Understanding the Rise in Infertility

hello hello everyone so we are here tonight I am multitasking as usual here at the office actually today I am on the webinar as well as hi I am also on Instagram lives so this month it's all been about hormones and one of the topics that often comes up in conversation is really trying to understand why there is so many issues with fertility right now and definitely when it comes to infertility it is something that unfortunately a lot of women are struggling with and a lot of women are feeling really really ashamed of and it's really not something that we should necessarily feel ashamed of because it's really just a lack of understanding some of the things that are potentially going on in our body and it's not our fault that we don't necessarily know what these things are but unfortunately when we are dealing with infertility we are usually just focusing on working with a infertility specialist and we're trying to jump through hoops in order to get our hormones to a place that make it make it a good environment to have a viable pregnancy but sometimes we're missing the understanding of why we might be struggling with the infertility and it really comes back to some very specific foundational principles which I'm going to talk more about tonight so I'm really excited to talk more about this because I want women to know that there is a solution there is a reason for why you may be struggling with infertility it is not bad genes it is not bad luck and it is something that you can once you have the knowledge you can actually prepare your body for having a happy healthy pregnancy and birth because unfortunately some of us that are going through fertility treatment are kind of having this really really you know difficult pregnancy because we feel so tired so sick and we end up on bed rest and there was a reason for that as well which I'm going to talk more about tonight so for those of you that are just hopping on we're talking about infertility all about hormones this month specifically but tonight really diving into the understanding behind infertility so before we really dive into the topic I want to bring up my lovely PowerPoint slide for those of you that are here on my webinar it allows me to make sure I stay on track and I am NOT going off on tangents but I do want to make sure that you guys are asking questions as we go if you're on Instagram live shoot some questions into the comment area if you are on the webinar definitely make sure that you put some of those questions in the question area or in the chat box and it will make sure to go over all of those questions as we go so some of the most important things that your guide you guys are going to take away tonight is really understanding why infertility is becoming such an epidemic also understanding that you don't know you don't know it is impossible for you to understand what is the foundational reason why you are struggling with getting pregnant and of course really trying to understand what can you do about it and sometimes it is an extremely extremely easy fix and sometimes it's a little bit more complicated but that doesn't mean that you can you know you can't overcome it it's just having the right strategy and the right tools so for some of you that are just a little bit new to integrated wellness group and kind of understanding the whole foundation of Integrative Medicine the biggest thing that you want to understand is that we have been driven to really involve how health care is being done and we primarily have been driven to do that because we find that people are usually not necessarily finding answers as to why they're not necessarily feeling the best or they're why they're struggling with infertility as well so we're really here to uncover why that might be happening and then to give you a solution so we've really gone against the grain day one and always kind of challenge the things that we were taught and it kept us learning growing and evolving to understand the big picture behind the body and how we are this integration of systems and how everything really interacts with each other and especially when it comes to hormones I have never ever ever worked with a woman who just had a hormone problem and there was nothing else going on hormones were part of the puzzle but there was always something else going on sometimes that was gut stress sometimes that was neurological stress sometimes it was immune systems stress sometimes it was compromised detox pathways every single person is extremely different but your hormones don't necessarily just dysfunction by themselves there usually is different reasoning as to why they become imbalanced and that is again some of the things that we're going to showcase tonight so for myself I am classified as an integrative medicine practitioner for those of you that have been following us on social media and also part of a lot of these webinars that I've done I've done a different topic every single week since January and some people might be thinking well you know how is she necessarily an expert in all of these different things and really what it comes down to is it's not necessarily about the diagnosis it's not really even about necessarily the symptoms it's about what is the foundational root cause and when you do the right testing and you ask the right questions you can actually decipher what is causing the diagnosis or what is causing the symptoms and this is what allows me to work with so many different types of people infertility cases being one but one thing I will say about infertility is I do not accept women that are trying to work on fertility when they give me a timeline and the only reason I do that is because when you're dealing with the body every single person's body is extremely different and the way that you're going to fix the foundation there's a different time for everyone so for for me to have the pressure to say I need to be pregnant in a month and I need you to fix me in a month that is not necessarily always a realistic expectation so the women that I tend to work with are the women that we're really giving ourselves the time and we're also giving our bodies the ability to not only maybe clean the things out that are stressing the system but also then replenishing the body to be a extremely healthy environment for a baby to grow and get all of the nutrients that that baby needs because that is a huge part of the puzzle is your baby is going to steal all of your nutrients and if you don't have enough it is going to be it's gonna make you sick is really what it comes down to so for myself for those of you that are wondering how I even got into this in the first place it is not necessarily because I was very sick or I had tons of infertility problems myself I was actually the polar opposite the primary thing about me is that I thought it was really healthy I thought that you know I my body was buried I was really conscious of my diet and I exercise I thought I was doing everything right and when I actually did my testing I realized that that really wasn't the case and when my testing revealed that I was actually dealing with mercury toxicity and I was also dealing with different types of gut infections I really sat back and I kind of sat with the information and what I ended up realizing is that a lot of the things that I've dealt with on a day to day or a week to week or a month to month basis I just classified those as my normal having the occasional fatigue you know not always having the best sleep having the stomach ache if I ate out you know having the brain fog occasionally all of those things were just my normal and this is something that I even really is a big part of this infertility conversation because a lot of women are struggling to get pregnant and they're like well you know that's kind of what happens to women these days a lot of women are struggling to get pregnant oh this is probably just a genetic