10 Things I Wish More Women Knew on Their Fertility Journey
What your doctor didn’t tell you that you need to know to get pregnant with unexplained infertility.
Where does functional nutrition fit in?
Healthy conception involves a beautiful synchronicity of events in the body. The amazing thing is that diet & lifestyle very intimately impact this! When conception is just not happening, it can be overwhelming, frustrating, & often heartbreaking. It is important to know that aspects may be overlooked that could greatly support you in your journey.
Unfortunately, within the confines of our conventional medical model there are many factors in the fertility world that go overlooked and often slip through the cracks. When I work with clients, they are regularly shocked that they were never educated on these things by their PCP, OBGYN, or even Reproductive Endocrinologist. I am rarely surprised, but it does fuel my passion and personal mission to change the way that women are educated about their female bodies.
Fertility challenges are much more than “just” a need for a pill, prescription, or medical treatment. It is essential to understand the experience of the body in which the fertility challenge exists.
I like to ask the questions.
- What does the body need for proper hormone communication?
- How can we support the environment to feel “safe” enough for healthy conception?
In the Liv Nourished practice, we are passionate about taking a root cause to women’s health concerns. When we aren’t prioritizing diet, lifestyle, environment, and mindset with sub fertility or infertility, we are MISSING the mark!
With knowledge we can then step back and apply the diet and lifestyle changes to optimize the environment for healthy conception and bring balance to the findings in which are promoting the challenges.
So what about lab testing?
Fertility challenges go beyond what is seen in conventional lab work. Many times women approach us with the diagnosis of unexplained infertility. They have been told that both they and their partners’ labs look pretty good. When it comes to supporting couples on their fertility journey, I find that digging a little deeper into the lab work can paint a more complete story of what needs to be adjusted with diet, lifestyle, and mindset to optimize results (and no, these are not tests that your OBGYN, PCP, or reproductive endocrinologist are running!). It is important to note that labs are NOT everything, they essentially provide a “snapshot”, of what is going on in your body. But, when it comes to the advanced lab testing that I do find supportive to order with couples on their fertility journey, these snapshots can fill in missing pieces to ultimately optimize the pathway to conception.
Your symptoms are information.
Your symptoms are information and your fertility challenges have a greater story behind them! For many, this is a story that goes far beyond the work of an OBGYN or Reproductive Endocrinologist, and rather is a journey of self connection and self awareness. A journey of learning how to work with your body in daily health.
Unfortunately our conventional medical system is not set up in a way that offers this level of health education for women. I will tell you that I personally experienced this too! It wasn’t until I really started to dig into the women’s health space that I realized how truly little we are taught about our female anatomy and how much diet culture truly can sabotage our hormone health. When it comes to the fertility space, I find this lack of education to be an incredible barrier to healthy conception and can really create a great deal of both physical and emotional stress.
Understanding how your female body works and how to decode the messages it is sending you, is a practice, but one that is worth investing in!
10 Things I Wish More Women Knew on Their Fertility Journey
There are so many things women deserve to know on their TTC journeys, below are 10 pearls to start!
1. Your cycle health matters!
Having a healthy, minimal symptom, consistent cycle is an indication that your hormones are on the right track. If you are missing your cycle, your cycle is all over the map, or your cycle symptoms are intense. This means that your hormone health needs some diet and lifestyle support! You will want to start here on your preconception journey. Here is what we are looking for in a healthy cycle.
2. You can only get pregnant 6 days of the month.
“You mean I don’t need to try everyday..?” No, only if you want :)! LH test strips indicate the spike in Luteinizing Hormone (LH) before ovulation takes place (LH triggers the egg to release!). Ovulation is expected to occur 24-36 hours post LH spike. Ovulation is a 1 day event when an egg will survive 12-24 hours after being released. Post ovulation your cycle is expected to arrive in 12-14 days. You can see here that all the ranges can get a bit mucky, so it is important to get clear with how YOUR body is operating.Getting confident with your cycle flow, cycle signs (like cervical mucus), and clear on when your LH surges each month, in advance of TTC, you can identify your “fertile window” the 5 days prior to ovulation and feel more relaxed and confident with your timed intercourse as opposed to anxious and confused. In the realm of TTC, knowledge really is power here!
