57. [WISE WOMAN] WITH DR CORINA DUNLAP OF NATUROPATHIC BY DESIGN - HORMONES, OUR GUT, FERTILITY, & PERIMENOPAUSE
Dr. Corina Dunlap is a licensed naturopathic doctor (ND) and women’s health and hormone specialist. Specializing in the treatment of conditions that range from irregular periods to PMS, thyroid imbalances, endometriosis, pelvic pain, and symptoms of menopause, she is an internationally recognized expert in natural fertility optimization and women’s health at all stages of life. Dr. Dunlap is a clinician, researcher, educator, and speaker.
What I love most about her is how simple she keeps the vast landscape when it comes to optimizing health. Give her Instagram a follow! You won't be disappointed.
Cornia and I dive into:
Best time to optimize hormones and why its so crucial
Cycle syncing- leading the feminine way
Root causes of hormone imbalance
How fertility is about so much more than just getting pregnant
Infertility care is not the same as optimizing health
Tangible tips to improve well being and balance hormones
Perimenopause tips
https://www.naturopathicbydesign.com/
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Music The Ancients (feat. Loga Ramin Torkian) by Azam Ali
Disclaimer:
The information and resources provided by me are not intended to constitute or replace medical or midwifery advice or a Mother’s intuition. Instead, all information provided is intended for education purposes only. My advice is not to be seen as medical diagnosis or to treat any medical illness or condition of Mother or baby/fetus.
The following is AI generated and will have errors
EMILY: Welcome to Soul Evolution. My name is Emily, also known as the Birth Advocate. I am a retired nurse, health coach, women's circle and ceremony facilitator and and the host of this podcast. Here we dive deep to reclaim our rites of passage with a big dose of birth story medicine, intentionally curious conversations with embodied wisdom keepers, and a sprinkle of polarity as we will hold space for our men from time to time too. I hope you find nourishment for your soul here, as you probably heard my course so youo Want a Home Birth, your complete guide to an Empowering Physiology Theological Birth is now available. You can listen to episode 41 to hear all about it, or you can go to my website www.birthadvocate.me course to learn more. I have poured my heart and soul into this complete guide to an empowering physiological home birth course. You will walk away feeling ready, body, mind and soul, knowing that everything you need to birth your baby already exists when within you, your questions will be answered, guaranteed, your fears will be quelled. I walk you through, step by step, exactly how to prepare yourself, your partner and your home for the most incredible experience you get to have in this lifetime. Birth is a sacred rite of passage worthy of honoring.
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EMILY: Welcome Dr. Karina Dunlap to the podcast. I'm so honored to have you here. We had an exchange earlier and then finally we got this scheduled and the day has arrived. You know you're you and I, we both live in Southern Maine and I met you in person the first time. I think it was at Kate's child's. I don't know if it was her son or her daughter's birthday Party. My friend Gabby worked for you, and then I have another friend who you worked with through her infertility journey, which I don't even like to use those words, but yeah. And she conceived and has a beautiful little daughter now. And, you know, you're just. You're serving the women in the area, and it is just such an honor to have you. So thank you for coming.
CORINA: Of course. It's truly, truly my pleasure. I love. I love speaking to a broader audience, and it's just. Thank you so much for having me.
EMILY: Yeah. So I have to tell you, I. You know, I was a nurse for 15 years, and I went down my own health journey probably five years into my career, where I, like, realized, like, oh, you know, what I'm doing is not real health. I was a mess. PCOs, diagnoses and stuff. Overweight, depressed, you know, just, like, all the things that you see every day in your office. And I cleaned my ACT up, and, like, you couldn't tell for a second that I used to have this syndrome called pcos. And, you know, so, like, I saw firsthand what real health really was, and so I became, you know, a health coach. And. Have you ever heard of Shawn Stevenson with the Model Health Show?
CORINA: No.
EMILY: Oh, my gosh. He's one of my favorite humans on the planet. But he has this podcast called the Model Health show, and it just. Yeah, it just opened me up, and so. So my original. I'm. I'm now in, like, the birth world, but, like, my original world was more what you're doing.
CORINA: Amazing.
EMILY: This is gonna be, like, taking me back. And, yeah, I. I like to nerd out, so.
CORINA: Amazing. Me, too. Same.
EMILY: Yeah, But I also. What I really love about you just, you know, reviewing your content on Instagram is how you keep it so simple, too. You know, you really, like, lighten the load. And stress is one of the main factors causing so much going on in our bodies, whether it's just plain old inflammation or, you know, hormone dysregulation, whatever. But, yeah, so, like, that lightness that you bring to the field, like, I feel that I just wanted to.
CORINA: Amazing. That is so important to me because, truly, we can get so bogged down and overwhelmed, and that overwhelm is massive. And I. I see it as our job and my job to take that pressure off the shoulders of the people that come in to see us, because we can truly streamline things, make things as, like, much simpler than people perceive them to be. And when we do that and come up with a really targeted action plan, it's just it really, truly can be simple things that make the hugest difference.
EMILY: Yeah. Yeah. So how about we just take a little moment here and you kind of tell everybody who you are and what it is exactly that you do.
