Infertility Empowered: Dr. Rachel Glubiak

Okay.

Hello, everyone.

Hi. Hi. Hi, everyone. I have Dr. Rachel Glubiak with me here today, and we're going to talk about how chiropractic can help you on your infertility journey. You know, we get a lot of— we have a lot of unanswered questions from Western medicine. And I know in my own personal journey, looking for answers outside of conventional medicine really made a huge difference in my health. And overall health is the goal and pregnancy is the outcome of that. So I wanted to bring Dr. Rachel in this morning and, and she's going to tell you a little bit about how chiropractic can impact your fertility. And for those of you like I was kind of afraid of going to a chiropractor, not knowing what to expect and kind of hearing those horror stories, we're going to put your mind at ease as well. So Rachel, thanks for joining us this morning. Tell us a little bit about, um, tell us a little bit about yourself and, um, and your practice.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. So my name is Dr. Rachel Glubiak and I'm here in Sarasota as well. Um, I'm at a practice called The Wellness Way Sarasota. So the Wellness Way is a network of clinics that are throughout the country that really focus on health restoration. So our goal is that overall holistic wellness. We use a lot of herbs, supplements, nutritional lifestyle changes to help people support their bodies naturally and really get down to the root cause of what could be contributing to whatever may be going on. So with With infertility, that's a topic specifically— hormones and fertility is a topic I'm very passionate about. I myself suffered with endometriosis for several years, and at the time— I mean, we're not ready to have children yet, but at the time I was— that was one of my biggest fears, that I wouldn't be able to have children, because that's a lot of times what they tell you. You know, you get this diagnosis and you're told, well, it's probably going to be very difficult to conceive. And unfortunately, or fortunately, that's not the case. But it's unfortunate that many people are told that because a lot of women go on to then believe that and just take a medication maybe to kind of COVID up those symptoms, suppress the pain, and get through the month. But what is it really doing to their body and how is that affecting their physiology? Because when we understand really the body from a holistic perspective, we know that women are meant to conceive. And when someone is struggling with fertility, that just means that there's, there's a roadblock. So our goal in our office and my goal as a chiropractic physician is to help uncover what that roadblock may be. So sometimes it is hormonal imbalances, sometimes it's toxicity. It could be stress. It could be a number of different things. So as chiropractors, we really are more, more so nervous system doctors. A lot of times people see chiropractic as like neck pain, back pain, which it's, it's common to think that. Yeah. And it's unfortunate that a lot of people aren't really taught from a younger age what chiropractic really is because our goal is to address the entire nervous system. So it's that brain-body communication. So when you think about hormones or the reproductive system and, you know, what has to happen for you to be able to conceive, we need optimal signaling from the brain down the spinal cord, out those nerves to control those reproductive organs, to send signals to the ovary to actually create hormone throughout the month. So when we're adjusting someone, yes, we have patients that come in with pain and of course we want to help them get out of that pain, but The practice we, you know, the people we see in our practice are more so looking for that overall wellness. They're coming in because they want to prevent chronic illness, they want to prevent pain, and they want to really optimize their nervous system function. So with chiropractic care and fertility, it's all about addressing any nervous system interference, because if your brain is not able to send those messages optimally to the rest of your body for hormone production and for optimal balancing, maybe a woman will struggle to conceive. So that's our goal really as chiropractors, to focus on really getting someone out of that sympathetic fight or flight state where so many people are kind of stuck in nowadays, right? Our world is stressful. I mean, the— and stress is not just mental, but it's physical and it's chemical. So the toxicity we're exposed to— every time we're adjusting someone, we're helping to shift them from that sympathetic state over to that parasympathetic state, which is really where you need to be in order for having optimal digestion and reproduction and hormone balance. So yeah, yeah, we're more than just pain doctors like a lot of people think, but really it's focusing on the nervous system.

