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.

Welcome to the Conscious Fertility Podcast, and today I am doing a solo episode where I’m going to share tools, techniques, ideas for unlocking your fertility potential, basically a roadmap to a healthy conception. Hopefully, if you’ve been listening, you know who I am for those that are listening for the first time. My name is Lorne Brown. I’m a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine. I’m also a clinical hypnotherapist and the clinical director of Acubalance Wellness Center and also the host of the Conscious Fertility Podcast. Now, I often share that the model that we do at Acubalance is that we really were some of the trailblazers in Vancouver where we really brought together integrative fertility care and patient-centered care. I think back to a time where I was chairing the Integrated Fertility Symposium and we had this panel, so this is where the integrative idea comes from that brought it to my mind actually is at this panels integrative as in there was a reproductive urologist on the panel there was reproductive endocrinologists and infertility doctor.

There were naturopathic doctors and Chinese medicine doctors on this panel. And Dr. Paul Magarelli, who’s the REI reproductive endocrinologist, had said that we help people get pregnant better and faster. And when he said this, he pointed to the naturopath and Chinese medicine doctors for the getting pregnant better part. And then he pointed to himself and the reproductive urologist. And when he said, getting you pregnant faster, and this is really that integrative approach because getting pregnant better, he was talking about epigenetics where what you are doing, the female in the male in the months, almost a hundred days. So that’s like three and a half cycles, 14 weeks leading up to conception, whether that’s natural or through IUI or IVF. What you’re doing then and then throughout the woman’s pregnancy impacts the health blueprint of the child. And so that was the getting pregnant better part, helping improve egg and sperm quality, therefore embryo quality and uterine receptivity.

And the faster part is because when you put egg and sperm together in an IVF and grow them out to blasts to about which takes on average five days and place that into the uterus, that’s getting them pregnant faster. And if you do genetic screening, then you can reduce the chance of putting in very abnormal embryos that won’t implant or that would miscarry. So that’s the faster part. And so our focus, what we agreed on when it comes to integrative care, and I believe it’s your focus as well, those that are trying or wanting to grow their family is a healthy baby. And we’re less concerned whether that happens in the bedroom or in the lab as long as the goal is a healthy baby and after this healthy mom. And if there’s a father in this, then a healthy partner. But regardless, we want healthy parents, healthy babies.

And that healthy baby comes from a healthy egg plus healthy sperm plus healthy environment. And as I just mentioned that recruitment for the follicles that contain the eggs is about a one year process. And it seems like the last hundred days is when that follicle goes through a lot of maturation, a lot of growth, and is really impacted by its environment, the cellular environment in which it grows in. And so this is why preconception care is important because the growth of the eggs and that ovarian follicle in humans anyhow is a good a hundred days, three to four month process from that resting follicle stage up until ovulation or if you’re doing an IVF into a retrieval. And so our goal is can we make that cellular environment, that ovarian environment optimal or for the man, the testicular environment optimal? So we get the sperm at its peak fertility potential, the egg at its peak fertility potential at the time of conception.

And a nice way to kind of share this, a metaphor of how we do this comes from a Chinese medicine saying, nourish the soil before you plant the seed. And if you can pause for a moment and think of a time when you’ve had a plant or outside garden where you’ve neglected that plant and it looks a little worse for where, and instead of tossing it in for composting, recycling, you add more water to this dried out soil. So you water it, you may add some fertilizer, pull some weeds. If it’s an indoor plant, you may change how much sunlight it gets where you place it on the counter. And oftentimes that plant that looked like it was finished ends up regaining its vigor and going on to give off fruits and flowers. Now this plant always has the potential, and I’m checking in with you to listen.

