Kimberly Spencer (00:00:00) - Welcome back, my fellow sovereigns, to another episode of the Crown Yourself podcast. I am Kimberly Spencer, and I'm so excited to be bringing you another episode from the backlogs from the vaults, because this episode I am the biggest believer in divine timing first and foremost, and I believe everything happens for a reason. And even when you think you may mess up the timing of things, it still somehow turns out, magically, that the timing of things is exactly what it needed to be. And I find it amazing that we found this episode in the backlog of our vaults and are bringing it forth to the light because, at this time, my hormones have had their own sort of transformation. Let's be honest about the stress of losing three family members now four family members in the past three years and two family friends, moving twice and having a baby, and running two businesses and all of that. My body just caught up with me, and I've been going through all sorts of functional medicine, and hormonal tests, and it is such a timely topic to bring to light the power of your ability to heal your hormones and to navigate that balance, especially as a biological woman.
Kimberly Spencer (00:01:29) - Our hormones are cyclical like we do not have the same amount of progesterone and testosterone and estrogen all throughout. Like the month, we vary, we cycle. It's our cycle. And the beauty of what I love about what Lauren Rice brings to the table is a delicious amount of science. She is an epigenetic scientist with the woo, the now she's added in psychedelic medicine as well, and nutrition and all of these realms that blend science and spirit that unite us for balance. Now, you may not be into all of the realms of exploration, but I encourage you to listen to this episode to just be able to explore with curiosity your body because that is the biggest and greatest transformation that can happen. One of the biggest lessons that I have learned over the past six years is that a diagnosis is not a death sentence, a diagnosis is a label. If we were to really chunk up and remove any meaning out of it so often, any diagnosis and I know this after having received some and received some for family members can feel so scary and how that fear plays a part of how things manifest in our body in the realm of epigenetics is so powerful because when you realize the power that your mind and your body have together aligned, you transform literally the biology of your belief and you transform your biology.
Kimberly Spencer (00:03:24) - That is the power of what I am so excited to bring to you with this interview with Lauren Reiss. She is phenomenally well-researched, like phenomenally so, and she brings the science and the spirit. So I hope that you become in spirit or inspired by this interview. And now I give you Lauren Rice. While we make every effort to bring you the best and correct information, we are all still learning.
Kimberly Spencer (00:03:55) - And I am simply presenting my views. I am not a licensed medical professional, and even for my guests who are licensed medical professionals, this podcast is purely for general informational, educational, and entertainment purposes. The use of any of this information on this podcast or materials linked in this podcast is at your own risk and you take full ownership of your results. This podcast is not intended as a substitute for professional medical treatment and or diagnosis. Always consult with a doctor for any medical issues you may be having. Welcome to the Crown Yourself podcast, where together we build your empire and transform your subconscious stories about what's possible for your business, body, and life.
Kimberly Spencer (00:04:50) - I'm your host, Kimberly Spencer, founder of Crown Yourself. Com and Iโm a master mindset coach, bestselling author, and TEDx speaker, known to my clients as a game changer. Each week you get the conscious leadership strategies you need to help you reign with courage, clarity, and confidence so that you too, can make the income and impact you deserve. Imagine this podcast as your royal invitation to step into your full potential and rein in your divine purpose. Your sovereignty starts here and your reign is now. Hello, Lauren, and welcome to the Crown Yourself podcast. I am so excited to have you on here to dive into all the BS of hormonal balance.
Lauren Rice (00:05:33) - Yes. Thank you for having me. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. I think what we're going to talk about is something that is just a subject that's really fresh in a lot of people's minds, so I'm excited.
Kimberly Spencer (00:05:45) - So how did you get interested in hormonal balance and the adrenal responses and epigenetics? What stimulated this interest for you?
Lauren Rice (00:05:58) - You know, I think it is a couple of things.
Lauren Rice (00:06:01) - I mean, of course I'm a woman. And like many women, this is something that I struggled with in my own life and my own body. So naturally that was going to influence the direction of my work. Um, actually, what brought me into my work was a kind of a personal health crisis. Uh, when I was in my late teens or early 20s, I had a very different career trajectory planned. But, uh, life or cosmic destiny had had other things in mind for me. So partially it was, you know, my my personal need. Right. Like, I think a lot of, a lot of us pursue things because we need them. And then we take what we do. And, you know, if we're lucky, we get to use it to help others. And then sort of the other piece to that is just seeing how endemic it was, how many women were struggling with reproductive imbalances, things like PCOS. And Demetrius, um, you know, even just thinking that, you know, PMS is like normal, that it's normal to just feel horrible for a couple of days a month.
Lauren Rice (00:06:59) - And that's something that, you know, I really want to bring some conversation around. Um, and then also seeing how underlying all of that was really a commonly a relationship with the neurological system that the stress sensing system that involves our adrenals, which actually make more of our sex hormones than our reproductive organs. So that's when it kind of a light bulb went off. And I thought, so this is not just relevant to me and even to women, but this is just a much broader conversation we need to be having about what's happening to the rhythm of our bodies and how we all are dealing with the fallout from that.
Kimberly Spencer (00:07:37) - So looking like for me, I remember when I was a.
Kimberly Spencer (00:07:40) - Kid.
Kimberly Spencer (00:07:41) - Like I was struggling massively, I had bulimia, but I had was diagnosed with Pmdd, which is like premenstrual just fork disorder, if you know it, and I'm sure you know it. But just for the listeners, um, and that like I had wonky periods and like, I know it was highly attributed to a high-stress environment and me completely jacking up my biochemistry as a teenager with bulimia.
Kimberly Spencer (00:08:05) - So looking at the hormones like, how does that how does this stress play into the hormones? And like when do these symptoms? So because so many people I know have PCOS, they're struggling with fertility issues. How do we balance this? When can we start? We started as soon as we started our periods. Like is this something that's innate within us or is it nurtured because of choices and lifestyle choices?
Lauren Rice (00:08:32) - Um, that's such a great question. You know, I think, um, I think looking at so for me, like reproductive health, it's an indicator in a lot of ways of total body health. And we tend to see, or at least I've seen clinically in my work, women that tend to be more balanced reproductively, they have less health imbalances. Overall, they tended to grow up with a healthier diet, and maybe less exposure to stress. You know, they tend to not necessarily be from as many urban areas because there's less pollution. So I definitely do see a correlation. And so, you know, to answer part of your question, like kind of how early is too early to be having this conversation? I think, you know, children's health becomes the health that they have as adolescents, and then that health impacts how we are as adults.