That's amazing. That was an amazing explanation. I don't know if you guys have ever met somebody that everything that they say, you're just like, yes, yes. And if you have been here for 5 minutes, you know that Dr. Rachel and I are very aligned in detoxing for overall health, in addressing the central nervous system. I want to highlight something that she said really quickly because The reason that I feel so excited to connect with Dr. Rachel is because if you missed what she said, there's 100 offices called The Wellness Way around the country. So wherever you're watching, there might be a Wellness Way clinic, chiropractic clinic near you, and they all operate under the same philosophy. So it's nice to kind of have a known entity that you're going in and you know, you can tell them that you saw Dr. Rachel here and ask them questions. We're going to go into a deeper dive over in the, the boot camp with Dr. Rachel. But, um, the other thing that I wanted to touch on is we talk about, um, if anybody is going through infertility, they've been told, um, unwanted advice is just relax, right? Which you want to punch somebody in the face if you're going through infertility and somebody tells you that. And it's not wrong, right? Because what we're talking about is what you're talking about, which is that nervous system connection that creates all kinds of hormone cascades in terms of adrenals and cortisol and things like that, right? So the reason that I bring that up is because, as Dr. Rachel said, you might not have a pain in your shoulder or your back or whatever, but you're just stressed from going through infertility. Infertility is extremely stressful. So chiropractic can help you from that standpoint. So what, what kind of things would you do if somebody came in with not a necessarily like a skeletal complaint, but just, hey, I have infertility. This is a really stressful experience for us. What kind of treatments would they what would they get?

Yeah, so because we're Wellness Way Clinic, our office is a little bit different, um, from a standard chiropractic point of view. A lot of times it'll start with x-rays or some sort of scan where you can really assess that nervous system, um, from like an objective point of view. Because like you said, it's not always pain. And I always try to educate my patients that pain is often one of the last things to show up And one of the first things to go away a lot of times when we start getting someone adjusted. So even though their pain may be gone within a week of getting under chiropractic care, it doesn't necessarily mean that we've addressed that nervous system component. And even not having the pain to begin with doesn't mean that it's not the nervous system that could be affecting their infertility at that time. So in our office, we do start with X-rays. Of course, if someone's not pregnant at the time, um, we will take X-rays and go over those X-rays with the patient so that they can really understand what we're looking for. So we take full spine x-rays because it's all connected. So we'll look at the neck, the mid-back, and low back and talk to the patient about what certain areas in the spine control and how, you know, maybe seeing rotation in the low back could actually be impacting their poor digestion or reproduction or whatever it may be. And then because we're a Wellness Way office, we do talk about lab testing. So that's one of the main things that sets us apart as a chiropractic office. All of the Wellness Way clinics throughout the country really focus on in-depth lab testing, and that's the biggest difference because there are so many people that have had their labs tested. You know, when you go through infertility, you're going from doctor to doctor and they're running different tests, but the tests they run oftentimes is really incomplete, and it's not testing that really can help us from a holistic perspective, determine inflammation and things like that, right? Yes, exactly. So one of the most common tests we run is food allergy testing, which may sound silly because it's like, I'm here for infertility, why are we looking at food allergies? But one of the most inflammatory things could be food, right? And you may be eating kale and spinach and fruit and veggies and maybe all food that we think is healthy and it is healthy food. But if for you that's a threat to your immune system because you have an allergy or sensitivity to that food, that can absolutely be that roadblock that's preventing your body from being able to conceive. And that's where it's different for everyone, right? What my body wants me to be eating is very different from what you should be eating to fuel your body. So the food allergy testing is really, really helpful. And that's a blood draw. So we do have a phlebotomist in our office. A lot of the Wellness Way clinics either have a phlebotomist who maybe works in the office a couple of days a week, or they send their patients to a local lab who will draw their labs for them. Because we do work with very specific labs, you can't really get good food allergy testing from anyone. It's not the type of food allergies that, you know, swell your throat up like anaphylactic type of reactions. So that's where your medical, you know, your MD allergist will be able to do skin prick testing, sometimes blood work to uncover immediate allergies. But what we're looking for, it's called IgG allergies, and it's something that takes hours to days to even weeks to occur. So maybe what I ate for dinner last night, I felt fine after eating. But let's say, you know, if I ate wheat, maybe I felt fine, but today I have fatigue or joint pain or constipation or, you know, some of those symptoms that indicate inflammation in the body over time.

Stuffy nose, right? And what we consider like seasonal allergies sometimes can be food-related allergies based on what we're eating during the season, right?

Yes. You know, we see that often.

Yeah.

Yep. Absolutely.

Instead of environmental.

So exactly. So food allergy testing is one of the most common tests we do run because it really can benefit everyone. And then we focus on nutrition specific to that patient once we receive those results.

I love that.

So it will be very different for everyone.

Yeah.

