Episode 350: Tempe Simmons
Ever wondered how menstrual health influences a woman's productivity and emotions? In this episode, Fiona chats with Dr. Tempe Simmons, a specialist in Chinese medicine. They discuss the physical and emotional changes that women experience during the transitional phase. Tune in!
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
The importance of discussing menstrual health in the context of female entrepreneurship.
Understanding the menstrual cycle and its hormonal fluctuations
How hormonal changes impact mood, energy, and productivity.
The role of testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone in the menstrual cycle
Managing imposter syndrome and other mood-related challenges
The impact of stress on menstrual health and hormonal balance
Navigating the changing aspects of menstrual health as women age
Common symptoms and issues experienced during perimenopause.
The misconception that menopause only occurs when periods stop in one's 50s.
The need for greater awareness and education regarding women's health
Conclusion
Get in touch with My Daily Business
Resources and Recommendations mentioned in this episode:
“One of the things that we do is, in this time, we want to see everyone and we want to do all those things, but we make plans then for two weeks time when we feel terrible. We need to make those plans for that time. We get to two weeks time when we're about to get our period and all we want to do is hibernate and we feel sh** about ourselves and we feel like we're letting people down. The last thing we want to do is put ourselves out there. It's working with our cycle and knowing these things that can help.”
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Welcome to episode 350 of the My Daily Business Podcast. If you've ever wanted to start your own podcast, get going. Honestly, I cannot believe that I've gone from episode 1 to 350 episodes. This has been pretty much the most incredible marketing channel that we have ever done in my business and I love doing it.
I get so much enjoyment out of talking to people and connecting with people who've followed the podcast, and who send their thoughts through, it's amazing. If that's you and you're thinking, “I'd love to start a podcast. She's got to 350 episodes.” It can be done and it's not as hard as you think it is. In fact, this is one of the easiest marketing channels to work on for your business and one of the best in terms of reach and connections that you can make.
If you are interested, we have a course called How to Start a Podcast and it goes through to how to start a podcast and not just start one, but how to come up with a process so that you keep it going. You get to episode 350 if you want to do 350 episodes. Many people start a podcast and then give up because there's no process, structure, or system behind it so we teach you that. You can find that at MyDailyBusiness.com/courses.
This is a small business interview and I'm excited about this one. I've been talking about this to many people even before publishing it because I found it useful. It's something that I think, “How do we not know this?” Particularly women, how are we not taught this stuff? It is my absolute pleasure to be bringing you this podcast.
Before we get stuck into that, of course, I want to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians on the beautiful land on which I connect with these people and I learn, share, grow, and laugh, and that is the Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. I pay my respects to their elders, past and present, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. Let's get into our small business interview.
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On this episode, I'm talking to the wonderful Tempe Simmons, who has honestly been so eye-opening in terms of understanding myself and understanding my body. As a small business owner, this is hugely under-spoken about. What are we talking about? Tempe is a Doctor of Chinese medicine and she specializes in treating people with fertility issues and challenges, and not just necessarily issues but people who want to be on top and proactive in their fertility journey.
You might be thinking, “What has that got to do with you, Fiona? I'm not planning to have any more children.” However, what many women don't understand is that our menstrual cycle has a gigantic impact on how we feel and how we show up in our businesses. If you are a man and you're reading this and thinking, “I can switch to another episode.” Please don't.
If you have a woman in your life, you have somebody in your life who is menstruating, or even somebody who's in menopause, please keep reading because it's going to make so much sense to you as well. Also, think about how you might show up and be more supportive of women because we need it and not in a, “We need somebody to save us,” but in terms of we need more acknowledgment around how difficult it can be when our hormones and our bodies are working against maybe how we want to be showing up in our businesses.
I'm talking to Tempe Simmons, a Doctor in Chinese medicine. Tempe reached out to us to come onto the podcast and I thought what she's doing is amazing. She'd already been chatting with me in the DMs on Instagram, being social on social media, imagine. When she said, “I'd love to come on the podcast,” I was like, “Absolutely.” This needs to be talked about more. I have talked about it previously in other podcasts but not to this degree and not with somebody with this expertise in the female body and how all these things function.
As you'll learn in our chat, we talk about why it's important to track your cycle. Even though this has been happening in my body for more than three decades, it has only been in the last few years, and particularly when I was trying to get pregnant with a second child I started understanding how my own body works. Of course, there are lots of patriarchal things at play that have prevented women from understanding the power that they have. I'm not going to go on a rant there.