Have you had that experience where you can imagine that you’ve done this with a plant and that plant always had the potential to give off fruits and flowers, but because the soil was suboptimal, the plant couldn’t reach its peak potential to give off fruits and flowers. Now note, we did not do any donor roots for this plant. All we did is we improved the environment, the soil ball, adding water by adding fertilizer, by removing weeds, making sure it’s getting the adequate amount of sunlight. And this metaphor goes for your eggs and sperm cells as well. And the soil here is your cellular environment. And so we’re doing what we can to improve the soil, the cellular environment, so your egg, his sperm, can reach its peak fertility potential and give off fruits and flowers and in this case become embryos. And so when we think of things that can affect the environment, the soil for which the egg and sperm grow in, there’s hormonal imbalances.

There’s inflammation, infections, infections. Think of insects in the soil. So we have infections, the acidity versus the alkalinity of the soil and the cellular environment, the microbiome there is a soil microbiome and we also have a gut microbiome, vaginal microbiome, a uterine microbiome. There is a microbiome on our skin. So the microbiome toxicity and endocrine disruptors can affect the soil, your cellular environment, poor blood flow, digestive troubles, oxidative stress, nutritional deficiencies, the inability to self-regulate. So we think about your immune system here and your emotional resilience as well, and mitochondria health. And so what I’d like to do is kind of go through some of the ones that I think are the main contributors that we see daily in our practice and share some of the things that you can do to optimize your soil. And so we’re going to talk about mitochondrial defects, poor blood flow, hormonal imbalances, nutritional deficiencies, inflammation, oxidative stress, chronic stress, and the gut and uterine microbiome.

And I’ll share with you that the approach is a very comprehensive integrative approach. It’s not like doing one thing and that’s going to solve everything. I will share that with you because people come to our practice often like I must and want to have your low level laser therapy after reading our blogs and learning about it, thinking that it’s a magic bullet. And I’ll share with you that an IVF magic bullet, none of them are unfortunately, none of them are. However, there is a multidisciplinary integrative approach. And when you do this, it really can nourish your soil. It really can support your cellular environment, which can improve your overall health and wellbeing. On a cellular level, you’re made up of trillions of cells, which also leads to helping you reach your peak fertility potential. And the things that we’re going to talk about are diet, lifestyle, eliciting a calm and relaxed state, having community.

These are all things that are important that people often neglect because they’re simple. You don’t have to really pay for them as an extra for them. You’re going to eat. So you can just choose to eat differently. Lifestyle, we’re talking about adequate rest, movement, exercise and deep sufficient sleep. And then the other things that we do in our practice will be acupuncture and electrical, acupuncture, low level laser therapy and laser acupuncture. Chinese herbal medicine supplements, nutritional IV therapy and naturopathic functional medicine testing. And that is really our comprehensive approach that we recommend for the people that contact us or Cs to help reach their peak fertility potential. And I’ll give you an example of this approach. She came to me at age 40 after an unsuccessful IVF. She was told because of her age and what they saw in the IVF, her cycle was canceled, that she had a low response when she came to me.

She also shared that she had very bad PMS and menstrual pain. She was always cold, felt fatigue, was overweight and struggled with constipation. So we worked with her for almost three and a half months. There’s that hundred days. And during that hundred days, her PMS diminished to the point where that cycle, her last cycle, she didn’t even know her period was coming. Her menstrual pain went from like a nine out of 10 to a one out of 10 no longer requiring any anti-inflammatory or pain medication. She warmed up. So she wasn’t experiencing cold, she had more energy. She wasn’t struggling with fatigue or constipation anymore. And she lost without counting calories. I think it was over 15 to 20 pounds in that period of time. And her clinic really pushed her into doing another IVF sooner than later because her last, she’s 40, and the one that she did three and a half months ago, she had a low response to that, to the medication.