CORINA: Sure. So My name is Dr. Karina Dunlap. I'm a naturopathic doctor who focuses in. On women's health and hormones, hormone health. I started my career through my own health journey. I was a. Went to an all women's college, always been really motivated in women's empowerment on all different subjects of women's empowerment. Postgraduately, I worked for Outward Bound as a rock climbing and mountaineering instructor. So I was very, very active and very healthy in quotation marks, but had a lot of imbalances in my body without realizing it. And after that journey of working for hourbound, I went and traveled around the world. I lived in other countries with different biomes and it affected, you know, the way that my. Affected my biome differently. And I got, actually, when I was traveling and when I was living in India for a while, got very sick. Gastrointest and gastrointestinal sickness. Very like standardly diagnosed as traveler's diarrhea. Came home and it was really like this tipping point for me of just pushing my body in ways that were too much for what my body really truly needed and not knowing how to create that balance or have that balance. And that, that trip and that sickness really kind of tipped things off in the direction of a lot of hormone dysregulation. I started to have. I was treated for the traveler's diarrhea from a conventional standpoint, multiple rounds of antibiotics. But it spun me into a hormone dysregulation spiral. So I started to have a lot of other types of infections, vaginal infections, dysregulated thyroid, some hair loss, definitely like cortisol dysregulation period changes and shifts that were not healthy to have. And it was just that moment where I was like, there's something bigger here. I need to dive deeper. I actually accompany my sister to a naturopathic doctor appointment for her. And when I saw how the approach was like so whole body focused and really educational and really getting to like talk in. In what felt like a real collaborative relationship with a provider. I was really. That was really like this moment, this aha moment. But that's what I needed too. And I went through my own journey of working with a naturopathic doctor. I also worked with an ayurvedic doctor. We did so much whole body care Using botanicals, nutrients, vitamins, really focusing on the things in my lifestyle that weren't really supporting me. Even though, like I said, I was a healthy athlete, like, outdoors person, I. There was just so many things that I really could optimize, and I did. And that year changed my life. I. I was so much healthier after that year and resilient. And my whole, whole system, what we call, like, really the, like, terrain of my body, was completely different. And I, and I, from that point, I've had. I've had things come up in my health, but never to the extent that, that, That I got to. At that. When I was at my lowest point before that health journey. And, and it's just been so beautiful to have had that experience in my body. And now I get to watch that my patients have these experiences and these transformations as well. I mean, it truly is like, wow, this, it can be so powerful when we look at all aspects of our health, when we stop seeing our body as these specialties or these silos. And certain specialties are really helpful to have in medicine. But it's also important to come back to, like, the whole person, really come back to the idea of this terrain, nourishing the terrain, talking about how our bodies are more than machines. We're really, really meant to be living in these cycles and seasons, especially in women's health, and really looking at the body from that really nature as the authority kind of viewpoint, which is really what naturopathic medicine does. And our goal is to really follow this therapeutic order, least invasive, most effective solutions, seeing the body as a whole, really treating, using and respecting nature's rhythms and what nature has intended and looking at the signs and symptoms of that and really nourishing and nudging the body along in health, versus overpowering with things that sometimes it's necessary to overpower. But we want to nourish and support the terrain, support the body so in the direction of health. And it just is beautiful to watch over and over again with patients. So I've been so, so excited to be in the field now for over a decade and having journeyed, you know, through my own. My own transformation as well.
EMILY: Yeah, it's so important to have that embodied experience, to then be able to take that to our clients. Because, you know, it's like a lot of times we don't even know how good we can feel until we feel it. You know, we don't know that this, like, underlying fatigue or just like anxiety or just like whatever that, like, tiny little underlying current is that's actually like stopping us from living our best lives. And it truly can be little simple things. But I want to kind of dive into, to, like, a little more of the nitty gritty, because, again, I like to get nerdy.
CORINA: Yeah.
EMILY: But, you know, you mentioned antibiotics being sort of like the. The thing that sort of kicked you off and, you know, that root cause of our hormone imbalances and that gut brain axis. I would love for you to speak to that.
CORINA: Absolutely. Oh, my gosh. So much comes back to the gut, brain and hormone connection. And when I talk to prospective patients, I do explain that this is really our area of expertise in the clinic that I have, which is naturopathic by design, that we really function in this intersection between the gut, the brain, and our hormones, which is such a trifecta intersection. When we think about hormone regulation, we always have to start with the brain. I mean, really, like the hypothalamus and our pituitary are really control centers for hormone regulation. But there is a superhighway between gut and brain. And. And then, of course, that control center that I mentioned in the brain is then really speaking to adrenals and us speaking to our ovaries and kind of this, what I see as like a triangle. So it's all really connected when it comes to gut microbiome. The influences of the gut microbiome on detoxification, on our mood, on our motility, on our thyroid, on our. What we call the estrobolome, which is like a. A collection of bacteria that help to pull and detox estrogen from the body. Is very, very real. We can have. And many of my patients will come in and say, like, I don't necessarily have a ton of gut symptoms, but I'm very curious to learn more about my gut. We do stool testing on everyone. And I do have colleagues who say, really, that's not necessary. I would. I disagree. I. I see so much benefit when we do a stool test. And I think that honestly, stool testing, good quality stool testing done once per year is like, is. Is really good care, is excellent, excellent care. In some countries, this is done regularly. It's not done regularly here, but I think it really could and should be for the support of our body's health because we can see so much there. We can see, are we absorbing nutrients and vitamins that feed healthy hormonal health, feed our brain health, or are we having difficulty absorbing, Are we producing enough digestive enzyme that's massive for being able to absorb the nutrients and vitamins that we need?
EMILY: I didn't know you could see all that. Honestly, I thought it was just like looking at the different species that are in your gut. You can see all of that?
CORINA: Yeah.
EMILY: I've never had my stool tested.
CORINA: Oh, my gosh, that's great. I mean, it's great. And also, like, you're like, wow, what am I finding here? This is helpful or not? No, it is so helpful. But, yeah, you can see your digestive markers. So things like, how well are we detoxifying or reabsorbing estrogen? And we can see that in a stool panel through glucuronidase. We can see, yeah. Some pancreatic digestive enzyme markers. We. We can see if, like, there's blood in the stool and irritation. We can see inflammatory markers. We can see a little bit more about some. A marker that has to do with leaky gut or a loose lining due to inflammation. We can see that in a. In a stool test. And we can see species of pathogens. So things like bacterial, viral or parasitic pathogens. We can see our keystone species that are supportive of good, healthy mood and supportive of overall our body's health. And then we can see, like, more of the bugs that can play both sides of the coin. Opportunistic bugs, and sometimes having them present is fine, but if they're high, they can cause havoc. So it's a lot of things we can see in a GI panel, which is really helpful when we're looking at somebody's overall health. The other thing I like to mention when we talk about gut health is how. How interconnected our immune system is in our GI. 80% or so of our GI lining, or 80% or so of our immune system is. Begins and is activated in the gut. So our lining is made up of immune cells, and it's basically sensing the world from the aspect of the gut. So when we are eating something or we're consuming something, that's the body's way of being able to sense what we're being exposed to and respond quickly. So it makes a lot of sense that we would have a lot of immune activation. So when we're talking about calming an immune system or supporting an immune system or supporting like, autoimmunity, for example, it always starts with gi. So it's a big part of our practice for women's health, for hormone health, is to really get into that gut, brain, hormone access.
EMILY: So I'm also curious about, you know, because it is kind of like a new science, right? Like there is. It's only been about 10 years right. That we've been studying the gut. So it's just, to me, it's so interesting, like, what we don't know that we don't know yet for sure.
