3 Fertility Red Flags Your Doctor Isn't Looking For | Ep. 146

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I'm Bridget Walton, a Women's Hormone Coach helping ambitious women ages 25-40 naturally restore hormone balance, fix irregular periods, feel confident in their fertility, and resolve gut health issues without restrictive dieting.

If you struggle with missing periods, PCOS symptoms, bloating, or unpredictable cycles, this women's health podcast will teach you how to support your hormones through strategic nutrition and lifestyle changes that actually fit your busy life.

On I'm Hormonal, you'll discover natural solutions for period problems, learn how gut health impacts your hormones, and get practical hormone balance tips from a functional nutrition perspective - no more guessing what your body needs.

If you're hoping to conceive, you'll learn about three red flags--topics that probably no one has asked you about, despite them impacting your fertility and hormone balance. Listen to learn what those three things topics are and what you can do to restore balanced hormones asap.

👉 DM us on Instagram @im_hormonal - we want to hear your biggest takeaway

Chapters

• 0:00 Why “Normal” Labs Miss Fertility Clues
• 1:58 Episode Framing And Goals
• 2:53 Red Flag One: Insulin Above “Optimal”
• 6:35 How High Insulin Disrupts Hormones
• 10:33 Red Flag Two: PMS As A Root-Cause Signal
• 14:44 Nutrition, Fiber, And Hydration Basics

