Herbs for PCOS [Podcast]

Amy Medling:                    Hello, and welcome to the PCOS Diva podcast My name is Amy Medling, I’m a certified health coach and I’m the founder of PCOS Diva. My mission is to help women with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome find the tools and knowledge they need to take control of their PCOS so they can regain their fertility, femininity, health, and happiness. If you haven’t already, make sure you check out pcosdiva.com because there I offer tons of great free information about PCOS and how to develop your PCOS diet and lifestyle plan so you can begin to thrive like a PCOS Diva. Look for me on iTunes, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest, as well. Now let’s get started.

Today I’m going to be talking to a dear friend of mine. Her name is Magdalena Wszelaki and she is the founder of hormonesbalance.com. Magdalena is a certified nutrition coach, speaker, educator, and author of the brand new cookbook, Cooking for Hormone Balance with Harper Collins. Magdalena has had a long history of hormonal challenges like most of us Divas here. Her hormonal challenges, she really feels resulted from a highly stressful life in advertising starting from Graves and Hashimoto’s disease which are both auto immune conditions causing thyroid failure to adrenal fatigue and estrogen dominance but today she is in for remission and she lives a symptoms free life and food and herbs were very instrumental in her recovery and we are in for a treat today because Magdalena is going to be sharing some of her extensive knowledge about how food helps you heal and I just want to welcome her to the PCOS Diva podcast.

Magdalena:                        Yay, thank you so much Amy. It’s so great to talk to you.

Amy Medling:                    Well, I have been a longtime fan of your work, and I am just really excited about the work that you’ve been doing recently on herbs and how they can really help you balance your hormones. Today you’re going to be sharing some of your favorite herbs and spices with us and how they can kind of help us heal our PCOS hormonal situation.

Magdalena:                        Yeah absolutely, and I have to tell you I got to appreciate herbs a lot more when I went through the journey of fixing my nutrition and fixing my diet, and I think you and I live through the same principles of keeping very low inflammatory diet really being very aware of what we’re putting in our bodies in terms of quality of food but also amount of sugar that goes in and yet not obsessing about it and making it a colorful and varied and fun diet, right.

I think we both live that and I know a big part of your community is either already living that or striving to live that. What I have found is that when you clean up your diets, herbs can play a beautiful role of really amplifying and speeding up the healing process so quickly and I have to tell you, I’m feeling this firsthand. You can see my Facebook posts about the latest surgery that I had done. I had a double hip replacement done just three weeks ago, and I’m healing. Everyone from my doctor to nurses to my PT’s, I cannot believe how quickly you’re healing.

Really, the biggest, I absolutely attribute that to the preparation that I did, obviously through diet, but also through some really amazing herbs too boost the immune system and support the adrenals and help you detox the liver and kidneys to really be prepared for something as invasive as a surgery so I’m a living testimony of someone who really lives this kind of life and your body responds to it so well and I’m not unique in this by any means.

Anybody’s body will respond so beautifully when you create a kind of environment like the gardener who nurtures the soil and gets this amazing plants and vegetables, and fruits, and berries out of the ground or roots for that matter when you do it well, absolutely. Herbs have been my latest thing for the past couple of years. I’ve been absolutely fascinated by that. Should we talk about a couple of them?

Amy Medling:                    Yeah, and I want to interject here for a minute, because you are really like a Wonder Woman to me. The way that you have recovered from the surgery is just amazing and anybody that has family members or if you’re preparing to undergo surgery, really encourage you to follow Magdalena on Facebook, at Hormones Balance and her blog because she’s actually put together a really extensive protocol for what she did to prepare herself before and then post-surgery that I’m sure would be so helpful to anyone that’s listening that might be undergoing a procedure in the near future.

Magdalena:                        Yeah, absolutely, and I really encourage … This is something that no one tells us, no doctor tell us to prepare this way before a surgery, right. Yes, absolutely. I’m so happy to share this and if you or anyone you know, just pass it on, it’s all well researched work. Actually, my doctor, my functional doctor’s allowed me to put this together, and I was the guinea pig on it.

Amy Medling:                    Well, it’s certainly working. I know you can’t see Magdalena on this audio podcast but she looks so cute with this awesome top and just vibrant and it’s just amazing three weeks out from surgery. I’m so proud of you, so happy for you.

Magdalena:                        Thank you, thank you.

Amy Medling:                    Let’s dive right in. What’s your first one for us?

