Category Archives: Healing Infertility Series: How I Lowered my FSH from 50 to 6.2

A Summary of Self-Healing: How I Lowered my FSH 40 Points and Reclaimed my Cycle

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I have rewritten my blog page on the steps I have taken to heal my body. For those of you out there who have followed me, and therefore might not realize I have posted there, I am sharing this information on my main blog.

Two years ago I learned my FSH was 50 (a menopausal level).

In the course of a year my FSH dropped from 50 to 6.2.  

I know many may visit this page looking for “the” answer. Some may come here after a similar diagnosis, after feeling the ground literally disappear from beneath their feet, looking for me to provide them with the one key to their healing.
 
What I now know, two years later, is that our bodies are a miraculous matrix, a web so intricate even Charlotte couldn’t spin it. Because of this, your path to healing will be uniquely your own. What I share is my experience, and avenues for you to explore as you travel your own path to healing.
 
How do you find your way? Listen to your body, trust your intuition, and take care of each aspect of yourself (body, mind, and spirit). To conceive a healthy baby, you must become the healthiest version of yourself possible.
  
While I cannot give you a miracle cure, or a supplement that will bring your child to you with miraculous speed, I can share with you the steps I took along the way. 
 
My Suggestions:

1. Seek out an acupuncturist. I recommend an acupuncturist certified by the American Board of Oriental Reproductive Medicine. If there is not one in your town, call the closest ones and ask them for referrals to people in your area. Keep looking until you find one that feels right for you.

2. Find a doctor who is also certified by the American Board of Integrative Holistic Medicine. Same thing here, ask for references if there is not one in your area. Don’t give up until you find someone who will partner with you in your health.

3. Chasteberry (Vitex) has been linked to regulating ovulation. The key however is that you need to give it at least six months to work–this is pretty standard with all supplements. I know that can feel like forever when you want a family now, however it may be the key to finding a healthy balance for your body.

4. Food: of course limit alcohol and caffeine. Also stay away from glutinous grains. Eat lots of legumes and try to eat only organic meat and dairy products–also as many organic fruits and veggies as you can (especially the Dirty Dozen). The hormones in foods, and pesticides on food, will affect your hormone balance. Some other information on foods: CLICK and CLICK and CLICK

5. Address the health issues that come with your diagnosis (e.g. PCOS–increased risk of ovarian cancer, increased risk of diabetes, higher cholesterol, etc.). Keep searching until you find a doctor who will address these underlying health risks.

6. Make sure your doctor tests things like your cortisol, DHEA, thyroid, etc. A good doctor will do this. Truly focusing on your overall health, and addressing the underlying issue, is what will get you pregnant the fastest (with or without fertility support from drugs or IVF/IUI–it helps in all ways to conceive). Those underlying issues are what are causing the challenges with conception. A body will fight against conception when it knows there is dis-ease within it.

7. Vitamin D is essential to getting pregnant so definitely make sure yours is between 60-80.

8. Stress: I don’t care what you’ve read, it affects health. Not necessarily the stress from TTC, just the everyday stress. If you have a stressful job and life, address that first and foremost. Make sure you are taking time to sleep well, meditate (if you that fits for you), exercise, and play. Addressing extreme and prolonged stress was the key to my healing! Addressing stress for me meant lifestyle changes, dietary changes, supplements, relationship healing, and much, much more.

9. Husbands are 50% of the equation and can absolutely stop us from getting pregnant. Thus, no matter how healthy we get we still might not become pregnant. The supplements men may want to take are: Vitamin C-500 mg, Vitamin E-400 mg, and Selenium 200 mcg. Men may also want to consider acupuncture.

10. Heal your relationship. If there are underlying tensions, unexpressed anger, resentments long held, any negative accumulation of emotion between you and your partner, work through them now. Emotions ARE a part of our bodies. Those emotions can literally make us sick, and prevent us from conceiving, and READ MORE, and FURTHER INFORMATION.

11. Pay attention to these 31 things and adjust your lifestyle accordingly.

I know from my experience that healing our bodies is possible, yet most doctors will not focus on that–getting pregnant with a healthy baby means getting a healthy body first and foremost. After two years of searching, and listening to my intuition, for me in the end it has come down to first healing my body to the best of my ability, and then healing my heart.

There is a key for each of us. Of course it is different for everyone, which is what makes this a challenge. Yet if we keep searching, keep listening to what our gut tells us, we will find that key.

And though this piece of advice may sting, each of us must also learn to release our attachment to the “how,” while still holding onto the deep knowing that we will mother a child. For some motherhood will come through their own womb, yet for others it will come to them on the wings of their heart’s creation. Both are miraculous, both are beautiful, and both are incredible blessings.