factor or you know this is just bad luck and really what it comes down to is you just haven't done the right testing yet and it's not necessarily just about looking at your hormones it's about looking beyond to that and looking at is there something that is affecting your hormones so I know it is late in the evening and there are tons of things going on there are people that want dinner there are dogs barking there are you know husbands and wives that you want your attention it's really just giving yourself the next like 20 minutes to really dive in with me because the information that I'm going to talk about tonight is not necessarily going to be your one of the mill information I'm actually going to be talking about things that you have not necessarily heard before in reference to infertility so that you could truly understand some of the things that may have been missed especially if you are still struggling to get pregnant so it's going to allow you to really be able to take action on this and then be able to take a step in the right direction so first and foremost females that are listening I want you to know that if you have struggled to get pregnant and then you've gone down the road of fertility treatment and you are still struggling to get pregnant it is not your fault it is not your fault that you don't necessarily know the big picture as to why your hormones are imbalanced it is not your fault that you don't know that it may be you have deficiencies that are not allowing you to get pregnant it is impossible for you to know what is the core root behind it if you haven't done the right testing so I want you to move away from the place of feeling guilty feeling ashamed feeling like less of a woman because you've been struggling with getting pregnant because there is a reason it's not just you there's no there's not that there's no reason and it's just bad luck there is a reason why it hasn't happened yet and I say yet because it is possible for you to get pregnant once you know what the foundational reason is so just a foundation that you need to understand as we move into this topic about infertility is that when you are not getting pregnant or struggling to get pregnant you go and see who a fertility specialist and this fertility specialist is all obviously focusing on hormones and fertility that is their specialty and most of medicine is segregated into all of these specialties so you're if you have a gut issue or you have depression or you have a kidney disorder or whatever you might be struggling with those are going to be assumed that they have nothing to do with the fact that you're struggling to get pregnant and your fertility specialist is not necessarily going to ask you do you have gastrointestinal issues do you have depression do you have an autoimmune condition they're not necessarily thinking that there is any level of a connection or a relation to your wor moans and that is just bad physiology because everything is connected and there are so many things especially different types of immune system stressors that will consistently affect your hormones and this really gives brings me to the second point of the lack of understanding basic physiology you know if we really look at basic physiology 90 to 95 percent of our serotonin which is our feel-good hormone is made in our gut so if you have a gastro problem like irritable bowel syndrome but you also have depression but you're working with a psychiatrist and a gastroenterologist and they're assuming both of those things are completely unrelated they're wrong because most of that feel-good hormone is actually made in your gut so how this actually even relates to hormones is that your serotonin directly influences your estrogen and your estrogen directly influences your serotonin so if you have depression because of your gut issues which means your bottom doubt in serotonin you're gonna have an estrogen problem and the same thing goes vice versa so there is a massive massive connection to your mood and your neurotransmitters to your sex hormones so a common question that I get is why doesn't every physician look at the body from an integrative standpoint or what why doesn't every practitioner do what you guys do at integrated wellness group and I always reply with the foundation of how we do testing in traditional medicine is going to be chemistry based testing what is the most common test that you get on a yearly basis it's going to be blood work so blood work is going to reveal different types of chemistry imbalances so one of those primary things is hormones so if we look at your hormones through your blood work we see that your estrogen is low or your progesterone is low then we're just going to use chemistry altering substances to boost those levels aka we're gonna give you a bioidentical hormone or we're gonna give you a hormone replacement and we're just going to focus on the hormone but we're not necessarily going to go outside of that box but your hormones can easily be compromised because you have toxins or because you have infections or because you have got issues or because you have depression so it's really a matter of understanding that most of the testing that is done is actually done on the premise of using pharmacology to correct a biochemistry issue so we're always looking at the hormones and we're never looking beyond that and this then brings us to the one-size-fits-all treatment okay let's do fertility treatment which is utilizing a variety of different techniques and hormone replacement in order to get your hormones to a high enough level that you can now be pregnant but at the end of the day maybe you're not getting pregnant because the environment is not necessarily the healthiest at this time so this is a really really great example so I had a woman who came to me she was struggling with infertility and she already had something scheduled out I think she actually had a an appointment that was scheduled out for months from when we started to work together because that was the first availability of the fertility specialist specialist in Manhattan so what's interesting about that is think about that that's a four month waiting list so this fertility specialist is obviously quite busy so this is not just this woman there are many many many people that are struggling with infertility so as we started to work together you know our primary goal was to not necessarily sit here and just focus on the infertility but it was to look at the big picture and look at you know what is going on in this woman's body that is creating a lot of stress and as we started to work together you know one of the biggest things that came up was the fact that she had a lot of issues with her blood sugar so her blood sugar yo-yoed sometimes it was so it was so imbalanced that she would actually faint that happens a lot more when she was in her 20s and then as she got older she really wasn't fainting as much but she still had a lot of issues with like lightheadedness dizziness and then she also would get extremely extremely irritable and shaky if she did not eat for a couple of hours like literally normally some people can go you know six seven hours she wasn't able to go more than two hours without eating something to keep her blood sugar stable so really what her testing revealed that she was extremely hypoglycemic so low blood sugar and part of this Ashley came back to some very significant infections that she had in her gastrointestinal system so these infections were affecting her pancreas which was not allowing her to keep her blood sugar stable so this wasn't really about her diet this was really about the pancreas being stressed because other aspects of her gut was stressed so the point of understanding this is that this was not the only piece of the puzzle for this woman dealing with her infant infertility but one of the primary things that is absolutely essential for you to have a healthy environment