Embark on a transformative journey that intertwines the mystical with the scientific as we unravel the complexities of conception and hormonal health. My special guest, holistic fertility coach Emma Kale, illuminates the conversation with her personal leap from competitive athlete to functional hormone specialist.
Discovering the subtle signs of imbalance is key to unlocking the mysteries of unexplained infertility. In our discussion, we illuminate the often-overlooked indicators of hormonal disharmony, offering hope and direction for those navigating this uncertain path. Stress and inflammation's role in reproductive health cannot be understated, and we break down actionable, budget-friendly strategies to bolster fertility. This episode will leave you empowered with knowledge, understanding how daily choices and deepened awareness can significantly influence your reproductive journey.
Finally, we plunge into the empowering world of mineral testing and hormone assessment, with tools like the DUTCH test providing a window into your body's intricacies. These non-invasive, informative methods stand as a beacon for those seeking clarity amidst the fog of fertility challenges.
Download your FREE guide to natural preconception support
Emma’s Instagram: @jewishfertilityproject
Emma’s Website: www.jewishfertilityproject.com
Book a 30-min free Connection Call with Emma
Join my email list for monthly guides to supporting your hormones
Connect with Bridget on Instagram
Learn more at bridgetwalton.com
If you're interested in working with Bridget 1:1 to overcome your period pain and irregular cycles and take charge of your fertility, click this link to connect and set up a discovery call.
If you want to support this podcast, follow this link to Buy Me a Coffee. Your support will help cover the cost of: podcast hosting platform fees, equipment, and transcription services.
Embark on a transformative journey that intertwines the mystical with the scientific as we unravel the complexities of conception and hormonal health. My special guest, holistic fertility coach Emma Kale, illuminates the conversation with her personal leap from competitive athlete to functional hormone specialist.
Discovering the subtle signs of imbalance is key to unlocking the mysteries of unexplained infertility. In our discussion, we illuminate the often-overlooked indicators of hormonal disharmony, offering hope and direction for those navigating this uncertain path. Stress and inflammation's role in reproductive health cannot be understated, and we break down actionable, budget-friendly strategies to bolster fertility. This episode will leave you empowered with knowledge, understanding how daily choices and deepened awareness can significantly influence your reproductive journey.
Finally, we plunge into the empowering world of mineral testing and hormone assessment, with tools like the DUTCH test providing a window into your body's intricacies. These non-invasive, informative methods stand as a beacon for those seeking clarity amidst the fog of fertility challenges.
Download your FREE guide to natural preconception support
Emma’s Instagram: @jewishfertilityproject
Emma’s Website: www.jewishfertilityproject.com
Book a 30-min free Connection Call with Emma
Join my email list for monthly guides to supporting your hormones
Connect with Bridget on Instagram
Learn more at bridgetwalton.com
If you're interested in working with Bridget 1:1 to overcome your period pain and irregular cycles and take charge of your fertility, click this link to connect and set up a discovery call.
If you want to support this podcast, follow this link to Buy Me a Coffee. Your support will help cover the cost of: podcast hosting platform fees, equipment, and transcription services.
Welcome to I'm Hormonal, your source of information about women's hormone health and how to support your body. Naturally, I'm your host, bridget Walton, and I'm a certified functional hormone specialist and menstrual cycle coach. I am on a mission to hold these hormone conversations with as many menstruators as possible, because you deserve easier access to accurate information about what's up with your unrelenting menstrual cycle and with your fertility mysteries. Don't you think it's time that we figure this out once and for all? On today's show, we are going to be talking about fertility and preparing for conception with Emma Kale. Emma is a certified functional hormone specialist and a holistic fertility coach, and she works with women who are struggling with fertility so they can discover and address the root causes of their challenges and ultimately balance their hormones so they can get pregnant. Naturally, emma uses a combination of her ancestral lens of Judaism to interweave connections between ancient wisdom, traditions and modern fertility support.
