My name is Phonexay Lala Simon, and I'm a licensed acupuncturist and herbalist. I've been practicing acupuncture and herbal medicine for twelve years, and a few years ago I began weaving seed cycling into how I support my patients. What pulled me toward seed cycling was a question I kept returning to: how can I help people support their hormonal wellness in a way that feels nourishing rather than clinical? 

Menstruation has long been shaped by silence, stigma, and systems designed to keep women disconnected from their own bodies. For filmmaker Rebecca Snow, those forces became impossible to ignore while directing Pandora’s Box, a documentary exploring menstrual inequity and the cultural taboos that continue to shape cyclical health. In this conversation with Two Moons, she reflects on why Pandora’s Box was created to “fling open the lid” on menstrual stigma, why silence around women’s biological transitions is structural rather than accidental, and how female-led storytelling can shift who controls the narrative around women’s bodies.

As a neurologist, I’ve always been driven by an evidence-based approach to medicine, but as a woman, I’m deeply attuned to the realities of cyclical health. Lately, both in my clinical practice and within our Two Moons community, I’ve noticed a wave of confusion. With wellness content exploding around Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS) and histamine 'buckets,' many are left wondering if histamine is the hidden culprit behind their severe PMS. Let’s look at what the research actually says about how our reproductive hormones interact with histamine biology.

I am Dr. Nashat Latib, a functional medicine practitioner specializing in fertility. I spend my days working with women who have been told, in one way or another, that their labs “look normal” (so nothing must be wrong) and yet everything feels wrong. That gap is what pulled me into this work, and it is what keeps me in it. What I have noticed, in patient after patient, is that the menstrual cycle is one of the most underused diagnostic tools in women’s health.