Would it surprise you to hear that menstruation can be a great time for detail oriented work, and for making great decisions? On this week’s episode of Period Story, I speak to Maggie McDaris, the CEO and co-founder of Phase, a company that helps women align their work with their menstrual cycle.
In this episode, Maggie shares:
- The story of her postpartum adenomyosis diagnosis and what she does to manage the condition
- The four phases of the menstrual cycle and how less than 40% of women know when they ovulate
- The post-ovulation cliff and why she believes the luteal phase gets a bad rap
- The generational divide on what productivity means
- Why our periods can be a great time to reflect, make decisions and take action on those decisions
- Why the follicular phase is a great time for strategic planning and creativity
- The influence of testosterone on communication skills
- And of course, the story of her first period
Maggie says that it’s very empowering to know how changes in our physiology and hormones impact how we show up every day and understanding this can help us show up as a better version of ourselves.
Thank you, Maggie!
Get in touch with Maggie:
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SHOW TRANSCRIPT
Le’Nise Brothers: Hi, Maggie. Thank you so much-
Maggie McDaris: Hi, Le’Nise …
Le’Nise Brothers: for c- coming onto the show today. We got all of our Arsenal chat out of the way.
Maggie McDaris: We did.
Le’Nise Brothers: So I want to kick off the show by asking you to tell us the story of your very first period.
Maggie McDaris: Yeah. So I vividly remember it.
So I was 12, so in America, from the US if you can’t tell. And it was over the summer holidays, and I was in between sixth and seventh grade, and it was the Fourth of July, which is a big holiday. There’s barbecues, and pool parties, and fireworks, and I woke up the morning of the Fourth of July and had my period.
And it was such an interesting moment because now with my, like, adult perspective, I can look back on it and see that so much of what I was feeling was, like, all of the sudden this onslaught of the stigma and shame associated with your cycle. I knew what was coming. I had friends who had started their periods.
Like, I wasn’t… There wasn’t anything biologically that I wasn’t prepared for. But emotionally, I was not ready, and I remember going into my mom’s bathroom and crying, and being like, “It’s started. It happened.” Like, I just… And I, I, you know, could have also been hormones. But I, I think in that moment I was so scared, and, and I felt a little vulnerable, and that I don’t think I had prepared myself for that.
It was not my- the physical experience of my first period was not bad at all. It was super, super light. But I did, I went to, we had a, every year we had a massive extended family get-together at my aunt and uncle’s house, and cousins, and there was a pool and a barbecue. And so I didn’t swim. I didn’t know, my early introduction to, like, period care was mostly pads, and I didn’t know how that worked.
And bless my mom, I think she did her best. But so much of what I learned was sort of social kind of osmosis.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah.
Maggie McDaris: And I just remember two feelings. One is, like, this real FOMO of, “Oh, I feel like I’m on the sidelines today because of this thing,” and my 12-year-old self doesn’t know how to process that. And also I remember being terrified everybody was talking about it, that my mom was talking to my aunts and my cousins, and that everybody knew.
And so I think what’s so interesting is a- and mind you, you know, I played sports. Played football competitively, hence getting the Arsenal chat out of the way. And I think I felt my memories, my memories of especially my, my first kind of year of having a cycle was very much tied into shame and also h- how do I navigate this with these things in my life where this is kind of interrupting it?
What am I going to miss out on? The emotional experience for me of my first period, and really the first year of periods, is what still you know, stays with me however many years later.
Le’Nise Brothers: That’s so interesting, because I think you’re one of the first people who have mentioned this kind of emotional side to it, where it sounds like you were very practically prepared.
Maggie McDaris: Yeah.
Le’Nise Brothers: But then when the reality hit you, there was this emotional side that you just maybe you weren’t ready for, you didn’t, it was overwhelming. And, at that young age, it’s a big event.
Maggie McDaris: Yeah.
Le’Nise Brothers: And can you say a little bit more about how that emotional side, it changed over the years, or how you learned to navigate that part of having a period and a menstrual cycle?
Maggie McDaris: Yeah, I think, you know, I’ll be honest, I, I think focusing on the emotional side is coming from a fairly privileged place, because before I had my daughter, my periods were incredibly manageable my entire life. They were regular. They weren’t too heavy. They weren’t accompanied by intense symptoms. And so I think that’s why the emotional response is sort of what sticks out to me, because the physical day-to-day impact was not what I’ve heard, you know, in many of the stories I’ve heard on your podcast which was sort of this immediate onslaught of all these terrible symptoms.
But I think, you know, so much of it was… And again, this was the 90s, early noughts. And I think so much of my preparation around my period, even in the context of the sex ed and conversations I’d had with friends and family, was still sort of shrouded in secrecy. It was, it’s hush-hush, and we sort of, here’s the secret drawer where we keep all the period products.”
And, you know, it was very much something that was kind of swept under the rug that we tolerated, we didn’t really celebrate, and we di- we weren’t really outspoken about. And that environment meant that when it happened to me, all of the sudden I was now subject to, “Oh, this is, this part of you, we don’t talk about this.
We don’t… You know, this is not something that we engage with or we interact with.” Bless all my football coaches, they were all men. They all had no idea what to do, and so they just didn’t talk about it. So it wasn’t something that was really addressed. And so I think I really internalised that this was a part of me, this was a part of being human that was not socially acceptable.
And so my emotional reaction was really a response to that, sensing the stigma. And I think generally, I have a very low embarrassment tolerance. So, like I, I think all of those things culminated to where I felt incredibly emotionally overwhelmed in the early months of understanding what this was like.
I will say, as I learned to tolerate it, I was an early adopter of, like, tampons, you know, the tricks of hiding them up your sleeve, in your pockets, whatever. and because my symptoms were manageable, I wasn’t a super heavy bleeder, right? So, like, leak fear wasn’t really something I dealt with.
As I, I got older, as I realised, “Oh, this isn’t impacting my life in the same ways I thought that it would. Hey, I can now go to a pool party because I kind of understand…” I, I think I, I grew out of some of that shame. But you know, it took, a minute.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah. And that’s so interesting because we live in a culture now, certainly in the UK-
Maggie McDaris: Yeah
Le’Nise Brothers: Where periods are much more widely spoken about. Certainly in London, you know, you see advertisements for tampons on-
Maggie McDaris: Yeah …
Le’Nise Brothers: the sides of buses. But we think back to the ’90s, the 2000s, where it especially depending on where you grew up in, in the US, they were hush-hush, and how you picked up on that shame, like it was like almost came through by osmosis to you.
