Kaely McDevitt is a Registered Dietitian specializing in nutrition for women’s health. She owns a virtual private practice where she and her team help their clients reclaim their energy, optimize fertility and overcome hormone symptoms through personalized nutrition. Having experienced the pitfalls of a conventional approach to women’s health first hand, Kaely is passionate about empowering women to build health from a place of connection: to self, to nature and to community. Join us as we tackle the importance of proper testing for hormone health & fertility.

Connect with Kaely @kaelyrd

https://www.kaelyrd.com/

• Looking at period symptoms as clues into your health 
• Why millennials are a generation deprived of Progesterone
• Why body size isn’t a great reflection of how well you’re fueling
• The importance of creating safety in your body for optimal fertility
• Why you need to care about ovulation even if you don’t care about pregnancy 
• Reliable forms of natural birth control so you can break up with the pill forever 
• HA or POI? Exploring elevated FSH and the connection with under fueling 
• How functional testing can give you a closer look at hormone imbalances

Lindsey Lusson  00:00

I know you mentioned a little bit about Fertility Awareness method. But that in your experience, does that come with a bit of a learning curve? What are the best ways to go about using that effectively?

Kaely McDevitt  00:10

I think, in my opinion it should at one point be a required skill set to be taught in our middle school health classes. Because whether you’re using this for pregnancy prevention, or wanting to start a family; even just troubleshooting symptoms, that ability to know where you are in your cycle is a superpower. And I think women just are done a huge disservice to not learn how to do that. 

Kaely McDevitt  00:35

So that’s my preferred option is for people to learn how to do that. But to be very clear, it requires learning, practice and responsibility. This is not the easy route. We’re not just taking a pill each day and knowing things are good. It’s a skill set. It’s developing that body literacy and it takes time to be really good at that too.

Lindsey Lusson  00:54

Welcome to the Period Recovery and Fertility podcast. Here we discuss the challenging, rewarding and life changing process of recovering your period and finding freedom with food and exercise. Whether you’re hoping to regain your cycle to get your health back on track or you’re ready to become a mama, this podcast is for you. While the recovery process isn’t always rainbows and butterflies, it’s my hope to bring you both information and inspiration during your own recovery journey. I’m your host, registered dietitian and fellow HA woman, Lindsey Lusson. 

Lindsey Lusson  01:25

Kaely McDevitt is a registered dietician specializing in nutrition for women’s health. She owns a virtual private practice where she and her team help clients reclaim their energy, optimize fertility and overcome symptoms through personalized nutrition. Having experienced the pitfalls of a conventional approach to women’s health firsthand, Kaely is passionate about empowering women to build health from a place of connection: to self to nature and to community. 

Lindsey Lusson  01:49

All right, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Period Recovery and Fertility podcast. I’m super excited to bring on another dietitian and women’s health expert. Welcome, Kaely!

Kaely McDevitt  01:59

Thanks so much for having me, Lindsey. 

Lindsey Lusson  02:01

Yes, absolutely. I wanted to help listeners maybe kind of like understand kind of how you got where you are. Do you want to share kind of briefly with your story. I know, you talk a lot about transitioning off of birth control. And how that was such a journey for you. So much of what you do now is to help people kind of have an easier way to manage their hormones without birth control. So tell us a little bit more about how you got here. 

Kaely McDevitt  02:24

Sure. I’ll see if I can do this as concisely as possible. Yeah, so I went into dietetics thinking I would work in sports nutrition. I grew up being an athlete. It’s what I was interested in. I thought it would be really cool to work for some pro team. Just very different track. And while I was in school working on my undergrad, and in my master’s, I was dealing with a lot of hormone health symptoms. To backtrack even further, I was put on birth control really young. Almost immediately after ever getting my period because my symptoms were so bad. And me being a young teenager with miserable symptoms and missing days of school, I was like, oh, birth control will solve this for me immediately. 

Kaely McDevitt  03:02

Yes, easy, easy decision at that time. I started having a lot of symptoms like fatigue and brain fog and just really not feeling like myself was the best way to describe it. So I kept bringing this up with different providers. I was being told, No, it’s not from this, but we could try a different type if you want. So I really spent most of those years in school, trying different types of birth control. All the pill, but just different formulations. Trying to figure out how I could feel better. 

