Wellness In Every Season

Fertility Myths

• Autumn Carter/ Aumatma Simmons • Season 1 • Episode 179

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Fertility Myths — What Hormones, Stress, and Lifestyle Are Really Telling Us About Our Health


Fertility isn’t just about getting pregnant — it’s one of the clearest mirrors of overall health. In this episode of Wellness in Every Season, I’m joined by Dr. Amma, naturopathic doctor and founder of Holistic Fertility Doctor, to break down the biggest fertility myths keeping people stuck, confused, and often treating symptoms instead of root causes.


Dr. Amma explains why infertility is not a diagnosis — it’s a signal. We dive into how hormone imbalances, chronic stress, toxin exposure, gut health, sleep disruption, and lifestyle habits quietly shut down reproductive health in both women and men. You’ll learn why birth control often masks underlying issues instead of fixing them, how fibroids and irregular cycles are messages from the body (not random problems), and why men’s testosterone and sperm health are declining at alarming rates.


We also unpack the truth about age and fertility, the myth of the “35 cliff,” and how living a fertility-supportive lifestyle can protect hormones long-term — even easing the transition into perimenopause and menopause.


If you’ve ever struggled with cycles, energy, hormones, fertility, or been told “everything looks normal” while your body says otherwise, this conversation will shift how you understand wellness.


Connect with Dr. Amma on Instagram at @HolisticFertilityDoctor and learn more at holisticfertilityinstitute.com.

For more wellness tips and exclusive content, join my newsletter! Sign up now at https://wellness-in-every-season.kit.com/5-days-to-mastering-mornings-and-evenings receive a free 5-day guide called "Awaken and Unwind: 5 Days to Mastering Life's Mornings and Evenings."

Episode 179: Fertility Myths

[00:00:00] 

This is episode 1 79. We are talking about fertility myths.

Welcome to Wellness In Every Season, the podcast where we explore the rich tapestry of wellness in all of its forms. I'm your host, autumn Carter, a certified life coach, turn wellness coach, as well as a certified parenting coach dedicated to empowering others to rediscover their identity in their current season of life.

My goal is to help you thrive, both as an individual and as a parent.

I am so excited to have Dr. Amma with me her business name is Holistic fertility Doctor, that sums her up perfectly. 

I just had a conversation with a friend of mine yesterday. She is struggling with infertility.

I'm very excited for everyone who's listening but I'm also excited for her because I have a feeling that I'm gonna quickly edit this and be sending this to her before it [00:01:00] ever goes live.

If you ever come into my world, know that I do that if you get to know me on a more personal level. You will have that bonus if you want to ever work with me or get to know me, let's start with. Having people really get an understanding of you are a doctor, what are you a doctor of?

Give us your resume of why you should listen to me to start. 

So I'm a naturopathic doctor by training, which is a philosophy of mind, body, spirit, do no harm, work with nature. Your body heals itself. Doctors are here to support your body in healing itself. So that's the philosophy that I live by and I've been doing that for 20 years.

And then 15 of those years have been specialized in doing fertility support. We work with couples primarily that are struggling with fertility. We do have some solo moms by choice. We have some same sex couples by choice. If you [00:02:00] are in a partnership, we need to be working with the whole of.

Like the family unit that is gonna create this child. A lot of people will reach out and say, oh, it's just me, it's my problem and I'm like, no, it's really not. There's no world in which it's just you. We work with couples and because I'm a super geek and specialized in fertility for so long, I am also board certified in naturopathic endocrinology, which is a fancy way of saying I love hormones and I love to approach them naturally.

Where does that word come from? 

Endocrinology 

Latin. 

I know that the endocrine system is like our glands and the hormones and it's, essentially the study of glands and hormones and the interconnections between all of them.

That's a great answer for people who don't know. Are you [00:03:00] the same as a doctor who is a do. 

No, not the same. 

I learned about that in my degree and I'm like, that's the type of doctor that I wanna go to. But then I heard about naturopathic and that's the doctor I wanna go to, 

now 

put them in the same category in my brain 

DO is osteopathic doctors, and most of them are trained conventionally, so they're pretty equal to MDs these days. But there's a very small subset of dos that are super amazing and follow the same philosophy as naturopathic medicine. So you'd really have to dig in and find someone who has the right philosophy match.

the history of medicine, started with naturopathic medicine as the foundation most places around the world have naturopathic or natural things like herbs and food and lifestyle as the core of the culture. If you look back at almost any culture, including American [00:04:00] culture we have deep in the roots to use herbs as medicine.

What ended up happening was the evolution of medicine and the invention of antibiotics and penicillin really flipped the script. Doctors MDs actually used to have as their main therapy bloodletting. That was it. You go to an MD and all they would do is bleed you dry. That was the solution for everything until penicillin.

That was the launch and the shift across the world where. Traditional or conventional medicine has become the primary and all the other medicines are ancillary or supportive. There's the ebb and flow in nature, which is normal.