for your baby is that you need to make sure or that your blood sugar is stable because your child is going to steal a tremendous amount of your nutrients glucose being one of them so if you have a boatload of glucose that is floating around in your blood that could potentially create a lot of inflammation in the body which then can put the baby at risk for developing different types of autoimmune conditions meaning that your immune system can start to attack the baby because of all the inflammatory stress which would then cause a miscarriage so this could seem like such a minut thing that okay this hypoglycemia this blood sugar instability has literally nothing to do with infertility but it actually had a lot to do with infertility and then in addition to that because of the other things going on in her gut she was extremely nutrient deficient one of her primary deficiencies was iron so if any of you have ever looked at a prenatal one of the primary things in a prenatal is going to be iron and that is because your baby is going to steal all of the iron that you have in your body so if you do not have enough to give your baby is not going to get the proper nutrients to grow and you are also going to get extremely extremely sick with morning sickness headaches fatigue etc so the infertility is not always necessarily about the baby sometimes it's actually about decreasing your risk so that's why sometimes when women use the different hormone therapies and that they get pregnant through the hormone replacement they feel very very sick going through the pregnancy and this is because their body is struggling to provide the proper nutrients that the baby really need to grow so some of the biggest things that are causing our hormones to be imbalanced that is then leading us down the road of having issues with fertility so some of the biggest things are in relation to too much hormone in the body that is coming from external sources so one of the biggest culprits for this is industrial farming so one of the primary things that we get exposed to by consuming different types of animal products that are not organic is high levels of growth hormone and estrogen so if you have chronically high estrogen this is going to counterbalance and throw off your progesterone levels which is then going to create irregularity with your periods which is then also going to create a lot of issues with fertility so secondarily is chemicals not only do chemicals from a lot of these personal products that we're using like lotions and shampoos and conditioners not only do they create a lot of hormone imbalance but they also create a lot of toxicity within our bodies which unfortunately your body knows best it's not going to allow a developing baby or embryo to be in a toxic environment so this is not just about hormone imbalance this is also about the risk that the child of the growing child will have by being in a toxic environment the blood sugar instability I've already talked about a little bit so blood sugar instability is going to completely alter your hormone levels but also create a lot of inflammation for a growing baby as well and then there's circulation so for those of you that are struggling with really cold hands and feet or you have really bad varicose veins you could easily have circulation issues to the placenta so if you're not getting proper blood supply through the placenta that can also create a lot of stress on the baby because the baby is not necessarily getting proper Cox nation because of the lack of blood flow so stress we all know stress is bad we don't always realize the effect that it plays but if you have elevated stress hormones you are going to have low sex hormones so the low sex hormones are not going to allow for you to get pregnant because everything is being suppressed the most interesting thing about stress is that you know as much as we have evolved over time our genetics actually have not necessarily evolved since you know we were hunter-gatherers and cavemen and what happens is your body doesn't really know the difference of you being in the woods about to fight or tiger overrun versus you getting a really crappy email from your boss that made you upset so your body still perceives both of those things as a fight-or-flight response which will compromise your hormones every single time so gut infections is another big culprit for why our hormones can be imbalanced so when you're dealing with different types of gut infections not only can these be things that could affect the baby but also it will come completely compromised your sex hormone levels because of your body dealing with all of the immune system stress and the same thing really goes for different types of infections that are happening either in your vaginal tract as well as in the urinary tract all these infections are extremely extremely significant for throwing off your hormones and also not creating the most optimal environment for a baby to grow and develop and I've already kind of said this about the nutrient deficiencies but sometimes not getting pregnant is as simple as you do not have enough nutrients to give iron B vitamins calcium magnesium etc these are all things that your baby needs tremendous tremendous amounts of so some of the biggest biggest myths about hormones and infertility is that our PMS is completely normal myth number one myth number two is that the foods that we eat do not play a role on our hormones or the fact that we're dealing with infertility myth number three is that our hormones are not connected with our neurotransmitters or our mood and what I mean by that is for those of you that have been listening the whole time is that your serotonin your feel-good hormone is completely tied to your estrogen levels so if your estrogen is depleted your serotonin is depleted if your serotonin is depleted your estrogen is depleted that's just the way that it works also next myth is that your hormones are not going to be influenced by infections and also that your body getting pregnant is also not going to be impacted by infections and that your body is ability to get pregnant is also not going to be affected by toxicity and then really the last thing is how a lot of us are led to believe that infertility is really just bad luck and bad genes which is really the biggest myth of them all because it makes us feel guilty it makes us feel ashamed and it's not about that it's just about what is going on in your system that you are unaware of that is prohibiting you from not being able to get pregnant at this time is it a deficiency is it a toxicity is it the fact that your immune system is under stress do you have an autoimmune condition it's really deciphering what that is so myth number one when it comes to the PMS so there's obviously some women that have PMS and there's some women that don't and there's some women to get back at their periods really regularly and then there's some women that get it irregularly so what's the big difference between these different women you know there's obviously some women that got pregnant super easily and then there's other women that don't so part of this comes back to having different types of PMS symptoms or irregularity with our with our hormones because of different stressors that are going on I'm the scenes with our immune system so let me use an example here so when some women are leading up to their period some women struggle with migraines some women struggle with looser bowel movements some women struggle with heart palpitations or irritability so every single person is extremely different when it comes to how their body is struggling when they're leading up to their period so the reason why this happens is because if your immune system is dealing with stress behind the scenes so like let's use an example of your gut so if you maybe have IBS irritable bowel syndrome maybe that's because you have some undiagnosed bacterial issues in your gut or