Answering Your Voicemails: Why Can’t I Get Pregnant? How Can I Support My Fertility as a Shift Worker? Does Perimenopause Look Different If I’ve Had a Hysterectomy?

You called? We answered. In this episode, Dr. Alicia Robbins and Dr. Lucky Sekhon are responding to voicemails sent in by listeners with questions about a variety of women’s health concerns. “How do I know if you have PMOS or Hypothalamic Amenorrhea (HA), or do I have both?” “I’ve done loads of testing to see if I had anything affecting my infertility and very little has been found, so why can’t I get pregnant?” “Is patch estrogen better than the pill for perimenopausal women who suffer from migraines with aura?” These are the kinds of nuanced questions we love—the topics you might be embarrassed to ask about, the symptoms you’re googling 17 times, and the questions you forgot to ask at your doctor’s appointment. Dr. Robbins and Dr. Sekhon navigate their answers to these callers by using actual stories from their real-life experiences as menopause and fertility experts. They explain what the clues are when diagnosing a patient with PMOS or HA, how having a hysterectomy could, or could not, affect perimenopause, and dive into the most frustrating thing that Dr. Sekhon sees couples go through—unexplained infertility. On the trending topic of Alix Earle finding out she’s a BRCA 2 carrier, Dr. Robbins shares what is important for women to know about BRCA gene mutations, and what the misconceptions are when it comes to taking the birth control pill and hormone therapy. For the women with thin uterine lining after ovulation, Dr. Sekhon explains what protocols she follows in her own practice to provide support and improve uterine lining thickness. Dr. Sekhon and Dr. Robbins also speak on their past struggles as shift workers, knowing how much stress this type of work puts on one’s physiology, and they give practical solutions on how someone can best optimize their fertility in these circumstances.  If there’s one thing that the questions in this episode proved, it’s that reproductive health is rarely as simple as one symptom, one lab value, or one diagnosis. The context behind every individual’s situation matters. Thank you to everyone who called in. Keep leaving voicemails to be featured on a future episode! The Science Behind Sleep with Dr. Saema Tahir of @thenycsleepdoctorPCOS: The Hormonal Group Chat Gone WrongPMOS (formerly known as PCOS) Part 2: Connecting the Hormonal DotsYou Lost Your Period… Now What? Understanding Hypothalamic AmenorrheaIF YOU’RE TEXTING YOUR FRIENDS LIKE... You: My lab tests are all fine….why can’t I get pregnant? Also You: My iron lev