Speaker 1:If this is your first time listening, I just want to say welcome to you, and if you've been here before, then welcome back. I started this podcast so that I can share information with you about our hormones, about our bodies, about how to understand what the heck is going on in there, and it's called. I'm Hormonal, because we're all hormonal. Being hormonal and having hormones is an essential part of life. There's nothing we can do to get away from it. So I think it's about time that we just go ahead and embrace it. Learn about our hormones, love our hormones. Maybe that sounds a little bit cheesy Sure, I won't argue against you but really I think it's something that we can all take hold of and embrace and cherish, because it's a really special experience that we get to have of having this cycle throughout our month and having these changes. I'm excited about it. I'm excited to be here talking to you and I hope you get a lot out of this episode today. Without further ado, let's jump in and get to know Emma.
Speaker 2:So my name is Emma Kale. I am a fertility and preconception coach, so I support women as they are preparing to have a baby, or also in overcoming fertility challenges and getting pregnant. I think another unique thing about the work that I do that's really important to me is interweaving the science and also the spirituality of fertility support. I think spirituality can mean a lot of things to different people.
Speaker 2:But for me, what I really key in on in terms of how it relates to fertility is just relationship to self. I think that's just so foundational to really overall health, but hormone health and fertility health specifically. So, yeah, I just really always highlight that as an important piece that sometimes we kind of skip over, when sometimes it's really fun to nerd out and go down rabbit holes about all different like nutrition, lifestyle things, and I love that and we should definitely talk about that too.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then I'm also a certified functional hormone specialist, which is how you and I met.
Speaker 1:That's exactly how I met. I love it. Coming back to what you said about bringing in spirituality and connection with yourself, so important right in this world where all parts of health are siloed into their own. Who is the specialist? But, yeah, so important to bring it all together, understanding how the mental, emotional side of things affect our physical health as well. How did you get into this work? Tell us about that a little more.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so my story getting into this. For many years I was a very competitive athlete, so I was always interested in pushing my body to its limits and beyond physically, mentally. But I'd say I was also pretty disconnected from my body, which I think is pretty common in our world. You know, we're like always being.
Speaker 2:Our attention is elsewhere. We're not really looking inwards and connecting with ourselves. So, yeah, I was really in this world of extremes, trying out different types of diets and ways of eating, cutting out this, cutting out that, and some of those things did make me feel better and so that sort of encouraged me like, oh, more extreme must be better, and I think we see this so much because extreme is catchy right.
Speaker 1:It is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when we're on the internet and reading different things, like that's the message we're getting, because it's catchy, it gets our attention and we want to know about it, and so, yeah, I follow that rabbit hole real deep to a point. For me, specifically, it looked like first getting sort of like a paleo diet, then into you know, okay, if taking out some carbs was good, let me do a keto diet and take out more carbs. Oh, if more carbs was, taking out more carbs, was good, let me do a carnivore diet and take out all the carbs.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:Only animal foods. Yeah, I'll send.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, but that on top of like extreme exercise, and at the time I happened to be doing a long distance hike with my husband where we hiked for like two and a half months straight for miles a day and I, you know, was not supporting myself nutritionally to be doing that sort of activity.
Speaker 2:Okay, so this is where it gets to the hormone piece, and it was during that time that, you know, despite being an athlete my whole life and always using my body in extreme ways, that was the first time I ever missed a period and for me, that really stood out of a red flag of okay, something is not like this. Is my body telling me something I need to pay attention? There were no overnight changes, but I started to become more open to the possibility that maybe extreme wasn't the answer and there might be some room for balance, and and also just getting more curious about how my body actually worked, especially on the hormone side, like what was it that made my period stop? And so, yeah, that led me down back into the realm of like, okay, let me look into getting certified as a functional hormone specialist so I can really learn this information at a deep, deep level.
