#97 Helping Women Conceive with Dr. Aumatma Simmons

The information provided in this podcast is educational and not intended to diagnose or treat medical conditions.

Dr. Donnie Wilson struggled for decades to solve her numerous health issues and heal her body. But with focused determination, she healed herself. And in doing so, she discovered the Dr. Donnie stress recovery Protocol. On this show, you're going to hear from doctors, nutritionists and Experts along with Dr. Donnie, who will give practical advice and wisdom to help heal your body. This is how humans heal.

Welcome back to how humans heal. I'm Dr. Donni, and today I'm excited to introduce you to my friend, Dr. Amatma. She is a naturopathic doctor and an expert in fertility. Thank you so much for joining me today. Amatma, so good to see you.

Thank you so much. Thanks so much for having me. Dr. Dhani, it's like, such an honor to be talking with you today. So thanks for having me.

You're welcome. And you know, I love helping women get pregnant, too. It is such a joy, and it's so amazing to get to be part of that part of their life of, you know, achieving pregnancy, have getting through and preventing a miscarriage and continuing on with a healthy pregnancy. It's just such a right. It's such an amazing and beautiful thing. And so thank you so much for helping women and families to do that. Tell us more, like, what led you to choose this as your specialty?

Yeah, that's a great question. I had a little bit of a personal journey with it. I was married to this man that I had. We had just basically gotten married, like, six months prior to this, and he started talking about having kids. And that was literally, like, I don't know why, but I had not thought about it before then. And then, like, everything that I learned in naturopathic school around, oh, fertility drops off of Cliff, and all the things that we know of it, like, kind of flooded in so simultaneously. Like, I'm with this person and everything in my body is like, no, don't do that. And.

I didn't understand why because we had barely just gotten married. But, like, something in me knew it was just not the right person or whatever.

That relationship ended up not working out very quickly. I call it my practice marriage.

We learn a lot, don't we?

Yes, we do. And. But I'm ever so grateful because asking those questions really led me down. Researching and trying to figure out if everything that I knew about fertility, which at the time was very little, honestly.

If what I knew was the right thing for me or if I believe if I even needed to buy into all of this. And what I came out with was that the 35 thing, yes, age does impact fertility, but no, it's not a drop off of a cliff. And.

And I really came out with, like, there's just so much that natural medicine has to offer. So I started talking about it, and I wasn't expecting that people would just, like, come in droves with, like, hey, can you help me with my fertility? But that ended up happening just out of me being who I am and being like, oh, that's bullshit. Like, we don't have to buy into this whole 35 myth. And. And then people saw me doing it, and they were like, wait, what are you doing? How are you preserving your fertility? How are you waiting till later in life? And just, like, all of the things that I put into place in my early 30s really turned around for me what my belief was in natural medicine and what I thought that we as naturopathic doctors have to offer for this world. And I think it's, like, so incredible, right? It's just so powerful. And I remember, like, creating a map of all of the things that underlie fertility issues.

And by the end of it, just crying. I'm like, I focus on fertility without knowing that I focused on fertility my entire life.

That's so cool, because I'm thinking of things like, everything from dietary changes that can help with fertility to nutrients, getting the right nutrients or addressing nutrient deficiencies, to herbs that help with ovarian function and everything that goes into ovulating and getting pregnant. Right? It's true. There's homeopathic, naturopathic remedies. There's so much we can do, really, from this, like, we call a naturopathic or natural approaches. That's not going to happen in the regular gynecologist's office or even in the reproductive endocrinologist's office. They don't talk about any of that, Right?

Yeah. Yeah. And I think for us as naturopathic doctors, like, we have the ability to empower women, right? We have the ability to say, I understand what your labs are. I see what's happening. Here's why this might be such a struggle for you. And you don't have to be afraid, but rather you can embrace your body and work with your body to really get those positive outcomes. I literally just got off the phone with someone who's 41. Her doctor was her reproductive endocrinologist. Kind of scared her. And the way she put it was like, he basically told her that she had wasted her life because she waited till 41 to start having children if.

They say scary stuff to people, Right?