maybe you have some undiagnosed Candida in your gut so if you have these things going on in your gut that your immune system is constantly tending to then as you get closer to your menstrual cycle all of your energy stores actually have to derail and they have to start focusing on the preparation for your menstrual cycle so if your immune system has been dealing with the gut infections and now has to derail to prepare for your menstrual cycle that's the woman who's gonna get the looser bowel movements closer to their period so it's extremely important to understand that PMS symptoms are not normal and the it's different so if a lot of your stress is in your gut then you might have the looser bowel movements if some of your stress is circulatory you might be getting the migraines but it varies person-to-person and it's not just PMS it's not just about your hormones there is a there is a reason and there is something going on in the in the background that is causing that so the other thing too is when it comes to the things that we are eating there are so many of us that are eating things that are totally screwing up our hormones and some of that comes back to some of the hormones that are being put into our animal products this is everything from our meats to our dairies butters cetera growth hormone being the primary thing that we get exposed to but then in addition to that there's a lot of soy feed so you could be consuming different types of animal protein that are being fed soy a lot of us don't eat soy because we don't want it to throw off our estrogen levels but if you're eating chicken that ate soy then you're also still being exposed to the soy and all of the estrogens that are in soy so the other one that is completely off of people's radar is the fact that there is something called my Co estrogens so Michel estrogens are estrogens that comes from mold so there are a group of foods that are high in mold so one of them is wheat another one is peanut butter another one is going to be wine cheese corn how many of us are eating those things usually all of us so corn especially have a very very specific mycotoxin called zero linen which is a micro estrogen so eating corn especially when we go gluten-free we're doing corn based pasta popcorn tortilla chips we could easily be exposed to these maiko estrogens that are completely throwing off our hormones and messing up our ability to become pregnant so it's important to evaluate what you are actually eating and see if that is playing a role in your hormones um or you know completely compromising your ability to get pregnant so the other thing that I mentioned already was how your estrogen and your serotonin are linked so if you have excess serotonin you could easily have excess estrogen the problem is is that if you have excess estrogen you can sometimes develop excuse me develop endometriosis or develop sis on your ovaries which can compromise your ability to get pregnant and then if you have lack of estrogen because you have lack of serotonin you can easily shift into not getting your period or getting really irregular periods so when you're talking about hormones they have to be in perfect balance it's not necessarily about them being too high too low they have to be in balance and when we're dealing with the connection between our mood and if we have depression or anxiety that is going to be directly tied to your sex hormones and vice versa so if you are taking something like an antidepressant which the goal of antidepressants is to amp up the amount of serotonin that you have floating around in in your synaptic cleft that sometimes can cause you to have an overload of serotonin which can then again lead to the excess estrogen so it's really really important to start evaluating you know did you find that your hormones became really imbalanced once you went on your antidepressant or once you went on birth control are off of birth control all of these different things are going to influence the hormones tremendously so the other thing too is you know when you're dealing with the other hormones like progesterone and testosterone they can't have their other they have other implications but higher levels of testosterone are actually connected to the women that are really struggling with their blood sugar so as your blood sugar is really really unstable aka maybe you're you know you're hypoglycemic and you're really nauseous in the morning you actually have no appetite so you don't eat breakfast and then you tend to crave like carbs and salt later on in the day that's a very typical sign that you have hypoglycemia low blood sugar so the longer that that goes on you can start to affect your testosterone levels which can then amp up the possibility for polycystic ovarian syndrome so one of the ways that you can also know if you put they have elevated testosterone without testing is if you're getting lovely hair grows on your chin or even around your nipples those are ways that you can know if your testosterone is elevated and it might be tied to the polycystic ovarian syndrome and the other thing too with the progesterone is progesterone and your other neurotransmitter dopamine work hand-in-hand so if you're really low in dopamine sometimes people are low in dopamine when they have addictive behaviors they're addicted to chocolate cigarettes wine coffee whatever the case may be so if you're really low and dopamine and you have a lot of these addictive tendencies you might also be low in progesterone and you might notice that your periods are irregular or they're very painful or they're really heavy these are all signs of not really just progesterone but also Saratov or I'm sorry estrogen imbalance so these are all very specific signs that you need to look for in your body is do you have hair gross and unwanted places do you have anxiety do you have depression do you have a lot of pain with your periods which might indicate that you have cysts on your ovaries these are all very very important things to evaluate so another piece of the puzzle which I mentioned prior has two parts here is toxicity so there are a lot of different toxins that we are exposed to in this day and age and part of these toxins come from drinking tap water showering in tap water in addition to the use of our makeups and our lotions and our shampoos and our conditioners and all of these lovely personal products that we use to try to make ourselves beautiful every day and when it comes to toxicity this is one of the absolute most common driving forces behind the infertility I find that the women that I work with that are really really struggling with the infertility despite going down the road of fertility treatment it's because they do not have a healthy environment for the baby and this can be because of heavy metals like mercury that they've been exposed to from fillings in their teeth maybe it's mercury from eating a lot of fish sometimes it's aluminum for use because they're using antiperspirant every day yes antiperspirant has tons of aluminum in it slip it around you can read it right on the back label or if they're maybe in the in the beauty industry they're either an aesthetician or they work in a salon and they're constantly inhaling different types of chemicals from the hair dyes or the hair sprays or the dry shampoos and all that fancy stuff so these are extremely important to understand this is so so common when women are struggling to get pregnant and sometimes they you know give themselves a month or two to detox and get some of this stuff out and not only do they get pregnant but they also have a healthier pregnancy they actually enjoy being pregnant they actually feel good being pregnant if you felt super super sick during your pregnancy it's because there was something going on that was missed and maybe it was toxicity but a lot of times it's deficiency based which again we're gonna talk more about but the other thing too is it's really not