you some cramp bark, or some shepherd’s purse or some other things, some, you know, combination of that with some vytex so that we’re supporting all these areas, stabilize your blood, sugar, Christine Garvin 34:07
sugar, sugar was the key, for sure. Jenn Pike 34:11
All of those things, and at the end of the day, we don’t none of that’s a prescription. It’s gonna cost us less. And now what you do for that girl and woman is you teach her that her body can actually do this when she’s given the right tools. That’s, I think the biggest takeaway, it’s not about like what’s right and what’s wrong is if we grow up in a body as women where we have been taught to outsource everything, like all the answers live outside of us, our body is not capable of that. How could we possibly stay healthy and heal on our own? That’s what majority of society and the industries want us to believe you need us in order for you to be healthy. I don’t believe that. I believe that if you connect yourself have a cup We’ll have key educators, mentors, you know, education in your life, you can learn enough where you understand that most of those solutions live inside of you. You just need someone to teach you how to how to knit those together. And then if you try all those things, and you were like, no things are still not working, that how grateful Are we that we have the option to now look at conventional medicine? Yes, Christine Garvin 35:26
100%. And, you know, when we look back over time, this was all information that women had, right, that got lost over time of oppression of women, right. And there’s still a lot of people out there that don’t want women to essentially have body autonomy, right. And so, in stepping into this, it’s like, we’re taking true control of our lives of our health, all of those things. And with the knowledge that as you mentioned earlier, we have we have inside, it was there, you know, in our brains for so long, but then got suppressed over time. And so here, we are just kind of reconnecting to that. And then, you know, going on the other side of the spectrum from the tweens going into the peri menopausal time going into menopause, doesn’t have to be this like horrendous experience that so many women, you know, I mean, I know a lot, you know, a lot of clients of mine, other women that they maybe were on birth control until their late 30s or early 40s. Or maybe they you know, things weren’t that bad, and then suddenly perimenopause kicks in and they’re just like, what, you know, my whole entire life is blown up over this, you know, and it’s like, if we have that information earlier than does it have to be you know, there’s so many good supports, and so many options along the way. And in hysterectomies, these should be the last option. Jenn Pike 36:54
Oh, gosh, it is I mean, we specialize so much with women and perimenopause. In our practice and the hormone project, I would say 85% of the women who are we are working with our perimenopause and like early menopause. So they’re in that that 12 month period of time, or they’ve just gone through the 12 months. And so, you know, the top three things that are recommended to these women are, let’s put you on the pill until you just like get to, you know, we we working with women who are in their early 50s, who their doctors are like, Oh my God, because they have irregular periods. It’s like, that’s going to normal, perimenopause. That’s you’re having an IV LaTorre cycles, you’re not ovulating every single month. Now your estradiol is actually starting to decrease. That’s the normal physiological process of us as women. But what happens is there’s that then there’s a Blasian. Right where they go in and cauterize, they burn off that extra thickening because a lot of times what will happen for women in perimenopause is they are now getting heavy, painful periods. gushing can’t leave the house, their whole period comes in two days. They aren’t being checked properly for fibroids, because a lot of the times those can be signs of fibroid issues as well. 200%. Or they’re being recommended to do an oophorectomy or a radical hysterectomy. And those are the prongs. Yeah, those are the options these women are given. Yeah, you know, and it’s like, maybe, maybe that might end up being what has to happen at some point. But we have got, you know, 612, probably 18 months ahead of us that we could actually start to work on supporting your body. And if you did end up having to have a you know, a partial or a full hysterectomy, for whatever reasons, your system now from doing the groundwork is going to be so much stronger, that it’s not going to feel like the rug was pulled out from under you when they go and remove an organ of your body. Right? Absolutely. So you know, it’s but they scare us, like you don’t have taught and listen, I want to say sometimes things are discovered in our bodies where it is at a stage where it has just progressed and gone too far. And if we need to have a certain surgery, then we need to have it but then we still need to work with support team who can help us to now look at what are some of the things we have to do like do we need to look potentially a bioidentical hormone replacement therapy? Yeah. Do we need to look at botanicals, herbs, homeopathy, Chinese medicine, how are we going to keep you feeling vital? And not like you’ve just been run over by a truck? Right? Christine Garvin 39:24