Yeah. And it just, like, it breaks my heart, and it makes me want to cry. At the same time, it's like, how can we say this? Like, how can physicians, doctors trained in the medical world come out with, like, such little belief in the body's ability to do what it's designed to do, Right? And where I think. Yeah, and that's where I think, like, we as naturopathic doctors just have such an incredible opportunity to hold a different space, Right? And it's not the space of, oh, anybody can get pregnant, because that's not what I'm saying. But the space of, hey, here's the reality of what's happening with your body right now. It doesn't come with any judgment of what you've done up to this point. It really comes with, this is where we're at. This is where you want to get to. Let's figure out a plan and, like, a course to get you there. And I think that, like, yeah, I just. I, Like, I am always the stand for women and couples to have babies when they're ready. And she was like. Even the. Her very first thing, when she said to me, she was like, you know, doc, I met my partner, like, much later in life. We got married at 39. It hasn't happened for the last two years. I don't know. Like, I don't know what's happening. But she. She was just, like, so apologetic about it. And I'm like, it's okay. Like, it's okay for us to find our people later in life. It's okay for us to have children later in life if that's what we are choosing. But I think that, like, what we can do is be empowered around it. And had I talked to her at 37, I would have said, hey, like, here's the set of tasks that you want to do every single year. Just like, a check in so you know where your body's at, you know what it's doing. And here are some things to put into place that you can use to prevent.

Or not prevent, but to really, like, support and preserve your fertility within your body for later in life.

Yeah, it's. It reminds me, like, so much of the time. What I find is that even when I'm helping a patient with something else, let's say we're fending off HPV and addressing an abnormal pap smear, or let's say they have digestive issues, sibo or bloating, by the time we Address whatever other issue there is. We've already improved their fertility. So much of fertility has to do with, I think of it like creating your healthiest body, being your healthiest self, even beyond the physical level. I would say like even to the psycho emotional level. What do you find with that? Do you find that there's a. I mean, you're already mentioning that there's a mindset shift that you help people to achieve, like to shift from a state of fear and shame into a state of empowerment. But how are there other aspects of it that's a shift in emotional, spiritual state that gets them into that more fertile place?

Yeah. I do think that this might just be a reflection of me, so I always am hesitant to generalize, but I do think that fertility is the struggle of the type A perfectionist. Right. So it's like the number of the percentage of women that I work with that are self identified type A's, self identified perfectionists. And my approach with it, like I, for myself, I'm a recovering perfectionist. And the way that I phrase it is, listen, your, your tendency and your natural mode is going to want to do this program 100% or 110%. Your goal is to do it like 85%.

I love it.

And they're like, wait, what? You're basically giving me permission to fall off of my plan, to cheat, to do all of the things. And I'm like, yeah, exact. And like being able to relax is so. And I don't mean this in like a, a demeaning way because I feel like a lot of times when people say, oh, I'm having difficulty getting pregnant and then the response is, oh, you just need to go on vacation and relax. And it's like, yeah, if I could relax, that would be great, but I can't.

Right.

It's like it not possible. Yeah.

Right.

So we get into this state of like, you feel like the clock is ticking and I only have so many months or whatever cycles left and it becomes this big stress. Right. It's like that, what if I can't get pregnant and what does that mean about my relationship and what does that mean about me and what does that mean about my life? And it just becomes this big snowball of stress. And of course we know that stress prevents the ovaries from working optimally.

Yeah, yeah. And, and like most people, I'll ask, like, how stressed are you on a scale of 1 to 10? And they're like, oh, I don't know, a 2 or 3. And these are women that are like high functioning badasses. And you like, your stress is not at a 2 or 3. There's no way they're like, but I relax and I took time off of work and all of these things. And yet like, fertility alone is a stressor in and of itself. But then they have the tendency to just stress and try to control everything, right? So the more people are able to relax, the more they're able to like, release control where they don't feel like they have to like control each and every part of their body and each and every part of their fertility, but that they really are getting into a new rhythm and a new place with things they can kind of like relax. And I feel like the relaxation happens best when.

When they've seen the power of their body to heal. Right? So perfect. How humans heal is like, it's really like they're going on this journey and the greater, the better they feel about themselves, the better they feel in their bodies, the, the more trust they're gaining in. Like, oh, right, my body knows how to do this, my body knows how to ovulate. I just need to like, move out of the way and let it do that.

