How to support fertility naturally with Christa Biegler, RD

This week on The Less Stressed Life Podcast, Christa does an overview of nutritional and hormonal considerations for optimizing fertility and then takes live Q&A from listeners/audience members to try to troubleshoot individual cases. 

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• The 3 hormone systems to optimize for an easier pregnancy
• Nutrition support that for fertility optimization
• Considerations for miscarriage prevention and preterm birth 

SPONSORS:
Save on Healthcare
A special thanks to Christian Healthcare Ministries (CHM) for sponsoring this episode. I’ve been a CHM member over 8 years and I LOVE that it provides a healthcare solution for my entire family that is budget friendly while also sharing the same values that included prevention and healing. CHM allows me to submit medical bills for cost sharing and reimbursement. CHM is a membership based nonprofit ministry, and it has shared 100% of eligible medical bills for members since 1981. I know where my healthcare dollars are going and who they are supporting and have the option for maternity cost sharing. With the money I’ve saved being a CHM member over the years, I’ve also been able to allocate other healthcare dollars where they matter most to my family. If you want to learn more about whether CHM could be a solution for you, there’s a link in the show notes for getting more information: https://chministries.org/lessstressedlife

WHERE TO FIND CHRISTA:
Website: https://www.christabiegler.com/
Instagram: @anti.inflammatory.nutritionist
Leave a review, submit a questions for the podcast or book a mentorship or case review call here: https://www.christabiegler.com/links

 TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Christa: Welcome to the Less Stressed Life. My name's Christa Bigler, your host, and if you're here, I bet we have a few things in common. We're both in pursuit of a less stressed life, but we don't have it all figured out quite yet. We're moms that want the best for our families. Health practitioners that want the best for our clients, and women that just want to feel better with every birthday.

[00:00:19] Christa: We're health savvy, but we wanna learn something new each day. And the less stressed life isn't a destination, it's a pursuit, a journey. If you will, on this show, we're gonna talk about health from the physical, emotional, and nutritional angles, and want you to know that you always have options. We're here to help you heal yourself.

[00:00:35] Christa: Welcome to the Less Stress Life, and on this episode, we're talking today about optimizing fertility.

[00:00:43] Christa: In this episode, I'm gonna cover the three hormone systems to optimize for an easier pregnancy or easier fertility nutrition support that optimizes both energy and pregnancy and maybe even considerations for miscarriage prevention.

[00:00:55] Christa: Now, earlier this week, I actually did this as a live Zoom community q and a call. I've been experimenting with those since about last fall, and so I'll include some of that q and A at the end. But first, I have a story about today's sponsor. Eight years ago, my husband lost his health insurance and I was self-employed.

[00:01:12] Christa: I've been working in conventional care up to that point in my career, and I was seeing gross mismanagement of the healthcare industry daily. The company I worked for was amazing, but the reasons we were treating the patients were completely preventable, and our small facility created about a million dollars per month in healthcare system burden due to these mostly preventable diseases.

[00:01:36] Christa: My nurse friends also shared stories with me of people faking chest pain for an ambulance ride just to get cigarettes. I did not want to be part of this broken model, and it weighed heavily on my heart while frantically searching for options to my healthcare dilemma, I found Christian Healthcare Ministries or C H M, which would allow me to submit medical bills for cost sharing and reimbursement.

[00:01:59] Christa: Chm is a member-based nonprofit ministry and it's shared a hundred percent of eligible medical bills for members since 1981. I've been a chm member over eight years, and I love that it provides a healthcare solution for my entire family that's budget friendly while also sharing the same values that include prevention and healing.

[00:02:19] Christa: I know where my healthcare dollars are going and who they are supporting, and I even have the option for maternity cost sharing. With the money that I've saved being a chm member over the years, I've also been able to allocate our healthcare dollars where they matter most to my family. I. If you want to learn more about whether chm could be a solution for you, there's a link in the show notes for getting more information, or you can go to ch ministries.org/less stressed life.

[00:02:46] Christa: That's ch ministries.org/less stressed life. When you use that link. It really helps them know if you heard it on the podcast, and I hope that my story is helpful to you in case you are in need of a healthcare solution. Okay, so first of all, fertility is a pretty big topic and I'm gonna scratch the surface today.

[00:03:07] Christa: I'm gonna talk about it from mostly a nutritional angle, and I'm gonna cover just a couple things about structure and other things. I won't really be covering major, major things conventional testing wise, or if you were going to a fertility clinic, I'll be covering some different things than what they would be covering, and I'm not gonna cover cycle tracking.

[00:03:25] Christa: Once upon a time when I had interviewed someone about migraines, I remember her talking about the treatment pie. And I think you really have to think about this from a treatment pie perspective as well. On the q and a yesterday, someone was asking questions that were essentially like, how do you prioritize?

[00:03:40] Christa: And I will say there's some skill to that, but you can kind of write out the pieces or as you go through this episode, maybe take some notes because it'll help bring out some things. And I would say always start with the easiest things first. So big picture, there are stressors that come in and affect our body and our ability to do things naturally.

[00:03:56] Christa: That's like the crux of what I do in private practice. So some of those stressors might involve imbalances and digestion that's gonna impact nutrient digestion and absorption that is going to affect. Detoxification because detoxification is very nutrient dependent. It's also gonna impact progesterone production because stressors and nutrient deficiencies impact progesterone.