Absolutely. And, you know, the reality that I can’t help but press on again and again, because of my own experience is that, you know, many doctors can act like oh, we do these surgeries a million times. They’re no big deal. Even if you don’t have the experience that I did, which was mind first surgery ever right? There was a myomectomy it was supposed to be kind of an easy get the fibroid out. And you know through that process, obviously I learned that when they have a tool that is heated in your body, it can easily hit against Local organs, including our colon, and our bladder, you know, they there’s also, you know, the possibility of being nicked when they go to cut things out. And so, you know, these are all things that happen a more often than it’s talked about, you know, and be even if none of that happens, just the anesthesia, you know, the impact of anesthesia on our body, all of these things, is really intense on the body. And so again, we certainly need it in certain situations. And I’m super grateful for I mean, the emergency surgeons that saved my life, yeah, like, they had to cut me up and remove out my colon, they saved my life. But to go in with reverence, and having tried all of these other things first, and it goes back, once again, to kind of what we’re talking about with birth control is we’re not really given informed consent, about all of the possible complications with these things and the effects that they have on the body. And also, if you are going to do that surgery, there’s so much good prep you can do nutritionally with herbs and things before and after that, it’s just going to ease a lot of the symptoms. Jenn Pike 41:11
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s how, you know, as we move through these different hormonal transitions in our life, and even understanding like yesterday, I was interviewed on a podcast, it’s all about perimenopause and menopause is that, you know, perimenopause is a second puberty that we go through. And there’s a lot that changes. And it’s never the same for any two women. And it can be over the period of a decade that it happens in your body, it can be the period of a couple of years, depending on what you’re dealing with in your life. And, you know, I just, I was asked yesterday, the woman who was interviewing me is in her mid 50s. And she was saying, you know, this is what I did once I hit menopause, you know, what are what are you doing, and I was like, Well, I’m living my life in my 40s, the way that I want to feel in my 50s and 60s and 70s. So I’m not, I don’t have a lot of Peri menopausal symptoms, right now, my period length has shifted a shorter by like one or two days. But that’s pretty much it. But I am doing all of the things like staying on top of my bloodwork, and that I have a great functional practitioner I work with where I might get ahead of the game and start to do some bio identicals, when I noticed some things instead of waiting to have hot flashes and not be sleeping and all of this or that I’m eating in accordance with the way I move my body with my body and my cycle, instead of just following some arbitrary plan of just like, you know, trying to burn as many calories and get as many, you know, points on my wearable device. I don’t care about any of that. And listen, I’ve been teaching group fitness since I was 17. I’ve been teaching it for 26 years now almost. And I taught the hardest classes when I owned my studio, I taught 20 classes a week, you know, yoga, Pilates barre strength, spin boot camp survivor, you frickin name it. And note, for the last almost five years, I have trained completely based on the four phases of my cycle, my body has never felt or looked better, or had the composition it does. Now, I didn’t realize how much inflammation I was holding on to absolutely, by living an ambitious life, and being a mother and then going and pushing myself so hard all the time in the gym. Because when I did that, that is what I told myself was me time, right? That’s where I you know, that’s where I got to show up for myself. And you know, what a change to decrease how long I workout for, you know, only trained to an intensity at certain times a month where I can really do that. Optimize recovery. I mean, to me, recovery is more important than the performance most days of the Christine Garvin 43:50
