Can Ovarian Cysts Be Cancerous

alisa vitti: welcome everyone. my name's alisa vitti. i'm the author of "womancode."and i'm really, really excited to be here. i'm in the midst of mywhirlwind book tour. i just got back from london. and i'm just excited aboutsharing "womancode" with women everywhere. so i'm thrilled to be hereat google, bringing

"womancode" to google. very exciting. for me, i never reallyconsidered how important hormones were and how hormonesaffect everything until my hormones stopped workingproperly. so i want your picture me as iwas a number of years back. i was over 200 pounds. i was covered face, chest, andback, in extreme cystic acne. i was exhausted.

i couldn't wake upin the morning. i couldn't go tosleep at night. it was a whole nightmare. and i wasn't gettingmy period, maybe once or twice a year. i was also at johns hopkins onmy way to becoming an ob/gyn when all of the hormonalstuff hit the fan. and it was in that moment, wherei was faced with this whole future of obesity,diabetes, infertility, heart

disease, cancer, that i realizedthat there was a different path. and in that moment with mydoctor, once we finally-- i was one night at the medicallibrary and researching a little bit on what might i have,because i had gone six years without a diagnosis. and i finally figured out whatit was that i had, which is a condition called polycysticovarian syndrome. how many of you know someonewith that disorder?

it's 1 out of 4 or 5 womenhave that disease. and it's a miscommunicationbetween the hypothalamus and the pituitary glandand the ovary. and so you don't end upovulating or menstruating. so i asked her, now what, now,that we know what we do, after we had our doctor's visit? and she said, there's reallynothing that we can do. but we can medicate you alongthe way for all of those problems that you'llbe having.

and i was a young woman. and i thought to myself, do iwant to be on medication for the rest of my life for heartdisease and high blood pressure and diabetesand infertility? the medication roller coasterseemed endless. and that's when i decided tothrow myself into functional medicine, because i had beenprivy to some really cool research at hopkins aboutnutritional genomics and epigenetics.

do you guys remember thehuman genome project? and what came out of that wasa surprising discovery, that there's this littleghost protein that wraps around your genes. and there are only two factorsthat influence its construction or expansion, whichthen causes genes to express disease or health. and it's food and lifestyle. so, of course, it was veryexciting to think about if we

can manipulate gene expressionon that microscopic level with food and lifestyle, what couldwe do with food on a systemic standpoint in the endocrinesystem? and so i began puttingmy protocol together. and i love especially sharingabout the skin. because so many people withcystic acne, they end up taking things like accutaneand all of these things. and i have not doneany of that. and to have 60 pounds come offof my body, to have my skin

clear up, to be able to behaving a period and ovulating normally for over 12 years now,it's really remarkable. because every time i go to thegynecologist still, they're like, do you really nothave pcos anymore? and they do all theblood tests. they check everything out. they're like. wow, we just havenever thought that that was possible. so it's exciting that not onlydo i share this work with

other women but also, i knowfirsthand the power of using food sequencing, which is thecrux of my protocol in terms of correcting hormonal issues. and this is why it'sso important. right now, unlike any othertime we've seen before in women's health, we aredealing with issues at an epidemic rate. now, this number of 20 millionwomen suffering from menstrual disorders, fertility issues,libido issues, energy issues,

it's a low number. in fact, when i talk to mycolleagues, they're always encouraging me to double ormaybe triple the number. but safe to say, that half ofthe women who are struggling are not talking about it. so it's easily upwardsof 40 million women. in 2009, we had almost $2billion being spent on assisted reproductivetechnologies, like ivf. how many of you know friends whoare doing the ivf roller

coaster and its multiple roundsand it's failing? and it's distressing, right? and now there's some concernabout what are the long term repercussions of so muchsynthetic hormone stimulation during the ivf process on youroverall health and well being. so we're not having the resultsthat our bodies are capable of. we're designed to havehealthy periods. we're designed to makebabies if we want to.

in fact, we're designed to havea hotter sex drive as we age, unlike men who peteroff, pun intended. so we are supposed to befantastic all of our lives. and there is just thisflood of issues. and i think what's excitingfor me, because i've been doing this for a long time. i've had a center in thecity for over 10 years. what's exciting is now thatit's more prominent in the media, i love talking aboutthe kardashian sisters,

because we have been with themfrom their period problems to their pregnancy problems totheir postpartum problems. and it really puts a nice lenson what so many women are dealing with. and everyone can identify withone of the issues that these women are going through. so it brings up somethingthat's really, really interesting. so in 2009, the nationalinstitute of health published

a very important bodyof research. and i wish i had t-shirts thati could wear that said, i've read the bio cycle study,on the front, and on the back, have you? because this is somethingthat's ground breaking research for all women. and this bio cycle studybasically with let us know that if you have any sort ofmenstrual disturbance in your 20s or 30s, something as simpleas pms, something

that's the butt of our jokes. like, i'm just that wayhalf the month. and it's just normal. how many of us anticipatethat that's the case? yeah? in fact, it can end up leadingto the big four disease of inflammation in your postmenopausal years. so something as harmless as wejokingly think about pms can end up increasing our likelihoodfor diabetes, heart

disease, cancer, andalzheimer's. so to me, that is something thati would want us to pay a lot of attention to. because the great news is youcan completely change and affect how your body'sperforming from a hormonal standpoint by using food. so like i was saying, hormonesaffect everything. how many of you connect thedots back to your hormones when you have a flare up ofacne or constipation or

sleeplessness or your mood ischanging or the way you're thinking about a projectis changing? maybe you've tied that backto your hormones. this is good. i'm going to give youeven more granular level thinking on that. the problem that we have in theway that these issues are being approached is that thewestern medical model has us treating symptoms.

and really, you should thinkof that as spot treating. you have a headache,you take an advil. you have cramps, you take-- what do you guys takefor cramps? midol, advil, whateveryou're taking. you have acne. you buy potions and lotions. maybe you try some internalmedicine. and how many of you spend atleast $100 on supplements a

month, just trying things out? ok. all right. how many of you are tryingsupplements at all? yeah. so we're always trying to spottreat what is going on with our hormones. and really, when i dove intothe research that led me to the protocol that i designed,what i found from a functional

medicine standpoint was that weactually have to treat the root causes. if we're going to allow thebody to heal itself and resolve its issues on its own,which is exactly what the endocrine system is designed todo, we have to address the and i want to go overthat with you today. what are the functions ofthe endocrine system? how do you interactwith it with food? so that whatever troubles you'rehaving, from pms to

infertility to wanting topreserve your fertility for the next few years until youmeet your partner, the partner of your dreams orwhat have you. i met mine at google. isn't that funny? audience: are you serious? alisa vitti: he'san ex-googler. so you want to be prepared forthat, hormonally speaking. and so we can do thatusing food.

what's really cool, and sincei'm at one of the coolest tech companies here, i just wanted tobrag a little bit about my tech company. so i have been in clinicalpractice, as i mentioned, for over 10 years. and about a year and a half ago,i had a really exciting conversation with acouple of people. and i shared with them this bigvision that i had, that women's hormonal health needsto be as prominent as

something like weight watchers,for example. we need to have a tool. we need to have a system. so i went ahead and built theworld's first online hormone improvement platforms. so think of it like rosettastone for your ovaries. you can log in anddo the protocol. because i was having womencalling in from the uk, from australia, from south america,from europe and we needed a

way to serve all of them. so it's really cool. in the past two years, we'veseen so many women logging on to the system from sixcontinents, really getting the results that they want and allthrough using the protocol. so women who've had-- emily, for example, thisone of our clients. she was having twoperiods a month. think about going on actingcalls and having

two periods a month. that's a lot. that's intense. and to be able to resolvethat permanently with changing her diet. or lisa, who is someonewho i just adore. her first pregnancy was throughmultiple rounds of ivf, after which she wassuffering from severe postpartum depression, weightgain, and her underlying

hormonal issues magnified. and she prepared her body forthe next conception using the "womancode" protocol and wasable to get pregnant the first time without ivf, no postpartumdepression. the child actually has astronger immune system. and her pregnancy was mucheasier the second time around. so all food, all food. oh yeah, i do have to brag onemore little thing about the "dr. oz" show.