And then of course, we have to look at hormones. So a lot of times my patients who are coming in for infertility, they've had some sort of hormone testing done. Sometimes they haven't. That always shocks me. I'm like, how have they been trying to put you on different drugs for infertility if they haven't even looked at your hormones? But I will check hormones and we do run hormone testing very in-depth. So it's important for me to see both blood work as well as urine testing. So through the blood work, that's testing the common estradiol, all of your estrogens, your testosterone, progesterone, DHT, your hormones, to really see what your ovaries are producing. And I like to run that at a specific time of the month when hormones are at their peak. And then we also compare that to what's called the Dutch test, which is a urine metabolite test. So that is one of my favorite tests to run because whether it's a woman struggling with infertility or just hormonal imbalances where maybe they have PCOS or endometriosis or just they know something's not quite right. And a lot of times it's those women that have had the blood work done and they're told that everything looks normal, yet they know that something's wrong, right? We run the Dutch test and I can see exactly why they're feeling the way they're feeling because the answers may not just be on the blood work. So by running the urine test, I can understand more of how their liver is actually converting their hormones and metabolizing hormones, which is a really, really important component to hormone balance and fertility. So those are common ones when it comes to fertility, but it really— it's different for every person, every woman, every couple, because I've had patients that their hormones did— we ran in-depth hormone testing and they looked perfect. And to me, it just tells me it's not the hormones that's off. That's not the roadblock for them. So that's where we just have to dig deeper and figure out what it is. I had one woman who had like 8 miscarriages and came to us and her hormones did look perfect and they were putting her on progesterone and trying to manipulate hormones and them steady throughout the pregnancies. But that's not what the issue is. We ran a stool test and found out that she had a ton of gut dysbiosis, which is like an imbalance of bacteria and gut infections. As soon as we healed those, she got pregnant. And right now she's probably 6 or 7 months pregnant now.

Amazing.

Yeah.

What a great testimony.

Yeah. And it just comes down to really focusing on the individual because it's not going to be the same for everyone. Even if it's one woman has PCOS and the other woman also has PCOS, that doesn't mean that the reason they can't get pregnant is the same because the reason they have PCOS is very different. Right?

It's right.

It can always be different hormonal imbalances or it can be physiological imbalances in the body that's affecting that. So that's, that's basically what it looks like from the start. And then once we get lab testing back, that's when we sit down with the patient and put a whole plan together. So they get their Wellness Way binder where they've got all their lab testing. We give them a bunch of handouts and nutritional information to help them because it's really not a diet. We don't like to focus on, you know, thinking it's a diet. It's lifestyle.

Right, right, right.

That we're really focusing on. So we're giving them tips on ways to kind of cut out those inflammatory foods and ideas of what to eat instead and things like that. And then we will create a supplement schedule for them. So as Wellness Way offices, we do a lot of herbs. So we really like to—

Chinese, Chinese medicine herbs, right?

Yeah. So we focus on like chaste tree, for example, is a popular one to help support progesterone production. And then we use a lot of glandular support, different supplements. We really try to get as much as we can from food sources. So we focus on nutrition first and then to support certain pathways in the body, we'll implement some herbs depending on what the testing shows.

Oh my goodness, so much good information. Thank you so much for being here with us this morning. If somebody— I have one last question and then we're out of time, but if somebody has, um, if somebody doesn't have a Wellness Way near them, what can they do to get this kind of great care?

Yeah, so all of our clinics do work with patients remotely, which is awesome. I've got actually the patient I was mentioning who's now Several months pregnant. She's in, I think, Arkansas. So she came and saw me on a vacation and then we've just been consulting now over the phone. I have several patients that live all over the country and are even in other countries at the moment where we just mail out lab testing. When they have to run labs, we'll find local labs near them to run the blood draws. And then some of the kits are done at home, like the urine or stool, and then we just mail out the supplements. So it's really, it's really great because it doesn't bound you to just a certain area, but it allows for people to really receive the Wellness Way care no matter where they're living. And if you do go to the Wellness Way, it's just thewellnessway.com. You can actually search for a local clinic and find one that's closest to you. So I have some patients that live in, you know, Miami or several hours away, but they'll take a trip up maybe for the first visit so that we can at least meet in person, build that connection, and then from there we'll just continue over the phone and remotely. So there are definitely options for those that don't have a clinic close by to them.

That's great. I got a little kick out of the fact that The Wellness Way is TWW, the, like, the 2-week wait that we all struggle through when we're, we're waiting to get that positive pregnancy test. So I just think it's such a great organization, and I'm not receiving any any kind of, um, any kind of, uh, sponsorship for putting Dr. Rachel here in front of you guys. I want to give you the best resources so that you can get the care that you need so that you can get pregnant faster. Thank you so much, Dr. Rachel, for being here, um, this morning, and I really look forward to having you back.

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Okay. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.