“Feel Good Five” interview
Why should we pay more attention to hormones, Sina Oberle?
© Shutterstock
In our “Feel Good Five” interview format, we talk to exciting women and men who are at home in the cosmos of wellbeing and ask them five questions. This time we’re talking to Sina Oberle, a trained nutritionist and hormone health coach.
It is the love of nutrition and health that motivated Sina Oberle to turn her passion into a profession a few years ago. Today, as a Hormone Health Coach, she offers coaching for women with hormonal complaints, writes books about women’s health, informs young women about their cycle via Instagram and creates natural products for women under the brand “paopao essentials”.
In the “Feel Good Five” interview: Sina Oberle
Brigitte: When did you start campaigning for women’s health education? Was there a specific trigger?
Sina Oberle: Yes, the trigger came from my own story. After twelve years of taking pills, I had a few symptoms, including blemished skin, hair loss, and mood swings. That bothered me a lot, especially because I had the feeling that nobody understood me properly or could help me out. So I went on a kind of self-study. I have spoken a lot with other people affected, but also read and researched with experts such as alternative practitioners, gynecologists, etc. Then I trained as a coach and health advisor.
And yes, now I coach women, write books and hope that with my knowledge I can educate other women about their cycle, hormonal complaints and their femininity.
Why do you think it is only now that more and more women are dealing with their own bodies. Can all of this be traced back to the “pill generation”?
A few years ago there was a women’s withdrawal movement, but it didn’t last that long because social networks didn’t exist back then. Today the topic is raised a little longer: magazines report on it, women exchange ideas on social media or take other women with them on their travels. On the other hand, I believe that at some point the body will say: ‘Hey now it’s good’. A lot of women tell me that they just woke up suddenly and no longer wanted or questioned the hormonal contraceptives. Some also report that they suddenly couldn’t get the pill tablet down.
Some hormones are still negatively affected to this day. What do you say to women in your coaching sessions so that they accept and appreciate their bodies, including hormones and the like?
Without our endogenous hormones we would have a big problem: we could no longer sleep, no longer eat, emotions would ride a roller coaster or we would no longer feel like having sex. The hormones are involved in some processes in the body and all of them interact with each other. That is why it is so important that we get to know the body and, above all, our cycle better. From puberty to menopause, women are cyclical: we all live in a cycle that brings a lot of great things with it. So it is worth taking a closer look and using the individual cycle phases for our everyday lives.
How do you value your body? Do you have any mantras or beliefs?
What I’ve become very aware of over the past few years is how I speak to myself. If we meet acquaintances on the street or sit with friends in a café, we also ask them about their well-being, we are interested in their needs or listen to them. We would never treat them negatively for no reason. Unfortunately, we do this to ourselves very often. Sentences like: ‘You can’t do that anyway’, ‘It was clear that this would happen to you again’, ‘Don’t do it’, ‘Do what the others expect of you’, etc. are sentences that we do often subconsciously tell us several times a day. So how we treat ourselves is very important for our health and wellbeing.
The more we speak positively to ourselves, trust ourselves to do things or listen to our body with its complaints and reactions, the more we strengthen our basic trust and the relationship with ourselves.
It is a process that certainly cannot be fully implemented overnight, but we can achieve a great deal with small, conscious steps.
You also have your own natural cosmetics line. What ingredients are you working with here? What should we women pay special attention to when it comes to skin care?
Paopao essentials is my complete love and passion. I wanted to create products for the cycle so that women no longer have to deal with hormonal complaints, but have a natural companion. We work on the basis of the aloe vera plant in our skin and hair care and with essential oils against complaints such as mood swings, loss of libido, menstrual cramps or breast tenderness.