Lauren Rice (00:09:19) - So I don't think it's ever really too early. I mean, a lot of what I do to help rebalance a person's endocrine system or their hormonal system is really supporting their body detoxification processes, supporting their liver, supporting their kidneys, their lymphatic system, all these things that help us detoxify from the toxic load that we all live under and that, frankly, many babies are actually born with a high toxic load already because of what they're inheriting from their parents. We really it's not anybody's fault on an individual level. This is just what's happened to us globally as we have created these really non-sustainable ways of living on our planet. So I don't think any age is too early to talk about it.
Kimberly Spencer (00:10:05) - And now I'd love for you to touch on that, that especially that's so interesting that babies are receiving so much. Now, I've heard many things about, you know, when you go to a doctor, I've had two children and both through midwives and through natural childbirth. The reason I chose to go with the midwife was because the information that I received from my doctor was far less than what I received from my midwife and the information that doctors will typically give a pregnant woman.
Kimberly Spencer (00:10:32) - It's like, don't drink, don't smoke, don't eat sushi, do exercise if it feels good. And that's about it. So like, what are those environmental toxins that, women are absorbing? Is it plastics? Is it radio frequencies? Like what. What is it?
Lauren Rice (00:10:52) - Oh so and that's such a great question. And I'm actually designing a prenatal nutrition course. I'm in partnership with another organization and I love called fit for birth that does like fitness training for women who are, you know, wanting to protect their bodies as they go through this change. And it feeds into exactly your question that, you know, naturally, when you start focusing on female endocrine imbalance, then people start to have questions like, what do I do when I'm pregnant, right? Like, this is just the conversation that keeps flowing, which I love the toxin load. I've seen people be skeptical of the word toxins in recent years. They're like, oh, you hear about all these toxins? What are these toxins? I just want to address that.
Lauren Rice (00:11:31) - My work, everything that I do, I, I like to be evidence-backed. I really like to see research behind the things that I do, but also just with this caveat, to understand that a lot of what's happening is still very emergent. For instance, for in-home cleaning products and personal care products, there's an organization called EWG or Environmental Working Group that rates. I see you know them. Yes. Cabinets and find out what color everything was.
Kimberly Spencer (00:11:58) - Oh my gosh, I'm such a nerd. Like, I was looking to hire a housekeeper and I couldn't use her products. Like I just said, you can't. And she said, well, I can't guarantee my clean. And I was like, well, then I can't guarantee that you're gonna work for me, because, um, I said, you're going to have to use my all organic, natural products that I've checked just because the the sensitivity is like, I get personally sensitive when I'm around heavy smells, especially things like febreeze. Like I can't even get into an Uber if it's just blasting with fake scents.
Lauren Rice (00:12:35) - Yes. So you know EWG, right? They rate hundreds of thousands of products within the personal care industry alone, there's over 400,000 different research chemicals. And none of these things have been tested. So we would all like to imagine that we live in a world where we can wake up and we can go to the grocery store, or we can go to a big box store or the mall, and we can pick something up on the shelf. And because it's for sale, we can assume that it's safe. Unfortunately, particularly in the United States, that is not a reality. That's just not a reality for people. So just because you turn over your lotion or your self-tanner or your perfume or your counter spray and, you know, you might just see this like a long list of words, right? And even if it's marketed as being green or healthy or eco-friendly there's something called greenwashing, which really just means that a lot of products are engineered to look that way because it's what the market is demanding right now.
Lauren Rice (00:13:27) - But you should know that just because something is for sale doesn't mean it's safe. So resources are really great to check out your home and personal care products. That's one of the biggest avenues because our skin is our largest organ, right? It is supposed to be a semi-permeable barrier. It's supposed to keep some things out and let some things in. And so what you spray gets on your hands and feet or your babies, animals, hands and feet. You know what? You wipe right and end up touching your skin surfaces or this, you know, or your food and then gets in your mouth everything you put on your skin, even if it's stuff you're washing off. Right. It still can leave a residue. So this is one of the number one ways. And I don't think it's something that's being as well talked about yet. And I think, you know, to your point about, you know, working like hiring a cleaner, working with somebody who might not want to use your products.
Lauren Rice (00:14:19) - I think there are a lot of people who are skeptical because they're used of using certain types of things. And there's also been a lot of marketing that like chemicals, make things cleaner, like, for instance, your soap to wash your hair. It doesn't need to suds. You don't need to have foaming toothpaste actually do the job. We've just been marketed to that we need these smells, these colors, these feelings that actually they can be stripping to our skin and to our hair. And so I often find the best way to do it is to just start a dialogue and say, look, a lot of these products have just replaced the toxic ingredients that are in the things you're comfortable with, with plant based surfactants and cleaners that are known to be non-toxic, it will probably do exactly the same job. Why don't you try it? I mean, for hundreds of years, people cleaned with vinegar. They cleaned with baking soda and lemon juice. We see that time all of which is the active component. In time, it kills 99.7% of all bacteria and viruses on contact.
Lauren Rice (00:15:15) - Right? So it's just as effective as bleach. And it's not bleach, which is a known endocrine disruptor. And I mean, it's a toxic poison. It can cause, you know, cardiovascular and brain damage if you inhale too much of it. So, you know, I find that it's just about having that conversation with. People kind of reassuring them, letting them try something, you know, and even for, you know, somebody who's cleaning your cleaner herself, she's inhaling those fumes. So we're getting it in our personal care products. If we pump gas into our car, inhaling those fumes, if we walk down the street and somebody is smoking, or if there are levels of smog or pollution, it's also in our food. Even if you buy organic fruits and vegetables, unless you know where they were grown and that they didn't spray or that they use, you know, different types of pest control, like they use terpenes or they use they bring in other pests, like certain bugs to control certain things.
Lauren Rice (00:16:12) - Um, then, you know, you're probably eating some chemicals, even if you wash them. These things absorb particularly into the soft skin thing. So the EWG has another list, um, called the dirty dozen or the clean 15. And they let you know what are, you know, the most important products to purchase, organic and not if you can afford to do so. And so it's in our food. It's on our it's getting into our skin, it's in our air. And then it's also in our water. Um, it's in our soil because it's in our water table. Most, um, like, uh, municipal water sources in the United States have pretty high levels of heavy metals. Um, some of them test below what the threshold is for quote-unquote safety. Um, but many of them don't. And so even if you drink water out of a plastic bottle, you think you have the like, you know, fancy Fiji water or whatever, you know, know that those flexible plastics are also leaching in.