And those are the, like, the little shifts of transformation that are happening along the way. And we're getting to that point where I sometimes, like, I see it as a masculine, feminine dynamic where the feminine is really this like, ability to receive, right? It's like, how can I just let go of everything and be present and, and receive. Receive the baby spirit, receive the love, receive the, you know, we can get graphic with it if we want, just receiving all of the different things. Whereas the masculine is really about giving, taking care of, protecting and all of those things. So.

Like, oftentimes this pattern kept repeating early on in my fertility career where the woman would be holding this very masculine energy. And the guys feel it like they're like, oh, she's a control freak. Like, she, what she does, that's okay. And they, they have learned to relax and, and instead let her take care of it, which is okay in most parts of life until you're trying to have a baby. And, and then what we would see is like the transformation. The woman would start to relax and let go and then all of a sudden the guys are like, back into their masculine mode and their sex drive goes up, their testosterone levels goes up, their sperm get healthier and more vibrant. And.

That is like, almost feels instantaneous because we haven't done anything to change the male's perspective. It's just the woman, but as soon as the woman, like, or I'm saying this woman and man. But this can apply for same sex relationships too, where the woman that's going to be carrying the child, if she's able to relax and receive the other partner, has space to be more in that masculine energy and they want to take care of everything and they want to be in, in the driver's seat, but they just have never had the opportunity to. So as soon as that shift happens, I can almost like hang my hat up and be like, okay, they're good. They're gonna, it's gonna happen very soon.

We've got the right ingredients for the recipe now.

Yeah, yeah. So if. And those shifts are like so much more subtle than the hormones and egg quality and sperm health and all of those, and those are just as important. But the emotional spiritual stuff, that's like so powerful and it's so beautiful to watch.

One of the guys. Very early on, this woman had, she would just come down to my office. She drove an hour to get to the office. Within 15 minutes she'd be looking at her watch and be like, hey, doc, I gotta go. When are we gonna be done with this appointment? And I was like, you realize the first appointment is like three hours.

And. And she would just be like, constantly, go, go, go, go, go. And it did. It took me a Saturday appointment with her virtually to put together that she was this control freak. And then I called her out on it because.

For three or four months, and I was like, so how's your relationship with control? And she just started bawling and she was like, I'm a control freak. I've been that way my whole life. And. And then. So I gave her a homeopathic remedy. And. And then her husband called me two weeks later and he was like, what did you give my wife? And I was like, I don't know what happened?

And he was like, whatever it is, can I just have a gallon of it? Because I don't know who that person I married was, but I like this person way better. And like two weeks later they got pregnant. And this man who couldn't find a job for three years had managed to find a job. Make like he was holding all this energy, which I didn't know about, like, not being able to take care of them and like not being able to be the man.

And he wasn't saying any of these things, but she was like, she had a badass job making like six figures, like high six figures. And she was like, there's no way I can take time off of work. There's no way, like, I'm pulling all the weight. He can't seem to get a job and can't get his act together. And all of those pieces just, like, magically clicked into place as soon as she was able to relax and let go and stop controlling him, that he found a job, six figures replacing her income. She took. She ended up taking a year off of work, which would have never been heard of for her.

But she was like, oh, like, he can do this. He can do this, Doc. I was like, yeah, he could. He's very capable.

So just like, you know, it takes. It takes some of those experiences to say, actually, there's a different possibility that I'm not even open to because I can't back up and take a step, take a breather.

It's amazing to me, and I see this, too, over and over.

The past couple decades that I've been observing patients too. And I love this story because I think it really shows people.

The ovaries. As much as we would like our ovaries to be able to respond to our thoughts, now it's time to ovulate and get pregnant. We want to be able to tell our ovaries what to do. You know what I mean? That same control, it comes out like that. Like, okay, this is what I'm doing now, actually, it's like the ovaries.

They don't respond well to that. The ovaries, like, they are. They're very much responsive to our thoughts and our emotions and energies. Like you're saying. I completely have seen that too, where it's like, with the ovaries in particular, of all the parts of our body, the ovaries in particular, really need us to just kind of, like, trust them and create. Create an environment of safety in a lot of ways. Like you're saying in. In that woman's case, safety in her relationship. But I also think, right, like, safety in your l.