how many of you saw theclip that i did on "dr. oz?" anyone? well, we will make itavailable to you. i made a little tv history,actually recently. this is all aroundthe book launch. and what i did on the "dr. oz"show was i wanted to share with his audience, withwomen everywhere-- you know how he did thefamous look before you flush for your poop?

remember that? remember? i know. i'm going to say lots ofbodily functions today. just bear with me. i know it's lunch, butwe got to go with it. i just thought, well, one of thebest ways for a woman to gauge how she's doing hormonallymonth over month is to actually take a look at hermenses before she flushes.

because the color and texture ofthat will actually tell you what's going on with yourestrogen, what's going on with your progesterone. and i will admit, you ladiesare faring much better than the londoners. when i brought this up to thelondon crew, they were like-- [gasps] alisa vitti: oh my god. she's talking aboutmenstrual blood.

that's horrible. but it's so important to knowwhat the different colors and textures are. there are four key ones. and i would love for you allto go and check that clip out and know. and spread the word to yourfriends, because not only in the short term does it havehealth implications, like for example, if you have lowestrogen and your period looks

a little light and thin,like strawberry jam. thinly spread strawberry jamis how we simulated these things on tv. i used fruit juices onlittle white dishes. it was very cool. we joke about that. like, oh, my period's solight and lucky me. but actually, you're now puttingyour bone density at risk, because estrogen protectsbone density.

that's in the short term. in the long term, it has otherrepercussions about the way that your ovaries age, the waythat your body ages, and your long term fertility. so looking and checkingmonth over month. and that's just oneof the four. see now, aren't you curiousto know the other three? i'm not going to tell you. so the book just came out.

it's really exciting. and i want to walk you throughit as a way of introducing you to the protocol and howyour body works. so let's start withthe first part. the first part has to do withunlocking your woman code. because there's this thing, ifthere was a code inside of your body that would give youaccess to feeling good all month, you'd want to crackthe code, yeah? how many of you are computerprogrammers in here?

any hackers? ah, so hot. yes. so i'm a biohacker. i'm a hormone hacker. that's what i do. and i've figured outhow to do this. i want teach you how to hack. so here's the problem.

the problem with accessing thecode is that we're blocked in a lot of ways. and one of the first thingsthat you have to do in establishing an environmentinside of your body where your endocrine system can thrive isthat you need to remove what i call flow blockers,pun intended. we want to restore flow, notjust your menstrual flow, but also your whole hormonalcascade. as i like to say,head to ovaries.

so the first problem is, howmany of you, if i asked you to get up on the whiteboard rightnow and draw me a 28 to 30 day monthly cycle with all fivehormonal patterns, could do that for me? audience: [inaudible]. alisa vitti: uh huh. and? and she doesn't know whatthe fifth one is. and don't worry.

it's kind of a loadedquestion. i teach doctors all thetime, surgeons. and they can't do it either,which says a lot. so we don't know what'sgoing on. and that's just on thelevel of the period. but we also don't know what theparts are, what they're doing, how your thyroid'saffected by, how much sodium you're consuming during it. we just don't know.

so that's part of the issue. the other issue, as i mentionedearlier, is this paradigm in health care tospot treat symptoms is incorrect for systemichealth issues. if it were just as simple asyour wrist was broken and they put a cast on it, thenthat would be great. you can spot treat that issue. but because we're talking aboutall of these different glands and all these differenthormones, we need a whole

system approach toget it right. and then the third thing-- and this is really whereyou can get activated. one of the chapters of the bookreally goes into, so you have a manual for this.-- is removing endocrinedisruptors. one of the reasons why we areseeing women at epidemic rates experience suffering aroundthese issues in their health is because we are living in anenvironment that is flooding

our bodies with something calledxenoestrogens, which is just a fancy pants term forsynthetic estrogens, strange, external estrogen. and it adheres to our ownestrogen receptor sites. and it starts to cause confusionin the hormonal conversation that our body'strying to have and can make you estrogen dominant, whichthen causes all sorts of problems around your cycleand your fertility. so what can we do?

first things first,you have to choose organic 80% of the time. notice, i'm not saying100% of the time. i'm just saying 80%. especially, when itcomes to fruits, vegetables, and animal products. these are just the biggestoffenders in terms of endocrine disruption that youcould expose your body to. and if you are trying to loseweight, clear up your skin,

preserve your fertility for thelong term, fix pms, get rid of the annoying-- just doing this alone will makedramatic inroads into that progress. and then the second thingthat you need to do is-- and i give a giantlist in the book. you have to look at the lotionsand potions you're putting on your skin. your skin is yourlargest organ.

it's also the largest organof elimination. anything that you put on yourskin, you better be willing to take a tablespoon ofit and eat it. that's always my litmus test. would i, if under duress,eat this body lotion? i know that sounds silly. and i don't actuallyeat my body lotion. but if i needed to, i wouldfeel comfortable doing it because it has three or fouringredients in it, like olive

oil, shea butter, vitamin e.if you have something from, i'm not going to name names,fancy lingerie stores that smell really perfumy and all ofthat, and you're putting it on your skin, there are so manychemicals in that lotion that are fda known endocrinedisruptors that are ending up in your bloodstream and messingwith that delicate chemical conversationof your hormones. really, really essentialyou do an audit. just audit your medicinecabinet, your bathroom

products, from your shampoo toyour make up to your lotion, and see if there's a way foryou to start slowly. finish up what you've got. does not need to be extreme. finish up what you'vegot and start to slowly make some changes. let me assure you, 15 years ago,whole foods did not have the wide array that it doestoday of fun products that you can try.

but now, there are so manyfabulous skin care lines and makeup lines and body care linesthat you can experience. and you should. you should give us a try. i'm going to save questionsfor the end. is that ok? but write them down, becausei'm totally into it. so what i want for you, i wantyou to get into a state of hormonal flow, where you arein sync with your hormones

every day, where you know howto manage your endocrine balance on a regular basis. so let's go into the protocoland share with you how that works. and this is the secondpart of my book and accessing your code. so the first piece of thesequencing protocol, and i'm just going to load them allup for you, is blood sugar stabilization.

and i'm going to go through eachone and share with you some of the fun science behindhow this all works. because i think scienceis really hot. and the more i know about mybody, the better i'm able to work with it. and i feel like all of you smartgoogle ladies are into data and science. yes? not afraid?

good. so that's the first thing. and it's so important becauseof the nature of which the endocrine system prefersto operate. and stabilization of blood sugaris the first place you have to go. if you go anywhere else-- and this is one of the thingsthat i talk a lot about in the book.

how many of you detox, have donea cleanse, have done some sort of juice madness? that's great. i'm drinking a green juice,but i'm not on a cleanse. i just like to alkalinizemy blood system. it's so important to appreciatethat just doing a detox doesn't actuallyget your endocrine system to work better. it actually can makeyou feel worse.