[00:04:18] Christa: And I'll just mention progesterone and sluggish thyroid are some of the biggest reasons I see fertility issues in practice. It's also gonna impact thyroid production, which I just said, which stress and nutrients also impact that. Just like video, progesterone. And then we also have these other issues where testing.

[00:04:34] Christa: Is variable. Maybe some people have different testing tools in their toolbox and others have different ones, or the analysises of testing is an issue. So these are all some possible barriers you might run into. Big picture fertility. Fertility is really about more than con conception. It's about health and vitality.

[00:04:52] Christa: That shouldn't be depressing. It's just we. Sometimes refer to it as the fifth vital sign. There's a book called The Fifth Vital Sign. So once you address structural things, anatomical things and infections, like sometimes a subclinical kidney infection that you're not having a lot of symptoms for, but it can show up especially in men once those types of things are ruled out in fertility, we really wanna look at these other tenets or core pieces of fertility that include toxic burden, mitochondrial.

[00:05:22] Christa: Production, digestive and immune function. And inflammation and oxidative stress. Now that's a pretty big comprehensive topic. So I'm gonna zoom in to these hormone systems and then the, the particular hormones that I see causing issues in fertility the most. So the three hormone systems that impact fertility include the ovarian.

[00:05:41] Christa: Hormones, the adrenal hormones and the thyroid hormones. You can also refer to this as the oat access, ovarian, adrenal, and thyroid hormones. Now, ovarian hormones are usually the ones we think the most about, and I think each of these can have a personification. So progesterone is kind of like the really happy hormone.

[00:05:58] Christa: Most people want more progesterone. A lot of people don't have enough progesterone. Progesterone and estrogen can act like a teeter-totter, and if estrogen is in excess, not getting cleared, broken down as well as it should be. There's a lot of places that can get enough traffic jam, then progesterone may suffer and kind of be on the lower end while estrogen kind of dominates on the higher end.

[00:06:20] Christa: That's not always the case, but it can be a common situation. So I'll just wanna put that there. So estrogen. Lofton gets a bad rap, but it really is more of a Jekyll and Hyde situation. Estrogen is necessary as a growth hormone and not having enough estrogen. Looks like I just had the conversation with someone today who took too much estrogen detox supplements that you can end up with, um, dry dryness down there.

[00:06:46] Christa: So poor lubrication. You can have hot flashes. These are symptoms of perimenopause and menopause, so we don't wanna be, uh, eliminating all of our estrogen. We should have a healthy level. But sometimes when you have too much, you might associate it with negative symptoms that a lot of people have experienced before, uh, most commonly felt before your cycle and maybe even before ovulation, because around those times is when your body is clearing out estrogen.

[00:07:09] Christa: So those symptoms might look like, uh, mood changes might look like tender breasts. It might be that you have a really heavy period because as, as a growth hormone, estrogen is predicting kind of the, the. With the, the thickness of the lining, the uterine lining, that's shedding. And so if it's growing more, then you're gonna have a thicker, heavier period.

[00:07:29] Christa: It's also maybe going to be associated with things like fibroids, fibroids, et cetera, but it's a Jekyll and ahy. You need it, but you need to be able to clear it. And there's a lot of things that happen with your digestive function. And different phases of liver detox that can make kind of estrogen jam up even in lifestyle.

[00:07:45] Christa: So if you have a, an issue with a calm T gene, then caffeine and stress will block estrogen from exiting. So there's a lot of pieces there. So, progesterone, happy hormone, uh, you have the most progesterone typically during pregnancy. So if you've ever heard someone say that they were the happiest or they the best they ever felt was during pregnancy, probably because they live in a low progesterone state the rest of the time.

[00:08:10] Christa: Also progesterone naturally declines postpartum and could be p a piece of postpartum depression. So progesterones are happy hormone, estrogen, kind of Jekyll and Hyde. We need it, but we need to be able to clear it. And then we have testosterone, and these are all of these ovarian hormones. Now, there is a little bit of testosterone made by the adrenals, but primarily it is made.

[00:08:29] Christa: From the ovaries, testosterone, I always call them maintenance man. If you don't have 'em, you're not gonna have very good muscle repair or tissue healing, and you might just feel like total poop if your testosterone is very, very low, which commonly has been from long-term stresses or traumas. But if testosterone is high, you might find that really annoying also.

[00:08:49] Christa: So again, maintenance man, you need 'em around, but you don't need them a ton. So too much testosterone can look like chin hairs, hairs around the nipples, the belly button, et cetera. Let's move on to the adrenal hormones. I'd like to state that I think if the adrenals feel like they're under duress, that none of the other hormones really care.

[00:09:06] Christa: And let's just go to adrenals 1 0 1. The adrenals make several hormones, aldosterone. Impacts blood pressure. D H E O A controls blood sugar. And if you don't have any, you might feel really hangry or shaky, even going a couple hours without food. But really, adrenals are kind of known for their cortisol production.

[00:09:27] Christa: Now, cortisol is an essential hormone. That means all other hormone production is gonna be down-regulated so the body can make cortisol. So resources are often taken away from this. Central area of the body and preferentially blood is moved to the arms and the legs to literally run from a tiger or to go do that stressful thing.