We were encouraging her to give another month or two and even try naturally because we saw such a change in her soil, right? All those symptoms had gone away because of the age and the pressure she went forward with. We supported her in that and her IVF was a totally different outcome as she conceived twins when they transferred two and she ended up having twins as well, birthing those twins. So let’s go through the issues with the soil. And so the first one I want to talk about is inflammation and chronic systemic inflammation can lead to accelerated biological aging, and that leads to premature degenerative diseases and I believe premature fertility decline. And there’s a term coined inflammaging, and that’s chronic systemic inflammation leading to accelerated biological aging. So they call it inflammaging. And in that story I just shared with you a woman that was 40 that had a poor response to her, IVF, her PMS, menstrual pain, constipation, cold fatigue, all went away.

So she had a chronological age of 40, but biologically her body’s responding much older, say call it 46. And our goal was can we help her become biologically 40 again because she was chronologically 40, but maybe she was behaving like biologically 46. And through the diet, through lifestyle changes, through Chinese herbal medicine and acupuncture and supplements, she was able to see a shift in her cellular environment known as better health. And that’s where we believe we’re having a shift on the biological level. And that’s that idea of lowering that inflammation, so reducing that inflammaging so we can get to a healthier biological age. I want to clarify when I say slow down, accelerated biological aging or even reversing it because a lot of diseases out there are often considered age related, but I think more and more they’re saying they’re more lifestyle related. And in this case, what I wanted to clarify is some people say, oh, I’m 40.

Can you make me, I’m 40 chronologically, can you make me biologically 20? I believe that we can make you biologically as young as your chronological age. So if you’re 40 and you’re biologically behaving 46, we can get you to biologic 40, which women in their forties can conceive. But if you come at chronologically 50, the best we can do is biologically 50. And that is beyond the reproductive span for most people, both from a western medicine understanding and a Chinese medicine understanding. So I hope I kind of clarified that part about how we slow down or even reverse accelerated biological aging. There was a paper published in reproductive biology and endocrinology back in 2000 and the conclusion, or they quoted that biological and chronological ovarian age are not always equivalent. Furthermore, biological age is more important than chronological age in predicting the outcome of a RT.

So things like IVF, and again, what they’re saying here is not all 40 year olds are equal. And so how old of a 40 old 40-year-old are you? So that’s key. But again, from what I pointed at, it doesn’t mean that you’re 40 and you can behave like a 20 biological. So I just wanted to clarify that part. Age does matter, but biological age is also important and we want your biological age to equal your chronological age, not be more advanced. So what do we do to cool this inflammation? What do we do to regulate inflammation? Because it’s really a regulating process. Inflammation is necessary for health and healing and for ovulation and implantation, but when we have chronic systemic inflammation, we have it out of control and that leads to poor health and also fertility decline. So what can you do to regulate inflammation?

Because I’m not suggesting you take anti-inflammatories, which will reduce inflammation. Those are contraindicated if you’re around ovulation or around implantation. So we’re looking for more natural tools that help you regulate inflammation. And there’s a fertility diet. I’ll let you know that you can download a copy of that off of aba. So contact [email protected]. It has a nice fertility diet. The theory and I think about 21 days of recipes, lifestyle will impact your inflammation. So you exercise, sleep, rest, all those things can impact inflammation. Stress can lead to chronic systemic inflammation. So developing a meditative practice and other tools to help you reduce stress, we will test, we’ll use functional medicine testing to look for triggers for inflammation. Some of the therapies we’ll use is low level laser therapy. It’s excellent for regulating inflammation. That’s why it’s been known to be used for pain. Its ability to help regulate inflammation.

And I think one of the main mechanisms why it’s been shown to help optimize fertility is its ability to regulate inflammation. There’s acupuncture again, which can help regulate inflammation. Then there’s certain supplements, Chinese herbal medicine and nutritional IV therapy. And this is where we come back to that multidisciplinary approach, that comprehensive approach to help regulate inflammation. Again, why? Well, chronic systemic inflammation can lead to many diseases including premature fertility decline. And our approach is to look because chronic systemic inflammation, by the way, leads to accelerated biological aging, premature degenerative diseases and premature fertility decline. So again, diet lifestyle, eliciting the relaxation response. So stress reduction and then low level laser therapy, acupuncture supplements, Chinese herbs and nutritional IV therapy. So the mitochondria are often considered the batteries of the cells. This is where you get your cellular energy from creating cellular energy, these mitochondria.