and it's because it'sout of order. so second piece, allof you mentioned that you were exhausted. and this is a state ofadrenal fatigue. i'm going to show you what'shappening with your adrenal gland in a moment, of why that'shappening to you and what you can do to restore it. one of the reasons why detoxing,first, is a problem for women who are dealing withthese issues is they are

typically all adrenallyfatigued. you all have some experience of inappropriate cortisol levels. when you start doing cleanses,extreme cleanses-- like the worst offender, ithink, is the master cleanse, because you're living on lemonjuice and cayenne pepper. it's insane. and you're not really eating. you're further taxing adrenalfunction, making all of the

problems more compounded. even though it might be trendyand gwyneth paltrow's doing it, and i love her, i just don'twant you to do it first. because then in the third stepof the protocol, in the food sequencing piece, we then dofocus in on metabolizing toxins and eliminatingexcess estrogen. and we do that in a very safefood based way that doesn't cause you to feel any worse. and the last piece, which ismy most exciting piece,

especially when it comes tothe world of work, is the hormonal synchronizationpiece. how do you live in cyclicalharmony with the four distinct hormonal shifts that youexperience in a 30 day period? because they are changing theway you think, the way your body wants to exercise, thekind of sex you want to be having, how much sleep you need,what kinds of things you're naturally going to wantto prioritize at work. they're affecting all of that.

and knowing how to lean intothat makes you healthier in the short term, and alsomore successful in your life in the long term. and i'm 10 years into livingthis life style. so i can assure you, just lastyear, launching this platform, writing a book, planning mywedding, getting married, and looking and feeling great, allof that is possible because i live in this constant stateof forward vector motion. what's really cool about yourcycle is that it's own form of

natural biotechnology. and we'll learn more aboutthat as we go. but let me introduce you toone of my favorite people, your endocrine system. i have such a great relationshipwith her. she is extraordinary. and i want you to get toknow her a little bit. and this is just a very basicrendering of how she operates. and we're just going togo through the parts.

you have in your midbrain,hypothalamus and pituitary gland. think of them like the personwho listens to the voice mail and then the switchboardoperator. hypothalamus is listening,scanning your bloodstream, negative biofeedback, reallyseeing what's the hormonal status quo right now in realtime, all the time. and the pituitary gland issending out messages to all the other target glands ofthe endocrine system.

oh, we need more thyroidhormone. oh, we need more adrenalineor cortisol. oh, we need more ofthis or that. and that's your switchboardoperator. then you have your thyroid. then you have the adrenals,the ovaries, the pancreas. i include some other thingsin here because, from a functional medicine standpoint,we also want to consider how the bodyis detoxifying.

so i include things like theliver and the kidneys and the heart, as well. because it's all about keepingthings moving. so let's talk a little bit aboutthe first step of the protocol and how your bloodsugar is operating. so how many of you wokeup this morning and had a cup of coffee? and how many of you had thatcup of coffee with nothing else, just for the firsthour and a half?

and how many of you had the cupof coffee with something like a carb, like, i don'tknow, not a pop tart, but something like that. like toast or banana. audience: does fruit count? alisa vitti: yeah. fruit's got sugar, yup. so basically, what ends uphappening to you is you wake up in a state of hypoglycemia.

so let's just definethe terms. there's hyperglycemia, toomuch sugar in the blood. hypoglycemia, not enoughsugar in the blood. you wake up in a state ofhypoglycemia because you've slept for eight hours,hopefully. and you haven't eaten, unlessyou're hooked up to an iv feeding tube, whichyou're not. and so your blood sugar islow when you wake up. so if you put something thathas too much sugar in your

bloodstream in the morning,your blood sugar's going to spike. and caffeine, and i ask aboutthe caffeine issue because it's the one thing that you dothat changes your blood sugar destiny the rest of the day. if you do caffeine, here'swhat caffeine does. it indirectly has more sugarsecreted into the bloodstream. caffeine stimulates cortisol. cortisol, we'll learn in amoment, talks to your fat

cells and has those fat cellsconvert into glucose. so indirectly, it gets yourblood sugar levels up. it also stimulates adrenaline. it actually prevents your bodyfrom breaking adrenaline down, is what caffeine does. so you feel the effectsof it longer. and that's why you feelenergized from coffee. and i put major quotationsaround that, because it's not real energy.

it's just adrenaline thatyou can't get rid of. so now you're bloodsugar's up. and no matter what you do therest of the day, if you've done the caffeine the firstthing in the morning like that, you will not get offthis roller coaster. you will be chasing that firsthigh all day long. so you'll crash midmorning. and you'll feel like whoever ishaving a birthday and the cupcakes are around or whateverit is, you're going

to have more carbs thanyou would normally. by lunch, you're going tobe doing the same thing. you're going to over indulge. and you're going to be beatingyourself up the whole time thinking, where'smy willpower? i told myself i was goingto be good today. and there's no possible way. the brain chemistry willoverride you every time, because the first thing theendocrine system wants to

protect is not your period,ironically. it's the sugar that's availableto the brain, the heart, and the muscle tissue. if you do anything to messwith the sugar that's available for your brain, yourheart, and your muscle tissue, you have no more sayin the matter. ghrelin will be secreted. all sorts of neurotransmitterswill start to get in line to make you crave sugar.

because if you haven't putenough in, the brain is going to freak out. and then all of a sudden, it'sgoing to try to bypass you. because clearly, you have noidea what you're doing, according to the brain. so that's a typical profileof what a lot of women are experiencing. and then even if you don't docaffeine in the morning, or you do it with food, or youhave, let's say, something

like half a bagel in themorning, or a muffin, or something that seems reasonable,it's shooting up your blood sugar levelno matter what. and then you're going to haveinsulin act on that. it's going to drop yourblood sugar levels. it's going to go allover the place. so you're finding yourself lessand less able to stay away from those afternooncravings. how many of you feellike at 3:30 or 4

o'clock, you feel awesome? crickets. so i did a little experiment. i'm a researcher. and so i sat in a starbucksfor a couple of days. and i sat there all day. i was just working there. and i just trackedthe patterns. and my thesis was that we wouldsee spikes in traffic at

starbucks during the timeswhere people are stereotypically hypoglycemic,which is midmorning and midafternoon. and let me tell you, thezombielike march into a starbucks at 3:30, from 3:30to 4:30, it is insane. don't even go to try and buycoffee at that time. you will wait for 25 minutesto get a cup of coffee. and it's not just the coffee. also then, oh well, this littlesweet thing only has

180 calories. and that seems reasonable. so you're having more sugarthan you would normally because your body isrequesting it. and so this is a big problem. also, any of you ever drivingin a car and see someone with road rage? road rage is hypoglycemia. that's all.

if you see someone with roadrage, or even on the subway, give them a bar,like a larabar. just fix them right away. what we want to see is bloodsugar that's hugging the stasis line much more closely. and you get there by modifyingconcentrations of macronutrients during breakfast,lunch, and dinner. and we help women figure outwhat do they need in each meal, based on their body'sresponse to carbohydrates,

proteins, fats, andextreme sugars. so how much can you tolerate? how much can you tolerate suchthat you're only undulating around the line, versusspiking and dipping around the line? and for someone who used tostruggle with weight as a result of my hormonal issues,just clearing this up alone takes care of any sort ofstubborn weight issues that you might be having.

so it's really, really excitingto know that you can just eat your way. eat to be thin, whichis really fun. because i like to eat. food is delicious. if you don't get the bloodsugar right, it starts to throw off that chemicalconversation in a long term way. so in the short term, we knowthat it affects the brain, the

heart, and the muscle tissue,and starts to have you secrete all sorts of neurotransmittersthat get you excited to eat sugar and zap your will power. will power doesn't reallyexist in a neurochemical standpoint. so i don't really thinkto try to use that. i would rather you leverage yourhormones instead, because they're much more powerfulthan your thoughts in a lot of ways.

but over time, if you continueto have this blood sugar roller coaster, it's goingto affect your liver. it's going to affect yourpancreatic response. it's going to affectyour thyroid. it's going to affectyour adrenals. and it's going to clog up thepathways of elimination. and i'm going to sharemore about that now. of course, at the end of all ofthis, how is it causing you to pay attention to it?