CORINA: There's so much we don't know. And I think one of my mentors says this, and it's so. She's so funny. She says, like, it's so for her, when she hears somebody say, like, oh, probiotic might help. It's like saying, oh, a drug might help. Because probiotics, there's like a zillion different strains that have all these different effects, and there's so much we don't know and do know. And yes, different formulas of probiotics can be helpful for different things. But as we get more into the science, we understand more. Okay, these specific strains are very helpful for vaginal flora and vaginal health. Or these specific strains are very helpful for IBS with, you know, constipation or IBS T with more loose stools. Or these strains are particularly helpful for babies. Or these strains are particularly helpful for mood. You know, so it's like. It is really very nuanced. And. And yes, I had a patient say today, would probiotics be helpful for my. For my gut? You know, and we just had to dig into that more like, well, what's going on? Exactly. Because that's a big question.
EMILY: Yeah. And I think kind of too, to tie it into, you know, the work that I do. It's like our babies are seeded from us when they're born. So it's so important for us to have our gut health under control, like, before we conceive.
EMILY: Right.
EMILY: Because it. How long does it take typically, to get, you know, for like, someone that doesn't have, like, major problems, maybe I should say.
CORINA: Oh, to find some balance with gi.
EMILY: Yeah.
CORINA: Oh, it can be quite quick. But overall, it's like. It's more about like these. It depends. It depends. That's a big question. But, yeah, I mean, it can be quick. You know, most of the patients we're doing GI work with see a lot of improvement in the first one to three months and rebalancing flora, decreasing the species that we want less of there and increasing the helpful commensal keystone species can be quite, quite quick, especially if we're using a combination of things like really diversified diet and we're using the supportive botanicals and nutrients. It can be. It can be really. People do notice a difference quickly when we are able to tackle it all at once.
EMILY: Yeah. What might be some things that people could do just on their own. I mean, you mentioned a diverse diet. I'll tell you right now, when I diversify my diet, I have gas like crazy. My gut just is like, no, you eat these foods that we're used to or you're in trouble.
CORINA: Yes, yes, it's a problem.
EMILY: I know.
CORINA: Yeah. So, so, yeah, so this can be, can be tricky with folks who have the more gas producing bugs. You know, some people will jump right to well, should I be. Yeah, should. How should I go about this? And so, so you might say, well, this might be a good time to see if there are any opportunistic or pathogenic bacteria that are overgrown in the gut. This might be a good time for testing for somebody in. And let's say they come in and say I do have a lot of gas bloating, then it's good time for testing. You know, and we might do a few different ways of testing. We might do breath testing to look for things like sibo mal, intestinal bacteria overgrowth. We might do, definitely would do stool testing to see if there's any sifo, which is small intestinal fungal overgrowth. And then we would be looking for all the other things in that stool panel. So that's important. And sometimes people have gas and bloating for other reasons too that are more a structural issue that we would have to do imaging for, but that we usually figure out by way of treating what's found first and then sometimes that the structural piece is discovered later if there is a structural cause. Unless they know that coming in to see us. So in the case there, you're telling me, yes, some foods really make you gassy. So it's either that there are some, there's some what we call dysbiosis or imbalance. There's more of the gas producing bugs that typically we hear that with like categories like brassicas, for example. Brassicas are the, you know, our cabbage and broccoli. Brussels sprouts. Exactly. So. Exactly. And so many folks who have a little bit of bacterial overgrowth can have that in the small intestine, can have a little bit more of those gas producing effects from those foods. Typically when we've done, when we do a panel or we do some initial workup, we look to decrease the numbers of those bacteria and increase the supportive keystone species like our Bifidobacterium or Akkermansia strains. What we typically do is yeah, first an eradication protocol, then a building protocol. And in a microbiome building protocol, I'm really Looking to help people diversify. But we do it slowly. So we start with like some resistant starches, things like cooked and cooled. Like I know this sounds like a lot, but cooked in cooled beans and lentils, chickpeas, you know, slowly. And you can do things like really soak them well before adding some apple cider vinegar to help break them down. Actually cooked and cooled potatoes with a little vinegar is excellent for the gi. Things like overnight oats, even like some semi green bananas are like good forms of these resistant starches. And introducing them about like one time, one to three times a day can be helpful in addition to other things. So polyphenols which are. And prebiotic rich foods like we can use like dark skinned berries, cherries, pomegranate. I like to use beets or I'll use like a little bit of. I love like the ferment, fermented category of foods for diversifying. And I'd like to grab like some sauerkraut, so red pigmented sauerkraut. So you get your beets and your cabbages with red because the red pigment really help to promote these keystone species. And, and then using things like fermentable fibers per tolerance. So things like ground flax, chia, you know, diverse fruits and veggies. But just slowly building up to tolerance because sometimes it's like, oh, people think they should just avoid the foods that produce the gas. So they avoid them and then they don't build up this diversity and tolerance over time because they've avoided them too. So guilty. Totally. You're like, why would I want to be gassy? So but it, it's, you know, and so, so it's interesting because many people will come to us and say, I, I was told, you know, I have this bloating in gas. I was told to go on a low fodmap diet. So common to hear that they're never told to go off. So a low fodmap diet is very restrictive of these oligosaccharide containing foods like you know, garlic, onions, brassica containing foods or brassica family foods. So it's removing those foods from. Or a short period of time can be helpful for people with gas and bloating if they have sibo. But ultimately you don't want to do that long term because it can disrupt the balance of the flora too. So ultimately getting to a good balance of the categories I mentioned is really ideal.
EMILY: Yeah, this is inspiring me.
CORINA: I. Good.
EMILY: I, I do. I just, I, I kind of lead this like boring diet currently where I just eat like the same things all the time. So thank you. Appreciate that.
CORINA: Of course, that was maybe a bit more deep dive than you wanted to go, but.
EMILY: No, it's inspiring me. Yeah. But let's shift gears just a little bit and let's talk about the best time to optimize, optimize hormones and why it's so crucial because.
CORINA: Oh, my gosh.
EMILY: Yeah. This is getting into the juice of like both of our passions.