But a lot of what we do as naturopathic medical doctors is in line with [00:05:00] what traditions around the world have done for thousands of years. It's not new. What is unique about naturopathic medicine is we want all of these natural things to have proof that's backed by research and science.

At least that's my philosophy. So I wanna know if this herb is really good for X, Y, z, like I wanna see the proof and know that it works in that way. Outside of the 5,000 years of traditional knowledge in old school books. So I try to be a bridge between the natural and the conventional with everything that we do and say is backed by research,

all doctors are not paying attention to all of the research that comes out. For me it's really like I'm up on all the fertility stuff and I wanna know about all of the fertility stuff. And so [00:06:00] much is misconstrued and misunderstood it's just a fun little world that we live in.

Yeah. So before we talk I wanna have this resonate for everybody, everybody can learn. Before you skip to the next episode listeners, get your finger away from that button. What kind of training have you had

unspecialized maybe is a better word. 

Sure. 

Naturopath, what is the difference between them study-wise and a. Regular med school, md. 

Naturopathic medicine is interesting because there's only four schools in the country that have medical curriculums, which means it's a four year training program with lots of like hands on.

Shadowing doctors, working alongside doctors. So what medical doctors do [00:07:00] in their training as well. And the curriculum, you could almost lay it on top of each other and you'd be like, is there a difference here? It's literally the same, right? The only difference is in the philosophy underneath it.

A conventional doctor would go to school and learn, about GI for this semester, then their courses in GI would cover all of the diseases, the symptoms, the signs, and then the treatment would pretty much be medications versus ours, which would be the same.

It would be signs, symptoms, diseases. Treatments would include the medications, but also include herbs, supplements, lifestyle, diet that would be specific to that specific condition. So it only varies in that like little bit of extra that we need to learn around natural [00:08:00] stuff.

And most of our curriculum is guided by conventional medicine, so we still need to know what is Crohn's disease, the naturopathic approach would be like, yes, this is the technical definition of Crohn's, but what are the things underlying it that's potentially creating this illness in somebody?

So what is the mind, body, spirit aspect to this? Not just the physiology that gets treated by Remicade, which is the medication you would take if you had Crohn's disease. 

Okay. I'm getting this. Hopefully everybody else is getting this a little more. And then from what I understand with naturopathy is it feels like they are looking at the full body system instead of just this part of the body. 

Especially when I was pregnant. Is that related to your fetus or is that related to, and I would [00:09:00] say isn't both that type of idea? And it sounds like they're also more likely to really drill into, okay, these are the symptoms. Let's dig to figure out the why.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Absolutely. I think that we are obsessed with what is the root and even the root of the root, which sounds so woo but I'm a coach, 

that's what I do. 

Yes. We wanna find the root of all of the things. 

And with fertility, what was really interesting to me when I started getting into it was that fertility is a diagnosis that doesn't actually mean anything.

So the way that you get the diagnosis of infertile is that you have tried to conceive for a period of six months to 12 months, depending on [00:10:00] your age, 35 and over six months, 35 and under 12 months. And if you have consistently tried to conceive and it didn't happen in that time, you are given this diagnosis of infertility, which to me, it's one of the only conditions that doesn't have any kind of workup to get to that diagnosis In any other world, you have a heart disease, you need to go through a bunch of tests before you get that diagnosis.

Even high cholesterol, you need to have a test to get that diagnosis. So for me, what was weird when I stepped into fertility was, how did we come up with that? Just that you tried and it's not working. Is that the reason to give you a label that is basically saying that you'll never have children?

That seems extreme to me. Very early on, I realized that I didn't like this idea at [00:11:00] all. And what I have discovered in the years that I've been doing this is that infertility or the struggle or difficulty in conceiving is just a symptom of something. Unfortunately, that something is so unique to each couple, and it is so under the radar that most of the time people are healthy and they feel fine.

And there's nothing really that they can tell you is wrong, yet their body is like, Nope, not doing this thing. And, because fertility is so sensitive in our bodies, it's the one part of our body that. Doesn't actually need to function in order to survive. Everything else that happens in our body is meant for survival.

Whereas reproduction is like the added bonus 

a different survival. It's the family free survival. 

[00:12:00] Exactly. But it's not a survival for me as a human. a really easy system to turn off if anything else is out of whack in the body. And the body will turn it off as a way to support the survival of myself over the survival of a species.

We see that happening all around the world. I was looking at some stats recently countries like Italy are down to 1.3 fertility rates, which is basically how many children are people having on average in that country. And the, survival of a species is dependent on an average woman having 2.1 children or something.

Anytime below that I'm, good with my four. Yes, you're good. You're helping the survival of the species. But I went 

through infertility as well.

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Yeah. 

And it was definitely a journey. You can look at families and not realize. The struggles that came. 