because you may not notice thesediscrete symptoms of your adrenals being off, oryour thyroid being off, or things of this nature. although, in the book, i teachyou how to observe these things in the bodyin real time. but how you'll notice it overtime is that all of a sudden, your period will be funky. you'll have a bigheavy period. or you'll have clots.

or you'll have major cramping. or you'll have pms that justrocks you and takes you out of your life for a day or two,which is not normal. and by the time you get toobserving a symptom like that, do you appreciate, now, themountain of chemical imbalance that has been persistingfor a period of time? no hormonal symptom, from amenstrual standpoint, a fertility standpoint, lowenergy, low sex drive, just happens out of the blue.

never. doesn't just happen to you. it comes through impropermanagement of the food that's affecting these things thatwe're talking about in the food sequencing that then causesan environment for all of this to startto break down. make sense? so let's look at the adrenals. this is so much fun.

i love cross sectionsof glands. i'm such a science nerd. but you wear cutejewelry anyway. it's fine. so the adrenal gland,so powerful, located in your mid back. do you all know where youradrenal glands are? now you do. over here.

right here. and they are nestled inwith the kidneys, really powerful gland. in fact, the inner most part,the medulla, forms at the same time in utero as the brainand the spinal cord. it's a primitive extensionof the brain, in fact. the cortex, which is what we'regoing to talk about, the three outermost zones, areessential for your life. and unlike the brain, theadrenal gland does not adapt.

not happening. doesn't adapt to stress. doesn't adapt to your diet. it does not like it if you dothings that make it unhappy. and it will start to affectyou in very profound ways. now, i'm not going to get intothe zona glomerulosa, fasciculata, all these wonderfullatin names that won't make any sense to you. but what i am going to tell youabout is this relationship

between cortisol and dhea. so if you notice, the twoinnermost zones, the blue and the pink. the blue is the zone thatproduces cortisol. the pink is the zonethat produces dhea. when you have stress, let's say,you're on a deadline or you're running late to an eventor something like that, you get a little boostof cortisol. why?

why does this happen to us? well, cortisol has a specialrelationship with your butt. how many of you have a specialrelationship with your butt? just your adrenal glands do. so it talks to the fat cellsthat are stored in whatever body part that tendsto store your fat. but for women, it's usually ourhips, butt, and thighs. that's typically wherewe tend to store fat. and cortisol tellsthose fat cells,

hey, something's happening. we don't know what itis, because it's not the whole brain. it's just a primitive part of responding to external factors. can you please convert someof that fat to glucose? because what is fat? fat is just long termstorage of sugar. that's all that it is.

so cortisol reverses theprocess, get's it into the bloodstream. and all of a sudden, you havea little bit of extra energy for the brain, the heart, andthe muscle tissue to respond to the external stress. makes sense? now, that's cool oncein a blue moon. that's cool if all of a suddenyou have to catch the train. and if you don't catch thetrain, you're going to miss

your plane. and that's really great. but it's not great if this ishappening to you all day long. and here's why. it has a suppressiveeffect on dhea. the more cortisol that youradrenal gland secretes, the less dhea you will produce. and dhea is the mother hormonefrom which, for women, 90% of your testosteroneis manufactured.

so any of you who are feelinglike you can't build up muscle mass though you are workingout, you still feel soft and flabby. you go to flex and nothing'sthere, but you've been doing push ups. is that happening to people? if you're all adrenallyfatigued, it is happening to you. if you feel like you just don'thave the same stamina

for running around and doingthings in your life, this is what's happening. cortisol up, dhea levels down. if your sex response and driveis kind of like, meh, this is what's happening here. and do you know whati mean by, meh? so what should it look like? on a normal, healthy personwithout any level of adrenal fatigue, you get a nice surge ofcortisol in the morning to

wake you up. how is it that we stay asleepall night and then all of a sudden, magically, in themorning, we wake up? it is not the alarmclock people, although that does help. but if you want to doan experiment-- i don't use an alarm clock. i just tell myself beforei sleep what time i'd like to wake up.

and then i just do. that's a whole otherfun conversation. but my adrenal glands supportthe ability of my body to wake up at the right timein the morning. because again, cortisolsurging at this time is doing what? talking to your long term sugarstorage, aka your fat, getting some of that to convertin to sugar to help your brain, heart, muscle tissuego through metabolic

changes to feel likethey can be awake. that's what's happeningin the morning. and then you get anothersurge midday. you get a little bitin the afternoon. and it starts to taper offdramatically so that you can wind down and go to sleep. now, how many of you feel likewhen you wake up, you kind of feel a little hung over, likegroggy, even though you have not been drinking?

i know you're all not drinkingevery night. but you wake up and you'relike, oh god, help me. this feeling, this isa normal feeling. we're all laughing. ok, here's what's happening. you're having adrenal fatigue. so instead of having that nicesurge of cortisol helping you wake up with joy and vigor inthe morning, which is how you should feel--

remember when you were a kid,you were like, i'm up. somebody else wake up. oh my god. that's how it shouldbe every day still. but that's not happening. instead, we get notenough cortisol secreted in the morning. we feel a little bit likewe're dragging. even though we're doingcaffeine, still we don't feel

the same surge of energy. how many of you had the caffeinethis morning and felt like you were five and itwas christmas morning? no, it is not giving you thereturn on your investment that you would like it to. and then, you maybeget a little bit more around the midday. but you start to get your bigsurge in the afternoon, late afternoon, evening, evenas late as 10 o'clock.

how many of you feel likeyou're night owls? and you wake up trulyafter dinner. and you're like gosh, i shouldjust do all my work in the middle of the night. that's super cool. i'm not someone who'sa conformist. i'm going to be in themiddle of the night doing all my work. no.

this is just an indication thatyour adrenal glands are not performing the waythat they should. there are four different degreesof adrenal fatigue. this, i would say, isabout stage two. stage three and stage fourinclude other things like major anxiety, response atinappropriate times, even panic attacks for noappropriate reason. that type of a thing canaccompany heart palpitations, sweating, it gets much,much worse.

and think about it. we're talking about cortisol. we're talking aboutadrenaline. we're talking about dhea. we're talking about this glandthat governs a lot of the functions of your response. and it's hard to pinpointbecause it can be lumped in. the symptoms can be lumpedin with other things. because you'll feelgenerally tired.

so maybe you'll think it'sa thyroid problem. or you'll have maybereduced immunity. and you think, oh it'sjust flu season. but actually, when adrenal isunderperforming, you are much more likely to catcheverybody's cold. so there's all of this. poor digestion, improperelimination, all of this can be affected by adrenalfatigue. so it's really, reallyimportant that we

get the hang of it. and depression and anxiety,such a big problem for so many women. we go through monthly bouts ofthis if we're hormonally imbalanced. but with adrenal fatigue ontop of it, the issue is compounded in multiples. so if you're struggling witha feeling of not feeling yourself or feeling anxiety orfeeling continuous worrisome

thoughts, we should look atwhat's happening with your adrenals and eat foradrenal happiness. third piece of the foodsequencing protocol has to do with your pathwaysof elimination. and you have four of them. and all them work in synergyto help you break down hormonal toxins, especiallyestrogen. think about it this way. imagine if you were producingadrenaline in the morning.

and then you weren't able tobreak that down and get that out of your body. how would you feel? you feel a little, all day. you feel anxious. and estrogen, this happensto so many women. you're producing estrogenon a continuous basis. that's your body's job. your ovaries are producingestrogen.