People like Tempe are paving the way for further understanding of why we feel the way we feel, how we can use that to our advantage in some cases, and how we can also be aware of how hormones and energy may fluctuate in the month and how we can then parallel that to what we're trying to achieve in our business and make sure that we are not setting ourselves up for failure by pushing ourselves at a time in our cycle when it's not going to be the best use of our energy.
I'll let Tempe explain all of this because she's so much greater than me. She also has an ebook that goes into this in further detail but you can find it yourself over at TempeSimmons.com, which is an incredible tool. I have a copy myself and it can help you, especially if you're a woman running a business. Here is my interview with the wonderful Dr. Tempe Simmons.
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Tempe, welcome to the podcast.
Thanks for having me.
You're welcome. How are you feeling about life right now?
I'm good. I'm in my clinic. I’m pretty happy. The weather's not too bad in Melbourne. My clinic is in Somerville, Victoria, and I've closed all the doors and put a post-it on the window so people know not to come in.
You're talking about the clinic. Obviously, you do something to do with that. Tell us about your business, what it is, how you got into it, how you started, and why you're so passionate about it. You are very passionate. We've chatted in DMs, we've done some coaching, and you're passionate, rightly so, and that passion is contagious. What do you do and why did you start?
I am officially a Doctor of Chinese medicine which involves acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine. Long story short, my mom had cancer when I was 2 and she had radiotherapy and she's fine but it killed her immune system, the radiotherapy. Our chiro, at the time, recommended our Chinese doctor, and within a few months, she wasn't getting sick anymore.
Every time we had a cold, we would go to the Chinese medicine practitioner. It was normal in our family. In year ten, I got quite sick with some digestive stuff, went to gastroscopies, had colonoscopies, and did everything, and Chinese medicine was the only thing that worked. I was like, “What are you doing that for? Why are you looking at my tongue? What does that mean?” Since year ten, I knew that that's what I was going to be doing.
I'm sorry, firstly, about your mother.
She's fine now.
You said radiation therapy, is that right?
Yeah.
My father had cancer and had radiation therapy. I always remember because they had to put the tattoos on his belly. Probably 15 or 20 years later, he had all these problems with his bowel, and when they went to have a look, they were like, “This has been blasted from the radiation.” He then had all these other issues because of one thing that had happened. They were like, “It’s like they've put a bomb inside your bowel and blown everything up.”
Mom had parathyroid cancer in the neck and then she ended up getting thyroid cancer fifteen years later from the radiotherapy.
Your poor mom. maybe I'm a little older than you, I'm not sure, but we probably both grew up in a similar time. In that space, where you grow up, unless you are seeking out alternative medicine for some reason, a lot of people will never have gone to a Chinese doctor and don't understand how it all works. How did you go from, in year ten, “I'm going to do this,” to specializing in what you do now?
I came out of uni, I was the youngest in my course, I was fresh out of high school, and everyone else was 35. It was a different uni experience for me than a lot of my friends. I entered into the recession in 2008 so that was pretty rough. Women's health is what I attracted and the more I did it, the more I loved it. You need to be compassionate.
I get how my patients are feeling. If they've been wanting a baby for six months, I get all that cycle of period comes and they're devastated and then they pick themselves up and they're like, “We can do this. We're in our fertile window.” There's that two-week wait and you can't think of anything else and your period comes and it's devastating. That cycle is exhausting. I get that so I attracted those people that need that from me.
Thank God that there are people like you available. I had gone through that exact thing. It's funny because when you're growing up, you're like, “I better not be pregnant.” You think that if you even look at a boy, you're going to get pregnant. When you get older, you're like, “It's hard to get pregnant.”
It's 4 or 5 days in a month.
That's it. Being a woman in this space, I also think would be part of the attraction of women coming to you. My sister is a female GP in regional areas and it's always more women who want to come and see another woman. You mentioned mainly attracting women. What are some of the biggest challenges you've gone through with fertility? Obviously, this is a small business podcast, and I know that when we connected, I was like, “Please come on and talk about this because we don't talk about women's health.” There are a lot of women business owners reading this. What are the key things that people come to see you about their health?
I have niched more for fertility but also women's health in general, coming off the pill, endo, polycystic ovarian syndrome, and even painful periods. I don't know if it's because I'm hitting that period in my life with perimenopause but I seem to be attracting women who may have never had heavy periods before and all of a sudden, they're getting heavy periods that are coming more regularly. They're flooding and they don't know what to do.