Speaker 1:Man, I guess sometimes you got to go through it so you can really see the light on the other side and, you know, open your eyes up to, to the benefits of having that connection and awareness of yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I think there's a lot that comes from like personal experience and feeling things in our own bodies that can really make things click, but I do hope that in sharing my story, it might be able to help some people avoid like the most extreme parts, definitely.
Speaker 1:No, I think that. Well, I think it definitely will, and maybe this is a good time to kind of connect the. So your story, and like losing your period through these different kinds of extremes and and how that can relate to fertility troubles, and like what are some of the drivers behind fertility challenges that you know that gals out there might be seeing in themselves.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. Yeah, at the time when I lost my period. You know I was not looking to get pregnant then, but I did know I've always known for me personally that I do wanna have kids, and so it was more of like a looking forward to connecting the dots to like a fertility journey and knowing that like, oh, if I want this in the future, it's something that I need to pay attention to now. Hence the importance of preparing for conception ahead of time, definitely so, yeah, I think. Well, I'm sure we'll get into that later too in terms of like what that looks like, but all that sort of prep can help us to mitigate some of these challenges that folks do come across, if you know it. Again, thinking of things that are just so common in our culture, I think one of them is kind of the idea that you just decide one day to try and have a baby and then you just see how it goes, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it just happens.
Speaker 2:Hopefully you get pregnant and it happens, and if it doesn't like, then it's something you're gonna have to work on. So we don't really have this idea of like preparing ahead of time. But yeah, so when people are coming into challenges, I think one thing off the bat to just kind of distinguish is this the word infertility.
Speaker 1:Definitely.
Speaker 2:I am not a huge fan of that word. Because I think it's yeah, it's used across the board and it has a connotation of like something is broken. Like someone is infertile, you know, like that is strong and that hits deep. You know, and this gets to the self-relationship piece it's like there's so much meaning and charge in that word and so it makes it really black and white, right, when you can like slap this label on it.
Speaker 1:But actually health and fertility in that whole journey is really, you know, this gray scale of that where you fluctuate back and forth on.
Speaker 2:But yeah, absolutely. We're so dynamic. Our bodies are constantly moving between seasons, seasons where it makes sense. Our bodies are feeling that safety, that support. Yes, this would be a time, a good time, to get pregnant and be able to support that process, right? I mean the process of getting pregnant and growing a baby and then having that baby and being able to support that baby. These are not small things, right? These take so many resources and our bodies Huge energy demand.
Speaker 2:Yeah, huge energy demand. Our bodies are really smart, right? They're not gonna put us in that position. If our bodies can tell that it's, we don't have those resources available, so yeah, so yeah. This term infertility kind of implies, I think, that like something's broken and there's no room for growth, there's no room for change. So yeah, I just like to kind of say that off the top. There's also another phrase of unexplained infertility.
Speaker 2:To me, if I hear that unexplained infertility, it just leaves me with a big question mark of what's actually going on, Like there's not just our bodies in terms of evolution, our bodies want to be in a state where we can reproduce.
Speaker 1:When I hear unexplained infertility, that's like a diagnosis that a woman or a couple go in for some support and they're given this. Basically it's a non-answer. It's like, hey, we just couldn't do more discovery to figure out what the actual answer was. So like, here you go, because this is the best we can do, which is inadequate. It's not adequate answer for people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally, it's a disservice. And yeah, how can we dig deeper to find what is the true root cause? What's really going on? So, yeah, so some different things that could be going on. So one thing is an ovulation, so a woman who is not ovulating. This is like the main event of the menstrual cycle. You talk about this in other episodes on your podcast, so listeners are definitely up on that. But obviously, if we're not ovulating, we're not gonna be able to get pregnant. And then, of course, if that's the case, we need to ask why and dig deeper down to what is the root cause of that?
Speaker 2:So then we get to questions about hormone imbalances, right? So whether that's estrogen, progesterone, prolactin, there are all sorts of different hormones that can be out of balance, and this could be leading to an ovulation, or a number of other factors too. But again, hormone imbalance, not the root cause, right?