And when it comes to fertility, this is what we believe is the issue as we age. Older eggs and an older sperm leads to less pregnancy rates and higher risk of miscarriages and birth defects because a lot of energy is required for that embryo to divide. And so think of it while it’s in your fallopian tube coming to the uterus or while it’s in the IVF lab growing out to a blasis to that day five, that requires a lot of energy and the mitochondria of the embryo comes from the female egg and also it requires a lot of energy for implantation. And so this is why we want to have good mitochondrial health. And you would think of tissues in our bodies and organs, which would have the largest concentration of mitochondria. And you would guess the heart because the heart has to pump all the time from months you’re alive ongoing.

And surprisingly, the highest concentration of mitochondria is not in the heart but in the ovaries. And again, makes sense then because this is where we’re going to create life from. So again, that mitochondria from the eggs are transferred to the embryo and it’s important to have good mitochondria health because we need that for cellular energy to lead to that embryo dividing as it grows and for that energy needed for implantation. So what can you do to improve your mitochondrial function? Well, again, the fertility diet that we have available on Acubalance.ca, contact us for that because it’s more about the things that are not good for you that can really impact your mitochondria. So we want to bring those out of your diet. And then there are obviously certain nutrients that can support mitochondria health. Again, going back to lifestyle, exercise, sleep, rest, stress reduction.

So going back to the meditative practice, acupuncture is an excellent tool for reducing stress as well. Meditation, yin yoga walks in nature. There’s many things, guided meditation, many things you can do to support you with stress reduction. There’s some naturopathic functional medicine testing we do as well in our practice to look at your mitochondria health. And then some of the other interventions that we like that are fairly noninvasive to help support mitochondrial function, those batteries of your cells is low level laser therapy. So again, low level laser therapy. One of the main mechanisms why it helps with injuries and in this case with fertility is its ability to support mitochondrial function and prove it. And I think of it as you remember our plant analogy when it comes to laser therapy, it’s like the sunlight. So plants take the sun and convert that energy through photosynthesis for the plant.

And our cells absorb these photons red and infrared light from the low level laser therapy and convert that into energy ATP. That’s the cell energy in the mitochondria. That’s part of the excitement around low level laser therapy when it comes to fertility and other conditions like injuries, you’re probably familiar with the supplements like coenzyme Q 10 and there’s other supplements that’s the most well-known one when it comes to fertility. But there are other supplements as well that we recommend to support your mitochondrial function. Chinese herbs have been shown to improve a TP and that’s the cell energy energy production, and that’s been shown in some mouse studies where they’ve given certain herbs. Interesting enough, the herbs that we would call yang yang and QE tonics are the ones that seem to have the most impact in these mouse models of improving A TP, which is interesting from a Chinese medicine model because often people kind of think of QI as energy and then also nutritional IVs we’ll do in our clinic to support mitochondrial function.

So as we go through all the things that can impact soil, we talked about inflammation, we talked about mitochondrial health, you’re starting to see that there’s this integrative multidisciplinary approach to support the soil, which then supports or reverses these insults to the cells. And again, you’re going to see the pattern that it’s pretty much the same thing we do. It’s a common thing that we do, this multidisciplinary holistic approach because when we do this, we’re seeing so many things, so many factors change on the level of the cell, of the level of the soil. The gut microbiome can impact your overall health and fertility. Your gut microbiome is responsible for a variety of crucial functions in the body, particularly due to its communication, the immune and neuroendocrine systems. So for those that have been going through reproductive treatments, you’re probably starting to hear or learn when you talk to your practitioners or your reproductive endocrinologist, IVF doctors, how important immune regulation and your neuroendocrine system is when it comes to getting good egg in sperm health and uterine receptivity and these beneficial bacteria aid.

