The frustration of an unexplained infertility diagnosis

Hey guys, happy Wednesday! Thanks for joining me. If you don't know me, I am Erica Hoke. I'm an infertility mentor and empowerment coach, and we're talking today about— oh well, I had some testing done, um, that has to do with where I was with, with my infertility. And we're talking about getting past the frustration of that unexplained infertility diagnosis, which is um, the worst part of infertility for most people. There are so many people out there that get a diagnosis of unexplained. They get all the standard testing done, myself included. I was— that, that was me. Even though I had literally almost every infertility issue known to reproductive medicine, I had endo and fibroids and all the things I still had an unexplained infertility diagnosis, and that was so frustrating. My husband had testing, he was fine, and so many women are in this same position. You're, you know, if you're watching, maybe you're in the same position where you have this unexplained diagnosis and you just don't know what to do with that. Like, okay, well, they ran a bunch of tests and they said everything is fine. So for me, um, That was enormously, enormously frustrating, and it led me to just keep digging. So one of the things that I ended up digging up was that I had low ferritin. So ferritin is really interesting. This is one of the tests that is often overlooked in infertility testing. Your ferritin is your usable iron in your blood, so you can have normal blood iron levels and have low ferritin, and that greatly affects your fertility. So, uh, I just recently had retesting done, and for years I had low ferritin to the point that I had to have, um, in between my first children and my second children, iron IV infusions, and before my first one was conceived. So I had to have— my ferritin was so low that that I had to have iron IV infusion. And now it's completely normal. And it's completely normal because I have made diet and lifestyle changes that have helped my absorption of my iron, and my diet is better, and I'm eating food that is, my body can absorb the iron better. So that's like one of the things. So I went from not being able to get pregnant, having to have iron IV infusions, to I just got my ferritin back and it looked Beautiful. So along those same lines, um, you know, our absorption issues in general, like if you are getting your blood work back and you're low on B vitamins and things like that, um, you might be having some absorption issues. Um, so bottom line is all the problems that I had in my blood work prior to getting pregnant are pretty much gone now and have been addressed through, through diet and supplements. And my body is able to absorb those now. And also supplements that are bioavailable, right? Like, it's no good to spend a bunch of money on supplements that are synthetic. I've talked about this a lot in some of my other videos. It's no good to be spending a bunch of money on those if they are not absorbable by by your body because they're synthetic, and that actually creates a big toxic load on your liver and your kidneys too, um, breaking those down, which is a totally different topic for a different day. Um, I have some videos out there on that too. Um, so ferritin is one of the things that can greatly affect your unexplained infertility diagnosis and, um, help you move towards that goal of getting pregnant. Um, that's overlooked. The other thing that I will tell you is your, um, his— your history of your thyroid. So what I did when I was trying to get pregnant and I knew that I was still kind of symptomatic, I was on thyroid medicine but I was still not 100% where I wanted to be or feeling as good as I wanted to be, I went back and I looked at my physicals So this is what people, um, you know, this was— I learned this after sitting in doctor's office and asking, well, did you look at my chart? Did you look at this? Did you look at that? They don't review your history in an in-depth way. That is on you. That is your responsibility to make sure that you know where you were coming from. And so what I mean by that is I like went back to my pre- thyroid, thyroid disease state to see kind of where my levels were. And that was my baseline, not like this football, football field wide range for your thyroid. So going back and looking at your own blood tests historically and taking a look at that can really help explain some of the unexplained things going on in your life that give you that unexplained infertility diagnosis. Some of these little tweaks just are all it's— all it takes, right? You're just moving the needle ever so slightly. It's a delicate balance in our bodies. And so, um, you know, when we talk about thyroid levels, when we talk about, um, things like ferritin, those are some overlooked tests. And the one other test that I will tell you is responsible for a lot of— especially secondary infertility. It's kind of crazy, and I've talked a little bit about it before. As a matter of fact, I have a training on it in my, in my group that I admin called Empowered Infertility, and I talk at length about Factor V Leiden. And so a lot of people, according to the geneticists that I saw, have Factor V Leiden. They don't even know it. They're walking around. It's a big cause for secondary infertility. And, um, and a lot of chemical pregnancies and miscarriage. So if you've experienced any of that and you're still walking around with an infertility, unexplained infertility diagnosis, it's definitely worth taking a look at and make sure that your doctor has, um, given you, um, has tested you, uh, for the genetic blood clotting panel. Sometimes it's overlooked. They're actually getting a little bit better. I've seen over the course of my journey, um, some more testing being done for that. And it's super important. So I feel you if you have an unexplained diagnosis and you're super frustrated. I feel you because it's the worst part. Literally, the little things that you are doing and continuing to do to move that needle, keep doing them because one day soon you're going to hit that mark and your body is going to fall into sync and you'll get the baby of your dreams. So, all right, thanks for watching, guys. Health and blessings to you. I'll catch you Friday at noon. Bye-bye.