Speaker 1:Right, hormone imbalance is the symptom. Yeah, and you have to use those clues right, Put on our little detective caps to understand what is the actual driving factor behind those imbalances.
Speaker 2:Totally yeah. So yeah, as we start to dig deeper we can get to different systems of the body. Thyroid health can be a big one. So our body's ability to support energy production, which is so important for all of our hormone production, specifically on the fertility side of things, thyroid health really comes into play. Because having robust thyroid health we're going that's gonna support the higher temps that we need in the levial phase and that's really important for supporting an implanted embryo. So if we did fertilize an egg during that cycle and that egg implants, it needs to be properly supported with high enough body temps. So that can just be a reason right off the bat why someone could be having trouble getting pregnant and staying pregnant.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was just to kind of put my mental list together in my head. Is you mentioned in ovulatory cycles, which is one cause or one obstacle to identify? But also, if you do ovulate, the egg is fertilized. But yeah, maybe you progress from levels are too low or otherwise. The pregnancy doesn't carry through. As a second challenge or situation to identify when trying to understand what's going on.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, and so another reason too why, in once we are, if the egg has ovulated and did get fertilized, other things that can come into play are stress and inflammation in the body. I mean, these are huge throughout, right? So, like the whole process, Definitely. But I think really key to name that these are major areas to focus on in both nutrition lifestyle. So many things plug into these and they also affect everything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the good thing well, maybe this doesn't make sense, but the good thing about stress is that me and my body I can assess my own stress levels. It's not something that I necessarily need to go get tested Although of course, you could go get your cortisol levels tested but I guess I'm saying this because I'm just thinking of all of the ways that we can easily make changes to help support our health and help support our fertility and overall egg health. Do you wanna should we talk a little bit about what are some of those really easy sort of free, accessible things that we can do to support our fertility?
Speaker 2:Yes, I'm so glad that you named that specifically, because there really are. This doesn't have to be complicated, expensive. I think a lot of times when people find themselves down the road of having like, especially if they're struggling to get pregnant, they're faced with solutions that are really expensive, and so, yeah, it's so important to me to spread this information that there are places to start that are free right.
Speaker 1:So where would you start? When you're working with clients Like what are some of the first things that you look at to say like hey, today or tomorrow, like these are some things to consider, tweaking.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So I mean, I think about it in terms of nutrition and lifestyle, like. And then within each of those buckets, we have different things no-transcript. On the nutrition side, you know a really big piece and these are things that you talk about also on your podcast, so we're just kind of like touching back into them. But things like balancing blood sugar you know that's gonna be so, so important for just supporting our bodies, hormone function and just like the overall balance of how our body is using fuel, making sure that our diet is like covering all of our bases in terms of nutrition.
Speaker 2:Um, so, you know, this can be as simple as just really highlighting full foods in our diet. Yeah, diversity of full foods, like right there, that it's gonna do so much for us, you know huge benefit.
Speaker 1:You know, I wish I, I wish I had like written down where I heard this study being cited so I could go back and find it. But long story short, I I heard some information about a study that was done where you know the overall women who were able to Focus on eating organic vegetables there are pregnancy outcomes. Well, we're better than those folks who mean who still maybe had a lot of Vegetables and fruits in their diet but which were not organic and maybe had some endocrine disrupting chemicals and things that you know are a little wonky in your body. So I guess I just wanted to mention that, or whatever it's worth for gals listening out there, that, to whatever degree you can, focusing on some organic vegetables and fruits, especially for like the dirty dozen. Right, you can look it up, I think it's the EPA, epa's website.
