Hazel Wallace: Yeah, so over 90% of women report. Experiencing premenstrual symptoms, and there are over 150 of them from bloating to low mood to irritability, gut symptoms, headache, breast tenderness. The list is endless, but you're right in saying there's a spectrum of how women experience this and the terminology's really important, so while over 90% of women experience premenstrual symptoms, a smaller percentage, about 20 to 40% experience, premenstrual syndrome. This is where the symptoms are so debilitating that they interfere with day-to-day quality of life, and we see this pattern emerge. One to two weeks before the next period, typically a week before, and it should end or get better when your period starts. Seems to be something that works really well for most people. So it's interesting to hear the caution. By the way, it's miserable for me. I'm one of these people who's tried intermittent fasting and did it in this study and I hated it. It was bad for my mood, but interesting. It's the reverse of the average, which again is down to, I think one of the things we believe a lot here about this personalization, that's not one answer for, for everybody. Our bodies are so complicated.

Interesting you said exercise actually is not only good full stop, so exercising regularly three times a week and it's not crazy exercise. It's like enough that you can't sing, but actually you could still talk, can really reduce your symptoms throughout the cycle and that you don't need to stop during your period. Jonathan Wolf: And then stop for 26 days. That's not a pattern. There's never any like good cheats. I have to say it's very disappointing things about this podcast, and no one comes to and says, oh, well you can just exercise once a month and you'll be fine. so you're saying here like, just make sure that like regular exercise has been shown to be helpful, but you are saying don't stop through this period.

It also covers to how to eat to ease the menopausal transition and staying active during pregnancy as well as countless other female specific issues. In a bid to change the conversation, female reproductive health content creators are not letting Meta’s restrictions silence their voices.

However, female reproductive experts tell CNN that the advertising policy is still too restrictive and is creating barriers for how younger people around the world access information about female reproductive health issues, including the menstrual cycle, which can start as early as 8 years old. Hazel Wallace: So when we talk about sleep architecture, we're talking about the different stages of sleep.And the reason I think that it's so poorly diagnosed is there's not a huge amount of information out there available. I don't think medical professionals are fully aware of the symptom spectrum and what it might look like. And like I said, I think we normalize a lot of these symptoms as a society that is just part and parcel of being a woman. And typically women will have some physical symptoms of PMS as well. So the things that we mentioned, like headache, mood disturbance, cramps, things like that. But they'll have significant mood disturbance and that will impact their day-to-day quality of life. So they'll find that, you know, a lot of women will even use their annual leave because they'd feel like they can't go into work, which is something that is not okay. We’ve got a round up of the no-nonsense books that will tell you everything you need to know about women’s health – all written by women. The Female Factor by Dr Hazel Wallace The pool of it and see how good quality it is. And this is based on women regularly exercising, so that will be three times per week. We don't know whether the same effect applies if you stop exercising, so it's unlikely to do you any good if you just do one exercise session?

They argue that censoring content about normal and natural bodily functions plays into the shame that has long plagued how people learn about the female body and hormone cycle. That can hinder how people with uteruses advocate for their bodies in healthcare settings, including obtaining care for misunderstood and underdiagnosed conditions like endometriosis. But if you find that exercise is the last thing that you wanna do, or that doing something high in intensity is something that would make you feel worse. Low intensity exercise in particular. Yoga, there's a lot of trials around yoga and the benefit in menstrual symptoms and also PMS, and that's likely because. Jonathan Wolf: They're experiencing the same change in hormones that other women are having, which is a big change as what you're describing, but they're somehow the reaction of their body to this, which sounds pretty profound. Yeah. As somebody who's a man is having, I guess, much more stable hormones through, through my day and through my month, the impact is much higher. Through an anti-inflammatory diet, and what I mean by that is lots of colorful fruits and vegetables, high fiber, whole grains, legumes, omega-3 rich foods like oily fish, flax seeds, walnuts, lots of herbs and spices, and that can help dampen the immune response. Jonathan Wolf: Oh, it sounds fascinating to try and understand more. Now, before I let you disappear, I have to follow up on the intermittent fasting. What can it do?This is the go-to book for coming to terms with the chronic pain and managing symptoms through lifestyle tools. Jonathan Wolf: And that's a lot of people you're talking about. So if you're saying 20, 40% of all women, women are slightly more than half the population and you're in this period of your life for what, like half your life or something like, that's an enormous number of people. CNN asked Meta about the reports that it is continuing to remove, restrict, and shadow-ban female reproductive health content. CNN also asked Meta why all female reproductive health, including menstrual health, is classified as an 18+ issue. Hazel Wallace: Yeah, absolutely. So if we kind of look at menstruation, that days of bleeding, as we mentioned, an anti-inflammatory diet's, really important from reducing that inflammation, which will help reduce symptoms, but also support your immune system during that time because your bleeding and because iron deficiency anemia is so prevalent in premenopausal women.

Jonathan Wolf: And I'd love, actually, maybe before talking about the health, I should talk a bit more about what women experienced through this cycle. Cause I think you've already touched a couple of times. Right. On a way that you might feel differently, could you maybe talk through, and I'm guessing this is probably an average, and explain. Categorizing reproductive health as an R-rated topic is an issue that extends far beyond Meta advertising policies, reflecting wider societal views, from politics to sex education curriculums. Hazel Wallace: No, but I think it highlights how severe and debilitating this condition can be for women.

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Hazel Wallace: No, absolutely not. And I think, you know, if we're focusing on getting a good variety of foods, you should be getting all the nutrients that you need. We're joined by Hazel Wallace. She's a medical doctor, nutritionist, and author of The Female Factor here to give us an education on the menstrual cycle. In this episode, we'll learn how the cycle affects almost every aspect of the body from heart health and sleep to metabolism and even the microbiome. The company has long faced criticism for removing and restricting female reproductive health information with a prominent report from the Center for Intimacy Justice early last year accusing Meta of systematically rejecting many female and gender diverse reproductive health ads. The CIJ report also accused Meta of having bias algorithms, stating that male reproductive health ads were found to be permitted, including ads that referenced male sexual pleasure. The quality of our sleep. It's also quite interesting in that some studies have even looked at how our sleep architecture changes in that second phase.