Mindful Drinking/ Alcohol consumption and your Hormones

Welcome back to the Period Chats podcast. I’m so excited about today’s guest, Talia Bennick! Talia is the founder of Crisp and Crude, a non-alcoholic botanical mock-tails brand. Her amazing drinks are filled with mood-lifting ingredients that also taste delicious, and look chic. Talia went to business school at Yale, where alcohol was a common part of networking and social events. But during her last semester, she began to suffer from alcohol-related migraines. So she started experimenting mixing hemp extract with terpenes, and began to her inventive non-alcoholic drinks with friends. It proved to be a hit. Many of her mock-tails are also CBD-infused, so instead of wreaking havoc on alcohol-intolerant or sensitive systems, these drinks can actually support better health. Her drinks went to production this past August, and they’ve been a fun new part of my personal journey since then. We all have different, nuanced relationships with alcohol, and this can evolve throughout our adult years. Many can mindfully consume, and we talk about what that can look like, but many others abstain for various reasons. Personally, I’ve moved from having a party girl mentality to a greater understanding of my hormones and desire to optimize my health naturally. So I’ve been experimenting with abstaining from alcohol for the past 12 weeks, and plan to continue for the next 12 months. I still plan to hang out with friends and go out, but alcohol causes my anxiety to spike for way too long. So we discuss how to cope with social settings when you’re planning to abstain from drinking, about the pro’s and con’s of sharing our reasons for not drinking, and share some of the reactions we’ve gotten from people over the years. Talia also gives us some good tips on non-alcoholic drinks to order at a bar, to equip us to always feel confident that we fit in and belong. If you want to explore syncing your life with your cycle more intentionally in this area, Talia and I geek out on how to do just that. We discuss the interaction of alcohol with our hormones and brain chemicals, and how liver function comes into play. Talia shares her insight on the advantages of planning some of our personal goals and schedules around our cycles, as well as just our alcohol consumption. Your body can process alcohol more efficiently during the follicular phase (after your period, before ovulation). In the menstrual and luteal phase, you may notice more symptoms after drinking alcohol. This is because estrogen also has to get processed through the liver. People that drink socially tend to get an initial dopamine release, but later suffer a cortisol rebound effect. Talia’s drinks have different plant extracts and botanical terpene blends that can help us relax, like citrus, marigold, and broad spectrum non-TCH CBD. I know you’ll love this conversation with the scientific, creative and very cool Talia Bennick. Check out her drinks at: www.crispandcrude.com. Use code FUNKIT15 to save 15% off your first order!