week. Yes, yeah, yeah. And it’s such a to me, it’s so beautiful thinking about truly syncing with our cycle, you know, when you really sit back and say, while we have these different superpowers, at different points in our cycle, and so here is the time that I’m going to focus on this aspect. And here’s the time where I’m gonna focus on this aspect. And I’m gonna move my body in particular in ways that feel really good and supportive to a you know, it just we talked so much about adrenal dysregulation at the beginning, this, you know, is a huge component of that, because women even when their adrenals are dysregulated still feel like, Oh, I gotta go do the hit, you know, and it’s like, oh, that’s not a good. That’s not really the best option when you’re in that place, you know, right. And but it’s, it’s so much of that mentality that they’re still stuck in, this is what I have to do in order to achieve this. And, you know, whenever I start doing this to myself, because I can still get caught in it, you know, it’s like, where do I feel best when I’m in, like flow state with my body, you know, and really listening to it. It’s not when I’m pushing against it. The signals in my body are pushing or telling my side stuff, I have to do something, you know. And so, but you know, as you mentioned, it’s like really working with practitioners that understand this and can help you figure this out. is a game changer. Jenn Pike 45:16
I think it’s, you know, it is probably the best investment we can ever make. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It’s yeah, Christine Garvin 45:23
yeah. Well, this has been a such an amazing conversation, thank you so much for sharing all your wisdom, and I love that you are working, you know, sort of taking it to the next level with women that are really trying to lead and hold all this stuff in a way that is really supportive of their bodies as they’re trying to help other women support their bodies. Jenn Pike 45:46
Yeah. And that is, that is it, right? It’s like within the audacious woman, it’s my my business mentorship program, I work with practitioners, you know, clinicians, trainers, Cairo’s RMTS, who that was what they do all day long is hold space for others. And they’re really feeling the impact of that. And so it’s supporting them in that way. But it’s also helping them to build their business in a way where we can create an incredible amount of wealth and our life and impact and to have time and space and, you know, not fall under that guise of there’s only one way to do it. Absolutely not true. There’s multiple ways. And, you know, it’s like, I sit over here, and I’m like, I’ve built an entire company organically. And I’m part of a lot of communities where other people have built those, you know, off of tons of ad spend, and it’s worked well for them that way. And it’s worked well for me that way. It’s not one or the other. It’s, it’s figuring out for you a What’s your core message? Like how much clarity and focus Do you have around who you are and what you do? And do other people know that, you know, I always say to the women that I mentor, if I were to ask you today to come on my podcast and share your message in like two minutes about who you are and what you put out into the world. Could you do that? Mm hmm. And if the answer is no, I don’t know how clear and focused you are on what you’re putting out in the world, which is why it can feel like you’re spinning your wheels, and you put all this energy and effort in and you’re not, you’re not seeing it on the back end. So yeah, I think it’s back to simplicity. Again, really, it’s back to simplicity. And it’s back to like, you have this gift for a reason, own it and get creative as heck with it. Like, stop being afraid of what isn’t going to work and just throw you know, 50 different things against the wall and see what sticks figure Christine Garvin 47:32
it out. Absolutely. That’s life early. Jenn Pike 47:35
Exactly, exactly. Christine Garvin 47:37
Well let everybody know where they can find you. Jenn Pike 47:40
So for health and hormones and mindset, Jen pike over on Instagram, and that’s a two Ns for business, the audacious woman and then for everything in anything else. Jen pike.com and the podcast is this simplicity sessions. Christine Garvin 47:54
Nice. And I know that you have other practitioners that work with you too, in the hormone program, right? Jenn Pike 48:00
Yeah, yeah, we have four other functional medicine practitioners that are coaches within the hormone project. And then we have the launch of the Global Women’s wellness clinic and that is a whole slew of other practitioners everything from like I said, the teen and tween to pelvic floor health, intimacy, health, cognitive behavior therapy, you know, body recomp all of it. Christine Garvin 48:22
So cool. You are such a powerhouse. Jenn Pike 48:26
I’m not doing it alone. It’s I really worked in collaboration and community and but I’m excited to be the you know, just to get it out there and make it happen. Christine Garvin 48:35
Yeah, absolutely. Well, everyone go check out Jenn’s information and thank you so much for being here with us today. Jenn Pike 48:43
Thanks so much for having me. Absolutely. Christine Garvin 48:45
Okay, you guys. I will see you next time. |
