Changes to your diet, your environment and your mindset to make you fall pregnant quicker.
I’ve always considered myself a healthy person. Sure, I love wine, chocolate and coffee - but apart from that, I eat vegetables, I drink water, and I’m active. I guess I’m average.
And that’s how I feel some days. AVERAGE. Not bad, but not brilliant.
Which begs the question. What if we were able to feel better than average?
What if we were able to understand WHY our periods are painful / our menstrual cycle isn’t regular / we get bloated / we’re overly emotional about the little things / we’re tired / we have premature ovarian failure / we're suffering from endometriosis or PCOS /our last IVF cycle didn’t work?
Most of the time we just accept our pain as part of being a “woman”.
But it’s not. If our body is working correctly and providing the right hormones at the right levels at the right time, we shouldn’t be affected by our womanly cycles or symptoms. When things are out of balance, this is where the trouble starts.
The symptoms we feel are a sign that something isn’t working correctly. So, what if we really investigated to find out the root cause of these symptoms, and get to the real cure? What if we stopped looking for the bandaid (the contraceptive pill, painkillers, caffeine etc) and found the solution?!
Feeling overwhelmed just at the thought?
Most of us throw our hands up in the air and walk away because the prospect of digging through all the options and possibilities and information is more than a little daunting. It’s a minefield out there!
There is so much information out there and it’s usually conflicting and inconsistent – if a diet is good for you one month, it’s bad for you the following month. The latest superfood is brilliant one day and gives you cancer the next.
It’s confusing – different acronyms, labelling is misleading, different tests to be done, and chemicals we can’t even pronounce.
The truth is that there are so many things we could be doing to clean up our lifestyle and the way we live our lives, but we don’t know where to start. You’re not alone. I’ve resisted for a very long time.
So today I’m going to try to simplify it for you.
There are 3 areas of your life that issues arise, which may have an impact on your fertility –
Physical stressors – food sensitivities / gut, bacterial and fungal infections. These are all reasons why your body may not be focused on getting you pregnant. It may just be trying to survive! Healing the root cause of these symptoms may allow your body the space to be able to make a baby instead.
Environmental stressors – personal care products that you put on your body, pads and tampons, cleaning products, chemicals inside drinking water, fertilisers on your vegetables – your body is exposed to around 85,000 chemicals. Not only that, think of the plastics your food is packaged or stored in, EMF (or electromagnetic field) exposure on your cell phones or laptops (especially when we put them up to our ear or sit them on our lap).
Emotional stressors – these include if you’ve been through trauma (and if you’re struggling with infertility, you definitely have), you’re feeling overwhelmed, you’re plagued with self-doubt, you have punishing thoughts, work in a stressful job…..the list goes on. Our emotions have an impact on our nervous system and if our bodies are constantly in a state of fight or flight (activating the sympathetic nervous system or SNS), our reproductive organs shut down. Hence unexplained infertility!
These are all things that can have an impact on your ability to fall pregnant.
I know – it’s a lot, right? And here you thought you had no control.
BUT, how do you process this and not have it overwhelm you (and create that vicious cycle of starting the emotional stressor and SNS)? Where do you begin to tackle the stressors in your life?
One step at a time.
Here are 3 things you can do to get you started –
Elimination diet – basically taking out the top aggressors for 8 weeks and then slowly re-introducing one every week, watching out for the symptoms to return. There are plenty of resources out there, but if you need some extra support, I’d recommend you see a naturopath or tune into my YouTube interview with Anna Reyes as part of our Infertility Unfiltered series.
Water – make sure you drink 8 glasses of water each day. Filtered water rather than tap water to eliminator contaminants and make sure you drink out of a glass or stainless steel cup.
Practice mindfulness – this could be mindful eating / handwashing / or just being in the present moment.
If you’d like to hear more on this topic, jump on over to Infertility Unfiltered, my interview series on YouTube where fertility experts and warriors are joining forces to share facts, tips, lessons and inspiration – so you can take back control of your life, and get your baby on board.
I was honoured to host Sarah Clark from Fab Fertile who shared these tips and a whole lot more, including a heap of freebies especially for you!