Your GUT Problem May Be Causing Your Infertility

But what if the root of the problem was your gut? In this video, I'm going to talk about how your gut health may be causing your infertility and some ways that you could improve it and some things to eliminate from your diet also to improve it. My name is Erica Hoke and I'm a fertility coach and I'm here to talk to you about something that often isn't talked about when it comes to infertility and that is gut health, both for, for both partners, for men and women. A lot of people don't realize that their gut problems could be the root of their infertility issues, but there's a way to fix it. So stay tuned and I'll show you easy ways to make changes in your diet that could help you ultimately get to the family of your dreams and get pregnant. So you might've heard the term leaky gut like thrown around out there, and it's kind of a weird sounding condition, right? What is it that's leaky about your gut? Well, people often, when I talk about leaky gut to them, will think that their intestines are impermeable, kind of like a garden hose. But instead, your intestines kind of look like this, okay? Imagine that they're locked together, and when you have leaky gut, the junctions, these, pretend my fingers are junctions, start to separate. So as they start to separate more and more, more and more toxins seep into your bloodstream. So So what are some of the things that these toxins leaking into your bloodstream from your gut— gross— what kind of problems, overall health problems can be affected? So when your gut biome is not good, when you have leaky gut syndrome or other gut issues going on— by the way, you don't have to have like IBS or Crohn's or a diagnosis. You don't even necessarily have to have bathroom issues. Where you're rushing off to the bathroom. Um, but poor gut health has been shown to cause estrogen imbalance. It's also, uh, been shown to cause endometriosis and PCOS, and also in men, testicular dysfunction. So, uh, problems in the gut can also, uh, lead to other metabolic issues which are under what underlying causes for infertility, basically overall body inflammation. So what can you do to help clean your gut up so that you can get pregnant? So there's 3 foods that I want to, um, that I want to tell you are the most inflammatory and cause the most damage to your gut, and you're probably eating at least one of them every single day if you're not being intentional with your diet. By the way, I'd love to know in the comments which one of these is the most surprising to you. So my number 1 biggest villain in this category is corn syrup. So corn syrup has been kind of, again, a buzzword, and people talk about it being the same as sugar, but it's not actually the corn syrup that's the problem, although the sugar is not great for your gut too. But corn is a heavily, heavily sprayed product, and that corn being heavily sprayed turned into corn syrup concentrates the amount of pesticides that you're ingesting. So if you're not actively trying to avoid corn syrup, you're ingesting corn syrup almost every day. Um, number one thing to eliminate from your diet. Okay, so number two is canola oil or vegetable oil. Um, substitute those out with good, healthy fat oils like olive oil and avocado oil, and try to find ones that are single source. That's going to give you the highest quality of those products. So that being said, try to avoid fried foods as well. And then the third thing we already touched on, but pesticides. So pesticides are the villain in the corn syrup. And if you can eliminate pesticides in your produce and in your meat, by, uh, going organic. I know that there's still some trace pesticides in organic, but if we can eliminate them through eating cleaner, then that is going to help your overall gut health. All right, so what are some things that we can do to help our gut other than food elimination? So one of the things is a good quality probiotic. I like to tell people to get a refrigerated probiotic that helps keep the live active strains going. The shelf-stable ones are not very, not very viable. Also with that is fermented foods, kefir, sauerkraut, things like that are really great for improving your gut health, kombucha, which is a favorite of mine. And then the second thing is, is exercise. So exercise um, helps actually increase your gut flora. Another benefit. Who knew, right? It also helps reduce your inflammation, your overall body inflammation, which is a major cause of unexplained infertility. And then the third thing is being properly hydrated helps everything work better. It's going to help your digestion, it's going to help your hormones, it's going to help your overall inflammation. Water is key to our overall health. Which I'm sure that you probably have heard before. So thanks for joining me today. I'm here Monday, Wednesday, Friday live. I put a link in the comments to my group, uh, where I support women through their infertility journey. And I also, uh, have spots available on scholarship, um, for my Accelerate Your Fertility Bootcamp where we talk about these things and actually help walk it out with you so that you don't feel alone, get discouraged, and give up. So thank you so much for joining me, and I will see you Monday. Have a great weekend. Bye-bye.