just about these different chemicals there can also be a very significant role that mold plays in and if you were listening this whole time you now know that mold can come from food like corn and wheat and coffee and wine but mold also comes from a lot of antibiotic use so if you're the the kid I don't care if you're 50 years old but if you were the kid or you know in your teens and you're 20 is that you were constantly on penicillin amoxicillin and ampicillin cipro whatever because you had urinary tract infections or you had ear infections or you had sore throats all of those antibiotics are made from mold penicillin is made from Penicillium mold so if you're allergic to penicillin or amoxicillin ampicillin you are toxic with mold the only way you could become allergic is if you have toxic levels of mold in your body so this is extremely important for you to know and I'm trying to give you tools to kind of self evaluate here because you know if you're like oh my gosh I've been allergic to penicillin since I was five then that means you've had mold in your system since we were five years old and maybe if you work on getting that out you could potentially not have to go down the road of fertility treatment because you lift the burden and now you can actually have the ability to bounce back and not only get pregnant but having healthy happy pregnancy because that's probably like the most heartbreaking to me is when women all they want to do is be pregnant and have a baby and then they feel horrible for nine months and and then they almost like don't want to hear from the women that feel good through their pregnancies because they're like this is like been one of the worst experiences because I feel so terrible and really at the end of the day it's just kind of knowing what's going on in your body before you go down the road of trying to get pregnant so that you can create the most optimal environment possible so the other thing too is is infections and part of this comes down to if you have infections your immune system is going to steal a lot of your energy reserves and I think that a lot of us realize that being pregnant is a huge energetic demand on your body so if you don't have enough energy for your body to sustain this healthy pregnancy that's kind of problem number one but number two is that if you have had reoccurring urinary tract infections your reoccurring bacterial vaginosis reoccurring yeast infections you know that is essentially the environment of where the baby is going to be so this can easily play a very significant role as to why your body is not allowing you to get pregnant because it's like no no no I'm not gonna allow a baby to develop in this environment that is going to you know expose it to a lot of different harmful infections and the reason why I have tampons listed here is because tampons are made from cotton cotton is another high mold crop so a lot of women are getting these chronic yeast infections and it's actually because they're using tampons and there are there's mold on the continent the tampons so this is something that you can change and help your vaginal tract you know rebound and then you can potentially stop having these infections number one and also improve your chances of fertility so the other thing too is c-section scars so some women have no problem getting pregnant the first time around but something happens and then they you know they have to get a c-section and when you have a c-section depending on you know if it's emergency depending on the surgeon depending on so many different factors you can easily have a lot of scar tissue and that scar tissue can really create adhesions you know in and around the uterus which can then lead to more difficulty with getting pregnant again so the point of all of this for those of you have been listening this whole time is this is not one thing like this is not just like oh here's the magical reason why there's infertility it could be infections it could be toxins it could be scar tissue it could be imbalance neurotransmitters like it could be so many different things and the point is is I'm not saying this to overwhelm you guys I'm saying this that I want you to understand how many avenues haven't been explored yet if you're just being looked at as oh you have imbalance hormones and nobody's looking at anything else there so many factors that need to be considered and so many possibilities that could potentially remove this burden and allow you to get pregnant on your own with no intervention or no fertility treatment so the other thing too which might sound so simple and so silly but deficiencies I cannot tell you how many women are so deficient and part of deficiencies comes from having irritable bowel syndrome GERD reflux heartburn like if you have a stressed gut that's where your nutrients are absorbed so you might not be absorbing nutrients from your food or from your supplements just based on having gut issues and then also to top that off is they've actually proven at this point even if you buy organic the soil has 80 percent less nutrient density than it used to 50 years ago so we are dealing with lack of nutrients and the food let alone if we have issues in our gut that are not allowing us to absorb it and I know there's a lot of talk about genetically modified foods and there's a lot of talk about organic and how there's pesticides and herbicides and all these things happening with our with our food but I will tell you the major pesticide associated with the GMOs called glyphosate glyphosate which is also roundup by the way so glyphosate is one of the major major reasons why we have gut issues number one number two is one of the major reasons why we're not absorbing any of our nutrients anymore so just having deficiencies will play a significant role and one of the top deficiencies is iron if you are iron deficient and maybe that's because you've been anemic your whole life maybe it's because you don't eat meat maybe it's because you have got issues I don't know but if you are iron deficient that alone will prevent you from getting pregnant and it is because iron is the top new Tran that your baby is going to steal so if you don't have enough to give your body is gonna say no no no I'm not gonna put you at risk that I'm not gonna put your baby at risk and then the second runner up here is Foley Foley not folic acid this is extremely important to just decipher folic acid is synthetic it is not most people cannot absorb folic acid so when you take a prenatal that has folic acid in it chances are it is doing nothing for you but if you do folate methyl Foley specifically that is one of the primary nutrients that your baby needs in order for its brain and spinal cord to develop so when you see these kids that have cleft palates or they have tongue ties these are the kids that were in an environment that was extremely folate deficient and now if you talk to anyone who's like a lactation consultant or a breastfeeding consultant you'll find that tons of kids are getting these lip ties tongue ties and having to get them surgically fixed that is a folate deficiency so Foley alone will play a significant significant role in not getting pregnant so again sometimes there's a bigger picture sometimes there's immune system stress sometimes there's toxins sometimes there's you know hormone imbalances but sometimes there's just nutrient deficiencies so you need to do the right testing in order to be able to decipher these things so that you can truly know what does your body need to then be able to get prep your hormones and get pregnant on your own so when it comes to this concept that infertility is due to bad luck or bad genetics there is nothing genetically in your body that will prevent you from getting pregnant yes there are different types of genetic mutations like the MTHFR MTHFR is really just something that's going to make you more fully efficient so in order to you know get your body