Empowering Women. Balancing Hormones.

Imagine you are at the doctor’s office. What is the first thing they do when you enter the room? They check your vital signs. A blood pressure cuff is placed on your arm and the oxygen monitor is clipped on your finger. Suddenly the nurse is swiping your forehead to check your temperature with a thermometer. Your head is spinning as you come down from the abrupt period of tests following a long wait in the waiting room.

According to the Johns Hopkins Medicine website, the four vital signs or “measurements of the body's most basic functions [are] body temperature, [heart] rate, respiration rate (rate of breathing), and blood pressure.”

On Tuesday, the women's residence life program hosted a panel of female healthcare speakers and professionals who brought awareness to fertility and full-body health. Butler Auditorium was at max capacity, filled with college women. The core message of this event was to bring awareness to what Dr. Brittany Kudrna, a family nurse practitioner, calls the woman’s “fifth vital sign.”

Kudrna and other panelists agreed, the menstrual cycle is indicative of a woman’s overall health. If cycles are regular and manageable, this information acts as a fifth vital sign telling the doctor that the woman is in good health.

One way to monitor the menstrual cycle is by tracking it through apps on the phone. “One of my favorite apps that is free is FEMM,” said Kudrna. She said the app offers educational information to learn about the cycle.

Tara Feil, clinical psychologist and mother of four, told the audience about her problems with hormonal imbalance and the importance of tracking. “I was shocked that it took three [miscarriages] to get some help,” said Feil, “if I had been tracking this sooner, I would have realized that my cycles weren’t very even, there was a problem, and I could have had a doctor figure out that problem long before...”

Kudrna agreed that tracking the cycle is important and she said, “From ages 15 to 20ish...from the time I started my cycle to the time I got engaged, I look back and I say I wish I would have cared...and sought out the education to understand my body.”

The panelists agreed that balancing hormones and tracking the cycle are interconnected approaches to health that take time and effort.

“It really took me many years to find out how to balance my hormones..there are so many pieces to the puzzle and all of us are so uniquely made,” said Emi Ronderos, a homeschooling mother of six and online wellness coach.
“Mental, hormonal, psychological, gut health...what you eat, what you put on your body, all of these things are connected,” said Ronderos.

Students said this event was educational.

“I’m glad I came,” said sophomore Natalia Campiz, "I learned so much about things that I had heard about before, but just having [panelists] that know more about it, I was able to learn more in depth.” Campiz added, “Yeah! I took a lot from this panel.”

Senior Emma Reagle agreed.

“They talked a lot about how your mental health can influence your menstrual cycle, it makes me know to pay more attention to my menstrual cycle, to see if they are kind of correlated.”

The students were left with practical information to begin balancing hormones. One of the tips to balancing hormones was centered around blood sugar stabilization.

Sophomore Abbigail Athey said, “I’m a nursing student...so I feel like I knew most of the scientific medical type of stuff [in the talks], but when they were talking about...blood sugar, I didn’t know anything about that.”

“I am a lover of sweets,” added Athey, “I’ve never checked my blood sugar or anything like that, so that was something that was interesting.”

Reagle affirmed Athey and said, “I would say the diet was very interesting. Incorporating more protein and whole foods..I thought it was important.”

To expand her newfound knowledge of fertility awareness, Athey said, “I signed up for [Ronderos’] email list.” She added, “I need to take more time just to go for a walk and to get moving a little bit, and also just talking to people about their cycle.”