And-
Maggie McDaris: 100% …
Le’Nise Brothers: the effects of that is just, that’s just so fascinating. And-
Maggie McDaris: Well, I think advertisements are such a good example. In the early nought, a tampon advert was just a bunch of women dancing or doing things.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah.
Maggie McDaris: It never showed the product. It never showed blood. It never talked about absorbency.
It was literally just, “Hey, look, you can go about your life. Oh, and by the way, at the end, this is a tampon advertisement,” right?
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah.
Maggie McDaris: So I think that’s actually a very relevant example of sort of how the conversation has changed quite-
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah …
Maggie McDaris: drastically.
Le’Nise Brothers: You said over time your tolerance changed and, you know, you’ve just grew into it.
Were there any moments where you thought, “Actually, I’m okay with this now. I don’t feel any shame”?
Maggie McDaris: I don’t know if I can, if I can pinpoint a moment. I remember some, in college especially, when you had shared living environments, where all of the sudden– ‘Cause even in high school, I think the conversations I would have with my girlfriends, one, you know, with sports, everything was sort of focused in one direction.
It was, we would easily talk about, like, stress diarrhea before a match, but yet somehow we wouldn’t talk about our periods. But I do think at university, once I was living with groups of women, that experience did a lot to destigmatise things. Because you go, “Oh, wait a minute. This isn’t just me.
This is all of us. This is a shared experience.” And I would say– And, and because at university I was also, you know, in nutrition and dietetics, and I was understanding some of the systemic impacts now of these hormonal changes, and I had more information, I think probably that kind of university-shared living experience was sort of the switch that flipped, where you go, “Not only am I moving away from the stigma and shame, but also, this is half the population we’re talking about.”
More than now, 51%. And, you know, I think some of that, like, feminine rage got triggered a little, where you’re like, “Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Why am I hiding this? Why is she hiding this? Why?” Because you have this, you know– And like I said, living with other women, and now all of a sudden you have the language, and you start catering to each other’s cycles and like, “Oh, you know, someone started their period today.
Okay, we’re going to get the Ben & Jerry’s,” or whatever it may be. Like, you– It became a galvanising experience. Mm. And that was so powerful in kind of lifting the veil of stigma, and then freed me up to go, “Hmm, interesting. Now I’m kind of mad that this was my experience for so long.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah. Yeah. And you mentioned now, you mentioned that your periods changed after you had your daughter.
Can you say a little bit more about that? Yeah.
Maggie McDaris: Um, that’s fun. That’s been a fun journey. So I had my daughter, and from pretty much the moment my periods returned, they were hemorrhagic. I was going through a tampon and a pad in an hour for multiple days in a row. And so the level of bleeding I had was so disruptive to my life, I couldn’t leave the house for, like, two days of my cycle because it was just in- incredibly heavy and intense.
And so for the first couple months after I gave birth, I was like, “Well, this must just be part of the pregnancy recovery process.” And unfortunately, that continued for me for 18 months. And in the process, one, I went back to work at 12 weeks. two, I, unbeknownst to me, within a couple months, had anemia, which then developed into chronic anemia because I could not…
I was bleeding so much every month that no supplementation or dietary changes was getting me back up. So I had to have multiple iron infusions. I lost all my hair and then it took an additional 18 months, so my daughter was three and a half when I got an adenomyosis diagnosis as the root cause of some of this bleeding.
So, you know, it took, I would say, 18 months to get, like, proper medical intervention, and then from there I was on tranexamic acid every month. And I’m incredibly hormone sensitive, so, like, um, Mirena IUDs, birth control aren’t really super viable options for me in terms of the treatment of the heavy bleeding.
So I was just, I just, take tranexamic acid for five days during my cycle. But that still wasn’t dealing with the root cause, and so just six and a half, eight months ago is when I got diagnosed with adenomyosis. And it was, one of those things where I was on doctor number three.
It’s just, it’s that, it’s such a cliched story now, and having listened to your podcast, I hear what a cliched story is, of I had to go to multiple physicians to finally have one of them go, “We’re going to do a 3D scan of your uterus, and we’re going to look at things a little differently. And oh, hey, do you see this layer of tissue right here in between your two muscular layers of your uterus?
That does, that’s not supposed to be there.” And so you just, it, it was, you know, very freeing, and now, In the future I can, I can have conversations around like what long-term management for that looks like. But yeah, and it, it has given me a lot of grace and respect for women who that is, has been their menstrual cycle experience for their entire lives.
Mm. Um, yeah.
Le’Nise Brothers: Well, firstly, thank you so much for sharing that.
Maggie McDaris: Yeah.
Le’Nise Brothers: Can I ask how you’re managing it now? Is it the tranexamic acid that’s helping you during your period? And then is there anything you’re doing outside of that to manage the inflammation?
Maggie McDaris: Yeah. So the biggest thing is inflammation management for me.
And so I am very practically, I take tranexamic acid from day one of my cycle. And again, this is not medical advice. For me, I find if I wait till my bleeding is heavy, I’m already behind the eight ball. So the moment I start bleeding, I have to stay on top of my tranexamic acid.
And even then, the second day can sometimes be a little hairy. But for me, that is how I’m managing, and it’s shortened my cycle significantly. So I’d be bleeding that heavily for, like, seven days, whereas now I’m a solid, like, four- to five-day. Day two can sometimes be tough, but everything else is much more manageable on tranexamic acid.
I don’t love it in terms of, like, just long term. and I have also, I would say definitely in the past kind of two years, started to experience some of the other symptoms of adenomyosis, like a little more pain during my cycle and also during ovulation, just a little more sort of abdominal tenderness, cramping, things like that, which again, because that was not my experience pre-child, I have a very low tolerance for, I’m learning.
So the inflammation management is the hardest part, and I would say my personal- the hardest part about that for me right now is not so much the dietary piece that, you know, with my background of low inflammation diet, it’s fairly accessible to me, given kind of the, the nutritional base that I had.