Speaker 1:If you Google dirty dozen, it comes up like organic dirty, doesn't because it'll be like based on your own, you know geographical area, so I just wanted to mention that, for whatever that's worth. I did want to ask you, though, just as we're talking about nutrition and things to consider there Well, everybody's body is different Were you doing a particular like as you cycled through different Types of diets? Did you notice anything, for for your body, that was like better or worse for your cycle when you did like carnivore or keto or something else?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, that was all long ago enough that. I really wasn't that tuned into my cycle, so I actually don't really have a lot of the data in terms of like, how was it affecting me? And I was on hormonal birth control for some of that time as well, so I wish that I could rewind the clock, and that would be so interesting to see.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, in another lifetime. Yeah, I mean, I what?
Speaker 2:I. What I did notice for sure was you know Just how it made me feel right on a day-to-day basis, like how I was digesting things. Yeah, again, it's like kind of each step of the way like I thought that I felt better, like I thought like, ooh, my digestion feels smoother and I think I think there were some pieces of it like I was in a place where my gut was really inflamed and taking some time away from gluten and some time away from dairy. You know, I think those types of you know, removing those things from my diet from a time for a time they did really benefit me in the short term so that I was able to do some more Just feeling of my gut. But then, over time, as I sort of came back towards balance, I had a period of reintroducing these different things and discovering that, oh, I used to Eat very and be super bloated, super gassy because of that, and I won't experience that anymore.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we know how important, you know, overall gut health is right just for making sure estrogen levels are important. So it's all. It's all synergistic and you know you said this earlier too. But I guess just reinforcing that the overall health of your gut, and like feeling good, you know that's also helpful for your fertility and for supporting ovulation, ovulatory cycles.
Speaker 2:Totally, totally, because, you know, fertility health is menstrual health is overall health right and so all of these things are just. They're so related definitely.
Speaker 1:Let's come back to Some other things that you focus on, that you think about when you're making recommendations of like, hey, let's take a look at this, let's make some tweaks and changes, just support overall health. And then with that, I just want to ask too, like, what is the ideal Time frame? Let's, let's talk about that for you know how long before you know, if you're, if you're planning for your conception, how long before you're trying to conceive, should you maybe be Practicing these different habits?
Speaker 2:Totally yeah. So let me give one more lifestyle habit and then we'll. We'll loop into the, the, the prepping phase, what that looks like. So, yeah, I think my top hip for lifestyle has to do with our circadian rhythm. So this is our body's daily rhythm. You know, as humans We've evolved with these day and day night cycles at like a base note.
Speaker 2:We're awake during the day and we're asleep at night, right, but on it can get so much more nuanced beyond that too.
Speaker 2:So, like when we're just thinking about the light that we're exposed to throughout the day, our bodies are used to, they're keyed in to exactly the light that we're getting from the Sun.
Speaker 2:So from the time when the Sun is rising on the horizon to when the Sun is, you know, High noon top of the sky, to all the time when it the Sun sets at the end of the day, the colors of the light that we're getting throughout that time are changing and they're different and our bodies are queued into that and it's like our internal clock, and the reason why this is so important is because so much of our bodies, hormone production, is timed off of this internal clock. This goes for sex hormones, but really for all of our hormones, the hormones that are governing our wake, sleep cycles, our hunger queues. Everything is tied into this internal clock, and so that is why it is just, it's so important, and so this this can be truly as simple as just Having pockets of time during the day where we can take a moment outside and just get some sunlight into our eyeballs, speaking of things that are free and immediately available.
Speaker 1:Super free outside your front door right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally. Um, it is important that, like we're getting that sun directly. So if you have Glasses, sunglasses, contacts, you want to be going out and getting that sunlight directly into your eyeball.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's just. That's a huge one. I Try to be in a good practice of like each morning, after I eat breakfast, I'll go for a walk and yeah, I get that sunlight in my eyeballs. But I have to admit I do. I wear contacts most days, so I don't know if I get it just right into my eyeballs. I'll have to, yeah, wait a little bit, put those in, maybe sometime.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you can do an experiment. You know, I'm such a fan of just seeing how your body responds to something and Trying something out if it is something that's accessible, like, yeah, are you able to try a short walk without contacts and just see like, how does that affect me?
