Stress and Fertility

August 13, 2020

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

Natural Weight Loss

July 28, 2020

Health

If you have trouble losing weight no matter what you seem to try, here’s why.

Digestive Dysfunction

If your digestion isn’t working well you will find it difficult to lose weight. And you’ll know if it’s not working well if you experience any of bloating, reflux, nausea, constipation, lose bowels or IBS.

This is because your body will be producing a lot of inflammation.

When your digestion is working well, not only will you more readily lose weight, you’ll usually feel lighter and have more energy.

Fat-Controlling Hormone Imbalance

You have natural fat-making hormones like cortisol and insulin and natural fat-burning hormones like adrenaline and glucagon.

For many people their fat-making hormones are too active and their fat-burning hormones are basically asleep.

Wrong Diet

There’s no doubt that you need to eat correctly to drop the kilos. This doesn’t mean starving yourself. It means learning the right foods to eat that turn your body into a fat burning machine. We’ve all grown up ‘learning’ certain things about food and weight gain. But much of what were taught was fundamentally wrong. It’s the reason why over 60% of Australians are overweight.

weight loss weight loss bairnsdale

Herbs Vs Drugs

July 28, 2020

Health

I am often asked what is the difference between taking herbs versus medications.

Western Medicine

Many of the drugs we take are actually based on plants. Plants have many different compounds and what pharmaceutical companies do is isolate the active compound (the chemical of the plant that has a particular action in the body) and then produce that compound synthetically. Because the compound is isolated from the rest of the plant (and possibly because it is manufactured), this is the reason why most drugs have side effects.

Western medicine focuses on symptom relief, not fixing the root of the problem. Whilst in most cases you will get some form of relief from symptoms, it also means that as soon as you come off the medication all of the symptoms will likely come back. The net effect is that you may need to take the medication for life.

All drugs must pass clinical trials to gain approval for sale. This is an important safety step. However, as soon as you add a second medication to your daily routine, the chemical makeup of the second drugs completely changes things in the body. Some people are on over 10 medication, which creates a chemical cocktail in the body that nobody really understands or can predict what the short and the long-term effects will be.

Many drugs have only been available for a short time so is it not known what the long-term effect of those drugs will be. We will just have to wait and see.

Medicinal Herbs

Herbal medicines are naturally produced from whole plants. Nature intended for the whole plant and ALL of the compounds within it to be consumed at the same time (not just one compound from the plant). This is the reason why there are few side effects from herbs.

Medicinal herbs are in fact, drugs – just naturally produced ones. Most herbal formulas consist of many individual herbs acting synergistically with each other. Whilst it is not possible to know exactly what chemical reactions occur in the body, there is a lot of comfort in knowing that nature has spent a millennia fine-tuning the naturally occurring chemicals in medicinal herbs.

Herbs work on the root cause of health problems and the symptoms they cause, at the same time. If the root cause is successfully treated then the symptoms will substantially reduce or go away entirely. This also means that you don’t have to take the herbs forever.

drugs

« Previous Page

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

What Do We Do with the Acupuncture Needles After Using Them?

The Difference Between Chinese Medicine and Western Medicine