What I found really difficult is actually my physical fitness routines and how attuned I have to be to how my body is responding to how far I can push it and when. And I wouldn’t even say it’s, um, as simple as kind of training to my cycle, which I know is something that’s talked about a lot with cycle syncing.
It’s more being highly aware of my histamine response and my inflammation response. And so I’ll notice, for example, if when I’m exercising, I get a lot of congestion, or I feel like the day after I exercise, I’m way more fatigued than the volume of exercise should have led to. I’m now very diligent about making changes because those are the early symptoms I used to miss, to where then by the time I get to my period, I’m hyper-inflamed, got super sensitive histamine response, and everything just sort of snowballs from there.
So that’s been, I would say for me, the last 18 months, the thing that I have shifted and connected to that has impacted my experience and my inflammatory kind of response.
Le’Nise Brothers: That is so interesting. So obviously-
Maggie McDaris: Yeah …
Le’Nise Brothers: I have a million questions.
Maggie McDaris: Go for it.
Le’Nise Brothers: The histamine piece is really interesting because I think for the average person who might be listening to this, they might not understand the connection between histamine and inflammation-
Maggie McDaris: Yeah
Le’Nise Brothers: but also the connection between estrogen and histamine. This is a two-part question. So the first part is can you just explain a little bit more about that estrogen, histamine, inflammation connection? And then can you, as a follow-up, can you talk a little bit more about anything you do In the kind of week before ovulation, where we know-
Maggie McDaris: Yeah
Le’Nise Brothers: estrogen and histamine, they rise.
Maggie McDaris: Yeah. Okay, so it’s a little outside of my scope to talk about the mechanism.
Le’Nise Brothers: Okay.
Maggie McDaris: My learnings are more based on my physicians explaining this to me.
Le’Nise Brothers: Okay.
Maggie McDaris: So I don’t want to get… I, I don’t want to go outside of scope. I am, I’m still understanding the relationship between estrogen and histamine.
But what I can tell you is what I do.
Le’Nise Brothers: Okay.
Maggie McDaris: And that is one, is I start taking anti-inflammatories in my late luteal phase. So from about day five out of my cycle, I will take ibuprofen to start to mitigate the inflammatory response. Similarly I will take, uh, allergy meds right now-
Le’Nise Brothers: Okay …
Maggie McDaris: to help support the preemption of the histamine response.
And so I will take those the week before my cycle, and I have found that to be immensely helpful. Um, again, this is not prescriptive. I know another to my, any Americans listening, uh, Pepcid AC, like heartburn, some of the antihistamine heartburn medications have also, there’s early clinical validation of kind of the preemptive use of those before your cycle to help inhibit a histamine overresponse, if you will.
So yeah, but in terms of the mechanism, I’m still understanding it. There’s also sort of some mast cell stuff that’s happening in the mix-
Le’Nise Brothers: Okay …
Maggie McDaris: that again, I’m just, I am it’s super helpful for me to be like, “Here’s all the things I’m learning,” but I can’t explain them ’cause I’m not quite there yet.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah.
Maggie McDaris: But I know that it’s this sort of lovely cocktail of inflammation, histamine response, mast cell response, estrogen hormone dysregulation, and then it all starts again and kind of builds-
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah …
Maggie McDaris: on each other. Yeah … so I’m kind of really in an experimental stage with my own journey to try to figure out what’s working or what will work for me right now.
I don’t love how medicinally supportive that is for me. Like, I don’t love that for basically two weeks of the month, the week leading up to my cycle, I’m taking medication that’s really, I would say an off-label use. And then during my cycle, I’m taking tranexamic acid so that, you know, I’m- I’ve got basically medical management for two months of the week, or two weeks of the month.
I don’t love that. It doesn’t feel super sustainable, but at the same time, we’re kind of in a let’s regulate to the point where we can start to explore some other potential root causes. I can invest in things like tightening up pieces of my diet-
Le’Nise Brothers: Mm …
Maggie McDaris: looking into my gut health, my microbiome health.
It creates a level of regulation that allows me to then start to address maybe some of the root causes.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah.
I think just to add a little bit more to that, what’s really interesting about the estrogen-histamine connection is that estrogen is this hormone that it guides a significant part of our menstrual cycle, along with progesterone, and it rises around the midway point of our period.
And then estrogen is connected to histamine, which is this compound, It’s connected to our immune system. Right now, a lot of people who are listening might be affected by histamine because of pollen in the air, might be taking-
Maggie McDaris: Yes …
Le’Nise Brothers: more antihistamines because of that kind of allergic response.
But because estrogen and histamine are so tightly bound-
Maggie McDaris: Yeah …
Le’Nise Brothers: when estrogen is even slightly higher than it should be, then histamine is higher.
Maggie McDaris: Yeah.
Le’Nise Brothers: And so that point in the menstrual cycle where estrogen is highest right before we ovulate, that’s really interesting based on what you’re describing around your management of the adenomyosis, where-
Maggie McDaris: Yeah
Le’Nise Brothers: you need to be so aware of those points where inflammation ‘ Cause when estrogen is too high, that can lead to an inflammatory response.
Maggie McDaris: Yeah.
Le’Nise Brothers: And inflammation can be high in the menstrual cycle. I … This is just so fascinating to me. It’s … I,
Maggie McDaris: I know, and it, it’s one of those, it’s speaking of female rage, those moments of, like, we, I just feel we are so behind in understanding all of these complex mechanisms.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah.
Maggie McDaris: And especially, listen, as we, as we start talking about, like, hormones in the brain, you’ll hear me say, like, our sex hormones are not just sex hormones. They are multi-system elements that have all of these sort of multifactorial interactions.
Le’Nise Brothers: Mm.
Maggie McDaris: And we have so little understanding of all of it. My base level understanding is that elevated estrogen can inhibit the breakdown of histamine-
Le’Nise Brothers: Yes …
Maggie McDaris: so it leads to sort of a histamine over-storage.
Le’Nise Brothers: Mm.
Maggie McDaris: Again, this is where I’m like, “I’m outside of my scope.” Yeah. So we’ll leave it at-
Le’Nise Brothers: No, but you’re, you’re exactly right
Maggie McDaris: my simplest kind of understanding. You get these sort of chicken and egg conversations, because you have these gynecological issues, like adenomyosis, which impact hormonal regulation, which then impacts histamine regulation.