Often, the GP will be like, “We'll put you on the pill or we'll give you tranexamic acid. There's not this understanding that when we hit perimenopause our progesterone drops off, but also before the estrogen drops off, often there's an increase in estrogen as our body's last-ditch effort to make a baby. You've got sometimes three times the normal amount of estrogen, which leads to heavy flooding periods. There's so much we can do to help clear that estrogen and boost the progesterone but people don't know this is normal so they're freaking out.
I'm interested in this. I would urge if any men reading are thinking, “I'm going to switch this off now,” please keep reading because it's important. Women, in general, so much of our health has been a taboo subject, even for ourselves. Therefore, that's why we have all these women coming going, “I don't know what's happening to me. Even though I'm well educated and I've done this and I've done that. No one has ever explained what is happening in my own body to me.” You brought up progesterone and estrogen. Until I went through IVF, I had no idea what either of these things was. You hear about estrogen and emotions. Can you talk us through what are estrogen and progesterone?
Let's talk about an average 28-day cycle when someone would ovulate on day 14. Day 1, 2, and 3, you've got your period, and that is when your hormones are at their lowest. Often, your mood is at its lowest. From day three onwards, we get follicle-stimulating hormones and estrogen, which begin to rise.
This is the stuff people don't know.
Follicle-stimulating hormone is a pituitary hormone that stimulates your ovaries to produce follicles and eggs. At the same time, we're producing estrogen to thicken our lining. What happens is the follicle-stimulating hormone stimulates the follicles and one of them will become the dominant follicle. it sends a message to all the other follicles, “Buddy, it's my turn. This is my month. Back off.” It does that by sending its own estrogen. Let’s say we're ovulating at day 14, around day 11, we get a boost in estrogen, like a peak, and a boost in testosterone. The testosterone is there to make us want to have sex and have a baby.
That's why you feel sexy at a certain time.
What happens is that peaks, during this time, we would have fertile mucus and increased libido. If you want to have a baby, that's your time, that's when you want to be having sex. There's BBT charting and all these other things we can talk about. What happens is those hormones plummet and you ovulate. From the sac that holds the follicle, it turns into what we call the corpus luteum, which produces progesterone and boosts your temperature and that is progesterone, which holds off pregnancy.
You don't get progesterone unless you ovulate. Progesterone is important for women for bone health, mood, and sleep, and the neurotransmitter GABA, which helps us stay asleep, and all these things. If you're on the pill, you're not getting any of that because you're not ovulating, but that's a whole other topic. We can work with these hormones and maximize them.
For example, let’s say we're on day 11 or 12 and our estrogen and our testosterone are peaking, this is going to be the time of estrogen, clarity of thought, inspiration, and confidence. Things don't bother you as much. If something bad happens, it rolls off you. Testosterone, you feel more powerful, you feel strong, and you have the motivation, the drive, and the energy. You are in your element. This is the time to move outside your comfort zone, take opportunities, network, go on a podcast, or step up your business. Does that make sense?
That makes sense.
One of the things that we do is, at this time, we want to see everyone and we want to do all those things, but we make plans then for two weeks time when we feel terrible. We need to make those plans for that time. We get to two weeks time when we're about to get our period and all we want to do is hibernate and we feel shit about ourselves and we feel like we're letting people down. The last thing we want to do is put ourselves out there. It's working with our cycle and knowing these things that can help.
Your email, I was excited. You were talking about imposter syndrome. We are not men. Men have basically a 24-hour cycle. They have peaks of testosterone but they're pretty stable. We have these constant waves that are like a symphony and they all need each other to work but there are going to be down points and high points and we need to work with them but we were never taught how to do that. There are going to be times when you're about to get your period when you are going to have imposter syndrome much more than when you're about to ovulate. It's knowing that and not beating yourself up for it.
This is blowing my mind. Honestly, I'm writing my second book.
I'm so excited to read it.
I've had the biggest blocks around it, my poor husband going up and down. I had a real breakthrough but now I'm reflecting, I'm like, “This also happened to be a certain time of the month.” Maybe it wasn't a big breakthrough. I also hormonally felt better in that period of time.
That's where you can go, “I know that the week before my period, I'm not going to push it. I'm not going to push through.” Often, when we try and push through, we beat ourselves up more, we don't rest, and then we feel like we're thinking about it all the time whereas if we give ourselves some space we can come fresh for when we are in that productive time.
To go back a step, you said before that we get testosterone. A lot of people don't realize that women also have testosterone. We always see it as a man and their testosterone or the boys are bashing things because of their testosterone. When you were saying estrogen does its thing and then testosterone comes to the party and then you were saying progesterone, is the progesterone keeping us happy? You said people, if they're on the pill, may not be ovulating and you don't get it unless you ovulate. Does that equal things out?