Kaely McDevitt  03:29

And so I ended up finishing up my program, I get my RD credential. I’m doing all the right things with nutrition and just feeling horrible health. Feeling major imposter syndrome about being able to help people when I didn’t feel well. So I ended up spending most of my free time as a baby dietitian. Just like learning more about the menstrual cycle and sex hormones and nutrition as it relates to these things and how birth control works. 

Kaely McDevitt  03:54

And ended up taking myself off. Took a couple of years to really get things optimized again. Because I didn’t really know what I was doing at the time. But I was chronicling this with a blog because I was so passionate about the fact that this wasn’t being talked about that almost no nutrition research is done on women. And it was probably my mom and a couple high school friends reading. But I just realized how many women just in my immediate circles were hungry for that kind of info. So then I pivoted away from the sports nutrition trajectory toward women’s health. And have stayed there ever since and love getting to work with them and and making their journeys a little bit less bumpy and dramatic than mine was.

Lindsey Lusson  04:35

And I think that that’s something that a lot of people don’t understand is dieticians… I was in school for seven years and I didn’t know anything about the menstrual cycle or women’s health. Some of it is just due to the sheer fact that women’s health is under studied. And I know so many people can relate to just that feeling of feeling like something’s off going to doctor after doctor. In my case, it was no period and I must have seen six or seven doctors and it was kind of across the board. This is weird, but we don’t have an answer for us to just go on the pill. 

Lindsey Lusson  05:10

And I know so many people don’t feel great on the pill plus, it’s not really solving anything, so it’s so hard. What would you say back to somebody who is in our shoes a decade ago or so and being told that, Oh you just have heavy painful periods go on the pedal, this will fix it; what are her other options?

Kaely McDevitt  05:32

Yeah, yeah, I think my my best advice would be to remember that your body doesn’t have symptoms by accident. This isn’t a flaw. This is a way of communicating with you. And if we could take a second to listen to that, and investigate why that might be, we could have lasting freedom from those symptoms. Rather than birth control really being a temporary band aid. And when the day comes that you come off of this, those symptoms are there, and a lot of times they’re worse, which is how it was for me.

Lindsey Lusson  05:57

Yeah, for sure. One of my favorite Instagram posts of yours that you’ve done recently is talking about how we are a generation deprived for progesterone, which is so interesting, and so true. Can you tell us a little bit more about what you mean by that? And then maybe we can also get into ways to boost progesterone. As I know that that’s something that our listeners are always wanting more.

Kaely McDevitt  06:22

Yeah, oh my gosh, I love progesterone. Especially because I spent so many years without it. Yeah, and that post really came about with just reflecting on the state of women’s health and how we’ve seen that change over the last decade of working in this space. Progesterone doesn’t get, I guess in your circle in this world of fertility space gets a lot of airtime. But in general, we hear more about estrogen and progesterone when we think about women.  

Kaely McDevitt  06:45

Progesterone is another sex hormone and it balances the proliferative effects of estrogen. So if we think about those symptomatic periods that you were talking about that normally prompt us to get put on birth control, that’s typically an imbalance between estrogen and progesterone. And that’s actually really, really common to be the case, right when we first start menstruating. Because it can take up to a year to really establish strong progesterone production. 

Kaely McDevitt  07:09

So a lot of the heavy painful symptomatic periods are typically because we just don’t have enough progesterone on board at that time. But I like to think about progesterone as that grounding hormone that in flow with life, we feel more at ease. It’s more of an anti anxiety hormone. We sleep better, our thyroid stimulated by progesterone. If conception is a goal, it’s absolutely required to carry a pregnancy. And that’s where the progestation comes from, and then progesterone. 

Kaely McDevitt  07:39

We only make progesterone if we ovulate. Which means if we’re not ovulating, or not ovulating consistently, or taking something that’s suppressing ovulation, like birth control, then we forego progesterone. And I think that the way that we look at fertility rates declining, really symptomatic cycles, a lot of mental health issues like anxiety and depression, just kind of at the population at large. We can trace that back to progesterone deficiency, and a lot of women today, because we’re living in a way and eating in a way that doesn’t really support favourable progesterone levels. 

Lindsey Lusson  08:11

Yeah, yeah. Can you touch a little bit more on things in our lifestyle today, or what you see in a lot of women that are things that are contributing to low or inadequate progesterone? 

