Feed Your Fertility: Your Guide to Cultivating a Healthy Pregnancy with Chinese Medicine, Real Food, and Holistic Living

279 Pages·2015·1.97 MB·English

by  Emily Bartlett, Laura Erlich

“Feed your Fertility provides solid information and advice on the most
fundamental strategy for increased fertility. We have developed much in the way
of high technology, but the foods we eat every day are our most powerful
medicine. Laura and Emily provide a path to nourishing yourself not in only
body, but in mind and spirit as well.”
—Chris Axelrad, L.Ac., FABORM, president of the American Board of Oriental
Reproductive Medicine
“Feed Your Fertility is a wonderful and refreshing multifaceted approach
towards reproductive care. From diet to stress reduction to conventional fertility
treatments and Eastern methodologies, this book is a comprehensive guide for
fertility care and successful, healthy pregnancies.”
—Eliran Mor, M.D., California Center for Reproductive Health
“Feed Your Fertility is a must-read for anyone trying to conceive. It draws on
traditional Chinese medicine brought right up-to-date, offering couples a simple
but effective nutritional plan that works. I recommend it highly.”
—Jill Blakeway, M.S., L.Ac., co-author, Making Babies: A Proven 3-Month
Program for Maximum Fertility
“[This book] is a must for anyone who wants to optimize their success by
integrating Eastern and Western medicine. It is a comprehensive resource
outlining a mind–body evaluation and approach to fertility.”
—Kelly J. Baek, M.D., California Fertility Partners
“Feed Your Fertility is really an invitation to pursue the best that life has to
offer: the beauty of Earth’s bounty, refining and cultivating your own intuition,
sharing this wisdom with your loved ones, and passing along the delicious truth
to your children. Food is our medicine, and thus the holistic circle ripples and
expands.”
—Lilakoi Moon (formerly Lisa Bonet), actress and mother
“If you’re caught in a quagmire of conflicting information about infertility, its
causes, and its treatment, you need this book. Accessible and easy to read, it’s a
wealth of information that addresses everything from environmental toxins, diet,
and Chinese medicine to PCOS, endometriosis, and standard medical fertility
treatments. Emily and Laura approach these issues with wisdom, kindness, and a
firm can-do attitude that will help you conquer stress AND beat back your
infertility!”
infertility!”
—Kristen Michaelis, author of Beautiful Babies: Nutrition for Fertility,
Pregnancy, Breastfeeding, and Baby’s First Foods
“Feed Your Fertility is a wonderful reminder of not only the mind–body
connection, but the connection between ourselves and our environment and how
they both affect our health and ability to conceive. The knowledge you will
gather from this book will give you the power to cultivate a healthy lifestyle,
body, and pregnancy.”
—Jill Latiano Howerton, executive producer of the film GMO OMG
Feed Your Fertility
Your Guide to Cultivating a Healthy Pregnancy with
Traditional Chinese Medicine, Real Food, and Holistic Living
Emily Bartlett, LAc & Laura Erlich, LAc
Contents
Introduction
Part 1: Causes of Infertility
Chapter 1: Stress, the Baby Blocker
Chapter 2: Toxins, Toxins Everywhere
Chapter 3: The Standard American Diet and Fertility—What Is Going Wrong?
Part 2: Cultivating Fertility
Chapter 1: Understanding Your Cycle
Chapter 2: Embracing Conscious Conception
Chapter 3: Self-Care
Chapter 4: Building a Solid Support Team
Chapter 5: Chinese Medicine and Fertility
Chapter 6: Adopting a Traditional Foods Diet
Chapter 7: Chinese Medicine and Traditional Diets
Chapter 8: Feed Your Fertility: Bringing It All Together
Chapter 9: Vitamins and Supplements for Fertility
Part 3: Dealing with Obstacles—Conventional and Holistic Solutions for
Common Infertility Issues
Chapter 1: Advanced Maternal Age—Am I Too Old to Have a Baby?
Chapter 2: Miscarriage
Chapter 3: Endometriosis, Fibroids, and Polyps
Chapter 4: Irregular or No Ovulation
Chapter 5: Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS)
Chapter 6: Thyroid Issues
Chapter 7: Unexplained Infertility
Chapter 8: The Male Factor
Part 4: Navigating the Medical Fertility Work
Chapter 1: Understanding the Basic Fertility Work-Up
Chapter 2: Insemination—IUI and ICI
Chapter 3: IVF and Other Advanced Fertility Treatments
Chapter 4: Other Options—Sperm Donation, Egg Donation, Surrogacy, and
Adoption
Conclusion
Appendix
A Week of Meals
Glossary of Medical Terms
References
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Recipe Index
General Index
Introduction
WHILE THE DECISION TO START A FAMILY can be both exciting and
terrifying, it is especially so for couples who encounter challenges. At its best,
making a baby can be the thrill and joy of a lifetime. At its worst, it can be a
roller coaster of hope, disappointment, and unfulfilled dreams.
We wrote this book to take the chaos and confusion down a notch and put you
back in the driver’s seat. Is your diet nourishing you and contributing to your