Speaker 2:You know you want to be consistent with it for you know, a couple of weeks or something to see if you are noticing a difference. But, um, but yeah, try it out for yourself and see, like what is the feedback that I'm getting from my body on this? Traditional cultures all around the world Prepare for months, if not years, for conception through a Lot, through different like nutrition, what Moms to be and dads to be are eating during those months or years. And so, in terms of timeline, earlier is better, but generally six to twelve months ahead of conception Is something to kind of keep in your mind. And the reason why that is the timeline Is because it takes almost a whole year for the egg that will Be a part of that conception. It takes about a year for the full development of that egg. So we're thinking about everything that's going into affecting the egg that will eventually Become fertilized and become a baby. Yeah, it's a whole year.
Speaker 1:That can be done, yeah okay, so we've got our eggs with us. You know, since we're born, right, they're with us every day of our lives. But yeah, that year right before conception is really essential. Is that how long? So let's talk about, like, if we wanna get into these details of like the follicle health too is really important and that kind of goes hand in hand. So, you know, the follicle that's developing on your ovary, which will ultimately, you know, squeeze out that egg. What is the cycle like for that follicle to grow? And, you know, grow big and strong and healthy too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the follicle itself takes three months to develop leading up to ovulation. But again, all of these things that we're already doing to support our egg health or overall fertility health, that's also gonna be exactly the same things that we'll do for supporting follicle health. So it all kind of goes together. But yeah, if you wanna have that in your head of like, okay, a year ahead is the time that the egg is developing and then three months ahead is the follicle development, what are your thoughts on, like pregnancy spacing and making sure that your body has enough time to really recover and, you know, provide optimal health for the new baby?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely yeah. I mean, we've talked about the importance of preparing for any pregnancy, but it's another sort of like subtopic of, well, how long to wait. Between you know, if pregnancy took all of these resources from my body, how long will it take to fully replenish those? And you know, I think minerals is a really good one to sort of like key in on. Minerals are so important for our body and through pregnancy and birth, a baby is going to take up 10% of mom's minerals.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:Which is kind of mind-blowing. So yeah, we certainly need time to replenish and, again, if we look towards traditional cultures around the world, a sort of average time between pregnancies is three years.
Speaker 1:Hmm, okay, that's longer than I would have expected.
Speaker 2:When we look at our soil today, the mineral content of our soil is has just decreased dramatically over the last 100 years. So I think, across the board, everyone can really use to always be supporting minerals specifically. So, yeah, and so people who are preparing for consumption are no different, but, yeah, when we are so I don't think there's like a you want to like up it by 10%. I think everyone needs to always be looking at minerals and then just like especially if you're in the season of preconception, pregnancy, postpartum, it's just something to, yeah, really focus on.
Speaker 1:So we're talking about minerals, we're talking about spacing, and you had just mentioned that three years is the average like is that the average recommended spacing?
Speaker 2:So there is research that shows higher likelihood of just kind of generally worse pregnancy outcomes with one to two year spacing of kids. And so again, this is just sort of reflecting that we're going to have the healthiest pregnancy possible, the healthiest baby possible, if we have, you know, replete nutrition on board. And so this just it takes time, right, like we can't just pour a bunch of minerals into our body and I'm saying minerals, but it's also vitamins, it's also other cofactors, like there's a whole spectrum of things and it takes time for our body to absorb and fully integrate these things.
Speaker 2:And so it's not to say that like you can't have a healthy baby and a healthy pregnancy with less than three years certainly like there's plenty of examples, but there is also a lot of really interesting research that shows these differences and shows better outcomes with more like three years in between.
Speaker 1:I got it For gals out there who aren't super familiar with what minerals actually do in our body. Can you give us a quick rundown on what are minerals important for essentially?
Speaker 2:Totally. Yeah. So I feel like we kind of have this phrase of vitamins and minerals, right, Like when we think about nutrition that we need. But yeah, so the mineral piece, minerals are like what you look at.