Magdalena:                        I know you do a lot of the work around helping women manage their sugar levels, right, and I know you have a lot of protocols for that and supplements and that one herb I want, spice, if you will, that I want to bring some attention to. You go to Pub Med and you just entered that particular spice. There is just so many papers that show how it helps incredibly in a very potent way to help regulate blood sugar levels and that’s cinnamon.

The medicinal amounts we’ll be looking at, are we talking about a sprinkle here what the amount that we talking about that actually has medicinal value so we’re looking at the value of about two teaspoons of freshly ground cinnamon on a daily basis, which is such a beautiful warming sweet spice. That is a no brainer to be adding that whether it’s a smoothies or whether it’s adding it to a latte, and I’ll give you a recipe in just a second for a wonderful latte with cinnamon.

The one thing that I want to just draw attention to is that there’s various types of cinnamon and so the cinnamon that has been my absolute favorite it’s not the cinnamon that you typically find when you go to Starbucks or coffee shops, that is the hard cinnamon bark that is hard to break and it comes in one piece. That’s the very common cinnamon is also known as cinnamon cassia. That’s not my favorite, and I’ll tell you about in the second why that is so.

My absolute favorite is called, the true cinnamon, also known as cinnamon verum also known as Ceylon cinnamon, and it has a very different feel to it. First of all, when you touch it’s very flaky. It’s like multi layered almost, very easy to break, but it’s also much more fragrant and medicinally potent. The difference between those two is that, one of the big things is that, the common cinnamon that a lot of people use, cassia, contains high amounts of coumarin, which is really quite stressful in the liver. Somebody said to me once, “Oh, but it’s not an enough to be make a big difference.”

Actually it is and, true story, my former partner fell in love with chai. He’s a big guy except for him it was not a matter of a cup or two a day. He literally went in there and he would have like two to three quarts a day, brewing this.

Amy Medling:                    Oh my gosh.

Magdalena:                        You know he’s a big guy like me it’s all day, right. I kid you not, there was like probably day five of the of this chia binging, right. With a huge amount of cinnamon because he loves cinnamon. One day calls me and he says, “I am all blue and white and I’m about to pass out and I’m feeling awful.” His eye whites had turned yellow.

The first thing it took a while of investigative nature to kick in, to see what’s going on we finally figured out that it was cinnamon that he was using. It can really be an issue, especially if your drinking it on a regular basis. Here we’re talking about medicinal value of two teaspoons a day so it will build up pretty quickly. Coumarin is almost nonexistent in cinnamon, in the true cinnamon so I definitely encourage you to get that. Where do you get it from? You can get it from Mountain Roast Herbs, you can get it from Amazon. If you have local herb stores, support a local trade. I’ve always been a big proponent of that, little mom and pop shops, get it from there.

To get the maximum nutrition out of and value out of cinnamon, freshly grind it. Get it in sticks, freshly grind it or have a little bit at a time so grind for like a week’s worth. Don’t buy those pre ground stuff because that gets oxidized and medicinal value diminishes.

Amy Medling:                    So grind it in a coffee grinder or like in your Vitamix or something like that?

Magdalena:                        Yeah. Probably Vitamix you would need a lot of sticks to make it happen. I would say definitely a spice grinder, but make it a coffee grinder and I will definitely recommend to separate it from coffee grinder because coffee just takes over everything, the smell of coffee.

Amy Medling:                    Flavor, yeah.

Magdalena:                        Flavor, it takes over. Yeah, yeah. Can I share with you my favorite recipe for adding cinnamon?

Amy Medling:                    Yes, please do.

Magdalena:                        One of the things I love to do is to do like one cup of full fat milk, coconut milk with two cups of water so you’re talking about the fat, fat, fat, fat, thick coconut milk, right. From native forest, something that’s BPA free, one cup of that with two cups of filtered water, warming that up and you’re literally just adding that ground cinnamon into that latte , stirring it, maybe three drops of Stevia in it so you don’t use any sugar, and boom you’re in now you a little latte is done, just a really wonderful warming drink that it’s going to sustain you so well.

Amy Medling:                    Two things I just was going to mention about that, so I do something similar to that I call it my Evening Elixir. It has cinnamon in it but I also put cardamom and nutmeg, freshly ground nutmeg in it. Sometimes a little, I have a fresh vanilla pod that I’ll put the seeds in there. I like it because sometimes in the evening you know you sort of crave something sweet and be sort of the time of night that you might hit the ice cream. You want something creamy and sweet and soothing. Something that envelopes you like a warm hug. I find that, yes, this latte would do that and then you also have the added blood sugar support, so it curbs the cravings and it also satisfies that need for something creamy and slightly sweet, makes a nice indulgence for you.

