Meeting the Needs of Modern Menstruating Women: When Culture No Longer Creates Health
Written By: Dr. Chelsea Dakers ND
From my vantage point, I’m seeing patterns in women’s health right now.
In the vast majority of cases, it’s the foundation that needs attention. The labs and supplements are usually fine tuning, best applied when there is skill in the basics. Our modern North American culture doesn’t inform us about these foundational elements anymore; we have become disconnected from life sustaining pathways and we need to get back on track. High calibre education can assist us in reclaiming what our intuition is telling us and learn how to create the conditions for health.
People are not used to seeing spirituality and medicine in the same room. But this is an imperative combination in our current times… Usually devoid in conventional medical spaces there is an over-emphasis on the “physical” with a robust fixation on “pathology”. This is not good or bad, but we need to strive for balance in healing spaces. It can be a relief and also a little curious to participate in these new (old?) care containers because people don’t know what box to put the care “in”.
What’s trending online in hormone healing right now… and what I see working in real life are not the same.
Online trends right now are really focussing in on finesse points— these have value, but if you are putting them into practice without a stable foundation, you end up jogging on the consumerism treadmill ad infinitum: chasing trends and having to maintain these extreme routines full of products that address what we “ought to be doing”. Sadly in this common scenario, the priority on maintaining the foundation is lost or never part of the equation. Foundational elements are not as glamorous. They require discipline, letting go of what no longer supports us and reprioritizing. This is the challenge in our modern life. With abundant resources, we have to make the choice to do less, simplify, anchor in… this can be hard with so much information and ideas making it seem like it needs to be more complicated.
One has to have a system to plug these solutions into. Then you get context and true utility. It’s challenging to plug all the latest developments into reductionism, you end up with an overwhelming grocery cart full random items. There’s no organization. Discernment is muddled.… “I use this… when?…”
In real life people need to be supported. They need to be seen and heard. They need to find success, not made wrong or submitted to a yard sale solution.
And as much as women feel like they are on their own in their health experience (I get it, I’ve been there), often times they actually need a group. Being together is so radically impactful, all you have to do is show up. Shadow, discomfort, joy, support… it’s all present. It’s near impossible to get that depth solo.
There is a gap between what’s taught online and what happens in a real, complex human body.
Our physiology needs certain elements to be present to be well. Often this is counter to what we are getting in our modern environments. Creating the conditions for hormone health is a lifestyle. It’s about curating an environment that matches what we were designed for. A simple first step: get in contact with nature, she has everything we need.
Unfortunately, some people are not ready for this kind of accountability. Or perhaps access has major barriers. Further, some will demand with all their might for their results to come in a pill. As a group, we’re addicted to the rush of trying something new, imaging that one “magic bullet” solution and all our problems are going to go away…I know some of you may not like this next statement: you’ll have to keep choosing health creation over and over and over again, and it’s likely going to take multiple generations for us, as a group, to get back to balance.
In my own work as a clinician, the hardest thing I had to unlearn about hormone health was that our delivery model is going to have to change.
Wrestling with my ego, my training, and doing what is being called for. Modern living and culture does not create the conditions for healthy hormones and I had to decide what I was going to do about that. I would be sitting in client visits and realizing that we are going through the same struggles, just our unique versions, but the catalyst was always the same: the foundation is not present, and this is an enormous (and possibly unrealistic) lift for a one-on-one care model to manage. Sharing what I have learned has become the challenge I am solving— how do I share in a way that meets the needs of the women before me?
I believed at the start of my practice that it was all about the sophistication and intelligence of my treatment strategies; I see differently now. Creating containers for knowledge translation and empowering women with education and confidence is equally as important.
The most humbling moment I’ve had as a practitioner was when I took my second medical leave of absence.
The shock that I didn’t see it coming, that I had been here before and clearly had not learned the lesson. I had to embrace radical honesty as I lived through the toll of being a primary care provider in world where we don’t learn how to take care of ourselves. As a clinician, this is a heavy load to carry. I’ve said multiple times to my colleagues: “I may have been the first to go down, but I will not be the last.” Dreary words indeed, but my physical meltdowns were prophetic. In those moments I was the canary in the coal mine; care providers are shouldering an immense responsibility and change is needed in the way we offer care.
Before I could help others with their hormones, I had to walk this path myself. What does it mean to make a million choices towards struggle, chaos and imbalanced physiology and then choose to turn it around? From experience, I can say that it is not easy. Courage and tenacity is called for. Gratefully, I’ve gathered some lived experience that although I took a path that lead me away from health, I could find my way back. And so can you.
The symptom I ignored the longest was fatigue.
I didn’t know what to do with it. Conventional analysis was not eliciting clues or improvement, and so it lingered. Even naturopathy struggled to illuminate. I knew it was telling a story, i just couldn’t discern what it was. I still experience fatigue. It comes and goes; it shape-shifts. Present in certain conditions and absent in others. I’m learning to track my energy and become more aware of what is energizing and what is depleting. The results of this self-analysis have been surprising.
One thing I learned in my own healing that I now teach every client is that not everything is physical.
We talk about the multiple planes of our existence in traditional naturopathic medicine — the mental, emotional, physical and spiritual. But to have lived through being unwell in all of these arenas has offered a new layer of awareness. The biomedical model of health and disease focusses on a physical aetiology — a pathogen, a nutrient deficiency, a toxicant… but sometimes the cause is immaterial, we can’t see it or measure it on a lab test. We can’t take a sample and looking at it under a microscope… but sometimes there is a very real, ethereal, variable, and it has a profound impact on our health. I have had to learn this lesson multiple times. I am so grateful to the indigenous wisdom keepers who have had answers where western medicine was left speechless.
This next part of my story still feels tender to share, but I know someone out there needs to hear it.
It’s not always yours. It’s possible that what you are healing is not “yours”. There are people, knowledge systems and cultures who know about this, who have tools and techniques and we need them just as much as the lab testing and advanced diagnostics we have in conventional medicine. It’s all part of the healing that is being called for at this time.
In closing, if you’ve been navigating something similar, you’re not alone. Perhaps you have been sensing that the care you have been receiving is not a good match. Maybe it’s been inadequate, dismissive, suppressive… or perhaps its been wrapped in the allure of “all natural” but it still hasn’t gotten to the root, just keeps you plugged into a never ending conveyer belt of supplement consumption and gizmo dependence.
You have a sense that you need care that is wholistic, where it addresses all parts of you - mental, emotional, physical, spiritual. Yet, seemingly paradoxically, you want a process that is clinically informed. You appreciate science, and you want it around. You’re craving a cohesive framework to pull everything into perspective. You’re tired of a “this for that” approach and you want a comprehensive system that you can carry with you now and in the future.
Registration is open for September enrolment for my group programs. If you’re ready to learn, to change, to take accountability and uncover access to a whole new set of tools, doors are open for you.