CORINA: So true. So I would say. And you would say, I know, because of your work, like, the best time to do this is even before a baby is born. Right. Because like, we think about preconception and then we're thinking about mother's health. That translates into generations of, of kiddos from, from there. But really, practically speaking, when we have an individual, it's really like, I mean, I'm doing this work with my daughters right now who are 7 and 10 and haven't. My oldest hasn't started her period yet. But, you know, as soon as her, as she, as soon as she starts her period, really, we're really going to be focused on, you know, making sure that she's having the healthiest cycles possible because we want the estrogen and progesterone to really get into good cycling amounts and to feed her body with the healthy hormones. So hormones like sex hormones that I'm talking about, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, these hormones are produced by our reproductive bodies that truly, truly build the foundation of vitality and resilience and healthy aging for years to come. An example of this. Allowing our own body to have healthy amounts of estrogen is critical for our bone health in our younger years. We build peak bone mass in our 20s, and we start when we're young and we build our peak bone mass in our 20s. If we decrease the estrogen that our body is exposed, exposed to during these key critical early years, we run the risk, higher risk of bone loss and osteopenia, osteoporosis in our later years. Now bone loss in our later years really, truly matters. It's what creates situations like catabolic events where we lose, you know, if we have fall break something, we have a catabolic event. What I mean by that is muscle loss, muscle wasting, limited mobility. It can often set the stage for mental health and concerns not only like mood, anxiety, depression, but also for cognitive decline. So in our older years, so allowing the body to have healthy amounts of these hormones in our early years is very critical not only for bone health, but brain health. So our brain is fed by estrogen and by suppressing that or not, not encouraging healthy cycles with estrogen when we're young is. Can set us back in our later years too. So it is truly the, the stage in our younger years in our. In like, I think about, like 20s and 30s. Teen years are tricky because there's so much going on in teen years, right. Which we're discovering our. Ourselves and our social selves and everything. But, you know, as soon as, like, I feel like there's this agency over one's health that comes in really awareness more in 20s, I feel like that happens a lot. And, and then Certainly in our 30s too, it's such a good time to really be optimizing. It's very critical. And there's so many other examples of this, from metabolic health to mood disorders. One thing that I see commonly, it's. It's almost like a, A cycling or a, A snowball effect is what I wanted to say. So a snowball effect, that one thing leads into the next. And I have many, many examples of this. So let's see. One example would be disordered eating in early 20s or in late teens leading to disrupted period, maybe skipped periods, maybe no period. Maybe it led to weight loss and then the period stopped. And that just being tolerated as like an okay thing. Maybe nobody's told somebody that's something we want to take care of as soon as possible. And when there's no period, there are. There is a decline in our hormones, especially estrogen and progesterone. So how can that negatively impact us? Early on? It can set the stage for metabolic dysfunction. It can set the stage for cognitive dysfunction, certainly can set the stage for GI dysfunction. And it is. And mood disorder. So when I see that, it'll trickle, trickle on into like, 30s. And then other things happen in the 30s, maybe somebody's trying to get pregnant and then they're having difficulty because their brain is wired to lose their period or stop ovulating from their early years of what was kind of set the stage for that. That's just another example.
EMILY: Yeah, yeah. So, like, when the cycle begins, I am so passionate about like, reclaiming our menarch, reclaiming this. And, you know, because everyone is put on birth control and there's just so many toxins in the world and like, all these phytoestrogens and it's just, you know, we're swimming in this soup of insanity and just like, I just want to, like, take these beautiful young women under my wing and like, you know, love on them and Teach them how to love their cycles and how to support themselves and you know, to start living as a cyclical being. And I know that you do a lot of education around that too and really promote women to live within their inner womb. Season is what I like to call it.
CORINA: Yes, absolutely. It is my true passion. It is these our cycles and our hormones are truly our superpower. They are like a. I think of it as like part of our celestial connection. It's wild what happens when, when birth control is given. And I'm all for having agency over our reproductive timing and ability to not get pregnant when we don't want to get pregnant and get pregnant when we do. You know, that's critically important and at the same time I just think it's so critically important to be well informed about what synthetic hormones do to the body. Dr. Laura Bryden has been on like, have been educating about this for many years. You know, just that like synthetic hormones are not a replacement for our own hormone endogenous hormone production. They're just not a replacement. It when we have a bleed once a month from synthetic hormones, it's not a period, it's a withdrawal bleed. It's very different. There are risks that come along with it. Yes, take your reproductive health into your hands and yes, be in charge of that and know, but know all of your options, you know, and, and I still think we need better options, quite honestly, because, and, and we do have options of timing, which is wonderful. And there are wonderful. There have been really won solutions like using something like natural cycles with that timing, you know, making sure we're timing our cycles and keeping knowing our fertile window. That's incredible. And that we can use something like that as a birth control option is wonderful. And you know, that combined with, if somebody is in a heterosexual, you know, relationship, they could use that with, with a barrier method, you know, something like timing with barrier method. But just knowing all the options that, like the non hormonal options too, to have age, like have that control over our reproductive timing and what we want, but also be able to truly experience our natural cycle power.
EMILY: It is so important. It is so important. And I feel like that's why it's a big reason why we kind of are in this crisis that we're in right now with women and infertility and just like our bodies being so out of whack because we, our generation, generation before us, have been so disconnected from our inner seasons. We were, you know, we were initiated into womanhood with shame around our bodies. And you Know this like the curse and the dread of, you know, this beautiful bleed this time when like the veil is thin and we literally like our celestial. Like you said, it's like, yeah, just really feeling into that. But I loved how you said you had a post about fertility is about so much more than just getting pregnant. So I would love to kind of dive into fertility just a little bit. You also had something where you said infertility is not the same as optimizing health. And I'd love to dive into why that is.
