Lorne Brown 

By listening to the Conscious Fertility Podcast, you agree to not use this podcast as medical advice to treat any medical condition in either yourself or others. Consult your own physician or healthcare provider for any medical issues that you may be having. This entire disclaimer also applies to any guest or contributors to the podcast. Welcome to Conscious Fertility, the show that listens to all of your fertility questions so that you can move from fear and suffering to peace of mind and joy. My name is Lorne Brown. I’m a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine and a clinical hypnotherapist. I’m on a mission to explore all the paths to peak fertility and joyful living. It’s time to learn how to be and receive so that you can create life on purpose.

Today I have Tracy Donegan on the Conscious Fertility Podcast. Now, Tracy, originally midwife in Ireland, now living in Texas and is a health coach and has a Fertility Mind app as well. Tracy and I have connected a couple of times, I don’t know how many years ago, but once upon a time Tracy connected with me and we had a pick brain session on photo modulation, a little of a laser light, and I loved her enthusiasm and interest. And just to show you that there’s the influencers and there’s experts, and then there’s expert influencers. I really have respect for you, Tracy, because we connected recently in August of 2024 in London, England. I was presenting and attending the photo by modulation 2024 conference in London, and there you were to learn more about photobiomodulation, low level laser light therapy and hanging out. We got to chat and break some bread together and really geek out, and I thought I wanted to talk to you more on our podcast.

You have lots to share, especially around the MINDBODY side and you have a personal story and I just always find that is something that the listeners can relate to, connect to, and you’ve been through it and you had to find ways to get through it. And so I thought your story would be important and you have the medical background delivering babies for a long time as a midwife. And so I just love that you’ve been on the side of pregnancy and birth and now you’re on the side of preconception helping getting that baby inside. They call it the oven, right? So welcome to the Conscious Fertility Podcast, Tracy.

Tracy Donegan 

Thank you Lorne. And yeah, great to connect. It’s as interesting as what I’m learning now about photobiomodulation therapy and fertility. Yeah, it’s really exciting. It’s an exciting time to be involved in fertility services and so when I go out there it is close to Lorne and you’re having challenges getting that baby in the oven, go check out what Lorne’s doing with various lasers and helping more women on the path to parenthood.

Lorne Brown 

Perfect. Well, before I get some questions I want to share, I went to your website and podcast pages and I saw your bio and I want to just introduce people to you. I gave you my personal informal introduction, but just to let everybody know and then we’ll get to the questions. And my first one is going to be your story through your fertility journey. And I just want our listeners to know that I’m, Tracy is a midwife, as I mentioned, and she’s dedicated and advocated for women’s reproductive health for many years. She’s a midwife and author of six books, and you have two apps out there, founder of two apps, and you have been instrumental in educating and empowering women through your comprehensive holistic approach to reproductive health and parenting, which is why I was drawn to talk to you, your holistic approach. She has her own personal experience and she’s going to share about her heartbreak through unexplained fertility and premature vein failure and then also the joy that eventually became apparent in her journey and what she discovered.

She does have a master’s in mindfulness studies and she combines extensive knowledge of reproductive health with mindfulness practices to support women and partners throughout fertility challenges. And she’s deeply committed to women’s empowerment throughout their journey and to parenthood and beyond. And you now have a focus as well on photo bi modulation emphasizing its benefits for reproductive health, fertility and overall wellbeing. And as we mentioned, you were in Ireland, but now you’re in Texas. So Tracy, one more time. Welcome to the Conscious Fertility Podcast and can you start with your journey? I’m really curious to hear your journey and what brought you to where you are today.

Tracy Donegan

Yeah, so I guess a lot of other women out there. I just thought that when the time was right to decide to have a baby that it would happen. And it was actually before I was working in tech at the time. That was kind of where I started out and just we assumed that yeah, the timing was right and said, well, let’s give it a year and see how it goes. And we gave it a year and practiced consistently, but it didn’t happen. But just after the first year of consistent practice and starting to little bit more at my diet and lifestyle, but again, I figured I would be one of the healthy women that I don’t need to do all of those lifestyle changes and I just thought I was special. Well, it turns out it wasn’t. We started off unfortunately with a miscarriage when it finally happened first.

So that was about a year later. And of course, again, like many of your viewers, I had been on a contraceptive pill for many, many years and really had no great understanding of that impact on my body. And I think we’re seeing a little bit more intentional focus in that area on what and what these different medications can do to our fertility. So we decided we thought maybe it’s time to get some treatment and go talk to somebody. So I was referred to a gyne who had a fertility practice as well, and we did all the blood work and everything and everything looked good. So we were given this really horrible diagnosis. And for anyone out there who has had this diagnosis, it just leaves you reeling because you almost want them to find a problem. It’s like if we find a problem then we can get a cure, we can fix it, we can get medication, we can do whatever we need to do. But being told it’s unexplained was just unacceptable. So we thought, okay, let’s start with the least intervention. So we went and we tried I, we did three rounds of IUI interuterine

Lorne Brown 

Insemination where they inseminate the sperm to your uterus. Were those medicated or non-medicated? 

Tracy Donegan 

IUIs unmedicated

Lorne Brown 

Un.

Tracy Donegan 

Oh, sorry, when you say medicated as in with clone with Yes,

Lorne Brown 

Like letrozole or Clomid.

Tracy Donegan

Yeah.

Lorne Brown

So you did clomid plus Interra insemination through those cycles. Okay.

Tracy Donegan

Yeah, no joy. So we were at a point where we thought, do we take the next step and go on and look into more intervention and more help? We weren’t really sure. So I did speak with another fertility therapist, a clinic in Palo Alto, and they introduced me to what we can do here. And that was a bit of a shock, the thoughts of all the medications and really, as we say in Arnold fiddling with my fertility even more through medication, I just wanted to I guess pause for a bit and think about, okay, is this really where we’re headed now or do we want to just leave it be for a little bit, both of our careers were taking off. Is this even a good time now to be planning a baby? And when

Lorne Brown 

You say all these medications, so they went from the ovulation drug CLO to suggesting the injectables in like a superovulation or even IVF, is that?

Tracy Donegan 

Yeah

Lorne Brown 

And that can be daunting. How old were you at this time when you started doing the ovulation drugs? With IUIs,

Tracy Donegan 

That was around the time I was 28.

Lorne Brown 

So unexplained and reproductive very young then too for the population that we normally see.

Tracy Donegan 

Yeah. So again, I figured my age was on my side, everything I thought was really on my side. So I looked at it, I thought, okay, so is there anything that I could do again on my own without going down the injectables and starting this treatment cycle so quickly? Because the first clinic that I visited really was pushing IVF quite quickly, and I really felt at that time I was like, I wanted to pause, I wanted to just, can we go and have a look at let’s try some of the acupuncture, let’s look at the holistic aspects. Because at that point in my life really holism and women’s health I think was not part of my mindset or my knowledge base.

Lorne Brown

You were in tech, you weren’t even a midwife then, I take it.

Tracy Donegan 

No

Lorne Brown

I’m thinking as a practitioner here, how old was your husband at the time?

Tracy Donegan 

Actually, he’s four years younger than me.

Lorne Brown

So again, age didn’t sound like it’s contributing factor. There’s something else going on here. So you started looking holistically. So acupuncture diet, I’m really curious. I don’t know your whole story actually, so I’m really curious about all the things you did.

Tracy Donegan 

Yeah, so I started looking at, okay, so what can I do to manage my stress a little better? So I thought, well, I think I had acupuncture in the past for a shoulder injury and I thought that was really relaxing. So let’s try that. And again, this was the time before the internet was really a thing. So you’d have to go to the library to look up a lot of information or to find good information on, okay, well does it work? That’s all you’re thinking. Does it work? Will it get me pregnant? So I started with, I can’t even remember now, it is so long ago, what kind of Chinese herbs I was given, but this white

Lorne Brown 

Congen, the stinky tasty tea. Okay, yeah,

Tracy Donegan 

Tea that I was quite happy to take I thought. And part of it was, although I definitely wanted a baby, I was like, ah, it seems like there’s a lot of extra stuff that I have to start doing now and I have to start looking after my health. And that was such a far, I mean, again, when you’re young and healthy, you think you’re invincible and you automatically assume that, yeah, of course I’m healthy and well. But growing up Irish, our diet was not fantastic. Our level of alcohol consumption in the early days with probably these days would be, I’m sure quite frowned upon, especially as Irish people tend to start drinking alcohol quite early in our lives as well. So I felt that the IVF was being pushed too quickly, so I thought, let’s pause, let’s give me some time to get my act together.

And from a physical standpoint, I loved acupuncture. I absolutely loved it. And I did acupuncture for probably about six months. And at that point we thought, well, let’s do it for six months, I had lots of really great massages. So I thought massage is always, for me, a great way to relieve stress. So I thought I’ll do more massages. Started getting out, getting more daylight, started looking at my diet, not any way that was obsessive, but I looked at, okay, I, let’s knock a little bit of the junk food on the head, let’s just reduce it a little bit and let’s see where this takes us. So we were at a point where it was six months later because this is now a year and a half later, and of course even though I was young, you hear that clock ticking quite loudly.

So at that point then we thought, okay, so what are we doing? Are we going to go for IVF or not? And nature kind of made a decision for us and we got pregnant without doing IVF, which I thought, okay, so what did we do? So we looked at stress levels, we looked at nutrition to a certain extent, but knowing what I know now is there’s probably a lot more I could have done and supplements and things, but the acupuncture I felt was a kind of pivotal part of that and making myself take time out of a really busy schedule. Because what I find working with women who are again, very career focused or very career driven is that one of the questions I will ask is what can you let go of to make room for this baby in your life? Because when we’re trying to work 50 hours a day and get ahead and get the promotion, it’s like where is this baby going to fit into this picture? And for me that was, okay, so what can I really draw so that I can actually make the head space for this baby and heart space as well

Lorne Brown 

Make some room for receptivity. So you shared a lot about letting go and making space and the stress. Now fast forward you have two children, right? Was the second one conceived easily then or did you also have to do some work by the way?

Tracy Donegan 

No, at that point we had traveled quite a bit. We would’ve in Singapore, we came back to Ireland and we thought this is a really good time maybe to expand our family. And we thought, well, my son Jack is here healthy and well, let’s just again start practicing and see where it takes us. So we started practicing again and I thought, well look, based on our previous experience, it’s probably not going to happen immediately, so let’s just leave it alone. But not dissimilar to our first experience. I found myself pregnant a couple of months after we really seriously started trying and had another miscarriage. So I was like, okay, well I can get pregnant. What’s going on that we can’t hold onto it? So again, I figured let’s give it another couple of months. And at this point now the clock is definitely ticking. So I did, we’re back in Ireland, so new care providers and new ways of doing everything. So eventually I got to have some blood work done and came back saying, oh, did you know that you’re in premature ovarian failure? Is there any history of early menopause in your family? I hadn’t never heard anything like this before. So I talked to my mom and she said, oh yeah, I went through menopause at like 37.

Lorne Brown 

So if you’re having premature ovarian failure, then they would’ve seen it in your FSH, that would be one of the markers. And then through family history, your mom told you she went into early menopause. Okay,

Tracy Donegan 

Yeah. So I’m like, well, that would’ve been helpful information to know. And it just turned out, yes, I was in early menopause and my younger sister, again, someone who didn’t know the family history found herself in similar circumstances. It would’ve been nice to know that earlier, but we didn’t.

Lorne Brown 

Yeah. So our listeners, if your mother’s alive and you’re talking to your mother, it’s worthwhile to have that information of how old she was when she had her kids, and when did she go into menopause? That would be good information to share with your fertility provider because trace, we’ve seen people like you come into my practice where they come in, they say they’re unexplained, and then I ask them questions, do you know when your mother went into menopause? Some know some tell me on the follow-up appointment. And we’ve had people come in, oh, my mom at 39 and they’re seeing me at 35. And in those cases, I often would encourage IVF cycle to bank embryos because we know if they have the elevated FSH or they have a low AMH antral hormone, antral folic count, if we see an ovarian reserve issue, it becomes a strategy to have a child or more than one child because they’re at greater risk of going to menopause earlier. And so there’s where IVF becomes a tool or a strategy to have a family, even though they may still be able to conceive naturally like you did, it’s a strategy to have more than one child and also to not have time as the thing that stops you from having a child. You found out then that you have a family history of early menopause. And so your younger sister, did she also have high FSH? Did she go and get tested and find out her story? 

Tracy Donegan 

Did they have one child and didn’t go on to have anymore. And they were at a point they were kind of happy enough with that. But I think again, if my sister had known this earlier on, she might have started her journey to parenthood a bit sooner as well. So I think that information really is so helpful. So we decided then again, I looked at IVF in Ireland and we were talking about donor eggs and for me that felt like it was a step too far.

Lorne Brown 

And in Canada, I mean the clinic I work with here, we’re over, we work onsite at Olive to do the IVF acupuncture on site and we have a great relationship to talk openly with their reproductive endocrinologist. If somebody, you were in your early thirties then at this time

Tracy Donegan 

This was mid thirties? Yeah

Lorne Brown 

If you’re mid thirties, I don’t know what your FSH was, but if it was elevated, you know, have a family member of early menopause,

Obviously the donor egg is brought up because the elevated FSH may mean you may not respond to the drugs, but if you have the AM hs there, if they see antra follicle accounts, they’re still likely to have a discussion. And they definitely wouldn’t jump to the donor egg. They would probably go for at least an FSH to see how you respond to see if you can make embryos with your own. And obviously if you can’t respond, then they know based on your FSH, your family history, then a donor egg may be the next best option. But I just found here that donor eggs are definitely used here, but it’s not like a knee jerk response to you should do donor egg. They usually exhaust you by doing what you can do with your own eggs first. That’s just my experience here. I do know other clinics like your experience where it’s just right away to donate eggs. That must have been stressful though. You had a child on your own, you just discovered you have early menopause in your family, you get this diagnosis, premature ovarian failure. Just hearing those three words like crazy and then they’re telling you donor eggs. So a little bit of a shell shock for you or were you okay with that?

Tracy Donegan 

Yeah, well the donor egg thing was a little bit of a shock for me, but we were also, again, is it going to really, really upset us if we have one child and we’re glad that we have one child and we can focus on enjoying one child. But when they mentioned donor eggs, for me I thought that was too invasive. And it was also at a time when in Ireland in particular, there were a lot of new clinics that were popping up in Eastern Europe that were offering very affordable packages to go to eastern Europe and have some of your treatments in Ireland, have some of your treatments go to your IVF in Eastern Europe. And I thought, oh, this is, yeah, it’s getting out of hand, I just want to, if we’re supposed to have another child, we’re going to have another child. And that was where I was at and financially on trips to Europe and everything was just not going to happen.

We had just moved back from Singapore to Ireland and all the things you do when you buy a house and you have expenses and we’re looking at how we can make the best of this situation. So we said we leave it be, I started in my midwifery training and a year into my midwifery training I found myself pregnant with Cooper. So that was a seven year gap. So seven years we were hoping it’ll happen. And because I didn’t even have cycles, I had the odd period where we felt it was over touch wood. I have to say my experience of menopause was very, very easy.

Lorne Brown 

But you conceived your second child seven years apart and in that period you found out you had high FSH, your mother had early menopause and your cycles started becoming irregular. It sounded like you weren’t.

Tracy Donegan 

Oh, totally

Lorne Brown 

Gives hope to some people too, right, that it can still happen. And that’s why I want to talk to you now about, because I think the listeners’ like, so what do you do? What can you do because of your work with mindfulness, your study, you’ve done the extra studies in this studying in this to be credentialed and you’ve come up with an app. I will let our listeners know, I’m going to ask you about stress and fertility because that seems to be an angle that you’re quite passionate about and like to talk about. But just on a side, Tracy has this app and it’s the Fertile Mind app. And for those that come to Acubalance, you can let us know because we are given us access, so we can play these for you in the tree room so you can get a sense if you like it. And you can also go ahead for any of our listeners and download the Fertile Mind app and get those meditations that she’s made around fertility. And I think you said the coupon code for those people that they want to save will be Acubalance. So thank you for that.

Tracy Donegan 

Sure.

Lorne Brown 

Let’s talk about stress and fertility then. What’s your take on how stress can impact fertility and what’s the strategy you have to help mitigate the effects of stress?

Tracy Donegan 

Well, I guess, and I know you are well aware of Alice Doer’s work and the big question, do fertility challenges cause stress? Which absolutely, but does stress actually cause fertility challenges? So we’re looking at it from different angles and I guess for me the mindfulness aspect is recognizing that so much of the stress that we all experience outside of fertility challenges is self-generated by the thoughts that we entertain. And I know when I talk about mindset, people say, well, you can’t just choose your thoughts, these emotions and they just pop up. You can’t choose your thoughts initially, but you can decide how much attention you’re going to give those thoughts and those feelings. So you wake up in the morning and you’re thinking, it is not happening. I’m never going to become a mom that you recognize that these kinds of thoughts are going to take us into a stress response and we’re generating that stress response more frequently the longer we spend in that thought pattern of I’ll never be a mom, things never work out for me, I’ll never be happy until I have a baby.

And it becomes this cycle of this habit of thought. So until you recognize that, especially when you’re dealing with fertility issues, that is an ongoing chronic thought pattern that we have. It’s never going to happen. I’m not that lucky. It works for everybody else. IVF won’t work for me. Whatever that thought pattern is. And I would say just spend a couple of moments throughout the day noticing where your mind went to that took you to that stress response because the brain has these kinds of defaults behaviors that are protective and evolutionary. So the brain will focus automatically on the worst case scenario. It’s drawn towards a case scenario, it’s drawn to drama because it’s a protective mechanism. So it’s a hundred thousand years ago we were out hunting and gathering and we heard a rustling in the bushes. The brain automatically thinks tiger, not hamster. Now could be a hamster, but you’re taking an evolutionary chance if you think, oh, I’m going to swim with a hamster and it turns out to be a tiger.

So for all the brain is focused on is how do we get our genes into the next generation? How do we propagate, how do we continue the human being cycle on the planet? So through the stress response, we’re creating more inflammation in the body. We are suppressing oxytocin, we’re suppressing all the hormones that we need to support fertility when we’re stuck in this chronic hot pattern of it won’t happen for me. And then our mind wandering is that second default is that the mind wanders to stressful thoughts. When we’re stressed, we don’t automatically think of sitting on the beach getting some sun. We think about the worst case scenario. So that mind wandering and the negativity bias of focus on the worst case scenario just derails our healthy thinking and keeps us in that stress response much more frequently. And we think it’s innocuous that it’s just stress, but stressful thoughts don’t stay in your head.

They impact everything that’s happening in the body. So I think we’re at a point now in research that we can recognize that the mind and body are intricately linked and we can’t separate them. And then we look at the number of women who are already experiencing anxiety and depression, other psychiatric illnesses even before they step in the door of a clinic and what the research shows without a doubt that when we can learn how to regulate our emotions more, we’re more likely to continue with treatments. So we’re more likely to manage those really difficult days with a little bit more self-compassion, which again, once we introduce self-compassion practices, which is just a way of being kind to ourselves and not beating ourselves up, fertility is not our fault. These fertility challenges are not our, we didn’t cause this. And it’s so easy to get drawn into those thoughts of, oh, if I hadn’t drunk so much tequila when I was 20 or that were looking for ways to really beat ourselves up.

So that recognition that we have to treat ourselves a little bit more kindly because the brain cannot tell the difference between something you’re vividly imagining and something you’re actually experiencing. So for walking down the street and someone shouts abuse at you, you’re going to respond in a physiological way. Your stress hormones are going to be released. But if you are walking down the street and you are berating yourself or beating yourself up again, the brain is going to act as if that is an assault on ourselves. So it will react in the same way. So we’re not talking about monitoring their thoughts, just starting to notice them. Be curious about where your mind goes when you’re not looking.

Lorne Brown 

And so just to kind of unpack that and summarize what you said, you gave a shout out to Alice Domar, she has a podcast episode with us, number 39, does stress cause infertility For those that are interested because she’s done research at Harvard and Steven Porges, episode 45, the Polyvagal Ethereum brain connection is on the Conscious Chili podcast. And this connects to what you’re saying because he talks about a state of alarm. And so what I heard is if you’re in this negative thought process, your body goes into a state of alarm and then it goes from that parasympathetic to sympathetic survival mode. And then you talked about the stress hormones that are released. So rather than doing dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin and good blood flow, you go into a stress response or alarm and now the body diverts blood from the reproductive system digestion into survival, your heart, your lungs, major muscles, and now you’re releasing cortisol and epinephrine and you’re releasing these stress hormones, which in short bursts are okay, but if we have it all day long walking down the street, it creates chronic inflammation which leads to many diseases including premature fertility decline.

And so being curious and kind, we can retrain our subconscious or mind to not be an alarm and to keep engaging the parasympathetic because so often the negative thought’s not a survival benefit, like if there’s a tiger there, that’s a really good example. There’s a wild tiger, not a hamster. It’s good to have a stress response. It’s evolutionary. If your parents didn’t have a good stress response, your ancestors, those that had a good stress response are here today. Those that did not have a good stress response are not here today. Those that thought, oh, it’s just a hamster did not survive. So we’re not saying you shouldn’t have it, it’s just that if you’re worried about work, if you’re worried about the IVF cycle, all these things, which are understandable why you would stress about it. However, from the physiological perspective, there’s no survival benefit, but your body’s releasing those chemicals for survival.

And if you’re having those several times a day every day, it wreaks havoc on the body and the mind body, a lot of the research, they call it psycho neuroimmunology, PNI, and I’ve heard people add an E to it. So psycho neuroendocrine immunology, which means what you’ve just said so eloquently, Tracy, is your thoughts and your thinking impacts your nervous system, impacts your immune system. And now we know endocrine your hormonal system and my goodness, your nervous system, your immune system, your hormonal system, that’s your reproductive system going to have an impact on the reproductive system. So for those that are wondering, does stress impact your fertility and you want the data, listen to episode 39 with Allo stoma. Listen to episode 45 with Steven Porges and listen to all our episodes. We usually bring it up. So I think the evidence of the mind and body connections there, mind, body, it’s not mind and body. You can’t separate them. So what led you to create these apps and how are you working with your clients and what are you doing with them from the MINDBODY aspect? And are you bringing in nutrition and supplements? Are you doing, I know you’re passionate about laser, laser, I’m curious about your integrative approach, what you’re doing when you work with clients, and a little bit more about your approach for stress reduction.

Tracy Donegan 

So as part of when I did my master’s, my dissertation was actually on the effectiveness of mind body intervention, specifically mindfulness interventions on psychological distress. So it was a really good opportunity for me to wrap my arms around what does the current research show because there’s of different, there’s CBT, there’s different therapies out there, counseling, but I wanted to see, okay, look, if I am focused on mindfulness as a therapeutic intervention that women and their partners can do at home is actually going to help. So the research came back that was fairly clear that it helps specifically dealing with that distress that often comes with a failed IVF or the lack of hope and shame and grief. There’s so many emotional aspects to this journey. And for anyone who has been out there who’s been told, oh, just go and relax, take a holiday, and mindfulness is not a relaxation technique, relaxation is a side effect of it because when you start to be curious about you become what I say the nosy neighbor of your mind, when you start paying attention to where your mind is going on a regular basis, you then have that awareness that you can, okay, well we’re not going to spend so much time on that train of thought because it’s just not good for me, not good for my reproductive health.

So let’s pull back and let’s redirect our attention. But for me, when I was creating this app, I had another app called Gentle Birth, which I designed because there was so much fear around labor and birth. So I developed a program that included mindfulness and hypnosis and breathing techniques for women going through pregnancy. But what was happening was I was having so many women who had used the gentler app coming back to me saying, I loved using it for my labor, but we’ve been trying for a while now. It’s not happening. Is there anything that you have that’s gentler that can help me with my mind and stop me kind of going off the deep end so frequently? So that was really where the idea came from. It was like, okay, how can we create a program that will cultivate hope, we’ll cultivate optimism and help these people manage their mind a little bit, but with no guarantees because there wasn’t aspect, and I know you sure you’re well aware of this, the snake oil part of fertility treatments of women pushed all these miracle cures being pushed that this will get you pregnant.

And some of the things that you’ll see online these days are just ludicrous, no evidence base. And it’s really just taking advantage of people like myself who are in a vulnerable state. And if you can afford all of these, which we think might be, that might be the final piece of the puzzle, you will spend good money on it. But I wanted to create a program that didn’t have any guarantees. I can’t tell you if you’re going to get pregnant or not, and what happens if you can’t? So what happens if you’ve done the IVF where you’ve exhausted all treatment that’s not happening? What’s that emotional landscape look like for those people? So for me, it lets create a program that cultivates hope, optimism, and joy during this journey, but without making promises and knowing that all of these practices that you’re going to do on a regular basis using the app will be a benefit to your mental and emotional health with or without a baby.

Lorne Brown 

Yeah, that’s what I call true success, that they’re going to be okay. And the conscious fertility work that I do, and I mentioned the podcast in the early episodes, that’s kind of the intention of this conscious work. So your app has that same goal of whether you have a baby or not. You’re better through the process and you’re okay, your desire is still there, you’re disappointed, but you’re not paralyzed by it. So that’s great. And obviously if you get into that safe boat, that should increase your chances of getting pregnant, getting more into the parasympathetic. So do you still have them, because if things have babies that are working with us, they’re going to be pregnant and they’re going to have birth, are your pregnancy and birth app still available as well? Can people still, because we’re always about getting you right to the birth when you get pregnant, different from an IVF clinic, natural Fertility Clinic at Acubalance and like you do, where we’re different if you don’t graduate at six weeks, your pregnancy later.

Our goal is birth. So we work with our patients right up to birth and postpartum. We’re here for a healthy baby, healthy mom, and if they have a partner, healthy partner. So we continue to work throughout the pregnancy and that’s also because the health blueprint of that child is based on the health of the mother and father, the sperm and egg, I should say, to be more accurate health of the sperm and egg at the time of fertilization. And then the health of the baby throughout the pregnancy doesn’t start at birth. You would know this as the midwife very clearly. So that’s a long-winded way of me asking, do you still have those apps available for pregnancy and birth? Love to let our patients that become pregnant know about them and those that just come to us for pregnancy support. Do they exist?

Tracy Donegan 

Yeah, so my pregnancy, birth and postpartum, which is of course the piece that everyone forgets about and that needs the most emotional kind of regulation, its gentle birth is the name of that app. So

Lorne Brown 

After you’ve gone through the Fertile Mind app and you’re pregnant, know that there’s another one for gentle birth. I want to talk about preconception care. From your perspective, I always find that you have better insight, different insight, but better insight if you know the end in mind, if you come from that experience. So because you’ve worked with pregnancy and birth, you’re on the end of what everybody’s doing with fertility treatments. How has that shaped you with respect to preconception care versus going right into an ovulation drug cycle or IVF or going in trying to conceive. While you may have endometriosis or PCOS, can you tell me from somebody who works in the fertility field now, but somebody who’s had experience with birth and pregnancy, what’s your thoughts on preconception and how long should it be in general?

Tracy Donegan 

Oh, it’s huge. We’re looking at creating the cells that will then create, and our body as a mom is going to create the building blocks of this baby. So preconception care is absolutely huge, but unfortunately, about 50% of pregnancies are thought to be unplanned. So we have a lot of women coming into pregnancy who may not be coming into pregnancy in the best of health, and we’re in this health crisis here in the US at the moment with 50% of the population being either diabetic or pre-diabetic. We have a huge metabolic syndrome issue in the US at the moment. But for me that preconception care is, I mean, I will look at the bigger picture and stress levels is always a big part of that because even this paradox of even women who have been through IVF and have had a successful IVF or successful treatment, if they haven’t gotten mental health support and not many clinics actually offer mental health support or really screen moms or screen women coming into their treatments to look at what their baseline is of mental health that those women will unfortunately, but half of those women will take that anxiety and depression into the pregnancy.

Even though we cut the golden goose here, we now achieve pregnancy and we know that anxiety and depression in pregnancy is associated with higher blood glucose levels. We know blood sugar in early pregnancy is associated with higher rates of miscarriage, birth defects. So it starts again, as I would say, I’d love to be working with someone at least six months before they really have plants. So we can look at their nutrition. We definitely want to look at their light exposure, which again, I’m sure is a normal part of your work, but most of the women and partners that I talk to have never had any information provided them about the dangers and the harms of blue light that were sitting under for 90% of the day, if not even more. So light consumption and light nutrition is a big part of my approach now. And that’s only in, I’d say the last year since I’ve learned more about how damaging the blue wave vans are

Lorne Brown

And not getting the good light in the morning. I got Hoberman’s podcast on light, really changed my thinking around that. Hence I get up early in the morning and go into my walk for that early light even with clouds. And if you remember when we were jet lagged in London together, I was making sure right away I got early light and stayed up late to get the dark. So get the serotonin going in the morning and get the melatonin going at night and stayed away from when I woke up at three in the morning in London, I made sure I didn’t look at my phone or anything just to help with the rhythm. So yeah, light’s important,

Which makes me want to ask you. So preconception care, it’s important. And so next we’re going to talk about photobiomodulation, but the preconception care, I’d just like to summarize for our listeners and just make sure I get it. You’re saying like three to six months and that’s because the egg and sperm cell that mature the lifespan, the follicular genesis, it’s about a hundred days where there’s a lot of impact on if the environment that the egg is maturing in can impact it reaches peak fertility potential goes through recruitment for about a year. But those last hundred days seem to be important. The guy’s 72 to 90 days, and on a tangent here, talking to a reproductive urologist, Paul Turk, we have an episode with him as well. He had shown that when he does a varicose seal repair, so surgery for the varicose veins in the testes where it affects motility and count, theoretically three months later you should see the sperm better because they actually know they repaired it, it’s gone.

Sometimes it takes us several months to change a metabolic disorder or change inflammation, but right there, the cause is gone. Right? In a sense, the blockage, he says, usually takes two cycles of spermatogenesis to see a change, so it can be up to six months after the change. So just to let people know, that’s why three to six months is reasonable for preconception care and a lot of people will be doing that while they’re doing things like ovulation drugs, trying naturally or RVF. You talked about light, you invested a lot of time and money to come out to London. That was not a cheap trip for us, was it? The travel was there with the hotel, the cost of eating in London and the cost of that conference and time away from our family and our clients, although we had a blast and we learned lots. Right?

Tracy Donegan 

Absolutely.

Lorne Brown 

What kind of has attracted you in photobiomodulation, in preconception, in preconception care that got you to go on a plane and go to London for four days to be at this conference?

Tracy Donegan

I think you cannot work in this field without being aware of how light can be beneficial or harmful. And we’re looking at metabolism and how unhealthy, unfortunately the population in the US is at the moment and we’re seeing fertility rates drop. It’s like what is going on that has changed in the last 20 years that we’re seeing fertility drop off so much? So we’re looking at, okay, what are people eating? And there’s a big push at the moment on seed oils and getting back to eating real food. But even we look at, oh, someone that says, I eat organic as much as possible and I eat kind a low carb diet and I’ve gotten rid of all the processed foods that even for anyone who is, they’re really conscious about what they’re eating and they’re eating organic, even our soil is so depleted and that even by the time that it takes for that food to travel across the country, we have depleted the nutritional status even more.

So for me it was we’ve got to get the diet and the light was just another part of it. It’s like our lifestyle keeps us under this blue lighting for 90% of the time, so we’re not getting it in the sun. We’re not getting our vitamin D, we’re not getting the uv, we’re not getting that really helpful infrared, our bodies are starved for light. And even the World Health Organization has come out and said that artificial light at night is carcinogenic. So we’ve got to start looking. When I first heard about the idea of light and reproductive health, I thought it was just some new fad and it’ll be gone in a couple of months. But the more I looked into it and the more research that I saw, and then talking to Annemarie in Denmark and yourself and it’s like, no, there,

Lorne Brown 

You’re talking about Annemarie Jensen who talks a lot about fertility and photobiomodulation

Tracy Donegan 

In Denmark. So for me it was becoming more and more obvious that yeah, we are light starved. We did not evolve to have no light in our eyes and on our skin. So for me, that seemed like it was a pillar, a really important pillar that was being missed. So yeah, the chance to go to London and hear you speak and connect with the scientists, which I really, one aspect of the conference that I really enjoyed was, it wasn’t, yes, was a really nice exhibit hall, but most of the presentations were from scientists with no skin in the game. They weren’t trying to flog a product. They were there saying, this is the data. We think it’s really helpful. Now there’s a lot of data, more data that we need. But when we look at it from a metabolic standpoint and the reduction or modulation of inflammation and looking at what it’s doing for pain and for people experiencing long, and I felt like, yeah, this is really, why isn’t this mainstream? And of course we know it’s not mainstream.

Lorne Brown 

It’s not a lot of money to be made in it.

Tracy Donegan 

Exactly. So for me, light was really a big part of it. And then exercise and stress management. Absolutely as well.

Lorne Brown 

So for you then, this is something that you’re incorporating in your practice then the photobiomodulation with respect to fertility?

Tracy Donegan

So at the moment where I’m at I will consult with that because some people just want to know about the light and they’re doing their own thing when it comes to nutrition and lifestyle adaptations. So I do consults for light based on if people are looking to buy consumer products. But consumer products, you can go on Amazon and there are 2 million different products that we have no idea if they’ve been third party tested, if the light is even what the wavelength that it says it is

Lorne Brown 

Were you in that session? So there was a session about home systems and what they shared is there are some that are good, but the majority of them don’t do what they say they do, as in they don’t have the power or the wavelength. I radiance. So it’s really hard right now for any of us to know if what they say is what they can do with respect to photons. Unfortunately there are some out there that are high quality, there really are those that do what they say and you could benefit from them. The majority of them at the time of this recording are not, and this was based on one of the publications that was presented where they looked at systems and tested them and they did not have the parameters of wavelength in a radiance and power that they stated and claimed no regulation to do that. That’s why the professional ones also can have some of those issues. And that’s why there’s a few professional lines that we look at. You and I have been talking that we at least know that they have the data and they’re reporting their data so we can confidently use their equipment knowing that it’s doing what it says it does

Tracy Donegan 

And is, I mean the power of the unit itself. And you just see there’s so much misinformation and lack of understanding about the different products. And because my own kind of journey into light over a year ago was all I could see out there was, oh, I got to get a panel. I have to get one of these big tall panels and that’ll fix everything. And then as I learned more, I thought, okay, the panel is great if you have I think systemic issues or for post exercise. And I thought, but as I look more at the research, so much of that light is lost just through the distance from the light. So it’s like how much we want to get good power, but the closer we also closer to the skin the better. And then we’re looking at EMFs and now the research is showing that again, closer to the skin and even compression on the skin reduces that scatter and then the different wavelengths, blue green near for red, red, what’s the best wavelength for the condition that we’re trying to treat. So it is definitely becoming a much more refined science, but at the moment when we look at the research, absolutely for musculoskeletal, for pain wound healing, it is absolutely fantastic.

Lorne Brown 

Brain health, Parkinson’s, we saw Parkinson’s and the concussions, those are great.

There was one I was at where they were placed on the sternum. I always liked the sternum because of Hamlin, Michael Hamlin’s research that he shared on stem cell proliferation. I don’t know if it was his research or what he presented when he shared it, but jeez, I can’t remember her name now. I’ll have to look at the program. But they did the thymus, so the sternum to impact the thymus and impact melatonin as well, metabolic lights and stuff. So again, like you said, it was so cool to see the scientists, what they’re doing with different lights and based on where you place it. So it’s not just so personally, I’m not for my fertility patients, I’m not a fan of the panels yet. Like you said, maybe some systemic because it’s good for some, maybe inflammation, definitely the skin. But when you’re getting into stem cell proliferation, viral immune health, getting into the mitochondria of the cells, I don’t know.

That’s why we have the BioFlex systems. We have the paramedic system, the giga laser. I like the giga because of Anne Marie Jensen, we mentioned her a couple times. She’s episode 78, by the way, all on photobiomodulation just because she’s been really diligent at documenting and collecting her data and publishing her data. It’s not what we’d call, it’s not a rigor of research, but she’s sharing case studies and she has well over 200 case studies showing very optimistic success rates using the system called the giga laser. So I like it because at this point in time, based on her data, that system seems to be working well for those that have reproductive health issues and other systems you could do it or maybe do better. It’s just that she’s published her data and eventually we’ll get more research. That was, as you remember, my talk was here’s the mechanism, the mechanism, we got the science, we’re so excited about the mechanism.

We have some research, some very poorly done, but we have some research. And now it’s like, can we translate this to clinical? Can we do more research? And Anne-Marie right now just has a lot of data, as does kin out of Japan that he shared with me. He has his data from case studies, so we’re in that direction. But robust evidence is not there to say, this is what it will do for you, but the mechanism is there. We just don’t know if it translates into clinical. And that’s a long way of saying when somebody says which one, I’m like, well, right now giga I like and I’m saying there’s other systems, yes, but I like it because of what Anne-Marie has reported. If it’s real, then I like it. No reason to say it’s not, but more reason to say we need to do research now based on her approach with that system. The panels, I’m not convinced. And most of the panels, again, do they go through the rigor testing to see that they’re offering what they are. And you mentioned so much gets reflected and bounces off when it’s not on the skin. So again, it comes down to we just got to study it rather than thinking maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t.

Lorne Brown 

Does the system do what it does as in power and wavelength? And then two is we just got to do research to find out what does it change certain pathologies in the body, more research. And we’re seeing that with muscle skeletal. We’re seeing it with Parkinson’s and the microbiome.

Tracy Donegan 

Yes

Lorne Brown 

I like the Giga as well. It covers not only over the abdomen, the ovaries, but over the microbiome. So I figured that’s probably one of the benefits to that system, helping the microbiome. So you have a passion for photobiomodulation, which means you, and I’ll be chatting lots more, right? 

Tracy Donegan 

We definitely will. Yeah, because we’re hoping to have another giga out of Texas soon. So I’ve been chatting to women in this community and yet this system is not available here in Austin where I am. And I know you have people that are flying to use your giga laser. I’ve talked to people who are willing to drive from San Antonio and other places and Houston to come and use it as well.

Lorne Brown 

Yeah, well people that will come and do it three or four times in that week in their follicular, they’ll come, they’re out of town. If they’re local, then they do two or three times during their follicular a week. That’s what Annmarie has shared. Six times a cycle for three cycles up to three to six cycles. So the first two weeks in the follicular check out annemarie’s podcast on that. For those that are listening, episode number 78. And I want you guys to check out Tracy’s website and her apps because she’s got some really cool stuff to offer you. So she has, as we mentioned, the gentle birth app is available for those pregnant and ready to birth. And then those that are on their fertility journey, the Fertile Mind App. Fertile Mind app, is that the website then?

Tracy Donegan 

Yep.

Lorne Brown 

Okay. We’ll put that in the show notes. We have that at the clinic. So if you want to hear some of the mindfulness meditations to help calm the mind and the nervous system, then let us know and we’ll put that on for you. And then if you want to download your own version to have it to use at home, go to the Fertile Mind app. And Tracy said that she’ll give people a discount if you use coupon Acubalance. And Acubalance is spelled with one C. It’s not like Accounting accounting’s with two Cs, but Acubalance as an acupuncture. So thank you for offering that discount.

Tracy Donegan 

And it’ll give them 30 days free so they can get in and pick the tires. And especially if they have a cycle coming up that they’re going to need a little bit of help on and manage reminders a little better, that’s 30 days free.

Lorne Brown 

I wasn’t sure what the discount would be. That’s a good discount. So that’s great. That’s really kind of you and hope to have you back on our show again, to hear more of the things that you’re into. And I’m sure our travels will cross over again as we tend to join these photobiomodulation conferences and fertility conferences.

Tracy Donegan 

I’m looking forward to it.

Lorne Brown 

Thanks, and I look forward to showing up. I know I’m going to be on one of your YouTube shows as well, so I’m looking forward to it.

Tracy Donegan

Yes. Yeah, looking forward to it.

Speaker 

If you’re looking for support to Grow your Family contact Acubalance Wellness Center at Acubalance, they help you reach your peak fertility potential through their integrative approach using low level laser therapy, fertility, acupuncture, and naturopathic medicine. Download the Acubalance Fertility Diet and Dr. Brown’s video for mastering manifestation and clearing subconscious blocks. Go to acubalance.ca That’s acubalance.ca.

Lorne Brown 

Thank you so much for tuning into another episode of Conscious Fertility, the show that helps you receive life on purpose. Please take a moment to subscribe to the show and join the community of women and men on their path to peak fertility and choosing to live consciously on purpose. I would love to continue this conversation with you, so please direct message me on Instagram at Lorne Brown official. That’s Instagram, Lorne Brown official, or you can visit my websites, Lornebrown.com and Acubalance.ca. Until the next episode, stay curious and for a few moments, bring your awareness to your heart center and breathe.