this is what it's supposedto be doing. if you're not breaking thatdown, estrogen's one of those hormones that's like adouble edged sword. just the right amount makes youlook and feel fantastic. too much or too little is veryproblematic in different ways. so if you have too much estrogenthat's not breaking down, this can cause all sortsof problems in terms of your hormonal health, from weightgain to fibrocystic breasts to increased risk for cancer topms, endometriosis, fibroids,

ovarian cyst development,all of this. very serious stuff. and what's interesting when wethink about how they work together is that-- and the reason why they'reorganized in this way is because this is decreasingmagnitude. so the skin is yourlargest organ. that's why it's so importantthat you make the choice not to put things on your skin thatare going to already--

you're already dealing withestrogen dominance because we live in 2013. and this is the state that theenvironment is polluted with so much xenoestrogen thatevidently fish, which develop their gender outside of themother's reproductive system, are all turning into female fishin the rivers because a lot of women are takingbirth control pills. that's ending up inour water supply. and there's chemicalsand pesticides.

it is happening. so we are flooded withtoo much estrogen. and so we just don't want to putany more on ourselves that we don't have to. the liver, i'm going to talkabout in a moment, but has a special relationship withyour large intestine. we're going to talk aboutpoop for one more time? ok, you're cool? you're cool with poop?

i'm so cool with it. here's the thing. how many of you feel like you goto the bathroom every day, no problem? put your hands up. everybody keep your handsup until this no longer applies to you. how many of you wake up andgo to the bathroom kind of relatively before noon?

how many of you have that happenwithin 90 minutes of opening your eyeballs, havea bowel movement? 90 minutes. how many of you have thatwithin 20 minutes? great, awesome. that's where you should be. you wake up-- oh wait, one last check. you have that 20 minutes,no caffeine.

awesome. ok good. so how it should work iseyeballs open, glass of water, brush your teeth,bowel movement. 20 minutes. if that's not happening, you'restruggling with a level of constipation. and why that's important is it'sindicating now, if the large intestine is the smallestplace that we have

elimination of estrogen, canyou imagine the backup that it's going to cause in theliver, in the lymphatic system, on the skin? constipation, for sure, willlead to skin problems. and a lot of women arestruggling with rosacea and eczema and acne. and all of this is a sign thatthe liver, the large intestine, the lymph areoverloaded with toxins and that you need to change, notwhat you're putting on your

skin to spot treat theeczema, the rosacea. we talked about this. no more spot treating. we want to start cleaningup liver, large intestine function. so let's look at the liver. and i want to break downthe pathways of elimination for you. this is super cool becausethis really shows the

importance of whatyou're eating. your liver has these two phasesof detoxification. the first phase, basically,breaks your hormones down into fat soluble, more toxic formsof the hormone than it was originally. the second phase converts itinto a water soluble, less toxic form that can leave yourbody safely through the urine, the sweat, the bowel movement. so the skin, the lymphaticsystem, the large intestine

are going to be thetransport systems for this waste product. what is required to be on tap inyour liver, stored in your liver at all times are keymicronutrients to support in phase one and phase two ofthis detoxification. so these are things like bvitamins, vitamin c, selenium, glutathione. i want to focus in a littlebit on selenium and glutathione because they'rekind of fun.

so how many of you remember thewhole story of the sperm and the egg and when they cometogether, it makes a life, dah dah dah? do you know why that happens? this is so cool. this is a little off topic, buteverybody needs to know. it's selenium and glutathione. it actually is suchan important chemical catalytic reaction.

selenium is stored in the spermin high concentration. glutathione in the egg inhigh concentration. when they come together, it'sthe selenium and the glutathione that react in acatalytic way that starts the cell dividing. isn't that so amazing? and it's because of whatyou were eating. you cannot supplement aseffectively the selenium and glutathione versus othersupplements.

we know vitamin c supplementsare recognized by the body. glutathione, we haven't beenable to manufacture a synthetic form that'sbioavailable. you have to eat it. and if it's not present inadequate supply for your liver and you're noticing littlebreakouts, what's happening with your egg quality? so we're thinking aboutpreserving our fertility for the long term.

we have to be thinking about allthe ways in which this is interconnected? do you understand? so how do we get glutathione? how do we get selenium? selenium is easy. two to four brazil nutsa day, you're set. that's rich supplyof selenium. this is good for your partners,if they're men.

and they're working on spermquality, motility, health, whatever, great to have thembe eating brazil nuts. glutathione, lucky us, is foundin any every organic, raw fruit and vegetable. it's in everything. so if you were to have somethinglike one green juice a day at any point, doesn't haveto be during a fast or anything, or some steamed orraw veggies, or some good quality fruits, you're goingto be dosing yourself with

this essential micronutrientthat not only is talking about preserving egg quality,but also helping your liver do its job. because if we don't haveadequate supply.-- remember, in phase one, itbreaks the hormones down into a more toxic form, that ends upcirculating in your body if it's not broken down properly. and it can make your liverperform inappropriately and have you store more sugar as fatin the liver and not break

down hormones the waythat you want. so it's so, so important toeat for all these organs. i know it might seemoverwhelming. but trust me, it's so easy onceyou put it all together. so i want to go into the lastpiece of the protocol here. and then i'm going to openit up to some questions. the really interesting thingthat i found when i was doing all of my research in functionalmedicine and nutritional genomics andlooking at all sorts of

interesting things likechronobiology, which is the study of the circadian patternsof different organ systems in the body, is thati thought, wow, isn't it interesting that no one islooking at the pattern of the menstrual cycle and mappingfood on to that? because we can map-- for example, the adrenalsreally love salt in the morning, really don'tlike it at night. they like potassium at night.

so drinking a little coconutwater at the end of the day can be a way to help youradrenals release and relax from cortisol overdose. so there's food that mapsonto our different organ circadian patterns. but no one was looking atthat for the cycles. so this is my big contributionis, how do we eat to be in cyclical harmony? because the reality is--

and i want to break down, youhave these four phases, in case you didn't know. because most of us know theobvious one, the menses. and we might know thepms, but we don't know what that's called. it's called the luteal phase. but let's go in order. starts with the folicularphase. eggs developing.

multiple little cysts onthe level of the ovary. then you move into theovulatory phase. one of the eggs leavesthe ovary. boom boom. and then we're in theluteal phase. there's two distinct parts ofthe luteal phase, which i'll show you in a moment. and then, of course,there's the menses. those are you four phases.

happens to you whether you'reobserving them or not. but i'd like for you to be ableto start observing them in real time. because most of us don't know. how many of you know whenyou're ovulating? yeah, 2% of you. most of us only know when westart menstruating because we can see it. it's obvious.

and you need to get products. and that's when wepay attention. but what's really cool is,remember how i was going to ask someone to come upand draw this chart? here's the chart. five hormones. the hormone that i don't havepresent here just because we like to layer it in after so youcan see these first four is testosterone.

you have testosterone patternsthat fluctuate as well that affect your stamina at thegym, your sexual desire, preferences, all of that,throughout the month. and they are absolutelymapped onto the cycle. let's just break down the lutealphase for a minute. and i go into such granulardetail about all the little parts of your cyclein the book. i cannot wait for you getyour hands on it. but in the luteal phase,you have two halves.

you have the build half, whichis indicated by the rise in the purple and the green lineson the chart from day, let's say, 18 up to 24. and this is both estrogenand progesterone rising. estrogen's thickening thelining of uterus. progesterone's holdingit in place. then if there is no conception,what happens? both of these hormonesstart to drop off. and progesterone and estrogenstart to diminish.

and the lining is ableto leave the body. and that's when menstruationstarts. there are two distinct halves ofthis because, i want you to pay attention to how you feel. most women still feelperfectly fine. they still feel like they're intheir post ovulatory glow the first half of theluteal phase. their energy's good. there's a little surgeof testosterone here.

