Danielle Sheriff is the founder of The HA Society, where she provides expert guidance to help individuals regain fertility, restore menstrual cycles, and achieve pregnancy naturally. The HA Society offers comprehensive resources, personalized coaching, and a supportive community to aid in period recovery and fertility enhancement without emphasizing weight gain or abandoning exercise. Danielle’s work is instrumental in helping clients recover their periods within weeks and achieve pregnancy within a few cycles. MysticMag chats with Dani.
Dani, can you explain what hypothalamic amenorrhea (HA) is and how it affects fertility and menstrual cycles? What are some common misconceptions about HA that you encounter?
When a woman of reproductive age, who has menstruated in the past suddenly loses her cycle for 3+ months in a row, it is most likely hypothalamic amenorrhea (though there are other less common causes). Really, HA is the most common and likely cause of a disappearing menstrual cycle. Essentially, the body has chosen to pause ovulation and pause the process of building a uterine lining, resulting in the total absence of a period.
But why? The reason is an energy deficit. The hypothalamus is always scanning the body for energy balance and availability. Once it starts to sense a drop in energy (aka food) coming in, but a rise in energy going out (aka exercise), it will start to cut bodily functions that are not necessary for surviving. Getting pregnant would be considered one of those less necessary processes.
So I know what many of you are thinking: I thought that only happened to athletes such as gymnasts! Nope – it can happen to any woman at any stage of life. We’re going through an epidemic of it now though, because the cultural push for women to manage and lose weight is so prominent. Because of this, many women are exercising constantly and dieting chronically. Eventually, the cycle down regulates to either just a trickle of the period it once was. The cycles start by getting further and further apart, and eventually, poof, they’re gone. The body just doesn’t have the energy to do it. It has to prioritize breathing, beating your heart and pumping your blood. You know, the stuff necessary for survival.
Your program emphasizes evidence-based methods for recovering fertility without extreme measures like quitting exercise or taking medications. Can you walk us through the key steps in your approach and how it differs from traditional medical interventions?
We use the Fertility Awareness Method, which is traditionally a natural family planning method, to track the body’s hormonal symptoms. Examples of this are the woman’s basal body temperature and cervical mucus production. The behaviour of these symptoms directly corresponds with the behaviour of certain hormones like estrogen, LH, FSH and progesterone. Using this, we can tell if the hormones are on struggle street, or if they’re starting to pick up steam without having to send them for regular blood testing.
You’ve mentioned a 98% success rate in helping women recover their cycles and achieve pregnancy. Can you share some specific challenges these clients faced and what factors contributed most to their successful recovery?
The biggest contributor to their success is also the biggest challenge: being ready and willing to make the changes to food and exercise that are necessary for period recovery. Those who are not ready to change yet will stay stuck. Things that keep them stuck are fear of eating more and resting more. Discomfort with letting go of their go-go-go mentality and no longer aiming for 10k steps per day. Most prominently, a woman’s fear of gaining weight will stand in their way the most. Those who are most resistant to leaving their body alone and letting it do what it needs to do to recover will stay in hypothalamic amenorrhea until they’re ready to change.
Sometimes, very occasionally, it’s not just as simple as some weight gain. Sometimes it requires a LOT of rest and weight gain in order to truly recover. This requires a great deal of tenacity and gumption for women to go through, so we are here to support them through that.
How does the HA Society tailor its coaching and recovery plans to individual needs? Can you describe how you integrate aspects like nutrition, lifestyle changes, and mental health into your fertility coaching?
Using the above mentioned emotional support through the process and the evidence based tools, along with lab work, food log reviews and a community based support system, too, we are able to get great results.
We do a full intake with clients, reviewing their labs and current food logs and immediately start figuring out how deep into HA they are and start filling nutritional gaps. We hold their hand through this process.
Then we use the fertility awareness method to track their progress and say objectively “yes you’re eating enough” or “you need to increase your intake and based on your food logs, the opportunities are here, here and here”, for example.
Many women struggling with HA are worried about running out of time to get pregnant or experiencing serious health issues. How does your program address these fears and provide reassurance and support throughout the recovery journey?
The great news is that HA is fully reversible. So long as you’re of reproductive age, you’re able to recover and get pregnant with no issues. HA itself doesn’t cause any long term infertility issues that we are aware of, which studies have helped to prove. We show these studies to clients which can be reassuring. We’ve had women with HA for 10, 15, 20+ years recover and get pregnant in a timely manner, so that real life, in practice experience is always helpful for clients to hear, too.
If you would like to find out more about The HA Society, please visit https://www.thehasociety.com/
