Warm Up to Fill Your Fertility Cup

August 13, 2020

Warm Up to Fill Your Fertility Cup

If you are too cold you may have trouble conceiving. Being too cold can affect digestive enzyme and hormone production to affect fertility. Also, a cold uterus does not encourage the formation of new life.

How do you know if you are too cold?

If you feel cold (ie. nobody other than you is wearing a jumper, you hate cold weather, or you simply feel cold all the time) then you are probably too cold.

If your waking oral temperature is less than 36.4 degrees then you are too cold. To do this you need to buy an oral thermometer (one you put under your tongue) and take your temperature when you wake – but before you get out of bed. If your temperature is under 36.0 degrees then you are getting very cold (if you are this cold you really need to visit us).

Feel the temperature of your lower abdomen. If it feels colder than your upper abdomen then you likely have a cold uterus.

What to Do If You Are Too Cold

You need to warm up! Here’s some strategies you can follow yourself.

Don’t eat much cold food or drink – it will only make you colder. Eat mainly cooked food. Still eat some raw foods but add ginger or cinnamon to it. The warmth of these foods helps to offset the cold of the food.
Eat warming foods – warming foods gently warm your interior to help fill your ‘Fertility Cup’. This includes cooked food, but also includes spices that warm you even when eaten raw like ginger, cinnamon, cardamom, pepper, turmeric and mild chilli (don’t go crazy with chilli as it can heat you up to much to cause the opposite problem).
Routinely use a hot water bottle on your lower back and your lower abdomen – these physically heat up these problem areas.
Don’t walk around in bare feet – the cold from the floor can transfer cold to your Kidneys as there is a Kidney acupuncture point on the bottom of your feet. Cold Kidneys are no good for fertility.
Cover your mid-drift – don’t wear clothes that reveal your lower back or your abdomen. It’s too easy for them to get cold.
Don’t work in a cold environment – such as a butcher shop, office with airconditioning turned up too high or outside in winter without the proper clothing.

If you feel cold all the time or your oral temperature is less than 36.0 degrees, you should visit us for a Free 45 Minute Natural Fertility Health Check*

*This service is provided free by our practitioners. It is done online via video call with one of our practitioners. There are no conditions and no other paid services subsidise these free appointments.

falling pregnant fertility

Your Temperature and Your Fertility

August 13, 2020

Fertility

Your Temperature and Your Fertility

There are two main temperature issues with fertility:

Being too cold generally.
The body not achieving the required temperatures during your cycle to conceive.

Being Too Cold Generally

In natural medicine you and your uterus must be sufficiently warm to conceive and to nurture new life to birth. Almost all things in nature grow better when it’s warm.

One of the most common problems we see in women who struggle with infertility is that they are just too cold.

There are many reasons why women are too cold including eating too much cold food/drink, not wearing appropriately warm clothing (particularly around the mid-drift), living or working in cold conditions or simply being born that way and their body temperatures have never normalised.

If you are too cold your body may have trouble producing all of the digestive enzymes required (affecting your digestion) and all of the hormones required (affecting your fertility).

Are you too cold? The easy way to find out is to take your oral temperature (under your tongue) first thing in the morning before you get out of bed. This is called your Basal Body Temperature (BBT). If it is below 36.5 degrees you are too cold. If it is below 36.0 degrees you are very cold.

There are ways to help warm yourself up.

Not Achieving the Required Temperatures During Your Cycle to Conceive

Your BBT should change during the different phases of your cycle. In fact, your changing BBT can help you identify the specific days of the different phases of your cycle.

In the first half of your cycle (follicular phase) you will typically have lower temperatures and in the second stage (luteal phase) you will typically have higher temperatures. This is largely influenced by the different hormones that are produced at different stages of your cycle.

See a ‘normal’ BBT chart below and notice the distinct shift in temperatures between the first half and the second half of the cycle.

Your BBT should rise after ovulation due to the increased amount of progesterone secreted by the corpus luteum. Progesterone produces heat and prepares the lining of the uterus for the implantation of a fertilised ovum. To know exactly when you began ovulating, it was the day immediately before your temperature started to rise.

You’ll see in the chart below that there are lower temperatures BEFORE ovulation and higher temperatures AFTER ovulation. Your temperature should typically rise by a definite 0.1 to 0.2 degrees Celsius during ovulation.

Your temperature should remain elevated for 10-16 days until the corpus luteum regresses. If you are not pregnant your temperature will drop again. If you are pregnant your temperature will stay elevated.

Charting your BBT can also help you inform you when you are ovulating for better timing of intercourse. Knowing when your most fertile window is takes the pressure off having to try all of the time!

Note that the chart image is courtesy of www.fertilityfriend.com This is a great free app to track your temperatures and other signs. We recommend you start doing this straight away.