Le’Nise Brothers: Mm.
Maggie McDaris: But then histamine can increase the production of estro- And so it’s, again and I think we’re at the stage now where we’re not quite sure where to interrupt that circle.
Le’Nise Brothers: Mm.
Maggie McDaris: And so hence the kind of throwing spaghetti at the wall of taking antihistamines, taking anti-inflammatories. Yeah, and again, there are lots of medical contraindications to taking ibuprofen as regularly as I do. If you have any of those, please don’t do it. Yeah. Just throwing that out there as well.
Le’Nise Brothers: Just one more thing to add into this-
Maggie McDaris: Mm-hmm …
Le’Nise Brothers: and then I want to move the conversation on a little bit. But-
Maggie McDaris: Yeah …
Le’Nise Brothers: one thing that has been helpful when I’ve worked with women with adenomyosis, has been antihistamines like quercetin.
Maggie McDaris: Mm-hmm.
Le’Nise Brothers: The research is there around quercetin, and research tells us that it can be as effective as an antihistamine like Pepcid AC.
Maggie McDaris: Mm-hmm.
Le’Nise Brothers: So just something interesting to, to throw in there, because I know that-
Maggie McDaris: Yeah …
Le’Nise Brothers: there can be a lam- long-term impact to taking, uh, antihistamines like Pepcid AC, like taking ibuprofen, where you’re, you know, worried about the lining of the stomach.
Maggie McDaris: And would you recommend, like, medicinal doses, like, in the form of supplements of quercetin versus, like, matcha green tea … I can’t remember what else it’s, where else you’d find it in food, but, like, y- you know, rather than focus … You think there’s kind of a, like- a mega dose, if you will that you need to access
Le’Nise Brothers: I wouldn’t say me- a mega dose.
Maggie McDaris: Maybe not mega dose, but, uh, in, in supplement form- Yeah … right? Kind of the-
Yeah … yeah.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah, I would say that the supplemental form of quercetin can be highly, highly effective.
Maggie McDaris: Yeah.
Le’Nise Brothers: From a food perspective, you were looking at things like onions, red onions-
Maggie McDaris: Mm-hmm …
Le’Nise Brothers: grapes, especially red grapes.
Apples, great source of quercetin. But I’ve seen a lot of success with with the supplement form of quercetin. So I would… No, it’s definitely something that’s worth looking into.
Maggie McDaris: Yeah.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah. Okay. We’re adding all of my- Okay … usual caveats and we’re not working together on a client basis and all of that.
Maggie McDaris: Of course, this is not medical advice. Yes. This is not… Yeah, yeah, no, no, I, yeah, no need. Yeah.
Le’Nise Brothers: So I want to talk about your business because-
Maggie McDaris: Yeah …
Le’Nise Brothers: this is completely in my wheelhouse. It’s all about aligning The way women work with their menstrual cycle.
Maggie McDaris: Yeah.
Le’Nise Brothers: I want to just take a step back and do kind of level set for any listeners who maybe don’t fully understand the phases of the menstrual cycle.
Maggie McDaris: Yeah.
Le’Nise Brothers: Can you just talk about the four phases, and then I’d like you to also say what the biggest misunderstanding you think women have about each of those four phases.
Maggie McDaris: Yeah, absolutely. And I think I, I love that we sort of started on kind of my own journey because, uh, my journey was very informative in why Phase exists.
Le’Nise Brothers: Mm.
Maggie McDaris: Because as, you know, I mentioned kind of my own health struggles, a huge part of my healing journey was a basic understanding of the four phases of the menstrual cycle, how they impacted other areas of my life, not just when I was bleeding and when I wasn’t. Um, and it’s when I started cycle syncing all sorts of areas of my life that I found that to be incredibly instrumental in getting to a point where my health was, uh, was, you know, regulated and on track.
So yeah, so let’s start menstrual cycle 101. Um, it’s really interesting. We give a lot of talks, um, about rethinking productivity, what it means, you know, what does productivity mean in the context of having hormone fluctuations. And I start every talk with, okay, one being, wait, there’s something that’s not just bleeding, and five being, I could teach a course on this.
What is your level of understanding of the four phases of the menstrual cycle? And people live around two and three, uh, where I, I think sometimes especially ’cause you and I operate in this space and we’re in the, the women’s health and the femtech world, we maybe take for granted how much the general population still understands.
Less than 40% of women even know when they ovulate or could recognise when they ovulate, so I think it’s really important, I, I really appreciate that we’re starting here, which is what are the four phases of the menstrual cycle? So phase one of your menstrual cycle is your menstrual phase. So typically, day one of your cycle is the day when you start bleeding.
This is when your body is shedding its uterine lining, and this is when your hormones, kind of the two key players, uh, with what we’re going to talk about today are estrogen and progesterone, but there’s also testosterone, luteinising hormone, fol- follicular stimulating hormone. But all of them are pretty much at their lowest during your menstrual phase.
And this is, you know, when physical energy is going to be low. We’ll get into some of the cognitive stuff in a minute. But really, your menstrual phase, typically days one to five, up to days one to seven it’s the first part of your cycle, and it’s when you’re actively bleeding. Following menstruation is your follicular phase.
So this is when your hormones start to trigger your ovaries to grow follicles that will then become the eggs, that will then become a singular egg that is released during ovulation. This is when your sex hormones start to rise. Estrogen in particular is rising quickly and peaking, near the end of the cycle as you approach ovulation.
And so this is the part of your cycle that sort of gets your body ready to ovulate. And then you have the ovulation phase. Now, because I know there’ll be, there’ll be some people being like, “Ovulation isn’t a phase.” We know. Technically, ovulation is a single moment in time. It is the moment when your ovaries release the egg, or sometimes two eggs.
Hello, fraternal twins. And it is a burst of hormones basically that causes the egg to be released. Estrogen peaks here. It is the highest it is across any other point in your cycle and it peaks right before this happens. Then you ovulate. We talk about the ovulation phase as really the 48 to 72 hours leading up to that, where it’s characterised by your estrogen is still higher than at any other time of the month.