[00:09:44] Christa: The problem is, is that of course, we live in too much chronic stress or fight or flight. So cortisol can be a little bit like a speedometer. When you're speeding, you speed, speed, speed. You use up a lot of gas and then your outta gas and then the adrenals are not really functioning and not producing hormones at robust levels, and your brain has a ton to do with this.

[00:10:03] Christa: Your brain kind of communicates overall to everything else, no matter what. And so if the brain senses an issue, and that could be. Literally a, a head injury, a concussion. If your brain senses any kind of anything that's a stressor. It is possible. It may impact your, your hormone production and the ovaries and the adrenals and even the thyroid.

[00:10:23] Christa: So that's the third system of hormone, thyroid hormone. Now I really. Have come to love this topic because I was a sluggish, I am my clients, right? So I had very poor, I had run out of gas with the adrenals. I had sluggish thyroid that did not show up on blood work. So when you feel, um, not good, but your labs say you're normal.

[00:10:46] Christa: And I do have ways that I assess this in practice, which is nice, but I think we have an epidemic of kind of low hormone status or sluggish thyroid. And so those symptoms can present long before the labs are altered. And I just want you to know you do have some options there. There's a lot of nutrient support.

[00:11:03] Christa: Honestly, stress support, I noticed the most that I had more thyroid. Symptoms when my stress was higher. So some of the most common thyroid symptoms would be a lot of hair loss, feeling very cold, or especially cold extremities, hands and feet. So I would see both of those things with more stress. And then some of the other ones could be like tired or brain fog.

[00:11:25] Christa: I think sometimes brain fog is considered a. Term of weakness, and so we don't always think about it, but you know, just think about whether, if you forget what you're doing, you know, if you walk into one room and you kind of forget, that would be brain fog. Or, I also kind of liken ADHD symptoms to this a little bit.

[00:11:41] Christa: So feeling a little bit scatterbrained. I really thought I had a ADHD before I started supporting my thyroid. Some other things that you can have, which it's kind of hard to put your finger on this one, but it can kind of make your face puffy or just kind of make you feel a little more, I guess, inflamed or a little more puffy.

[00:11:56] Christa: And some other symptoms that can be symptoms of thyroid or other things as well would be predisposition to dry skin, dry hair, even dry feet. And you also have an increased predisposition to anxiety, depression. So I know what you're thinking. Woo. That's a big list. I might be all of those things, I get it.

[00:12:12] Christa: Like I think you have to be supporting the thyroid all the time. And I think if the adrenals are in tough shape, then the thyroid. May not function beautifully. So let's talk a little bit about cortisol. A lot of these things I'm gonna say are more like tendencies, and I'll try to make this brief. So if you have high cortisol that's at fight or flight, so you're kind of like always rushing from thing to thing to thing, feeling pretty.

[00:12:34] Christa: Constantly agitated or irritable, maybe forgetting to eat right, that's gonna raise your cortisol, cause your body needs that blood sugar to try to stay kind of more consistent. So just like not taking breaks, feeling inflamed, feeling like things are out of balance, thriving on deadlines and stress. Those are all the things that kind of, those are the lifestyle things that really lead to kind of elevated cortisol.

[00:12:53] Christa: And then low cortisol might be looking like, usually it's gonna be a low nutrient profile, so it might be. Slow healing, like maybe you get acne or a mosquito bite and it's just very slow recovery, or you have slow recovery from workouts or you just kind of feel dead after doing cardio makes you feel worse.

[00:13:09] Christa: Craving salty foods, having kind of a predisposition to being dizzy, from sitting to standing, from laying down to sitting up, maybe always registering on the lower end of the blood pressure. All of those are pretty classical, low cortisol things, and unfortunately these are not. That per this section is not really recognized.

[00:13:25] Christa: You're not gonna go to the doctor and say, I feel this way, and they're usually not gonna diagnose you as having an adrenal issue. I think a lot of people walk around feeling like this and aren't really sure how to support themselves, honestly. And it's a, it's very nutrient dependent. It's really nourishing, it's resting, it's lots of things.

[00:13:42] Christa: You can't just out supplement lifestyle and this is where people really get into trouble cuz they'll add a lot of support but not change how the stress is metabolized in their body, which honestly is beyond the scope of this conversation for today, which is okay, they just mean that there's a lot of options and there's a lot of ways to go about it.

[00:13:57] Christa: You can, there's not a wrong. Well, there's, there's just many ways to do the same thing. All right, let's go to sus sex hormones. So excess estrogen. I talked a little bit about that already. So it's like PMs symptoms, painful, heavy periods, bloating, headaches, migraine around ovulation and period, especially breast tenderness, fibro, fibroids, and then low estrogen.

[00:14:17] Christa: I brought this up as well, and usually you're gonna see lower hormone. From a history of undereating being under body weight, not having enough, um, cholesterol. So cholesterol gets vilified unnecessarily. Cholesterol is a steroid hormone backbone to making the rest of the hormones, so you need adequate cholesterol.

[00:14:37] Christa: So let's stop. Like, let's not giving metals for low cholesterol. That's actually like, I hope that dies soon because that is very archaic. So low estrogen. Normally we would see this more in perimenopause and menopause when your body is like checking out of the fertility era, right? And it's checking into the post fertility era of perimenopause and menopause.