CORINA: Yeah, yeah. I've been thinking about this for so many years because I've been working in fertility with fertility and optimizing fertility for patients for many years. I worked in a reproductive, an art IVF center for several years as like a natural medicine support and was mentored there too. So I have both like the conventional side and natural medicine side of things and like, really my experience in both worlds, which is really, really fun and, and, and exciting. Optimizing fertility or fertility in general? Our fertility is a marker of overall health. It truly is. When something is, you know, when we are having trouble conceiving, there's a reason. There may be a structural reason that, you know, we were born to have. There may be a hormonal reason, but it is a marker of overall health. And, you know, it starts with just knowing, like, what the menstrual cycle is. And there's different aspects when it comes to female and male factors. But for female factors, some of the most common reasons why we're having trouble conceiving or our fertility is fertility. There's subfertility. And I know infertility is, you know, I like to use that less too, because that's like more of an absolute term versus sub fertility. But there can be reasons that are really also indicative of things going on in the body. Pcos, classic example, PCOS is, is a condition that affects so many aspects of a woman's being and body. And it's, it's much more than the decreased ovulation or increased risk of miscarriage with that comes with pcos. There's a risk of mental health concerns. There's a risk of body habitus and metabolic dysfunction. There's a risk of uterine lining becoming thickened over time with that low progesterone or lack of ovulation. There's a lot of like, body habitus concerns that come along with it. Hair loss, acne, that sort of thing, you know, so there's a lot more about one's health than what PCOS does. To fertility. So when I talk about optimizing fertility or fertility is more than about, than more about more than pregnancy. It truly is. But it becomes into hyper focus when we're talking to somebody who wants to conceive. Of course, endometriosis is another example of this. Endometriosis can impact so many aspects of one's health from mood to levels of pain, to absolute reduction activities of daily living, ability to function at certain times of the, of the cycle, even like to cancer risk too. So you know, it's really important to get underneath what's going on for somebody when it comes to them having trouble conceiving and helping the body as a whole. Like thinking about beyond like I'm so motivated to help people get pregnant when they come in to see our clinic and that's their goal. That is the number one focus is what their goal is. And at the same time I'm seeding the, the, these ideas that like let's really get underneath that for your lifelong health, for how you're going to show up and be, you know, for your, for your kiddos on the other end too and lifelong, your quality of life, your enjoyment of life. So it's it. And for men as well, I think about it like if there is something impacting semen, something impacting those, those, those markers of the like they're all of their sperm markers, then we want to know why. If it's a reason that there's thyroid dysfunction or toxicant load, that's what's impacting, that's important for the whole body, it's important for brain health, it's important for cancer reduction risk, it's important for mood and I mean so many things. So yeah, so it's just really, it is like a marker of, of overall health. Not to make people feel sad to hear that, but it is something to like ask why is this happening? And you know, oftentimes there's unexplained and that's the most frustrating scenario to be in is when there's unexplained sub fertility or unexplained infertility. And like my heart is like so invested in these cases when I'm working with patients who have any type of fertility struggle because I know having had a smaller journey myself, just even as a smaller journey, how like wild it can be and how hard it can be and stressful it can be. So. And I also like to talk about like what are the broader implications of, you know, the long term health outcomes if we are seeing something Impacted infertility, if there is something there to discover, to look into. I like to think about the whole health. The whole health cycle, I think, like to think about lifespan and quality of life, too. Beyond it as well.
EMILY: And that's what makes you such a wonderful doctor, because you're looking at the whole picture. You're looking at the whole person, you're looking at their whole lifespan. You're not just, like, siloing. Okay. Your uterus, your ovaries, you know, it's so important. And I think, too, the medicine for a lot of people is just being held. Just being held in that and being seen and, like, feeling seen.
CORINA: Yeah. And feeling seen for their own unique experience and not as, like, part of, like, one in the many. But really, like, this is really freaking hard. And this is what I've gone through and. And it is not fair, you know, and I might, you know, I want to one day throw up my hands and say, you know, this is not meant for me as, like, my fertility journey. But, you know, it's really helpful to have somebody who cares. And our. We in our. In our clinic, we create the space so that we can be available to our patients and not feel like we don't want to overwhelm ourselves with, like, we're not looking to do high volume. We're looking to really, like, do quality care.
EMILY: Yeah.
CORINA: So we can continue to have our hearts truly invested in every single one of. One of our patients that comes in. In the onetoone setting.
EMILY: Again, that's probably why I felt attracted to having you on. It's so, like, sacred space, holding. I mean, that's my job now. Like, I. I hold space for people. And so much magic happens when someone is just held and witnessed and given the space to feel their feelings.
CORINA: Yeah, exactly.
EMILY: Which kind of leads me into this, the realm of, you know, the spiritual aspect of infertility and women. So many of us are, like, in our masculine. Right.
CORINA: Yeah.
EMILY: We're not in our feminine energy. We're not in that receptive place and that surrender place. And we get all up in our heads and, like, we're, you know, taking the supplements. We're doing these things. We're checking the boxes. It's just. It's so masculine. And I know, like, my heart, like, I have so much empathy and compassion for the women out there going through that experience and, like, grasping. But what would you have to say about that aspect of inviting in that more feminine approach to dealing with this?
CORINA: Yeah. It is really interesting to think about this because it almost Takes a. It takes us taking a look, like, going. Going more to, like, what is the rhythm by which I live? What is the. Like, what are the stories I've been told? What is the circle of influence I'm surrounded by? It takes. It takes a lot of reflection. And that feels like extra hard work. Especially when our brain wants to. Our body and our hearts desire most is to, like, just conceive. You know, we don't necessarily. Aren't necessarily asking, like, when it's time to. When we want to have a baby. We're not necessarily asking to do all this hard work of reflecting on, you know, what is it that I could do more of. It's. That's really gets. It's really hard to, like, say, open up to more feminine ways of living. I think it's. It's tricky. You know, it's very tricky because we are in, like, this really. Yeah. In more of a masculine sense, driven, like, check the boxes and get all the tasks done and do all these things in this order. Make sure we're taking the supplements and seeing all the doctors and done all of our, you know, homework. And at the same time, there's this, like. There is this feminine way that doesn't get explored as much. And I do think it's. It takes this moment of what is it that could allow for more of that feminine in. You know, I used to do a lot of pelvic floor, holistic pelvic floor work based on Tammy Kent's training.
EMILY: Oh, I love Tammy Lynn Kent. Yes.
CORINA: So wonderful. Yes.
EMILY: Oh, good. I gotta get her on here.
CORINA: Oh, yeah, exactly.
EMILY: Yeah.
CORINA: She'll be wild. So amazing to have. She's beautiful, human. And one of the things I learned a lot about the patterns that are held in the body, you know, and it was wild to be doing the pelvic floor care internally. And notice that how that translates into our actual physical body. And you'd feel a lot of hypertension on the masculine side or the right side, and the muscles would be hypertense on the right side. And there's no anatomical reason for that. It's very interesting. And the left side would be a lot more, you know, less engaged in many women. And I really felt the more we did the work and the more we talked about how to rebalance and bring more feminine into to our lives and how to do that, it would balance out and we would. I would feel, like, more evenness across the pelvic bowl in terms of the way that the muscles and the way that the tissue intention was being held. And one of the ways that I liked, one of the things I would have people do as a homework assignment was figure out what really gets you feeling passionate. Like what is, what is in your everyday that you can do to nourish the kind of the like the excitement inside, what makes you feel elated and alive. And that might be in just a regular standard day, that might be like a nice bath at night. That might be. I think about that because I love that right now.
EMILY: Me too.