Absolutely. There's just so many things that could be happening under the radar that unfortunately a lot of people don't see, and it's getting better, like more women are talking about it. But even when I started working with us 15 years ago, it was. So taboo, it was like, oh no, I'm not dealing with fertility issues.

No one would talk about it and they would come, I would do a talk in audiences and there would be a line out the door for people that wanted to talk one-on-one. But if I asked a question of have you ever struggled with fertility? Have you had weird menstrual cycles? Nobody would raise their hands.

You need one of those clickers For the anonymous poll. 

Yes. Anonymous polls. So it is, it's gotten so much [00:15:00] better, right? Like over the last 10 years, there's been a shift where more people are talking about it, more open with their struggles. But I think we're a long ways from it becoming the level of conversation that's needed to match the fertility crisis that we're in most countries.

So a question just came to mind. I knew you were coming on, but your name and I forgot what we were going to be talking about. I play a sport where I have to be fully there, it was one of those thoughts that come when everything else is washed away.

I have somebody I've been working with who has a fibroid. She doesn't want children. But she is bleeding almost all the time it would be amazing if she could just. Have things removed more permanently. But because of where she's at, it's not allowed because she's still in childbearing [00:16:00] ages,

to those kind of laws, yeah. But it brings this question to mind, and this is for those that are listing where they might wanna still press that button, get your finger away to skip this, because, just because we're not trying to get pregnant right now, let's talk about why this still matters, even if you're before this or outside of this, because it sounds like this is still a really good gauge of your health from what you're 

Yeah, absolutely. 

I think that when your health is in an optimal state, fertility is turned on. And when your health is suboptimal, infertility is the biggest symptom of it. So we often pass off the need for optimizing our hormones, or young women that have irregular menstrual cycles that are like, eh, just take a birth control pill for it.

For me, I am flabbergasted because [00:17:00] taking a pill is not fixing the problem. It is not helping regulate your cycles and your periods, even though that's what you're told. And when you get off of that, if and when you decide you wanna have children, those hormones will have. Affected your endocrine system negatively, where it becomes really hard to reestablish the connection and get your menstrual cycles back on track.

So essentially you're worse off than when you started. So for me, I think that hormonal system or our menstrual cycle as women in particular, we can talk about men separately, but for women, our menstrual cycles are the biggest indicator of our health from month to month. If the cycles are irregular, if you have a fibroid, for example, then your body is literally saying, [00:18:00] Hey, I'm creating these.

For a reason. The fibroids have a reason, and almost always it's estrogen is super high. Estrogen's not being metabolized properly. There's probably a gut issue, microbiome issue that's causing the, lack of processing of that estrogen through her body gets recirculated. The body goes, oh, not sure what to do with this.

Let's, sequester it and grow these random things called fibroids. 

And, 

then she's bleeding a ton. 'cause her body's trying to also get rid of it, right? 

Yeah. Her body's trying to get rid of it. And when you get into that constant bleeding state, you're depleting your iron levels in the body, which then causes more bleeding.

Literally like there's all of this downstream effect and that fibroid is just a symptom of here's all of this stuff that is going under the radar that [00:19:00] maybe you don't know how to pay attention to. And your doctor is just take it out.

Put you on birth control 

To stop the bleeding. 

She's been suffering for months on birth control. 

Yeah. So that is, unfortunately it's not a fix there are people who may potentially opt for a hysterectomy those fibroids are no longer growing because she doesn't have a uterus.

But unfortunately, no one looked at the root cause, which is the estrogen and possibly the gut issues. So it will manifest in other ways. She might end up with breast cysts or breast cancer, I don't know what the consequences, but somewhere else is gonna show up 

or their gut issues.

Yeah. It is not as simple as Hey, I don't need this system, so let's just turn it off, we really have to think about our fertility and our menstrual cycle as a reflection of what's happening in our bodies. The question then [00:20:00] becomes why isn't my body doing what it's supposed 

to do? 

And, then just to take a pause from the female side, on the male side, we have a massive testosterone crisis in our world, and there's literally like testosterone clinics on every other corner trying to push. Die onto testosterone. The problem with exogenous testosterone is it shuts off sperm production.

So here are these young men that are not being told, Hey, by the way, this might shoot your fertility in the foot and you may never get your partner pregnant. Because you now have essentially given yourself birth control for a decade, two decades by taking testosterone shots.

Why are they taking testosterone shots? 

Why are all these young men having low testosterone [00:21:00] levels? It makes you wonder, right? Like men in their twenties and thirties should not need testosterone shots. If you're 70 and taking testosterone shots, have at it all day.

But a lot of these clinics are not old men. They are very young men of fertile years. Their bodies are not making testosterone, I believe, for a few main reasons. One is that they're being exposed to so many endocrine disruptors that. Are shutting off their production of testosterone and sperm. So we see this a lot in 25 year olds that have low sperm counts.