In terms of circadian rhythms, light and darkness, exposure. Safety in terms of exposure to enough calories and nutrients. When the ovaries feel safe and they're getting all these safety signals, then they're going to do what they're supposed to do. But from what you started with learning to trust your body and trust that your ovaries will. They know how to ovulate when they have the right signals?

Yeah, absolutely. I've heard it said the ovary is the overachiever.

And I love that so much because it literally is like the ovary wants to produce. The ovary will go above and beyond everything else. But.

The balance or the transformation is really to not overachieve. Right? Like we don't need to overachieve. We're perfect the way we are. And if we can help get women to that place of like we're perfect the way we are, then things magically transform.

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And like the point you made earlier even if you're in your 40s. Right. So it's like you have to kind of like sometimes it's this careful balancing act of yes, being aware of time and age but also kind of like not being so stressed by that or attached to that.

Yeah, yeah. And, and like age is representative in the, in the fertility world with a number called anti mullerian hormone amh which you know, I'm sure. But that number is like so prioritized in fertility medicine.

Oh my gosh. And people get so afraid of it.

Oh my God, my AMH is too low. And like to the point where I'm, I don't know who the doctor was so I can't even talk about that if I wanted to. But like I've heard doctors tell women that an AMH of 2 something is too low and I'm just like, you know, there's not science to that. Like there is no science to that. Yeah. Like an AMH of 2 at 3:32,33,34 is not too low. It's fine.

I agree.

Yeah. And like a higher number isn't magically going to mean anything different unless you're doing ivf. So like really weighing out and I think that that's One of the biggest myths, right, is like, the age thing, but then simultaneously the AMH thing, which, when most people understand that AMH really came about as observation that.

As the number declined below 1.06, that's the magic number in the fertility medicine world, 1.06 or lower meant that women would have poorer IVF outcomes. This is specific to IVF. It doesn't mean anything about your fertility. It doesn't mean anything about whether or not you'll have a child. I think it's, like, misrepresented because your reproductive endocrinologist is only doing ivf. That's what they're good at. And if their success rates are lower at below 1.06, that doesn't mean you can't have a baby below 1.6. It just means that IVF may not be your best option or your best friend. But there are lots of other things that you should explore. And we have, like, we have women who have had two babies after an AMH of 0.3.

Which is low even for us. It's kind of low. But, like, these women were told, there's no way you're going to have babies of your own. And then they go on not only to get baby number one, but then a year later, they have baby number two, and they're like, what? I just. I was gonna throw in the hat and, like, go do egg donors and whatever. And it's. It really takes us a step back to think about our bodies as a number and to think about it as a correlation to whether or not we can have children, where really it's a outcome of a specific procedure. And when you can disconnect those two things, I don't know about you, but I think it's still an important number. It still gives us some information.

But you don't know how to use it. When do we apply it? No, I think. I'm so glad you brought this up, because.

In some ways, we wish we could have the answer right. You know, am I going to get pregnant? And when. We wish we knew those answers. And so sometimes I think that's when we're searching for a number that's going to give us some sort of information, but you might as well just be rolling the dice anyway, because it's not that it's not going to give you the right information you're looking for. There is no such. There is no way to tell that. The only way is to. To just. If you decide you're like, hey, I want to try to get pregnant Then just putting in what feels to you as your. What the effort you feel comfortable with, which ends up being, to me, the effort to improve your health overall. Right. No matter what, you end up healthier. And then does that end up allowing your body to, you know, have a successful pregnancy? But there's, there's no way to know for sure going into it. And sometimes we. It's very uncomfortable in the unknown, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah. The, the unknown that's not ever fun and not like it's full filled with questions of like, oh, but will this happen for me? And I'll tell you another quick story. There's a 41 year old that I've been working with for about six, six, seven months. And when they started with me, they were open. They were like, we want to do the natural stuff. We want to figure out what's going on with our bodies and, and then we'll see. And they get to the end of that. Her AMH started at a.16 or something like that, which is really low. And I told her that and ended at a 0.1. So it hadn't, it hadn't improved that much and it was surely like slowly going down. So I was like, listen, if, if I were not doing my job, I would say nothing. But I do my job and I have to tell you what your odds are and all of the things. Right. Like, I want to make sure that you're making an informed decision.