After several years of crazy cycles, all of varying lengths, some months without ovulation, hot flashes, and the illusive 28-day cycle something I only vaguely remembered, my body began healing. This healing did not however usher forward the cycles of my 20-year-old self. The core of my dis-ease was something that could not be completely healed, and which required me to move on to acceptance. This path is where my feet journey now–to the child growing in my heart, whom I love no less than the one that still may one day grow from my body.
 
Take very good care of you and be the best advocate for yourself that you can be! I wish you tremendous healing and a deep knowing that every single day you are one day closer to motherhood.
 

Healing Fertility Series: Step One, Chart Your Own Path, be Your Own Heroine

Healing Infertility Series: Step Seven, Stress – A Major Fertility Barrier

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Each woman’s journey to healing fertility is unique. For every single one of us our imbalances are different. However, occasionally we share similar threads. Today’s post speaks to one of those possible threads–stress.

I have written many times about the devastating impact of stress on my fertility. I can literally show you where I was under tremendous stress by my BBT charting–it’s blatantly obvious.

In the world of fertility stress has been sort of a chicken or the egg debate. Stress can come from attempts to conceive, however regular good old fashioned life stress is
also usually ever present. This type of everday stress is something we may more easily be able to address.

According to a recently published study by researchers at Emory University in Atlanta, stress is the number one contributing factor to infertility. Results from
the study were presented on May 26, 2011 at the annual conference of the
European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology in Prague.

Bottom line, the study findings indicated a connection between stress hormones produced by our bodies and a significant reduction in ovulation and our chances of successful conception. Other clinical trials have shown the same imbalances in
hormones such as Cortisol (a stress related hormone), which hinders our ability to conceive.

Stress affects both women and men; however women with hectic jobs (and hectic lives) can be most at risk. My guess is that it would be hard to find a woman who does not have either or both.

Steps to Address Stress:

Reducing and avoiding stress as much as possible is step one. Take an honest inventory of your life and make a list of all the things that push and pull at you throughout your every day. Are there things you can cut back on, say no to, or step away from? If so, do it!

Persistent low-grade stress is the most harmful to us. Such stress will keep our hormones at a constant level of imbalance, which can become a “norm” state for our
bodies. This is obviously no good for conception!

Some Things to Try:

  1. Acupuncture gives an instant feeling of relaxation and the World Health Organization has stated that it is effective for treating stress. Personally, acupuncture was the one and only thing that help me from completely going over the edge.
  2. Create relaxation time. Allow yourself periods of time where you relax completely and calm your mind down. Using meditations, like those available through Circle + Bloom, can help you to “come down” from the effects of a stressful day. Empty your mind of things to do, let it go quiet and just drift. You can do this anywhere: in the bath, sitting down somewhere peaceful, lying in bed. For best results, make
    this a part of your everyday routine.
  3. Using talking as a therapy. Finding a safe place where you can relax and discuss some of the issues you are faced with in day to day life can also help. You can do this either by meeting up with some friends or with a professional. Discussing worries and fear, as well as ways to help cut back on things that create stress, along with a few good laughs, can do wonders.

Bottom line, reduce your stress in every way you can. Heal your fertility one stress reducing step at a time.

Healing Infertility Series: Step Six, How to Heal Infertility by Listening to your Intuition

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In our modern world, moving at a relentlessly fast past, it is easy to become disconnected from our intuition. Sometimes we even forget just what intuition is.

Intuition is that little “voice” in your gut that pushes you one direction or another. It is the tug you feel to do, or not to do, something. A nudge we sometimes ignore.

Women are especially tied to our intuition; it is a gift we can forget we have been given.

As we progress down the path of healing our fertility, it is important to listen to this quiet voice within. Often the way it whispers won’t make sense to us. However, still it calls us to step forward in the direction of its urging.

Over the last year my intuition has pushed me away from western doctors (even holistic ones), from ovulation predictor kits, even from fertility meditations–which I strongly believe in from the vantage point of the mind-body connection. These things just didn’t feel right.

Recently though, some door inside of me has swung open and I feel ready to travel down different avenues than I have been. You see these roads just felt (there is really no other way to describe it) wrong. I did not feel good when I thought of them, and I could not get myself motivated enough to even take a first step.

My body knew what it needed, and listening brought me healing to the tune of an over 40 point drop in my FSH.

Many other aspects in my life also healed over this past year: my relationship with my husband, my relationship with myself, and my fear of what becoming a mother would mean. All of these things needed healing, and the route to that healing was paved by my intuition.

The challenge, and opportunity, with intuition is that we cannot see where it is leading us. When we befriend our intuition it is with blind faith, and complete trust.

Yet when we take that leap, it will always, always, lead us to the pot of gold.

So today perhaps it is time to put on your swimming suit and jump into the well of your own inner knowing. Maybe, just maybe, it will lead you to healing that which you did not even realize was splintered, and to your child.