[00:14:58] Christa: But this might look like hot flashes. It might look like fatigue, depression might look like joint pain, muscle aches, dry skin. Um, vaginal dryness, sleep issues, et cetera. So not very fun stuff. But if you're a younger woman experiencing low hormone, you can have this happen just because of, you know, not having the pieces, the cholesterol backbone to make hormones and the just overall under eating.

[00:15:19] Christa: So, especially if you've been an athlete in earlier life, I see that kind of stuff happen a lot. All right. I think we talked a little bit already about elevated and low testosterone. I mean, elevated testosterone is gonna be a predisposition to acne and oily skin. Facial hair that, you know, pops up really chest nipples, belly button, et cetera.

[00:15:37] Christa: Kind of darkening of the arm pits, maybe hair loss in the wrong place, maybe P C O S diagnosis, that's a whole nother topic for another day. Cuz sometimes that can get a little bit sort of misdiagnosed. Um, and it's not high testosterone necessarily. And then low testosterone. Also anxiety, depression. Isn't that fun?

[00:15:55] Christa: So many, so many reasons for that that are possible. Increased belly fat, et cetera. Okay, so I don't know if you needed all of that, but big picture, I like to think about, well, what influences hormones? What if we don't just spot treat, but we support the how? You water the tree and you trim the tree and you give it sun?

[00:16:12] Christa: I'm like more of a fan of that. So here's the things that are, that hormones are impacted by or influenced by stressors of all types. Toxic burden and detoxification burden. Gut imbalances or gut stressors. That might be bacterial imbalances and fungal overgrowth, parasitic infections, blood sugar, right?

[00:16:31] Christa: So that can be just spikes in blood sugar, skipping meal. It can be all kinds of things, right? Just depending on how, um, just depending on all kinds of factors. And then nutrient deficiencies, right? So if we have gut stressors or toxic burden stressors, those are really gonna impact nutrient deficiencies.

[00:16:46] Christa: And then if you don't have nutrients, there's just so much to say about nutrient deficiencies that parade around as. Other symptoms or even other diagnosis diagnoses is a bother to me. So the core values really of fertility are blood sugar, balance detox, digestive health. When you do those things, you're really influencing egg and sperm and then cervical mucus, um, fluid quality because you need that cervical mucus to get the sperm to the egg.

[00:17:14] Christa: So it's gonna travel a long way. Um, and then implantation and embryo development that can be impacted a lot by membrane. Um, so whatever we do to like improve regular cells or phospholipids and membranes may impact fertility well, so, Um, so all of these things are gonna impact pregnancy outcomes in different capacities.

[00:17:34] Christa: So I hope I remembered to also mention, I'm just gonna insert it here really quickly, in case I forget later because it's not in my notes. There is an omega-3 testing company in my state. They do a nice little blood spot finger prick, and I learned from their PhD RD that if your omega-3 status is adequate during pregnancy, then it doesn't.

[00:17:57] Christa: It's not like there's no known benefit to add Omega like high quality Omega three s and dha, but if you are. Not having, if you do not have adequate omega threes during pregnancy, you're at an increased risk for early preterm birth, which can be very, very expensive because preterm birth may land a baby in the nicu, which can be a very expensive thing and not to mention.

[00:18:23] Christa: Really challenging on the mom, right? Because she's missing out on that bonding time. Just a lot of trauma and stressors and sometimes things happen anyway. But I kind of wish when we're talking about all these public health initiatives and if we have research that supports this, it's just an area that I wish, uh, was just a little bit more.

[00:18:40] Christa: Readily accessible and available. So you can test your omega-3 status and your liver can convert plant-based omega three s, um, ala into animal-based omega three s, EPA and d h a. But if you're like me and you have a sluggish gene, your liver does not convert that very well, then I'm gonna be depleted if I'm not eating salmon or black cot or maybe algae as the only plant-based version to get that, to get that EPA dha.

[00:19:08] Christa: Um, So just nice to know information. You can test this, you can take it. Take a high quality product. Don't be buying trash because that's where any negative research probably comes from with fatty acids is that they're oxidized. So you need to have a high quality product with that has stable, stable omegas.

[00:19:27] Christa: So fertility has many angles. So we've been talking here and there about the nutritional angle, but there's also a structural angle and an emotional angle. So I, I interweave stress into the conversation in general, and I'm gonna get into more nutrition specifics here in a moment. But before I go there, I wanna just mention an episode that's coming out soon that talks about some other structural.

[00:19:48] Christa: Pieces of fertility. So I interviewed a physical therapist recently and she was telling me about something called Mercier therapy, which is was just developed by a PT with the same last name. And essentially I interpret it as some abdominal interventions every week for six weeks. And one of the mechanisms is that it brings blood flow to that area.

[00:20:09] Christa: So earlier we were talking about with high cortisol times. Blood flow literally leaves that area and goes to the arms and the legs, and without blood flow in that area, that could impact hormone production as well. So by, by bringing back, by nourishing, by supporting blood flow to that area, you may improve hormone production, which is just a cool.

[00:20:30] Christa: Different way to go about it, right? I'm talking about it mainly from a nutritional aspect, but there's just so many cool opportunities for you to support fertility that don't have to be so invasive, or even like tens of thousands of dollars that's maybe unnecessary. So, Before we get into egg quality, let's talk a little bit about male health.

