Why Women Feel Like TWO DIFFERENT PEOPLE Every Month (The Science of Hormones) | Dr. Sarah Hill

24:28Sarah Ann Macklin:Yeah, I know. I completely agree. I think that having a language with which you can explain to yourself what's happening really makes all the difference in the world. And I think that, you know, I wrote the period brain and I wrote, this is your brain on birth control, both for the same reasons is that, you know, women have been, we haven't been educated in the way that our bodies work and we haven't been given a language or any sort of, you know, research explanations for what's happening. And so many women have felt crazy, whether it's, they have felt crazy because they're on hormonal contraception or they felt crazy because they're in the second half of the menstrual cycle and they feel so different and they feel bad and they don't understand what's happening and why it's happening.

25:08Sarah Ann Macklin:And I think that having an understanding of what your body is actually doing, why it's happening, and being able to explain it to yourself, I think can just really do so much in terms of improving the quality of our lives. Because you have that. Yeah, because you're able to have that internal dialogue about what's happening. And, you know, one of the things that I that I talk about in the book is that that most women have no idea it goes on and most primary care doctors have no idea it goes on. It's just this idea of luteal phase changes in symptomology of chronic illness. And many women who suffer from chronic conditions, whether it's asthma, whether it's irritable bowel syndrome, whether it is a mental health condition, like panic disorder, anxiety disorder, major depressive disorder, different autoimmune conditions.

25:58Sarah Ann Macklin:Many conditions like experience premenstrual worsening of symptoms because your immune system and all sorts of systems in the body, our respiratory system, our gut motility, all of that shifts with progesterone. And the reason for this is that progesterone has to cause your body to totally rewire everything that it's doing to prepare for the possibility of pregnancy. And these changes from head to toe oftentimes can lead to the changes in the way that we experience physical symptoms within our body. And if you have a chronic condition, this can lead to changes in symptomology of your chronic conditions.

26:34Sarah Ann Macklin:And so many women I know have had the experience of going to the doctor where they feel really terrible. And then by the time they get to the doctor's office, they're feeling okay again. And nobody can really, you know, and then they're worried and they think that there's something wrong with them. And it just turns out that the way that we experience physical symptoms in our body from everything, like I said, ranging from asthma to mental health conditions to irritable bowel syndrome changes across the cycle. And recognizing that saves people from so much worry, you know, because there can be so much worry that gets created based on having symptoms that we can't explain.

27:11Sarah Ann Macklin:And that's like the story of being a woman in a lot of ways, is having symptoms that you can't explain and then being worried about them and, um, and just understanding what's going on in your body, being able to track, as you said, and seeing whether there's any rhyme or reason. Cause a lot of times there is, there's usually a hormonal element to a lot of these things that seem to pop in and out. Um, like in terms of our experiences with like food cravings or symptoms of illness and energy levels and sexual desire. And, um, and then really understanding the way that our body is working. I think it's just, it's really game changing in terms of the way that we understand ourselves and the way that we talk to ourselves.

27:52Sarah Ann Macklin:Because I think that our self-talk as women is pretty pejorative. Like we don't say nice things to ourselves a lot of the time. Yeah. And I think that having a language to really understand what's happening and be able to talk ourselves through it in a way that's informed and kind I think can really do us all a lot of good. I want to talk about something important to you guys. People today are lonelier than ever. Most long-term relationships aren't happy ones and a third of people under 30 haven't had sex in the past year. Sexual issues among young people have surged over 3 ,000 percent but what most people miss the vast majority of relationships and intimacy struggles aren't physical problems.

28:36they're psychological and yet most people never get traditional therapy because it feels awkward, expensive or just impossible to access. So much about Live Well Be Well's mission is aimed to reduce stigma around health and help us understand ourselves better and that is exactly why I wanted to tell you about Mojo, an app for dating, sex and relationships that I am genuinely excited to tell you about. They have partnered with the world's leading experts in sexology, including some that you're actually here on this podcast to create expert-led courses. Now, their AI personalizes everything to your specific situation, so you can work through it privately at home and on your own time.

29:23Suffering in silence doesn't help anyone. And I don't say this slightly because I've believed in mojo so much that I've personally invested in the company now if any of this resonates go to mymojo.com forward slash live well be well and use the code live well 15 for 15 % off our sexual well-being matters and everyone deserves support hugely I think like you know the thing that I want to pick up there which I found really interesting when I had a podcast episode in this last year and we haven't said the words PMS but so much about the second half of the phase is around PMS and I feel like any woman listening to this would at some point experience PMS and any man listening to this has probably been at the other end of a woman experiencing PMS so I find it a really hard one to sometimes understand and I found it really interesting that last year when I spoke to somebody on the show we were talking about PMS but they saying, you know, it's really interesting when you look at different countries and how the rates vary, that when it's really pathologized or barely discussed, symptom reports are higher because women feel less heard.

30:32And actually, when it's more, when women feel like they've got more agency and that they can speak about it more and they're more heard, then actually the PMS reports are lower. And I was like, wow, that's like another step into even understanding why it's so important to talk about this.

30:48Sarah Ann Macklin:Well, right, exactly. And I think that it's, if you understand it and you feel supported, then yeah, it all of a sudden loses the sort of taint of pathology and that it changes the way that we experience the symptoms, right? Because it doesn't feel like there's something wrong. It just feels like part of the natural ebb and flow of being human. You know, and one of the things I talk about in the book is just this idea of reframing the way that we talk about, you know, PMS and talking about these experiences that we have as experiences and not symptoms because they're generally not you know something wrong with us this is just an experience that we have as a result of our body shifting gears and there's nothing wrong with us right and that it's a matter of just understanding what it is that our body is doing and what it actually needs um that that i think you know can get us out of that sort of pms corner that we get backed into but it's interesting because when i like i would say in the past i historically suffered with bad PMS and actually in the last few years I don't feel like I have and I don't know if there's just a relation to me doing this show and understanding so much more about myself and giving myself a bit more grace that has actually made it change and I kind of think about how it was spoken about when I was growing up you know like all your periods coming oh it's gonna be really heavy and right you know you would have a bit of like fear around this thing starting.

32:13And actually, it just made me really interested in about just how we, as ourselves, approach our period.

32:18Sarah Ann Macklin:Right. No, that's so interesting. And so I would say yes, I think that 100 % when we have, like I said, when you have a language to understand something, it's like you can ignore it. You know, it's like if like nobody told you that you are going to intake air and exhale air, you'd be totally distracted by like, what is this that's happening? Like, why is my body doing this? Right. But we know what it is. We know why it's happening. We can ignore it. And that's what our brain does is like, if something, if we understand it, if it's status quo, our brain tunes it out and then it pays attention to other things.

32:53Sarah Ann Macklin:When something is, seems abnormal and like, it's not supposed to be happening, then our brain is very much like alert to like, what is this? Like, what is this? Is this a problem? Is this wrong? Like, what is this? And so, um, by having, again, you know, it's like having just a framework in which to understand ourselves as women is so important in the way that we experience things. Because then we can just say, okay, this is my normal, right? This is the blueprint. And then you don't need to pay attention to it anymore. You know, it's just like it gets absorbed into your sort of unconscious. And then you can go into the world and pay attention to other things.