so we're feeling energized andable to do everything. the second half of the month,depending on how far apart estrogen and progesterone are onthis chart from each other, is the degree to which youwill suffer with pms. so for example, if estrogen wasvery high and progesterone was much lower than what you'reseeing here, then you're going to have crampsand bloating and breast tenderness and mood swingsand all of that. and if prior to thatprogestorene levels are not

adequate, this iswhere it becomes difficult to even get pregnant. so if you're thinking abouttrying to make a baby, you have to know where you arehormonally in each phase of your cycle so that you can dothat more successfully. now, here's whereit gets cool. in the book, there are severaldifferent charts that map out for you each of these phases sothat you can start to plan your food, your exercise, yourpriorities, and your sex life

around where youare hormonally. because these distinct hormonalpatterns, this is happening to your brain. estrogen is flooding yourbrain at different times of the month. progesterone, all ofthese things are changing your brain chemistry. and it makes a lot of sensethat you would feel differently week over week.

because you know intuitivelythat you already do. how many of you, for example,first half of the month you go into a boot camp class at thegym and you crush it? you walk out of therelike, eye of the tiger, it's awesome. that happens. then same class, same you, samelululemon pants and you go to the same thing twoweeks later, and you're like, oh god.

make it stop. when is this class over? and you're thinkingto yourself, what's wrong with me? it's not you. it's where you arein your cycle. and you're in the wrong classfor that time of your cycle. in fact, if you're dealing withadrenal issues and you overdo it with the exercise atdifferent times of the month,

you can actually make yourselfgain weight. how many of you have had anygirlfriends who've trained for a marathon or triathlon andthey've put on 20 pounds from doing that? i see this all the timein my practice. this has to do with adrenalfatigue, hormonal imbalance, and overexercising at thewrong time of the month. it's amazing what you can dowith a lot less effort and strain on the body if you leaninto your hormonal natural

rhythms that are happening. so i wanted to give you a tasteof the priorities of how your brain is shifting, yourneurochemical shifts, so that you might start to apply thosein your work life. because my whole company runson this cycle, actually. we call it a form of bodytime management. again, it's a natural form ofbiotechnology that's governing the way your body performs, soyou might as well use it to your benefit.

so during the follicular phase,this is when the brain is getting initial dosesof estrogen. and your brain isstarting to-- think of it like popcornof ideas. you're like, oh, this wouldbe interesting to do. or this might be an interestingway to tackle this project that i want toget done this month. this is a great time duringyour, let's say, month of working to plan projects, tomap out your chart to do,

anything that you need to do toset yourself up for success for the month. in the ovulatory phase, becauseof the flood of estrogen on the brain, you'remuch more communicative and social and magneticat this time. this is a great time to work incollaboration with people in your team, to set upstrategic meetings, to ask for a raise, to go on first datesor second dates, or have important conversations.

it would be easier for youto do it at this time. you can do it any time ofthe month, of course. but this is when youwill be most-- it will feel effortlessto you. in the luteal phase, the effectsof progesterone and estrogen on the brain inconjunction have a getting things done kind of an effect. so i always tease women. and i say, ok, remember howyou've told yourself to do

your laundry two weeks ago andyou just cannot get it done. but then all of a sudden,something happens. you don't register as it movinginto your luteal phase. and you just want to organizeyour shoe closet and your bills and do your accountingand write thank you letters to people. and you're just banging thingsout, getting things done, this is naturally happening to youin the luteal phase from a neurochemical standpoint.

so lean into that. if you have to get things doneon project basis anyway at work, why not try to leave sometime in your schedule during these weeks, these 10days, to have project time. don't over schedule yourself. make sure you give yourselfthree hours a day to get things done and crankthings out. you will feel so muchmore on top of your projects if you do this.

then during menstruation, what'shappening to the brain chemistry has you actuallyhaving the maximum amount of communication across the corpuscallosum, which is the bundle of nerve fibers thatconnect the right and the left hemisphere of the brain. so this means you'resynthesizing data from the right and the left hemispherein ways that you don't the rest of the month. so this is actually a time to doan evaluation, whether that

be evaluating people on yourteam, if that's your role, or evaluating your own projectperformance that month, or evaluating how you'redoing in your life. like, how's your relationshipgoing? are you really happy inyour relationship? or are you just tolerating it? we all do that, unfortunately. are you really happy with whatyou're doing in your job? are you moving forward theway that you want to?

now, think about a bicycleversus someone walking. put two people onthe same path. one's on a bike. one's walking. who's going to get to thefinish line faster? bike rider, yes. and has to do is forward vectormotion of the wheels. so imagine just doing this forone month, how much you would get done, how far youwould accomplish,

what you need to do. then project that outone quarter, half a year, a whole year. how much more progress you wouldmake by leveraging your hormonal patterns versusnot working with them? it is kind of like trying toturn a television on with a remote control that onlyhas one battery. you wouldn't even dream ofhaving no tv turn on. but we try, as women, to operatenot using this, not

using this technology that'savailable to us that is having a real influence on our brainchemistry, our physical sensations, our moods, ourenergy, our stamina. and because we're not usingit, we are inadvertently working against it, from anendocrine system standpoint. and it's taxing ourhormonal function. so we feel more adrenallyfatigued. our period problemsbecome amplified. women are dealing with prematureovarian failure.

they're not getting pregnant. their sex drive is going awayin their early 30s. why is this? it's not just the chemicalsin the food and in the environment. it also has to do withhow we're not partnering with our bodies. so, so important to think abouthow you can get into cyclical harmony.

in the last section of thebook, i talk all about different-- my favorite foods. and i just wanted to share someof the favorite foods that you can start taking awayfrom today to address some of the issues that you mightbe dealing with. so if you're dealing with anysort of pms or period problems, this would be the listthat i would give you to start with, in addition totaking on the food sequencing that we talked about.

first thing that i could say,the most important thing is to eliminate soy products. i have the word reduceon the slide. but i would highly encourageyou, if you're dealing with fibroids, endometriosis, pcos,pms, ovarian cysts, heavy bleeding, to eliminate soy. soy has high concentrations ofestrogen, especially if it's not organic gmo free soy. there was a study done in brazilon gmo soy and its

effects on both maleand female rats' reproductive system. poor rats, they had toeat all that soy. and what they found was actuallythat the gmo soy changed the uterine structurein the female rats, changed the shape of the uterusin the females. and what's really exciting aboutwhat's going on with the whole genomic research and food,we actually now can look in a laboratory setting at yourbiome, your human genome,

plant genomes, the food you'reeating, and the intestinal microbiome that you haveand how they're interacting with eachother. they're changing each other. these genes-- the vegetable that you atehas genetic material. it's mixing with yours. and the bacteria that you havein your gut is mixing with your genes.

so you need to learn how topartner with that whole process, otherwise it's goingto run your life. definitely want to getyou more on kale. kale, cabbage, brussel sprouts,broccoli, these cruciferous vegetables containsubstances that help the body break down estrogen. they also are rich in magnesiumand calcium, which helps during the pms phase, ifyou're struggling with that. and then, of course, this is oneof my favorite juices for

women who are havingcycle issues. and it's just a good cover forblood building, for liver detoxification, andfor circulation. so you can get this recipeand try it at home. make your own juice. it's really, really great. let's say you are thinking abouthaving a child at some point in the future. and you'd like to preserve yourfertility, make sure your

egg quality is good, make sureovulation is strong. these are some thingsthat you can try. turmeric has been shown toimprove the vascular health of the ovary. cinammon actually reducesinsulin levels, which help keep ovulation healthy. avocado, one of the studies icite in the book, avocado should be a poster on everyivf doctor's office. because we now know, lab tested,women who go through

ivf and eat three avocados aweek versus women who don't eat any avocados have a 3 and1/2 greater successful outcome with ivf than the women who werenot increasing levels of essential fatty acids. hormones are all stabilizedin fat. and women on our no fat, low fatdiets are doing ourselves a huge disservice for hormonalhealth and long term fertility optimization by not eatinggood sources of fat. so each your avocadoes.