The other thing that happens in the 48 to 72 hours before you release an egg is testosterone peaks, and that becomes really significant actually when we start to talk about your brain and what’s happening cognitively during this part of your cycle. So for our product’s purposes, we actually consider ovulation a phase, and it is roughly 48 to 72 hours, ending, culminating in the moment your body releases the egg.
Then after ovulation, you have your luteal phase Okay. Y-
Le’Nise Brothers: I love the pause there.
Maggie McDaris: This is my, I think this is my life’s work, Le’Nise. And it is justice for the luteal phase.
Le’Nise Brothers: Mm.
Maggie McDaris: The luteal phase is a 14-day, it is actually the most regular, when you, when you get irregularity with your cycles, often it has to do with ovulation timing.
Your luteal phase is kind of the most predictable part of your cycle, and it is 14 days. I refuse to believe that women are resigned to suffering for half of their lives in their menstrual years. Okay? And I think it’s easy, it’s really easy to oversimplify the phases of the menstrual cycle and say, you know, “Me during my follicular phase,” you know, and it’s a meme, and you’re, like, dancing.
And it’s like, “Me during my luteal phase,” and you’re crashed out on the couch. Now there’s a reason the luteal phase has such a bad rap, and we’ll get to that. So what happens is that empty follicle, uh, it kind of triggers your sex hormones to start to produce progesterone. If you break down the word progesterone, it’s pro gestation.
Progesterone is the hormone to prepare your body for pregnancy should that egg it released get fertilised. And so, that rise in progesterone and drop in progesterone is what is responsible for a lot of what’s going on during your luteal phase. But that being said, if you look at the luteal phase, if you, you know, have one of those hormone graphs, you’ll see it’s really quite a bell curve, and there are two parts of the luteal phase that are responsible for its bad reputation.
The first, which this was one of my key learnings as I was learning about this, is what internally we affectionately call the post-ovulation cliff. After you ovulate, your sex hormones bottom out, and I would argue That’s one of the most difficult times of the month for many people because you have such a stark contrast with how you were feeling two days ago and how you feel today because of the delta there in the physical experience.
And then your progesterone slowly starts to rise. Estrogen also rises a bit as well, not near to kind of follicular heights. But y- you get a nice little bell curve. And really, like the eight days in the middle of your luteal phase, in my experience, are delightful. Um-
Le’Nise Brothers: Mm …
Maggie McDaris: we’ll talk, you know, mentally why I enjoy them so much.
And then as you approach your menstrual phase, your hormones start to drop again. Progesterone drops, estrogen drops, everything kind of prepares your body to bleed. Those days a- are typically when many women will experience PMDD, PMS, cramps, all of the negative physical symptoms associated with their cycle.
When we talk about this, we’re going to talk about the brain and all the positives of all the phases.
Le’Nise Brothers: Mm.
Maggie McDaris: I want to add the caveat, like I never want to diminish anyone’s lived experience. Those symptoms, regardless of what’s going on in your brain and whether your verbal fluency is high or not can be debilitating and, and life interfering.
I gave the example earlier that I was bleeding so heavily I couldn’t leave my house. When it comes to work, it doesn’t matter what’s going on in my brain if I can’t leave my house for fear of blood trickling down my leg at any given point, right? So I never want to diminish that lived experience, and if that is what you are experiencing, my PSA is that is not normal.
Please talk to your physician and keep talking to physicians until something changes. Yeah … so there’s that. But that is, that is sort of menstrual phases 101.
Le’Nise Brothers: Well, firstly, thank you. And it was, it’s actually so interesting being on the other side of this, ’cause I explain this all the time. Yeah. So hearing it back I just loved it.
Maggie McDaris: Ah. Good.
Le’Nise Brothers: That post-ovulation cliff that you mentioned is so interesting, because you do hear women talking about how ovulation is supposed to be this really amazing time, and why do I feel like I do right before my period starts? And you have people talking about post-ovulation syndrome-
Maggie McDaris: Yes
Le’Nise Brothers: Which is really interesting. So that’s just given me a bit of food for thought to explore that a little bit more. So we’ve done this level set, and now I want to ask you about the productivity.
Maggie McDaris: Yep.
Le’Nise Brothers: talk a little bit about productivity and the menstrual cycle.
And perhaps, again, what is the most surprising thing that you’ve learned through building out your business and focusing on this, this topic?
Maggie McDaris: Yeah. So one of the first surprising things, which maybe shouldn’t be that surprising, is that, when you use the term productivity, That means something very different to different people.
Le’Nise Brothers: Mm.
Maggie McDaris: And we, uh, it was really interesting. We did a lot of focus groups to to dig into, okay, what does productivity mean to you as a woman? And we found two answers that were the most common, right? So answer number one is productivity is output. It is, how much am I getting done? How quickly am I doing it?
How much can I get done? It’s performance, right? It is, it is how can I maximise my performance? And then on the other side, you have productivity defined more in the realm of efficiency. How can I get the most done as efficiently as possible in a way that is less draining, in a way that is sustainable?
And I’ll give you a guess, but there was a real age delineation between those two answers.
Le’Nise Brothers: That-
Maggie McDaris: What would you guess?
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah. I, you know what? That’s really interesting, ’cause that was going to be my next question. Because the first part of what you said, that feels very millennial to me.
It feels very girl boss. It feels very, like, hustle, work, very actually male aligned.
Maggie McDaris: Yeah.
Le’Nise Brothers: And then the second part is, feels very Gen Z. Very like, I just want to do what I need to do and be in the best way possible.
Maggie McDaris: Interesting. So it’s the opposite.
Le’Nise Brothers: Whoa. Okay.
Maggie McDaris: So it’s the younger, I would say, Gen Z ,Gen Z to early millennial, Zillennial- Yeah
who were very much it’s about how much I can get done, how much I can get done in a day. It was elder millennials to Gen X who were, it’s about efficiency, it’s about preventing burnout, it’s about a more holistic, systemic way of doing things. And my hypothesis to that is you don’t really… preventing burnout isn’t really a motivator until you’ve experienced burnout.
Le’Nise Brothers: Mm. Yeah.
Maggie McDaris: And so if you’re a young woman who still has been told, like, your period’s kind of something you have to deal with and ignore, and this is what… You know, and you just kind of crank on with things, versus women who don’t really have the luxury of just cranking on with things.