Lauren Rice (00:17:07) - So I don't want to say this to scare people. I just want to make them aware that you're not going to avoid toxins in your environment. What you need to do is actually focus on nutrient density in your diet, relaxing the nervous system so that you can detoxify efficiently. Getting enough rest because that's a massive time when the body performs important operations like detoxification and things that balance our hormones and do things that give you joy. You know, while, you know, trying to eat well and be hydrated. I mean, it's simple things actually.
Kimberly Spencer (00:17:41) - Yeah. I think that I'm so glad that you address that because so often we can hear like like there's the perception of like, oh, then now I have to like now I have to like check all the ingredients and ditch all my plastic water bottles and like, and I do believe that there, there is a balance of finding it and allowing for yourself to, to do the best you can with the resources that you have available. Not everyone may have the ability to go out and purchase all different types of organic meats and fruits and veggies, but at least, you know, look at that dirty dozen list and either don't buy those in if they're not organic or being able to just navigate, use the tools effectively to just just navigate the waters instead of feeling overwhelmed that, oh my God, there's now this other thing I have to concern myself with.
Kimberly Spencer (00:18:29) - I mean, I can speak for myself that for me it was a very gradual process of adaptation to buying organic to natural things. And I mean, look, I'm still drinking out of a plastic water bottle at this moment. So like, you do the best you can with the resources that you have available. So I'd love to know a little bit more about epigenetics. What is epigenetics, and how did the toxins that we're experiencing in our environment and in our world affect us and affect our genes?
Lauren Rice (00:19:04) - Um, yeah. So epigenetics and really we should just refer now, I think to to genetics as epigenetics. Right? When we discover something new in science, we just sort of like, you know, we continue to replace our knowledge. Epigenetics is really the study, the understanding of how our environment shifts us, shifts our genetic expression. So a simple way that I like to explain it to people is what we eat, drink, breathe, think, feel, and do all have the power to change our genes.
Lauren Rice (00:19:35) - Right. So you and I have grown up in a world where, you know, first of all, genetics were starting to be talked about in the mainstream. And you know, that like kind of phrasing like, oh, it's in your genes or, you know, it runs in the family. I think that when we say things like that, there's this underlying perception that there is a certain way that things are for you, and that is how they always have to be, when in fact, what we know about epigenetics is exactly the opposite, actually, that your genes are not prescriptive, meaning they don't tell you how you have to be or what's always going to be. But they're descriptive. They tell a story about where you've been, what you've experienced, what kind of stress load you've been under, what happened to your parents right before you were born, all of these things. And so I think what it does is it kind of to follow on your your previous point is that it gives us a sense of agency.
Lauren Rice (00:20:29) - It also allows us to take a little bit more. A responsibility for our own health, and it does show us that that's in our hands in a lot of ways. But I think it gives us hope. And so I've literally seen people heal their bodies and then create epigenetic changes in themselves. I am one of those people. Part of the reason that epigenetics is, you know, something that I became so passionate about is that my mother, um, unfortunately, passed away of metastatic breast cancer when I was very young. And I naturally write, had concerns about, you know, hormone based cancers for myself and, you know, wanting to reduce my cancer risk. And so when I came into my work and started studying epigenetics, at first I was actually really nervous to look at my own genome because I was afraid that I would find something and then I would feel trapped by it, even though I knew everything I knew. That's the power of fear, right? And so a couple of years later, after, you know, kind of getting studying epigenetics and integrating this into my work, I finally, uh, looked at my own genetics and I found that I did have some of the markers for the BRCA gene, which is sort of it's been made famous by Angelina Jolie's personal journey and what some of these.
Lauren Rice (00:21:40) - So basically, I'll explain a little bit more about how your genes function. So if you imagine there's like a street and then there are houses on that street, right? They're sort of like locations on a particular gene or in a piece of genetic material. And depending on what's going on in your environment, you can shift things at some of those points. Right? You can up-regulate or down-regulate certain things. You can turn certain things on or off, right? Express or express certain traits. And so when we look for somebody's disease risk, what we're looking to see is do they have certain expressions in that gene that tell us that they're more likely to develop this disease or to, you know, have this type of cancer? And so I was, you know, positive for some of those mutations which gave me a risk for breast cancer. And so then I kind of went on this journey doing everything I could think of, diving into the research to kind of balance my body hormonally. I came off of hormonal contraceptives, which was incredibly damaging to my biology and is to many women.
Lauren Rice (00:22:42) - By the way, this is not just a sugar pill. No one takes it as directed. And there are lots of side effects, including female sterility, which I deal with a ton of infertility women in their 20s and 30s who should not necessarily have so much trouble getting pregnant but do anyway. So, you know, I went back and I, I looked at my own genome again, and I found that I actually had, um, I had expressed some of those polymorphisms or, you know, differences in expression. And I actually had a below-average risk for breast cancer. So I myself, right, saw that just by, you know, making changes in healing my physiology, my gene shifted, which makes total sense because this is what epigenetics tells us that we can do. It was just really cool to see that for myself.
Kimberly Spencer (00:23:28) - Are so powerful.
Kimberly Spencer (00:23:29) - Because I don't have the data, but I have the experience to back that. When I shifted into teaching Pilates for ten years, my sympathetic nervous system and my cortisol had been fried from my childhood.
Kimberly Spencer (00:23:45) - From just being on a roller coaster of growing up with an addict. And when I started doing Pilates, suddenly I had balance come back into my body because I was working my parasympathetic nervous system. So. And my nervous system, actually, I was starting to have that balance of being able to oscillate from sympathetic to parasympathetic. So can you speak a little bit about how our nervous systems really play a role in the expression of our genes?
Lauren Rice (00:24:11) - Yes. And I'm so glad you asked that because I wanted to make more about this point. So when we talk about the nervous system, right, we actually have multiple different nervous systems in our body. A lot of people, when we mentioned the nervous system, you know, they think of the central nervous system, they think of, uh, words like sympathetic and parasympathetic dominance or fight or flight or rest and digest or tend and befriend. Right? We think about basically feeling stressed or not feeling stressed, or the system in our body that controls all sorts of things automatically for us.