Magdalena:                        Absolutely, this is basically it’s like a chai latte, right?

Amy Medling:                    Yeah.

Magdalena:                        Love it yeah and maybe perhaps a little bit of ginger if somebody likes that. I love it how you say it’s an evening craving thing and so my elixir … You know for women who struggle with adrenals and I know many women with PCOS definitely are on that path too. Think about also using ashwagandha as an adaptogen. You can grind also freshly and it’s got a very potent, rooty taste to it, but I personally love it and with the spices you’re talking about it’s just an absolutely amazing concoction. Ashwagandha will nurture the adrenals, but also for a lot of women it just calms you down, makes you sleepy. That’s going to help you with your sleep as well.

Amy Medling:                    Now have you ever tried shatavari?

Magdalena:                        Yes.

Amy Medling:                    The female, the way it was explained to me is sort of the female version ashwagandha.

Magdalena:                        Absolutely, yes. That’s a great one and I have to tell you I grew up in Southeast Asia with a lot of my friends being Indian and shatavari very present in ayurvedic medicine, right. A lot of Indian people are very familiar with it. Indian girls, a month before getting married will get on shatavari to make sure they have all the juices they need for their wedding night.

Amy Medling:                    I think for women that are listening that are struggling with low libido it’s something that is worth a shot because it is I think it’s translated in Sanscrit, as like, she who has a thousand husband, something like that. Yeah. Then just speaking of ayurvedia, I find that a lot of women with PCOS have the Vata constitution or Dosha, which is what I have. Please go on my site. I have several articles about ayurvedia and Vata. I find that these warming spices like cinnamon really help balance that cold, dry, Vata.

Magdalena:                        Constitution.

Amy Medling:                    Yeah, constitution, so something else I think is of benefit you know outside of the blood sugar balance with cinnamon for women with PCOS.

Magdalena:                        Absolutely, love it, love it. I think it’s good too, you mentioned one thing and also kind of forgot about ashwagandha, we talked about. It is a night shade, so if you’re sensitive to night shades, do you exercise precaution because it might actually make you feel kind of achy and however potatoes, tomatoes, eggplants make you feel as a night shade, that might bring out some negatives so that’s one of the things, moving forward with our conversation is with herbs the same as with food, whatever we talking about can have one effect on one person, you might have a different reaction to it. Do exercise a lot of respect for herbs and your own body’s responses to it.

Somebody just posted on Facebook saying, “Hey, you should try Turmeric.” Telling me, I should try Turmeric, right, as an anti-inflammatory. My response is that actually, Turmeric doesn’t do it for me, in small amounts doesn’t do anything and in larger amounts, it actually makes me more inflamed. I discovered that I have a mutation, a genetic mutation that makes it. You don’t have to be a genetics expert to figure that out, but if you tune into your body and you introduce something new, and you’re like I’m feeling off or I’m feeling sleepy or I’m stimulated or I’m achy, whatever it might be just respect that of the herb and your own body. Lay off, try something different.

Amy Medling:                    Yeah, excellent advice and you have to really get in touch with how food and herbs make you feel because there is no one size fits all approach and something that I constantly try to help women realize, great point. What’s our next herb?

Magdalena:                        I want to talk a little bit about Matcha tea, green tea, which is the ceremonial green tea from Japan. Matcha is made out of the little tiny leaves, the baby leaves of a tea plant so it is really just the baby leaves that get picked. It is not put through fermentation the way green tea would be. It is an expensive tea, but you don’t need a lot of it in order to enjoy it. The reason why I talk about Matcha is I would love to position it as a potential replacement for coffee. The reason why I say that is because, I’m of the opinion that caffeine is the biggest drug that we have in the country apart from opioids. Everybody talks about alcohol, opioids, gambling, whatever addiction. Caffeine is a real addiction and what I would say is that if you and especially looking at it, the component of coffee elevating our blood sugar levels, when you have PCOS, it doesn’t serve you well.

Especially when you do it on an empty stomach, coffee before breakfast, I think that’s one of the worst things you can do to yourself, right? If you find that coffee and caffeine is something that you really need, you can’t give it up, replace coffee with Matcha. The reason why I love Matcha is because it is … believe it or not, one teaspoon of Matcha actually contains the same amount of caffeine as you have in a shot of espresso. It’s not like it doesn’t have caffeine. It does, but the way your body responds to it is very different. It gives you, if you could just imagine, a little chart, it basically lifts up your energy levels and it sustains it throughout a period of six to eight hours versus caffeine, it gives you that boost, but then within an hour or two, you crash again. That’s when you reach out for more sugar to, as people say, rebalance my blood sugar levels – just total nonsense.