Kaely McDevitt  08:24

Yes. So I think a really important frame to view progesterone through is that, again, this is only being produced if we ovulate. We’re only ovulating if the body feels safe. And it’s a beautiful mechanism that the body has to make sure that we don’t take on the metabolic and energetic responsibility of a new life unless we have abundant energy and safety as an individual. 

Kaely McDevitt  08:46

So our brain is always looking at how am I eating, moving, thinking, breathing, and am I feeling safe. And so if we look at modern human life, where typically pretty high stress. At least the women we serve, this is a type A burning the candle at both ends type population, which was me 10 years ago or so for sure. We’ve got always access to technology, to news, to social media. So it’s keeping us in that kind of fight or flight state. We’ve got so much blue light and not much sunlight. We have got limited connection with other humans. We’re essentially just in captivity working behind screens under fluorescent light.  

Kaely McDevitt  09:24

That doesn’t create a feeling of safety in the body. So I think there’s a big mismatch between female physiology and the way that modern humans live. And then nutrition being a whole other can of worms there too for to speaking to women that are reproductive age right now. They grew up through decades that had really bad nutrition advice. We had low carb season, low fat phases. We had a lot of fasting, we had Special K had a moment where their diet was just eating Special K. Things were crazy and not conducive of creating safety in the body.

Lindsey Lusson  09:56

And it was all about low calorie.  Screw nutrition. And it was like, how low calorie can you eat because that’s healthy, right?

Kaely McDevitt  10:03

Like those 100 Calorie packs.

Lindsey Lusson  10:07

And you eat five of them because they don’t actually provide anything.

Kaely McDevitt  10:11

No, there’s nothing there. So yeah, I think it’s interesting to see the trends now in the state of hormone health and fertility. And it makes sense if we reflect back on the last 10 to 40 years of nutrition advice, and just general lifestyle. We’re coming in really nutrient depleted, usually not eating enough high stress, just not creating safety in the body. So then that means ovulation isn’t happening reliably. And if it is, we might not even have the raw materials to make that progesterone yet.

Lindsey Lusson  10:38

So true. Kaely how do you tackle though working with women who are maybe existing in normal BMI, or maybe even higher BMI, just kind of normally existing and larger bodies, They’re like, I am not under eating. I am not deprived of anything because I’m sighs whatever, I weigh, whatever. How do you kind of encourage them to understand that it doesn’t really matter what size your body is, you could still be under fueling? 

Kaely McDevitt  11:08

Yeah I think that that’s a great question. And it can be a little bit confusing, and typically, in conventional appointments gets dismissed or overlooked a lot. But it is fully possible to be under fueled or lacking safety in a bigger body. And one thing I like to talk about in that context is, if we’ve been under fueling for a long period of time your body’s really smart, it’s very wise, it’s got your back. And one thing that it can get really good at doing is actually storing body fat as a form of a security blanket. Like it’s trying to find safety, because fueling is not adequate or reliable. So just body size or body composition alone is not enough of an indicator of adequate fueling, and we see accidental under eating all the time, in the clients that we work with. 

Lindsey Lusson  11:52

Yeah. Can you speak also too a little bit of the idea of maybe somebody is eating enough, but maybe their coffee all morning long salad or kind of push through lunch, and then six, seven o’clock hits, and they’re like, I’ve made it, now I can feast. Can you talk about how that kind of mindset or thinking of eating might actually be really detrimental to hormone balance and fertility?

Kaely McDevitt  12:18

Yes, yeah. It all comes back to this safety piece again, and I’m sure you’ll probably tire of hearing me say that. I’ve ever spent time on my Instagram it comes up a lot. But that’s really the theme for supporting optimal hormone health and women is creating safety. And if you think about the signals, we’re giving our body if we let coffee be our breakfast, and we eat just a few nibbles at lunch, and maybe on paper, were technically eating enough total calories for the day with our evening meal.

But we spent all day writing on stress hormones, because we had to do something to keep blood sugar up and to get us through the day. And the net result of that is stress and lack of safety, which is where, I think intermittent fasting and the trends that came about with that are just not appropriate long term. And women that are looking to conceive because we’re we’re minimizing that feeling of safety throughout the day. We just want to be gentle with our nutrition in this life season.