ready for prime see you just need to take more slowly than the average person but that is not going to define if you can get pregnant or not so infertility is just your body's way of saying I'm not ready I'm not ready because this is not the best environment and this is not the best environment again maybe because you have a bunch of infections that are causing your irritable bowel syndrome maybe it's because you have toxins from all of you know the personal products that you use or because you lived in a moldy dorm room when you were in college you know or it's coming back to do you have a bunch of deficiencies because you don't eat a nutrient-dense diet or you have gut issues so when we defy this and we use the fertility treatment to get pregnant sometimes what we're gonna find is that we feel really sick going through our pregnancy and then we get postpartum depression or then we also find that we can't produce milk to breastfeed or we also find that we just are our thyroid completely shuts down after the pregnancy and we can barely get out of bed and then we start to feel extremely guilty that all I ever wanted was this baby and now I'm depressed and now I feel like crap and I can barely take care of them and it's this vicious vicious cycle and it doesn't have to be that way if you understand the bigger picture behind it and it's really you owe it to yourself to be able to kind of know what is going on in your body what does your body need so that you can have that beautiful amazing healthy enjoyable pregnancy that you've dreamed about well you know when we dream about being a mom or dreaming about being pregnant we don't necessarily dream about feeling sick for nine months we dream about it being this beautiful experience that we love every second of and you deserve that and you can have it but sometimes it just takes digging a little bit deeper to understand really where your body is at and what does everybody need so this is one really interesting case this is actually not a hundred percent related to to infertility because it isn't it isn't if the woman didn't come to me saying I want to get pregnant but part of the conversation was that she didn't have the ability to get pregnant and you know she just decided that it wasn't for her so this was a woman that came to me and she had she had some thyroid issues she was having a lot of trouble with losing weight she felt really really hormonal II imbalanced she kind of contributed her hormonal imbalances and her thyroid issues to her mood swings her fatigue she really she had headaches but she almost kind of like blew them off she's like listen I I get headaches they're very mild I've been getting them since like since I'm a kid that's just my normal but the other thing that she said was that she had pretty significant memory loss especially short-term and what was happening is she had she owned a business she had of her assistant kind of chasing her around through the day and writing everything down because she couldn't really remember you know minutes a minute so she needed everything on paper so she could actually get through her day so another thing that she she said in relation to you know her her thyroid issues is like she's like well you know I think that obviously stress is playing a role and I was asking her I was like if you mind sharing you know what's one of the big reasons why you feel stressed is it just you know you have a lot on your plate is it your company etc and she said well I'm a caretaker right now while I'm also running a business because my mom is really sick and she has something called faster dementia so that was kind of a red flag for me because vascular dementia what that is is when you're not having proper circulation to the brain and when you're not having proper circulation you're not getting proper oxygen to the brain so this can definitely cause a lot of memory issues but it can also cause a lot of hormonal issues and the reason I say that is because your pituitary gland which is the control center of your hormones is in as part of your brain so as they kind of talked a little bit more and I got to learn more about this woman's history one of the things she said was that she had her tonsils removed at two years old I'm due to chronic sore throats she had a lot of antibiotic use because of the sore throats and ear infections as well another thing that she said was that she was always really small for her age which I'm gonna piece all this together for you guys she was very small for her age up until she was like in her 20s and then in addition to that she had very cold hands and feet that later in life and eventually ended up getting diagnosed as three knots Rena's is like a really significant circulatory issues to the hands and feet and then the obviously the memory loss started young but it actually got really severe as an adult so as I'm really piecing all of this together the biggest thing that you want to know is that when you're talking about the tonsils the tonsils are here the thyroid is here so if the tonsils we're dealing with a lot of chronic infections it's very common that those infections can start to get into these lymph nodes of your neck which can then affect the thyroid so one of my patients husbands he came to her session with her and when I was explaining this concept to him he's like so you're saying her thyroid is in a bad neighborhood I was like that's exactly what I'm saying and it was a really great analogy because sometimes your thyroid dysfunction can be strictly associated with the things that are happening around it especially if there is a lot of lymph node issues so the other thing too about the antibiotic use is that when you're dealing with the antibiotic use it goes back to that mold toxicity because she also told me she was allergic to penicillin so being allergic to penicillin means that she has has toxic levels of Penicillium mold in the body in addition to that being small for your age is actually a pituitary issue so if the pituitary in the is underdeveloped or small that can cause developmental issues so this was a red flag because I started to think you know did she have circulatory issues to the brain since she was a kid and then the cold hands and feet was another compound compiling factor when it came to the circulatory issues and then obviously the memory loss so kind of piecing all of this together is that part of the circulatory issues for the head wasn't necessarily just about genetics it was also about the fact that all these lymph nodes in here if they're congested and gunked-up with strap or different types of infections it's like somebody put their foot on the hose AKA blood getting in and getting out is going to have a lot of issues so this is what causes something called cerebral venous insufficiency aka the blood is not draining out of the head properly which is going to cause issues with the brain getting proper amounts of oxygen this can lead to early onset of memory loss but it can also lead to pituitary dysfunction which will then throw off the hormones this is the control center if this is not talking to the thyroid it's not talking to the ovaries it's not talking to the adrenal glands then you cannot have proper balanced hormones which will then lead you down a road of infertility so this is extremely important to understand that you might be the woman who's like oh my gosh my circulation is so bad I'm always freezing my hands and feet practically like go numb my fingertips are white all the time and that could actually be the reason as to why you're struggling with fertility because your pituitary is not talking to the other parts of your endocrine system so again before if you're not overwhelmed yet but for those of you that haven't listened there are so many factors that need to be considered your circulation toxicity nutrient deficiencies gut health immune system there are so many pieces to this puzzle so you know I hope that