33:30Sarah Ann Macklin:And you don't experience those things as being as sort of pronounced right and and so I think that's a piece of it another piece of it is I mean I would be I would be curious like do you think that in like since your PMS has become less severe do you feel like you're doing more to take better care of your health like you're just general health also so in that time as well I think personally I've become more vulnerable with my friends so I've shared more experiences with my friends, especially with my girlfriends. That's been a massive thing because it's made me feel a lot more normal than things that I experienced, what they experienced, whereas before I think I wouldn't talk about it as much.

34:12And I've become really deeply ingrained in the work of self-compassion. And I think that has allowed me to shift gears in how I perceive this. And now I used to dread my period. I used to honestly get anxiety about my period coming. and now I'm like I'm so thankful that I get a period I'm so happy that I get this this every month is actually quite an amazing thing that happens yeah and one of my friends reframed it where she said it's kind of like the end of the month where everything you can just let go of everything and you can just feel like a whole resystem reset and you can actually have some time or you can give yourself some time off should I feel pretty bad for my boyfriend that he doesn't get like these moments of like just feeling like he can let go and have a bit of a reset And I was like, wow, you've taken back so much power just by reframing it to me in that way.

35:01And so I don't know, maybe that's had a part to play in it. I think generally I've been quite healthy.

35:06Sarah Ann Macklin:Yeah, yeah, no. I think that's super interesting. Because I do know, like, so for me, when I am, like, too stressed out, I'm not getting enough sleep, and I'm doing things that are eroding at my just stress resilience, I find that I have worse cycles. I mean, just in terms of the PMS rollercoaster is I can definitely feel it more. And then when I'm doing a really good job of being on top of and especially for me, it has to do with with sleep and stress, because those are my two that's like my Achilles heel. and the two things tend to co-vary because when I have a lot going on and that creates stress, it also creates insomnia.

35:48Sarah Ann Macklin:And then during those times, my cycles tend to be worse. I mean, just in terms of my emotional responses to them. And so I think that the combination of, you know, like sort of the way that our body is showing up in terms of its resilience to stress, just based on what's happening with our health. And then plus these other issues that you're talking about, the way that we frame it within our head and like, do we have an understanding of this? Does it make sense? I really love the reframing of this being a reset and sort of framing it as an opportunity instead of a cost. All of those things, I think, can really change the way that we experience ourselves across the cycle.

36:23Yeah, I think it just gives us empowerment back, right?

36:25Sarah Ann Macklin:Yeah, for sure. That we have agency. Yeah. Before I felt like I had no agency on what the hell I was doing. That's so funny. But one thing that I found, not one thing, there's so many things that I found fascinating about your work. And so much about this, I think one of the core things in life, right, is to find a mate, potentially reproduce. That's kind of, if you look at evolution, I guess why we're having a period. That's the whole point. And whether we want that today or not is a different question, but I guess in an evolutionary perspective. And you've written so much about understanding, you know, why we might be more attracted to a more kind of testosterone driven man in one part the cycle to the other.

37:03I know you've spoken about this so much. But it is fascinating. And you've then kind of spoken about how that could be linked to potentially women that then go on the pill and come off it and then maybe break up with their partner because their attraction changes. How common is that?

37:22Sarah Ann Macklin:Well, so let's just start by backing up a little bit and just talk a little bit about estrogen and about partner preferences. And one of the things that we talked about early in our conversation was just this idea that our bodies have to do two distinct tasks in order to reproduce, right? There's the sex and attraction piece, and then there's the implantation and pregnancy piece, right? Sex and attraction is coordinated by estrogen, right? So when estrogen is rising, that is when conception is getting ready to be or is possible from sex. And during that time, estrogen prepares our brain to be maximally able to choose a high quality mate, right?

38:01Sarah Ann Macklin:And so there's been research for several decades now. I think it's about 25 years now in the making. This research has been done looking at estrogen and its role in partner choice. And what it tends to find is that when women are in an estrogenic phase of the cycle, so especially near ovulation when estrogen is peaking, that during this time, women express a heightened preference for cues to things like facial, vocal, and behavioral masculinity, right? So qualities related to testosterone. And this is hypothesized to be the case because testosterone is one of these things that we call like a good genes marker.

38:36Sarah Ann Macklin:And we call it a good genes marker because the fact is that men who have like a masculinized male face, for example, that tells us that their body was releasing a lot of testosterone during development. and that's something that male bodies will not do if they don't have an immune system that's high enough quality that they're able to allow themselves to be immunosuppressed long enough to be releasing that testosterone because testosterone is immunomodulatory and when testosterone goes up your immune system functioning goes down right because our body has a limited energy budget and when it's making when it's increasing investment here that means there's less to be invested there.

39:21Sarah Ann Macklin:And one of the primary trade-offs that the body makes is between testosterone and immune system functioning. And it's this really interesting relationship. And they've shown this in all, like so many different types of species. And it seems to be sort of a fundamental trade-off that sexually reproducing species make, is high testosterone suppresses the immune system. And so because of this, our bodies will not release high levels of testosterone if we're immunocompromised, right? Because the body is like, essentially has the hierarchy of needs, right? It's like survival. So that way you can have sex and then sex, right?

39:56Sarah Ann Macklin:And so if your immune system can't handle being suppressed because it's gonna cause your body to get sick and fall apart, your body will just lower testosterone levels. And so the reason that testosterone is believed to be a good genes marker is because it is an indicator of like immune function of a man, because a man who does not have a high quality immune system would not release high levels of testosterone during development. And so that a man has a masculinized male face and like a deep voice, which means masculinization of the vocal cords, behavioral masculinity means masculinization of the male brain.

40:31Sarah Ann Macklin:All of these things wouldn't happen in the case of somebody with a low functioning immune system because their body would pump the brakes on testosterone release to direct that energy toward immune function. So that's the reason that we hypothesize that testosterone is a good genes marker. All right, so now we're going to flash forward and talk again about estrogen. We find that when estrogen is high and rising across the cycle, that this tends to be associated with a heightened preference for cues to facial, vocal, and behavioral masculinity, right? So essentially leading the female brain to be oriented toward men with like good genes, right, good immune genes, who are likely going to be able to help produce really high quality, healthy offspring.

41:16Sarah Ann Macklin:And so this research has been going on for 20 to 25 years, you know, showing that as estrogen levels rise, that this is associated with this increase and these changes in the preference for facial, vocal, and behavioral masculinity. And then you enter in the birth control pill, right? And what the birth control pill does is it prevents ovulation, right? And ovulation is how our body releases and produces most of its estrogen, right? And so estrogen starts to increase and peaks in response to egg follicles maturing and then being released and getting or being prepared to be released. And when you suppress that, then women aren't producing very much estrogen, right?

41:56Sarah Ann Macklin:Women who are using hormonal birth control produce far, far, far less estrogen than women who are naturally cycling, particularly during this first half of the cycle and in what we call the peri-ovulatory window or the fertile window when estrogen levels are at their highest, which is generally five days prior to ovulation and then the day of ovulation itself. So for naturally cycling woman, you're going to go through this waxing and waning of hormones where you're going to be attuned to things that are related to masculinity, right? So testosterone cues and then women who are on the pill, they don't have that surge, right?