Lindsey Lusson  13:13

I couldn’t agree more. We do talk a lot about fertility on this podcast, but for those who are listening, and maybe have completed their families, or maybe they’re not thinking about starting their families for another decade or so, why else should we want to have regular ovulatory cycles? I think so often people are like, Oh, I, I get my period, so I’m good  or I feel fine on the pill, so there’s no need to worry about this. Why else does the body need progesterone just to function optimally? 

Kaely McDevitt  13:45

I think this is a thriving, not surviving type of a situation. We can certainly get through without adequate amounts of progesterone. But we were designed this way to have progesterone about two weeks out of the month, so that we can keep estrogen in check. And we can keep our thyroid healthy. We can keep our brains healthy, we can help calm the stresses and anxieties that come with being a modern human and even sleep deeper with progesterone on board.

Kaely McDevitt  14:11

So I’d like to think about, if you even just envision maybe it’s a family member or a friend in your life, but that woman that just knows who she is, she’s confident she’s not rushing around, she’s just moving through life at her own pace and when she steps into the room, you’re like, oh, man, that is the energy that I’m looking for.  That is progesterone, right? That is the column assured and not rushing through life. So I think if we want to thrive as women, whether we’re looking to have a family now or not at all, or maybe we’ve already done that, progesterone is an essential piece of that thriving. 

Lindsey Lusson  14:43

Yes. I’m also seeing it come up more in some research for bone health than we’ve talked about the big gap between not having a period and amenorrhea and bone loss. And for so long we’re like, oh, we’ll just put people on the pill. It’s fine. Well, now more research is coming out. It’s like oral contraceptives aren’t doing anything for our bone health when somebody isn’t having a period at all. And I feel like there’s more coming out even in the respect of using hormone replacement therapy if and when you eat to about the importance of progesterone for bone health. Is that anything you’ve kind of come across as well? 

Kaely McDevitt  15:14

Yeah, I’ve been looking at the same stuff too, which I think is really interesting.  And make sense to me that birth control hasn’t been helpful, because those are synthetic forms. This is not a bioidentical hormone replacement therapy situation. Another interesting thing about progesterone is that it’s also a neuro peptides. So our brain can make progesterone too and it does so in response to traumatic brain injuries in men and women. So there’s a really interesting brain avenue with progesterone that I don’t think we’ve fully dug into yet. But I’ll be excited to learn more, because already, teen progesterone, but I think more information will be..

Kaely McDevitt  15:53

Well, switching gears, for a second, because I think that we’re often… I think people are still learning, but I think that people are more on board with understanding, oh, I’m under fuelling therefore, I don’t get my period or my period is like… Talk to us about the flip side of that having heavy periods, having painful periods. Are there any ties to that with under fueling and or overtraining to your knowledge?

Kaely McDevitt  16:21

Yeah, so when we think about really symptomatic, heavy, painful, maybe lots of clots present in the period, we think a lot about estrogen that’s been unopposed. So estrogen is proliferative. It builds up that endometrial lining. It creates a potential home for a baby to implant if that’s the goal. But it can get a little rowdy, if it doesn’t have checks and balances on it. And the main checks and balance we can put on estrogen is that progesterone production. So if we don’t make strong enough progesterone, we could still be ovulating, we could still be having regular cycles. But now we have all this unopposed estrogen, and we’ve got heavy, painful just not fun periods that take one or two weeks out of fear month where you just don’t feel great. 

Kaely McDevitt  17:02

And if we think back to all the modern human things that create an environment with low progesterone, you could see the argument for really heavy painful periods in an under fueled high stress state. It’s like everything being on a spectrum, I think the body will maintain that cycle up until a certain point, and it may be really symptomatic. And then if we pass a certain threshold of under fueling in terms of severity or duration, eventually it would be infrequent or not at all ovulating. But we definitely can see really symptomatic periods, even in that kind of under fuelling. 

Lindsey Lusson  17:34

And we’ve talked about that a couple of times on the podcast in the past too just about, not everybody totally loses their period. But at the end of the day, regardless of your symptoms are your parents are infrequent, or they’re all the time or you just feel like crap. That’s something that deserves some investigation and nutrition, stress management, these are just foundational pieces that, unfortunately, just get really missed I think and kind of swept under the rug about how much of a difference they can make. From somebody’s well being and especially in the context of fertility. 