Speaker 1:If you're looking at the periodic table, you know, so it's time travel back to seventh grade, yeah.
Speaker 2:So you know, things like magnesium, potassium, sodium, iron, copper, and these minerals are so foundational for our body because there are. They're kind of sometimes I hear them described as the spark plugs for our body.
Speaker 2:They're sort of like what our body needs to run, what is needed for different enzymes function Just like they're really the building blocks. If we think of it in terms of, yeah, like the periodic table, it's the elements of life, right, and so we can't make these things ourselves. They're things we have to take in from our surroundings. In some cases, you know, our body can do a good job at recycling minerals that we already have, which is the case for iron, but we also still need that input.
Speaker 1:Definitely.
Speaker 2:So yeah, so minerals are really key.
Speaker 1:Do you often recommend, or I guess what are your thoughts on doing mineral testing? You know if you're planning to conceive or you're trying to conceive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, mineral testing is a great place to start if you are looking for some additional data. You know, in terms of functional testing in general, I do think it's important to always preface with you know, let's look at your symptoms, let's look at your history, let's really get that full picture, like we never want to only rely on testing. That said, testing can provide some really valuable insight in addition to what we're seeing from symptoms and history and just life experience. So yeah, for the mineral testing, the test that I always do is the hair tissue mineral analysis, and so this test is great because it is noninvasive and not very expensive either, so it's quite accessible.
Speaker 1:Awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we love that right. It's a test you can do at home. So you're testing the inch and a half of hair that's closest to your head, which is going to give a average of the last three months of the mineral status in your body. So that's another reason why it's a really interesting test, because a lot of times if we go to get a blood draw or something, it's really a snapshot right.
Speaker 1:Definitely.
Speaker 2:Which there's pros and cons to that, but with getting a three month average, we're really seeing more of like a big picture of what's the status of your body and the status of minerals in your body. So, yeah, for those reasons, I really love this test and, yeah, it just gives us insight into what's going on mineral-wise in the body, and one of the best things that we can see from this test is how your body is handling stress. Minerals are so related to stress in our bodies and how our bodies first of all, how much stress we're under, but then also how we're responding to that stress and how resilient we are and we see that reflected very clearly in the test.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I've talked quite a bit about stress in other podcast episodes too, just how, when we're stressed and our cortisol levels are higher, how that just clouds all of our pathways for hormones and can really have a potentially negative impact on ovulation. So we know that that's a big deal. Definitely like getting stress under control. In addition to the mineral tests, what other tests do you recommend if that seems like that would benefit and provide some more clues? But can you talk about other tests that you like to look at?
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely so. Another big one in terms of the fertility space is the Dutch test. So, yeah, I know you are familiar. So this is a test that looks at the. It's a dried urine test looking at our hormone status of our body. It looks at both sex hormones and, again, stress hormones, because we know that stress is such an important part of this picture. And this test in particular, you know, rather than looking at just like a serum or hormone draw, it really gives us a lot more information about how hormones are actually being utilized and metabolized by the body, which is really important if we want to get down to the root cause of an issue right, like we said before, Hormones are not the root cause, right, hormones are a symptom and we need to get a layer deeper, and so this test can really help us dig down and understand.
Speaker 2:Okay, this is what we're seeing in terms of estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, cortisol, but why?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it definitely is, like the real full-body picture for everything, just like you said sex hormones, stress, organic acids, all these things that can give you different clues about what's going on and why is it going on. So, yeah, I, I'm here to co-sign that on the Dutch test, for sure, not that I wouldn't co-sign the mineral one, I'm just less familiar with that one. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, totally yeah. So I think those are really my two, my two go-to tests the, the hair tissue mineral analysis and the Dutch test for hormones. I think together you know if you're someone who is struggling to get pregnant and you you don't know why, maybe you have received an unexplained infertility diagnosis from a doctor and you want to dig deeper and find the reason. These two tests can provide really insightful information to help us just unpack what could be going on at that root cause level definitely.