And they're like, what? That's impossible. I'm great. Blah, blah, blah. Like the whole macho thing. 

How good I look. 

Look at my muscle. It does not matter. Your sperm are extremely low. Your testosterone is extremely low. And it is [00:22:00] potentially from all of these things that they're being exposed to plastic phalates, which are basically perfumes and scents 

show me a guy who doesn't have one of those air freshener things in his car and he's breathing it in all day in his car. All of these things that we're doing in our lifestyle that are contributing to essentially. Throwing off the connection between the brain and our reproductive system that's saying, shut it down.

Shut it down. And those things over years will move into low testosterone, low sperm count, motility, morphology, all of those things. So I think the exposure to toxins is probably a big, one. The other is the stress. And with men stress is very interesting. 'cause most men are like, oh, I'm not stressed, I'm good.

I'm fine. yeah, but let's do a test and see what your actual levels look [00:23:00] like because it's unlikely that you're not stressed. Even if you think you don't have any. Physical stressors, you may still be exposed to things around you that are creating physiological stress that you don't realize as stress, 

I think we have a, men's health crisis in a lot of ways. Testosterone is just a symptom of all the other things happening in our society. 

Sounds like we can tell a lot from our hormones. 

Yeah, exactly. 

And it can be so hard because we get our hormones tested every year, as part of our physical, but they always test it versus what is normal instead of what is your normal. And your body has different needs from other people. Can you talk on that? You're the actual authority on this.

So we have I think what a lot of people get [00:24:00] confused with is that there is what's called normal in western medicine, based on the average of a population. That doesn't mean that population healthy, doesn't mean they were even healthy when they were tested, right? So we get these broad ranges of what's considered normal.

Unfortunately, most of the time that normal is very far from what our bodies need optimal for function. So that's where there's this whole field of like functional medicine that has come about with, I don't care what your diagnosis is, I don't care what label you have. I wanna know how is your body functioning.

In its optimal state. So this is where like with hormones specifically, we have much narrower ranges of what we consider normal. With sperm, same thing. We have much [00:25:00] narrower ranges of what's considered normal because the sperm are funny conversation. But in the fertility world, it's still a very patriarchal culture where doctors will say, ah, your sperm are fine, they're not gonna affect anything.

They bring the same results to me and I'm like, that's never gonna get a woman pregnant. And they're like, what? My doctor said it was fine. Or great sometimes, and I'm like, yeah, this is not great. And the reason that there's such a discrepancy is because what is considered normal for sperm has declined.

It continues to go down, and the reference ranges keep changing because now the average male is coming in with lower and lower sperm counts. So we just keep lowering the bar essentially. It's oh, that's not normal anymore. Okay, we drop it down a notch.

If we keep lowering the bar, then we end up in a situation [00:26:00] where the bar is already so low that we're evaluating it against this general population scenario. With fertility. There is a reason why men make millions of sperm and put out millions of sperm in an ejaculate. Most of them are gonna die before they even make it anywhere near the egg.

So that is our body's natural mechanism for survival of the fittest to be figured out. And when we bypass it or deprioritize it, because we say, ah, you're gonna go do IVF, you don't need that. You don't, that's not a problem anymore. IVF will bypass all the sperm issues or most of the sperm issues, but it's gonna show up in other ways.

So I see this a lot where women will go through repeated IVF cycles and they're like, oh, they got 15 eggs for me in every cycle. [00:27:00] By the time the sperm were exposed, there's five embryos that are left. And then those embryos didn't make it to day three. The problem here looks like the sperm.

And they're like, no, but my doctor said it's my eggs, it's my age. I'm like, yes, let's put this through the filter of a patriarchal culture, a patriarchal medical society that does not prioritize women's health. And when we put those things together, we're like, oh, it's gotta be the women. They're over 35.

That's the problem. So we see it all come to a head with fertility because it's the meeting of male and female health. Both partners have to be optimal to that degree where. Not oh, let's lower the bar so that you can be considered normal, but let's actually get to where your body can produce millions of sperm and [00:28:00] ejaculate and have great motility and morphology and all of these things.

Because we want to give the option for at least the partners to get pregnant in a natural environment without the need for IVF. And if they need to do IVF, that's still good, but we still gonna raise the bar for all of these men that we work with. 

Cheaper versus not for one 

Like $20,000 versus free. 

So can you talk for those who are saying hold on, why are you saying it's not the women? Because I've seen women on their periods and they takes so much to have it be the perfect period, blah, blah, blah. Whatever their excuses are.

Because we've all been told for so long that it's mostly the female's problems, give us a little more [00:29:00] scientific so that some of these excuses can go away. 

Statistically 51% of fertility issues in a couple are female and 49% are male. And then there's a peer amount of overlap and I don't know what the overlap is.

I think it's 30%. So essentially same, like 50 50 is the statistical average. And yes, I agree with you, absolutely women have hormonal problems and hormonal issues that are driving fertility issues. But what the IVF doctor is saying to them is not about their hormones, it's about their age. So they're saying it's your eggs because you're over 35.

