Laura Schoenfeld: Okay, so I actually wrote a guest post for Chris on recovering from post-birth control syndrome. And so I think we have that available on the video. But what I can talk to you a little bit about is just what some of those recommendations were. So the first thing I would focus on is nutrient status, and there are a few nutrients that become depleted while a woman is on an oral contraceptive. And obviously for eight years there’s going to be more depletion than somebody who’s been on it for a shorter period of time. Now I mean, it’s not a bad idea to get all of the nutrients recovered in any way possible. So if the person needs to be eating a more nutrient-dense diet, or taking a multivitamin or something like that just to generally get more nutrition, then that’s always a good idea. But there are a couple of nutrients that are especially important.
So zinc is one of those that are especially an issue on the pill. There are lower zinc plasma levels in people on oral contraceptives. So there may be a higher need for zinc if somebody is coming off the pill. So zinc is one of those nutrients that you can definitely get enough of it to maintain your health on a Paleo diet, but if you’re trying to replenish zinc status, then you’re not going to just rely on food in that case. So I would usually recommend a little bit of a supplement there. I wrote in the article 15 to 30 milligrams per day with somebody with post-birth control syndrome. Now that can either be part of a multi or if you wanted to do that separately, usually multis are going to contain about 15 to 20, maybe up to 30 milligrams of zinc, depending on what kind of multi it is. But so I would definitely get a zinc supplement because even if you do eat a lot of zinc-rich foods, it may be difficult to actually replenish the zinc that has been lost during that eight years of birth control use.
Magnesium is another mineral that is shown to be reduced in oral contraceptive use. So I know that Chris recommends most people, if not all people, are supplementing with magnesium so you may already have this person on magnesium. But I would make sure that she is getting at least 200 to 400 milligrams per day to replenish some of that magnesium from using the birth control. And then the last nutrient that is shown in research to be reduced in the plasma after using oral birth control is B6. So again B6 is one of those nutrients that is in a lot of foods and it’s fairly safe to take as a supplement. So if you wanted to take between, I’d say, 20 to 50 milligrams per day for a couple months should be fine. You shouldn’t have to take that indefinitely. There’s a couple of different supplements that contain zinc and B6 together because they do work in concert with each other. So you might be able to double those up into a single supplement. I know Designs for Health has a product called Zinc Supreme that has both zinc and B6 in it. So if you didn’t want to do a multi and you didn’t want to be doing separate pills, you could do those two together.
Also, vitamin A tends to be one of those nutrients that really does help with hormones and fertility for women, and a lot of my clients are not getting a lot of vitamin A in their diet. And when I say vitamin A, I’m really talking about preformed vitamin A and not beta-carotene. So if somebody’s not eating liver, then they’re probably not getting enough vitamin A to replenish what they might have lost from using birth control. So I do encourage my clients to eat liver, but if that’s not possible, then doing a little bit of supplementation with that would be potentially helpful.
Another thing that’s really important for getting the menstrual cycle back to normal is paying attention to circadian rhythms. So this is important for anyone, even if they’re not coming off of birth control. But circadian rhythms do really affect all different hormones, and that definitely includes the ovarian sex hormones and the different FSH, LH, that kind of thing. So depending on what this person’s light and dark schedule is, what their work schedule is, if they’re paying attention to circadian rhythms, you may want to do a little bit of a harder focus on that. So making sure that they’re getting eight hours of sleep per night, trying to make sure that they’re in bed for at least a couple hours before midnight, that is important. It’s not ideal to be sleeping your full eight hours after midnight. So try to get to bed at least by 11 or 10, if possible, and getting a full eight hours. And focusing on the light and dark cycle. So making sure that they’re getting daylight and possibly using a light therapy lamp during the day. And then at night using either orange goggles or the different light-blocking apps that you can use to reduce blue light exposure in the evening to really hammer on those circadian rhythms.