So we’re talking about the gut microbiome here. They aid in the digestion of your food. They help your body absorb nutrients, especially those B vitamins and minerals. They help regulate blood sugar and fat storage and also keep a healthy metabolism. So things like your immune health, your neuroendocrine health, and then being able to absorb vitamins and minerals and regulate your blood sugar has an impact on embryo quality, has an impact on uterine receptivity. So why the gut microbiome is such an important factor when it comes to overall health and reproductive health and all of these functions, the mineral absorption, vitamins, blood sugar, fat storage, communication with the immune and neuroendocrine system, they can influence your risk of obesity. Metabolic disorders such as type two diabetes and cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases. Some of the things that we see in practice that can indicate that there’s something with your microbiome where you want to talk to your naturopathic physician about doing some testing to see what your gut microbiome looks like from a balance or imbalance perspective, skin condition.

So eczema, psoriasis, and rosacea can be connected to the gut microbiome, just gut health. So think of your inflammatory bowel disease, lots of bloating, painful bowels or alternate between diarrhea and constipation, diabetes, mental health, depression, anxiety, and even autism spectrum disorder has been linked to the gut microbiome, autoimmune diseases, allergies, obesity and dementia and Alzheimer’s disease and even Parkinson’s. We’ll talk a little bit later about low level laser therapy with respect to Parkinson’s. And now in reproductive medicine, they’re looking at the uterine microbiome and how it could possibly impact implantation failure. And from the Acubalance approach where we integrate Chinese medicine and naturopathic medicine, we realize that these systems and we believe communicate with each other. And so if you have a gut microbiome issue, this can affect other microbiomes in the body. And so we want to address the gut microbiome as an important one.

It’s one of the easier ones to get to address as well as the vaginal uterine environment. Since we now know that the vaginal uterine environment can now impact implantation success. And we’re looking at the gut microbiome, how it impacts your soil, your cellular on a cellular level, which we think can impact embryo quality from the egg and sperm. So what do we do for the microbiome? How do we heal it? It starts actually from birth where you breastfeed, was it a C-section versus a vaginal birth? That can start to impact the microbiome because the baby gets some of that immunity and microbiome through the vaginal microbiome of the mother when it’s being birthed. Stress could impact your microbiome, your diet, certain pharmaceuticals you’re taking where you’re born because you get your microbiome from your birth and just different life cycles of age all impact your microbiome.

So we address it through diet again. So there’s the fertility diet. Another call to download that free diet from Acubalance. Just contact us about our lifestyle. So exercise, sleep, rest. We talked about how stress can INF affect your microbiome. So again, finding ways to elicit the relaxation response. We do use naturopathic functional medicine testing to test your gut microbiome so we know what bugs are there or not there that can impact your overall health. And then our treatments, low level laser therapy supplements, Chinese herbs, nutritional IV therapy, all to support the gut microbiome gave another shout out to the low level laser therapy that I really enjoy using in my practice. There was a study done out of Australia and they used it for Parkinson’s because they believe there’s a link between the gut microbiome and the inflammation related to the poor gut microbiome and Parkinson’s.

So they did low level laser therapy over the gut microbiome and over the brainstem, and they showed an improvement in symptoms with Parkinson’s and they did do some DNA gene sequencing of the microbiome before and after, and they were able to objectively see a change in the microbiome from low level laser therapy. What about oxidative stress? What is oxidative stress? While it’s damaging to both sperm and egg cells, it’s kind like the body rust. It’s inevitable by living, by breathing and eating, you’re going to create this oxidative stress, but too much of it can be damaging. And as we age, we tend to lose our ability to deal with active stress. So as we age, we definitely want to do other things to lower how much stress we create in our body and also to find ways to clean up the oxidative stress.