Kaely McDevitt  18:11

Yeah, it’s a shame that that’s the case. That it’s almost the last resort when I mean, I’m biased because I work in this space, too. But it feels like the most fundamental aspect, right?

Lindsey Lusson  18:20

But I’m sure you see that too, is people have kind of done everything, sometimes. They come to you for doing things that maybe that could have kind of been I don’t wanna say quick fix, but could have been relatively easy solutions if somebody had gone to you for censure. 

Kaely McDevitt  18:37

I know. It’s really, it’s sad, actually, to see a lot of time and money wasted in other avenues before really the foundations were established. But that’s where I appreciate podcasts like yours to just put good information out there. 

Lindsey Lusson  18:50

Yeah, I mean, I think the more information that women have, and of course, somebody gets to make their own decision, right. You might just decide, you know what, I felt fine on the birth control pill. And this is working for me right now. So the end, we’ll put a pin in it. But I do think that there comes a time when people do start to get a little bit more curious. 

Lindsey Lusson  19:10

Do you think that most people on birth control; Do you experience a time where they do want to come off, or they start to get interested in coming off? Because I feel like there’s more and more stuff coming out about how it’s basically the bleeding. And, of course, if there’s any sort of imbalances, you come off the pill, and then you’ve got reading hormone symptoms. Where do you find that people kind of start to get the most curious about coming off the pill? 

Kaely McDevitt  19:33

Yeah, it’s been interesting to see that change over the last decade of of sharing this kind of info. I think in the beginning, it was met with more contention, and people being like, No, this is what I want to do right now. And I’m like, I’m not here to tell you what to do at all. I just want to put complete information out there. But now I think because it’s being talked about more. I think we understand the mechanisms of birth control more and potential downsides. More and more women are getting curious about Who am I off of this? What do I feel like off of this? 

Kaely McDevitt  20:03

And more education around things like fertility awareness method, and just some non hormonal methods of birth control have made that an easier jump. Even just the apps and devices that are out now and people don’t have to do paper charting anymore. Yeah, amazing. So it’s definitely increased, which I think is really cool. And a lot of our clients do come specifically with wanting help to come off birth control and either prepare for minimizing symptoms or address things that they know will be there when they take the birth control out. So yeah, it’s been, it’s been interesting to see that momentum built over the years. 

Lindsey Lusson  20:37

I mean, I feel like in my immediate friends circle and most of us are kind of done having kids, we’re on our last kid, but I feel people are like, I don’t want anything to do with it. Either my husband’s getting a vasectomy or condoms, or we’re gonna do something. I feel it has definitely flipped. For those who are wanting to come off the pill, though, and not wanting to get pregnant. What are kind of their more reliable options? I know, you mentioned a little bit about fertility awareness method. But that in your experience, does that come with a bit of a learning curve? What are the best ways to go about using that effectively?

Kaely McDevitt  21:14

I think, my opinion, is that that is, it should at one point be a required skill set to be taught in our middle school health classes. That would be amazing. Because whether you’re using this for pregnancy prevention, or wanting to start a family, or even just troubleshooting symptoms, that ability to know where you are in your cycle is like a superpower. And I think women just are done a huge disservice to not learn how to do that. 

Kaely McDevitt  21:39

So that’s my preferred option is for people to learn how to do that. But to be very clear, it requires learning practice and responsibility. This is not the easy route. We’re not just taking a pill each day and knowing things are good. It’s a skill set. It’s developing that body literacy. And it takes time to be really good at that, too. So what we typically will do with clients that are coming off birth control and are interested in that is we’ll start to develop the skill set. 

Kaely McDevitt  22:06

So we’re learning how to track the three metrics of cervical fluid position and body temperature and learning what that looks like for analyzing chart data, while also having a backup contraceptive method. So whether that’s abstinence during the fertile window, if we know how to identify that or maybe we’re using condoms or other barrier methods at that time, because I don’t think we’re setting anybody up for success to go from birth control, right into…

Lindsey Lusson  22:32

Yeah, yeah. Such a good point. When somebody is transitioning off birth control you keep hearing more and more about delay a period after prolonged birth control use. When in your opinion, is the time to worry, when is it time to say, hey, I don’t think that this is related to the pill anymore? I think there’s something else going on?