Lauren Rice (00:24:43) - Um, we actually also have a nervous system in our gut called our enteric nervous system that responds and sets off the central nervous system. So there are many different kinds. Basically, the nervous system is, is it's a sensory system. So when we take a human body like a cadaver and we, you know, we examine it after that person has died and we, we learn how the body works by doing that. If we were to sort of pull the nervous system out of the body, it's fascinating what it looks like. It's basically a brain with eyes and then all these little nerves that look like the shape of a human body. So we like to think that cognition, like thinking, happens in the brain only. But that's not true because we're sensing data. We're feeling things, you know, not just touch on our skin, but, you know, also we're intuitively feeling and sensing things, sensing the energy, sensing temperature changes. You know, what other people's electromagnetic fields are giving off around us?
Lauren Rice (00:25:37) - You mentioned electromagnetic pollution, which is also a very stressful thing to many nervous systems. So it's basically our sensory system. And when we grow up in stress and trauma, like unfortunately, how many if not most people I think are growing up in the world? We have a system that gets set on high alert, and something in the brain called the default mode network is very active. Uh, it's basically a readiness-sensing programming, right? You're always waiting for a threat and trying to anticipate that so you can have trouble relaxing. You can have trouble regulating your emotions. When the nervous system is stressed, the adrenals have to produce certain hormones and certain chemicals. The adrenals are glands in your body that manage our many things our immune system, our fight or flight response. You know, they're like, the clutch that kicks in when you need that extra energy. They're the thing that responds to caffeine, to sleep or no sleep. Circadian rhythms also are sexual hormones, our hormones of balance and fertility, and even cognition.
Lauren Rice (00:26:44) - Your adrenals make things like serotonin, uh, norepinephrine, dopamine adrenaline, and cortisol, which are kind of the most famous. We, like, vilify them like, oh, you don't want to have cortisol. But truth be told, if there wasn't cortisol in your body, you'd be dead in 72 hours. It's it's really important. It's just got to be balanced. And so when we're in that nervous system state where we're always on high alert, our adrenals are producing a lot of what I call stress chemistry, stress chemicals. And those stress chemicals are corrosive to our organs. They slow our liver function. They impact the ability of our lymphatic system to work. They, you know, negatively impact our cardiovascular system, which is why we associate stress with heart attack risk, particularly in women. Um, we hear a lot about, you know, male cardiovascular health, but actually, heart disease is like one of the number one killers of women. So, you know, women's systems are meant to be fluid.
Lauren Rice (00:27:39) - They're meant to have, uh, differing hormones at differing times. And so if we are forced into one sort of pigeonhole of having to produce stress chemicals a lot, the body's actually really smart. What it does is it down-regulates other stuff that it considers to be non-essential. So for instance, making sex hormones for keeping your periods regular and balanced or making you fertile or making enough chemistry for you to not feel so like for you to have, you know, faster cognition or for you to not, you know, for you to feel calm and able to connect with others like the body, even digest your food. Actually, the body kind of down-regulates all those things to make way for making more of the stress chemicals. And so then it creates this negative loop where your hormones are unbalanced and your body is producing the things that make your nervous system. Stressed and then your nervous system stressed. You got to produce more and then your hormones are unbalanced and did I sort of, you know, paint a picture for you? It's basically a vicious cycle or a virtuous cycle that you can be in.
Kimberly Spencer (00:28:40) - And so looking at the fact that so many women are on birth control, like with our body's natural responses to have that cycle and then with birth control, it basically you're on a pill for 28 days. I haven't touched birth control since I was 19 years old because it just jacked up my system. I was on it for nine months and it just. And yet it's so often prescribed for everything that's related to a female cycle. I mean, I was put on it to regulate my moods for PMDD, and I was like, well, I can time it down to the week that I will have to be a little bit more on edge. So what can we do for that week instead of like putting me on something that's going to be for the whole month? So what have you noticed about birth control and how it affects women's cycles and and even their stress responses?
Lauren Rice (00:29:41) - Yes, that's a great question. You know, I mean, I think so part of the reason that birth control is prescribed for so many different, uh, you know, female hormonal imbalances is because we just don't have anything else, uh, you know, a lot of, uh, doctors, gynecologists, you know, obstetricians, they're not really trained to look more broadly at women's health.
Lauren Rice (00:30:02) - I mean, we could get into a broader conversation about how kind of, you know, mechanized and, um, specialized medicine has become, and in some ways that's had great benefits. But in other ways, I think that's prevented us from looking at the body as a whole with different parts. Um, so when women are prescribed hormonal birth control, you know, it does regulate things because it artificially sort of tells the body that it is in a certain in a certain state. Right? It's it regulates the hormonal response. And what that can do, unfortunately, is mask symptoms for a lot of people. So when they come off of it later, they didn't realize, like, wow, I have really heavy clotting periods. You know, they're really crampy. They may have had endometriosis. They don't realize or, you know, all of a sudden they might have mood swings or acne that are not actually caused because of their hormones. It's because when their body is menstruating or ovulating, it's waving a flag.
Lauren Rice (00:30:59) - It's like a kind of smoke. When there's fire, it's saying, hey, there's actually something underlying that's going on. But because my body is devoting all these resources to to keeping my reproductive system nourished, because this is important for the furthering of our species. Um, you know, so biologically, we have that drive. Again, women are amazing women's bodies. Um, you know, our periods at the time when it's making known, making visible those things that we don't see. So that's why, you know, a time of, you know, maybe it was the week of your menstruation or maybe even the week of your ovulation when you were having, you know, those more anxiety, those mood changes. It's because of what was going on underlying in your body. And if you were to just have taken the birth control, even if that helped ameliorate some of the symptoms, it was going to be masking what was going on underneath and the damage that that birth control causes. I mean, typical hormonal contraceptive.
Lauren Rice (00:31:52) - When we say birth control, that's I should just say that's what we're talking about. We're not talking about barrier methods of contraception, like condoms or even a new product that was just passed by the FDA. Um, that's like an inter-vaginal gel that's non-hormonal or diaphragms or spermicide or anything like that. We're talking about hormone-altering contraceptives. They're also IUDs, which are devices that are inserted in your body up into your cervix that can prevent pregnancy. Some of those emit hormones as well. Even the low-dose hormone-emitting birth control still can cause damage. Uh, I read an interesting study once that showed that for women who took a hormonal contraceptive for as little as 6 to 18 months, which is, like way less than how most people take it, they had changes in something called their sh g b, which is sex hormone binding globulin. Imagine it like a little Pacman that goes and eats up all the extra hormones that your body doesn't need to have. They experienced changes in their body's ability to regulate its own sex hormone production with this little pac man, this SGB, um, for up to five years, and for some women, it was considered to be permanent.