Because as you get older, also your life responsibilities tend to grow. Your likelihood for having a family, having responsibilities outside of work, you know, even having partners, all of that shifts your, your ability to… You need to do more with less, and so efficiency becomes more important. But also, as you get older, your risk for burnout increases, or you have either experienced it or you have come close to it.
And so that was really interesting because we talk about Phase as a productivity product. And so what we need to do is both. Because I’ll be honest, I have experienced burnout.
Le’Nise Brothers: Mm.
Maggie McDaris: And I’m still motivated. I’m a performer. I’m an optimiser. I’m still motivated. I want to understand the things that are going to get me to where I want to go faster and better.
And I want to do that in a way that means I can continue to do those things for a long period of time and show up in other areas of my life as a healthy version of myself. I’m kind of a nice both/and.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah.
Maggie McDaris: And so it was really important as we were building Phase that we spoke to both and that we made sure to frame the product in a way that where we could define productivity in a variety of ways and still feel confident saying that Phase is going to help you be more productive.
Le’Nise Brothers: That’s really fascinating.
Yeah. I’m loving this conversation.
Maggie McDaris: Yeah, it’s been fascinating for us to learn because I think, we had guesses around how people would use the product, how, how they would, perceive productivity, what they wanted in something like this. What, what we found was that, The majority of our active users really want something that is going to help optimise in, in, within the context of that more traditional definition of productivity, of like really I want to get some more done.
I want to feel good while doing it. And so, I feel good about the version of the product we have because I’ve I can confidently say we do both. It’s a both and. In working in alignment with your cycle-
Le’Nise Brothers: Mm-hmm …
Maggie McDaris: two things are true. One is you are optimising your day.
If you are choosing the task to work on that match most closely to where your brain is, to, to what’s happening physiologically in your body, that’s going to improve your output. You’re going to be able to do more, and you’re going to be able to do it better at its core. And it also means you’re not working in misalignment.
It means you’re not expending the energy and the, the cognitive stress to try to do things that feel really hard for you that day.
Le’Nise Brothers: Mm-hmm.
Maggie McDaris: And so we’re doing both. We are able to improve output, but also over time, if you’re, if you’re working in alignment day after day after day, we are having an impact on things like burnout risk because you’re not overexerting yourself constantly to reach the level of output you think you need to be doing.
Le’Nise Brothers: There are two points in our menstrual cycle that I want to ask you a little bit more about.
Maggie McDaris: Yeah.
Le’Nise Brothers: So the first one is menstruation. Yes. And culturally, we’ve been told, and I know this is dependent, as you mentioned before-
Maggie McDaris: Yeah …
Le’Nise Brothers: on individual experience. But culturally, we’ve been told that this is the time in our cycle where we will just feel terrible.
We won’t want to do anything.
Maggie McDaris: Yeah.
Le’Nise Brothers: And when I talk about this, and when I do workshops on this I surprise people when I talk about this time in our menstrual cycle and what actually we’re able to do, and the tasks that we can be most aligned with at this time.
Maggie McDaris: Yes.
Le’Nise Brothers: And then-
Maggie McDaris: Yeah. Go-
Le’Nise Brothers: And then, okay, let’s go, let’s start there.
Let’s start there.
Maggie McDaris: Yeah. Well, and, and I’d love to, if we could, you know, I, I can kind of go through phase by phase and talk about what’s happening in our brain, what’s available to us, why we sort of say here’s the strengths. Here’s the things you’re, you’re most aligned to accomplish during this time.”
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah.
Maggie McDaris: Let’s start with the menstrual phase. So with your menstrual phase, you’ve got obviously estrogen and progesterone are pretty much at their lowest, um, and that is going to correspond in a dip in physical energy. It’s going to correspond in a dip in motivation. We’ll talk about, as I talk through some of the other phases the relationship between estrogen and dopamine-
Le’Nise Brothers: Mm-hmm
Maggie McDaris: and how as estrogen rises, dopamine activity, dopamine receptor sensitivity also rises.
Le’Nise Brothers: Mm-hmm.
Maggie McDaris: So motivation feels harder to access when estrogen is low. We don’t have enough time in this podcast today to talk about what that means for, like, ADHD, for example. Um, but everyone with ADHD will go, “Yes, I feel my hormone fluctuations more.”
Yes. What’s happening during the menstrual phase, there’s a couple kind of key things. One is you have a rise and a shift in the gray matter density in your left inferior parietal lobe. You don’t need to remember that. But what you may need to know is that is the part of the brain that’s involved in distinguishing between perspectives.
Le’Nise Brothers: Mm-hmm.
Maggie McDaris: It’s the part of the brain that’s involved in interpreting nuance and in recalling past memories, so, like, episodic memory, recalling details. Additionally, and this is my favorite part about the menstrual cycle, your left and your right brain are communicating more efficiently during this time of the month than they are at any other time of the month. So that means your analysis, your critical thinking, your logic is able to speak fluently with your creativity, your intuition, the type B areas of your brain.
And so what this means is that one, that left parietal lobe activation, you can look back on past experiences, and you can recall them with detail, and you can interpret nuance and go, “Huh, here’s what worked. Here’s what didn’t.” So things, uh, you know, to kind of simplify it, reflection, analysis, this is a really great time of the month to do that.
But because of that cross brain integration where your left and right brain are talking so well, it also means you can take this analysis, and you can make it very actionable. Very practical, very tactile. It’s, you can go reflect. Okay, what does that mean? Here’s what went wrong.
Here’s what went right. Here’s the changes we need to make as a result of that.
Le’Nise Brothers: Mm.
Maggie McDaris: And so what I love is that, you know- Our bodies during this season do, they do need more physical rest than other phases, and it’s so great because the cognitive strengths that we have access to are, I would say, a quieter form of productivity.
It’s still productivity. It’s great time for, like, editing, organising, detail-oriented work, auditing systems and processes, conducting post-mortems, identifying small improvements to carry forward. It’s a really important and powerful time. It’s a productivity pause, not for the purpose of rest even, but for the purpose of reflection-
Le’Nise Brothers: Mm-hmm
Maggie McDaris: so that you move forward with, in greater strength, basically.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah.
