3 Ways to Naturally Boost Your Fertility - Easily!

Photo by LesKZN

It can be hard to conceive naturally. And sadly, the reasons for this are too numerous to list. Often, the root cause boils down to one thing: hormone imbalance.

Reproductive hormones are part of the endocrine system, the same system that manages stress and energy hormones. When there is an imbalance in one area, it’s common for the other areas to suffer as well. 

In addition, everyday products & foods frequently contain “endocrine disruptors” - compounds that act like hormones and can trick the body, artificially inflating or depressing natural hormonal activity.

Even your sleeping patterns can affect your fertility: if levels of your serotonin and melatonin hormones are out of whack, it can influence your reproductive hormones.

It’s common to feel hopeless when struggling with fertility, but there are many natural ways to take back control. It can even be easy!

Here are some tips to effortlessly boost your fertility naturally:

1) Reduce stress however you can. Three of the most quick, effective, and free ways are deep breathing, meditation, and exercise. Short on time? Just take a few deep breaths and clear your mind while you’re on the way to work, washing the dishes, or before you fall asleep. Simple AND effective!

2) Reduce exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals. A few ways to do this are to filter your water, eat organic, avoid plastics and canned foods unless they’re BPA- and phthalate-free, and don’t put anything on your skin that you wouldn’t eat. (Coconut oil is a great moisturizer, apple cider vinegar works as a toner, and jojoba or sweet almond oil rivals even the fanciest eye makeup removers). Pick one area to tackle, and then try to add a new resolution each week.

3) Get good quality sleep. This means getting at least 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep and sleeping in complete darkness. Even the glow of your cellphone or street lights can affect your melatonin levels. Better sleep means more energy, improved mood, a greater capability to deal with stress ... See how all the other hormones (thyroid/energy, serotonin/mood, adrenal/stress) benefit from a good night’s sleep? Well, your reproductive hormones do, too!

If you’d like to learn even more ways to boost your fertility naturally, and become part of a supportive community of like-minded people, sign up for my FREE 14-day Fertility Prep Program at Priming the Bump.

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Can Autism Be Prevented?

Photo: Subhadip Mukherjee

One of the staggering facts I shared with the Expectant Mamas' Group on Monday was that the
Center for Disease Control now claims that 75% of all healthcare spending goes towards the treatment of preventable diseases - most of which are linked to diet.

In a world where women are usually responsible for, well, everything - from birthing to bringing home the bacon (and then making sure that it's perfectly cooked) - hearing that we are also responsible for preventing disease can just add another layer of stress.

If you're like me, one way of dealing with that added pressure is to ignore it. That's what I did, for years, until my body literally shut down and forced me to listen.

As women, we tend to put others' needs before our own. I put the needs of my job wayyyy before my own, and it finally caught up with me. My body didn't appreciate my work hard, play hard lifestyle.

But I couldn't (or didn't want to) face the prospect of adding even more tasks to my plate. Working out, food shopping, cooking ... these things take TIME. And time is a precious commodity these days.

Luckily, what I've learned since then is that taking better care of myself wasn't really as hard as it seemed. Which brings me back to my current stance on disease prevention: why bother kicking the can down the road when you can take small actions now that will help your health later?

A great time to do that is when you're pregnant, because it's so much easier to justify taking care of someone else instead of yourself.

Studies suggest that pregnancy super-nutrient folate can prevent autism - even when consumed BEFORE conception!

The tricky thing about folate is that supplements usually include the synthetic version, folic acid. Folic acid has been linked to an increased risk of cancer, maternal infection, and low birth weight infants. In addition, an estimated 40% of the population has a genetic variant that prevents the metabolism of folic acid.

A better choice is true folate.

In supplements, that means 5-methyltetrahydrafolate (or 5-MTHF). The prenatal supplements I like contain this kind of absorbable folate, but you can only order them through a practitioner (head to my store to check them out).

Luckily, absorbable folate is found abundantly in beans and greens, among other food sources.

The bottom line? Choosing folate-rich foods and taking a high-quality prenatal vitamin are two easy steps you can take to help prevent autism. There are many other factors in the development and prevention of this disease, but starting with small, easy modifications is the best way to make lasting change.

As Benjamin Franklin said, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." While it's not easy to add prevention to your list of things to do, these simple steps have a potentially powerful outcome.

And hey - we might even be able to change those CDC stats.

My baby has arrived!

No, not a real baby (yet) - my first online self-study program! Yes, it's true: Priming the Bump: A 14-Day Fertility Prep Program is finally here!

This Fertility Prep program helps you boost your fertility naturally & improve your baby's chances of being born healthy & smart - without spending a fortune or risking dangerous side effects. It nourishes your reproductive system with fertility-enhancing foods while cleansing your body of toxic substances that could prevent you from conceiving (or lead to birth defects & developmental disorders like autism).

I'm so excited about this new addition to my services. One of my personal goals is to provide health counseling to everyone who needs it, but not everyone can afford my one-on-one coaching rates. That's why the Prep Program is so awesome - you get all the juicy goodness of working with me 1:1, but at a much lower out-of-pocket cost. And I'm offering it at a special introductory rate for a limited time. There's no better time to join in the fertility-boosting fun!

Here's what people are saying about Priming the Bump's 14-Day Fertility Prep Program:

"This is all excellent material and a well thought-out program."

"I'm really enjoying the daily emails, they're informative, yet simple and concise. Love!"