Kaely McDevitt  22:55

once we’re getting past that three to six month mark, of coming up birth control, I think it’s time to dig into other stuff. The good news is, is the work that you’d be doing post birth control with repleting those nutrients and working on the food and the stress, that would be foundational stuff anyways. So you’re taking steps toward investigating other things, even out of the gates. But anywhere past three to six months, I’m like, let’s take a little deeper look at what’s going on here. 

Lindsey Lusson  23:20

And then your experience, can it take hormones? So let’s say somebody does get their period back six months after the pill, do you see a lot of dysregulation of certain hormones, even months, and maybe even a year or more after? Maybe we even look at it a little bit more put the context of a fertility lens. Because I feel like the narrative that I was told, growing up being an older millennial was like, Oh, just take the pill, it’s not going to impact you’re not going to impact your fertility, it’s not going to impact your fertility. And I can’t help but wonder if, if we didn’t get the whole truth then.

Kaely McDevitt  23:53

I know, I got the same messaging. And I disagree with that. Now, being in practice, and actually having walked it myself to. From what I’ve seen, and from what I lived, it can take a long time to get progesterone levels to come back around post birth control. And I think that has to do with duration of time on it and when it was started. So the closer to the onset of menstruation that birth control is started, the longer it can take to get progesterone production back. 

Kaely McDevitt  24:21

Because if you think about it, your brain over a communication really didn’t get a strong connection before it was severed chemically. So it’s like we’ve got two organ systems that have to get reacquainted and then meet each other and fall into that rhythm again. Typically, that’s what we see taking the longest is that really robust progesterone production. 

Lindsey Lusson  24:41

Well, and it’s interesting because I see a similar pattern with people during recovery from hypothalamic amenorrhea is that’s usually one of our hormones, sometimes estrogen too, but a lot more often progesterone and we’re seeing shorter luteal phase. And on a personal level, it wasn’t until years after how big babies where I’ve been able to break past like a 910 day luteal phase and I wonder is related to just years of not ovulating.

Kaely McDevitt  25:08

Yeah, it makes sense. I mean, I think that establishing that communication between the brain and ovaries is a big deal. And to act like when we just pull birth control out, or maybe we just had years where we didn’t have consistent signals down that pathway, it can just take a while to reestablish that. And to expect it to just immediately be there when we’re ready for it is unrealistic.

Lindsey Lusson  25:31

So when somebody’s thinking about starting a family, when is your recommended time to start coming off the pill to start figuring out in cycles to start seeing if we’re going to be easy or a challenging journey for them? 

Kaely McDevitt  25:43

I would love at least a year, honestly. Six to 12 months is typically what I’ll say. But the more time we have, the better. We’re just getting more practice with understanding your body, we’re getting more space to address any issues that might be there. Because for a lot of women that that trying to conceive season can be pretty stressful. And if we can have more time to address stuff before it becomes the stressful timeline, then it just makes for an easier experience. 

Lindsey Lusson  26:09

That’s so true. And when you’re giving yourself a six plus month window of thinking about starting your family, if it happened sooner, cool. But you definitely don’t want to be in that situation where I want to be pregnant yesterday and overlook some of these hormonal imbalances. And I mean, it’s hard when you’re already ready to be pregnant yet, you’re now learning about things that you could have been addressing six months to a year prior. It’s hard for sure. 

Kaely McDevitt  26:39

It’s super hard. And then that stress is a factor in the fertility too. It’s tough. I think we approach that preconception timeframe really casually in modern society. And actually, there’s very rarely any thought to preconception. It’s just like pregnancy prevention, and then boom, we’re trying to get pregnant. If you’re listening and thinking of starting a family in the next year or two, it is a huge gift to yourself to have an extended preconception time where you get to just pour into you. Fill that cup up, fill those nutrients stores up, address any issues that are there on a lower stress timeline.

Lindsey Lusson  27:15

100%. Well, we’re talking a lot about progesterone, we’ve talked a little bit about estrogen, I want to switch gears and ask and talk a little bit more about kind of two more like under talked about hormones. Luteinizing hormone and follicular stimulating hormone. A lot of times with our listeners who are dealing with new period, their luteinizing hormone is really low. And typically their FSH is low too. And that’s typically one of the ways we’re kind of distinguishing between a POI versus an HA. 