in terms of energy and sexdrive, a lot of this has to do with your adrenal health. so there are a couple of thingsi would have you do immediately. get off the caffeine, because weknow it over stimulates the adrenal, not even, green tea,not even decaf, nothing, for a couple months. by the way, the whole protocoltakes three months to do. so don't think this hasto be a forever thing.

but if you want to get your bodykick started to healing, give your body a break. and the summertime is veryeasy to go off caffeine because it's hot. you'll want colder thingsanyway, so try it now. get on a b vitamin. a b100 complex will containadequate levels of b12, b6, and b5, which the adrenalglands need to perform. and i would say if you're reallystruggling with adrenal

fatigue, and some of the thingsi talked about with weight and energy levelsresounded with you, i would definitely exercise no morethan 20 minutes at a time at the gym. after that, you're burningyour adrenal reserve. and you're causing morespikes in cortisol. and you're making theproblem worse. so this will, of course,continue to keep you in that vicious cycle of low energy.

and when there's no energy,there is no reserve for sex drive. so if you want to bring sexyback, it's not justin timberlake. it's b vitamins. although, he's so cute. connect with us. we are a whole community ofwomen who are living in the womancode way.

we are all in flow withour hormonal health. find us on facebook. there's a weekly videoseries that we have that's me talking. so if you enjoyed me talking,you'll see more of me. and they're all underfive minutes. and it's really about how canyou be troubleshooting in real time all the issues thatyou're dealing with? and connect with us.

i want to hear howyou're doing. so i want to open it up to you,little ovary town hall. what are some questionsthat you have? what are some things that youheard that you have some deeper dive desires around? and how can i supportyour cycle, your fertility, your sex drive? lay it on me girls. audience: so you mentioned withthe different parts of

your cycle that there are thingsthat you should focus on more, because [inaudible] when your cycles are. what would say if you had toschedule yourself with some kind of medical procedureor surgery or something? where in your cycle wouldyou have to do that? alisa vitti: dependson the procedure. but ideally around the ovulationtime, where you have a little bit extratestosterone.

so a little bit more staminaand energy to bounce back more quickly. and also because as you leadup to menstruation-- how many of you have ever goneto the dentist right before your period and notice that yourgums bleed a lot more? you have more of that potentialfor happening. so you have more bleedinghappening, less coagulation, leading up to that. so i would schedule it moretowards the first half of the

month if you can. great question. audience: so i've heardtwo things. the one, that cortisol,it increases that. it makes that deposit. but it seems like in this case,it actually signals the burning of fat. and i also heard that caffeinehelps stimulate metabolism. and both of those things seemlike they conflict?

alisa vitti: yes. audience: so what are yourthoughts on that? alisa vitti: it brings upan important point. every magazine you read everymonth, isn't it annoying? there's like do this. now, do this. and by the way, we're justsaying do the opposite of what we said last month. so this is some of the thingsthat this makes me feel

reminded of. but when we're talking about awoman who's struggling with menstrual issues, fertilityissues, low energy, low libido issues, adrenal fatigueis happening. period pun intended. so we know that for woman whohas got these issues that caffeine is going to have anadverse effect on her. it's not going to stimulateher metabolism. in fact, how it works on theblood sugar level is cortisol

is going to get the fat out fromthe fat stores into the but then the pancreas is goingto be hyper responsive, secrete lots of insulinto try to restore it. so that's how indirectly youend up with more fatty deposits, because you have toomuch cortisol being produced. so again, because caffeine istriggering that for women who are adrenally fatigued and whoare struggling with these issues, it causes a viciouscycle from an endocrine function standpoint.

now, for some people who,let's say, are in their perimenopausal years, postmenopausal years, caffeine can be a beneficial tool. but for a lot of women who arein their reproductive years, i don't find this tobe great advice. and unfortunately, a lot of-- and i was on the "dr. oz"show and all of this. a lot of these shows arebeing watched by women who are over 50.

and so a lot of the topics arebeing geared towards that demographic, which is great. they need support too. but i'm really interested inwomen who are still in their reproductive years. because what you do in your 20sand 30s will completely dictate your hormonal destiny,your whole entire health destiny in your 40s, 50s,and 60s and beyond. so i want to take your periodseriously for sure.

more questions. you had a question. audience: yeah. well, one of them you answered,because i was going to ask you about selenium. alisa vitti: good. audience: the other one wasabout what we put on our skin. audience: so spray tans, thoseare all chemicals. alisa vitti: oh.

audience: right? alisa vitti: great question. no one has asked me thatquestion before. audience: i'm trying to stayout of the sun and be good to my skin. i wear spf 50 on my faceevery day now. alisa vitti: great. audience: but i don't likelooking pale in the summer. so i've been doing theoccasional spray tan here and

there, even thought i knowthat's probably great either. here would be myrecommendation. if you really are limiting it totwo months out of the year, i would say that's ok. i personally would never putthat chemical on my skin, any kind of self tanner-- audience: ok. it's a self tanning lotion. alisa vitti: just becauseit affects melatonin.

that's how it works. and melatonin's a reallypowerful hormone. in fact, it's so powerful thatyou cannot get it without a prescription outsideof this country. in europe, if you want to takemelatonin to help you with your sleep, you have to havea doctor write you a prescription for it. here, we just go buy it. and we take massivedoses of this.

that's a whole otherconversation. but i would not use that. however, if you are going to useit, and that's a personal choice, again, i'm only askingyou to be good on protocol 80% of the time. because if you have anenvironment where 80% of the time you're strengthening yourendocrine response, the 20% of your life where you make choiceslike you're going to have a night of drinking, you'regoing to have the spray

tan, you're going to havewhatever food on vacation you're going to have,your body can bounce back from that. any ratio different than that,like 70%, 60% on, your body can't respond as quickly. and you start to get intosymptoms much, much faster. so make choices. if you're rest of you ishormonally golden, fabulous, you're humming along andeverything's great, then two

months of-- i would rather you do the selftanner, just because i would rather you not risk the aerosolexposure of the whole way that that's delivered. you're breathing it in. it's a whole other thing. i would rather youdo spray tan. audience: you wouldrather, which one? alisa vitti: i'm sorry.

self tanner cream, thanthe spray tan. and i would also rather you doit small amounts of the year. and then what about-- i've heard that there's organicspray tan out there. have you heard of it? alisa vitti: i haven'theard of it. but i would check out selftanners at whole foods. i haven't looked, because iprefer to glow in the dark. and i don't tan at all.

but check it out and see. certainly, the organic selftanners are going to have the surrounding cocktail, therecipe, the lotion is not going to have parabens andpetrolatum and other chemicals that are known endocrinedisrupters. so if it does exist,100,000%, do that. audience: a lot of what youtalked about assumes that you're not regulating yourcycle with birth control pills, right?

so you mention00 alisa vitti: not true,but go ahead. keep going. audience: oh. my question is, what ifyou're on the pill? and you touched upon inthe beginning about going off the pill. i'm curious what yourthougts are. lots of conversation. aboutthe pill in the book.

and i can go on and on and on. but essentially, you're stillhaving hormonal cycles if you're on the pill. if you're having symptoms, andmany women do still have symptoms of hormonal issues onthe pill, and if you have adrenal fatigue, and if you'reconstipated, and you're having other things going on, andyou're on the pill, the best thing for you to do is to startgetting on the protocol. because if you then identify orif you now realize that you

have an underlying hormonalimbalance for which you decided to take the pill. and the pill for these issuesthat we're talking about, think of it like puttingmasking tape over the indicator light on your car. it's blinking at you to try toget you to pay attention. change the oil, something'swrong, refill at the next station, something like that. and being on the pill preventsyou from really paying

attention in real time. but if over time, the symptomsstart building and it's undeniable that you have somehormonal stuff that needs addressed, get on protocol. and then you can workwith your doctor. we have so many women who dothis, who then end up taking a little birth controlpill vacation. you do the protocolfor three months. then you take three months offthe pill and reassess, how is

your hormonal performance? are you now healthy andhormonally balanced? if so, your choice. go back on the pill,no problem. if you get off the pill andyou're still struggling with symptoms, there's more work foryou to do nutritionally, maybe another month or two. but it is so essential in your20s and 30s to resolve those issues now.

