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What’s your Fertility Plan and and how do you enhance your fertility naturally?
Welcome to this free 6-part article series designed to help you determine your fertility plan and understand the steps you can take to optimise your fertility outcomes. Below you’ll find Part 3 – “Enhance your Fertility Naturally”. If you’ve already read article 1 & 2 feel welcome to skip this intro and get stuck into part 3 below. If this is, however, your first time finding out about this series – please read on to learn what it’s about, how it can help you and what to expect over the coming weeks.
Over this free 6 week article series we are going to discuss all potential options for those of you who are:
In these articles I will address information around:
Opportunity to Ask Me Questions – LIVE
After each article release, you have the option to submit any questions you may have by 7pm Monday evening to the Create A Fertile Life Facebook group. If you’ve not yet joined that private group you are welcome to go there and request to join.
If you wish to submit your questions anonymously, you can private message the Fertile Ground Health Group Facebook page and admin will forward them to me.
Each Tuesday, I will be answering your questions live in this Create a Fertile Life Facebook group at 7pm AEDT, so we can all learn from each other.
Now, some of you may know exactly what your plan is, others may not have thought about it so concisely yet. Whatever stage you are at, I want you to provide you with the tools to determine what your fertility plan can look like and how you can optimise your outcomes with Naturopathy. Grab a pen and a piece of paper, or type in to a document on your phone/computer so that you can create the skeleton of the items that relate to YOUR individual journey and we will build on this each week over the 6 weeks of this series.
I am excited to be on this journey with you. If you’ve already registered for the whole free package, take a sneak peek at part two below and check your inbox for the arrival of your full comprehensive article for this week (week 2).
If you’re just finding this free series now and would like access from part 1 all the way to part 6 – simply register here for your free access to the whole package.
“What should I eat? What should I avoid? What supplements should I take?”
These are some of the many common questions I’m asked in my practice. When it comes to being proactive at improving your health for fertility, the internet, books, people around us, and social media are all full of their own interpretation of what is “good” and what you “should” be doing. Today I’m hoping to simplify some of that information for you so that it doesn’t seem so overwhelming. Whilst what I share won’t be exactly individualised to your needs, it will provide you with practical ways you can start to optimise your health to support your egg and sperm quality immediately.
Now that you know your optimal preconception window is 3-4 months, I suggest implementing the strategies in today’s article for this period of time alongside any other intervention indicated in your case.
For those of you in same-sex relationships where both of you have ovaries and a uterus, and have decided that one of you is going to provide the egg while the other carries the pregnancy, it is imperative that both of you implement the information in today’s article. Optimising egg quality as well as endometrial receptivity require similar diet and lifestyle interventions, as well as adequate preconception assessment and supplementation where indicated.
Nutritional and Herbal Medicine
Following on from last week – after thorough preconception screening and assessment I will prescribe nutritional and herbal medicine alongside dietary and lifestyle interventions based on your results and individual needs. Even if you have a really good diet, factors including stress, illness, poor digestion, alcohol, caffeine, smoking, medications, shift work, long-term oral contraceptive use, past or current pregnancy, genetic factors, and much more can result in less than optimal nutritional status. This is where we bring in nutritional supplements.
Supplementation is often required to ensure replete nutritional status alongside adequate dietary intake. However, commonly in practice, I see people self-prescribing with over-the-counter supplements from a pharmacy or health food store. While it is great our community has access to our wonderful medicines, just because it is ‘natural’ doesn’t mean it is safe or indicated in your case.
For example, if you have the genetic condition haemochromatosis, supplementing with iron is extremely dangerous and can lead to organ damage. Maybe you are unaware you have MTHFR and cannot methylate folic acid adequately influencing your egg and sperm quality, and implantation among other things. Other examples include the possibility of interfering with medications, or competing for absorption with other medications or supplements, or too high a dose resulting in depleting other nutrients. I’m sharing this with you to help empower you with knowledge – as while nutritional medicine is a very effective and safe tool that I use regularly in clinical practice, it is essential to seek the assistance of a qualified and experienced health practitioner such as a naturopath to determine what is indicated for you, and what is safe.
The same rules apply for herbal medicine. I love herbal medicine. I mean, my parents named me after a herb, I really had no chance did I?! Herbal medicine is powerful and effective when used correctly. And while herbs have so many wonderful positive influences on our health, especially when it comes to holistically supporting someone on their fertility journey down to hormonal imbalances, they also have many cautions and contraindications to consider. This applies particularly if you’ve embarked on your medically managed IUI or IVF journey already. I use herbs for stress management, sleep support, increasing or decreasing different hormones to influence egg and sperm quality, supporting endometrial receptivity and implantation prior to IVF embryo transfer into early pregnancy, and much more.
“That’s great Sage, I’ll be sure to be safe. But is there anything I can do now?” I hear you saying.
Want to keep reading? Sign up to get instant free access to Sage’s preconception article series and find out about the intricacies of your menstrual cycle, sperm donor considerations, intercourse, conception, egg quality, egg carrying considerations, assisted reproductive technology, home insemination, the answers to your questions and more.
Written by Fertile Ground fertility Naturopath, Sage King.