There’s some study done where they have discussed how in the mid thirties women experience a decline in infertility coupled to a pronounced increase in the risk of aneuploidy. So those are abnormal embryos, an increase in miscarriage and birth defects. And they’re saying, although the cause is complex, there is a causative relationship between the age-related decline and cyte quality. So egg quality and oxidative stress is now being well established. And so we’re looking for ways to support the body’s ability to repair from this oxidative damage and also to clean it up. And so a lot of you’ll probably wear antioxidant therapy, right? So there’s diet, so eating a lot of green leafy vegetables. Again, lifestyle can contribute to oxidative stress. So movement, exercise, deep, adequate sleep, and finding time for rest, stress reduction because again, stress can increase oxidative stress. We can test for oxidative stress.

So talk to your naturopathic physician at your clinic or if you’re coming to Acubalance, talk to us because we can test to see what your oxidative stress looks like. And then what are some of the treatments? Well, diet, as we mentioned, antioxidant therapy, Chinese herbal medicine, they’re herbs and spices, so they’re naturally full of antioxidants, nutritional IV therapy, low level laser therapy. Starting to hear this well now you see why we brought this into Acubalance and recommended it address so many of the issues we see in our soil on a cellular level. And so yes, low level laser therapy has been shown to help lower oxidative stress in the body as well. And you’ve heard a couple of times of the benefits of Chinese herbs. Here’s another case of that as well as nutritional IV therapy. Again, it’s a multidisciplinary, comprehensive, holistic approach.

There is no one thing. We do many things and it starts with diet, lifestyle and stress reduction. And then we can add on other things like low level laser therapy, also known as photobiomodulation, acupuncture, herbs supplements, nutritional IV therapy. Let’s talk about blood flow. So this one, when it comes to the soil, this is the water. If the soil dries out, then the plant starts to wither and dry. And so we need to have blood flow to our reproductive organs. They bring the nutrients and the oxygen and the hormones. And if you’re going through medicated cycles, the drugs to your follicles help with that follicular genesis, the growth of the follicles. And if you can imagine, just think of taking your finger. Now, I invite you to do this. Now you wrap an elastic tightly around the end of your index finger or you can squeeze it with your hand.

And if you do this for close to a minute, maybe 30 seconds, even less, it’ll start to turn purple and hurt. And that’s because it has a lack of blood flow. So if you just release it, the colour returns and the pain disappears. And so we want to bring blood flow to the reproductive system, more blood to the ovaries, again, the hormones, nutrients, oxygens, the drugs and more blood flow to the uterus. Then hopefully it will support its growth and the necessary nutrients for uterine receptivity as well. And as we age, unfortunately there is a decline noted in blood flow to the reproductive system. So if we are in our mid to late thirties or even into our forties, it’s important to do things that can support blood flow. And so again, talking about movement, exercise, rest, sleep, meditation. So stress reduction because stress can negatively impact the blood flow.

When you’re under stress, when you’re in that alarm state, the blood is diverted from your reproductive system and from digestion. So it can go to your heart, lungs, and major muscles so you can fight or flight. So stress reduction is a really nice way to help support blood flow by increasing that parasympathetic response. Acupuncture has been shown to increase blood flow. There’s been research on this when you do it twice a week for a minimum of four weeks. They were showing how that increased blood flow to the reproductive system. So that’s one of the more common reasons why IVF clinics in their early days would recommend women go for acupuncture to bring more blood flow to the reproductive system. As we said, more blood to the ovaries, nutrients, oxygen hormones, IVF drugs as well as more blood to the uterus if you’re doing that frozen transfer to support uterine receptivity, low level laser therapy, I’m talking about it again.

And this is kind of where they believe in the mid nineties, why it may have helped some of the women in their small study that they did that I’ll talk about later. But in that study, they did low level laser therapy where it improved live birth rates for women going through IVF cycles and they did some thermo photography in their study and they showed the images in the study. You can see the woman in a bikini standing front and back and most of the colours are green and blue with a little bit of orange or red. The orange or red is showing good circulation. And after one treatment there was incredible improvement in circulation. And by the fifth treatment of low level laser therapy head to toe, you can see the circulation. And I’ll talk about that study a little bit more when I directly talk about low level laser therapy.