[00:20:52] Christa: So obviously reproductive health is dependent on both male and female. Sperm can be influenced up to a few months in advance. It's more straightforward than the female reproductive system and. This is a stat from my friend ALA's presentation, but the American Society of Reproductive Medicine estimates that 40% of infertility cases are from the male partner contribution.

[00:21:17] Christa: So here are some things to be assessed for male fertility. That includes semen analysis and ruling out infections like kidney infections, evaluating stress. Evaluating oxidative stress that can be impacted by a lot of alcohol or cannabis use or just anything else that causes oxidative stress, like poor sleep, um, just life things, smoking.

[00:21:40] Christa: Those things can all add up. Uh, free radical damage. And, uh, take from antioxidants cuz the main thing with men is antioxidants for supporting their sperm. So heavy, heavy duty antioxidants with females. It is antioxidants and mitochondrial support. So, uh, for the most part, so egg quality, we're thinking about supporting this, the egg, we're thinking about supporting the egg mem, like the cell membranes.

[00:22:06] Christa: And something that's kind of cool that comes up in fertility conversations is that you, like you were inside of your grandmother, right? So your grandmother housed your own mother and inside of your mother was her eggs. So you know, your grandmother's nutrition. Influenced you. So I'm thankful for my grandmother and I also feel like, um, I should be a good steward of my body for my grandchildren's health, right?

[00:22:30] Christa: So men regenerate their sperm, but we have our eggs forever and they have been around for a while. So with egg quality, it's also influenced a few months in advance and mitochondrial nutrients include but are not limited to coq 10 alpha lipoic acid and acetyl cyst. And then there's a little overlap here between the things that are also antioxidants, vitamin E, vitamin C, and then even Myo acetol, which is actually kind of considered more of a B vitamin and can help with blood sugar regulation.

[00:22:58] Christa: Now, I use a fair bit of vitamin E. When I'm starting out to support clients, I might use 400 IUs of some mixed tocopherols, although, uh, Dr. Barry Tan in his episode about vitamin E made some pretty compelling arguments for Tocotrienol, and I have been using those a lot as well, either which way high quality vitamin E 400 IUs is good, can help support and mimic progesterone.

[00:23:20] Christa: Coq 10 is always pretty awesome for energy and honestly, I might just turn around and take some today since it's his first day of my menstrual cycle, which is my little hack for, uh, functioning on the day of your menstrual cycle, which is your lowest energy day of the month, typically. So, Whatever supports cellular energy is gonna support egg quality.

[00:23:39] Christa: So mitochondrial support and cocutine is probably the most well studied. So all of those things are supportive and that's like I would consider frosting. You always wanna make sure the foundations are done first, but I'm already working on foundations when I work one-on-one with clients. So I'm wanting to talk a little bit about the fancy stuff.

[00:23:55] Christa: So in addition to egg quality, I'm also definitely looking for subclinical signs and symptoms of subclinical thyroid. So maybe not showing up on blood work, but how can we support it with nutrients? Nutrients, um, nutrient co-factors largely. And then I'm also looking for signs and symptoms of low progesterone.

[00:24:13] Christa: If you resonate with symptoms of high estrogen, there's a good probability you might have lower progesterone. It's just kind of an obvious thing. You can also ask, you can ask for your full thyroid panel to be tested. It does not mean it's perfect. At all. Um, you can ask for your progesterone to be tested.

[00:24:31] Christa: You can ask for things, but just keep in mind our body's last priority is fertility. So our resources for that are just gonna be turned down when other inflammation stressors are on the body. Uh, I have written, you know, the body keeps score, the brain's really in charge. So the longer I've been in practice, I realize like the brain is really in charge more than anything else.

[00:24:49] Christa: So, Couple other things I understand from really friends and colleagues that often, I think the standard of care is that a further workup or further hormonal workup. Often people come in and they're like, well, I have blood testing, and I'm like, well find out what you're having done. Cuz sometimes it's like two or $3 worth of blood testing.

[00:25:08] Christa: It's just really not anything. So you can get extra things done. As I said a moment ago, you can ask for comprehensive thyroid testing. You don't always get it. You can ask for progesterone testing. That should be a little more straightforward. There's. You know, not as many markers there, right? You can order testing on your own, you can learn and you can advocate for yourself, or you can find an adjunct provider, you know, outside of your fertility provider, outside of your ob, if you want some additional support around that.

[00:25:33] Christa: I do some of this. I don't really advertise this because it's not my main thing, but it's always fun when someone comes in and says, uh, fertility is also on my list of things I would like so, I really enjoy that. But you have lots of options and some resources. I wanna guide you to just a few books. One Laura Briden's Period or Para Manual for a Cycling Woman.

[00:25:53] Christa: I don't, you know, I, I wouldn't just be turned off by the name if you don't feel like your period needs are pairing. I also think we have low expectations around our menstrual cycles and it's. Been normalized to have negative symptoms, which I think is unreasonable. But what I love about this book in paper format or like the actual hard copy format, is it's really a reference manual.

[00:26:11] Christa: So if you're like, man, how do I improve my progesterone? I mean, she gives honest answers and nutrients and different things to support that. So I think it's a really beautiful resource for that. My friend Lacey Dunn wrote a book called The Women's Guide to Hormonal Harmony. It's very generous. Um, It's the first edition and some of the charts are like a little bit small, but otherwise it's a very generous book.