3. Fertility treatment hormones are hard on your body.
I personally believe that our technology today is amazing and these treatments are an INCREDIBLE tool in our tool-kit. My message here is that they are not the only tool, and long term exposure does not come without risk for consequences. The hormones provided in treatment increase your body’s inflammatory pathways, stress response, and risk for autoimmunity. We have to remember that these hormones are foreign to your body and the body has to process them out via detoxification pathways. The incidences of hormone positive cancers is higher in those who have undergone hormone therapies via fertility treatments. If you have explored repeated fertility treatments without success, this would be a great time to connect with a practitioner and focus exclusively on diet and lifestyle support in your fertility journey prior to exploring further next steps. Whether you choose to use a fertility treatment in the future, this will optimize your efforts for success by first optimizing your body’s environment!
4. Your emotional and energetic body plays a massive role in your conception journey.
I know for some of you this can be a little bit woo woo, but depending where you are in your story, this may be what you need to hear and land! I recommend the book Spirit Babies as a place to start on this exploration, you can also opt into my Self Nourishment Video Series for pearls to up-level your health journey from an emotional standpoint.
5. A TSH is not a complete thyroid panel.
For a full starter picture of your thyroid health we want to see TSH, free T4, free T3, reverse T3 and thyroid antibodies (TG and TPO). Antibodies are an often overlooked piece of a subclinical thyroid condition when the TSH “looks normal”. If your body is mounting an autoimmune attack against your thyroid gland – it is not going to function optimally! Healthy thyroid conversion (T4→ T3, in relation to RT3) and sufficient active thyroid hormone T3 are also incredibly important and overlooked, more on this coming in the month of April!
6. Your thyroid health is an important factor to your fertility, but a medication alone will not fix your thyroid function.
Your thyroid health is directly connected to your mineral status, stress load, gut health, and immune health. As a thermostat for our body if we are lacking adequate nutrition (eating enough for our body) or we are depleted in the nutrients necessary for healthy thyroid function, this is going to cause a shift in our thyroid function and how your body feels even with a medication on board. Bottom line – we want to look at diet and lifestyle with thyroid concerns.
7. Your gut health intimately impacts your hormone health.
Whether you have GI symptoms or not, I always recommend optimizing gut health on your fertility journey. Hormone problems are gut problems! Check out this IG post for more information here.
8. If you are missing your period and trying to conceive, you need diet and lifestyle support.
If you have had your period previously and it is now missing, you HAVE diet and lifestyle work to explore. I repeat, secondary amenorrhea is your warning light that diet and lifestyle need to be addressed. With a specialized professional, I recommend dedicating at least 3-4 months of closely working on diet and lifestyle routines to set the stage for your period to return. A missing period suggests great need for hormone balance. Remember, making the changes to bring your hormones into balance is the best way to set the stage for support healthy conception!
9. If you have stopped birth control, I recommend dedicating 4-12 months of intentional support to the body in the transition before TTC.
Here I recommend addressing the 3 main areas I see most overlooked in the post birth control window:
- The 4 Post Birth Control Balance pillars
- Getting clear on your Cycle Awareness
- Mastering your Women’s Health Foundations.
Nutritional depletions alone post birth control can challenge your ability to conceive.Your egg has a 100 day journey! Creating a 3 month intentional runway with the priority of renourishing can set up for great success here post birth control. Interested in learning more? Put your name on the No Birth Control, Now What? Self Paced waitlist!
10. Your partner’s health really does matter!
With all our TTC clients, we check in on partner health! Male factor infertility accounts for 40% of all infertility cases. It really takes two to tango here. This can also be true EVEN if a semen analysis comes back looking clear. There is much more to healthy sperm than just the motility and morphology. To support sperm DNA health I recommend getting your partner on board with nutrition strategies for nourishment and reducing inflammation, by practicing blood sugar stability, building a balanced plate, and increasing antioxidants in the diet from colorful fruits and vegetables. There are well studied supplements on this subject matter too, but nothing replaces the benefits of a great diet and lifestyle.
I share this with you today as a way to further explore an overlooked area in your journey to conceive that can pave huge shifts in your progress.
Curious about how you can start to optimize your fertility journey? You can schedule a discovery call here to chat!
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