But again, another reason why we like LLT, also known as photobiomodulation is that low level laser therapy helps improve mitochondria function, helps regulate inflammation, and can lower oxidative stress. And here we’re learning about how it increases blood flow. This is why it’s a popular adjunct that people add to their acupuncture treatments in our practice because of this mechanism. And then there are certain supplements that can help. I’m thinking about certain spices. A lot of people know about turmeric now and Chinese herbal medicine also. There are formulas that we use and if you’ve taken Chinese herbs and you’ve had really bad menstrual pain and clotting and thick blood, but very painful periods, we would call that blood stasis. So poor microcirculation. And you probably noticed over a three month period of taking those herbs that your menstrual pain diminished greatly or has totally disappeared, and that’s that improving blood circulation aspect of that formula that you would’ve taken.

Other reasons for the soil to be out of balance and in this case the cellular environment. We’re thinking about hormonal imbalances. So think about if you have premenstrual symptoms. So do you get really irritable or sad around your cycle? Do you have breast distension, acne, premenstrual acne, bloating? Some people describe that they feel like they’re five to six months pregnant, cramps before your period. Insomnia, night sweats before your period. All this sleep disturbance that’s assigning Chinese, that the M, there’s some hormonal imbalances. Your cycles are irregular, irregular ovulation or they kind of come at 23 days, come at 40 days or 50 days. They don’t come on a regular period. Ovulation disorders. And if you’re having heavy bleeding or spotting throughout your cycle, that could also indicate some hormonal imbalances. And your medical doctor often will say your PMS, your clots, your pain heavy flow, that’s normal.

Well, normal doesn’t mean healthy. So in Chinese medicine, a healthy menstrual cycle, just so you can compare it to your own cycle, it’s regular. And so there is the textbook 28 days of your cycle, but regularity is really key. So if you have your cycle all the time at 26 days, that’s considered a healthier cycle than if it comes sometimes at 24, sometimes at 32, sometimes at 28. We do want regularity and the range, if you’re asking from a Chinese medicine perspective, a healthy length is between 26 and 35 days. If your cycle is shorter than 26 days on a regular basis, then that is considered an imbalance. It’s not a healthy cycle that we’d want to see if we could correct. If your cycle comes regularly more than 35 days, that’s also considered a delayed cycle. We’d want to see if we could adjust that. The key though is regularity.

So if you always have a 34 day cycle, that is a healthy cycle. And again, you’re bleeding. Talking from a healthy perspective should be average flow. It shouldn’t feel pathological that you’re going to bleed out and you need iron infusions. You’re so exhausted after a bleed shouldn’t be really light either like you’re hardly bleeding. We want average flow and the flow should be on average three to seven days if it’s shorter than three days or more than seven days. We also think of that as not the most healthy cycle and see if we can adjust that. And these are indications that there could be some underlying subtle or not so subtle hormonal imbalances. How do we regulate hormones? Diet, here we go again. Right? The building blocks your hormones. What do you eat? The nutrients that you’re getting into your system, the minerals, the vitamins, the essential fatty acids lifestyle.

So movement, exercise, adequate rest, deep sufficient sleep stress reduction because again, those chronic stress hormones can impact inflammation in your body. These chronic stress hormones you’re getting the cortisol, epinephrine, all this stuff that’s being released from your adrenals, short-term, great long-term, not so great to the cells and to the health and it can lead to blood sugar dysregulation and other hormonal imbalances. And then what do we do to regulate hormones, acupuncture, Chinese herbs supplements, nutritional IV therapy. So again, seeing this multidisciplinary holistic approach is kind of the way we like to do this. Let’s talk a little bit about acupuncture. Acupuncture has become really popular when it comes to reproductive health. There was a recent study that came out in July of 2023. It was a meta-analysis looking at over 4,700 women. And in this they shared that those going through IVF cycles having acupuncture had an increased implantation rate by 28% at an increased IVF clinical pregnancy rate by 33%.

