I’m not currently trying to get pregnant, so why do I care when I’m ovulating?

Why would I bother charting and tracking my fertile signs when I have no intention of conceiving?

Your fertility is so much more than making babies. It’s about eliminating the need for artificial hormones that have their own set of side effects, and relying on your own body to tell you everything you need to know to avoid pregnancy with a natural method of birth control that’s equally as effective as the pill!

You can use your observations and your symptoms to address underlying health issues before they show up as other more serious symptoms in your body. You can take your chart to a healthcare professional and figure out what your body needs to rebalance your hormones and regulate your periods.

And finally, you can use this knowledge at every stage of life – birth control, pregnancy, post-partum and while breastfeeding all the way through until menopause.

The best part? You only have to learn it once!

Here’s a secret – there is one single thing that I miss about being on the pill, and it’s how damn clear my skin was!

Like our teenage years aren’t angsty enough without having to experience the highs and lows of breakouts too. But once we make it to the other side of puberty, not all of us emerge with clear skin. Our hormones like to remind us who’s boss and often around ovulation or our periods, a few fresh spots will emerge.

In this episode, I’m breaking down how to manage your skin as you transition off hormonal birth control. We’ll cover how to identify the underlying cause of your acne and what to do about it.

Acne is a sign that your hormones happy, and there’s only so much that topical creams and lotions can do to help!

Truthbomb: Your phone doesn’t know when you’re fertile.

I seem to have developed quite the reputation for being anti-app. I’m not necessarily anti-app, but I am anti-crappy apps and it seems that there are a lot of them out there.

The internet is completely flooded with period and ovulation tracking apps that claim to help you to monitor your menstrual cycle and your fertile window. Here’s the bad news – most of them are nothing more than a high-tech version of the rhythm method.

I get it, you’re already trying to remember to drink enough water, exercise every day, text everyone back, be a good friend, partner, mother, sister, employee…phew, it’s a lot. The last thing you could possibly add to your plate is complicated tracking and charting system. Every. Single. Day.

Fertility awareness and charting has a reputation for being time-consuming, overwhelming and just another thing on our never-ending to-do lists, and so many women are missing out on this incredible knowledge as a result!

In this episode, I’m going to walk you through exactly how I track my menstrual cycle and my body’s natural fertile signs every day. I’m doing it as I go about my day and I don’t have to add in a single thing to my day to get all the information I need.

And I do it in under 5 minutes.

When I look back, I cringe at how little I knew about my body.

When I started to wonder if there was another way to avoid unplanned pregnancy without the artificial hormones, everyone gave me the same cynical answers – Yes, but you’d be crazy to actually rely on them for birth control!

I call BS.

By taking just a couple of minutes a day to tune in to your body, you can use a method of birth control that is equally as effective as the Pill and condoms.

No side effects, no artificial hormones, no prescriptions, no awkward supermarket visits.

This knowledge will help you to know exactly when you are and aren’t fertile.

Not only does this knowledge help you to avoid pregnancy, it also allows you to maximise your chances of conceiving naturally and, according to the research, in half the time!

A xenoestrogen is a type of endocrine disruptor that has an oestrogen-like effect on the body and a significant effect on your fertility.
We know that oestrogen is a key hormone for a healthy menstrual cycle, but when xenoestrogens enter our bodies they block oestrogen receptors so they can’t do their job.
The body thinks there’s not enough oestrogen available and begins to produce more. This will increase the total amount of oestrogen in our bodies and cause oestrogen dominance.
Xenoestrogens don’t break down, they’re stored in our fat cells and a build up over time can lead to breast cancer, obesity, infertility, miscarriage, endometriosis, early onset puberty and diabetes.
In this episode of The Mana Women’s Wellness Podcast, I’m diving deep into the common household items that contain xenoestrogens and hormone disruptors.

We’ve all been there once or twice. We wake up thinking we’re going to get our period. But it doesn’t come.

We wake up the next day. Still no period.

Then we start to panic.

We do some backwards maths and work out if we might be pregnant. We start frantically Googling and cursing our bodies for messing with our heads.

In this episode, I’m going to save you from that long fall down the Google rabbit-hole and share with you the top reasons why your period might be late. And none of them mean you’re pregnant.

Ready to ditch hormonal contraceptives for good but feeling completely clueless about how to do it and what to expect?

In this podcast episode, I’m talking you through the 5 steps to coming off the Pill.

Whether you’re ready to start preparing for pregnancy or you just want to explore a natural method of birth control, I’ve got you covered!

Did you know that the pill was the very first medication that was prescribed to perfectly healthy women to treat something that was not a health problem?

Instead, it works by shutting down a completely natural process of the female body – ovulation.

Let’s get something straight, cervical mucus is not just discharge and it is a very good thing! You want to see mucus throughout your menstrual cycle because it’s the very best real-time indicator you have of your fertile window. It tells you when you’re ovulating so you can use this information to avoid unplanned pregnancy or conceive naturally. Mucus helps keep sperm alive and helps get us pregnant, and it protects us from vaginal infections. The change in mucus during our cycle also helps us to predict our next period and if you’re a control freak like me – you like knowing when your period is coming. Some women see cervical mucus every single day. Some only see it a few days in a month. And every single one of these women is 100% normal.