Maggie McDaris: And I love this part of the cycle for that reason.
Le’Nise Brothers: people are always surprised when I talk about it like that, as in you can make really great decisions at this time of your cycle.
Maggie McDaris: Yeah.
Le’Nise Brothers: And they’re like, “But it’s my period. It’s really bad.” No. But if you separate what’s happening physically and focus on what’s happening cognitively-
Maggie McDaris: Yes …
Le’Nise Brothers: you might actually think, “Actually, my, I was a bit more clear-headed without the influence of estrogen,” which I sometimes call it the hormone of accommodation, where, especially when it’s at, at its peak, you might say yes to things where maybe you should have said no.
Maggie McDaris: One of the, like, my key takeaways when I give our rethinking productivity talk is do not let your ovulation self make decisions for your luteal and menstrual self. Okay? Your ovulation self is a yes man.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah.
Maggie McDaris: Your ovulation self’s going to be like, “I can do that, of course.” Your luteal and follicu- or, uh, menstrual selves are going to be like, “Excuse me, why did you do that?”
Yeah. “That was a terrible decision.” Yeah, so I’d love, if it’s all right, I’ll kind of go through each of the phases of the cycle-
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah …
Maggie McDaris: and the juicy productivity bits, the cognitive insights, that accompany that phase. I like to refer to your follicular phase as the on-ramp to the month, even though it’s technically the second phase of your cycle.
This is when estrogen is obviously increasing steeply and peaking at the end of this phase, and that rise in estrogen is really what is responsible during your follicular phase for the cognitive and emotional and energetic shifts that you’re going to experience during this phase. So yes, you’re going to get a surge in energy, especially mental energy, but you are also going to get that surge in motivation.
So I referenced it before. Estrogen is directly linked to dopamine, and as estrogen rises, dopamine activity, dopamine recep- receptor sensitivity goes up, which means motivation is easier to access. So you’re going to have energy, but you’re also going to feel that, like, “Get up and go. I can accomplish a lot today.”
Estrogen’s impact on the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus support big-picture thinking. The technical term is like cognitive flexibility, but it’s basically you can synthesise a lot of information at once. It’s why I often feel sometimes the follicular, and especially late follicular, early ovulation, it’s almost a little manic up there.
Ooh. It’s a lot. It’s a lot going on. A lot… You’ve got a lot of synapses firing because they’re taking in a lot of information at one time and digesting that. So the other thing is estrogen’s relationship to cortisol. So estrogen makes you stress resilient. Very practically, this means back-to-back meetings, work-related travel, days that feel long or hard or intense, your resilience to those days is going to be higher during this part of the month.
So very practically, your follicular phase is a really good time for strategic planning. So that kind of, I like to say high-level thinking, 40,000-foot thinking. It’s not a great time to be in the details. It– like I said, that kind of high mental energy can sometimes lack a little focus. So it’s a good time for big-picture thinking, for expansive thinking.
It’s a really good time for creative problem-solving. Your creativity is at its highest during your follicular and, um, ovulation phase as well. So if you have any activities requiring creativity, so whether that’s brand development or content development or solving a creative problem, launching things.
So because of that sort of ability to feel easily motivated, it’s a great time to start stuff. It’s a great time to launch prototypes, to launch projects, and then take on any, you know, work-related travel, meetings, et cetera. So then you get your ovulation phase, which again, really we’re talking two to three days.
It’s everything you get in your follicular phase and then some, basically. Um, it is characterised by, you know, estrogen peaking. The and then some is that peak in testosterone. So with that peak in testosterone, you get a very significant increase in verbal memory and verbal fluency. It’s your communication skills.
During ovulation, your ability to communicate well, communicate clearly, is going to be peaking. And what’s interesting is that rise in estrogen, it does activate some of the, I would say, like EQ emotional centers of your brain. And so what that means is that ovulation, you have the right words to say, and also you can kind of interpret how they’re landing.
Le’Nise Brothers: Mm-hmm.
Maggie McDaris: So it’s a really good time for high-stakes conversations, for pitches, for presentations, but also, like, some of the hard high-stakes conversations, things like negotiations or like feedback.
Le’Nise Brothers: Appraisals.
Maggie McDaris: Yeah. Performance reviews, things where you want to say the right thing, and you want to say it well, and you want to be able to pick up on how it’s landing.
That’s a really good thing to schedule during ovulation, business development activities you know, high visibility moves. Here’s the two warnings I have with your ovulation phase. The first we’ve already addressed. Don’t let this person make decisions for you for the next two weeks. You will regret it.
The other is which we already talked about as well, is the cliff. So when you’re scheduling to optimise your ovulation phase, I always caution, aim for early ovulation to sched- late follicular, early ovulation to schedule these things, because what you don’t want is to miss it. And now all of a sudden you have hard conversations, really high-impact stuff, in the middle of your post-ovulation cliff.
That’s tough. So it is a bit of a tightrope in this, you know, particular scenario, and everyone’s going to experience this differently, right? Okay. And then finally we have ovul- or luteal, and then I’ll stop talking. Yeah. And let you ask some questions. Eh, I’ve already gone on record, justice for the luteal phase.
So progesterone, it is the leading hormone in your luteal phase, specifically this, like, nice meaty middle bit of your luteal phase. Progesterone enhances activation in your prefrontal cortex, that’s your judgment zones and your temporal lobes. It supports reflective and deliberate thinking. Your amygdala is also very activated here, and if you’re familiar with what the amygdala, amygdala does, it is your emotional center.
It is what is reactive to emotional stimuli. And so, yes, what that means is during your luteal phase, you might feel a little more emotionally reactive. Every woman’s like, “Uh-huh.” I would ask you to reframe that as you are emotionally responsive- … and you are emotionally attuned. Because the same things that make you feel a little emotionally reactive, that’s really just the underbelly of emotional intelligence.
Your emotional center is being activated. And so during this part of the cycle- It’s a really good time for making, I would say, like, emotionally driven decisions, gut-driven decisions, instinctive decisions. It’s also a really good time for detail-oriented type tasks. So because estrogen is not as high here, that motivation is harder to access.
