The 4 pillars of Fertility
When I work with women to improve their fertility there are four areas that should not be ignored. If you are planning a pregnancy or actively trying to conceive and your health care provider has not addressed the following topics, it is time to take your health into your own hands and empower yourself to stack the deck in your favor on your journey to motherhood.
The 4 pillars of fertility (and optimal health) are:
Sleep
Stress Management
Diet and Gut Health
Reduction of Environmental Toxins
Sleep
Sleep is when our body goes through repairs. There are so many inputs during the day that prioritizing sleep can be beneficial for allowing our cells to communicate with each other through hormones. Better sleep means better hormonal communication. It also goes without saying that you always feel better after a good nights sleep.
So aiming for a minimum of 7-9 hours of sleep is a great place to start. This should be quality sleep. If you struggle with getting to sleep (wired but tired at night) or wake frequently throughout the night, or wake up feeling groggy, your sleep could definitely use improvement.
Try turning off your cell phone (all screens 30 minutes to 1 hour before bed). If you must be in front of a screen before bed consider blue light blocking glasses (affiliate link). Another favorite of mine is to get natural daylight as early in the morning when the sun comes up to help set your circadian rhythm.
Stress Management
We all know stress plays a big role in how we feel. No one wants to be stressed but unfortunately we live in an environment where we are constantly being bombarded by stressors both physical, mental, and emotional. So it is important to find ways to be mindful of how we feel moment to moment.
Cortisol is the body’s stress hormone which is released as a result when we get stressed. Cortisol should be high in the morning and go down at night, when it doesn’t go down is when we fell wired and tired at night. Cortisol is also made of the same building blocks as progesterone (hormone needed to help mature your uterine lining to help with implementation of embryo after fertilization). So if you are over stressed you might experience something like delayed ovulation or short luteal phase.
A good way to help reduce cortisol is to produce more oxytocin! Here are some good ways to produce more of this feel good hormone: get/give a hug, pet an animal, be intimate with your partner/spouse, yoga, meditation, listen to music.
Diet & Gut Health
Food is the foundation of our health. The quality of the food we eat matters, and traditional cultures around the world would focus on providing certain foods to women of childbearing age to help improve their fertility and egg health.
Some of these foods include: organ meats, grassfed meats, fatty fish, eggs, lacto-fermented veggies, bone broth, and saturated fats like ghee/grass fed butter, coconut oil, lard, tallow, duck fat. Unfortunately, the standard American diet is comprised of more food “products” than real food. Even if you are eating a very high quality diet, but your gut health suffers you might not be absorbing all the beneficial nutrients of those foods. So if you suffer from any symptoms like gas, bloating, diarrhea or constipation, or you don’t have a good bowel movement a day, then your gut health could use some love and support.
Reducing Environmental Toxins
Our skin is a very large organ and absorbs what we put on it and if you consider how many personal care products you are putting on your skin every day there is a large chance you are putting many toxins on your skin that enter your blood stream and are potentially disrupting your fertility.
We are also exposed to environmental toxins in our cookware, the air, through our food, and through our water. Substances like parabens, phthalates, BPAs are some terms you may have heard. These can mimic estrogen in our body and disrupt our reproductive systems. One resource I love to use to see how “good” or “bad” personal care and cleaning products are is the Environmental Working Group.
Start with changing your personal care products since those have the highest potential of disrupting your system, look for products that are fragrance free. Eating organic as much as possible will also reduce your exposure to pesticides and herbicides that may further degrade your gut health in addition to disrupting your reproductive hormones.
Which pillar do you start with?
The order in which you address each one might vary from person to person. If you are struggling to know where to start and would like support coming up with a personalized roadmap to improve your fertility and health, I offer one time optimal fertility strategy sessions. This 60-75 minute session will leave you feeling empowered on your journey to pregnancy.