How to Take Your Basal Body Temperature (BBT)

Take your oral temperature (under your tongue) using a digital thermometer (get one for about $10 from Chemist Warehouse) when you wake in the morning but BEFORE you get out of bed. This is your BBT. The other rules you must follow are no food or water before taking your temp, no speaking or movement (other than putting the thermometer in your mouth) and you must have had a minimum of three hours sleep.

And you need to do this every single day.

BBT fertility

Stress and Fertility

August 13, 2020

Fertility

Stress and Fertility

We’re often asked if stress affects fertility. We think so.

Blood Flow is Key to Good Health

In natural medicine good blood flow is one of the keys to good health.

Your blood contains the oxygen, nutrients and hormones that your body and its organs and tissues need to function properly.

When your blood flow is strong everything in your body ‘gets fed and watered’ properly so everything has the ‘fuel’ to work as it should.

But when your internal blood flow becomes restricted, this is when trouble starts.

Just image if I was able to turn off an imaginary tap that fed blood to your arm. Your arm would soon be starved of the oxygen, nutrients and hormones it needed and it would start to malfunction – loss of strength, tingling, numbness, shaking, cold….

It’s the same situation anywhere else in your body.

Stress Affects Your Blood Flow & Your Fertility

When you get stressed you get ‘tight’ on the outside (neck and shoulder typically) AND you get tight on the inside (the blood vessels).

Your blood vessels are made of smooth muscle. They can be relaxed and open (good blood flow) or tight and narrow (restricted blood flow). This can affect some organs or all organs depending on the individual.

Constant daily stress leads to chronic vessel restriction, which leads to chronic blood flow problems.

This includes to the organs that most impact your fertility including your liver, kidney, ovaries and uterus.

If these organs are suffering from poor blood flow, this is highly likely to make conceiving and carrying a healthy baby to term more difficult.

Also, poor blood flow contributes to too being too cold, which also impact your body temperatures and fertility.

Stressors trigger a flight or flight response by our body forcing a release of cortisol (which also contributes to weight gain) and adrenaline (which in high volumes is toxic for your liver).

This whole fight or flight response was meant to be triggered occasionally when we found ourselves in a dangerous situation (like being confronted by a tiger in the wild). But today we see the metaphorical tiger every day in work, finances, home life…..

So, we have a fight or flight response every single day.

It’s no wonder poor blood flow and hormonal imbalances are affecting so many women’s fertility.

How Do You Know If You Have Too Much Tension and Poor Internal Blood Flow?

Some typical symptoms include:

Cold hands and feet
Painful periods
Feel tense and irritable
Bad PMS symptoms
Endometriosis and PCOS
Visible blue/purple/green veins on your arms and legs
Extended blue/purple sublingual veins under your tongue (take a look in the mirror).

These are some typical signs but we get a much more accurate picture by reading your radial pulse.

What Can You Do About It?

There are a number of things you can do which can help a lot.

Remove or reduce your exposure to the stressors in your life (not always easy or possible though).
Allocate time daily to de-stress. Yoga, tai chi, qigong, hard exercise, hobbies and getting out into nature.
Use natural medicine to help you when you need it.

Note: exercise typically doesn’t correct poor internal blood flow. When you exercise your vessels will widen to take the extra blood flow required. But when you are finished, they pretty well go back to where they were. You have to deal with this at a more fundamental organ level.

Without Good Blood Flow You Cannot Fill Your Fertility Cup

In natural medicine theory to conceive and carry a healthy baby to term your health needs to be strong.

Good blood flow is required for this.

And stress affects blood flow.

So in our experience, stress and fertility are definitely related.

Reflux

July 28, 2020

Health

Reflux is also known as heartburn or Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease. Symptoms include a burning pain in your stomach, throat or chest and/or bitter tasting acid in your mouth. Other common symptoms include bloating, belching, nausea, hiccups dry cough or chronic sore throat.

Major causes include:

Lying down after eating
Being overweight
Eating foods like chocolate, citrus, tomato, garlic, fatty foods, onions, alcohol and soft drinks.
Pregnancy
Medications including blood pressure meds, aspirin and ibuprofen.

Western Medical Treatment

Antacids neutralise the acid in your stomach but they can cause diarrhoea or constipation. Antacids can provide temporary relief to reflux symptoms.
Foaming agents that coat your stomach to reduce reflux.
H2 Blockers or proton pump inhibitors act to reduce acid production.
Prokinetics empty your stomach faster to prevent reflux.
As a last resort surgery can be performed to create physical barriers to stomach acid ascending up the oesophagus.

dyspepsia reflux

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Why Acupuncture Can Be So Good for Sciatica

Why is Chinese Medicine Often a ‘Last Resort’?

The Importance of Practitioner Experience

Good Health is the Absence of Symptoms

Are We There Yet? (how long does treatment take?)

How Your Organ Health Affects Your Emotions

For Beauty – Inside & Out

Chinese Medicine for Stress

What Your Tongue Says About Your Health

Medicinal Herbs & Western Medications