Creighton FertilityCare instructor and owner of Divine Mercy Nutritional Care Rita Johnson is all-in on menstrual cycle charting as a fifth vital sign of health for women. That’s par for the course for fertility awareness method instructors, but Johnson’s approach goes one step further. She también pursued additional training to become a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner in order to offer her clients recommendations for at-home lab testing, mindset coaching, and personalized nutrition and supplement recommendations to help improve their gut health and support their natural hormone production. Johnson spoke with me via Zoom about her personal and professional fertility awareness journey and how it led to an approach that combines fertility awareness education with nutrition.
She was introduced to NFP in high school
Though many women only come to learn about fertility awareness when preparing for marriage (something we’re actively seeking to change through our Period Genius parent/daughter puberty education program and our Clubes Cycle Mindfulness!), Johnson first heard about natural family planning (NFP) in high school. Her Catechism class teacher’s “bubbly, cute” wife gave a high-level presentation on NFP at a mother/daughter retreat.
Johnson came away from that presentation interested in NFP. But with no personal connections in her life who used it, her immediate enthusiasm and excitement about learning what was going on in her own body sat on the shelf for several years. That changed when she met her now-husband in college. He worked for the Catholic campus ministry, and when they got engaged midway through school, his boss told them “Congratulations! We’ll see you in (NFP) class in a month!”
She and her fiancé were blown away by what they learned in their CCL classes
When Johnson and her fiancé attended the symptothermal method classes, taught by a Couple to Couple League volunteer couple, they were equally blown away by what they learned. Rita described it this way, “It was like scales from my eyes” as she learned about the hormonal patterns occurring each month in her body and how she could identify the signs that these changes were happening. Her husband commented, “It’s so cool that this is what your body does all the time!”
The Johnsons married while still in college, at ages 20 and 21. They utilized CCL’s symptothermal method to postpone pregnancy for their first year and a half of marriage while he finished his Bachelor’s degree and got health insurance through work. The couple welcomed several more children over the following years, spacing pregnancies successfully with CCL’s method.
They pivoted to Creighton to address secondary infertility
When the couple unexpectedly experienced secondary infertility as they tried to conceive their fifth child, they made the switch to the mucus-only Creighton Method. As Johnson learned even more about how the menstrual cycle is specifically an indicator of health, she chose to become a Creighton FertilityCare instructor herself. After completing her FertilityCare practitioner (FCP) training, she began teaching women and couples, and yet, over time, felt that there was something more she could offer her clients.
For those familiar with the Creighton Method and its medical protocol arm, NaProTECHNOLOGY, it’s often synonymous in many people’s minds with “progesterone support.” Creighton Method and NaPro founder, Dr. Thomas Hilgers, pioneered progesterone supplementation as a means of preventing some miscarriages y parto prematuro in women with a history of recurrent miscarriage or preterm birth risk factors. Progesterone supplementation for luteal phase defects, whether it’s taken orally, via shot, or via vaginal suppository, is another hallmark of NaProTECHNOLOGY treatment. Certainly, getting women the progesterone their bodies need is important.
Helping women’s bodies feel ‘safe enough’ for sex hormone production
And yet, Johnson wondered, “How can we support women’s bodies so that they feel safe enough to produce their own sex hormones?” Johnson knew that our intelligent bodies prioritize vital functions, and that they tend to marshal energy and resources to respond to chronic stress and inflammation over healthy ovulation and reproductive function. And yet, healthy ovulation impacts bone, breast, brain, heart, and immune health (in addition to conditioning the body to handle the inflammatory process of pregnancy well via exposure to the low-level inflammation of menstruation). Johnson wanted to learn how to help clients improve their nutrition and lifestyles in order for their bodies to feel safe enough to “do the most amazing thing they can do!”
When she knew she needed to combine fertility awareness and nutrition education
This led her to pursue her Nutritional Therapy Practitioner certification through the Nutritional Therapy Association. Now, Johnson strives to offer her clients the best of both worlds through fertility awareness instruction (and referrals to restorative reproductive medicine-trained (RRM) healthcare professionals, as appropriate) plus individualized nutrition education for healthier lifestyle choices. She notes that making positive changes to encourage natural hormone production can occur in tandem with seeking RRM medical treatment such as medications, surgery, etc.
Certainly, the nutritional and other lifestyle modifications Johnson encourages her clients to make can and do affect their cycles, sometimes “in as little as 3 cycles, but sometimes longer, depending on the symptoms.” Client charts have shown improvement in breakthrough bleeding, sluggish temperatura corporal basal (TCB) rise, continuous mucus, really long cycles, and more. But the mindset shifts Johnson facilitates for clients who may feel “sluggish, worn out, and run down” and stuck when it comes to making headway with their symptoms, are arguably the linchpin of their success.
Cycle charting as an ‘act of humility’
Mindset work, through encouragement, active listening, and other techniques Johnson learned for her NTP certification, helps women process and accept the health data on their charts. Again and again, Johnson observes an understandable desire to “make” the chart tell a certain story. This may be to make a cycle look healthier than it is (“nothing to see here, folks!”). Or it may be a reluctance to accept that the chart looks “messy” and doesn’t show a clear picture of what’s wrong (necessitating more ‘digging’ and more time). Johnson shared, “It’s important to not make a chart say what we want it to, or force it into a box. It’s important to let it tell us what it will.” For this reason, Johnson sees cycle charting as an act of humility, by listening to what our charts are saying and accepting our bodies as they are.
Healing a gut wrecked by hormonal birth control
For women whose reproductive health history includes hormonal birth control use, Johnson has special advice. She notes that hormonal birth control can wreak havoc on our gut health, which in turn affects our reproductive health. She explained, “taking hormonal birth control is worse than antibiotics for gut health. Plus, you take antibiotics usually for a short time, but birth control is long-term. Hormonal birth control kills the gut microbiome.” Especially in patients with a history of hormonal birth control use and infertility, “their gut health is often wiped out.” Fascinatingly, these internal digestive issues often manifest in visible ways, particularly on the skin. Johnson said, “Your skin is a reflection of your gut.” Through at-home lab testing and personalized nutrition plans and supplementation, Johnson helps women restore their gut health and natural hormone production for improved overall wellness.
Accompanying women for the long haul
As every fertility awareness method instructor (and nutritionist) knows, change often isn’t easy and it rarely happens overnight. Johnson, who also hosts the Health and Hormones podcast to give women bite-sized general health and fertility education, understands this well. Accompanying women as they get help for reproductive issues and do what’s in their power to improve their health is not easy, but she believes it’s in service of a bigger picture. As she wrote on her website, “When we have more mental clarity, feel stronger, and have more energy we are able to learn more about the unique mission the Lord has placed on our hearts.”
I had no idea about the links between hormonal birth control and gut health. Grateful for this knowledge! Thank you!
Excellent article, this is a beautiful insight by Rita that she sees “cycle charting as an act of humility, by listening to what our charts are saying and accepting our bodies as they are.”