Now it's come down to, I've had 29 year olds being told, it's your age, what? You're 29 years old. What does your age have to do with it? 

Talk more on age. Like what is the actual age? [00:30:00] 

What is the age cutoff? 

It's not a cutoff is it? 

So statistically, or like traditionally, we have accepted this idea that fertility for women drops off a cliff at 35.

For me it was important to figure out where that came from because I just wanted to know for myself, I was in this place of do I have children with this man or not? The decision was gonna be based on how much time I have to find someone I actually wanna have children with?

When I was evaluating it, I was like, I have to know where this came from and I couldn't find any studies on it. That was a red flag because I told you in the beginning, that's like the driven and the walk 

and goal on the Apple Watch where it was just arbitrary. 

 

So, I couldn't find any studies and now there exists about three very small studies that you can't even rely on, I traced this idea down to [00:31:00] 18 hundreds, France, where there are churches that have documented that women did not come to get their children baptized after the age of 35.

So we adopted this idea that women's fertility is dropping off at 35. So me being who I am, I was like, that doesn't sound right. How long were women alive in the 18 hundreds France? And it turns out that the average life expectancy for women back then was 32.8. So now you have a serious issue because you're telling women your fertility drops off.

But it's based on this idea that hasn't been proven the entire field of fertility lands on this idea that our fertility is done at 35 and we are entering perimenopause at 35. We can talk about what that means. Now that's like all the buzz in the social media world 

this is so frustrating. We have [00:32:00] this idea of age driving a major part of our body systems that isn't actually based in anything. 

What the studies have done, there are very small scale. I will admit that they're not like massive global studies that we can put our hat on, but it's better than nothing.

So what most of these studies have found is that when they compared age groups 25 to 29 versus 35 to 39, they found a 3% fertility decline. The women in the older age group had a 3% lower chance of getting pregnant than the other women. I'll take that any day. I basically looked at that and I was like, I'm good.

I'll be fine. 

And that's probably one of the biggest things 

when people come to you, that's probably one of the biggest things they'll start to say is, we know we're older, and you're like, hold on. 

Yeah. And the reason that I, talk [00:33:00] about it so often is this is a really hard thing for people to change their mind about.

They are being entrenched in this culture. I feel like I learned that in middle school, high school, medical school, everywhere across the board in women's health, we learn that fertility is just done at 35. 

It makes it interesting for the men who are single and wanna have kids, then they go for younger women when maybe they really don't want to.

One woman who has it all together. For a family member it was like that and he ended up with someone slightly older than him. They still had two kids just fine. 

But, 

we're raised that way. 

So for a woman in the early thirties that is with a person that she doesn't necessarily feel super excited about, she's I could settle down with this person, but if, I didn't have a ticking clock, I would probably [00:34:00] make a different choice. So when we really think about what are we accepting of we are gonna put ourselves to a different standard, or we're gonna put that man we're with to a different standard,

he's not the right one. And that's no shade to whoever is in situations where you made that decision. But for me, I think having the right knowledge changes the choices that you would make. And that is absolutely true for me. I was in a marriage that I was like, oops, I think I married the wrong person.

I can have children with him or follow my body and my intuition, which was screaming run. The only thing that would've had me have a child with that person would have been, oh, your fertility's actually gonna be done in a year that to me would've been like, okay, maybe I'll just have a kid and then get the divorce.

Like [00:35:00] that was a very real possibility. And when I learned all of this, I was like, oh, yes, of course. Like I see how age impacts fertility, don't get me wrong. Absolutely when you have been menstruating every single month for, 20 years that is gonna have an effect on your hormones, on your ovaries, on the reserves that you have in your eggs.

But. 

The other piece of that is stuff that you can control, which is how much exposure to toxins, how much are you drinking, how much are you staying up at night? What are the lifestyle choices that you've been making for 20 years that are then impacting your fertility and your ability to get pregnant?

So for me, I was like, okay, I'm not only am I gonna get a divorce, I'm gonna wait for the right person, which thank God did happen and I did end up having a child with [00:36:00] him seven years after that. But the ability to make that choice was dependent on knowing the facts and then making the decision of, oh, I'm gonna clean my act up, like I'm gonna stop.

Allowing myself to live stressed, not sleep, work 80 hour weeks, like I'm gonna make a massive rehaul on my lifestyle because I wanna have children someday with the right person. I think that's the wisest thing we could do is when you realize you actually wanna have children, you're not at the age where you can or want to yet, then you're making different choices that are going to support your future fertility, and that might include egg freezing egg freezing was brand new. It was very expensive. And I was like you freeze the eggs, but what about the uterus? You're not [00:37:00] really freezing the uterus. 