[00:26:31] Christa: She does a great job of covering just tons of topics and then link to Henderson, Jack, uh, she's the host of Fertility Friday. She also wrote the fifth vital sign when you're really trying to think, that's a more. Thinking about optimizing cycles and optimizing for fertility. So I mentioned earlier about omega three s and preterm birth, and I wanna mention also that an acetyl cysteine has been shown to potentially help with miscarriage prevention.

[00:26:58] Christa: So you again, have options. And now I am going to cut over to some of the q and a from this week's live q and a. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode on optimizing fertility. Jennifer says, can you speak to secondary infertility? Can a first pregnancy change hormones significantly?

[00:27:20] Christa: Jennifer, do you wanna unmute and give me more context? So I'm not trying to guess cuz I have a tendency to try to guess context sometimes. Um, but long story short, Of course everything can change. Right. So, um, if you wanna unmute, share anything mute. Uh, yeah, sure I can. Uh, so I have a, a son who's four.

[00:27:41] Christa: Mm-hmm. And we've been trying for about a year to conceive again, uh, with just no luck. Um, so I've, I've only just begun like getting tests from doctors and stuff to see, uh, and scans to see if there's any physically thing wrong. Um, But I'm just wondering, like, can the impact of a first pregnancy shift your hormones significantly?

[00:28:07] Christa: Like, I, I haven't experienced any changes really, uh mm-hmm. Aside from maybe in the first, like 12 months postpartum, but other than that, everything seems like it was pre first pregnancy in terms of cycle and, and all that sort of stuff. So I, I'm just not sure how you. Yeah, if that has impact or how you assess that.

[00:28:30] Christa: Oh yeah. So first of all, anything can change at any time. Second of all, here are some questions I would ask you and you're welcome to answer and not answer depending on what you wanna do. So it's like, okay, do we have any trouble getting pregnant the first time that we knew of? Right? That would be the first question.

[00:28:44] Christa: Second question is, what happened postpartum? Did you cr, was it tough? Did you crash at all? Did you have any stuff going on postpartum? That kind of sucked. Um, cuz all of that can just lend to maybe my progesterone is not robust. Right. Maybe the stressors, cuz if you have stressors, you're not gonna have optimal thyroid function potentially.

[00:29:05] Christa: Right? And so that kind of stuff can impact fertility pretty significantly. Anything like stressors can come in at any time and start to cause an issue, right? Like you can have some new gut issue come in and create some imbalances. Our, I don't think this is a good one, but like I don't know anything about you, so I dunno how old you are.

[00:29:24] Christa: Um, one major thing is like, okay, so if you were 37 first pregnancy and now you're 41, I'm just making this up, right? Or like, you're 39, first pregnancy, I'm 44. In the second pregnancy, your body might be downshifting some hormones, but I wouldn't go to that first. But I just wanna say like, Obviously in mid forties sometimes your body will start to downshift some hormones.

[00:29:43] Christa: But before that, we would expect, and then you also would look at like your mom when she started experiencing those things. That's not my first stop. It's just kind of like you do a good questionnaire history and again, you would go like those symptoms that I put up there for all those different things.

[00:29:58] Christa: If you screenshot that, like did you, so question, do you resonate with any of those symptom patterns? Those would be some questions to ask. Uh, yeah. Yeah. That's helpful. Yeah. I mean, I do with some, but, uh, I find it always hard to assess like, like what's, what's normal and what's not, and how, how bad does it have to be in order to tick the box, you know?

[00:30:23] Christa: Mm-hmm. I find those difficult, but Yes. But that's helpful to think of that. Yeah, and I think, you know, sometimes it's hard to see the label on the bottle if you're inside the bottle, so, Sometimes it's good to potentially work with someone if it's been a while and if your timeline is more urgent or whatever.

[00:30:40] Christa: Cuz it's working with having someone who knows how to put the pieces together. Just gonna be a shortcut as usual. So, um, I always like to start with symptom assessment, or if you want, you can dive into one of those book resources, but I guess I encourage you not to like, sh. If you experienced that symptom at all in that month, I would just check it, right?

[00:31:03] Christa: Because. Things ebb and flow and I think better to like write that down and start to look for those patterns earlier on. So it's hard for me as someone who like, really, like one of my favorite things is pattern recognition. Um, honestly, it's like my favorite, favorite thing. Everyone's sending me a direct message.

[00:31:18] Christa: I hope it's okay if I just say this out loud. Lindsay, thanks for sharing this. I'm 35 and 18 months into our conception, M r I indicated possible structure issues. So had, um, laparoscopic myomectomy. It means we get a break until October before trying again. So you have a good time then to like support egg and sperm quality, right?

[00:31:37] Christa: That's an opportunity or other things that you can do. All of the hormone specimen and blood work we did came back into normal, so. The first thing I would say to that is get your blood work and have that right, because someone else may not view it as normal or they might view it. So the thing about conventional testing is that the reference ranges are based on the most, um, the more like that recent patient population.

[00:32:00] Christa: So these reference ranges are getting like, Honestly worse and worse sometimes. So it's good to just know. Sometimes people say, well, I went and had blood tests and came back normal. Well there was like $3 of blood test done, you know? So I'm sure that was more, but it's just this whole conversation gets more complicated.