Lindsey Lusson  27:40

However, I keep seeing a trend of people with under fueling, disordered eating, eating disorder histories and really high FSH levels. And they’re kind of being funneled away from, in my opinion, the detriment of choosing to nourish their bodies and not over exercise, because that’s no longer their issue. They have something else. Do you know of any relationship as to why FSH would be overshooting at such a level that could put them in this state, even with more of a history that aligns with, period loss or not having their periods due to HA? 

Kaely McDevitt  28:16

Yeah, it’s interesting. We’ve seen a bit of this to in our practice. And so this is just my thoughts and hypotheses on what’s going on here. Because I do think it’s, it’s putting women in a category where it’s really confusing to get help or next steps. But if we think about that rising FSH can be a clue that egg quality is not quite as high as it should be. Or it’s just requiring, like more of a yell from the brain to the ovaries to get that consistent ovulation, which is a good way to explain what that hormone is doing. 

Kaely McDevitt  28:47

And I think in an under fueled state history of amenorrhea, or just long history of irregular cycles, I think it could make sense that egg quality would suffer in that state, too. We’re lacking fundamental nutrients, we’re probably also lacking antioxidants and the things that keep those… So I think it makes sense to me that we could see those existing together. It’s just a different variety of the same issue. It’s just presenting differently because everybody’s unique. And I think conventional medicine likes to have really specific columns to put people in. If you don’t match those criteria perfectly, it’s like, well, they can’t do that.

Lindsey Lusson  29:23

Yeah. And what I always tell people too, especially when you’re working with conventional medicine doctors. You might only have the hormone lab panel done one time, right, over the course of years, right. And I’ve definitely seen wonky things with hormones during the recovery process. I’ve seen luteinizing hormone crazy overshoot. But I also really appreciate what you said about just the communication and  hey, we haven’t ovulated in a while. Let’s try sending out more signal than we ever need to and if you were to capture that. 

Lindsey Lusson  29:54

So I think repeat lab work is also really important. I think so many times, especially with a POI diagnosis, I feel like people think  this is it, this is the end and IVF is my only option. And I just want people to be able to have a little bit more curiosity with what might be going on rather than thinking that that’s where they have to stop.

Kaely McDevitt  30:15

Amen to that. And I’m glad you mentioned that repeat testing. Because I think for whatever reason, we have in our mind that lab testing is infallible. I love lab testing, it’s a huge part of our practice, too. It makes our lives easier as clinicians. But there’s not a single test out there that is flawless and perfect. And a single out of range lab result is not enough to sound alarms, it’s just the first data points and hopefully many that can establish a trend. 

Kaely McDevitt  30:41

So especially if we’re throwing around POI diagnoses and things based off of one set of labs, just the mental emotional toll that that kind of thing can take, I have a problem with. So I would encourage repeat testing. Let’s gather a bigger data pool and see what’s going on there. Because we’ve seen some weird things happen with labs where there’s just a strange fluke, at a time of measurement, or where you are in your healing, maybe we’re catching some of that kind of unusual communication.

Lindsey Lusson  31:09

We see that a lot with  even non hormone related labs. We that a lot with insulin resistance, and also with thyroid with elevated liver enzymes. So yes, I always encourage people to use lab work like we do have to look at it more than once. And we do have to not put so much stock in it being the perfect and healthy whole picture of our health. 

Lindsey Lusson  31:32

Yeah. But with that, I know that testing is a really big part of your practice. So what are your typical must have tests whenever somebody is transitioning off the pill and thinking about starting their family in the next year? Where do you like to start people out?

Lindsey Lusson  31:47

That’s great. Yeah, I was gonna bring that into because I do know that while the functional tests can tell so much more than just a single bloodwork is, sometimes they’re dedicated, sometimes it’s a lot of work on the client. And they some of times cost a pretty penny. But yeah, when you can order stuff through providers, get it covered by insurance, and then kind of go from there. And I’ll be super helpful. I also love what you said a little bit about minerals, and how they can be so helpful for making something a little bit more targeted to the individual. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Kaely McDevitt  31:47

So we do bloodwork and an htma, or hair tissue mineral analysis on all of our clients. And we do other functional tests, like looking at stool tests, or things like a Dutch test, or things like that on an as needed basis. But we just find that the blood work that’s telling us about blood sugar handling and our hormones and our thyroid that we get so much great value from. Then an htma is telling us about mineral status over the span of about three months. 