42:32Sarah Ann Macklin:And so researchers have proposed, you know, if estrogen plays an important role in terms of influencing who we're attracted to, like might that then mean that women who are on hormonal birth control who aren't ovulating and therefore aren't producing high levels of estrogen, might they not, you know, express this preference for facial, vocal, and behavioral masculinity? And so researchers studied that and what they find is that lo and behold, women who use hormonal birth control do tend to have a preference for a slightly less masculinized male face voice and set of behaviors. And so this means that when you're on the pill, it could potentially have an impact on who you're attracted to.

43:13Sarah Ann Macklin:And so then your question was like, how often does this happen? So this is actually a really great question. And it's something that I can speak to with some data. So we have a paper that's under review right now. And we did a study with natural cycles the fertility tracking yeah that's what i use yeah i love it i love yeah i love it no sponsorship by the way yeah yeah yeah no sponsorship yeah so yeah and i don't have a financial relationship with them i have a research relationship with them um where we've done um they've worked with us to um allow us to look at their data to be able to uh with user consent people everybody always there's a whole headline i know there's about i know about all these different things.

43:54Sarah Ann Macklin:And anytime that, um, that they at least have done research with us, there's always a consent form where people are signing off and they know that their data are being used, um, anonymously for research, scientific research purposes, not for like marketing research purposes. But we did a study where we, um, we sent out a survey to people who were just onboarding, who were just starting. Um, and, uh, and we asked them about what type of birth control they were on when they met their partner. And, um, and we got a sample of women, half of whom chose their partner when they were on hormonal birth control and the other who, the other half who chose their partners while they were naturally cycling.

44:31Sarah Ann Macklin:And, um, and then, and all of them were, um, just discontinuing hormonal birth control. So here's a bunch of women, large sample of women who are all discontinuing hormonal birth control to start using natural cycles and cycling naturally. Half of these women chose their partners when they were on the pill. The other half chose when they were naturally cycling. Then we looked at changes in attraction. So did the women report that they were experiencing after discontinuing birth control? Were they experiencing changes in attraction? Were they experiencing changes in sexual desire? And then we also looked at logged sexual behavior over the course of several cycles.

45:10Sarah Ann Macklin:And what we found was really interesting. And so one thing that we found was that women who chose their partners when they were on the pill or on hormonal birth control, that they have less sex across the cycle with their partners than women who chose their partners when they're naturally cycling, which is consistent with the idea of differences in attraction, sexual attraction, because sexual attraction generally predicts sexual frequency within the context of a relationship. Although there's a lot of variabilities that play into that. So don't read too much into that. Anybody who's listening to this who's feeling nervous about that.

45:42Sarah Ann Macklin:statement. So that's one thing we found. We also found that women who chose their partners when they were on hormonal birth control reported that they were less attracted. They reported having less attraction to their partners. But then the question about what happened to their attraction to their partner when they went off of birth control, what we found was a really interesting pattern. And we found that for about 25 % of women reported, and this is the women who chose their partners when they're on the pill. 25 % reported that they felt less attracted to their partners. 25 % reported that they felt more attracted to their partners.

46:19Sarah Ann Macklin:And about 50 % of women said that they felt no differences in attraction. So is this something that happens like that where you go off the pill and then you feel different about your partner? Absolutely. And there's been studies where they find that the average levels of attractiveness are significantly lower after going off of it. If you chose somebody who's not sexually attractive, um, and that all is like, all of a sudden the blinders come off and then your hormones are like, what are you doing? Um, but you know, when we, when we like broke it down in terms of frequency with which people experience that as an effect, we found about a quarter of the sample experience feeling diminished attraction to their partner and like whether or not that's diminished attraction, you know, know, to the extent that they're like, I'm not attracted to this person.

47:07Sarah Ann Macklin:I'm guessing not. It just might be like less, you know, some, some cases, cause obviously this does happen. And I've heard from so many women who've had that experience where they went off the pill and they're like, this isn't going to work anymore. And it's heartbreaking. Cause I mean, you can imagine like if you choose somebody and in case in cases of at least three women that, and these are just women I know personally, they ended up getting, um, they ended up getting divorced, um, after discontinuing hormonal birth control because of a lack of attraction to their primary partner. And so that does happen, but it doesn't happen all the time.

47:39Sarah Ann Macklin:And in fact, the majority response seems to be that they don't notice any change in attraction with 50 % of women saying no, right? And then 25 % saying they feel more attracted to their partner, right? So for some women, they go off of it and they're like, oh my gosh, I chose this really sexy partner and my brain wasn't even paying attention to it, you know? And it's like, and all of a sudden you're like off the pill and your your estrogen brain is like yes yes you wow there was a study that was done looking at women who chose their partners on the pill and off the pill and then they looked at um like differences in relationship satisfaction sexual satisfaction sexual attraction and so on and so forth and what they found and this was like such a fun study because they found that women who chose their partners on the pill felt more satisfied with their partners with respect to their earning capacity.

48:26Sarah Ann Macklin:And yeah, and like just their like, I forget what the other one was, it's something to do with like, maybe like their intelligence. But then women who chose their partners while they're naturally cycling, they were more satisfied with sexual attraction, sexual adventurousness, sexual desire, anything with sex in it, like they did, they scored higher on. But the women who chose their partners when they were on the pill, it was like all about the other types of qualities that we value in partners, right? Those sort of tangential things, right? Like, or concrete. I have jet lag, so my brain isn't working.

49:00Emotional safety.

49:01Sarah Ann Macklin:Yeah, like emotional safety and intelligence and financial stability. And it's so interesting because, you know, one thing that I think is so cool about the female brain is that, you know, when we look at partner choice in particular, it's like, we know that when, and this is true for men and for women. So this isn't unique to women, but it's like whenever we're choosing a partner, we're balancing a desire for somebody that we're just maximally sexually attracted to, right? And that's like essentially something that's telling our brain, this person has good genes, right? Like good genes. But then we're also having to balance that with a desire for somebody who's a good partner.

49:38Sarah Ann Macklin:And it's going to be somebody that we can work together with and it's going to be investing and providing what we call in the evolutionary sciences, we call these direct benefits. So it's like investment, love, time, commitment, financial resources, childcare, we call that direct benefits. And then indirect benefits are genes, like good genes. And so anytime that we're choosing a partner, it's like we're choosing both for sexiness, like how attracted am I to this person? But then also, can I work together well with this person? Will we invest in each other? Will this person love me? Will I love them?

50:10Sarah Ann Macklin:You know, are they going to be caring? Are they going to provide childcare that, you know, all of these kinds of qualities. And anytime that we are choosing a mate, we're always having to strike a balance, you know? And it's like, what research finds with women is that when we short-term mate, so if you're just engaging in sort of like a fling, it's just like we take all of our mating chips and we shift them towards sexiness, right? Because it's like, oh, this person's not gonna be, I'm not gonna be hanging out with them anyway, and they're not gonna be providing childcare, and they're not gonna be providing resources.

50:38Sarah Ann Macklin:And so they take, you know, their mating budget, and they shift all those chips to sexiness But then when we're choosing a long-term mate, it's like we have to have a balance, right? And we're sort of balancing between somebody who's going to be a really good partner and then somebody who's going to be like really sexy. and you know what's so interesting is that it's like the different phases of our cycle kind of specialize in identifying different types of qualities right and when our when our brain is primed with estrogen that is when we are very much dialed into those sexiness cues right deep voice you know masculinized face charismatic personality you know our brain is like ding ding ding right and then when we get into the progestogenic phase of the cycle those things aren't attractive to us anymore.