Lauren Rice (00:33:07) - Right. So if you the longer you take birth control, the more likely it is to permanently affect your body. Doctors tell women to just stay on it because their bodies are used to having it, but it can alter your ability to produce estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, even your insulin, uh, balance, and sensitivity. So, you know, it has real long-term effects because it's a synthetic hormone. And if you were to look at like actual estrogen, right, it would look like this. And then if you were to look at synthetic estrogen. It would be like this. They would be totally different. Your body would not think that they were the same thing by any measure. So when we put these things in our body, it affects our ability to regulate our own hormones, and that can have untold effects on the rest of the system. So that answers your question.
Kimberly Spencer (00:33:58) - Yes. Yeah. It does. I mean, our periods are such a especially as women.
Kimberly Spencer (00:34:03) - Like it's just such something that's not really broached like it's perceived as normal to just get prescribed and like just, you know, birth control and like, how do we start normalizing the conversation about actual health and like actual sustainable health for, for the long term?
Lauren Rice (00:34:24) - So, you know, I.
Lauren Rice (00:34:26) - I think that there's a couple of ways that we do that. First of all, we have to begin with a different assumption, the assumption that influences doctors to prescribe hormonal birth control and for women to want to take that is that women's cycles are something that is basically messy, awkward, a pain in the butt, and they need to be regulated and dealt with. Right? That women's premenstrual syndrome symptoms are just a normal part of life, not necessarily an alarm bell or an indicator light telling you something is wrong. But like if you're driving and your check engine light is on, you don't just like, well, maybe some people just ignore it, but you don't ignore that forever, right? Like something could be going on.
Lauren Rice (00:35:10) - You think about this. You know, if you have crampy periods, if you have PMDD, if you have massive mood swings, if you have a lot of bloating if you break out like these are check engine lights from your body, something is off in your body's communicating that to you. It's very important. So I think we just need to kind of dismiss the assumption that women's bodies and their hormonal cycles are something that needs to be fixed or regulated artificially. That's the first assumption that needs to go away. Women, you know, we are supposed to shift even when everything is working healthfully and fine. You know, our cycles may shift slightly. They may shift in relationship to lunar activity, and also to what's happening in our lives. Sometimes the date that we ovulate can shift throughout the month. So we're supposed to be fluid, loosey-goosey creatures, right? And to try to artificially stabilize that doesn't honor that. So I think whatever system we do, needs to have variety, and it needs to be able to work for different types of women who have different types of concerns and needs.
Lauren Rice (00:36:16) - Right. A woman who's trying to conceive, you know, what we do, um, to help her regulate her hormones and to even give her choice as to when that might be is different than, you know, a woman who maybe is for sure she doesn't want to conceive at all. Right. And so giving people different options, I think that's key. And looking at making some sort of hybrid of, you know, hormonal if necessary at certain times or non-hormonal options of birth control and also educating ourselves about our bodies and our natural cycles. Do you see cervical mucus changes? Do you notice changes in your mood or your skin? Do you notice changes in your body temperature? There are all kinds of devices that can give at-home urinalysis. There's one that I use actually, that measures multiple different hormones for me throughout the month, because I just want to understand my cycle more than even using it as a contraceptive or not. So I think a level of education then follows where women need to be open to understanding their own bodies a little bit more, and realizing that fertility and infertility or conception, not conception, and also women's sexual health is a much bigger conversation than just like taking a pill.
Lauren Rice (00:37:28) - So we don't get pregnant.
Kimberly Spencer (00:37:30) - Are so powerful. And you touched on something, especially when you were speaking about epigenetics. And the power of our genes, is that it's something that I believe is one of the most pervasive problems in society, is the lack of taking responsibility for our own health, because it's very easy to blame a diagnosis. It's very easy to blame something. Even though a diagnosis does not seem to be something external. We're blaming something that attaches a label onto something so that no longer it's something that's a part of us, and it creates an illusion of separation, which is what blame does, versus taking that personal ownership of studying ourselves and allowing ourselves to remain compassionately curious about our cycles, about our endocrine health, about our responses, our stress responses, and really taking ownership that that is something that we also have in our power to be able to, to adapt and evolve as, as, as needed. So I would love to shift into just a little bit more about, um, understanding the neuro-cortical adrenal response because I know that these past two years have been stressful.
Kimberly Spencer (00:38:43) - I mean, women have gone from just, you know, we may some may have had full-time jobs and then suddenly they're heading into another full-time job of tutoring their kids and educating their children from home. And so, um, there have been a lot of changes in evolution in what women have had to deal with in these past couple of years. Um, so can you speak to how we as women can help regulate and understand our, nervous systems and, and the other systems in our body outside of just, our period as well?
Lauren Rice (00:39:19) - Yeah, absolutely. Um, you know, I think, I think one of the gifts. This period of time has been that it's been uniting all of us. No one has been untouched by the massive global pandemic that we are still within. That has no end in sight, and the concept of uncertainty is something that's very challenging for many human beings because it challenges some of our innate biological drives to want homeostasis or to want things to stay the same.
Lauren Rice (00:39:48) - So we know what to expect so that we know what kind of resources to allocate and how stressed to be or not to be right. We want things that we expect, but unfortunately, this concept of certainty is really illusory in life. It's it's not real. It's no one knows exactly what will happen tomorrow necessarily based on what will happen. You know, what happened yesterday. And so I think it's illuminated all of our need for certainty and the ways that we can, when we can't get that on a greater level, either globally or, you know, what, a broader level in our lives, on a micro level, we can choose to bring in certain practices or certain things that we do daily that are within our locus of control for the most part, um, that can help to ground us and give us some sense of certainty. Um, so one of the things that I do with pretty much everybody that I have that I've worked with in the last several years, um, is teaching a daily meditative breathwork practice.
Lauren Rice (00:40:46) - Um, I'm going to be conducting a clinical study. This has begun already, um, with women looking at how, uh, using their breath to regulate their stress response may impact their sex hormones, because I've seen clinically what a powerful impact it has had. And in fact, I think it's been more powerful even than some food changes that I've seen people make, which as somebody who's been practicing nutritional therapy for ten years, you're like, how is she going to say that? You know, look, obviously, I think food is incredibly important, but my goal has always been trying to find things that help further human health. It's the lowest lift. What is the minimum effective dose that I can help somebody to do? Because I know we all get overwhelmed. And so what I bring in is a meditative breathwork practice daily before I ask anybody to make any other changes in what they're eating, what they're drinking, how they're moving their body, even how they're sleeping. You know, we know sleep is important.