"There is so much good stuff here! Excellent flow of materials and info."

"This is awesome and so informative!"

Want to learn more? Head on over to the Priming the Bump page to check out all the details. And tell your friends & family, because this introductory rate won't last forever.

Get ready to prime YOUR bump!

Detoxing for Fertility

Have you heard about my upcoming Fertility Prep Program, Priming the Bump? It's a 14-day guided
cleanse to help couples boost their fertility naturally and give their babies the best odds of being born smart & healthy.

My latest post for Can Can Cleanse explains why detoxing before conception is so crucial. Take a peek below! And if you or your friends would like to hear more about Priming the Bump, head on over to the website to discover one secret tactic you can use TONIGHT to increase your odds of conceiving.

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Flowers are blooming, baseball's in full swing, and June is busting out all over.  A fresh feeling of newness and rebirth is palpable, and babies seem to be on everyone's mind. It's easy to see where June gets its name (from the Latin iuniores, or "young ones").

For those couples feeling the spring fever to conceive their own baby, it’s also a great time to start detoxing. Eliminating toxins now helps boost fertility while keeping dangerous compounds from affecting fetal development.

When you’re preparing to conceive, some of the most important toxins to avoid & eliminate are heavy metals and xenoestrogens.

Heavy metals like mercury and lead can contribute to low sperm counts, low progesterone, breast cancers, and severe birth defects and developmental problems. Mercury is most commonly found in silver dental amalgams and large fish. Lead can be found in everything from old paint to lipstick to soil.

Xenoestrogens are chemicals that the body mistakes for estrogen. In women, estrogen must be in balance with progesterone, so too many xenoestrogens can cause a progesterone deficiency. Excess estrogen is also associated with polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS). That said, xenoestrogens don’t only affect women. They can also damage the DNA of men’s sperm, leading to infertility, miscarriage, birth defects, or cancer. In addition, xenoestrogens can make babies more likely to suffer from behavioral problems or obesity later in life. Some common xenoestrogens are pthalates (found in PVC, personal care products, cleaning agents, and contaminated food), parabens (preservatives found in personal care products & contaminated food), BPA (found in soft plastics and the lining of most canned foods), food coloring, birth control pills, PCBs (industrial chemicals most often found in large contaminated fish) and DDT (pesticide found in contaminated food).

Phytoestrogens occur naturally in foods. Still, they too can raise estrogen to fertility-blocking levels. The most common phytoestrogen is soy, and many natural fertility experts recommend that couples avoid it. Perhaps an even more compelling argument for eliminating soy is that over 91% of soy is now genetically modified - and GM soy & corn have been found to decrease fertility in animal studies.

Cleansing gives the body’s detox systems a break from everyday demands, allowing detox organs like the liver to focus on safely excreting toxins like heavy metals and xenoestrogens. After detoxifying, couples can prevent further exposure by eating organic foods, choosing smaller fish, and selecting safer consumer products.

So as you spring forward towards parenthood, consider taking baby steps: start with a cleanse. Then you can get to the fun part.

Preventing Autism

Photo by Lance Neilson

A friend of mine recently started volunteering at a local kindergarten. As we enjoyed brunch last week, she described her typical day - chasing down the kids with behavioral issues like autism and ADHD while the teacher tries to keep the rest of the class from falling behind. She was exhausted and frustrated by the situation - a sentiment many of my friends who work in early education (or have school-age kids) share. These parents and educators wonder, "What can we do to stop this (or make it better)? And how did this happen?"

Traditional medicine struggles to address chronic conditions, from behavioral disorders like autism to the obesity and diabetes epidemics that are so rampant today. However, this is precisely the type of situation where an integrative approach really works. We look "upstream" and address the problem at its root. More and more research points to the preventability of illnesses like these - and much of that prevention occurs in the womb.

Science has identified a plethora of prenatal factors that can contribute to the development of autism:

• Folate deficiency before & during pregnancy
• Vitamin D deficiency
• Stress during the prenatal period and maternal neurotransmitter health
• Exposure to toxic metals like lead or the mercury used in dental amalgams
• Maternal inflammation. Inflammation can stem from stress, toxins, lack of exercise, or an improper diet high in sugar, processed foods, oxidized fats, and unidentified (or ignored) food sensitivities
• Older (35-40+) mother or father
• Not enough time between sibling births (child-spacing less than 3 years apart)
• Genetics - though these genes are influenced by environmental factors

So how do we use this information to help slow the spread of autism? Now that we have awareness, how do we take action? The first secret is not to become so overwhelmed that you don't do anything. Pick one of the above bulletpoints and make a couple of changes. You don't have to tackle it all at once. (And of course, a good prenatal nutritionist can help make this process much easier.).

Also, you may have noticed that some of these factors actually come into play before you conceive. Compared to the people of traditional cultures (who spent years eating special pre-pregnancy diets before conceiving), we do very little today to prime our bodies for pregnancy. But I'm aiming to change that with the upcoming launch of my online coaching program, Priming the Bump. This program is perfect for those of you who want to boost your fertility naturally and prepare your body to deliver a healthy baby. If this sounds like you, be sure to check out Priming the Bump - and bring your partner, friends or family.

Armed with the right tools, parents can regain control over these diseases by attending to diet and lifestyle - and that's exciting news for families who've felt helpless.

Hungry for more? 

Join our mailing list

or work with me!