51:21Sarah Ann Macklin:And instead, we're much more concerned about whether or not somebody is going to be emotionally supportive. Is this somebody who would be a good parent if we have children, et cetera, et cetera. And so what's really cool, you know, for women is like when we're choosing a mate, it's like we get, you know, both perspectives from our brain as it's sort of specializing the two things that our bodies need to do in order to reproduce. And, you know, you know, we obviously choose partners over longer spans of time than a single cycle, right and so our brain is constantly scrutinizing this person based on the extent to which they provide sexiness cues and the extent to which they provide you know these other types of um what we you know these direct benefits like partnership and um and then you know that leads us to choose our mates and then where the birth control pill gets into it is you know it flatlines your hormones it keeps you in this constant state that's kind of mimicking what happens in the luteal phase and yeah and women are sort of shifting their chips away from the sexiness and putting them all toward these other types of benefits.

52:23Sarah Ann Macklin:Like, is this person going to be a good partner? Is this person going to be, you know, a good dad? Are they going to be able to financially provide, et cetera, et cetera. And, um, and sort of as a speaking to that point, like a really funny, and I shouldn't say it's funny, but it was like a really surprising and interesting nugget from that same study I was just telling you about was they found that women who chose their partners when they're on the pill are actually less likely to get divorced. than women who chose their partners when they're naturally cycling. And yeah, I know what you think like, wait, like that's surprising, but think about it for a minute.

52:57Sarah Ann Macklin:When you are naturally cycling and you're sort of vacillating between like these really sexy kinds of qualities and then good partnership qualities, it means that you're going to be striking a balance, right? When you're on the pill and you're not really paying attention to these sexy kinds of qualities and you're shifting all your chips over on this person's going to be a good partner, it's like almost like you're banking you know it's like you're you're orienting yourself specifically toward qualities that are related to stick-to-itiveness you know within a relationship like commitment and love and those kinds of things and so um that was sort of a surprising effect that is sort of counterintuitive to people but it makes perfect sense when you consider what is missing when women are naturally cycling and choosing their partners or pardon me what is missing when women are on the pill and choosing their partners.

53:49Sarah Ann Macklin:And that is that they're not trading off investment and sexiness, right? And brokering an agreement somewhere in between those two things. Instead, they're just kind of going toward those cues related to investment. And therefore, you know, they end up with somebody who's an investing partner and they're likely to stay together. Wow. I love that you've kind of got two sides of the pill there. There's like pros and cons. Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, you know, the thing about hormonal birth control is that for some women, it does really amazing things. So like for women who have really severe PMDD, and they aren't able to get relief any other way, so many of them find it very palliative to have their hormones just flatlined on the pill, and they feel so much better that way.

54:31Sarah Ann Macklin:And yet you get the lower rates of divorce. And obviously, the pregnancy protection benefits are huge. Yeah, I mean, it's like, I was on it for 10 years, and I don't know that I would have been able to, you know, get a PhD and build a research career. Um, if I was, uh, not on it, just because I don't know that I would have been able to keep myself non-pregnant long enough. Um, and I, you know, I don't know. So it's, it's, it's all just, it's with the pill, it's just really about understanding the trade-offs, you know, cause there are very real trade-offs that you make. And, um, and I think that knowing what they are can help you choose for yourself whether or not it makes sense for you?

55:12Sarah Ann Macklin:Because there's going to be a lot of women, you know, for whom it does not make sense where the trade-offs seem like a bad deal, right? And there's going to be other women who look at the trade-offs and say, no, this still makes sense for me. And the thing is, is that for a lot of us, whether or not it makes sense for us or not, it's also going to change across our lifetime. You know, so I've been off of hormonal birth control for a long time now. I prefer the way that I feel off of it. I much prefer, you know, the way that I feel when I'm naturally cycling. and it works for me now. I don't know that it would have worked for me as well back when I was on it.

55:47Sarah Ann Macklin:And so it's so nice that we have these options and it's so important that we educate ourselves so that way we know and are able to make the best choice for ourselves based on where we are in our own lives. I'm interrupting for one moment to ask one small favor. Please subscribe to the show. This helps it grow more than you know, and I'm so bad at asking this from you. I'm so bad at thinking about this. but you know my goal is a hundred thousand to get to on YouTube and I really want to bring you more content and better guests and bigger episodes and we can only do that with your help together so please do hit subscribe thank you yeah I'm I mean I was in the pill for over 10 years when I was like also full-time modeling and I would have really struggled to turn it to a day on a shoot not knowing where my body was right the pressure of that was so was so much but I also had no idea of any of this right when I was making that decision and it was you're talking about like the partner choices about the different types of ways that your brain can go and I was thinking like through that does that I mean if there's any research on that but does it change the partner choices you get older anyway because I feel like I find it really interesting that I naturally as I got older and understand understood and seen successful relationships, how important that safety is.

57:05And having someone committed to growth and understanding that and understanding about values. Like I didn't know what values were 10 years ago. I didn't care about that when I went on a date with somebody. I mean, I was also, I grew up in the modeling world, so I was also surrounded by quite good looking men a lot of the time. So my brain was just constantly on high alert that there was all these hot men around me. I was so different and I don't know if I would put that down to the pill or just emotionally where I am at that time. right whereas as i've got older i'm like that stuff actually isn't that important i mean you have to be attracted to someone i think that's essential right but like that's not my first thing of when i would think about going on a date with someone it's like how hot are they

57:44Sarah Ann Macklin:right yeah well yeah it's so interesting because um i think you know i think all of those things play a role yeah right so i think that like we definitely see um cycle-based shifts right in terms of like what women are really zeroing in on depending on where they are in their cycle again And, you know, sexiness in the first half, those commitment, you know, good partner types of qualities in the second half of the cycle. But definitely over the course of the lifespan, especially as we're beginning to approach an age in which we, you know, if we want to have children or even if we don't want to have children, but our brain is just operating as that of somebody.

58:18Sarah Ann Macklin:Yeah, in its evolutionary tracks as somebody who may reproduce that we do tend to really begin to narrow the focus. And again, you know, moving the chips that are all stacked on the sexiness pile that we choose when we're younger, where we're not really thinking about commitment and that we're just having fun. And our brain is thinking about genes, even if we're on, you know, like we're on like birth control that's like preventing us from getting pregnant. Like our brain, if we're going in like a short term mating type of way, we tend to like put all of our chips on how good looking the person is.

58:57Sarah Ann Macklin:And then, you know, as we're going toward a longer term relationship, balancing that out. and as we get older and we approach child you know child bearing I do think that it definitely you know takes the chips and shifts them more toward um somebody that you can form a partnership with because I mean the fact is um you know long-term relationships in addition to all the other wonderful things that um long-term romantic relationships do is that it's like a it's a partnership you know and and it's just like really like am I going to be able to cooperate with this person easily for the next however many years because child care and managing a household and making sure that there's enough to eat and everything else I mean that requires cooperation on the part of the people in the relationship and so I think that as we get older and we begin to sort of recognize how important that is especially for you know planning on having children yeah it's So fascinating, isn't it?