One of the things progesterone also does is balance out estrogen and keep it in check. Often, if someone is coming to me and they're getting irritable breast distention, teary, headaches, insomnia, sweating, and all of those things, bloating, premenstrually, I'm going to be looking at, “Do they have too much estrogen? Do they not have enough progesterone? Is there both?” Trying to balance that out.
For some people, does their bodies make more estrogen or is estrogen coming from the food they're eating?
Both. A lot of women don't love to hear this but alcohol increases estrogen by 10%. Some women get flu-like symptoms before their period, inflammation, and estrogen dominance. That is not the time to be having alcohol. That's often when we want it but I will say to them, “I need you to not drink the week before your period because it's going to increase all of those symptoms.”
Women have to put up with a lot. I don't drink at all but I used to. I can imagine how much you might want to whine when you're also feeling crap. It's unfair that it’s doing it. We are talking so much about menstrual health and cycles and this is vital for people to understand. You've mentioned a few times we need to work with it. What does that look like? How do people work with it? I know that you have an ebook and you have resources for people for the people who can't come in and see you. How do you work with it? Is it mapping out your calendar? How do you work with it?
I wrote an ebook, an e-guide that is on my website and I've put some resource pages on there at the end so it goes through each stage of the menstrual cycle. It's broken down into what's happening hormonally because I know it's a lot to get your head around, how you might be feeling, what's happening from a Chinese medicine perspective, and then things to do and things not to do.
For example, when you're in ovulation and your estrogen is peaking, that is going to be the time when if you're trying to do exercise, your estrogen helps build collagen and collagen is going to help with bone health and ligament health. You're going to be less injury-prone at that time. You've also got the testosterone that's going to increase strength. If you're trying to do a personal best, or if you're trying to do a marathon, try and do it then. I'm trying to get a lot of my patients to map these things out.
For example, I had a bad day once, nothing was wrong, but I felt super vulnerable, and I couldn't work out what was going on. I looked in my calendar and I realized I was day sixteen and I knew I had ovulated and my FSH, estrogen, testosterone had plummeted. Because I haven't been taking my supplements, my progesterone has not had a chance to kick in and buffer that. I knew that by the next day, I would be fine and I was. When you're in that, you're beating yourself up, and you're like, “What's wrong with me? Why can't I control this?” If you feel like you have some idea of what's going on, you get some control back.
This all makes so much sense to me. Also, I wanted to ask, from my own experience, this was what's happened. To people, their mood swings or how things impact them, the different hormones will change over time. I never had PMS ever my whole life, never had any mood in it. I didn't have any extreme flatness. Especially when I had my second child, after that, it hit. If people are thinking, “It doesn't apply to me,” it may change as you age.
Absolutely. Also, stress. If you've had a stressful few weeks, you often will have a “shitter period” where things are clothier because of the inflammation and because it does mess with your cycle, it messes with your estrogen. The stress hormone cortisol, progesterone doesn't like it. It drops progesterone levels. Especially in that second part of your cycle, you want to be trying to keep your stress levels down because it will just plummet your progesterone and you'll get more irritability and more PMS symptoms and you'll feel shitter. Even from month to month, it can change so much. Also, as we enter perimenopause, things change. Progesterone will drop off and you might have that excess estrogen. Does that make sense?
That all makes sense. Can you talk about perimenopause? I bought a friend a book that has come out by Melissa Doyle and another person on TV in Australia and it's about aging. I read the first couple of pages while I was waiting for her at this cafe and it was like, “Your kids are growing up and you're hitting menopause.” I thought, “She's going to be like, ‘I'm 44. Why are you giving me this?’ Perimenopause, can you explain that? A lot of people, when they think of menopause, and I thought this when I was in my 30s, it doesn't hit you until your periods have stopped and you're in your 50s or later.
Perimenopause is 1 of 3 transition times for women. We have puberty, we have childbirth, and that period afterwards. it's like a lot of rewiring of our brains. Often, women will get things like thyroid issues and autoimmune stuff after they've had a baby, which they've never had before, and it's because there’s so much stress on the system. You then have perimenopause. They talk about, theoretically, 47 years old, but it can be from 35. It can last ten years and it's a slow decline. You might still be fertile and you might still be having children but entering that perimenopause phase. It’s not a strict you hit this point and you're now in perimenopause.
People may not even realize they're in it.