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

What if I told you that normal lab results don't actually mean that your fertility is optimized? You might not be entirely surprised by this, but the American medical system uses ranges that are pretty broad and they could be missing subtle imbalances that make a huge difference when you're trying to conceive or even just when you want to preserve your fertility for the future. So in this episode, I'm sharing three fertility red flags that can be hiding right in plain sight. These are things that I've talked through with some of my clients recently and which their doctors never brought up with them. Welcome to the I'm Hormonal Podcast. I'm Bridget Walton, a women's hormone coach, helping busy, ambitious women through personalized coaching and science-backed solutions. Whether you are working with me one-on-one or listening here, my goal is the same to help you stop guessing about your hormone health and start seeing real progress. So let's get into it. Alrighty. Hello and welcome. This is episode number 146. And on the podcast today, I wanted to talk about some of these red flags because, as I mentioned in the intro, what I'm gonna talk about, these three items can be really hiding in plain sight. You get your lab results back from your primary care provider. Everything looked good. Let's take a quick little visit at one of those markers again. And I also want to talk a little bit today about root causes. What do you want to ask yourself or ask your provider there, whatever phase of problem solving that you were in right now? This will be really helpful for you, give you some things to think about. If you're somebody who's listening and you're not currently on your fertility journey, these will still be important for you to consider for your overall wellness, your overall metabolic health and gut health, and all of these good things. So this is a good episode for you, regardless of where you're at in your journey. And I hope helps shed some really good context on where you can go moving forward. Let's jump right into it. The first red flag that I want to point out is one that you'll see on your lab results. In many cases, your primary care provider will order for you an insulin test when they do your kind of annual labs, or if you're like, hey, doc, something seems a little bit weird with my hormones here, let's look into it. You will oftentimes see insulin reflected on that report. Now, the thing that I want to note here, and at least, you know, I can only speak to the American medical system and what I really observe going on here, what I'm hearing from my clients, but what you'll see is that the range, the optimal range for your insulin goes up to 24. Or I guess if it's 25 or above, that's when um, you know, the medical system might say, hey girl, there's a little bit of chaos going on with your insulin, with your metabolic health. Um, and they might, you know, have a conversation with you further about that. Now, that being said, let's say your insulin is up at 20. And this actually, I had this same exact conversation with a client earlier this month because she did really in-depth lab work and her insulin was up there just about 20. Um, but it wasn't something that her provider actually mentioned or brought up to her at all. She's like, okay, cool, we're in range, we're in good shape. Now, the optimal range, though, and this is kind of coming from the functional health side of things, the optimal range for insulin is certainly much lower. So, yes, you may not have prediabetes if you have an insulin marker of 20, but you want to have it down like below 10. We're not gonna get super specific today, but this is just to say, really interrogating what is your insulin marker looking like if you've had that test done recently. Now, let's talk about why this marker is important. What is insulin and how does this even tie into fertility overall? Well, you might already be familiar with the fact that insulin is a hormone that helps your body to absorb glucose, right? You eat an apple, your blood sugar goes up, insulin is released to help your tissues, you know, to help your cells absorb and actually use that glucose. So we need insulin. It's we we don't want it to be, you know, there's a balance, I guess is the best way to say that. However, when it is too high or when it is relatively high, what that could signal is perhaps prolonged elevated levels of blood sugar, right? You or for me, grew up in the Midwest, drank a lot of soda in my life, ate a lot of sweet treats. And so having years and years of those habits could over time send a signal to my body that, hey, we need more insulin to do the same amount of work. Now, let's talk, like take a step back and talk about what can this actually look like from your day to day? So when insulin levels are higher, you may be experiencing more um erratic blood sugar levels, and that can look like irregular or inconsistent energy levels. So afternoon energy slumps. Are you really hangry? Like, are you really irritable if you have a meal that's delayed? Sometimes even waking up in the night a couple hours after you go to sleep, that could be a signal that, hey, your blood sugar is a little bit low and you your body is waking you up because I mean it's trying to tell you to go get a snack. Those are just a couple of the ways that insulin or that blood sugar dysregulation can impact your day-to-day life. It also can contribute to inflammation and stress in the body. And we know that when there is inflammation, when there is stress, when insulin and glucose levels are dysregulated and or elevated, that that can kind of inject this chaos and confusion when it comes to your sex hormones as well. So that is really the long way to say that insulin, super important indicator about your metabolic health, and your metabolic health is absolutely impactful on your fertility and your sex hormone balance. So this is another one to re-examine, have a conversation with your provider about it. Just make sure that you understand what that marker is indicating because if that is a signal to you that, hey, focus a little bit more on your blood sugar regulation and supporting optimal insulin levels, then maybe that is one of the things, or maybe that is the thing that moves the needle for you here next. Let me talk about this second red flag because it's never, well, in my experience, somebody please DM me if you have a different experience. But um, I've never heard of a provider really trying to understand what is the root cause of PMS for somebody. It's pretty common that PMS will be dismissed as something that is just that common or normal. It's not something to be worried about, just like, you know, eat some chocolate or take some ibuproven or whatever. And just to be clear, that's not my advice. I'm making fun of that advice. But this is my encouragement for you. This being the second red flag of the episode that we're talking about. If you have PMS, if it really impacts you, if you have just you are not looking forward to that time before your period starts each month, then that is important to dig more into. And let me talk about a couple of the things that could be contributing to that. So you have a few starting places. The first one I want to mention is low progesterone. Now you already know this, but progesterone is a really important marker for those of you looking to conceive because that is one of the hormones that is really instrumental in supporting the pregnancy for that, well, for the whole pregnancy, but also um for