That’s one of the things I love about Matcha. In Japan, Matcha was originally used by both people who go to war, so warriors were using Matcha to stimulate them and be alert, but it also was used by the monks during meditation so that they stay awake, they don’t fall asleep. Dual approach, and both of them are very effective. Don’t think you’re going to be missing out on your coffee, just a wonderful replacement. The one trick with Matcha is do not pour hot water on it, because you’re going to be killing a lot of the really great asthmatic properties in Matcha. The trick with that would be to put cold water into it first, dissolve it properly. I just put it in a jar, close the lid, shake the heck out of it until it fully dissolves, kind of foamy on top. Only then, pour hot water … warm water into it to get the maximum benefit of it.

Amy Medling:                    Yeah. Another thing that I … First off, I definitely concur about the caffeine and women with PCOS. I really would venture to say most of us have adrenal issues. I just think that caffeine is something that we need to really work hard to get off of, or caffeine from coffee. Like you, Magdalena, I agree that caffeine from Matcha, because it’s balanced with the L-theanine that really helps calm us. It’s a better way to get our caffeine fix, I guess, if you really need it. It’s amazing to me how many women that do my Jumpstart program, and that’s one thing that I ask in preparation for that is you start weaning yourself from caffeine and dairy. I think it’s very hard to take away cheese and coffee. Over the years I find that for most of us, it’s some of our biggest vices. I think if you can switch, if you have to have caffeine to switch to something like Matcha, it’s a better alternative for our bodies. Your body will thank you for it. I have a recipe for Matcha cookies. It’s just fun, but you’re right, once you start heating up the Matcha, you lose a lot of those healing properties.

Magdalena:                        Yeah.

Amy Medling:                    Besides the tea, how else do you like to use Matcha and get that into your day?

Magdalena:                        Yeah. The last thing that I was giving you an example of, I would do the same way instead of using cinnamon, it’s just basically adding Matcha and putting that either in a blender, whether it’s Vitamix or Nutrabullet or whatever, just if you’re traveling, just in a jar and just shake the heck out of it. That’s your little shake-shake Matcha latte right there. The Japanese would be very upset by that because the original Matcha’s supposed to be drank just with water, and the way I described. It’s an extra-ceremonial, very highly respected tea. It’s just in America, we like to put it with all sorts of things, but whatever pleases your pallet. I don’t care. Just get it in and enjoy it.

Amy Medling:                    Yeah. Something that I really like to do, it’s like I have my little afternoon tea ritual before the kids get home from school. It’s like my 5, 10 minutes to myself to center myself for the rest of the evening. I actually went out and bought this beautiful Matcha bowl, and I have the little ceremonial whisk, yes, and I think there’s something really soothing and meditative about having that tea ritual for yourself and making that a little special time for yourself and whisk it up and drink it from the bowl, and it’s fun. You can also put it in smoothies too. It’s like a nice little energy shot in your morning smoothie as well.

Magdalena:                        Absolutely. Absolutely. I’m really glad how you mentioned … You might say, “Well, I can just pop a pill. I can just take cinnamon in a pill form or a tincture and forget all about it. Just move on with my day.” There is something about being intentional in using herbs in your life that I feel like that has huge healing power is the intention that we put behind it. It’s the same way when you go for yoga class and your teacher would ask you to be very intentional before the class and how different is that kind of experience versus the yoga and people treat it like some kind of a workout thing where you’re just rushing from thing to thing. I hate that kind of yoga classes. The ones that just really asking you to tune into your body the same way you’re doing and being calm and centered and intentional, I find that … Intuitively, I find that being intentional with herbs and bringing them in, not in the form of supplements, which we mindlessly pop into our mouths, but it’s the preparation of it that makes it so healing.

Amy Medling:                    Yeah, I love that point. Thank you for bringing that up. What’s our final herb for today?