You may have been in it for a while but you don't notice it until you're getting the hot flushes. The amount of women that come to me, they're like, “I'm only 40 and I'm flooding. I'm having 21-day cycles. My GP tells me it couldn't be perimenopause.” I'm like, “It absolutely can be.” If you understand what's physiologically happening, it makes sense that your progesterone is dropping off, which means you're not holding your luteal phase. The luteal phase is the phase from ovulation to your period and we want it to be 10 to 14 days. If your progesterone is dropping off, you might only be having a five-day luteal phase so then your period is coming around again.
You're not having the 10 to 14, you're only having 5 days.
You bleed more, you're more iron deficient, you haven't got enough progesterone to balance out the estrogen, and it's a whole thing.
If people are reading this and they are business owners and a lot of people will have irregular hours or maybe someone's just come to them and said, “I've got this amazing collaboration idea. Let's go live next week.” There isn't always a perfect routine for them to say, “It's every four weeks.” What strategies do you have for people who are like, “I understand this and I'm sick of feeling crap in the middle of the month or at the end of the month or start,” whatever their monthly thing is? How do they then put this into practice, especially if they are not somebody who has the same hours every week or the same work every week?
The first thing is I get it because doing this podcast is terrifying for me and I am in my luteal phase.
You're doing amazing.
I'm about a week out from my period. In a perfect world, I would have done this two weeks ago and I would have been funny and have much more clarity of thought but I'm not. Being aware of that, I've set up things in place. I've had my neurocom and my Carmex. I have gone for a walk and I've done things to calm myself down and also not beat myself up this partly is hormonally and there's only so much I can do about it. That being said, if you have the ability to choose when you can put things in, then track them to your cycle. What I would suggest is to download my ebook.
I've had a look at the ebook and it's good. I support downloading it.
I've got some worksheets so that you can track how you're feeling, what symptoms you're getting, and maybe even some action steps like, “This month, I'm in my luteal phase. I'm going to make sure that I have a bath without the kids because my daughter always wants to jump in or I'm going to go for a walk by myself or I'm going to rest.”
I don't know about you but when I grew up in the ‘90s and 2000s, as women, we were like, “We can do it all. We're not going to let our periods stop us from doing anything.” Gradually, we're coming to a place where we're like, “We're not men and it is harder.” To be honest, we need to honour that time when our hormones plummet and look after ourselves so that we have the energy for the rest of our cycle. You need to hibernate and calm yourself down and do those things. It should be non-negotiable.
It's so true because I finished school in the late ‘90s and there was a girl at my school who got a job and was a model and was on a tampon ad. She was kickboxing in the tampon ad and it was that exact message of, “Just because I've got my period, I can do anything.” It's so true what you're saying because there has been that expectation of pushing through it and it doesn't matter how you feel. If you do want to run to the cubicle and start crying at work, it's like, “What the hell is wrong with me? Get it together.” We put all this pressure on ourselves to take on that masculine energy.
It's your fault that you can't control yourself.
You've mentioned your background and how you came into Chinese medicine and you've been practicing that for over fifteen years. How do you get the word out about that particularly when even years ago, even now people would still see especially in Western countries as an alternative, a last resort? When I was trying to get pregnant the second time, it had been so easy the first time that I was like, “I can have a baby whenever I want. I'm one of those people.” Unfortunately, it wasn't.
You probably see a lot of people like this where there's this unexplained infertility. I remember talking to my GP who's lovely but she did say, “Fiona, either pick.” She's of Eastern background. She was like, “Either pick, East or West? You can't keep trying all these things.” I was like, “No, I can.” How do you get the word out about that when there's also a large education piece to do there as well?
This is the thing I find the most frustrating and I have had to Educate myself with more functional medicine things like looking at how to read blood tests and optimal blood tests. A GP may say to you that your ferritin, which is your iron reserves, are fine when they're 30 but the reference range is 30 to 200.
You've crossed over. If you were 29, there'd be a problem.
The same with prolactin, prolactin can be high and it shuts off all your other hormones and they'll be like, “It's fine.” You're like, “It's not fine. We need to work on this.” In terms of business, it's been referral-based, to be honest. Especially with practitioners, there is that connection. You need someone to feel comfortable with you. It took a while. Referral-based has been the main form for me and doing a good job and staying in the one space long enough that you do get a network and people can find you.
I imagine as well that you would see a lot of people. Statistically, we're having children later, people are coming in later for these things, because we're never taught it and you're all taught, like, “Go get a career or start a business or do whatever, and then you can have children down the track.” Do you also deal with people who maybe don't want children or haven't gone down that path but are wanting to generally feel better?