because what i don't want to seeis what i see often, far too often at my center. women who've been on the pillfor 15, 20 years with hormonal imbalances from their teens andearly 20s, fibroids, endo, cramps, whatever,pcos, even pms. and then they findtheir partner. they want to have a baby. they're pushing 40. and now, all of a sudden,you go off the pill.

and you have a reducedamount of time to correct these issues. and your stress levels arehigh because you feel the pressure of all that. so don't do that to yourself,meaning you now have some important information that iknow isn't being discussed on a regular basis unlessi'm here. and i'm happy to be here. but share it with yourgirlfriends.

hand them a copy of the book. let them know, hey, this isreally, really important that you understand and appreciatewhat your period is actually telling you now about yourfertility in the future. audience: so going back, insteadof having coffee and the bagel in the morning-- alisa vitti: is this whatyou have for breakfast? audience: no. actually, i was eating dinnerfoods for breakfast.

alisa vitti: dinner foodsfor breakfast are ideal. audience: yeah, i was eatingsalty stuff or leftovers from dinner. so what do you recommend eatingthen first thing in the morning to set yourselfoff right? alisa vitti: depends on yourbody's metabolism. that's why step one of ourprocess on the online platform is metabolic testing, so thatyou know exactly what your body needs, carbohydrates, fats,proteins, sugar in the

morning, salt. and you know what works foryou and what doesn't work. we also teach you how to trackwhich foods are working for you best and which are not. so we do all sorts of funfood experiments. but ideally, and it changes weekover week where you are in the cycle. and i lay this all out for youhow you can start your own experiment on your own at home,based on where you are

in your cycle, what kinds ofbreakfasts, lunches, and dinners you would have, hormonally optimizing yourself. i'll take two morebefore we wrap. you have a question. you've been looking atme soulfully all day. tell me. audience: i'm curious to knowwhat you use on your skin. i just did a vlog aboutis talking about

clearing up the skin. and we got, i don't know, azillion comments about, oh my god, what products do you use. i didn't realize my skinwas that gorgeous. thank you. and having been a former acnesufferer, it's valuable to just continuously getthat feedback. because when you've had acne,you're never quite sure if your skin looks good anymore.

but now, after so many years, ithink i'm getting the memo, all i use on my skin, forreal, i use two things. i use an alpha hydroxy acidtwice a week at night. i use something byearth science. it's called ab glycolicor hydroxy or i buy it at whole foods. very gentle. twice a week, that's it. i just wash my face at night.

other than that, i don't putanything else on it. maybe sometimes a little witchhazel in the summer if i feel particularly oily. i am mediterranean, soi self lubricate. and then for moisturizer, theonly thing that i use is pure aloe vera gel, which you buyin the sun care section at whole foods. it's a little tube. i buy two a year.

they each cost $4.00. that's it. aloe vera gel is amazing. it's anti-inflammatory. it's antiwrinkle. it's natural cell turnover. and it's fantastic,shrinks the pores. you don't need to getsucked into-- once you know how food works inthe body, all the marketing

about lotions and potions, youkind of look at it like, that's not true. none of that's actually true,what you're saying. the simpler, the more directthe ingredient, the better. audience: makeup remover. alisa vitti: makeup remover. what am i using? oh yes, i think it's anotherearth science, natural, like a lotion, very gentle.

makeup, i use mineral makeupat whole foods or aveda mineral makeup. i use natural mascara. i think the brand is calledgabriel, things like that. jane iredale makeup, amazing. lots of great organicmake up now. and there's a great website youcan go to check that out, green beauty, i thinkit's called. audience: is bare mineralsactually minerals?

it's actually goodfor your skin. you can sleep in it andall that stuff. alisa vitti: bare minerals hassome chemicals in it that are endocrine disruptive. so that's why you shouldcheck the ingredients. you want mineral makeup that is without all of those chemicals. so that's why some of the onesat whole foods are better. i think one is calledmineral fusion.

you use that one? audience: i've used it before. it's good. it's really good. audience: what aboutsunscreen? alisa vitti: i use albabotanical sun screen. i am a product lover. so i should do a wholething on products. alba botanical, i usetheir spf 50 face.

and then they have a reallyyummy enzyme pineapple. so while your sun tanning,you're also exfoliating dead skin, which builds up in copiousquantities while you're exposing yourselfto the sun. audience: do you wearthat every day. alisa vitti: i don't wearsunscreen every day, personally. and i don't spend a lot oftime out in the sun. and if i do, if i know i'm goingto be in the sun a lot,

i either wear a hat. or i do put some sunscreenon my face. but i try not to do it. but i think that's beena good thing. because people on this book tourhave been like, how old are you again? and certainly, it's acombination of, obviously, what i'm eating and my hormonalhealth, but also how we take care of our skin.

audience: what aboutinsect repellents? alisa vitti: oh my god,don't use it. no, no, no. audience: i kind of can'tlive without it. alisa vitti: no. yes you can. all you need to do is take 200milligrams of vitamin b1. changes the scentof your skin. mosquitoes won't evenknow you're there.

audience: b1 or d1? alisa vitti: b. b as in boy. b1. audience: take it every day? alisa vitti: no, just take itan hour or two before you're going to go out outside wherethe mosquitoes are going to eat you alive. audience: take how much? alisa vitti: 200.

audience: and so if i'mtravelling somewhere,-- alisa vitti: b vitamins. audience: --just takeit once a day? alisa vitti: no, take it beforeyou're going to be out where you're exposed a lot. so typically, mosquitoes arenot out all day long. they're only out at night whenit starts to get cooler. just pay attention to where yourtrouble zones are and try it around there.

the stuff in bug spray isendocrine disruptive on a major, major scale. so you don't want to be sprayingthat on yourself or on children. don't spray it on your kids. one last question, thenwe're going to wrap. audience: so related tothe b supplements. i kind of get this feelingsometimes that we weren't designed to have totake supplements.

alisa vitti: you're right. audience: so, with things likethe b vitamins, what kind of foods can we get thosequantities of b vitamins? alisa vitti: complexcarbohydrates. complex carbohydrates, eggs,and animal protein contain massive quantitiesof b vitamins. and so again, if you're someonewho is-- and we didn't talk about all the fad dietsthat are out there, vegan, paleo, fresh airaterian,whatever you're doing, i am

not dogmatic about food. to me, it's not so much aboutthe trend or a theory. i'm only interested in what isthe actual response that this food is creating in the body. and then i want to put that foodin based on if my body needs that. so for example, if you'restruggling to have cycles at all and you're vegan, it mightbe really great if you were to introduce organic pasture fedegg yolks into your diet.

they boost levels ofprogesterone in the body, which you might need to getyour cycle back on track. and other b vitaminsdo other things. and i can go on and on. but you have to be willing toeat everything in the right quantity for you. and for women especially, ican't drive the healthy fats idea home enough. and eating more fat willactually, if you're dealing

with all these hormonalproblems, help you lose weight faster, for sure. i'm so glad to have met you. i'm happy to signsome books now. and i would love to stayconnected to you. we have free resourcesfor you. in fact, as a special thank youfor those who chose not to shop today and to come to this,i would love to give to all of you a free 30minute consult with

one of our flo coaches. so if there's any furtherquestions that you have, you can certainly getthose answered. and i'll just need isyour email address. and we'll get you set up. thank you so muchfor listening, for your great questions.