Magdalena:                        I got a few, so let me just pick which one that we want to talk about. Let’s talk about chasteberry. I know you work a lot with chasteberry. It’s an interesting herb because it’s not for everyone. Women with elevated FSH and LH might not be benefiting from it. I know you had an experience, right, yourself of not particularly benefiting from it as an herb. First of all, let me just mention, because I think it’s an interesting story, chasteberry is … Originally, the word comes from chaste as being chaste, originally comes from the fact that it used to be given to nuns to suppress their libido. You think, “Well, what the heck?” Now, it’s supposed to be helping you with your ovulation and stimulate your progesterone receptors and regulates your luteal phase. Interesting thing is when you use it in lower amounts, that’s when it becomes actually quite beneficial for some women to help them regulate their cycles.

As always with herbs, you don’t want to overdo it because you’re going to be like a nun. Your cycle, altogether, yeah. Chasteberry, how it works is basically the hypothalamus, the pituitary acids that get stimulated and it signals to the ovaries to release some stuff preparing us for the luteal phase, right? In fact a lot of times in Germany, instead of putting women on progesterone creams, chasteberry’s being used, also known as Vitex as the go-to herb. There’s always discussions about whether is it because of the progestins that it’s there, or is it because chasteberry stimulates progestin receptors? To me, it doesn’t really matter. At the end of the day, the whole idea is to get you to ovulate again and regulate your luteal phase, which is the second part of your cycle, and most women with PCOS are suffering in this department.

Whether you do it through supplements, that’s obviously a no-brainer. I like to use it in tea form. Chasteberry is not the tastiest of berries. It looks like a big peppercorn. It’s kind of pretty, but it’s not the most tasty one. Again, if you combine that with things like cinnamon and hibiscus, for example, and the chasteberry in an infusion that you just pour hot water over it, steep it for 12 to 24 hours, it becomes a really nice tea infusion.

Amy Medling:                    Excellent. I think it’s worth giving a shot. I think being a Diva is about experimentation and seeing what works best for you. It sure beats taking Provera or some synthetic progestin to try an herb like chasteberry. Give it a shot. Are there any on the market teas that you can suggest, or do you just recommend getting the chasteberry through one of these spice distributors?

Magdalena:                        Yeah, that’s a good question. I have never seen chasteberry used in teas. I think it’s probably because it is like the prepared teas, like the Yogi teas or whatever, I think it’s because it is not the tastiest of herbs to work with. I haven’t really seen it. I make my own, so that’s why … An infusion I was talking about, I’m talking about one teaspoon of chasteberry seeds, and then however much you want in cinnamon and the hibiscus.

Amy Medling:                    I love hibiscus too. I bet you can even drink it iced, right?

Magdalena:                        Oh, absolutely with a couple of drops of stevia. Hibiscus is tart, so sweetening it slightly with things like stevia, a couple of stevia drops or just a minimal amount of sweetener like honey or maple syrup over ice, absolutely. Yes.

Amy Medling:                    Magdalena, I’ve been following you on Facebook, not just to get the updates on how you’ve been doing post-surgery, but I’ve been seeing you creating these really amazing do-it-yourself recipes in your kitchen for skin care and hair care and I was hoping that you could chat with us about what you’ve been doing using herbs to create these self-care items.

Magdalena:                        Yeah. Can I tell you about the workshop that’s coming up? Because I’m going to be teaching a lot of stuff there.

Amy Medling:                    Oh, gosh. I’d love that. Yeah.

Magdalena:                        Okay. There’s a workshop that’s coming up, it’s called herbsforbalance.com and you’ve got the link on your post, so herbsforbalance is really … Part of the thing that we’ll be teaching there is bringing in one herbs in one hand, like what we’re talking about to help you rebalance your hormones is a big part of the equation, and having fun with it and making it part of your culinary tradition in your kitchen, right? But also, we want to be mindful of the fact that there are chemicals that are also disrupting our hormonal … our sacred hormonal balance, right? Whether it’s from skin care products, house cleaning products, I can’t tell you how many women I’ve worked with who say, “I live so cleanly.” Then, we’ll really go deep into working together. Turns out they’re using those things you put on the wall, those diffusers, those artificial diffusers, which is like you inhaling all these chemicals that go straight into your body. Huge endocrine disrupters, so I’m really anal about getting those out. The problem sometimes is that you trust companies that are really nice and clean, and they make amazing products.

I’ll give you an example. This is actually my former client, Kiehl’s. They got bought over by Loreal a few years ago, and no one knows about that, so people trust … You might trust the brand. Looks like they’re fantastic, clean, responsible, loving brand, and then they get bought over by somebody as large as Loreal and Proctor & Gamble, Unilever, or whatever. You don’t know about that because they don’t publicize it, unless you read a huge financial digest. Then, what they do, they slowly start replacing the ingredients, but you don’t look at them anymore, because you trust the brand. That’s exactly what happened with Kiehl’s. Today it’s full of parabens, it’s full of phthalates. It’s a chemical concoction of stuff that you don’t ever want to put on your body.