Absolutely. I have a lot of women who come in to regulate their menstrual cycle or they're like, “Why am I feeling so shit at this time?” Often, when you're in it, it feels like it lasts so much longer than it may. You may think, “I'm depressed half of the month.” When you track it, it might only be seven days. Not that that's great but when you're in it, you're so bad that it feels like it's the whole month. Tracking those things can be powerful and then being aware, “I need to look after myself at that time.”
Back to business, when you said a lot of work comes through referrals, we have a similar business where a lot of work comes through referrals until the podcast. A lot of people are on our Sunday email. With referral work, particularly for people who are reading who are service-based businesses, it can feel sometimes like feast and famine because you can't control the referrals. You can do a bit of marketing.
What have you done around that to keep going for over fifteen years? A massive pat on the back. That's a huge amount of time. Most businesses in Australia, under half, fail in the first three years. It’s not like you're a dentist where every person in the country sees a dentist every so often. You are dealing with an education piece and then a more specific niche and then only in the last few years have more women been even aware of this stuff. How have you kept going and who else have you brought on board? Have you had anyone to help with your marketing or your finances?
I opened my clinic and that was in the middle of COVID.
Nice timing. In Melbourne?
Yes, in Melbourne. I opened when we were in stage three lockdown. A week later, we went into stage four lockdown and I couldn't treat any patients for six weeks. I had a good client base. During the first six years of practice, I nearly quit every six months. I would go through this cycle of, “I can't do this. I can't live in this feast and famine anymore. It's too exhausting.”
I almost needed permission to give up so that I could pick myself up again and go, “There isn't anything else for me. This is it. I love it so much. I love helping people. I don't want to do anything else.” It is hard. Around that six-year mark, I did a course called Double Your Patients in 90 Days. I cannot remember the company but that was the first introduction for me to marketing and realizing that you're not selling yourself, you're just sending your message out there. There's a difference with that. That was good.
I'm not great even now at outsourcing, it's something I'm trying to get better at. I haven't needed to do so much up until recently because I want to work my clinic but also create a course called Fast Track Your Fertility for women who can't necessarily come and see me but that I can give them all that knowledge. Because of that, I need to build my brand. I am having to step outside my comfort zone, learn some of this stuff, and ask for more help. I'm not great at it, I'm getting better.
What is the phase where you feel amazing?
Ovulation and follicular phase.
You've given so much advice but for anyone reading who is a woman who gets menstrual cycles and is a business owner, what is the top piece of advice that you would say in regards to all of this stuff? Is it tracking?
I would say take a couple of months to track where you are in your cycle and how you're feeling because you will find patterns where you're like, “I'm feeling good around day 7, 8, and 9,” and then maximizing that, and then being able to plan that out a bit and be like, “I'm doing a masterclass or a podcast. I'm going to try and sync it to that.”
The other thing is not beating yourself up when you are in that down because you will be. It's crap that we, as females, have to do that. We can maximize the other time and lean into that. Charting will give you feedback on what's happening. One of my patients had an ablation so she's not getting her period but I am tracking her cycle and can tell her, “You're about to get your “period”. That's why you're irritable and picking fights with your husband. You need to be aware of that.” Does that make sense?
Yes, that totally makes sense. I'm putting you on the spot here but is there anything that men who are reading or people who identify as that can do to help? It's a hard topic, isn't it? Let's say you had women working for you, it's not like you can say, “Tell me when your period is so that we can track your progress.” Is it just men becoming more aware of this stuff and educating themselves as well?
Also, for a long time, women didn't want to say, “Yes, I've got my period,” or, “I'm feeling down because of it.” because there was this stigma of, “You're so emotional. It's all to do with just your emotions. I haven't done anything wrong. It's all you.” Is there anything that men can do, whether they are in a business with other women, or they are a supportive partner in some heteronormative relationship?
Going a bit easier on us. I don't want to polarise. I don't want women to turn around and go, “Softly.”
It's a hard thing, isn't it?
It is really hard. As you get older, you worry less about what other people are thinking. We have tiptoed around this in society. Half of us are women so why are we doing this?
It's keeping us down.
We're keeping each other down, it's ridiculous.
Another thing I wanted to ask while I'm finding this all fascinating and you may not be able to answer this so don't worry if you can't but why do women sync? When I used to live with my housemates, my periods would sync with them and it was like, “We both got our period again at the same time.” I was listening to an obstetrician on the radio who had sisters who were twins and who had baby boys on the exact same day.