Yes.

So.

So I said to her, if you like, your best case scenario, even when you started with us was egg donor. We had that conversation initially. Your best case scenario still is an egg donor, but she'll like, she'll put this on a cross. Like, she's like, I feel so much better. I feel different. My hormones are better. I can see the reflection on basal body temperatures. Like, she's been doing all of the things, things, and her body's like, amazingly responsive to all of the things. So in a way, like, those six months have massively changed and transformed her health. But we're still not at the point where AMH went up. So I was like, listen, I wouldn't put too much more time into waiting. At this point. You need to figure out, like, what is the next step for you guys? And so they went on the exploration and they, they came back just two days ago with letting me know that they do not want to do anything else. And they're like, we're just gonna take our chances and if it doesn't happen, we're at Peace with that. We're grateful that we feel healthier at the very least, and we're gonna, like, relax and trust our bodies. And this was like her. If you saw her when she came in, she was like, oh, my God. Oh, my God, like, is this ever going to happen for me? You know? So for her to be like, I'm relaxed and chill and I'm okay with whatever happens was a total change, total shift. So it is. It is okay to not go push forward and do the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. And, like, I don't have a happy ending to this story yet, but. But the happy ending for me is really that she can walk out of this experience with, like, I feel good about where my body is right now, and I'm okay with whatever happens. If it's in our cards, cool. If it's not, it's totally fine. And, like, who's to say that she's not going to get pregnant? Like, we don't know that she actually did. She got pregnant and had a loss. Long story. But.

It is like, her body already is proving that she can get pregnant because she's been on this journey for four years and never even conceived.

So it's. I feel like there are a lot of different paths that people can go down, and we get so caught up in the. The one path that seems like the magic path, when in fact it's not that outcome for everybody. And oftentimes it's like, we're not having the con. The difficult conversations of, like, hey, this is what it looks like for you and your body and where you guys are at, and it's okay for you to say, we don't want. That.

Is at the end of the day, it's your choice.

Yeah. And I think you're making such a good point, like, just really, really acceptance of, like, this is my life, this is my body. Because ultimately then you're going to be living the rest of your life yourself. So you want to be. Get to that place of feeling at peace with your experience of whatever the outcome is. Right?

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So I'm. I'm excited for them. You know, I feel like, just so much clarity and like, we're good. Our life is good. We have a really good life, and we're grateful for what we have, and we're grateful that we're healthier now than we were six months ago.

And we'll see and we'll see what's in the cards and just let it go.

You do hear about And I see it in cases too. Recently, a case I was helping with where, like you mentioned, they're very focused, doing everything possible, doing the 110, you know, and then as soon as they decided we're good, we're going to put our focus on something else. Now we're at peace. We put in the effort and we accept that this is what's going to happen. And then within two months, she got pregnant. So it's like sometimes. And you can't count on that either.

No, you can't.

Sometimes. Sometimes it's just when you really let go and release the possibility and just kind of let your brain. Because our brains get so hyper focused sometimes on things in especially fertility. Right. When you can just let it go because it's. You might be tracking when am I ovulating and when do I need to add this hormone treatment. There's so many things to keep track of that it takes over your world sometimes.

Yeah, absolutely.

Just having a break from all that. Like, I just don't, you know, sometimes you're like, I just don't even want to know when I ovulate or when my period's coming or I have to do a pregnancy test. I don't even want to think about it anymore. And then sometimes that's what's needed is just a little break. Right?

Yeah.

Wow. Now I know you wrote about this and your protocol for fertility in your book. Remind me the name of your book.

It's called Fertility Secrets. What your doctor didn't tell you about baby making.

Ah, yes. So good. Fertility secrets. And so it's available at Amazon, right?

It is. It is, yeah.

Wow, that's awesome. And how else, like if someone wants to learn more from you or get in touch with you, how should they do that?

Yeah. So I'm easy to find on Instagram at the holistic or not the holistic fertility doc. Oh, sorry. Why don't I remember my Instagram holistic fertility expert with underscores in the middle. So holisticfertilityexpert. Holistic fertility expert. And then our website is holisticfertilityinstitute.com awesome.