Kaely McDevitt  32:01

And one of the bigger concerns with birth control specifically is just the depletion of micronutrients. So getting some of that micronutrient data helps us just be more targeted for the individual. And then to that greater picture of high stress and a low nourishment, low progesterone picture for most of our clients. If we can take a look at what’s happening with minerals, we can much more meaningfully intervene to help build that resilience of their nervous system to better handle stress to help create more energy or improve metabolic rate at the cellular level. So we just love bloodwork and htma. The nice thing is that those are really cost effective in the world of functional testing.

Kaely McDevitt  33:22

Yeah, we love mineral testing and work with our clients. Because if we think about, zooming to what the lowest route possible for somebody symptoms, we’re really talking about what’s happening inside the cells. Can we make energy? Can we get rid of exhaust? And then do hormones interact with the cells the way that they’re supposed to? So thyroid, insulin, sex hormones. All of those questions come down to mineral status and mineral balance. And we’ve got this kind of high stress society and stress depletes minerals. Every subsequent pregnancy depletes minerals too so we work with a lot of mamas. So there’s just a lot of mineral depletion. It’s also much harder to get enough minerals from food because the soil is so depleted now, too.

Lindsey Lusson  34:07

Right, it’s a different world. 

Kaely McDevitt  34:09

So you’ve got an uphill battle with with mineral status. And what I think is really cool about mineral testing is that we’ve all got our own kind of stress signature, or how we might use or deplete certain minerals in response to stressors. And you and I could go through this equally stressful three month period, but have very different living mineral signatures in response to that. 

Lindsey Lusson  34:30

True, because our bodies are going to handle the stress differently.

Kaely McDevitt  34:34

So knowing that about the individual means that we can not only correct the current issue, but now they know should life throw another stressful season their way should they have another baby another postpartum season. They know what to be proactive about because they know hey, I burned through magnesium like crazy when I’m stressed or I’m someone that needs a lot more sodium when I’m dealing with stress. And so it’s, a skill set that can be carried and just make some of the fastest improvements and symptoms of any interventions that we’ve seen.

Lindsey Lusson  35:01

Okay, I love this. Well, before we wrap up, you are currently pregnant and in your third trimester getting close to that delivery date. I’m curious Kaely, as a women’s health dietitian and an expert in the field, what’s one thing that you have known about, but it’s so different experiencing firsthand when you yourself are pregnant? 

Kaely McDevitt  35:26

Oh, gosh, that first trimester was so humbling for me. I really thought that I could just dodge all symptoms, because I quote, unquote, know what’s happening. Oh, yeah, no, I didn’t. I’m glad that I went through that, because I learned a lot of things that they needed to.  One of the most important ones just being like, slow down. This is your body being like, hey, we fed a lot of work going on here, you need to slow your pace. So that was huge and humbling. 

Kaely McDevitt  35:54

And I just like approach that differently with clients now. I think there’s more to it than just protein rich smoothie, if you’re not doing…. A very tactical advice. So that’s been big for me to just get to feel that firsthand. And to also feel the impact of when I am really nourishing myself well, when I am paying attention to minerals and seeing that reflected how I feel. So I just think it’s given my recommendations a lot more weight because I’ve lived them now. Which is fine. 

Lindsey Lusson  36:23

Kaely, how can somebody get in touch with you? I assume maybe taking some time off here in the next couple of months. But I’m sure do you have a team that also works for you? And how can people get plugged into your channels what you do and potentially work with you or your team in the future?

Kaely McDevitt  36:38

Sure. Yeah, you can find me on Instagram. So it’s @kaelyrd. My name is spelled weird. It’s Kaely. And then my website is the same. So Kaelyrd.com. In both places, you’ll find a lot of free educational resources and then you’ll find different capacities that my team and I can help. We do that in a one on one basis or in a group course format. So you’ll see that on there. And yeah, there’ll be a bit of a maternity leave for me in the next couple months, but our team is available to help.

Lindsey Lusson  37:05

Perfect.  You’ve set yourself up well for that. And at a minimum I highly recommend at least following along on her Instagram because wealth of information on all things women’s hormones. So thanks so much for being here.

Kaely McDevitt  37:17

Thanks so much for having me.

Connect with Lindsey Lusson: 

Instagram: @‌food.freedom.fertility
Website: www.foodfreedomandfertility.com/
Twitter: @LindseyLusson
Tiktok: @food.freedom.fertility