Unexplained infertility is more and more common. Interestingly enough the statistics have been in the last few years, 25 to 30 percent of women have a diagnosis of unexplained infertility and yet I just read an article recently that said the numbers are up to 50 percent of women that are being diagnosed with infertility have unexplained infertility.
You know I have a host of opinions around that. I think a big part of that is our lifestyle and stress and we're moving through life in through that fight or flight part of the nervous system and so our bodies don't get the message that is safe to conceive. I think that's a big part of it. I think that oftentimes women
feel, and men too for that matter, going through this process is its because it is so isolating, they all commonly feel like it's a failure to to not conceive easily, and which i think is a really hard, those are hard emotions to sit with. It's a hard place to sit in and I think as a culture we become a really hard on our bodies. And the expectation of performance whether it be at work, or even achieving pregnancy can be really, really intense. It's really about conscious rest. We spent so much time in fight or flight in our culture. All our devices, all the television shows we have these days, right? Our corporate culture. Everything is keeping us engaged 24/7 it's really hard to shut things off. We have very little downtime and very little rest time. We don't have constructive rest in our lives, very little. We don't oftentimes.
Restorative yoga, that's what I primarily like to teach because the restorative yoga is, it's really about conscious rest. And restorative yoga is about laying over bolsters and blankets and resting into the earth so that so we can shift our nervous systems into the rest and digest part of the nervous system. That's the part of the nervous system where we conceive. If we are living in fight-or-flight at all periods of time, then our bodies are not in the mode of conception, they are just trying to survive. Because the tiger is behind. You're being chased by a tiger at all periods of time and so our bodies are basically sprinting through life trying to survive. Restorative yoga helps to shift that. I really like that explanation. I think that food is a huge part of it. I don't really feel like in Western medicine we have supported really clean good nutrition and I think that there are confusing messages through nutrition. A lot of what is taught even in Western medicine is from a nutrition standpoint is still based on 1970's theories that were proven not to be true. We're still not getting the information about real food and that eating real food is really important. And we've so gotten away from cooking our own meals, right? The way our grandparents used to cook all their own meals and we're connected to local farmers and connected to local dairy, things like that, is very different than the bulk of our culture today. You know maybe nutrition give you really tricky and but my approach is much like my approach to restorative yoga in that my goal is to keep your body in the rest and digest part of the nervous system more so than its been. I literally will look at foods that nourish the nervous system and so I try to to at least start my clients on foods that are going to keep them grounded and balance their blood sugar which is going to help keep them in the rest and digest part of the nervous system. That's gonna shift your body more than you can even imagine.
In your experience how quickly does that shift occur, so in other words how long does it take for changing your diet or nutrition or your restorative pattern, how long does that shift take to occur in someone?
It really depends on what's going on in their life. At the Institute of Integrative Nutrition we use this term called primary food. Primary food is your lifestyle. So it really depends on someone's lifestyle and how they're moving through life. That said though, you can shift breakfast for yourself by adding more grounding foods, more good fat, more real food and in a week's time I've had people feel completely different in their bodies. Yeah. That's amazing.
Then lastly I really believe that chemicals are a strong component in throwing off our hormone balance and it just happens that there are over 80,000 different chemicals in our culture alone in our country that go unregulated by the FDA. These chemicals are in our health and beauty products, in our cleaning products, they are in food products, food storage and people don't really understand. I think we're guinea pigs right now. People really don't understand the consequence of those chemicals and basically they are xenoestrogens. They're coming into our bodies and trying to act like hormones and messing up our our normal hormone system. The challenge is that it's not that we just used a lipstick that had chemical in it or or we used a food storage container where we put in microwave oven, heated it up in plastic and those chemicals leached into our food, or that our laundry detergent has scent on it and and then we are absorbing that in. It's not just one of those things it's that these chemicals are in multiple places in our lives. It's multifaceted unfortunately and that a bigger conversation of all of those chemicals coming in is called body burden. It's really scary and we don't know the effects of all of that on our bodies right now. We do know that girls are getting their periods earlier and earlier in life and I think that's super scary and has a lot to do with chemical exposure and xenoestrogens and their own body burdens.
Is then detoxing or cleansing your environment part of what you do with your clients?
Yes, detox can be something that I do work with women. I do it in a really gentle way and the reason why is because intense detoxes can be really intense on the system and really stressful, in my opinion. So my goal is to do detox in a way that's super gentle so someone doesn't get completely stressed out when they're doing it.
What about making changes like the cosmetics you use, the soups you use or the detergent you use? Are you a strong advocate for that?
I am and it's a really big part of my teachings whether I'm working one-on-one with, someone or through my workshops, I do a great deal of teaching where chemicals are typically found, what products are really high in chemicals and give guidelines like the Environmental Working Group for people to check the toxicity of their products. I have vetted so many products in the last, I don't know 10 -12 years, so I always have a list of things that I'm sharing with people and great companies that I feel really doing really great work and advocating for clean products ,and legislation around around that too.
That's fantastic. That could be so much bigger than just women dealing with infertility.
Absolutely, it's really for every single group, for all of us. Choose you. Choose you. Choose your own nourishment, and choose your own wellness right and find people that are really going to support you and hold you in that space. It does take conscious effort. It does take choice. It takes stepping out of what is the norm and I think sometimes that's the hard part is that you know stepping out of our crazy culture and doing something nourishing for yourself is not necessarily always revered in our culture. Sometimes I think we feel guilty about doing those things. And what I want you know is that that's paramount, is stepping out and taking care of you is paramount. Paramount to your health. Paramount to you conceiving if that's your path right now. Paramount for living a long healthy lifestyle. Paramount for nourishing both yourself and those around you, and it's feeling really good in your body.
That's great. Thank You Jen.
Thank you so much.