I’m passionate about teaching women how to replace these things with ingredients that are just the real oils, the real essential oils, and then cleaning up our cabinets in that way, so one of the things that I’m going to be teaching at the workshop is there’s an anti-wrinkle cream is just one example here that on the market these things cost $70-80. I reverse engineered it, and now I’m using ingredients that really matter. One of them, for example, is the rose hip oil, which is incredibly potent oil for restoration of cellular rejuvenation of the skin, and a couple of essential oils that also speed up the plumping up of the skin. You’re talking about coming up, creating that yourself, even from small batches you buy for $17. Not only are you saving money, but you’re also removing all the skin care they end up in disruptors.

The little videos that you’ve seen me posted on Facebook is one of the things I’m passionate about is lip glosses. Why are we using commercial lip glosses? You can look at the ingredients list. It’s absolutely scary. Most of the things you’ll look at, and you don’t know whether … You’re not a chemist. I’m not a chemist. Most of us are not chemists. You look at it and you go, “Is that safe or not? What does it mean?” Even if you’re a chemist, let me tell you, you go to the databases that analyze these ingredients and so many of them have not even been tested. We don’t know whether they’re safe or not. When I started working with a couple of herbalists to help me prepare the program, we realized that all we can do is just if you look at the ingredients list in that lip gloss that’s on the Facebook page, it’s as simple as using lanolin, which is totally naturally occurring fat in sheep, right? Castor oil. I think we’re using almond oil, so a couple of these essential oils, and then the coloring comes from different colors of mica, M-I-C-A.

Mica is full of the colorants that are naturally occurring in the earth on the rocks. They have all these different tints. You can go from brown all the way to bright orange with it, and a couple of essential oils to give it a little bit of flavor, and that’s all you need. I just couldn’t believe it, and I’m actually wearing it right now, and it’s as good as the commercial lip gloss. I don’t know why we need all these chemicals in there, but they’re there and you can make it yourself and you know what? Amy, it takes 15 minutes in your kitchen.

Amy Medling:                    All right. Every year, I do a homemade Christmas gift, and I’ve done a little series on my blog. I call it beyond the food handmade gifts because how many times have you … I know I have made my mother-in-law’s fudge recipe to give away to people, and ended up eating half of it and feeling like crap, so I started several years ago, making non-food gifts, and I’ve made vanilla extract and lavender linen spray and just different things, but I love this idea of the lip gloss, because I give it away to all my lady friends, so yeah, I’m going to have to tune in so I can get your lip gloss recipe for my Christmas gifts.

Magdalena:                        My god, it’s like the best thing. It usually takes you 15 minutes. It produces six of them, so if you just multiply it gives you 12. How many can you use on your own, right?

Amy Medling:                    Right.

Magdalena:                        Wonderful gifts. I love it. Yeah.

Amy Medling:                    I’m very thankful that you’ve come on and shared about those three herbs and I’m really looking forward to your herb workshop, and I’ll be tuning in, and we’ll have the dates and all the information below the podcast, or if you’re listening on iTunes, just head over to pcosdiva.com, and I’ll have the transcript for this podcast, and all of the information. I’ll also point to the awesome article that you wrote to us … for us a couple years ago about balancing your hormones through seed rotation, which is really a fascinating approach. You’re filled with so much really insightful information about how to heal yourself through food, so I encourage listeners to check out your website at hormonesbalance.com.

Magdalena:                        Thank you.

Amy Medling:                    Yeah, thank you, Magdalena, for joining us, and thank you for everyone listening. I hope that you enjoyed today’s episode. If you liked it, please don’t forget to subscribe to PCOSDiva on iTunes or wherever else you may be listening to the show. If you have a minute, please leave me a quick review on iTunes. I read them all, and I love to hear from you. If you think of somebody else that might benefit from the podcast, please take a minute to share it with a friend or family member so she can benefit from it too. Don’t forget to sign up for my free newsletter. It goes out every Wednesday or Thursday, and there’s always really valuable content. I try to stay on the forefront of what’s going on in the PCOS research world and just lots of tips and tricks to help manage your PCOS. Thank you for being with me, and I look forward to being with you again soon on a future podcast. This is Amy Medling wishing you good health. Goodbye.