Okay, so another thing is making sure that the person is eating enough food. Now this isn’t again just for people coming off birth control. But anytime someone is having issues with menstrual regularity and maybe missing their period, I always like to make sure that they’re eating enough because that is something that can sometimes become a problem. And one of the issues when you’re on birth control for so long is that you wouldn’t know if you were going to be having hypothalamic amenorrhea in that situation because you’re getting an artificial cycle. So if somebody comes off birth control and they’re having a lot of trouble, it is possible that they have been in an underfed state for awhile. Especially people who are on the Paleo diet, I see this all the time that people change to a Paleo diet and then they start undereating because they don’t realize how little calories there are in the kind of foods that they’re choosing. So that is something that’s really important, and I know Kelsey and I tend to hammer this point a lot, that’s because a lot of our clients are struggling with this issue. So anytime a woman is dealing with any sort of menstrual irregularity or missed periods, I always double-check that they’re eating enough because you’d be shocked to see how frequent it is that that’s happening. And like I said earlier, a lot of women do lose their period if they’re undereating for a long period of time, and if you’re on oral birth control, you’re not going to have that side effect of an inadequate diet.
So another tip is to make sure that they are dealing with stress well. So stress is another thing that can definitely have an impact on the menstrual cycle. And so if you’re not either reducing stress in your life or at least managing the stress that you’re under if you can’t avoid it, that’s going to be a big issue if somebody is dealing with menstrual irregularities. And again that’s not just people post-birth control, but definitely can help. And for post-birth control the last thing that I like to focus on is detox. So when we talk about detox, there’s a couple of different things that we want to focus on. So one of the things is supporting the liver and making sure that the liver is able to detoxify the excess hormones that came from either the oral birth control or if it’s potentially coming from the body fat tissue where a lot of these hormones are stored up over time. So those stored hormones can hang around for awhile after you stop taking the pill. And so the liver is basically where that hormone excess gets detoxified. And if your liver’s not doing well, then it’s not going to be able to clear out those excess hormones too well. So any sort of detox support, liver support is going to be helpful.
Now another thing that can affect hormone clearance is gut health. And there’s two different reasons why gut health is important for hormone issues especially post-birth control. One is because just having a high-fiber diet is actually going to help bind to the hormones in the gut. So if there are hormones that are getting basically secreted into the gut as part of the detoxification process, if there isn’t enough fiber in the diet to basically carry those extra hormones out into the stool, then those hormones can get reabsorbed in the large intestine and then in that situation the gut is not able to clear out the hormones very well. And then another interesting thing with the gut is that actually gut bacteria can help detoxify excess hormones. So there is I think Chris, let me see if it’s Chris’s podcast. Oh, no, it’s a different podcast, not Chris’s, but there’s something called the estrobolome, which is basically bacteria that metabolize estrogens within the human intestine. So that’s obviously an issue if somebody’s having a hard time clearing out excess hormones, they might have inadequate gut bacteria or and I think, let me see this question. I think she said the person was having gut issues. Yeah her digestion isn’t good. So maybe focusing on probiotics either in a supplement form or having fermented foods. And then also eating lots of prebiotic foods if possible. So things like the higher-FODMAP foods are prebiotic, making sure she’s getting some starches, just fruits and vegetables in general are going to help feed gut bacteria. And also the fibers in those plant foods are going to help clear out hormones from the gut as well.
So those are really the basic places that I would start with someone. So making sure they’re getting an adequate calorie and micronutrient-rich diet, getting lots of fiber and prebiotics in their diet as well as probiotics, maybe doing some supplementation of zinc, B6, and magnesium, maybe vitamin A, and really focusing on some lifestyle things like stress management and circadian rhythm and treatment. So that would be the places I would start and then obviously, if at that point they’re not seeing improvements, you might want to do some testing. I would recommend doing the DUTCH test if they’re still having problems, just to see if there’s any sort of hormonal imbalances that are still there. Because if there are, there might be some things that you can do more targeted toward certain hormonal imbalances, like, say, estrogen is high you can use specific herbs to help bring estrogen down, or let’s say progesterone is low, then you might want to do some stuff to bring it up. So those tests can be helpful for pinpointing more specific issues. But the recommendations that I just made are just basic for any woman that’s dealing with post-birth control syndrome.