Lauren Rice (00:41:42) - Many people struggle with that due to being stressed, because I feel like it's hard to make healthy changes when you're stressed and overwhelmed. Right. And so I bring in this practice because I believe that in as little as 3 to 5 minutes a session, 3 to 5 times a day, this is the protocol that I've developed. You can create functional changes in your neurochemistry that have ripple effects that help to heal the rest of your body. So throughout the day, we are in that fight or flight state that we've talked about a lot. And when we don't even realize that we're we're actually addicted to adrenaline. We're producing so much of it. If we drink half a beverage in the morning, or if we have a pick-me-up of dark chocolate in the afternoon, we're actually causing your body to inject more adrenaline into your system. Uh, we seek out maybe challenging dynamics without even being conscious of it. Um, because that's where we're comfortable, um, you know, things like that. And so when we use our breath, which can, within seconds or minutes, turn our body's nervous system state from a, uh, sympathetic dominant one, which is a stress response to a parasympathetic dominant state, which I always tell people to remember.
Lauren Rice (00:42:56) - Think about like a parachute, like your parachutes your way out. Right. So the parasympathetic nervous system, that's the one that we want to enforce. And so just with your breath, you can create a hormonal cascade that begins at your pituitary gland in your brain and moves all the way down throughout your endocrine system, through your adrenals, causing you to produce, uh, relaxation chemicals, things like oxytocin, dopamine, serotonin, things that really help to balance the body. And so if you do that multiple times throughout the day, you're kind of pulling yourself out of that stress response, and eventually, you're taking a curve instead of looking like jagged like this, you're creating a nice little sloping line of the body, maybe coming a little bit into a stress response. But being able to self-regulate, you're cultivating something called resilience, which makes you more elastic, and more flexible to stress. If you were to drink all of your water at once in the morning, you would feel dehydrated throughout the day, right? And so it's kind of like this concept of giving yourself a little break, a little rest.
Lauren Rice (00:43:56) - So that's one of the number one things you can do to help your body to not produce some of these things and to realize that the production of stress chemicals, in some instances, you know, for instance, with adrenaline or melatonin is binary. Very little in the body is actually binary. The body has many workarounds and different ways of doing things. But like in the evening when you want to be winding down, when it's dark outside, you want your body to be producing more melatonin because that tells your body that it's time. The time for relaxation can then trigger other things that induce sleep. But if your body is looking at bright screens or has been through a lot of stress throughout the day, it's producing adrenaline. And it's sort of like a train that can only choose one track. It can't produce both. So you're either up and wired or you're winding down and relaxing. So using your breath is a way to kind of very quickly turn the train from the other track and help create a pattern of healing that can, you know, help you to heal that stress response.
Lauren Rice (00:44:56) - Even if you're not ready to make dietary changes, you know, or you can't sleep very well.
Kimberly Spencer (00:45:01) - So I know that there's a big hot debate with entrepreneurs of the early bird and the night owl. And so. Is that an innate thing? Is that our night owls? Do they have a different hormonal balance based on what they're producing? Can you speak into that just a little bit, in terms of productivity and, and aligning our productivity with our stress response, with our hormone response throughout the day?
Lauren Rice (00:45:34) - Right. Yeah. That's that's another great question. You know, there there's differing schools of thought on this. So I'm not going to pretend that I think that there is a definitive answer. But I'll sort of, you know, just go into both sides and then people can make a decision for themselves. You know, there is biodiversity, right? Everybody is different. And the way that we like to operate throughout our day or our sleep-wake cycles are influenced by many things, right? Our culture, our upbringing, and the things currently going on in our lives.
Lauren Rice (00:46:04) - I mean, there are just some periods where we're going to get less sleep. I think everybody who's like been a parent, you know, will understand. Yeah. Right. Like and we kind of know that. And I think life is about harmony over balance. Like I think this idea that everything is going to be perfectly balanced is a bit of a fallacy. But there are some times when we spend more time and energy on one thing, and then other times when we spend more time and energy on another thing. And so I think finding what that rhythm feels good for you, finding the way that it feels good for you is key. The way that you'll know that you're on track is can you sleep when you want to? Do you get enough hours of sleep and do you wake up rested? For most people, that's between 8 to 10 hours. Some people say that they function well on sleep, some study on six hours of sleep, and some sleep. Studies show that they function well on sleep in lesser quantities, but other things get downregulated, like immune system function like hormonal balance.
Lauren Rice (00:47:01) - If you're trying to heal any condition in your body, whatever you think, your underlying kind of innate type may be more of a night owl or an early bird. There's, you know, a couple of different designations within that. But know that the way you feel could be influenced by your hormones and your stress response. If you're a very stressed person, your body is producing more adrenaline, which basically takes your noon and pushes it towards like 4 or 5 p.m. So you may be what we call tired, but wired in the evening where you're, you know, you feel exhausted, you feel drained, but you kind of can't wind down. And if you're not very self-inquisitive, you might not even realize that your habitual need to be on your phone, in your bed at night is part of that stress response, because you're craving that hit of adrenaline and wakefulness that you're used to. So first of all, just be aware. And I think you need to be curious, like, why do I do the things that I do? Is it because I really enjoy doing them and I feel nourished by them, or is it because there's like compulsive energy or I feel like I have to, but I do believe that, for instance, like the night owls, you know, they tend to be maybe they're a person who's more introverted, or maybe they need the house to be quiet for them to have creative time.
Lauren Rice (00:48:11) - I think to look at that and say, okay, if what I really want is quiet, creative time to myself, is there a way for me to somehow get that engineer that maybe earlier in the morning or during a different time of the day, in the afternoon? Maybe? That feels nourishing to me. That's not making me sacrifice my sleep, because if you're a woman and you're trying to support your body after giving birth or during pregnancy, or if you are trying to heal an underlying hormonal imbalance, or if you've been through a lot of stress, or if you're just simply in the collective trauma of this, this decade that we're in right now, getting more sleep is not a bad thing. Sleep is how the nervous system repairs and refreshes itself. So if you want to actually heal, add an extra hour of sleep. You will be amazed within two weeks what that does for you. It's just two weeks of your life. You know you can you can even a few days, right? You can shuffle things around and you can change things and just give it a go.