[00:32:15] Christa: Cause people are like, oh, I tested my thyroid. I'm like, yeah, you probably tested two markers out of like five or six. Right? So, and I don't even really think blood testing is like, A very gold standard unfortunately. But this is just me. Cause I have other tools that I think do a better job for subclinical thyroid in addition to symptoms.

[00:32:31] Christa: So just opinions all, there's room at the table for all opinions actually. Um, and that's okay. There's more than one way to do everything. All of hormones, specimen and blood work, we did come back as normal. So you just wanna make sure you get those copies and look for anything that's trending high or low next to the reference range.

[00:32:48] Christa: So I'm thinking about these next four months as a great opportunity to optimize every other factor I can, which is perfect. Given the standard OB G Y N fertility test stocks, I've already done lack of symptoms outside of infertility. Is it worth it to seek additional testing or just relax? Ooh, that's a good question.

[00:33:01] Christa: Should I seek additional testing or relax? Well, I think in general, Do anything you can for your brain and for your nervous system. You will always have leaps and bounds, better life if you support your brain and your nervous system. So whatever you think, and then it's up to you. Um, what you do. Like, I think it's you decide what kind of capacity do I have, right?

[00:33:21] Christa: Like I can't, some stranger on the internet can't tell you what capacity you have. So you have to decide, do, where is my energy here? How much do I have to put into this? Um, what do I want to do? Have I checked? So my question is like, How's your progesterone, how's your thyroid? Right? When you say all of your blood work stuff, like, was that even appropriately assessed?

[00:33:42] Christa: Because those are really the first things I'm kind of looking for in symptom history is how's that thyroid working? Let's look at the symptoms and how is that, um, or progesterone looking, right? So, and like what's your, I don't know, like Lindsay for example, like how was your menstrual cycle? Cause that can give you some indication.

[00:34:00] Christa: Yeah, that's a funny thing. Did you want me to answer? I'm so sorry. Please. Yeah, please. Yeah. Ok. Weird. It just weird to talk to myself. Uh, I would say super, super regular and, um, only, only in the last year and a half did it change and to get a little bit heavier in those clots, which the doctor attributed to that fibroid that was removed.

[00:34:19] Christa: So, I, I don't know yet if it was effective in kind of changing that, but regardless of kind of those symptoms, it's always been super regular, not very painful or exciting. And not a ton of symptoms around it. Well, what do fibroids mean? You know, they mean potentially some estrogen excess and maybe some, some detox issues.

[00:34:39] Christa: Um, did you, you have not had a previous child. This is your first Correct. All right, cool. Um, so probably estrogen, progesterone balance. There's some opportunity there cuz there was a structural change from a physiological. Amount of something. That's what I'm hearing from that. There was something else you said, um, and I thought you said, did you say it had gotten heavier?

[00:35:02] Christa: There was something else you said around that would be correct. Oh, just, yeah, just, just the amount and like size of clots and things. Oh yeah. Okay. So blood clots or more clotty periods has, some, has to do with poor fatty acid status or poor omega-3 status. So you can dose this huge problem. People like.

[00:35:21] Christa: Halfway dose things like as if it's gonna make a difference. People like take 500 milligrams of omega3s instead of 4,000 like they should. Cuz it's like very expensive to take 4,000 of high quality omega threes. Not from Sam's Club or Costco. Let's not do that. Okay. It's like if we have to name a brand, let's pick Nordic Naturals, right?

[00:35:38] Christa: It's gonna be not the cheapest, but it's gonna be much better. You can literally take like. Three to 5,000. Actually in my state there's a company called if you want to like validate this further OmegaQuant, you can do a blood. Now they do a good blood spot test. This was developed at a university. They have an antioxidant on the page that preserves this from getting like oxidized, um, and the test being ruined.

[00:36:03] Christa: So this company you can do up like $50. If you want, you don't have to do this, but um, you can do an omega-3 basic test for about 50 bucks. You do a blood spot, they tell you it's extremely straightforward. They tell you like where you're at with your omega-3 index. Why is this important in fertility if your omega so big picture inflammation uses up your fatty acid status or omega-3 status, omega-3 N nine.

[00:36:29] Christa: We have inflammation in our life. Duh. Like stresses are inflammation. So we have inflammation. You're only, your body will either convert plant-based fatty acids into animal-based fatty acids via your liver. Or if you're like me, you're, your genetics suck at that. So I have to, like, if I'm not taking in salmon or algae, I'm not getting my omega3.

[00:36:49] Christa: So if you're not eating salmon, black cod, algae, pretty much your only food-based sources of animal BA or E P A D A. You're probably low in this. So really the answer for clotty periods is to take omega threes so you can just see where your base is. If you want to test first, it's very accessible to you to do at home.

[00:37:05] Christa: Um, or you, or you don't have to just take enough omega threes to actually see a difference. A minimum of 3000 in my opinion, like not less than that. And then see your clots potentially disappear. So you do have some inflammation as evidenced by clots. Um, and you know, it doesn't have to look like your grandpa's inflammation.