CORINA: It might be, you know, that you really love to cook and you're like in a creative cook and you don't, you know, you want to make these like kind of special meals or whatever it is that you might just like to be in the kitchen and that's a special place for you and that, that is part of your passion. And you might like to paint, you might like to sing, you might like to listen to like great music and put on an awesome playlist. Maybe there are people in your life that make you feel more held and warm and cozy and just like, they just get you. And those are the kind of things that make you. If those are the kinds of things that make you feel elated and alive. Like dig into that, put that in your schedule every single day. Not even in a schedule, but like make time for those things all the time. Prioritize it. It's truly part of our health is to like find that again and, and it can be really like get the work done, go to bed, you know, kind of task oriented, have the career, you know, check all the boxes. Kind of like we can be in that, in that rhythm. But to like allow all the beautiful feminine to come in. I think of feminine as, you know. Yeah, the nourishing stuff.
EMILY: Yeah, Feminine embodiment. Like what opens the feminine, what makes her feel safe to be like that soft, juicy, supple, you know, like I like to think of like dancing or like self massage or you know like the Abhyanga massage with a oil and just like really getting into our feminine. Like what opens your feminine. I feel like that's such an important piece to, you know, again, like holistically when you're treating someone for something like this. That's because like say if someone were coming to see you for more of the clinical stuff, that's what I would be working with them on, you know, in our sessions.
CORINA: Yes, I love and you mentioned a really key word which is safe, what makes you feel safe, you know, and like safe to take a breath, safe to exhale, safe to allow that circulation to flow. And it's wild to see too, in some of the research that there's a different body temperature around the pelvis. In folks who are dealing with more subfertility, it's like a colder body temperature.
EMILY: Well, that makes sense.
CORINA: It makes sense. Yeah. So like, when we think about relaxing into the feminine, we think about releasing. We think about. Yeah. Just like letting go of that tension that's held. And so often it is held in the pelvis. So often it is. Does lead to some constriction of blood vessels and blood flow. And this is all not like hyper scientific, but this is like based on some research and also observation in clinic.
EMILY: And which I've been saying this a lot. I feel like observational studies and anecdotal reports, they need to have a little more merit than what we give them when it comes to like, physiological birth or, you know, like women's health. A lot of times we don't even study women, we study men.
CORINA: Exactly. Well, yeah, that's for sure. It's true. It's important to like. Yeah. Be able to see both sides. Definitely. And also understand that it's true. We haven't studied women enough.
EMILY: Yeah.
EMILY: I mean, because we're, you know, we're cyclical, it's not easy to study this beautiful cyclical being that we are because we are ever changing and ever flowing. And I think that that's also just a really beautiful reminder to people, like the cycle, the birth, death and rebirth, it is what we are. It's what we embody. So, like, we might be in more of like a death phase, but, like, remember, it's going to shift. It doesn't stay the same.
CORINA: No, not at all.
EMILY: And also honoring, you know, the Earth season, like I hope everyone is. We're recording this here in the end of December. It probably won't get released for a while, but, you know, like, I hope everyone is slowing down and allowing the cold, the dark to be, you know, that more inward pull. Like, go with it.
CORINA: I know. It's amazing and it's a really, really beautiful, you know, like a lot of, like Chinese medicine, ayurvedic medicine, really focuses so much on aligning recommendations to the season, aligning diet to the season, align and it. And it makes so much sense to do that. It really does.
EMILY: Yeah. So do you have any maybe tangible tips that you might want to throw in here to improve, you know, that overall well being and balancing these hormones? We've kind of talked about a little bit of it. But do you have any, anything you'd like to add in?
CORINA: Yes, yes, for sure. I like to give tangible tips. I like to be very individualized in my recommendations too. But there are definitely certain things that we can all do that really help. One of the key things that I like to come back to is this idea of respecting nature. Nature is our ultimate guide and nature is the authority. So when it, when I. What I mean by that and this can be applied in these tangible tips on how to get into our cycle health and how to like support our hormones. I like to use this example. I just kind of made it up one day. But it's, it's, you know, I think about like an animal, I think in the, in those, in nature. What would happen to that animal if we were to take it, put it into an unnatural habitat, shine a bunch of bright light on it all day, put it in front of a screen when it's dark out and have that animal stay up beyond its normal rhythm of sleep and wakeness? What would happen to that animal? What do we think? You know? Absolutely. And I'm sure there are studies on this. For sure there are. But yeah, there definitely are on the whole circadian rhythm and how an abnormal exposure to things can really disrupt that circadian rhythm. So it absolutely affects one's health, it absolutely affects one's hormones, it absolutely affects one's digestion, absolutely affects one's mental health, cancer risk. We know all these things just simply based on our exposure to even just light and dark. So first focus on your cycles of living throughout your day. When we wake, we're meant to wake up with the sun. We're meant to go to sleep with the sun. Now it's dark at 4 o'clock here in Maine, in Detroit.
EMILY: That's what we're talking with. Like all these lights flared on us.
CORINA: I know, exactly. But ways to protect during that time, like there's lots of ways to do it. There are lots of different bulbs you can get that really reflect more of the natural light spectrum to put those into your have really low lights at night, like we do in our house. We have lots of low lights. When the kids were little, we only had red light on. When the sun went down, we only put red light on. We're going back to that now. Just as like them being older, but also us knowing more information about this, wearing our blue light blocker glasses all the time when we're. And these are my glasses, but they have the blue filter. Blue light filter. All of my screens are protected, turned off to the greatest extent I can. So, you know, that's another way also just making sure that the nighttime sleep pattern is as early as can be with what's doable with a, you know, dinner and schedules and things like that. But I feel like in Maine, one of the things I noticed of moving hair six years ago was how much I felt that people actually naturally did respect the day and sleep cycles more. I felt like I would, like, go from Portland at the end of the day and drive to home. And I noticed like, all the lights were turned down. It felt like people were just like having their dinner and then it was time for bed. You know, it just felt like a. Definitely a different respect for light and dark, which I think is fantastic. But yeah, going to bed. In ayurvedic medicine, there's this ayurvedic clock and it's. We want to take with us the kapha. We want to go to bed before kapha hour is done. The kapha hours are 6 to 10. So we want to go to bed before 10 o'clock hits for optimal digestion, detoxification, rejuvenation of our adrenal health, of our cortisol, of our immune system. That rest is critical between the hours of 10 and 6. When we get to the hours of 10 and 2:00, that's our pitta hour. That's when a lot of activity happens for the body's detoxification. Like I mentioned, digestion, mental health support. When we get to the hours of 2 and 6, that's our vata hour. And so waking up by 6 is great because we bring vata into the day and we continue to, which is energizing and elevating and creative and. But if we come, if we wake up too early in that vata hour, sometimes we can be overstimulated and we see that with adrenal, like, dysfunction or we see that with flipped cortisol curves. And waking up by six, having your daylight be. Start. Start your daytime start just before six, you're bringing that vata energy into the day. If you keep sleeping beyond that, you're bringing kapha energy into the day. And that's more of a kind of like a little bit of a stubborn energy, I think of our, like a grounded energy, which is the good side of kapha. The like, just the imbalance side of kapha is more like stubborn and stuck. So 6 to 10 is the Kapha hours. So going to bed with kapha is great. And then waking up with lato, great. So I Think a lot about the Ayurvedic clock. When I think about sleep in cycles. And that's a great way to support hormones because if your body physiologically feels safe, our body is going to reproduce. I think of like reproduce. Reproductive hormones produce optimal hormone production when our body feels safe. And so just aligning with light and dark period, like that helps so much. How do we do that? Yeah, I love that.