59:57I kind of think about, you know, all of this through, I think the person that we end up choosing to have our life with is one of the biggest decisions. It's like, same as a co-founder who you run your business with.

1:00:07Sarah Ann Macklin:Yeah. And actually, like, I was just telling my daughter this because, so my, I have a, um, my daughter is 19 and she's in a relationship and, you know, she was telling me that she's like, oh, I'm so mad at myself because I'm distracted by this relationship and I need to be focusing on, you know, X, Y, and Z. And, um, and I was telling her, you know, research finds that the biggest predictor of like the most important decision that you'll make in terms of your health and, um, and your success, like your financial success and your overall wellbeing and longevity is who you marry. And it's not that, you know, I think that she's going to marry this guy and it's not that she thinks that she's going to marry this guy, but it just goes to show how important relationships are you know and like the person that you choose to be with I mean like that's a hugely important decision and um yeah so to get to your point it is actually that important yeah it is well also the other thing I find really interesting is you've you've mentioned this quite a few times so don't you have to to go over a lot of the ones such as the strippers that earn a lot more money when they're in their first half of the cycle wild but also I found it really interesting about the scent and the smell.

1:01:16I don't think we talk about this as much when it comes to attraction. We talk a lot about like physical appearance. Right. Yes. But actually, I can't remember where it was. Maybe it was with Paul. Oh my gosh, Paul Brunson, who came on the show like years ago. And I swear it was him. And he said, you know, one of the biggest icks that people get in a relationship is people's smell. It's like all different things from hygienes to pheromones. I was like, wow, I didn't think that that's what it would be, but it was.

1:01:41Sarah Ann Macklin:Yeah. Yeah. And so there's research that finds that women are a lot more sensitive to that than men. So men don't seem to be as sensitive to scent-based like ick cues. Women tend to be more, they tend to be more noticing of scent and more discriminating based on scent. But there is research that indicates that men, when they're exposed to the scent, for example, of a woman at high fertility compared to low fertility, they prefer the scent of a woman at high fertility. And it also causes their testosterone to increase significantly compared to the scent of women at low fertility. And so for a really long time, researchers were saying, oh, there's no such thing as pheromones and humans.

1:02:23Sarah Ann Macklin:And I get this. Oh, so I had some interview that was released. I don't even remember who it was with. And I was talking about just this issue of scent and people are like, that's not true. Research has since revised their opinion about pheromones, folks. And the latest research is very consistent with the idea that we are able to pick up on scent-based cues and that they have a direct influence on what our brain is doing. And this is true of the traction and other things as well. And just to give you an example of this, there's this really fascinating research coming out of the lab of Noam Sobel.

1:02:58Sarah Ann Macklin:And he does this research looking at the way that scent influences the brain. He's a neuroscientist. And one of the coolest things that he found is that the scent of women's tears decreases aggression in men. The scent of women's tears reduces aggression in men. Isn't that fascinating? The scent, not even the sight? Not the sight. Because I would think the sight. They had men smelling just like water. I know, isn't that crazy? They had men smelling tears. And like women's tears. Women just cry into a cup. I don't know how they collected the samples now that they say that. And it would be interesting because different tiers also communicate different things.

1:03:45Sarah Ann Macklin:And that's a whole other thing, too. I know. There's so much about the brain and our unconscious brain and what it all knows that we just have no awareness of yet. Research is just starting to really dive into some of these really brilliant things that our brain can do. But yeah, the consensus in the field now is that, yes, scent influences our brain in ways that we don't fully understand yet. And even though the parts of our brain that are related to scent-based cues is smaller than it is in, say, a dog, where that's their primary way that they get cues, that it still is doing really important things and that these scents do influence us and can influence our behavior, including things like attraction.

1:04:33Sarah Ann Macklin:And so yes, scent matters. And there's also research that indicates that women who are using hormonal birth control have a diminished sense of this. Like their scent-based, like their ability to detect scent-based cues seems to be lower. So they don't, it's like blunted relative to what you see in naturally cycling women. So my guess is that when you go to these areas in the brain that are related to being able to detect scent-based cues, that they're going to be things that are estrogen sensitive. And there are lots of different regions of the brain that are estrogen sensitive, where when estrogen is being released in high levels, that it tends to lead to the sprouting of new dendritic spines and neurons in those areas of the brain.

1:05:18Sarah Ann Macklin:And this is why learning and memory tends to be better at high fertility, like when estrogen is high in the cycle compared to outside of it is because in the hippocampus, which is the brain area that's most important for learning and memory, you get the sprouting of these dendritic spines. And I'm guessing we would find this also in the areas of the brain that have to do a scent detection, because there are research showing that there is research showing that women's sensory thresholds do change, and that they are higher under the context of hormonal birth control, meaning you need more stimulus in order to detect it than you do when estrogen is high in the cycle and you're naturally cycling.

1:05:56Sarah Ann Macklin:Wow. And so I've also heard, and I don't know whether you've heard the same thing, I've heard from women that they've had the experience that change in attraction that they get when they go off of hormonal birth control is fully scent mediated. So in one case, one of the women I know who ended up having to break up with her boyfriend after she went off of hormonal birth control is because she could not stand the way that he smelled. And she had no awareness of this when they were together. They were together for five years before she discontinued hormonal birth control, and then she just couldn't handle the smell.

1:06:28Sarah Ann Macklin:And again, it is not that he smelled bad. You know, and this is somebody that I know, you know, and it's not like he like smelled, you know, it's not like, you know, there are people who smell bad. Yeah, it's not a hygiene thing. Yeah, it's not like that. It's just like not, yeah, not compatible. Oh, that's fascinating. It is fascinating. I feel like women should come, it's interesting because I think the natural way, I think about my sister who's eight years older than me. You know, she was on the pill, similar to me. And she came off it when she got married. And she was very lucky she got pregnant straight away.

1:06:59But you know, a lot of people will get married, then they might have the honeymoon phase and go, I'm going to come off the pill for a year, probably trying for children. I'm kind of listening to this going, maybe you should come off before you walk down the aisle, just in case his smell changes and you don't take that to you anymore.

1:07:13Sarah Ann Macklin:No, I completely agree. Like, I think that, I think it's just like as an insurance policy. Again, you know, in the majority of cases, it's not something that's catastrophic, right? Like there's either an increase in attraction, right? There's no change in attraction or there's a decrease in attraction, but it's not anything that's, you know, going to ruin your relationship. It's just like, you know, kind of tap the brakes a little bit. But for some women, it does create this problem. And so that would be a way to avoid that it would be to test that out you know before you walk down the aisle it's wild I'm really thinking about all my 20s when I was on the pill yeah thankfully I didn't marry any of them so it's fine yeah you know it's really funny because um I know I have had very much I've had this experience um because I was on and off it at various times when I was younger I definitely noticed that I I was more like my type changed ever so slightly like it's not like it was like you know all of a sudden I, you know, want somebody who's just like Mr.

1:08:11Sarah Ann Macklin:Investing and no testosterone cues. And then all of a sudden a Neanderthal. But instead, I definitely noticed that when I think about who I dated over the course of my life, or it was like, it did seem to kind of get tilted a little bit this way or that way, depending on what was happening with me and birth control. Yeah, it is so fascinating. And I've also heard from women who, you know, one of my former graduate student, she won't mind if I call her out on this. So, um, you know who you are. Um, she was, she would, um, when she would go on and off the pill, she would go through periods of being more and like more feminine or more androgynous.