So if I keep living the way I'm living, it's probably not gonna help me that much. And statistically it was true, like 1% of the eggs that were being frozen were actually turning into live babies.

For a good return.

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Not a good, ROI. So I was like, I'm just gonna roll the dice and do what I know to do, work on myself, work on my stuff and see what happens. And literally the up being, finding the right person. And like he was ready to have children a lot before me.

And he would just every time, every month he'd be like, you're ovulating. Should we try? And I'm like, so he was like super in tune with my cycles and knew I was ovulating. He could just tell quote unquote which I've now learned that most partners can actually tell at least he would just be like, is [00:41:00] it, is this the one? And I'm like no, And I said that for months finally the day that I was like, yes, let's try we got pregnant that day. It is wild. To think about because it could have been a very different choice and a very different struggle.

Given that I had been doing fertility work by that point for a few years I was expecting to have struggle, I did not expect to get pregnant on the first try, but I also looked back at it and I was like, yeah, I've been doing everything that I tell my people to do lifestyle wise for five years at that point.

And technically doing all the testing and, supplements for a year. So I was prepping my body, knowing that very soon I'd be ready. I didn't know when, I would feel ready, [00:42:00] but I knew that was coming soon. It was good feedback to be like, yeah, this is me walking the talk doing all the things I tell my patients to do.

And knowing that when we let go of all the expectations and, surrender I was in that place of sure, let's do it and see if it happens. It worked because of all of the things that I had gone into making it happen. Not to say that it had to take five years, but that was for me to heal my crap.

Tell us that list. 

The basics were stress. 

I literally had gone from working 80 hour weeks. Trying to sustain our life with my ex. Pay the mortgage, the bills, all of that. I was the breadwinner and a lot of pressure and stress [00:43:00] in that.

After the divorce I was like, okay, I still am gonna have all the bills 'cause the mortgage was in my name, the bills are in my name. Literally nothing was changing. I was like, I have to change something about how I'm doing life because working 80 hour weeks is not the solution.

Like in no world is that going to keep going. And I had been doing that for five or six years at that point so one of the earliest resets was, okay, it's gotta come down to 40 hour weeks. I'm gonna need to make some changes in my business. I'm gonna let go of the things that I was working another job to moonlight so I could pay the bills at this clinic.

So I was like, I have to end the stuff that's out of alignment in order to make space for what is going to need to come in. It took some time [00:44:00] and I struggled through it and got to the point where I could do 40 hour weeks. And really in that process was rebuilding my adrenals, rebuilding my circadian rhythm.

I couldn't sleep. I was wired all the time. It was nuts. My hormones were out of whack, so I would have these like extremely painful menstrual cycles. It was the lowest point in my life, so every part of it had to get rebuilt. Adrenals, thyroid, gut health, circadian rhythm the things that I was doing, like I was taking supplements, eating very simple food.

'cause who's got time to cook when you're doing a million things, trying to get your business together. Yeah. So it was like basic food stopped eating out, just simplified all of it and [00:45:00] prioritize, sleep over everything else. So it was like, absolutely must go to bed at the same time, wake up at the same time, sunlight in the morning.

So doing the things that. We all know to do. It's like organic, the basic 

caveman 

Yeah. 

Before, 

electricity stuff. 

I was going bad at like probably 10 30. I've, always been a night owl, so sleeping early for me is like 10, I'm not going to bed at eight.

That's probably never gonna happen. 

The summertime sun schedule? 

Yes. And doing better about spending time on the things that absolutely were needed by me. A, lot of that was mindset reset around business. As a new business person, I was so stressed out.

I was like, oh my God, what am I doing and how do I run a [00:46:00] business? People were like, you need an assistant. And I was like, I can't afford an assistant. So it was all of the mindset stuff around business. I had a lot of support and coaching with, and that helped me to shift

as stressed about money and where the food is gonna come from, and if I'm gonna have a roof over my head and then I can go into, okay gotta heal the nervous system, the adrenals and the circadian rhythm and those, I think those are the foundations for everything. So as those started getting better, the hormones started to improve and then I probably did a year and a half of just supporting my hormones.

And that's like herbs, right? I wasn't doing a whole bunch of stuff at that point. Baseline fertile lifestyle, add in the herbs. And then when I got closer to the fertility time period, I did a really stupid thing, [00:47:00] which was, it was a lesson that I needed to learn. 

I was like, oh, I'm not sure I'm getting enough protein as a vegan.

So I added in a protein shake and it was this like really pure protein shake with no sugar added to it. The sweetener was mango. This will become relevant in a second. And then they had a greens powder that I was like, oh yeah, gotta get the greens. So I added in some greens and both of them sweetened with mango within probably four months of taking those. I would be in pain on the floor every single night and I was like, what the hell is happening? I had created food sensitivities for myself, the biggest one being Mango. I had to laugh about it because eventually I did the testing and I was like, mango, are you kidding me?