EMILY: I want to also just throw in here for anyone. There's a book called Sleep Smarter written by my favorite human, Shawn Stevenson. And I love how like Ayurveda has like what, 5,000 years old or whatever. I know, but like all the modern studies absolutely support it. And he talks a lot about the modern studies and like the optimal times for sleeping and stuff. And everything you just said is what he says too. Yes.
CORINA: Amazing, Amazing. I love that. I want to read that book. Yeah, so that's like, like my number one tip is like respect. Think of how like what nature's intention is in something. And so similarly with the way we eat, so similarly with the way we eat, there are times to feed and times to fast. So the nighttime, you know, later at night is time to fast. You know, that time to eat. The eating window is, is important. And we wake. We would definitely want to break our fast with something that's really nourishing. You know, things like, like good healthy proteins and fats and fiber and color and polyphenols and things that are going to give us energy for the day to break our fast that way sets us up for really healthy blood sugar throughout the day. Not skipping meals really sets us up. And I, and I won't go into the whole like, you know, fasting, not fasting or like prolonged fasting or intermittent fasting, but, but nighttime time restricted eating, which is really when we like stop eating dinner at a reasonable time, giving ourselves a little break before dinner and then waking up and breaking our fast in the morning, having a feeding like eating cycle throughout the day, but not grazing the whole time, really just like having a meal, having digestive rest, having another meal, having some digestive rest and having a meal in that early hours of the evening, then digestive rest overnight, not eating overnight. A time restricted window of about 12 to 13 hours is really helpful for digestive health, it's really helpful for metabolic health, it's helpful for brain health. And when we eat a really well balanced meal in the beginning of the day and many researchers would say aiming to get like 30 to 50 grams of protein, I'm really thinking about not just protein, just like all of a balance, like all the things that we can get into. A good breakfast that is really just sets the stage for the whole day. So another tip for like, good hormonal health is make sure you're eating well balanced and timed meals. And then you could do your time restricted overnight. That's a really just great habit to get into. And you would think, like, if I'm an animal, which I am, how would an animal eat and function? You know, they. They're going to look for nutrient dense foods that have plenty of proteins and fats and, you know, whatever their body needs. And it's for satiety. And then they're not going to need. They're not going to necessarily unless they're nocturnal, eat at night. Right. So, yeah, so that's another tip.
EMILY: Beautiful. I love it. Again, just keeping it simple. Sleep is so important. Sean also wrote another book called Eat Smarter. So amazing. Yeah. Those are his two, two main points that he likes to make.
CORINA: I love it.
EMILY: Thank you very much. I would love. Again, I think I wrote this in the email. Like, it's almost a selfish ask as far as perimenopausal tips, because, you know, again, I'm having Jane Hardwick Collins. I'm interviewing her this evening and we're gonna dive into women that are like, entering into perimenopause and have younger children. Because this is such a very large group of people nowadays, like all my friends and myself and, you know, I'll be 40 in 20, 25 and. And it'll be coming before I know it. So I. This is something I haven't like, dove into. It's like, I, I gotta get nerdy about perimenopause. So, like, I think, I mean, it's pretty clear to me like already, like, how have I optimized my hormones throughout my life?
CORINA: Yeah.
EMILY: But, you know, let's just, you know, maybe some generally generalized. What would you have to say about perimenopause?
CORINA: For sure. Yeah. This is. I feel like, yes, when we're getting into like our late 30s and even just like 40, early 40s, we're. And there's a lot more conversation on perimenoplasm and wild, which is fantastic. I think it still is one of those things where we know it's coming, but we don't want to think about it until it's here kind of idea. However, I think that is shifting and changing where we. We are starting to understand there's preparation can actually really, really benefit things for Us in our transition time. One of the examples that I'll give about this, and we talked about stress because that's like such a common thing that impacts our health. But stress truly, truly like our cortisol, Cortisol dysregulation. And talk about stress, I talk about the adrenals. I talk about adrenals producing cortisol, which is our main stress hormone. But cortisol dysregulation does accelerate hormonal shifts. It does accelerate and it can bring perimenopause on sooner. And the symptoms of perimenopause can be more extreme when we are stressed. And the interesting thing in the research is that we know that women who have a positive outlook and who have a positive perception of perimenopause actually experience less symptoms.
EMILY: Imagine that.
CORINA: Imagine that. Imagine that. So when we can also see that this change is and embrace this transition as a part of our natural, like evolution and also part of a feminine wisdom and power that's we're being. And it truly is one of the most incredibly empowering times of our life to go through. It is, it is like. It is a beautiful. And it can, it can feel scary to not know and think, oh, I'm losing this part of my life. I'm going through an era of change. Yes, change can feel disruptive, but change is one of the only constants that we have too. So it's like there is a beauty that comes with it. The women who are going through Perry are some of the most in touch women I know. The veil becomes very thin again, similar to when we have our periods. We're having a lot of. We're having overall, we're having decreased hormone production of estrogen and progesterone and somewhat of testosterone. But it actually brings us really in touch with things. We. There's. It's an opportunity to really take our health again to the next level of like, what else can we do? So to that question, what else can we do? It's just a time to get even more clear that we are eating for our bodies and eating for our lifespan and really take our nutrition seriously. What do I mean by that? Again, coming back to like really eating in sync with nature's rhythm of the day, building in more adequate protein forms. Protein does become more important because the body naturally shifts into more of a catabolic state, which means that we can lose more muscle mass easily. So really focusing on keeping our muscle health and our protein health and not letting the body steal from our protein, our muscle sources to have enough protein in the, in the body. So eating out of the protein becomes very important. Eating phytoestrogen rich foods can also be quite helpful. So things like flaxseed is like great during this time or doing things like seed cycling. I'm a huge proponent of seed cycling.