[00:37:22] Christa: You know, it can look like. Straight up plain Jane. I got cloy periods. Guess what? Not normal sign and symptom. The end. So like there's a lot you can tell from just a little bit of like case history, which is why I prefer talking through like individual cases because it's like, well I can learn, you just can learn so much from like symptoms if you put 'em all together.

[00:37:42] Christa: So for sure you're probably deficient in omega threes. And why is this important when you get into pregnancy? If you're deficient in omega three s, you should be dosing omega threes der pregnancy. It's massively related to preterm birth. Not to give anyone stress around it, but how cool you could like avoid a NICU stay by having adequate omega3s during your pregnancy.

[00:37:59] Christa: Carolyn said, what could be potential things to look for? Light periods like one to two days long helps support so it's more normal. That would be low hormone in general, that is gonna be low estrogen and low progesterone. Remember, estrogen is a growth hormone, so I'll get to why this has in a moment.

[00:38:14] Christa: Estrogen is a growth hormone, and so it's gonna. Uh, predict how thick that, um, lining that uterine lining is that will shed. So if you don't have a very thick lining, then you might have low hormone. That's the most likely cause cuz it's not making a very thick lining to shed. So you have a very light period.

[00:38:31] Christa: Um, the most common reason for low hormone in general, like across the board, low progesterone, low cortisol, or low progesterone and low estrogen, especially low estrogen. Is Undereating, low body weight, low cholesterol, those are the big ones. The question would also stand to be, did you ever have absence of period as well?

[00:38:51] Christa: Um, no, I never had any absence of period. Um, I, my cycles aren't super regular, but I would say like within the last year there, like the longest was around 38 days, and then the shortest cycle was 30 days. Um, how old are you? I am 28. Okay. And I did get some hormone testing done. Um, I've had like multiple rounds of blood labs done in my, my last round for estrogen it was 130.

[00:39:24] Christa: And then for progesterone, it was, um, I believe it was eight.

[00:39:34] Christa: My cortisol was a little bit lower. It was around six. Um, so I didn't know if the cortisol, if that played a role. It sounds like that's the so big picture. First of all, do you have your labs in front of you? Um, I can pull them up. Yeah, go ahead and pull them up. So, big picture, your cortisol has a curve, so I'm guessing they checked it in the morning spot, checked it.

[00:39:57] Christa: When do you think they checked it? Yep. Um, it was around, Nine or nine 30 in the morning. And I, I believe I'd been up since six. Okay. So kind of a ways, but usually it's gonna peak 30 to 60 minutes after you wake up. So it would've peaked at about 6, 6 30 or 6 37 or something like that. And then after that it's gonna, it's still gonna be pretty high.

[00:40:18] Christa: Um, so it's just a spot check. Usually you should check a four point, but from what I know about, if the reference range is what I'm thinking it is in my head, that's pretty low end. Of range. Does that sound right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. So if your cortisol is low, common problem, right? You might have massive adrenal stuff that needs a lot of love and support, a lot of mitochondrial support, a lot of mineral support, et cetera.

[00:40:39] Christa: And so that means like you maybe ran outta gas, potentially. It's just a possibility, right? So if you run outta gas, your body is like, I, I can barely have cortisol. Like why would I care about making progesterone right? So, um, do you have the reference range for the progesterone? So the progesterone reference ranges are gonna depend on the time of the month because it varies where you are in your cycle.

[00:41:03] Christa: So if you have the reference range for where that point of the month was, you can share that with us. You can talk through it, yeah. Um, it was post ovulation and I confirmed it. I tracked my temperatures and I did, it looks like I did have a spike in my temperature. Mm-hmm. So what was the reference range for that timeframe?

[00:41:18] Christa: Um, On the blood work, it says for the Lud phase 1.8 to 23.9. Okay. And then your, um, estrogen reference range was what? Um, 43 to two 11. Okay. So you said you estrogen what? I wrote down, I think I wrote down 180 or one 30. I can't read my writing. One 30. Thank you. One 30 and then for the progesterone, the eight.

[00:41:50] Christa: So it's kind of like, not crazy low, but it's on the lower third of that reference range. Right. Um, right. So it may not be awesome. I think probably is the cortisol, the, was the reference range like six or seven to something? Um, let me see. Said cortisol in the morning. The reference range was 6.2 to 19.

[00:42:11] Christa: Yeah, so like, and barely, barely there. I would say focus on loving your adrenals cuz your, um, sex hormones don't really care if your adrenals are shot. That's what it sounds like is going on, is your adrenals are in not amazingly resilient shape. Right. Does that sound like it to you too? Yeah. Does that sense make sense thinking?

[00:42:31] Christa: Just wanted to double check and get your opinion on it. Yeah. I mean, I don't know enough about you, but I see this like constantly all day long, so it's just like, Happens. So just love. Mm-hmm. Love the heck out of those. And it's a bit of a long game. You gotta, there's a lot to like, there's a bunch of nourishment stuff, but it's like more sleep than you think you need.

[00:42:50] Christa: Um, really good blood sugar, like eating enough, uh, often enough, et cetera. Like there's a bunch of pieces to that, but there's just a lot of things you can do to like nourish and support it. You can't, it's all about like pouring into yourself essentially for that. And it makes sense. I would've expected that with low.

[00:43:07] Christa: Um. Or a light cycle. It's just like not robust hormones, so. Mm-hmm. Cool. All right. Thank you. Good? Yeah.