this is not overwhelming and that this is taken as inspiration because this is gonna allow you to know wow there are so many check boxes that are unchecked then I can explore to understand why I'm struggling to get pregnant so if you haven't figured it out yet I'm here to tell you that you don't know what you don't know so there's no possible way for you guys to know these things if the only route that you gone is a fertility specialist because they're looking at your hormones and nothing else they're not looking at what's influencing your hormones they're not looking at toxicity they're not looking at infections they're not looking at nutrients they're not talking to you about your diet that is not the real house it is not their zone of genius they are focused on the hormones how can they manipulate the hormonal pathways to get your body to a place that it can get pregnant so you don't know what you don't know until you do better testing and you have a physician asking better questions so I really hope that you can use this to not accept that this is it for you just accept I have fertility problems fertility treatments my only is my only route there are so many different aspects to explore that can really help you to get the clarity and this is not even just about getting pregnant this is also about you being your healthiest version of you so that you could be the best most energetic mom you know that's the thing is like it's not just about the pregnancy you still have to feel good once you have that baby that you have to take care of day in and day out every hour of the day and the last thing you want to do is feel so tired that you can barely function because your body is so depleted from the Pepa pregnancy so the biggest myth of all is that you have no control over your hormones and I know there's a typo on this webinar people thank time and it's really once you know the root of what's causing the hormones to be imbalance then really anything is possible and again for those of you that have been listening the whole time this is also not about oh my gosh I have certain like as you're sitting here self diagnosing yourself and you're like oh my gosh my hands are always cold and oh my gosh I've had tons east affections and oh my gosh I you know my gut is messed up I don't want you to think that it's super super difficult for you to get better a lot of times when I work with women and you know it's obviously infertility is part of the puzzle you know within two three months their bodies are so much better with the right tools that they're usually able to then start that process of trying to get pregnant of course we always like evaluate their tests and their hormones at that point but you know that's a pretty amazing thing that you know for women that I've been shoveling for years upon years and you know poking and prodding themselves with all these trying to hormone remedy even replacements that you know in a couple of months two weeks you can clean out your body and get it to a good place and be able to get pregnant on your own is you know I know that sounds like cannot be real but I promise you it is so Instagram live people it is going to cut me off in a minute and a half for those of you that are looking for the whole webinar definitely shoot me your email through a direct message and I can definitely get you the full webinar so that you can watch the rest of it but I hope you enjoyed it thanks for joining me okay webinar people you're here you're with me so again if you haven't realized this so far very rarely do things look like a textbook and very rarely do you just match the the infertility stamp and you know if you don't just match that infertility description in the textbook then chances are your treatment should not just necessarily be what the textbook reveals about infertility it's really about understanding the bigger picture and knowing with what are the needs of your body so this obviously brings me to this concept of the difference between conventional functional and integrative because there is a huge difference between the three so obviously when you're dealing with conventional approach it's let's look at the hormones let's see which ones are in balance and let's manipulate those pathways by using hormone therapy and then we have functional medicine which is going to look at you know your hormones and a little bit deeper of a matter we're gonna maybe do some different saliva tasks we might do a urinary task and we're gonna dig a little bit deeper to really truly understand where your hormones are at but the difference about functional versus integrative is the functional medicine approach the the tools are a little bit limited so instead of using medication per se we might actually be using supplements and herbs to balance out your hormones which I used to do that and I used to work with tons of women and focus on okay we gotta fix your hormones but then what I realized is that as women got off of that supplement regimen or you know went back to a more balanced diet their hormones went back out of range and I found that that wasn't personally how I wanted to practice I wanted to understand what was the route and that's what let me down the rune of integrative medicine and I wanted to understand the bigger picture I wanted to understand all of the factors that I talked about tonight influencing the hormones but I also wanted more tools in the toolbox I wanted to give women a solution to not only balance their hormones but to fix the major reason why their hormones were off in the first place and also to help correct the hormones in a sustainable way and I think that that is unfortunately something that a lot of the approaches lack is sustainability and what I mean by that is okay if I stay on this regimen or if I stay on this protocol I feel good but as soon as I come off of it I don't feel good I wanted to be able to correct the foundation so that once you go back to a more balanced life you know or you you are not necessarily taking tons of vitamins the supplements all that you still feel equally as good so integrative medicine is really all about sustainability and allowing us to fix the foundation which will then allow a lot of the other effects to go away so with that being said people always ask you know how does it all work how how how do you guys work with patients and I always say we serve people we do not serve insurance providers for those of you listening that have been down this fertility route unfortunately a lot of fertility treatment doesn't also work with insurance and I still can't believe how expensive it can be depending on the treatment that you are doing so it is definitely so worth it for you to try to understand more about your body before going down this road of crazy crazy expensive modalities and therapies that may or may not help you get pregnant I had a woman that she came to me after her third attempt at implanting a frozen embryo $26,000 each time fortunately this woman had the money to do it but it failed three times and that is just something that I don't want other women to go through if they don't have to but most importantly when it comes to insurance we do have most of your labs your blood work goes through your insurance but when it comes to some of the other you know visits and services they are classified as out-of-network most people can great reimbursement and use their health savings accounts and flex savings accounts so it's definitely not something that you know we don't work with insurance at all but our biggest goal is to always serve you as a client and dig as deep as possible to give you clarity and to give you a solution in the fastest amount of time and I think one of the biggest things that we forget nowadays is that health care is supposed to be about answers n solutions I know a lot of the time you know especially when we're struggling with our hormones or we kind of just settled for this well you