those first couple of weeks, that first trimester, you really want to have and make sure that you're having adequate levels of progesterone. So that's one of the things that could cause PMS. If that's happening, you want to start to understand, okay, well, why are my progesterone levels a little bit low? The next thing I want to suggest to you would be to look into what's going on with your digestion. If you've listened to the podcast before, you've heard me talk about digestion, and that's because it is so important for your hormonal balance. Also for your overall health, but when we're talking about hormones, we cannot not talk about digestion as well. So, for example, if you have a lot of digestive discomfort, if you aren't having complete or daily bowel movements, then that is gonna be really important. And that is going to most likely be exacerbating your PMS because the estrogen that would normally be eliminated through your stool has the opportunity to be recycled, which contributes to the picture of elevated estrogen levels. Now, the third thing I want to mention on this note is thinking about how your diet and nutrition can also influence PMS. Because, again, we're easy, we're quick to say, hey, well, take this gummy, take this thing, but let's take a step back. Let's look at this through a nutrition-first approach. Are you getting an adequate amount of fiber? And are you hydrating properly? Because if the answer to those two things are maybe not, maybe not every day, that's a really easy area for you to make change right away. So do a little audit today on how much water you're consuming, how many ounces of water fit into your water bottle, how many times are you filling that up each day, whatever that looks like for you. Um, make sure that you are drinking enough water. Just say that one more time there. When it comes to fiber, we're really just thinking about, or we are mainly thinking about vegetables and fruit in their whole form, right? So that you have the fiber, which is that structure of the vegetable. While certainly more foods have fiber than just vegetables and fruits, also honorable mention to legumes and to chia seeds, uh, getting in these whole foods, which you should be focusing on anyway. I'm sure you are, uh, eating a diet that is mostly comprised of whole, unprocessed foods, that's what's going to help get you to this fiber goal. And this is something that I work on with all of my one-on-one clients. This is something that I reflect on even myself, or this is my life. This is what I talk about every single day. Yet sometimes I can get into uh a rift, what's the term I'm looking for? And I say, oh shoot, okay, Bridget, let's take a second to assess where we're at and then let's recalibrate, right? And maybe that's what would be helpful for you as well. And let me actually mention here really quick, because I realize that I have mentioned a few times about my work with clients. So let me just clear that up for you for any of you who are new listening to this episode today, because yes, something that I do every single week and that I love to do is put together podcast episodes for you. My main thing that I do though is actually the one-on-one work to support women who have hormonal imbalances, who have digestive imbalances, and going through the process with them to use functional lab testing, to put together personalized protocols, to help them understand, you know, what's going on, how did they get to where they are now, and what's the way forward. So when I talk about my one-on-one work with clients, that's really what I'm talking about. And I like to share on the podcast when it makes sense about what are things that surprised them because you may be feeling the exact same way. So if you are like, what is she talking about? Well, that's what I'm talking about. And of course, if you ever do feel ready for one-on-one support, then I'm also here to partner with you too. Now that that's out of the way, let's move on to this red flag number three. So we've already covered insulin, we've already covered digging into the root cause of your PMS. But a third thing that I see, you know, time and again overlooked, and that my clients see overlooked when they're talking with their primary care providers, is really digging into what's going on with their gut health. And gut health is really critical for your hormone balance because a lot of your sex hormones are eliminated through your stool. Also, if there's something inflamed in your digestive system, or if there's a bacterial imbalance or you have a yeast overgrowth, or whatever it might be, well, that can be creating inflammation. And as we discussed earlier, inflammation can contribute to stress, and that can cause friction, um, cause your sex hormones to be off balance too. Now, something else that I want to mention here is this question of how well are you digesting? Because it's important to be eating well, it's important to be eating a diverse diet, to be getting in the right amount of protein and fats and carbs and figuring all of that out. But even if you have that part down, if you're not digesting your food well, then you're not able to absorb all of those nutrients. You know, I was curious to see what zinc levels are like in Americans. So actually, let me explain why why do we care about zinc anyway? Because zinc is a really important component of your stomach acid. And your stomach acid is one of the most important things that kind of kicks off the rest of your digestive system and has everything moving smoothly. I was unfortunately, well, I was surprised and disappointed to see that one study showed that two billion people on the planet as a whole are deficient in zinc. I saw another resource that said 73% of Americans are deficient in zinc, um, but I couldn't find a uh I couldn't find the source for that one. Regardless, suffice it to say, a lot of us are deficient in zinc. And when we don't have enough zinc, we don't have all of the building blocks that we need to make an adequate amount of stomach acid to then be able to break down all of the nutrients that we need. Whether, again, you're getting those nutrients from your food ideally, or if you are in that preconception phase, then are you getting the nutrients that are contained within your prenatal? So we can't talk about hormonal health and hormone balance without talking about gut health. They go together hand in hand. We're getting ready to wrap up now, but I hope this episode was helpful for you just to walk you through what are the things that I see clients come to me with where they're like, dang, why didn't anybody ask me about that before? Like, why haven't I thought about that before? And I've been trying to figure out what's going on with my period for two years now. So hopefully this helped you cut that timeline in half. If you have any questions for me, you can always connect with me on Instagram. You can find me at I'm underscore hormonal. And um, quick reminder: everything that I share with you on this podcast is for educational purposes only. It's not a replacement for medical advice or diagnosis. Now, if what we covered today resonated with you and you feel like you have already tried everything for your hormones, but you are still stuck, I want to offer you this free guide that I've put together specifically for you, specifically for women who feel like they have tried everything. Head over to imhormonal.com slash guide to grab it. And that's all for today. I will see you on the next one. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you then.