I would've never in a million years been like, mango is what's triggering my food sensitivity [00:48:00] reactions. My immune system was haywire, my stomach was like churning in knots every single night. And I was like, oh my God, I don't know what's happening. So that last year was basically gut health and like taking away.

Oh, I had stopped drinking alcohol. 'cause that had become a routine with stress. Oh, I need my glass of wine every night. So I had stopped doing that. Getting rid of the toxins I feel like everyone knows these things, but we don't always do the things that we know to do.

So I think it's doing 

the mental health work to be able to do those things. Because your alcohol, I'm sure was a crutch. Some of the foods you were eating, I'm sure were a crutch. Not getting enough sleep, a crutch. 

Yeah. It's like we are doing all of these things to survive in a way that feels like, oh, I need it.[00:49:00] 

I have to do that. And if you just stick to eating wholesome foods that are not processed. Get the sugar out, sugar and alcohol remove the toxins I'm still super into makeup, but I was really into makeup back then and didn't realize how many toxins were in all of it.

The average statistic I found was like 168. Toxins is normal for an average woman to apply to her skin before she leaves the house. And I was like, holy shit. Hair, product, makeup, skin nails. Yep. All of the things. That was a massive shift for me. I was like, oh, I gotta shift to all the clean beauty products that aren't going to increase the toxin burden that I have in my body.

the foundations are [00:50:00] really easy and we could all be doing them. I don't care if you're trying to get pregnant or not. They're gonna help everything all the time. Those are the things that I continue to do and practice in my life. Of course you're gonna have times where you fall off and then you can be like, okay, gotta get back on, gotta reset and keep doing it.

Sounds like this works for both genders as well, 

Absolutely. And it's so important. I feel like with men, maybe they don't need as much sleep, but still high quality sleep is super important for men as well, and then good wholesome food, high nutrition, low calorie or the empty calorie stuff is just not that good.

And then getting rid of alcohol and cigarettes Why marijuana is helpful the [00:51:00] research on marijuana, especially for men, is that it will cause low sperm motility. So for men that consume marijuana, I'm like, listen, we're gonna do your semen analysis, and then we're gonna see if there's a motility issue.

Marijuana's gotta go. 

Are you serious? What about energy drinks? Which one's worse? I feel like they're pretty neck and neck there. 

Which energy drinks? 

That's true. Monster I know is really bad. Like the ones that are on that caliber of energy drinks. Not the healthy energy drinks, although I don't think any of 'em are healthy,

even kombucha is going to affect negatively something in the body. The energy drinks are bad, I think because of the artificial sweeteners that are in them. And there are lots of studies on the artificial sweeteners affecting male fertility. I thought it was food [00:52:00] coloring too.

Probably Food coloring also. I haven't looked at them in a long time and we should probably consuming them 

decades ago 

so just think about your 

heart health with energy drinks to begin with. And heart and your penis go together. 

Circulation. The blood flow. The other thing about marijuana, which has come out recently is that it stimulates cortisol production. So while people are consuming marijuana thinking, they're getting the chill out effect, they will be like, oh, but it helps me relax.

It helps me sleep. That's great. Except it's a really weird response because while you feel relaxed, your body's actually driving up cortisol production. And a lot of the people that consume when they get off marijuana, they will have sleep dysregulation created by the consumption of marijuana, because their body's used to kicking out cortisol when it shouldn't be.[00:53:00] 

That's interesting. It reminds me of cigarettes. People smoke to relax, but it doesn't relax the body. 

It does not relax the body. 

So let's now switch this to the perimenopause stage. 

Yeah. 

Okay. We can make it quicker.

So, let's talk about perimenopause because it sounds like the same things that you're saying probably apply here. 

What I was getting at earlier, is that when we are living the fertile lifestyle, our hormones are in rhythm.

The whole like 10 years of perimenopause before you get into menopause. I think that it will delay the onset of perimenopause I have noticed that when. Women continue this after pregnancy, they are going to have lesser symptoms during the perimenopause, menopause period.

this idea that we are just gonna automatically be in perimenopause 'cause [00:54:00] we're 35 and oh, your hormones are done and you're off the cliff. It's just not always true. So for me, I'm like, let's test and see where your hormones are. That's a simple solution to knowing if you're in perimenopause or not.

And if you are, then we can do some things, especially for fertility, for the people trying to get pregnant. We've seen plenty of people that are perimenopausal and we can get them off the ledge and bring it back online to Fertile. But it's not always the case.

People 45 and over who have already entered menopause, their hormones are consistent with that. Their ovaries don't have a lot of eggs left. That's really hard for us to turn around. at that point your fertility actually done. But that perimenopause period is a weird one.

I think our culture is getting to the point where they're saying, oh, everyone's gonna have these symptoms and you're gonna feel like shit, [00:55:00] and you're gonna have brain fog And to me, I'm like yes, maybe, but it's gonna depend on what you are doing leading up to that period of time where your body's actually I don't see any hormone flues.