Holistic fertility institute. I mean, that sounds like already such a resource for people. And I know you also are training other practitioners in your protocol. So even if people are not, if they are working directly with you or working with. With a practitioner who's trained with you, they can get access to.

What you've seen work for people. I mean, that's the thing. I think it makes such a difference when you're searching for help and already hearing how you have such a beautiful support system for people to help them mind, body, and spirit to get to their most fertile selves, but to know that they can reach you virtually or to work with someone who is trained by you. Right.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think that, you know, I felt. I felt like this natural, functional, holistic approach to fertility is just so needed in the world, and there are not enough of us. There really aren't. So to be able for. There are 10 practitioners that we've graduated who are located all around the world.

From a mentorship program. And then we have another round of another cohort starting in a couple of weeks. So we'll have another 10 at the end of this year. So really, it's. It's like I want everywhere accessible practitioners who can say with confidence and the backing to say, like, I know that this will work, and I know when it won't work, but I really know when it will work, and I can lay out the process and the path to get you there. I think that's just so powerful, and I would love to see the world in which holistic, functional fertility is the first step, not the last step. It's not an afterthought, right?

Absolutely.

Like, really, we should be making this accessible to everyone so that there are no. We're not taking chances, and we're not saying, oh, don't do anything for five years and then go walk into an IVF clinic. Like, that's just not a good stepping stone.

Oh, my gosh. It's such a good point. And I completely agree with you. Like, I think so many women do feel like their doctor says, yeah, try on your own for Even if it's six months or a year, it's like, well, what if. Even if you already can start with some diet changes and nutrients, and even if you just start at a low level of support for your fertility, your chances go up so much.

So much you can just do. I feel like most people can do 80% of the basic stuff and probably get amazing results. There are people that I'll talk to and say, actually, you don't need to do a whole lot. Here's a diy, like, do this yourself first. And if in three months you're still not pregnant, come, come back, reach out again.

We'll take it to the next level. Yeah, what's missing? What don't we. What information don't we have? Maybe then you do some other testing and you go, okay, now let's go to the next level.

Yeah, yeah. And like, so often natural medicine is like, oh, it's going to take so long, it's going to take forever. And it's like, no, this stuff, you put it into place, it works in, like, six to eight weeks. You should be able to see a tangible difference in your life, in your hormones, in your periods within three, three months or so. So I think that's so different. And, like, imagine if every reproductive center that has a waiting list of sometimes a year long, every single one of those people were like, like, here's a DIY program for you to do this for now.

Yeah.

And then if you're still not pregnant, then come to your appointment. But, oh, my gosh, I agree. It's a much better plan and for women to not feel alone. And a lot of times in the beginning of pregnancy, like, when you first find out you're pregnant, there's all the women also feel very alone because they're not going to meet with the obstetrician or prenatal provider for several weeks sometimes, and they end up with a pregnancy loss. And that's also not addressed well in conventional care unless you had multiple miscarriages. And even then they don't do that much to help. Whereas there's so much we can do to help prevent a miscarriage. Right. And be there in that first few weeks of pregnancy to help try to prevent a miscarriage.

Yeah, absolutely. I feel like, obviously, don't wait till you're pregnant to reach out to us, but if you are pregnant, I do think that there is the proactive care that's different from what you're gonna do with your obgyn, which is wait till nine weeks before you go in for your initial appointment. By nine weeks, a lot of women have already had a miscarriage. A lot of those are happening really early on and are really preventable. So I feel like there is just so much. There's a big gap in how women are being supported through this part of their life. And fertility is one of those things. It's like, oh, wait six months to a year before we even do testing. Like, anybody should have access to basic hormone tests whenever they want. Like, I shouldn't need to. And I went through this with myself. I was 36, 37, and I knew that I was planning to get pregnant a year after that point. So I was like. I went to my OB and I was like, hey, can you order some basic blood work for me? And she knows that I'm a naturopathic doctor. So she was like, she understood What I was asking her, but her response was, no, you don't need these tests. Have you tried for six months at least? And I was like, no.

But I know when my hormones are out of whack.

And she was like, why not do something here?

I was like, why wouldn't I start preparing for this? And she was like, you don't need these tests. And then literally like 40 minutes later, because I continued arguing my point.