EMILY: Tell me a little bit more about that. Cause I'm, that's something I'm not familiar with.
CORINA: Okay. Yeah, I love talking about seed cycling. So seed cycling is, it's a naturopathic practice that was done, has been done historically where we rotate seeds during different phases of the cycle. So during the first phase of our menstrual cycle, day one to day 14, we're consuming pumpkin and flaxseed. During day 15 to day 28, we're consuming sunflower and sesame seeds and, and we're rotating the seeds based on the properties of those seeds. So flax and pumpkin have a lot of lignans. Lignans are really helpful in that estrogen production. That's when we're really experiencing a good estrogen surge. We have a big estrogen surge right before we ovulate. And then we do have some estrogen in our second half of our cycle too, but it's less, less estrogen. It also helps support a healthy ovulation. So like when we ovulate is how we produce progesterone. So the seeds given during the first half of the cycle are really primarily to prime the body for healthy ovulation. The seeds given during the second half of the cycle are more like of your recovery and healthy, supportive seeds to help decrease fatigue, help support. They also have some lignans too, which are helpful at that time of the cycle for other reasons. So supporting our blood sugar regulation which can be a little bit more wonky during the second half of the cycle. And all the seeds have a good amount of fiber and lots of, lots of vitamins that are very specific to those phases of the cycle. Interestingly, women report when they seed cycle improved periods, less pain, less skin concerns, improved mood, the less bloating around their cycle, around their periods. We see that reported in use of seed cycling. There isn't good research on using seed cycling at all period. But there is, there's really pretty good research on the individual constituents of the seeds and what they can be helpful for. And we know in clinical experience and practical experience that it does work really well. Now we, I, I have partnered with a company that does see, does create seed cycling blends. It's BIA Wellness, one of the original creators of that product and it's rotating the seeds between the phases of the cycle. We are actually doing research now with the.
EMILY: Awesome.
CORINA: Yeah. So we're actually doing, doing a study right now to study. Yeah. The effects and in a, in a very methodical way. So that's exciting. But anyway, seed cycling is a great thing to do at this time of life because it's like we want to optimize our healthy cycles for as long as possible until they're truly no longer possible to maintain. But optimizing them for as long as possible until they're truly no longer possible to maintain, which is part of a natural transition and there's so much available to us at that point. Optimizing our mental health also is, can, can be supported by decreasing stress and doing things like suitcycling. That can be really helpful. Um, and then just establishing those healthy routines that you know, you need. Like what do I want to do? What feels good for my body in terms of movement. That changes when we're getting closer to Perry. You know, what felt good. When we were younger, we might have done more hiit. We might have done like more like just general cardio when we are younger and as we age our body craves different types of movement. Maybe it wants like more restorative movement combined with strength training and that weight bearing exercise. And strength training is incredibly important for skeletal muscle, our metabolic function and our bone mouth.
EMILY: Yeah. Beautiful. All right. Yes. This conversation has been very inspiring to me. You know, I'm, I'm like two years and a few months out from having my son and it's like I can feel that like it's time to like come back into myself wholly and like really pour into myself, you know, and like just, just get, get myself back into order because it's been just, you know how it is when you have little games. Oh, I've been, have been his number one for two years and it's like, okay, this year 2025, this is, this is about pouring back into Emma.
CORINA: So yeah. Yay.
EMILY: Karina. This has been lovely. Thank you so much.
CORINA: You're so welcome.
EMILY: All of your wisdom getting nerdy with me adding a little spiritual spice. Why don't you please share where people can find you and connect with you.
CORINA: Yes. Love to. So you can find me on Instagram @Doctor or Dr. Karina. C O R I N A Dunlap. D U N L A P. You'll find me there easily. And then I'm also at Naturopathic by design. That's all that's Instagram and our website was naturopathic by design. You can find a personal website and our clinic website. That's our clinic. And yeah, reach out, Send me a dm let me know if this podcast was helpful for you. I love hearing from people who have listened to podcasts and it keeps me going recording them.
EMILY: So Lovely. Well perhaps I would have you back on then and we'll dive into some other deeper topics.
CORINA: Amazing. Wonderful.
EMILY: Thank you so much.
CORINA: Thank you for having me.
EMILY: Thank you for for listening through to the end. I do hope you found good medicine in today's episode and that it encourages your own soul evolution. I have a few new offers, both in person and virtual that I'd like to tell you about. Beginning in January, I will host a free in person perinatal Women's Circle for anyone trying to conceive, pregnant or polarization postpartum seeking community and support. There will be a focus on preparing for natural birth and healing from birth trauma. Children are welcome. You can sign up via my website. I also now offer a monthly online virtual Village circle for families seeking an empowering physiological conception, pregnancy, labor, birth and postpartum. It's just $10 a month or free when you purchase my online course. So you want a home birth? You can gain access by signing up via my website. As always, I host Women's Circles once a month at my home in Southern Maine. All women are welcome. For details, go to my website. I have 20 years of experience in the medicalized system. I let my nursing license expire in 2023 and now I walk with women seeking a physiological, instinctual and deeply spiritual conception, pregnancy, labor, birth and postpartum journey. I help prepare and repair for the most expansive rite of passage that women get to experience in this lifetime. It is my greatest honor and sole mission to hold sacred space and witness women as they claim their own inner authority and power. I am a fierce advocate and guardian of natural birth using the culmination of my life's experiences including my own embodied wisdom when it comes to being a home birthing mother, nearly two decades of experience in our healthcare system and a year long sacred birth worker mentorship with Anna the Spiritual Midwitch. I support births with or without a licensed provider present at home birth centers and the hospital. I offer birth debriefing and integration sessions for women, their families and birth workers. I offer therapeutic one to one sessions, individually tailored mother blessings, closing of the bones and fear and trauma release ceremonies. If any or all of this resonates, I offer a free 30 minute discovery call if you have a birth story to share or if you're a embodied wise woman, witch healer, medicine woman. I am also interested in sharing your contribution to our soul evolution. You can book in via the link in the show notes. Thank you so much for your love and support everyone. Until next time, take really good care.