ability to conceive? Have you explored the unique perspectives on fertility that
Chinese medicine can provide? Are you getting the most out of your medical
care? Have you truly created space in your life for a new little being?
The title we chose, Feed Your Fertility, has to do with a lot more than food.
We believe that, in order to truly nourish yourself in a meaningful way, all
aspects of your life must be fed. That means paying attention to your
relationships, your lifestyle habits, and all of the nuances that go into making
you feel healthy, inside and out. In this book, we hope to provide you with tools
to enhance your whole self, paving the way toward conception, a healthy
pregnancy, and a thriving baby.
Taking this a leap further, in Chinese medicine, human beings (and all living
beings) are viewed as a microcosm of the world in which we live. This means
that we as individuals are simply tiny parts of the greater whole, and our little
tiny part is a mirror image of the world around us, just on a much smaller scale.
With this in mind, we admit that this book is about more than achieving a
healthy pregnancy—it’s a call to cultivate fertility within your life and for our
planet at large. Without an external healthy environment, our internal
environments become essentially irrelevant, because we cannot survive without
the earth upon which we live. By living consciously and choosing our food
sources carefully, we take on the role of the archetypal Mother, nourishing
ourselves, the health of our planet, and the viability of future generations.
As part of your fertility journey, we invite you to embrace the role of the
great archetypal Mother, bestowed with the obligation to protect her children.
Begin to live your life from the belief that you already are a mother and that your
mothering can be applied right here and now.
Consider the possibility of letting go of the wanting and instead living
through the present moment—honoring, cultivating, and activating life and
fertility in every aspect of your existence. Living from this place, on both a
physical and energetic level, will invite the conception of a baby into your body
far more readily than existing from a state of fear, stress, and ticking clocks.
{ PART 1 }
Causes of Infertility
Prospective parents, it’s time to get healthy. Now’s your chance to
finally quit smoking, stop binge drinking, and stop depending on
sleep medications, caffeine, and other chemicals you can do
without. Start exercising, see a therapist to get over your issues
with your mother-in-law, stop overworking, and start eating
healthy foods from sustainable sources. Sounds simple, right?
Even if you don’t feel like you have any major issues to
overcome, there still may be barriers standing in your way to
conception including mounting stress, a myriad of hidden toxins,
and the pitfalls of our broken food system.
Chapter 1
Stress, the Baby Blocker
ASIDE FROM POOR DIET, stress is the biggest contributor to modern health
problems. The truth is that stress is unavoidable. It’s as integral to being human
as eating and sleeping. In fact, our very survival depends on our ability to react
to our surroundings via our stress mechanisms.
Have you heard of “fight-or-flight?” This is the part of your nervous system
(called the sympathetic nervous system) that, when activated, will give you
superhuman powers for survival by sending extra blood flow to your muscles,
making your vision more acute, and sharpening your reflexes. The sympathetic
nervous system can ask the body to perform out-of-the-ordinary feats because it
temporarily deprioritizes normal body function, including digestion, sleep, and
… reproduction. After all, why would your body agree to make a baby if there
was a pretty good chance your life was in acute danger?
In our modern hustle-bustle, go-go-go world, it’s common for your nervous
system to always be in a state of mild to moderate fight-or-flight, telling your
reproductive system to take a nap. Recent research supports the theory that stress
negatively impacts fertility. Researchers at Columbia University published a
2014 study in Fertility and Sterility, that concluded that stress diminishes male
sperm count and motility. Another 2014 study published in Human
Reproduction found that women with elevated salivary alpha-amylase (a marker
of chronic elevated stress) had more than double the risk of infertility. Studies
aside, common sense suggests that by reducing and managing your stress, you
may increase your likelihood of conception by improving your overall health.
Here’s another simple fact: Baby-making itself can be stressful, especially
when months tick by without getting pregnant. What’s more, the stress of trying
to conceive can often drain the fun and enjoyment out of sex, leading to strain in
your relationship.
If all of this news seems rather, well, stressful—don’t fret. In Part 2 (page
34), we will be arming you with a myriad of ways to manage and deactivate your
stress. First, let’s look at some other silent fertility offenders that can be found in
places you may least expect.