Lauren Rice (00:49:07) - See how it feels to go to bed earlier. Because there is such a thing as the body has a natural circadian clock that it schedules its REM cycles and the liver detoxifies very efficiently during some of these REM and deep sleep cycles. And those tend to happen roughly between ten and midnight, between 1 and 3. And then, you know, between 3 and 5 or 6 a.m., depending on the person. So if you're going to sleep very late, you know, you might be missing one of those earlier detox and refresh and repair cycles. So that's another thing to know. So just experiment and see what feels right for you and understand why it is that you want to do the things that you do.
Kimberly Spencer (00:49:49) - I love I love.
Kimberly Spencer (00:49:50) - What you said about just allowing yourself to get curious and recognizing when it's that, like biological, because I've even had to check myself from time to time with my, um, just after having my second son of just the extra push that's required with a newborn and and and all that there, that.
Kimberly Spencer (00:50:11) - I would actually start craving that boost of adrenaline with having my phone constantly. Okay, well, I have a 15-minute break. Instead of like, doing something, I'd be on my phone getting that spike of whatever, just because it was the addiction to a crying baby. So being able to recognize that and also, I think by having the knowledge, by having the information, it can give us some compassion around recognizing that it is us and it is our biological wiring like it's our biology. It's not just like a mindset thing, it's also the mind also plays into the physical. And I would love for you to touch a bit because you mentioned our sensory receptors. And with the shift that I know just recently happened with AT&T and Verizon turning on many of their 5G towers, what are ways to combat those electromagnetic toxins for ourselves?
Lauren Rice (00:51:17) - So first of all, there are things you can do to reduce your exposure, right? You can look at how many devices, you know, kind of like if you have one of those smart houses or you have a lot of devices that emit a signal, you can look at how many of those there are, maybe unplugging them, maybe, you know, unplugging your Wi-Fi at night or turning your phone in airplane mode.
Lauren Rice (00:51:38) - And there's even like these plug-in sensors that you can put in your home by a company called Green Wave that are really great, that, um, kind of can basically absorb excess EMF, but we're not totally going to be able to avoid it. I mean, a lot of people have been very concerned about this 5G rollout. I think that just like, for instance, you can have two people and they can both live on Earth and one person can have a really sick body and one person can have a less sick body. We can look at maybe some of the different things that those people do. So it's not so much, I think, worrying about how we prevent ourselves from having exposure to these things. It's about what are the things that we actually can do, realizing that we're adapting, we're evolving. We are living in this world that we have co-created, which has some things that are great for us, and some things that are not so great for us. And how do we function right? Like even closing your eyes and doing deep breathing for a few minutes shuts off parts of the brain, similarly to the way that sleep does.
Lauren Rice (00:52:39) - So, you know, there are ways, I think, to support the grounding of the nervous system that make you overall less sensitive. This is why, you know, some people are more chemically sensitive than others. So for instance, after you've had kids, you might, you know, feel like there's been some hormonal changes. Your body has just been through more, right? Your liver has had to filter more. And so you might be, you know, chemically sensitive. And so your body is protecting you by, you know, you having a really strong olfactory response to certain things or getting headaches. And it's telling you, hey, like, stay away from that. And so there are ways that you can, uh, stabilize your nervous system so that when you do encounter these things, you can regulate that response. And I think, you know, we've talked a little bit about breath. Another one of the big ones is hydration, making sure that your body is getting proper hydration, not just from drinking enough water like the volume of liquid you're drinking, but making sure you're not having a lot of things that are dehydrating, like coffees and teas that are not herbal teas, you know, sodas, things like that.
Lauren Rice (00:53:43) - And having a nutrient-rich diet that also has wet foods in it, things like melons and cucumbers and, you know, anything that releases water when it cooks down spinach, bananas, berry, citrus, all of that. These things, particularly citrus, contain electrolytes, natural electrolytes, not the things that are in Gatorade, that are synthetic, that are not absorbed the same way, but basically minerals, things that help the liquid that you put in your body be properly electrostatic charged. Right. So it helps the water get into your cells and it helps communication happen across the synapses, which is, you know, basically this way that our brain communicates, it sends information from different points. And this is how our brain and our nervous system sense things and have thoughts. And so knowing that you can strengthen and support your nervous system by, uh, focusing on your stress response, by giving your body the proper hydration so that we have actually given your nervous system the nourishment, the raw materials it needs to function.
Lauren Rice (00:54:47) - And then also building in this concept of rest. And so I don't just mean sleep for me, I define rest as something that feels functionally different than the thing that you've been primarily doing. Right. So if you've been like having a winter movie marathon all day and you've been like in your jammies, like binge-watching Netflix, like you need to get outside and walk around. Or if you've been on your feet all day. It feels really nice to sit down. And so if we spend a lot of time in front of screens or in this like thingy analytical mode, then taking a walk, moving our bodies, doing Pilates, doing yoga, playing with animals if we have pets, uh, connecting with others over a cup of herbal tea and just like looking at another person rather than a screen, these are all things that can feel like rest. And so those are they're sort of like the three legs of a table, right? Like rest. Um, you know, focusing on balancing your nervous system.
Lauren Rice (00:55:46) - I like through breath and, you know, making sure that you're hydrated. Those things are going to strengthen you so that you're not so vulnerable to, you know, other things in your environment.
Kimberly Spencer (00:55:57) - Foreign. I just find you to be so wise, and you are so well-studied, and the amount of information that you have is phenomenal. And I have just loved our conversation. So I would love to move into a little bit of a rapid fire to wrap this up. Are you ready for it?
Lauren Rice (00:56:18) - I'm ready, I will I will be ready.
Kimberly Spencer (00:56:21) - Who is your favorite female character in a book or a movie and why?
Lauren Rice (00:56:26) - I think I really liked, um, Jane Eyre. I thought that that was just the first one that came to my mind. She was really brave, and she listened to her inner knowing, despite what, you know, everybody else around her thought.
Kimberly Spencer (00:56:41) - One of my favorite books. And what woman would you want to trade places with just for a day? Like be in her body, see how she thinks.
Kimberly Spencer (00:56:51) - Experience her world.
Lauren Rice (00:56:53) - I think I'd go with Michelle Obama. I think she's had an incredible life. And, um, I would just love to see the world from inside her perspective.