And for me, i'm 45. And so technically have been in perimenopause for 10 years, but in reality I've probably been in perimenopause for one year if that, and I'm not having any severe symptoms. I just see some, slight changes with my hormones.

Menstrual cycles are shifting a little bit, but I'm not freaking out about it and I have all these symptoms. I'm gonna continue living the fertile lifestyle that I've been living for the last 15 years. My goal is no symptoms. Get into menopause and woo-hoo.

We're done. 

For people who are listening, especially the men, 

to 

call you out, what is perimenopause [00:56:00] versus menopause? And then tell us where we can find you after that. 

So perimenopause is the. Supposed like 10 year period of time where your hormones are fluctuating often what we'll see is a shift in estrogen and progesterone throughout the cycle.

Sometimes estrogen goes high and then it'll flatline or it's shifting from month to month, hopping back and forth. That's the perimenopause time. You still have hormones, but they're acting weird for the men. And then menopause is where your ovaries are no longer producing the hormones that it was during its fertile years.

I believe that the deeper level shift that's happening in our bodies is we are going from relying on the infra rhythm, the cycle of 28 days, our menstrual cycle into a 24 hour cycle, which is based on testosterone. [00:57:00] So when we are in that transition period, it feels very weird and scary and oh my God, I'm not functioning the same.

You're shifting your gears into a very different gear 

It's hard to be in tune with your body. 

Yeah. Exactly. Like our early years, we were reliant on. Testosterone and other growth hormones essentially to get up to the menstrual time.

And then we start menstruating and our body has shifted into the infra rhythm. So now we're on a 28 day clock. Now we have to shift back to the 24 hour clock, which is the clock, right? So we're shifting more into this period of time where we're gonna have a more consistent energy, more consistent, hormone system because it's just one hormone instead of 20. But the downside is if we [00:58:00] have relied on our infra rhythm and relied on these hormones to be the primary driver of everything, instead of a full endocrine system that is reliant on adrenals and thyroid and insulin and all of these underlying hormones that are driving the infra rhythm, if those are out of whack, it's really hard to shift gears.

So for me, as a fertility person, I'm looking at all of this stuff that's happening on, the worldwide web that is perimenopause related if you worked on all of these things when you were in your fertile years, you wouldn't be having these issues right now because to get fertility back online, you have to work on the adrenals, the thyroid, the insulin blood sugar regulation.

All of the underlying stuff is what's gonna help support your fertility. 

Then is it too late for those who haven't and [00:59:00] they're now, oh my goodness, I have way too many symptoms 

yeah. No, not at all. 

I think it'll just be easier for these people

I think it's mostly keep doing what you were doing in your fertile years if you were doing it all, and if you're starting to see symptoms, then go to the foundations first. You don't need fancy hormones, you don't need to be on estrogen and progesterone. Maybe go get tested and see, but you have to have the foundation in place.

It's not just as simple as throw some hormones on it and I'll be fine. 

Which a lot of the, they call 'em wellness centers the places where you can get Botox and everything else. It's hormones and they, it's literally just sometimes they do it without testing. Your hormones.

Here's your estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone, and you're good. It's the same as the t clinics for men. The male version is the testosterone clinics, the female version is the wellness clinics, quote unquote, that are promoting the use of these hormones as the, fix for all of your symptoms.[01:00:00] 

Weight loss. 

How much, yeah. Those things tell 

us, were to find you because we could go for hours longer with how much information we actually need versus what we need to just push out of our brain because they're what we've been fed that are wrong. 

So tell us where to find you so we can gain our own information and go down our own rabbit hole with you.

Instagram is the best way to connect at Holistic Fertility Doctor, and our website is holistic fertility institute.com. 

Perfect. Thank you so much. This was amazing. I need to hurry up and have this ready to go for several people now. I am so excited for when this goes live because I have so many people having this conversation with me when I'm out in the world, having first coaching consultations with people.

Sometimes it's one of those maybe you should get that checked before we work together because it'll help you with your energy levels and everything else. I am all things [01:01:00] wellness, but that doesn't mean I do all the things. It means I can refer out to. I am glad that I have you as a resource at this amazing episode, and for all of you who are listening, we all know somebody who struggles with this male or female.

So please share this so that we can fix a lot of the misinformation I really hate when people just take away like no, all this stuff is false for you, and then they don't give you something good. We've given you good things and you have this amazing resource of checking her out on Instagram and her website.

So please do that. And thank you again for being on. 

Thank you Autumn 

Bye everybody. Bye.

Thanks for tuning into this week's episode. I am your host, autumn Carter, a certified life coach dedicated to empowering individuals to rediscover their identity, find balance, miss chaos, strengthen relationships, and pursue their dreams. My goal is to help people thrive in every aspect of their lives. I hope today's discussion inspired you and offered valuable insights.[01:02:00] 

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