They both delivered their babies and they were talking to the obstetrician and he was saying, “A lot of the time, we see sisters who might live in the same house and then they sync so they're ovulating at the same time and they get pregnant at the same time.” He's like, “These two women were living in separate houses but it may be that they were just so in sync that we often see menstrual cycles get in sync with each other.” Can that happen in the workplace as well?
It can and I do see it quite a bit and I was talking to a patient about this. I don't know all the technical stuff.
It's mysterious.
I don't know if it's like lunar cycles and all of that stuff but it's something I'd have to look into a bit more but I do see it quite a lot.
It's interesting. Even some of my friends will be like, “We've both got a period at the same time.” It's like, “That's weird.”
I've got one friend and we'll message each other and be like, “I'm feeling terrible today. Period must be coming.” They're like, “I'm going through the same thing, which is nice.” I don't know enough about it.
It's just a fascinating thing. Back to your business, when you said before you had this course that you've done, have there been any books or anything else? Do you have a Chinese medicine mentor or somebody that you've worked with? Likewise, have you found any apps or platforms or even apps for tracking periods, which, especially in the US, a lot of people have stopped using because of the ridiculous laws that have come into place? In your own business, firstly, have you got any mentors or books that have helped you with your business side of things?
On the business side of things, I've been reading Denise Duffield-Thomas’s Get Rich, Lucky Bitch!, which I enjoyed. because I'm creating an online course, Tina Tower’s Million Dollar Micro Business has been helpful.
Both are Australian women.
I've enjoyed that. Another book, which is not a business book at all but I loved it, and it's a great book for letting go of regret because there are a lot of things that we say, “I should have done that,” and it's a fiction book, The Midnight Library by Matt Haig.
That’s one of my favourite books of all time.
I love it so much. I want to re-read it. I finished it and I was like, “There is nothing holding me back except me.” I love that book. It's not a business book but I loved it. In terms of mentors, Chinese-medicine-wise, I had a lecturer, Adrian Button, who was amazing. He stepped up for me and helped me. I've had a lot of people who have said all the right things but when it came to it, it hasn't, which has been disappointing but then it's made me go the other way. I've had multiple students who I'm happy to have students and support them. Even when they become practitioners, they'll ring me or they'll message me. We need to support each other. I don't think there's enough.
Do you think that's because people think there's a scarcity or something? It's like, “I'll help you out.,” but then when you go to get help, they can't help because of that.
I don't know. I've had some practitioners be like, “I'm too busy.” I always put myself in those shoes and go, “I would have loved someone to have looked after me.”
Or have that person to bounce ideas. I work with some psychologists. My friend, Natasha Ace, runs a business that's coaching for psychologists. There are lots of people who work by themselves all day.
It's lonely. The one thing is it can get lonely. I have got a couple of great practitioners and they help me with business, even launching this e-guide, which I've never done before, and it's the first thing that I've put out there. I've had quite a few of my practitioner friends read it, edit it, and help me with that. Honestly, I value those friendships because we need them. In terms of other marketing stuff, I did Marie Forleo's B-School, which I liked and I go back to that. In the future, I probably need something more one on one.
What are you most proud of from your journey in business so far?
A couple of things, the first one would be opening a clinic in the middle of COVID. That was a big leap. Honestly, the best thing I've ever done and I am super proud of it, I love it, and I've got plants everywhere, I love coming to work. I love my space. The other thing is all the people I've been able to help and the relationships I've been able to build. I've got a patient who's in labour as we speak. I've known her for maybe six years. She couldn't get pregnant and kept having miscarriages.
We got her pregnant with her first one and then came for a second and kept having miscarriages. She would keep falling pregnant super easily and I said, “I'm pretty sure there's natural killer cells going on. I need you to see this specific fertility specialist.” She pushed back and I pushed. She's seen him and she's in labor. A lot of it is educating people and helping them advocate for themselves. I know that I will have her in my life in some capacity forever. Being able to help people have families is amazing.
It's life-changing. I know when we had different specialists who helped us get to our second child, you will never forget those people. Even if you never see them again, you're like, “You transformed our life and you gave us something we didn't think we were going to get.” That's incredible that you're helping people like that all the time. What is next for you? You have your ebook. Where can people connect with you? Where can they find out about the ebook and other offers that you have available?
Tempe Simmons Acupuncture is my website and the ebook is on my homepage. I also have a free little fertility guide if you want a basic intro to some of the blood tests to get or sperm. I could do a whole bloody thing on sperm and how bad sperm quality is across the board and BBT charting. The next thing I'm going to create this Fast Track Your Fertility course so that anyone can get access to it. Often, you want to start trying and there's so much out of your control and you go to a GP and they won't even look at you unless you've been trying for twelve months.
