115. Hormone Hacks for Your Sexual Health with Vanessa Schiffelbine

I’m so excited to have Vanessa Schiffelbine on this week! I knew she needed to be on the podcast and was someone my listeners needed to hear about. We’re talking mostly about PMS, how your hormones contribute to so many things in your life, and how to biohack your life to get the most out of it.

Who is Vanessa?
She is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist currently living in Saint Clair, MI. Vanessa is the owner of Nutrition for Gals where she provides virtual one-on-one nutrition counseling for women suffering from fatigue, burnout, brain fog, PMS, low libido, painful periods and acne. Vanessa is also a co-host of the podcast Wellness Myths.
She wanted to help other people maximize their lives using nutrition and lifestyle. 
As long as she can remember having periods, she was spending at least a week a month feeling like a different person.  She realized something was wrong and needed to fix it. 

What’s the 101 we need to know about hormones?
Hormones are just chemical messengers. If your hormones are out of whack or are unhappy in some way, there is a deeper issue. Her number one thing is that you can eat as healthy as you want, if you’re super stressed out, it’s not going to help you. You need to work on stress first. Incorporate things like meditation, journaling, yoga, going for a walk,  or mindfulness before going into the food stuff. If you’re jumping right into the food stuff but you’re in stress mode you’re not going to see those effects. Find joy, do things that make you laugh. Do the things that made you super happy as a kid, even if you look silly, even if you look dumb doing it, who cares?

What changes might people see if the work they're doing is working?
Something really obvious is that you’re having a daily bowel movement. When you wake up in the morning, you feel awake. You should be feeling like you’re falling asleep easily at night. You should be feeling like you have energy throughout the day, and you’re not hitting that 2pm slump.

What are things people should know about the area of sex and hormones?
Low testosterone is a really big one, you might notice things like a little more belly fat, not being able to gain muscle, low energy, and brain fog, and a lot of times it comes with a low sex drive. You can support testosterone production with things like vitamin D, zinc, strength training, maca, and you want to look at your adrenal gland function and support that.

What does hormone testing look like?
Vanessa uses a test call the DUTCH Test. It gets sent right to your home and you provide a urine sample. If you have a 28 day cycle it gets taken during your luteal phase day 19-22, but it can change a bit based on your cycle. You send your sample back to a lab and then they send the results to her. 

If you’re someone who’s completely new to this and you’ve never done anything with hormones,  start with tracking your cycle. You can use an app or even just a calendar or a piece of paper, you don’t need anything fancy. Just knowing when the phases of your cycle are can be so empowering. It can help you schedule your life so much better, and you can see where your symptoms are happening and figure out how to solve them better. 

Resources:
The Period Repair Manual by Lara Briden
avivaromm.com for great blogs! 
Why we Sleep by Matthew Walker 
For period tracking: The Clue App 
Wellness Myths Podcast 

Connect with Vanessa!
Instagram: @nutritionforgals
Website: