Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.
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Infertility is, I think, the reflection of what’s happening in our society. There has never been an association with a man’s age and his reproductive ability. But what we’re seeing is that in the last 70 years, there has been a steady decline in male fertility. 23 % of improvement in reproductive hormones
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by spending five minutes a day doing mindful body scanning. 23 % improvement of reproductive hormones just from doing five minutes.
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Welcome to Uncover Your Eyes, where we break down the most pressing health topics shaping lives today. One in eight couples in the US will experience trouble getting pregnant or sustaining their pregnancy. And globally, one in six people will experience infertility at some point in their lives. There’s a lot we may not know about baby making. We’re diving into the truth behind fertility with Dr.
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Aumatma Simmons, who is the author of Fertility Secrets, What Your Doctor Didn’t Tell You About Baby Making, and the host of an award-winning podcast, Egg Meat Sperm. Thank you so much for being on today, Dr. Simmons. I’m so glad to be here, Dr. Meemel. So tell me, why is infertility on the rise? Like, it’s scary that, you know, so many people are struggling getting pregnant. Yeah, infertility is, I think,
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the reflection of what’s happening in our society. And I think, like, we can go to all levels of depth with this, but on the surface level, we are being exposed to more toxins than ever before. A lot of them are reproductive and cancer causing toxins. And the second level is stress and stress can be broken down into the stuff that we
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experience as stress. So a shitty boss, too much work, whatever, that kind of stress, but it’s also stress from like mold that’s in our house or oxidative stress from the processes that our body is doing and it’s not able to clear it properly. So it can be lots of different types of stress that all are impacting whether or not we’re going to be able to procreate or not.
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I just did a Ted talk actually two weeks ago. So the core of that talk was how safe we feel in the world and in our environment is going to determine whether or not the body is going to allow reproduction to happen or shut it off because it’s in survival, right? So if we don’t feel this like safety, nervous system regulation that
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gives the signal like it’s safe enough to have a child, then fertility is just not happening. It’s shut off because we don’t need fertility. The core of our existence is how do I survive? And yes, it would be great to have children and grandchildren, but that’s not my core focus if I can barely make it myself. there a difference, you know,
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In age, like the CDC has now stated that first time pregnancies are now over 30 age group versus back in the 70s when it was 21, 22. Is age a factor and what is happening with age that is causing us to be less fertile? Yeah, that’s a great question. So yes, age is a factor. It is the longer that we spend time in our own bodies, the more oxidative stress.
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physiological stress, and life stress that we’ve been exposed to. So if you think about like, I’m sure high school and college were stressful for you too, in some ways, but it’s not anything compared to where you are today, right? So as you grow in age, you also have lived a longer time in this body.
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And if you haven’t been taking care of it as well, then your body is essentially breaking down. So the later it is that you’re trying to have a baby, the more broken down your body is already. So that’s a factor. What’s important to realize though, is that we can see more clearly what’s happening when we look at sperm counts. So if we look at male fertility,
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There is, it’s not a, like theoretically, men can make sperm into their eighties, right? So there has never been an association with a man’s age and his reproductive ability. But what we’re seeing is that in the last 70 years, there has been a steady decline in male fertility. So the average count for men went from 120 million
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in the 1970s to now 40 million in present day. And it’s still going down. And it’s predicted that if we keep going at the rate we’re going, then in the next 15 years, we’re going to have most men having zero sperm, like no sperm. that to me, like, is a little bit of begging the question of like,
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We’ve pinned so much of this on age. Like, oh, women aren’t waiting till later to start families. Women are older at 35 fertility declines. Like all of this things has been so female centric and sort of like to the extent of putting blame onto the woman. But in reality, male fertility is on a decline and it has never had anything to do with age because sperm turnover every three months.
06:34
So what’s happening? So to me, the bigger question is, yes, women are waiting till later in life. Yes, fertility is going to decline. Yes, our hormones are going to change. All of that is true. But something else is still going on, which is causing this massive decline. And to me, a lot of it is the environment. So we’re
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human bodies are being asked to deal with more from the environment that we’re exposed to, whether that’s the food we’re eating, the stuff we put on our faces, the shampoo that I used to wash my hair yesterday. Like literally every aspect of it is either it’s laden with chemicals that now my body is being asked to get rid of, which
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If I have a high functioning liver, if I can like do all the processes it’s supposed to do, it will clear it out. But I had to do more work to do it. So now I have released more chemicals in my own body, oxidative stress, to get rid of the chemicals that I was given. So like, there’s a cost to that, to the body, which is…
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we’re breaking down our bodies. We’re using up more of our reserves and our resources to deal with life in general. What’s happening with the eggs? Oh, we touched on, I love that you blamed the men because I’m a feminist. So yay, I’m so glad you that up right at the beginning. Small problem that might be in women. What’s happening with the egg reserves? Is that like, are stats on that? Is it going down?
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Well, egg reserves are different because you get your eggs, what your ovaries have as the reserve was actually created in your grandmother’s womb. Not your mother, your grandmother. So what she was being exposed to when your mom was being conceived is what’s going to determine how much of an ovarian reserve you are born with.
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And you’re born with what you’re born with. So there isn’t like, oh, we can go back in time and change it. No, like we just have what we have. But what we are exposing those eggs to is going to make a huge difference. So if these, if our ovaries and the eggs inside of them are being kind of held in a soup of toxins,
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for example, those eggs are not going to be good quality. It’s just like common sense, right? Like if you put your phone in acid, what’s going to happen to your phone? Like it’s probably not a good scenario. So similarly, if you put your eggs, these like premature, pre-developed follicles into a soup of toxins, you’re going to have a
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a shit show. So there is that. There’s also quality is going down. is not the reserve. It’s the quality of them. Yeah. And the end the reserve can also go down. So there is kind of a growing number of women that are waking up in their 20s, mid 20s, mid early 30s. Like, oh,
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I started trying to get pregnant, I was having issues, and now I’m being told I have premature ovarian failure. I have a regular cycle, what’s going on? And for those women, it could be genetics, it could be the toxins they’re exposed to, it could be the amount of stress. For some women, we will see their ovarian reserve come back. So you expose the…
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ovaries to the right environment, the right blood flow, the right nutrients, and suddenly their AMH goes up, which is the marker for ovarian reserve. And most doctors will look at this and be like, what? That’s impossible. Like you can’t increase ovarian reserve. And that’s true. We haven’t like magically created eggs that weren’t in her ovaries, right? What I think is happening is
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in an effort to protect our potential fertile future, the ovary goes, oh my God, all these toxins, all these things happening, let’s shut it down. Let’s like pretend that none of it exists, right? So we like turn down the volume of all of these eggs and instead of tons of eggs developing in every cycle, we’d like to lower the number.
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so that we can protect these follicles from being used up in an environment that’s not conducive to fertility. So sometimes when we get that ovarian reserve flipped, suddenly the ovary is like, oh, we’re good. We’re in a good environment. We’re not in acid anymore. Then the ovary sends a message like, hey, you guys can wake up again. Like, we’re good. We don’t need to be in hibernation. We don’t need to be in protection mode.
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And they all of a sudden function restored. So that has happened. Is that every single person we work with? No. There are some people whose ovarian reserve will never go up. And unfortunately, I tell these women all the time, like, listen, we’re going to try everything we have, but it’s not a guarantee that your ovarian reserve suddenly goes up and you have access to eggs that you have in reserve.
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because we don’t know if anything is actually nascent, right? Like we don’t know if there’s any eggs sleeping. So we can wake up these eggs if they’re sleeping, but if there’s nothing sleeping, then we have nothing to wake up. So we just won’t know, because there is no measure of what it is that’s in the ovary itself. It’s just what’s accessible to the testing that we’re doing, where we can see it. So yeah, it’s a little bit of a mix, but…
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I think even there was a 32 year old, it’s probably, her baby’s probably a year. So it’s been a couple of years since I talked to her, but she was, she had been to three different doctors, fertility doctors who had told her, sorry, there’s nothing we can do. You need an egg donor. And her AMH was 0.1, which is very, very, very low.
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but she was 32. So she wasn’t quite ready to give up. We meet. I was like, well, basically what I just said, like, we’ll try whatever we can. We see what happens. And she, her AMH did not go up. So I was like distraught because she had made so many improvements and there were so many signals that things were better. And we worked together for six months and we did that test as like her final check. And I was like,
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dang, the AMH didn’t go up. And that cycle, she got pregnant. Wow. And I was like, wait, Like, is this possible? So it really like, to me, that was proof of like, even if you have a couple of eggs left, it’s still possible to conceive naturally. It’s just, do they have the right environment and the right
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soup that they’re hanging out with so that they can develop at the healthiest possible place and be able to turn into a potential baby. So that has also happened where AMH doesn’t go up, that’s okay, like still got, it still has your baby, so we’re good.
15:05
So what are those things that you worked on? I know it’s not one size fits all, but I mean, there’s certain things like you said that you worked on with her. What are some of those common things that you work on for infertility that may not increase AMH, but at least helps people may get pregnant? Yeah. So we have a process. It’s the four Rs to restorative fertility. Reveal, remove, rebalance, receive.
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So the reveal phase is let’s figure out all of the things that are potentially happening in your body and around your body that could potentially be throwing you out of whack and giving the signal that fertility is not a good idea right now. For her, the biggest factor was protein deficiency. She’s Indian descent, vegetarian, not eating enough protein.
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Right? Like I just, knew it even before I did all the testing. Like, yeah. See, like I’m, I’m the same. So I got it. I was like, okay, we have a really good starting point. Then we had her brain and ovaries were not talking super well to each other. So she had been on birth control for a very long time, which in my opinion is that it disconnects the brain from the ovaries.
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So all of the signals that the brain would send to the ovaries and the ovaries would signal back to the brain, that communication loop is broken with birth control. So that was not a good scenario. And then the last piece was her cycles were super kind of irregular and spotty and she would like bleed for a half a day, like just.
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really weird things. So those were the three things that were the most informative. There was some hormone, like how her body was metabolizing hormones was a little off in that we’re usually looking at cortisol, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, those are our main hormones and the metabolites of all of those hormones. So that was the piece. And then nutrient deficiencies.
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Surprise, surprise. So in the absence of adequate nutrition, the body again says survival of me before the future generation, right? So always prioritizing myself. I am a selfish human as are we all. So her body was like, we’re in survival mode. We got to like have all of the nutrients we need to keep them. So those were her like main things going in.
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The remove phase is where we’re getting rid of crap that’s stuck in our body. So that’s gonna be detox. And then we pair that with an environmental detox. So your home, the cleaning products you use, the cooking utensils, the pots and pans and health and beauty aids and all of that kind of stuff. So their detox was relatively okay. They didn’t have a ton of products. So she wasn’t like super into.
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putting stuff in her hair or her face. So that was relatively easy for them. And then we will go into rebalance and the rebalance phase is where we check off the list of all of the things that are happening. So for her, we just checked off one after another. Like let’s replenish your nutrients. Let’s get your hormones metabolizing properly. Let’s increase your protein. It was really hard. And then like,
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let’s get your cycles back on track. And that all happened within a period of like four-ish months. And then we got to receive, which is the mind-body phase. And that’s really where a lot of women that are going through fertility issues is like, I’m broken, something’s wrong with me, right? Like the conversations we’re having inside of our heads are worse than what people are saying to us. So.
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really working on those pieces is extremely important. So we did that for like a month. And then that was it. That was her six months. At the end of that, her hormones were better except for AMH. That was the only one. And then she had had on the clock, like having a regular cycle, three day bleed, like everything had clicked into place. So I was like, man, everything checks out except for this AMH.
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And I was really bummed because I was like, she’s 32. There’s no way her ovarian reserve is as low as that specific lab shows. But unfortunately, that never went up. And there she was. was she was like, oh, we already got pregnant. Even before I reviewed the results with her. She was pregnant. So wow.
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So it goes to show like what you ingest, what you surround yourself with. And obviously like you talked a lot about the stress or the mind body, you know, we hear that when we go through fertility or, you know, when I was trying to get pregnant, everybody would say, stay calm, like don’t stress out. But we say it so casually, right? Like I don’t think anybody actually like thinks about it. like, but I’m not stressed, right? But you know, I think there is that internal conversation, like you said, that can be harsher than the outside conversation with others. And that’s…
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That’s scary. Um, and it’s a process that you kind of have to dedicate yourself to, just like people dedicate themselves to, you know, going through IBF and you know, there’s a lot of injections and things like that. This is a, different approach that, um, is something that requires dedication. So I love that. I want to talk about, um, a couple of things. So first is the detox that you talked about. What does the detox mean? Like when I think of detox, I thinking like just drink teas all day, you know, for three days. That’s my, you know,
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I would say like what I think of when we talk about more of a nutritional detox or detoxing your body. I know you talked about the environmental detox, are they also on a detox with nutrition? Yeah. So we have a few different detoxes that I’ve designed that we pull from. And the reason is not every single person is going to do well on every detox. So
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there isn’t like a generic template that I would say, everyone do this and you’re gonna be great. It’s more specific and nuanced to what do your liver enzyme show? What does your blood sugar show? And what is your metabolic function? And based on those three, we’re choosing which detox is gonna be the best. So another example, we have this like, I think he’s like 50.
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50 year old guy, he came in, his liver enzymes were off the charts, like scarier numbers than I’ve ever seen. They were all red flagged, which that range is so big. It’s like, I’ve never seen anyone red flagged for liver enzymes. So the conversation I had with him was like, sorry, we’re not doing any detoxing. Like you’re going to your doctor and getting worked up and seeing like, of course he had fatty liver disease, but
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Like I wanted someone else to be involved and let him know that this is a really severe condition. What was crazy to me is he came back and the doctors told him like, oh, you’re fine. We’ll just like wait and watch. And I was like, what? You’re in the normal. Wait and watch? Like this is abnormal for the lab. Like this is not a functional normal or abnormal. I was.
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blabbergasted, they were like, oh, we’re just going to wait and watch. So for him, we actually opted for, we can’t do our traditional detoxes because they would just be way too intense. So we went for like a homeopathic detox, very gentle and like prolonged it over a period of three months because there’s no way like his, if we flushed all of those toxins out of him.
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his body wouldn’t even have been able to handle it because the liver enzymes were so high. It was telling us like his body doesn’t actually know what to do with the amount of toxins already floating around. So we had to like do it in a way gentler mode and his liver enzymes are now in the forties, which is better. Still crazy high for us. But I was like, okay, at least you’re normal range. The type of detox varies a lot with
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what their metabolic function shows and what liver function looks like. What are the, you know, I’m glad you mentioned like the metabolic function testing, you know, having those regular lab tests as opposed to just like the fertility tests, I want to say, you know, what we’ve got to change and what soup, you know, your body is sitting in. So for the AMH, what other lab tests do you suggest that people are getting done?
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First, if you can mention the more specific fertility related ones that like a fertility doctor would do. And then the ones that you kind of like to add on because that helps to give you that holistic type of approach. Yeah, absolutely. So the main ones from the fertility perspective are FSH follicle stimulating hormone, LH luteinizing hormone, AMH, which is the anti-malarion hormone and estradiol, which is
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estrogen basically, the fertility-focused estrogen. So those tests are the ones that we want to look at. We want to make sure that we’re testing all four of those on cycle day three. So this is where a lot of doctors that are non-fertility-focused grew up. They’re like, just go whenever, it’s fine. No, not fine because your hormones are shifting every single day.
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So if you’re measuring it on the wrong day, you’re getting a completely different picture and snapshot of what’s happening. I think that’s a really big component. And then the other big thing that’s popping up a lot is women have these like at home monitors, Inido, Mira, these are like urine strips that people can pee on, which gives them a read of all of the same hormones except for AMH. So it does LH, FSH and estradiol.
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and progesterone. So they come in with those and they’re like, here’s the values on day three. And I’m like, this is not, does that translate to blood labs? So in order for evaluation to happen, we need blood labs on cycle day three. Why day three? Day two, three and four are kind of the lowest point of our hormones. That’s where our hormones are baseline.
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Other parts of the cycle, estrogen is high or FSH is high, LH is high, different points, different hormones are elevated and everyone has a different normal. So for someone like me who’s probably more estrogen focused than progesterone focused, and I didn’t say dominant, this is not like an abnormality, it’s just my body’s tendency is more towards estrogen.
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If I test it on cycle day 10, which is two days before I ovulate, like, yes, I’ve got my cycle down. So I’m just using myself. So estrogen peaks like two days before and a day before the LH surge, estrogen is going to be at its highest. But a high estrogen for me might be like 300. A high estrogen for you might be 150. So we don’t have like,
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If you’ve never tested it, and if you don’t have very specific days that you’ve been testing your hormones for a period of time, we don’t actually know what your normal is, right? We don’t know that your normal is 150, but right now you’re at 400. We don’t know that my normal is 300, but it should be 150, whatever, right? Like it’s really hard to figure out what’s happening. So we find that
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for the average, for almost everyone, we can agree on what is happening on day two, three, and four, which is also going to predict what happens in the rest of your cycle. If your FSH on day three is 21, you’re technically menopausal, A. Your FSH above 20 puts you in menopause.
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still have regular cycles, you could be considered menopausal, or your ovarian reserve is really low. So for young women that have high FSH and low AMH, they’re the ones that are being diagnosed with premature ovarian insufficiency. The FSH is an indicator of what’s happening in the ovaries. How responsive is this ovary to the signal from the brain?
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And if your brain is screaming at the ovary, which 20 would be screaming, it’s sort of saying the brain is either screaming because it’s gone crazy or it’s screaming because the recipient is not hearing the signal. And if the recipient is not hearing the signal, then we know that what would pair with the high FSH is a low AMH, low ovarian reserve.
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So those are the two checks. But if the brain is screaming without the ovary needing screaming, then it’s a completely different issue. So I’ve seen women who have an FSH of like 300, but their ovarian reserve is not low by any means. Those almost always, they’ve had really intense stress about two to three years leading up to that test.
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Almost always. And if they had that stress and their AMH is okay, but their FSH is nuts, it’s like brain’s gone crazy. So let’s get the brain under control. And the way we do that is through nervous system restoration, So we can bring that FSH all the way back down. One of my first patients was 43, her FSH was 300 something.
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And we got it down to like an 11, which still is not optimal. Optimal is like below 10. So we were really close. And I was like, well, this might be as good as we can get. We can keep going, but let’s try. And they tried and got pregnant after five years of infertility, trying everything, going through so many IVF cycles. But her brain was going nuts because she had lost a parent three years before that happened.
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And she was like, well, that was such a long time ago and I’ve processed the trauma and I’ve healed and I’ve grieved and all of the things. And I’m like, yeah, but no one restored your nervous system for fertility. So we got to do that before your body will let you get pregnant. So those four hormones on day three, which is the baseline, the kind of lowest point for everyone across the board. And if it’s not the lowest point for you,
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then it can actually show an abnormal versus if you do it a few days later, FSH is rising. So you’re catching it when it’s rising. You’re like, oh my God, it’s 42. Like, well, it’s cycle day seven. It’d be actually normal. So we get the best information from that timestamp. And those are the fertility kind of main tests that you do. Those are it. Yeah. Those are the four.
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And then you would do all these metabolic tests as well on a lot of your patients, help the environment and the body, correct? Yeah, on men and women. women and men are going to get the same test that I’m going to talk about. So the additional tests are CBC and CMP. Those are the basics. Those literally cost $12. For those of you that are listening that are like, oh my God, I have to get my doctor to run this. It’s $12.
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CBC and CMP and then liver enzymes, blood sugar, hemoglobin A1C, insulin, homocysteine. Those are the main ones. I’m missing some markers. Oh, there’s like sex hormone binding, globulin, testosterone. We’re doing FSH and LH on the guys as well. So they have those I was just going to ask you for the guys, there something specific? Yeah. Yeah.
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The fertility ones for them are FSH, LH, and testosterone instead of estrogen. And then sperm count, is instead of AMH. So pretty similar as far as like what the guys need tested versus what the women need tested. We want a sense of what’s the reserve like. We want to know how the brain’s connecting with the reproductive organ that is making these egg and sperm. Sorry, I’m like, what are they called?
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Do we have that signaling happening? And then outside of that, probably I would say liver enzymes are super important because that gives us a sense of is the liver doing what it needs to to get rid of the toxins in your environment and in your body. And then blood sugar and homocysteine actually have very interesting correlations in the male side. There’s a lot of research that shows that if a man has
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hyperhomocystinemia, high levels of homocysteine, or hyperglycemia, high blood sugar, then that is gonna correlate to pregnancy loss in the women. Wow.
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Yeah, crazy. So for anybody who is still in the mindset that women like, women take it on so hard, right? Like, oh, I lost the pregnancy. I did something that caused a pregnancy loss. And in reality, she probably didn’t do anything. But she probably like the percentage of
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times that I’ve talked to couples who have had recurrent pregnancy losses. And I asked them like, what were you doing? What was happening? Blah, blah, blah. And then we do the testing. The correlation between the man having one of these factors and recurrent miscarriage is really high, like 95 % of the time.
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the guy has one of these two markers, at least. Yeah. Yeah. So not to say that hormones don’t play a role and she should be doing all of the things, but I think the idea that we’ve ingrained in society is that fertility is a woman’s problem and pregnancy, if it doesn’t sustain, is her doing something.
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incorrectly. She didn’t take her prenatal. it’s probably too heavy. Yeah, lifted something. Yeah, it’s, but most of the time it’s the man. I hope that I’m helping to change that mindset that we have around fertility and pregnancy. And that what is happening in pregnancy is actually more reflective of what’s happening with the guy than what’s happening with the woman.
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So yes, she’s carrying your child, but whether or not that child is set up with the best health possible and has the best chances of survival in her womb have to do with what you did leading into the pregnancy. I love that. I’m so happy with you today. You’re my favorite guest now. I love to blame the men. I want to go back.
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to this central nervous system because I think there are a lot of people who try to get pregnant or, you know, don’t sustain their pregnancy. And a lot of us have trauma before, you know, most of us are now trying to get pregnant post 30. And a lot of us have experienced trauma in our lives, losing a loved one, whatever the situation is. So, you you talked a little bit about that patient of yours and the nervous system calming down. What does that look like? Is that counseling or are these medications they’re taking? None.
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Neither. These are things you can do in your own life like today. It’s totally free. It’s like I love these because they’re just so easy. my favorite and these are all research back. So I’m going to share what it is and then what the research says. So 23 percent of improvement in reproductive hormones by spending five minutes a day.
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doing mindful body scanning, which is basically like you’re meditating, but the meditation is just like you’re noticing what’s happening in your body. 23 % improvement of reproductive hormones just from doing five minutes. So take that.
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I’ll take that all day. Yeah. The second one. I have to quit my job. This is important. you need mindfulness. Yeah, you don’t need to quit. don’t need, like, you can find five minutes, I promise. Or we can just lie and say we need 24 hours. The second is consistent sleep-wake cycles.
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even on the weekends. And that was the hard part for me to digest because I love to sleep in on the weekends. But if you can maintain a consistent sleep time and a consistent wake time, that’s going to get you 40 % improvement in reproductive hormones. 40 %! Your cycles will regulate 40 % of the time if you just sleep and wake up at the same time every single day. You can add to it. So
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Some of the tools that I like to add is like, don’t look at your phone right when you wake up. You can instead get five minutes, five to 10 minutes of natural light on your eyes. That really helps to reset the nervous system, reset your cortisol pattern. All of that is really, really helpful. But even the foundation can get you a lot for very little. And then the last one is my favorite and that’s oxytocin.
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If you can like have a 20 minute meaningful time with another human, whether that’s face to face or not is irrelevant. 20 minutes per day of a meaningful conversation, a shared meal, any kind of connection with a human that feels meaningful for you is going to show a… What is this that’s like…
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60 % reduction of stress hormones. 68%, something like that. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. But those I love sharing because they’re so easy and you can put this into your life without any friction, right? You can be like, hubby, we’re gonna have meals together every night. We’re gonna share, like we can do five minutes of mindfulness.
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practice in our lives, either on our own or together, and I’m going to be sleeping and waking up at the same time, period. Like, that’s it. That’s all it takes to reset our nervous system, improve our reproductive hormones, and just like reduce what we title stress in our lives. And so many times people are like, but I’m not stressed.
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No, I’m not stressed. I don’t need to relax. if we actually view things that we may not even be registering as stress, but our body is registering as stress. Just talked to one of our guys yesterday who, A, like they’re doing IVF because they have a rare genetic issue that they both carry.
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so they could pass it on to the baby and the baby would not survive for very long if it had the disease. So they’re doing IVF because of that. But they came in because they were having repeat failures of IVF. And so I talking to the guy yesterday and I’m like, listen, you’re stressed, right? And he’s like, no, I’m not stressed. And I’m like, your hormones show your stress.
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And he’s like, what are you talking about? He’s a functional medicine doctor, this guy. I’m like, here’s your cortisol chart. You’re at the bottom level of like, not even optimal. You’re like teetering right above survival. And he’s like, yeah, so. And I’m like, dude, your body is viewing whatever is happening in your life as stress. This is.
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the flat line that you get to after years and decades of high stress. And he is like, yeah, but I don’t feel it. Like, cool. You don’t feel it because you’re pushing through it. You would probably feel it if you cut back on your coffee intake, but you’re like doing a really good job surviving in your life. He just like really couldn’t see.
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past how he felt to be able to be like, oh yeah, I see why my cortisol is bottomed out or I see how my body’s perceiving stress, even if I don’t feel it, which is really a hard thing, right? Like there’s so many times where I’m like, I’m not stressed. I’m not stressed. I’m not stressed. Right? Yeah. Right. Yeah. And like the more high functioning we are, the more
43:03
we are like, I lovingly call our people type A control freaks, because I’m that and I have been that in so many parts of my life. But these high achievers that are just like we can add and take on so much before actually feeling it as stress. So the more high functioning you tend toward or the high achieving you tend toward the more
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you have kind of a skewed perspective of what you actually perceive as stress. So interesting. Thank you. Oh my God. Those are all like amazing tips for people because I think like some of them are so easy. And if this was 10 years ago before I had my first kid, then I would have been going for a coffee with a friend every day for 20 minutes. My husband had to do all these things. No job, nothing. I need to relax all day.
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Are there common misconceptions that you hear that you want to debunk those myths and make sure people know that these are not things you should be listening to? Yeah, I think the biggest one in the fertility world is this idea that our fertility drops off of a cliff at 35. And that is not actually true. That myth emerged out of the 1800s in France that has records of churches
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that were showing that or tracking that women were not coming to get their children in to get baptized after the age of 35. So to me, the scientist that I am, I read that and I was like, hmm, well, it’s happening in the 1800s in France. Life expectancy for women in the 1800s in France was 29. Wow. So yeah, they weren’t having children after they were dead.
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So I kind of like saying it super jokingly, but that is where that myth comes from. And there are some countries that have replicated high quality studies. They’re very small scale, but those studies are showing about a 3 % decline between the age groups of 25 and 29 versus 35 and 39. So a 3 % decline is very different from
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the cliff that we’re imagining in our heads, right? It’s like very different. 3 % is like, oh yeah, there’s some loss versus the cliff, is like, I’m going to go from super fertile to zero overnight, which is not happening. So I think that’s a major myth. And I think that that myth actually leads into so much of what is being promoted and driven to fertility women.
45:55
So women are being told, freeze your eggs because your fertility is going to drop off of a cliff. OK, freeze your eggs. But don’t freeze those eggs thinking that you’re going to have them and guaranteed going to have children because if you continue living the lifestyle that you’re living, sorry, your uterus is still aging. So you go back in at 45 and you’re like, I would like to use those eggs now. If you continue the stress that you were under,
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you continue drinking and partying and doing all the things, then sorry to tell you at 45, you’re going to be really disappointed that the eggs that you froze are not turning into a live baby. And the success rate of those eggs is like 3%. 10 years ago when it first came out, was 1%. 1 % of those eggs were turning into live babies. Wow. Now.
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3 % are turning into live babies. So yes, it’s better, but not that much. So we really need to think about how we’re treating our bodies from a very young age so that we can preserve our fertility in our bodies and freeze those eggs if we feel like it, but really like use it as a backup, not as an insurance policy guaranteed payout. I think that is a
47:19
The age myth lends itself to a bunch of other myths. The second one is, oh, I’m over 35, so I just need to walk into a fertility clinic. So people, like, because this myth is so ingrained, they’re like, oh my God, I’m going to need IVF. Right? So you’re already bracing yourself for it. And you go into a fertility clinic. If all you have is a hammer, everything is a nail.
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The fertility clinic’s like, great, let’s try it. You try for a little while on your own. Then we do a bunch of IUAs and then we do IVF. And that’s kind of it. That’s the trajectory you’re on. And unfortunately, like even IVF success rates, what a lot of clinics publish on their own is very different from what gets officially published in SART, which is the National Governing Body.
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overseeing and publications related to overseeing fertility clinics in the US. So SART, I forget what it stands for, but SART is kind of the authority on this. if you go and the problem is that it’s blinded. So you can’t see like what clinics they are talking about in their research, but what you see is very different from what fertility clinics publish on their website.
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So a lot I’ve seen clinics say we have a 99 % success rate.
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No, there’s no way you have a 99 % success rate, A. But B, like, there are no fertility clinics in anywhere in the world that have remotely close to that success rate. What SART has published is the best success rate is under 35. And I think that’s like 42%, maybe. And then by the time you get to 42 or 43, that percent
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that success rate has gone down to 2%. So it’s like steadily declining with age. Now, so that’s the second myth. The third myth is that there’s nothing you can do to improve egg quality or fertility or IVF outcomes, especially not diet. That is the message that so many women are hearing. Oh my gosh, every day.
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And that’s also not true. There are massive studies published that show, hey, if you improve your diet, even by 30%, you’re going to see an improvement in fertility outcomes. So we know that that’s not true. That has been proved by research. I don’t have anything else to say about it. I like why these fertility doctors are saying diet makes no difference, makes no sense. So that’s a big one. And then
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The last one I would say is that we culturally and medically are telling women to try for six to 12 months, depending on their age, before they get tested for fertility issues. And this is the one that I probably find the most heartbreaking because if a woman knows that she doesn’t have regular periods or she has pain with her menstrual cycle,
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or she’s super stressed out, whatever it is. Like there’s so many things that you can be like, something’s not right. Like I feel off and you go to your doctor and the doctor is like, have you been trying? No. Okay. Well then go try for a year. And then when you come back, we’ll do some testing. So for an entire year, this woman is sitting in her bathroom every single month, like,
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I’m not pregnant again. Something is wrong with me. I’m broken. I’m screwed basically. And she’s going through this roller coaster for 12 months before she gets adequate testing to say, oh, your hormones are shit.
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which to me is like flabbergasting. Like we live in a country where we should have access to all of these things, but the way that women are treated is this. Like you don’t need testing, you’re fine. Go try for a while. It’s like, well, would it hurt you to do this hundred dollar hormone test to let me know what’s happening with my hormones? Even if it’s just like test so that I can
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put aside the fact that I don’t have anything going on that’s major, right? And I’ve had, I’ve probably talked to a few hundred women at least that are like, hey, I’m like super concerned about my hormones and blah, blah, blah. And I’ll be like, great, go get this test. It’s like, there is a company even called Modern Fertility. You can do that test for like $170.
52:27
You pay out of pocket, insurance is not going to cover it. But guess what that gives you? The peace of mind of feeling like, oh, it’s not my hormones. Something else is going on. Yeah. Yeah. Not my hormones. Yeah. So just the relief that they feel. So they’ll come back with these labs. I review them for free. And I look at them and I’m like, your labs are good. Try for a few months. Don’t wait a year, but try for a few months. Yeah.
52:55
And a lot of them will come back in like the next cycle. Like, thank you so much for telling me that because it relieves the stress. Yeah. pregnant. I was one of the ones that actually my doctor did tell me, um, wait a year, um, before, you know, just in case. And you know, cause it’ll happen. Um, it turns out there was other issues, but I didn’t get to know till after a year. So, you know, I agree with you. Um, and I think that’s so important, like self.
53:23
advocacy, like this is why we have this podcast is so important to keep people informed. Question your doctors, you know, question other healthcare providers, ask them and know the information so that you can make these, you know, informed decisions and choices. Right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. And like, if you knew, after a year, you find out that you have issues that you have to deal with.
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You’re like, well, I could have saved a year if I just had that testing upfront. Like you just wasted a year of my life. It’s so hoping that it was going to happen on its own. So I just don’t see the logic. I, I haven’t lately, but I’ve talked to women in the past that are like, oh no, I don’t want to get tested because I don’t want to know something’s wrong. And I’m like, well, if something is wrong,
54:16
Knowing about it isn’t going to change whether or not you do something about it but not knowing about it is like running in the blind in the dark and Being like, oh, hopefully it’s all okay. Yeah, it’s peachy and it’s gonna fix itself. It’s not gonna fix itself guys so Really? Like I think we could be saving people a lot of time if they just had access to testing sooner if we had
54:46
access to analysis that was like, can someone just talk to me and ask me a bunch of questions to figure out is my fertility on track or is it off track? And obviously it’s expensive for humans to do this, but that’s what I think you said in the intro, madre fertility, that’s exactly what it does. So we’ve taken the like the normal questions that I would go through with people and turned it into algorithm.
55:15
so that people can have that access for free. And they can just go to this website, do the analysis, and it will tell them, like, here are your potential fertility factors. Here are the tests that you can get. If you want, we can order the tests for you, or you can go to your doctor and ask for these specific tests. But it really, like, cut through the BS because we should have access to better care. And I want to make
55:45
that accessible to everyone so that we don’t have women that are like, oh, I wish I had the right tests like two years ago, five years ago, but nobody told me. Or I did all of these hormones, but they were on the wrong cycle day. So my doctor said it was normal, but like, do they even know what that means? So we just eliminate all of the barriers, I feel like.
56:14
to fertility care that should be accessible, but it’s just not available. And hopefully we’re gonna change that paradigm. Thank you so much. I mean, thank you so much, Dr. Simmons. This was so helpful. We’re so grateful. I’m sure our listeners are such great information. And I think my takeaway is make that soup as good as it can be and the men can be to blame. Tell us where our listeners can find you.
56:43
great social media page and also about your book. We are gonna link everything in the show notes, but we’ll hear it from you. For sure. So my social media Instagram is where I’m most active. It’s @HolisticFertilityDoctor It’s also that on TikTok and YouTube. So we’re everywhere. However, you like to consume your content and grow your knowledge. We’re there for you. The book is fertility secrets. What your doctor didn’t tell you about baby making.
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And that’s on Amazon. Excellent. And we’ll link your podcast in the show notes as well, because you have a wonderful podcast. Good point. don’t know if I get that. forget about that. Thank you so much, Dr. Simmons, for your time today. Awesome. Great talking to you. Thank you, listeners and viewers, for tuning in. If you want to catch more episodes of Uncover Your Eyes, make sure to follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and on YouTube.
57:41
To learn more about me, follow me on Instagram @Dr.MeenalAgarwal Until next time, keep those eyes uncovered!
57:55
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