Kimberly Spencer (00:57:03) - Yeah. Oh, we got another one from Michelle Obama. She is. She and Oprah are just rivaling each other. For how many? Yeah, for the choice. So out of all my guests, those are the top two ever picked. And if you were to have your success at twice the speed, what would you have done differently? Um.
Lauren Rice (00:57:25) - I think what I would have done differently is focus more on what I felt passionately drawn to. I think I was very broad-based and that was great. And it helped me learn so much about how to do what I do. But if I had really followed my heart's leanings, I think I would have just gone directly to where I am now, which is looking at how the stress response helps to, you know, look how it affects our bodies for good and for bad.
Lauren Rice (00:57:53) - Mhm.
Kimberly Spencer (00:57:54) - And what is your morning routine like?
Lauren Rice (00:57:57) - Well so my morning routine is it's it's it definitely a bit of a long one., I structure my life so that I don't start with any of my work until I've had really time. For me, the morning is that time because the rest of my day gets so busy. So I wake up, I, you know, make some sort of really nourishing beverage, usually a big, huge mason jar of water with some citrus or some ginger or honey in there. And then I make my green juice and take my dog for a walk. I read, and then I come back and probably have a smoothie, uh, do some meditative breathwork, usually before I get out of bed. But, um, if not, then definitely a second time before I start my work, maybe do some physical movement, and then I get my day started. So that's my self-care time in the morning for sure.
Kimberly Spencer (00:58:44) - And what is your evening routine to support your morning routine?
Lauren Rice (00:58:48) - That's it.
Lauren Rice (00:58:48) - That's true. The evening routine does support the morning.
Lauren Rice (00:58:50) - Yes.
Kimberly Spencer (00:58:51) - I feel like it's necessary to ask both because those who wake up at 430, they're not going to bed at, you know, midnight consistently on a regular basis. Ideally. Um.
Lauren Rice (00:59:06) - Ideally.
Kimberly Spencer (00:59:07) - But um, but that evening routine really does support. So how do you support having an epic morning?
Lauren Rice (00:59:14) - Um, yeah.
Lauren Rice (00:59:15) - So evening, um, after dinner, um, you know, I will again just kind of hang out with my dog. Will either read or maybe we'll watch a movie. Um, if I didn't get in, uh, physical movement in the morning or I just had time for something quick, I'll do something a little bit more relaxing. Like maybe facial flossing or some active stretching. And that really helps my body to wind down. Um, I might get in the sauna or take a bath because I find that, like, heat exposure really relaxes me as well. And then, um, you know, I try to be in bed, um, between 10:00 and 1030.
Lauren Rice (00:59:52) - I don't always make that, but, uh, I've been pretty good about it lately, actually. And then I'll read or, um, you know, do a meditation. I meditate, you know, at different times throughout the day. Um, but I typically will do a longer one before bed because that does help me to sleep.
Lauren Rice (01:00:09) - Um.
Kimberly Spencer (01:00:10) - What do you define to be your kingdom? Um.
Lauren Rice (01:00:13) - My kingdom is. I feel like it's it's it's the world. It's it's everything. I don't feel like there are parts of things that are mine and parts of things that are others. I just feel like I'm a part of everything else. And I have always felt that whenever something was meant to kind of come into my life, it has never missed me. I'm a true believer in like, what is for you will not miss you and just kind of following things that have lit me up. Obstacles just have fallen out of the way, like things have fallen into my lap the way that they needed to.
Lauren Rice (01:00:46) - I was able to help the people I wanted to help, which is just like probably the biggest thing that drives me. And learning and understanding. And so I feel like like, like everything, there isn't one thing.
Kimberly Spencer (01:00:57) - Lastly, how do you crown yourself?
Lauren Rice (01:01:00) - Well, I think these days.
Lauren Rice (01:01:02) - It is about just giving myself the grace that knowing that what I did in one day was enough. That has been the biggest thing because I have found that especially during this pandemic, a lot has weighed on me, has weighed very heavily on me. The lives of the people in my practice, the lives of people that I'm seeing online and on TV, what they're going through. And I think when you're in a position like myself or like yourself where, you know, we support other people, that's what we do with the bulk of our time. That just gets really heavy. And I realize I was like taking on a lot of the emotional weight of that, and then the emotional weight of like, all the things that I need to be doing, like just to, you know, move my life forward, all my goals and dreams.
Lauren Rice (01:01:45) - And so the biggest way, the biggest thing I think I gave myself was just. This grace of like you is enough, right? You are sovereign and you are valuable and you are worthy. And what I say is what determines how I feel about that. Not any like metric that somebody else that's or that's sort of like out there in the world.
Kimberly Spencer (01:02:08) - So powerful. Lauren, where can we find you? How can we work with you? You're doing such amazing work in the world. Plug yourself. Queen.
Lauren Rice (01:02:17) - Yeah.
Lauren Rice (01:02:18) - Uh, so you can. The easiest way to find me is on my website or Instagram. Uh, my website is Lauren Rice. Wellness dot coms. Pretty easy. Just my name and my Instagram handle are at Lauren Rice Wellness. Um, you can find links for anything I'm doing that's upcoming. I teach a lot of free webinars and classes. I have group programs, and I consult with individuals on a, you know, an appointment basis. So if you're interested in learning more about my work, you can go to either of those places.
Lauren Rice (01:02:51) - I am offering a 15% discount to all of your listeners. Uh, the code, 'll go through the end of February. And the code is I love Kim 22. So I have a group program running right now. And if you guys want to join, you'll find the link to that through my website or through my Instagram. Uh, and I always do Instagram live, so I'm out there. You can find me.
Kimberly Spencer (01:03:15) - Awesome. Lauren, you have just been such a wonderful wealth of information to support us, especially as women, just leading that harmonious life. Because like you, I, I also believe in harmony over balance and being able to harmonize not just with our own systems, but with the system of the world that we're a part of. So thank you so much. And as always, my fellow sovereigns, on your throne. Mind your business, because your reign is now. Thank you so much for tuning in today. If what you heard resonated with you, be sure to subscribe and start creating a bigger impact now by sharing this with a friend.
Kimberly Spencer (01:03:54) - Just by doing that one simple act of kindness, you are creating a royal ripple to support more people in their sovereignty. And if you're not already following on social media, connect with me everywhere at Crown Yourself Now for more inspiration. I am so excited to connect with you in the next episode, and in the meantime, go out there and create a body, business, and life that rules because today you crown yourself.