And she was just like, fine, I'll order these tests, but insurance is not going to cover it, so it's going to cost you $3,000. And I was like, ah, I'll just get the test myself. It's going to be like $130. No, thanks. Thanks.

And that's a lot of times it's insurance that's determining what they order. And then you have to think like, hey, do I want health insurance to determine my fate? You know, like, no, if insurance isn't going to pay, then there's other ways to get. And you don't have to be paying $3,000. Like you said, there's out of pocket rates that are much lower.

Exactly. So I feel like we're living in the world where fertility is seeing lots of innovation and there's lots of startups and things that are doing really cool things in the field of fertility because there's this huge need. There's a gap between what the status or conventional medicine can offer and what's actually available, utilizable and proactive care. That's so different. So I always encourage women, you know, you don't have to wait six to 12 months. I think that's the. One of the worst things we can do because we're literally for six months. Then at the minimum we're trying to get pregnant. We're stressing ourselves out because it's, it's not happening and we may not even be ovulating or we may be like at a point where the hormones are out of whack and it wasn't going to happen anyway. Or the sperm are not optimal. Right. Like the guys don't even come into this conversation, but they should.

So there's just so many factors that, that if we tested sooner, we would know, like, oh, these things are actually perfectly fine. Here are some lifestyle things you can do. Go do those first. Or here are legitimate things that are out of whack. Let's address them. Let's rebalance and optimize your body and then you try and you're gonna have a very different outcome. And. And it's just unfortunate that we go from 0 to 100, which is IVF for me, without doing any steps in the middle. Whereas those steps in the middle could, A, improve your IVF outcomes at the minimum, but B, really probably get you there faster and way less expensive than going through cycle after cycle not knowing why it's not happening. Happening.

No, it's such a. It's such a good point. And thank you so much for sharing that and helping to get this information out there for women. And I agree with you. I completely support this idea of filling this gap, of filling in this information so that women know that they. Because even just feeling supported and having information alone can improve your fertility. So might as well give yourself. I think we're so used to thinking we're supposed to be superhuman and do it on our own and it means something bad if we ask for help.

Like you're saying, basically, forget all of that. Asking for help is what you deserve, and we're here to help. And then you're more likely to get to where you're hoping to go because you're doing it with information and support. So, yeah, try to be gentle with yourselves and. And give yourself that support, because we're here to help you. Right?

Yeah, absolutely. And the number of times I've talked to women that I'm like, actually, your hormones look great. There's nothing going on under the surface. How about you give it a couple more months, and honest to God, like, those women will message me back later like, oh, my God, I'm pregnant. And it was literally their bodies being able to relax and.

Put aside the fear that something was wrong, but instead, like, hey, I can trust that some doctor is telling me that my hormones look great, so maybe I can just relax a little bit.

Yeah, exactly. And that's like a different level of relax than saying, like, oh, go on vacation and relax. Like that feels so flippant to me. But founding it in knowledge and understanding about your own body, that's a different kind of relaxer. Right? That's the perfect kind of relax for a type A like myself. I can be like, oh, I can relax. Okay, sure.

Yeah. You don't have to be in that fear and worry. And what did I miss and what did I do wrong? And that's what you're trying to relax out of. Yeah, exactly. Beautiful. Oh, my gosh. Well, thank you so much, mama, for joining me and sharing all your wisdom and expertise about helping women and men with their fertility and achieving their pregnancy goals or helping them come to peace with whatever that process is for themselves. Again, you're both Fertility Secrets is available so people could start there or they can go to your website, fertility holisticfertilityinstitute.com yes, yes, absolutely. I'll put that in the notes so everybody has the link and can reach out to you and your team for more support. And is there anything else you wanted to share before we go? No.

This was so great. I'm so glad that we're connected and we're sharing this information because I think we have this, this unique perspective that's going to help so many women, so many couples.

Yeah. I'd love to any of you listening. If anything like was an aha moment or really helped you, we'd love to hear about it. So please write into us and I look forward to all of you joining me again on How Humans Heal for the next episode.

Thanks for listening to How Humans Heal. If you liked this episode, leave a rating and a review. And for more resources, visit drdani.com.