1:08:49Sarah Ann Macklin:And so, and she also like during the periods where she was androgynous, she also felt bisexual where she felt attracted to women and men. When she's naturally cycling, she only feels like she's attracted to men and she's more feminine. And so like she would come into the lab. Um, cause you know, when you're in grad school, year there for six years. And at one point she came in and she cut all of her hair off and we're like, are you back on the pill? She's like, yeah, I went back. And she's like, and she knows this about herself. She's like, yeah, I always just, I feel a little bit more androgynous when, when I'm on the pill.

1:09:19Sarah Ann Macklin:And, um, and she just kind of leans into it. And, um, and she's like, I just need this right now because I would need to really just be focusing on my work and, um, and doing this. And, um, and she feels more androgynous. And I've heard from people who, um, yeah, whose sexual orientation kind of nudges one way or the other, depending on whether they're on or off of it. It might be fascinating how many bisexuals are on the pill. Yeah, I think it'd be really fascinating, too. And then also whether or not it changes. Because ultimately, this is the population that is going to be most sensitive to changes.

1:09:50Sarah Ann Macklin:Because it's not going on or off the pill. Because hormones just nudge things. You know what I mean? It's not like your hormones will nudge your brain and behavior this way or nudge it a little bit that way. It's And so it's like for most heterosexual people, you're not going to have any change in your sexual attraction when you're on or off the pill. But it's people who are kind of on the border, you know, of usually of bisexuality in some way, whether they're lesbian and then a little bit bisexual or whether they're heterosexual and a little bit bisexual. And so this is a population of people that we would expect would have the most sort of nudging in and out of one sexual orientation or another.

1:10:28Sarah Ann Macklin:And it would be really interesting because I've not seen a study on this. I've just gotten emails from readers, you know, over the last couple of years telling me their stories where they're like, I've read your book and now I've got to tell you this story. And I've heard it at least 10 times. So fascinating. That's so powerful. The one thing I was also thinking about this is, you know, when you were mentioning about the senses and the pheromones and how men are attracted to different phases in the cycle, even just through scent. And I'm sure there's other things as well. I know there's other things.

1:11:02What happens? I don't know if I want to know the answer to this. I don't know why I'm answering this question. But I feel like I need to. What happens as a woman ages? So perimenopause, menopause, thank God, has been spoken about so much more. Women are feeling more heard than ever before and starting to understand this phase. I've had a few people that I know that have said, you know, my girlfriend's broken up with me and she's coming into her late 30s. And they actually referenced your relationship. And I'm like, speaking to her, ask her directly. I love it. And so there's this, like, there's a two-prong approach.

1:11:35One, do women kind of get this spur and want to leave men, even if they're not on the pill, they're just in their natural cycling. Right, yes. And want to go, hmm, maybe this is my one last chance, or I don't know, fling, I don't know, there's no many contexts, but basically leave their partner and go and explore. But then also, there's a second-prong approach that also, as we start changing in our phases and our cycle as we get older, and we less produce babies. That's the whole point why we're having periods. Do men become less attracted to us? Because do our pheromones decrease? Do things change?

1:12:07This whole kind of weird phase is one that I'm like, what happens?

1:12:12Sarah Ann Macklin:Right, okay. So I'm going to answer this in two. I'm going to break the question into two. Yeah. And I'm going to start with the less happy answer and then I'm going to answer the one that's like really interesting. Give me a shit sandwich. Yeah, so here's the shit sandwich. But I'm going to tell you the shitty part right now. I mean, there's a ton of research that shows older women are less attractive to men than younger women. I mean, it's just a fact of life. And that's true whether we like it or not. And it's because our hormones are decreasing. It's like the male brain is wired to find cues related to fertility attractive.

1:12:47Sarah Ann Macklin:Because men who had a preference for cues related to lack of fertility because of age and menopausal status, they wouldn't have passed down many children, right? They wouldn't have passed that preference for those qualities to anybody, you know? And so evolution has wired men to have a preference for cues related to fertility. And so what that means is that, yes, on average, women are less attractive to men as they get older. And like I said, it's true whether we like it or not. And yeah, and there's so much evidence of this. And this is why, you know, these products and surgeries and everything that try to extend the youthful appearance of women are so monetizing, you know, is because this is something that women are, because it's so linked with beauty.

1:13:35Sarah Ann Macklin:Standards of beauty are linked with fertility, are linked with partner preferences. And so that's the unfortunate thing. So wah, wah, wah, you know, and that's... It's annoying because men get more attractive as they age. I know, I know. No, it's a total, it's a totally, it's totally unfair. And yeah, so it's totally unfair. So that's the bad part. So the other thing that I think is really interesting is what happens with women, right? And so like, do women's partner preferences or mating strategies change as they get older? And this is a really interesting question. And there's two lines of research that kind of speak to this issue that I think are really interesting.

1:14:15Sarah Ann Macklin:So the first is just that, you know, we know that women's sex hormones influence mate attraction. We've known this for a long time. And what this tells us is that as women's hormones change over their lifespan, this probably is also going to influence their attraction to their partner, right? So not just their partner's attraction to them, but given that sex hormones play a role in attraction, it's probably going to change the nature of the attraction in the relationship, relationship right and this could mean that if your partner was just you know he was really sexy and but he's kind of a jerk right and then you're going through menopause and the sexiness doesn't matter as much because estrogen is being released in much lower levels you might think this guy's a jerk and then you leave him right because you're like like that was the thing that was that was a glue that was holding the relationship together in other cases right you might be with this person they're a really great person you have this great history together you might come to love them more you know because now all of a sudden your priorities and what's influencing attraction and your relationship satisfaction changes and you see a lot of this you know you see that women as they're going through the menopausal transition some couples get closer together some couples get divorced and it's almost always initiated by women so something like 68 percent of divorces are initiated by women and this is true later in life you also get this phenomenon where you get women who then were heterosexual and then take female partners, which is interesting, which again, you know, we know that sexual orientation is influenced by hormones, which is how you can get that nudging in and out of bisexuality that we talked about with hormonal birth control.

1:15:51Sarah Ann Macklin:We probably also get that in the menopausal transition, which I think could account for some of the kind of late in life lesbians that you see. And the other thing, so that's like one other, you know, that's like another thing that we know about the way that women's mate preferences and strategies can change is that when your hormones change, you change. And that means that it's going to change what you value in your relationship and the way that you feel about your partner. And that can either like, it can bring you closer together or drive a wedge, depending on what the glue was that's holding your relationship together.

1:16:25Sarah Ann Macklin:The other thing that happens to women, and this is prior to menopause, and this is actually usually prior, it's like right on the cusp of perimenopause is that late 30s yeah like late 30s is what happens is um women start producing a lot of testosterone and it's really fascinating because there's this hypothesis that's out there um about what they call reproduction expediting and it's just this idea that women experience this surge in testosterone right prior to perimenopause that is sort of aimed at trying to get them to squeeze out another baby before, you know, essentially before they are going to be infertile.