So you need to tap into sometimes these sort of motivational hacks, and what that means is that when you do finish something, that dopamine response is going to feel much better. It’s going to feel heightened-
Le’Nise Brothers: Mm …
Maggie McDaris: during this part of your cycle. So it’s a good time, I always like to say, to, like, build the dopamine snowball, where start with your to-do list.
Start with something small that’s analytical. Send that email. Do that thing. Get that dopamine response going, and then ride that wave. Your focus, your ability to laser in on something is also highest at this part of the month. So I find my mid-luteal is my favorite time of the month just in general.
Le’Nise Brothers: Mm.
Maggie McDaris: And I shock a lot of people when I say that. I mentioned kind of the, the high energy of, you know, your follicular and your ovulatory phases. That gets exhausting for me. I love to just, like, sit down and crank some stuff out-
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah …
Maggie McDaris: and it feels really good, and I feel really grounded in my luteal phase in a way that I think if people were to let themselves, they would also experience.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah.
Maggie McDaris: So okay, I’ll stop talking. The summary is launch stuff during follicular, make that push for it in ovulation, wrap stuff up in luteal-
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah …
Maggie McDaris: and then reflect on it in menstrual and start the cycle all over again.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah, I love that, and thank you so much for that explanation. I think there’ll be a lot that you’ve shared that’ll be surprising to people, and I love what you’ve done in reframing the menstrual cycle, and I think that’s really powerful. When I talk about this stuff, when I give workshops on these, this topic, I always start by, “Let’s reframe.
Approach this with an open mind, and let’s reframe,” especially that late luteal. I like to talk about it as this kind of get stuff done, you know-
Maggie McDaris: Yeah …
Le’Nise Brothers: where you, you’re not troubled by the, estrogen and accommodating and saying-
Maggie McDaris: Yeah …
Le’Nise Brothers: yes. It’s just about this energy that you can tap into, and I love the way that you’ve explained this.
We have time for one more question, hopefully. So you’ve explained this in a really structured way, and what I’ve seen a little bit online specifically on TikTok, is this pushback against cycle syncing and talking about it as a kind of form of biological essentialism and saying that it assumes that everyone is the same.
And you have thrown in caveats, you know, to say that we will experience this differently. This is a kind of framework. It’s not a template. Can you just say a little bit more about that?
Maggie McDaris: Yeah. Yeah. Here’s the reality. Your menstrual cycle is one physiological process that is impacting how you show up today.
Spoiler alert, hope I can say it, say this publicly, we’re incorporating sleep chronobiology and circadian biology into the Phase app because the two cycles are incredibly linked, they’re directly linked, and if you have a really bad night’s sleep, especially in your luteal phase, it’s going to impact how you show up at work a little more than the luteal phase on its own, right?
We know this is one tool in the toolkit. But just because it’s one tool, should we forgo it? And something I’m really passionate about is when it comes to narratives around our cycle, I always ask the question of where did that start and who did it serve? So when you talk about being emotional during a certain part of your cycle, who wrote that narrative?
Le’Nise Brothers: Mm.
Maggie McDaris: And was it women? ‘Cause I would argue it wasn’t. And I think this is one way we can start to kind of take our power back a little. We get to be the ones to write the narrative around how our cycle impacts us. And so, in terms of the biological essentialism, what I’ll say to that is, I think it is very important and empowering for us to know how our physiological symptoms are impacting how we show up every day.
Your hormones are a part of that. Your nutrition is a part of that. Your sleep is a part of that. I would argue we need to know all of it. So let’s start here. And when you look at, especially in this world of biohacking, who’s leading that conversation right now? It’s not women. And as a result, we get women saying, “Well, this is biological essentialism, but I will go cold plunge.”
And so and, and, and that’s really hard for me- Yeah … because I go, “Oh, but cold plunging research is mostly centered on men, and, and, and while it’s not as black and white as it’s not good for women, women need it to be colder, we need it longer, and honestly, a sauna’s better for us.” So let’s, I think it, it will be a complete disservice to women and how we show up differently in the world.
I also think it’s a disservice to those of us who want to show up as the best versions of ourselves. Because me knowing this means I can be a better colleague, a better mom, a better human, and that is incredibly important to me. Can everything go to an extreme? Yes, 100%, but I think it’s important, in a world where most women don’t even know when they ovulate, I don’t think this is the hill to die on to say it’s biological essentialism-
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah
Maggie McDaris: is my-
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah …
Maggie McDaris: 10 cents on that.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah, yeah. And yeah, thank you so much. So obviously, I agree with you. You’ve already shared a little bit about what’s coming up next, but I want to just ask what’s the one thought you’d like to leave listeners with today?
Maggie McDaris: That’s a great question. I think the one takeaway is that all of…
You know, we’ve talked a lot of science-y stuff, and hormones, and cycles, and chronobiology, et cetera. At its core, all of that stuff is what makes you human, it’s what makes you unique, it’s what contributes to a lot of the value you bring, specifically in the context of Phase, to work. And so I think the one takeaway I would bring is make an effort to understand how the things that make you human, and living, and breathing are showing up in those spaces.
And then the kind of secondary follow-up is, in understanding those things, how can you use them, use that understanding to support a more fulfilled version of those things? Everything we’re talking about, it’s, it’s health, and wellness, and, and physiology, and all of that, but at the end of the day, it’s our humanity.
It’s our heartbeat. And so pursue an understanding of those things so that you can be a more fully formed human in every area of your life.
Le’Nise Brothers: Thank you so much. Yeah. I have absolutely adored this conversation.
Maggie McDaris: Me too.
Le’Nise Brothers: It’s always so great to be able to dig into the menstrual cycle, and the phases, and just to kind of pull out even more about this amazing process that our bodies go through.
Where can people find you? Where can they find the app?
Maggie McDaris: Yeah. So you can go to phaseapp.io. Uh, that’s where you can find the app. You can find it in the App Store, as well as we have a web-based version of the app that you can find through our website. So please do that. Um, and you can find me, just Google Maggie McDaris Phase.
You can find my LinkedIn. Whichever search engine leads you, um, I’m pretty easy to find on the internet. But I would say focus on Phase, phaseapp.io. You can find us on LinkedIn. We’re also at, on, uh, Instagram and TikTok at phase_app. So any of those spaces.
Le’Nise Brothers: Thank you so much.
Maggie McDaris: Thank you.