One of the best ways to start prepping for pregnancy and optimizing your fertility, is to become more aware of your sex hormones like estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone. If you’ve been tracking your cycle for a while now, you may know that there are two distinct phases of the cycle – your follicular phase and […]
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One of my favorite parts about working in functional nutrition is that I get to take a deeper dive into the root causes of health issues. Fertility is something that is so interconnected to every system in the body, that we sometimes forget that something that may seem totally unrelated, could actually be the […]
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Harnessing the Power of 5R’s for Optimal Gut Health If you’ve read my other posts about how gut health is so important for fertility, then you’re probably wondering how you can approach the process of healing. Enter: the 5R Framework for Gut Healing. *While I recommend working with a health practitioner to help guide you […]
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What is the GI-MAP test? If you’ve ever heard that the gut is like the second brain, then you probably know that our gut health impacts our overall health, especially for fertility. Research has found that the gut microbiome impacts our digestion, immunity, metabolic and neuroendocrine functions, sleep, stress and so much more. The GI […]
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You may be thinking – I don’t need to work with a fertility dietitian / nutritionist, I already eat pretty healthy (weekend margs don’t count right?), I exercise, drink my green juices … and besides, I can get any nutrition information I really need through Google. Well, my friend… I’m here to break down five […]
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I thought I’d write this post out to clear up any confusion you may have. Maybe you’ve heard of what a dietitian does, and maybe you’ve heard of fertility specialists – but perhaps this is the first time you’ve heard of a fertility dietitian. So here we go. I’m going to break down exactly what […]
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If you’re like most of my clients, you’ve probably already spent a lot of time googling at 3am what foods you should be eating to get pregnant. Maybe you’re googling at 3am right now looking for the perfect fertility diet. If you have, welcome. I know how frustrating it can be to sift through the […]
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The top 10 fertility foods for women trying to conceive.
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Do you know when your fertile window is? I’ll be honest, I never even tracked my period before this past year. My period was something I dealt with, not something I was particularly interested in or fond of. But once I started down this TTC journey, I became fascinated with periods, ovulation, and all the cascade […]
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![Want to avoid short cycles, luteal phase deficiency, delayed ovulation, and early miscarriage?
A commonly over-looked piece of the fertility puzzle that I see is women ignoring stress...
In a recent study, women whose saliva had high levels of alpha-amylase, an enzyme that marks stress, took 29% longer to get pregnant compared to those who had less.
What happens when you're a chronic stress ball your body responds in a few ways:
Glucocorticoids such as adrenaline and cortisol are released in response to stress.
As a result, this suppresses Leutenizing Hormone (LH), which in turn causes the corpus luteum to not develop properly.
When this happens, adequate progesterone is not made which may cause short cycles / short luteal phase, early miscarriage, and delayed ovulation.
Remember, we need an adequate luteal phase length for implantation.
Timing is important for implantation. Once embryo is fertilized, it takes 7 days after ovulation to float through the fallopian tube to get to the uterus and implant.
If you have a short luteal phase, you shrink the window where implantation can occur. So you need a long enough luteal phase to support implantation - and to have a long enough luteal phase we need adequate progesterone.
And what is progesterone's enemy? Stress.
So I know that was a mouthful, but bottom line: Stress is KEY 🔑 for fertility.
I'm curious, what's the biggest stressor in your life right now? [As if we all don't have a million of them now...]
PS I'm devoting an entire week on stress, burnout and mindfulness in my upcoming group coaching. DM me your email if you'd like to be added to the waitlist! We start Sep 1!
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