1:17:08Sarah Ann Macklin:And the way that this extra testosterone plays out in relationships is it can either just lead to a surge in sexual desire within the context of relationship. It can also lead to women breaking up with their partners and wanting to explore additional avenues of partners or women taking lovers, because you also tend to see that increasing in women in their mid thirties. And so all of these things are likely related to this little surge in testosterone that we get that's related to what they call reproduction expediting. And again, evolution by selection has shaped our brain, right? Based on us inheriting qualities that led our ancestors to be able to successfully reproduce.

1:17:48Sarah Ann Macklin:And what this means is that our brain has all kinds of sneaky tricks that it wants to play on us to try to get us to reproduce, you know? And I think that on the one hand, like you hear about these things and it's like, oh my gosh, like really? Then on the other hand, it's like, this is another, you know, kind of circles back to the start of our conversation. When you understand these things and you know what's happening, it also gives you a lot more control to be able to say, I know what's happening here. Like, hold on, you know? And if you value your long-term relationship and like this is temporary.

1:18:22Sarah Ann Macklin:It's a temporary surge in testosterone. It's going to go away. And so if you're feeling bothered by this, I think that sometimes when women are feeling like these strong surges of sexual attraction, especially if it's to somebody other than their primary partner, they begin to question their relationship. And when you understand the biology behind it, I think that it gives us the tools that we need to not allow us to put too fine of a point on it and not have us questioning our relationships the way that we do. I think a of women make the mistake of questioning their relationship about things that have nothing to do with the quality of their relationship.

1:18:57Sarah Ann Macklin:It just has to do with these little biological idiosyncrasies that we've inherited from our very prolific ancestors. I feel like everyone needs to share this episode. Yeah. I think it's so much about communication, right? I think even like men need to understand this because if they can see their partner acting differently, there's also a shame of like, if you don't really understand what the hell is happening, you just make a decision because you're like, well, I should just do this. Right. Well, yeah, I think, yeah, definitely. And I also think that, you know, I see this within the luteal phase too, which I talked about in the period brain is I've also, I've talked with women who, because, you know, women's sexual desire is cyclical, right?

1:19:34Sarah Ann Macklin:It's cyclical across the menstrual cycle and across the life cycle. And so the life cycle, you know, we were just talking about that and how we get these little blips that happen as we get these hormonal changes across our life and how that can lead us to second guess our relationships and everything else. I've also seen this happen across the cycle because women reliably experience, you know, a surge in sexual desire that generally happens right prior to ovulation and on ovulation, the day of ovulation thereabouts. And then afterward, get a decrease in sexual desire and sexual desire becomes, or sexual behavior tends to be more about connecting with your partner.

1:20:10And it's less about, you know, just like base, you know, sexual desire.

1:20:16Sarah Ann Macklin:And, um, and so many women I know have questioned their relationship about like, I don't know that I'm attracted enough to my partner because I go through these periods where I really just don't want to have sex with them. And it's like, no, that's just your biology. And that's like how we're built. And then when they understand that it removes that as a fear, because I think that a lot of times as women, because we have such powerful brains, that we think about everything so much. And, you know, any little bit of data that we get, we can like, you know, we try to make sense of it, right? Like, why do I have this decrease in sexual desire?

1:20:48Sarah Ann Macklin:Maybe this isn't the right partner. It's like, no, this is very common. Most women experience a decrease in sexual desire in the second half of the cycle. It has nothing to do with the quality of your relationship. It has nothing to do with the quality of your partner. This is just about your biology and your body is tapping the brakes on sex because it no longer can lead to conception. And sex introduces, you know, novel genetic information into your vagina and near your cervix at a time when your body's preparing for implantation. And so it doesn't want that mess to deal with when it's trying to prepare the endometrium for the possibility of pregnancy.

1:21:21Sarah Ann Macklin:And so I think understanding that is really powerful for women and also for men, because again, you know, and so with my first book, I spent a little bit of time talking about sexual desire and how for women it changes across the cycle and that, you know, peaks in your high fertility and then it's lower in the luteal phase. I got so many emails from men who had no idea that this was a phenomenon that happened within women. And they were reading the book about birth control. And they were like, I always thought there was something wrong with me because my partner would just seem totally turned off by me during, you know, some weeks and I'd feel like I must have done something wrong.

1:22:01Sarah Ann Macklin:And so then, and again, like you said, the shame, and I think a lot of men, there's so much shame around feeling like they're not desired by their partner that they don't ever want to talk about it to their partner because they feel like there must be something wrong with them. And they don't want to call attention to that, to their partner, because then their partner will think there's something wrong with them. But for men to understand that, I think also is like like hugely beneficial because it puts the pressure off of themselves because they can understand that women are cyclical and desire is cyclical and it's very normal to experience waxing and waning of sexual desire.

1:22:37Sarah Ann Macklin:And it's not you and it's nothing wrong with your partner. And it allows men to take pressure off themselves and then also to take pressure off their partners because I've also heard from men who said that, you know, I didn't even realize it, but I think that I was trying to push the issue too much with sex sometimes. And it wasn't even that I wanted it, it's just that I needed the validation to know that my partner was still attracted to me. It's a big thing, right? Communication is the fold of so much of this. Oh, yeah. I mean, communication is everything. Right? Everything. And I kind of think about, like, you know, for so long, everything has been, not everything, that's a sweeping statement, but a large majority of research has always been focused on men, and women are only really recently coming into this conversation.

1:23:16We're also getting to understand ourselves, because women are speaking more openly about it, hence, like, I speak to my friends more about it now than I did 10 years ago. And it's amazing that we have that. But I also, you know, do believe that men need to come into this conversation too, because you can learn together. The power of like understanding this together is way more powerful than one person having to explain to another.

1:23:37Sarah Ann Macklin:Oh, no, 100%. I completely agree with that. And in fact, you know, one of the things that I talk about in the period brain is my experiences with, you know, emotional sensitivity that occurs in the luteal phase. And I very much, like many women, experience the changes in sensitivity, especially in the last week of my cycle. And, you know, and there's good reasons for this, the amygdala becomes more interconnected with the brain. And so that's like, there's some real biological things that are happening during this time. And I understand this about myself, my partner understands this about me. And, and I can't tell you how helpful it's been when, you know, if something is happening, and I respond in a way that's sort of asymmetric to the, you know, thing that has happened.

1:24:23Sarah Ann Macklin:Like we had a scheduling snafu one time where, um, he had scheduled something over a time that we were supposed to be together. And to me, it was like, oh my gosh, he doesn't value the relationship. Like, you know, it was like sending off all these alarm bells, um, in a way that it might not have at a different point in the cycle. And he knew that. And, um, and he didn't react when I was reacting. And then later around when I was like, I'm sorry, that wasn't really fair because you've, I know that you value our relationship. Um, and, uh, and so it wasn't fair of me to do that. It was an honest mistake.

1:24:57Sarah Ann Macklin:And he's like, yeah, I knew, I know where I know what week it is, you know? And, um, and so I didn't, I didn't push the issue and, and, you know, and everything's okay. Cause he understands like there's some times where you just, just let it pass, let the storm pass. And then, and then I'll always come back, you know, I'll always come back and apologize if I overreacted to something in a way that wasn't fair, based on past history of events. So yeah, the repair is always the strongest part. Yeah, but you can only repair if you both understand. Right, exactly. Exactly. I mean, and honestly, you know, one of the things that we've been talking about is just when you have an awareness of something, and then being able to talk yourself through things.