just have infertility that's kind of it it's just your body and you know we don't necessarily always know the right questions to ask and we don't always know if there is a solution that is beyond you know the fertility treatment option so we need to be an advocate for our own health and know that there is a reason and there are answers and there are solutions that you know are solutions that are not only gonna help you get pregnant but also really help your body to be as healthy as possible so some of the major tasks that we do and what's great about this is because of some of the tests that we do being DNA based you have DNA in your hair so we can actually do a lot of these tests from a distance so with that being said we look at everything from chemical sensitivities food allergies environmental allergies mold allergies antibiotic allergies heavy metal toxicity mineral deficiencies vitamin deficiencies we do comprehensive bloodwork we look at your hormones we look at autoimmune conditions we do so much testing in our onboarding package and you will have the most information to understand what is the route is it circulatory is it toxicity is it infections is it your gut is it actual hormones is it all of those things so with the type of testing that we do it reveals all of the components that can be contributing to why you are struggling to get pregnant one of the really really amazing parts of what we do is when it comes to the healing process and it comes to what can I do to actually get my hormones balanced so that I can get pregnant on my own any of those types of therapies modalities supplements herbs those are all tested against your DNA using autonomic response testing so there is no cookie cutter recommendation we do not guess we always test so this is why I can say that some of these women that I worked with that were struggling with fertility were able to balance their hormones in two to three months and this was because there was no trial and error all of the recommendations that we gave them were specifically what their body needed based off of the testing and the DNA testing that we did so this is probably one of the most amazing unique aspects of our practice because again there's no trial and error and we're able to know exactly what your body needs so one of the biggest reasons why we do this unique onboarding process and we do all of these different types of tasks is because really at the end of the day we want to give you the information and an understanding as to why you're struggling to get pregnant under a pretty minimal cost bracket because at the end of the day the most important thing is for you to spend money on getting better so that you can obviously feel good and get pregnant and having happy healthy pregnancy so we have really really evolved over the past few years to create this really amazing onboarding process to give you the most amount of information in the littlest price point so the other thing too is like even talking about price I feel like if you can understand why you struggled with fertility and actually know what you need to do to get pregnant that's priceless because there are so many women that are just so sad because they just feel like there's something really wrong with them and there's nothing wrong there might be some imbalances in your body that you need to work on but there's nothing wrong with you and there's nothing you know there's no genetic defect this is just about lack of information and it's not your fault it's just lack of information because you just haven't had the right tests yet so with the testing and how it all works the onboarding price is 1425 so for those of you that are kind of new to this integrated functional world you might be thinking wow that's a lot of money that's more than I expected but with that being said a lot of the tasks that are done in this world of social integrative medicine everything from hormone testing to gut testing infectious disease testing all of those tests are done through private labs and those tests can rack up anywhere between 2 3 to even up to $5,000 so that was something that I personally did not love because I did not want my patient to spend thousands of dollars before they even knew what was wrong with them so we customize this onboarding process to give you the most information under this onboarding price but everything that I mentioned before is included your heavy-metal testing environmental testing mineral testing vitamin testing blood testing all of it is covered under this bracket the most important thing is depending on where you're at you know what you've tried for fertility and what are your expectations for fertility meaning are you on a press timeline we always want you to apply and talk to one of our client services team members because we want to make sure that we are a good fit for you as you are a good fit for us because the the biggest hurdle working with fertility cases is when you're on a strict timeline and you feel a lot of emotional pressure that you have to get better in a month or two months or three months when women go into it and they're just like you know what I'm going to do what I need to do to fix my body and it's all about me getting healthy right now those are the women that usually get pregnant the fastest so so definitely when you apply we kind of warm out all of those details and make sure that we have realistic expectations I'm working together oh and I always forget to do this so I'm gonna make sure that I put this link here because you can click right through and schedule a strategy call to get on the phone with one of our client services team members so definitely feel free to click now or you can actually check it out on our website because we have the available availability to book those also on our website okay so if you are a long distance do not worry about that we can do all of your testing from distance again because most of our tests are done on DNA and you have DNA in your hair so strictly by sending us a hair sample and then doing your blood work local to you we can do the bulk of all of those tests and give you tons of information as to what is going on in your system so I heard he took a peek and it looks like we don't have any specific questions right now I'm I always say I'm like I guess I did a good job is there's not a lot of questions side feel free over the next minute or two if you want to pop any questions in there but I really hope that this information was of value to to those of you listening and I really the intention is never to overwhelm I know it's a lot of information but there are just so many components that play a role on our hormones and there's just a lot of things that need to be evaluated to truly know why you may be struggling with infertility and once you know what that root causes or what that foundational issue is the healing process actually becomes pretty pretty simple so it's really once you get that information and you know the needs of your body is when this becomes more of a breakthrough experience so I really hope this was a value and it allows you to feel empowered to know you know if there's something that has potentially been missed and also gives you the tools to take action on getting better testing so you can understand more about your body and also be able to have the most beautiful healthy pregnancy that you've always dreamed of so I thank you all for being here and I hope this was again a value you can definitely check out our website integrated wellness group calm I've done podcasts on infertility as well so feel free to tune into that and then also you can check out the website if you are looking to learn a little bit more about how we work with our patients as well as scheduling one of those strategy calls so that you can get started so I thank you guys for being here I really hope you enjoyed it and I really hope you've got amazing amazing clarity and I hope to see you soon