If I can send someone and say, “These are the blood tests we can get,” we can get them through an independent pathology lab so we can start working before a year. If we can get a sperm test or even get you both on prenatal, if we can get you tracking your cycle so we can tell when you're ovulating and if your progesterone is holding, there are so many things that you can be doing before they say you're ready. I see so many women come to me who are about to do IVF and none of these things have been checked off and it is mortifying to me. The sperm is terrible but they've been told it's fine and that's a whole other story. I wish that they had known this stuff first so that's why I'm creating it.
Yeah. I also think for people who are in regional areas or even people, the amount of work that goes into this is almost like another job trying to have another baby if you don't naturally fall pregnant.
It's all-consuming when you're in it. You can't think of anything else. All you're doing is tracking your cycle and it's rough.
Putting out this course and your ebook and having that resource available for people is life-changing so thank you for that. Also, thank you for coming on the podcast, especially in your luteal phase.
Thank you so much for having me.
Thanks so much. Bye.
Thank you. Bye.
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A lot in there. As I said at the start and I said throughout with Tempe and she completely agrees, why haven't we been taught this? Many people will be in their 40s reading this and thinking, “I've only had to put up with this every single month for decades without knowing what is going on.” That is part of a much bigger picture and a much bigger problem in terms of women and health and how women are looked at and appreciated and valued in society.
I wanted to firstly thank Tempe for coming on and sharing so much wisdom as we talked about. She does have an ebook that goes through all of this and you can find that over at TempeSimmons.com and that is called The Menstrual Phase Guide, that's the ebook. Tempe also has a new course called Fast Track Your Fertility and you'll be able to find that on her website as well. If you are in that season of life where you are looking at your fertility or looking at your menstrual cycle, she's got her ebook and her course.
If you are finding all of this new, if you want to understand how to work with your menstrual cycle and your business, definitely go and check that out. As I said, I've got a copy of it and found it useful. Honestly, I've got so much out of this conversation. As I talked about with Tempe, I had gone through a bit of this going through IVF and learning stuff. It blows my mind that we don't talk about this enough.
Two things that I took away from it and of course, there were so many. The first is to work with your cycle. That is gain, that we just don't talk about, periods, and all of that, it's such a taboo topic. It's always seen as such a dirty, messy thing that no one wants to talk about or be open about. For too long, we have accepted, “You’re moody,” and all the things that people say without looking at it like, “What is going on?” As if we have a choice sometimes in that matter. Knowing and working with your menstrual cycle is key.
Also, for anyone else who is not menstruating but is working with maybe in a business partnership or other women who are aware of this, being aware and being helpful, not hindering things, and making things worse. That is the first thing, working with it. The second, which comes out of this, is being proactive about your own body and your health. I know that for many of us, we can get busy with our businesses.
We can get complacent around things. We can let things slide, “I'll do it tomorrow. I'll start next week.” We don't do those things. We prioritize business a lot of the time over our own health. That could be physical health or your fertility health. It could be your mental health. It could be your spiritual health. Often, we put business as the number one priority in our lives until something goes wrong with our health and then we look at it rather than being proactive.
I was watching a show, a good one, it's basically about Blue Zones and it's on Netflix. Blue Zones are those areas where there is a higher concentration of sedentarians so people who live past 100 or to 100 and beyond. The guy was talking about an area in Costa Rica and how proactive they are. Instead of waiting for people to go to the doctor or waiting for people to turn up at the hospital, they have a system for people to get a visit. Once a year or twice a year, every single person will get a visit from a medically trained professional who will check them, and who will look through their statistics, and their vitals, and catch things before they develop.
The presenter, who was from America and was talking about Americans but this goes for a lot of countries, especially in the West, was talking about how our health system is set up to be reactive. It's there when something goes wrong as opposed to being proactive and looking at how can we prevent things from happening. That's something that Tempe is talking about and trying to help people with. Let's be proactive. Let's look at this well before it becomes a real issue.
I want to thank Tempe again. If you are interested in that super helpful guide, you can find it at TempeSimmons.com called a Menstrual Phase Guide. You can also reach out to Tempe on Instagram, @TempeSimmonsAccupuncture. I'm sure she would love to hear from you and what you took away from this podcast. I'd also love to hear from you so don't be a stranger. You can email us at Hello@MyDailyBusiness.com or find us on Instagram, @MyDailyBusiness_. Thank you so much for reading. I'll see you next time. Bye.