1:25:38Sarah Ann Macklin:We talked about this idea that just like sort of understanding what's happening and being able to talk ourselves through it. I've found, and just based on research, you know, and what we know about what the luteal phase brain is doing, I have learned that for many women, and I am one of these women, a lot of times when we have an overreaction to something in the luteal phase, especially with our primary partner who tends to, you know, it's usually our relationship partners who tend to take the brunt of those hits, it's because it ultimately gets at issues related to security and safety. And it's because here's this time that our body is preparing for the possibility of pregnancy.

1:26:17Sarah Ann Macklin:And so our brain lowers the threshold on what it considers to be a threat before the alarm bells sound. And so if the alarm bells sound, right, and I'm feeling like, oh, you know, how could he do this? It's like, okay, I asked myself two questions. Am I feeling safe? Am I feeling secure? And usually the answer to one of those is no. And then I know what to address, right? Because the issue isn't about the fact that he forgot to empty the dishwasher, right? The issue is that I'm feeling unvalued. So I'm feeling unsafe in the relationship because I feel like a need that I had was ignored, right?

1:26:50Sarah Ann Macklin:And so then I can address the safety security issue with my partner and say, here's what happened. I'm feeling upset about this because it's making me feel insecure in the relationship. So I just need to be reminded that like everything is great, right? I need a hug. A hug, honestly, solves so many arguments. It's It is. It is. And understanding that and being able to identify it and talk yourself through what you're feeling and asking yourself the real questions and like, is this about safety? Is this about security? Really goes a long way. Because again, it allows for better communication and then allowing you to actually have the needs met.

1:27:28Sarah Ann Macklin:Because if I didn't know that information, the conversation would be about the dishwasher. And that doesn't actually get at the solution to the problem. Because it's not about the dishwasher. It's never about the dishwasher. It's never about the dishwasher. It's always about something else. Yes. Oh, Sarah, you have opened so much of my eyes in your first book and your second book. Thank you, first of all, just for writing about women. Like, I'm sure you get interviewed by so many men. Yes. And I hope that parts when you're interviewed by women, it's slightly different. Yeah. I'm sure it is. Yeah.

1:28:00And yeah, I just think we need to be talking about so much of this so much more, but also you know men to be listening to two women speak I think it's also really essential

1:28:10Sarah Ann Macklin:to hear from a different perspective yeah no thanks so much no it's been a pleasure my um it's my career has been so much fun you know it's like it's so fun to learn about women and be able to be able to do the research that I do and then to be able to talk to people about it so thanks for having me no I've absolutely loved it I guess the the leading thing that I want to ask is the next phase of what you're going to do, what do you want people to kind of maintain or remember or take with you, with them, from everything that you've written in the last two books? I know I don't want to talk about what you're doing next.

1:28:45I'm sure there's something you're doing next. But what do you want women and men to take from what you've worked on so far?

1:28:52Sarah Ann Macklin:Right. I mean, to me, one of the most important things that we sort of understand is that sex matters like biological sex matters i mean it's like males and females and this you know and this isn't to say that because gender also matters it's just and the two things aren't always aligned with each other but it's like male bodies and female bodies male brains and female brains are different from one another and we can't just try to pretend like everybody's the same because whenever we do this it ends up particularly being harmful to women because most of our understanding about you know, the way that brains work and the way that the body works and everything else works has been based on research that historically was done on men.

1:29:32Sarah Ann Macklin:And then we just tried to apply it to women. Um, and it doesn't work, you know, and we're learning that now we're seeing all of the ways that women have been harmed by the assumption that their bodies are going to respond to drugs or surgeries the same way that men's bodies do. And they don't. And so, so one, it's just understanding that, um, men and women are different, right? And that doesn't mean that we're one is better than the other because we're different and equal and that our hormones matter. So as a woman, it matters that you're a woman and it matters what phase of the cycle that you're in and really starting to take those things seriously.

1:30:09Sarah Ann Macklin:Because I do think that we went from assuming that sex didn't matter, right? And now we're starting to understand sex does matter, right? It matters for everything ranging from the way that you train your body. If you're engaging in physical training, it matters for the way that you metabolize drugs. It matters for nutrition, et cetera, et cetera. And now within women, we need to start taking our hormones seriously and understand that cycle phase and menopausal status and pregnancy status, all of that matters too. And so for the next phase of like research, what I want to see happen in the world of science is that we, in addition to making sure that we test for sex as a biological variable, so looking at whether or not there's sex differentiation in anything ranging from heart disease to the way that our bodies use medication, but when we're looking at women is really taking their hormonal status seriously also and beginning to get a better view of what it means to be a woman under the primary control of estrogen, under the control of progesterone, paramenopausally menopausally and during pregnancy yeah i love that i really hope all of this does happen um i think we're on our way i know we kind of maybe talk about it that it doesn't happen i think we are really changing and i think people are starting to take note that women are different men are from mars women are from yes that is so true it's so true so so i asked this question to all of my guests i love this question it's the name of the show every single person's answer has been different, which basically shows us that we're all different.

1:31:41Yes. Which is what does live well, be well mean to you?

1:31:44Sarah Ann Macklin:I think that live well, be well for me is about showing up, you know, so there's this really great psychologist from Harvard. Her name is Ellen Langer. And she studies mindfulness. She's wonderful. And one of the things that she says that I've, I actually have it written down above my desk. And it is, if you're going to do something, show up for it. And so for me, like living well and being well is showing up for things. So when I'm there, I'm there. And, um, and that to me is like been the secret to having like a really good life. I love that. Showing up. It's so true. It is. Don't do things half-heartedly.

1:32:25Sarah Ann Macklin:No, exactly. It's like, if you're going to bother to do it show up do it do it show up yeah yeah and I think that my life is so much more beautiful for it honestly like I think every morning when I take my walk because I take a walk every morning and it's like I notice the changing of the leaves and the different way that the light is in the sky at different times a year and the different birds and I don't know I like those are that's like what matters and and you know when you're with people and being able to actually engage with them and like being present it's a gift to yourself to skip to all the people that you're around so if you're gonna do something show up that's love that it also feels very ellen langer doesn't it yeah it does she's a tough cookie but she is a tough cookie she is no it's like she scares the hell out of me but i very much admire her yeah she's been so influential to my work but i love it probably the most terrifying interview i've done oh that's so funny you know who i feel that way about.

1:33:19Sarah Ann Macklin:And I love her. And I've is, do you know, Geraldine Pryor? Yes. Yeah, she is that way, too. Where it's like, you scare the hell out of me. And I admire you so much. She's like a pioneer. I mean, she's like, you know, because she's a pioneer in the area of progesterone. She's a person who, I mean, in some way, she is probably been the person who's influenced me the most in creation of the period brain and just like really trying to, you know, scream from the rooftops like pay attention to progesterone you know it really matters it influences who we are it influences the way our bodies respond it's neuroprotective you know and and she's been shouting this for years and nobody listens and so she has a reason to you know to be so keyed up and same with same with ellen i mean she's got you know she's her research she's had a push for her um her ideas as well and so i think that we get a lot of these really badass women who are incredibly impressive and terrifying.

1:34:12At the same time. At the same time. Exactly. It's not just men. Yes, exactly. Sarah, thank you so much for coming on to this. Yes, thank you for having me.