Speaker 1:Is there anything that we haven't talked about yet that you want to touch base on when it comes to preparing for conception?
Speaker 2:You know, I think the only thing to add is just a big picture idea, which is about empowerment, right when we, you know, we're trying to figure out our health, our hormones, our fertility, and there's like all this information from different places and sometimes it can be overwhelming, it can be confusing, and so I always come back for to wanting people to really feel empowered in their own bodies, and I think this consists of two things.
Speaker 2:The first thing is knowing all of our different options and truly understanding like the whole possible range, and so this is why I think podcasts like yours are awesome, because they help people to understand, you know, the whole range of options and what's going on, and having just like that baseline understanding. So that's really important. But there's a second piece to to full empowerment, which is being free of Judgment about whatever choice we make, which both is External judgment but also internal judgment, and so being able to See all the options in front of us, understand how our bodies work and what could be a good choice, but not being, you know, pressured by either someone else or it's and this is like the sneaky one by ourselves, right and like feeling like I like need to do it this way because I Feel that that's like the right way.
Speaker 2:No, it's like there's no wrong choices. You are the expert of your body and, yeah, how I just really encourage everyone to like take a moment with that full empowerment. Yeah, no judgment.
Speaker 1:I think that that is really so important. I think that, yeah, just listening to your intuition and be, you know, just not being hard on yourself and being there to kind of observe how the how the journey goes and Building that relationship for yourself, all those things I think are so important. And I guess I'm just really glad to Know that there are books gals like you out there who are out here to help spread the same message and share this information and, just coming back to what you said at the start there, to help empower women to Understand themselves and their bodies and their cycles. It's been really great having you on today. I've really enjoyed this conversation and I would love to know where can listeners connect with you more and after the show.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Yeah, thanks so much for having me, bridget, it's been super fun. So folks can follow me over on Instagram. My business and Instagram is the Jewish fertility project. So I mentioned at the top you know this the connection, the interweaving of the science and the spirituality, and so for me that's looked like really connecting in with my own ancestral lineage of Judaism, and so that's sort of the lens that I bring to connecting those two. But whether or not folks you know resonate with the Jewish piece or not, I'm still super happy to connect. So go ahead, yeah, follow me over on Instagram at Jewish fertility project. Feel free to reach out in a DM with any questions that folks have.
Speaker 2:And then I also just want to let folks know I am relaunching my free guide, preconception health, so it's going to be have a whole section on Tips and tricks in terms of the nutrition and lifestyle piece. So a lot of what we got into today, but then so much more. And then it also the second part of it is a tracker to help people to tune into their body, their symptoms, start to be able to notice patterns and really Work that intuition muscle that we're just talking about, about really, yeah, what is my body Trying to communicate to me, and what am I hearing from it? So I hope that that is a super helpful guide. You can find that in the link in bio on my Instagram.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Thanks, and we will. I'll go ahead and drop that link in the show notes as well, so people could just scroll on down there and get the link to that guide as well. Well, thank you so much, emma, for being here with me on I'm hormonal this week. I loved having you on Everybody.
Speaker 1:If you enjoyed this conversation, go ahead, connect with Emma.
Speaker 1:You can get all of her links there in the show notes so you can reach out to her. You can also reach out to me if you have any questions or if you have any requests For topics that you'd like me to cover on upcoming episodes. If you found this conversation to be helpful, consider sending it to someone who you know that would find it insightful as well. And if you liked it and you want my next episodes if I Hormonal to show up automatically in your feed, then click the subscribe button before you end the episode. Last but not least, if you're considering one-on-one coaching or wondering if it would be a good fit for you, then click on the link in the show notes to set up a free call with me. I'm so grateful for you listening, especially for those of you who have made it all the way to the end here. Thank you so much and I will see you next week. I Think you're really gonna like this conversation that I have today with Emma, again about preparing for.