And here’s the most important one: increase live birth rates by 33% and a decrease risk of biochemical pregnancy by 51%. That biochemical pregnancy is when you get the positive blood test, but we don’t make it to the heartbeat on the ultrasound, so it just shows up chemically in your urine test or on the blood, but we don’t get to the heartbeat. So that would be your chemical pregnancy and it was reduced by 51%. So the thing I want to share about acupuncture is timing and dosage matters. What I see is becoming very popular is the transfer day acupuncture. That’s what this research was kind of about on transfer day, that’s what that was discussing. But in the research they showed that if people came for a series of treatments leading up to the transfer day, that’s where you get your best results. And that’s what we’ve seen in our practice.

Olive did a chart review of all of the fertility of Vancouver where we’re integrative and go on site for transfer day acupuncture. We also showed when they looked at two years of frozen embryo transfers that were genetically screened. So putting back euploid embryos, normal chromosomal embryos, the patients that had transfer day acubalance on site had a higher pregnancy rate and a lower miscarriage rate. And then when we looked at the data a little bit more, this was just a chart review. It wasn’t like a big study. They showed that those that did seven or more treatments leading up to transfer day plus had acupuncture on transfer day, had even a higher pregnancy rate, lower miscarriage rate. Most of the research is showing that the benefit is having a series of treatments leading up to, well, just a series of treatments. Let me put it this way. It’s like if you’re going to exercise, train for a marathon and you train once a week versus twice a week, you’re going to get different results.

So for those that are in school or teachers or have ever been to school, if you’re looking to get a really good grade, which we want on our embryos, you’re looking for a good grade on your paper, on your exam, you could just show up for the exam and write and study the night before. That’s like transfer day acupuncture, cram the night before or you can study for a hundred days leading up to the exam. And if you study once a week versus twice a week versus three times a week during those hundred days, you’re going to have different results. You’re going to get a better grade the more you study. And so acupuncture has a dosage impact as well. Dosage matters when it comes to reproductive health, most of the research we see for male factors and most of the research we see when it looks at endometriosis, when it looks at PCOS, even looking at IVF, it’s twice a week.

So that’s the dosage you’re going to really want to look at, especially if you’re over 35, especially if you have a condition like PCOS or endometriosis or you’ve had already unsuccessful cycles, then really consider going twice a week versus once a week and giving yourself time leading up to it. So if you’re going to go through an IVF cycle, that’s a hundred days before the retrieval so we can support the soil. So help you reach your peak fertility potential egg and sperm at the time of retrieval. So those hundred days is the time we can do that. That’s preconception care. If you’re doing a frozen embryo transfer, then twice a week starting with the ashtrays. So that would allow, that’s usually three weeks of ES strays to build your line, even if it’s a natural cycle on the first day of your bleed twice a week.

And that hopefully will get you six treatments leading up to your transfer day and then have the acupuncture on site before and after transfer. That would be what I would recommend. So if you’re looking for that, if you’re doing acupuncture, talk to your practitioner and maybe increase it to twice a week and do a series of treatments leading up to transfer or retrieval rather than just on transfer day. To give you one more metaphor to just kind of make sense of this, it’s kind of like when we look at earthquakes on the richter scale and you go from a six to a seven, it’s not a factor of one, it’s like a factor of 10 from a six to a seven. And so when you do acupuncture once to twice a week, it has an exponential impact. And if you go from two to three when people have really thin linings and implantation issues, often in my practice they’ll get the laser therapy, they’ll get acupuncture and herbal medicine, but the acupuncture laser is being done three times a week.

Why the magnitude on the richter scale from a one to two to a three is not just a factor of one or two, it’s exponential. And so that’s also, think of that when you’re looking at the dosing. And again, if you have conditions like endometriosis, polycystic ovarian syndrome, you’re in your forties, then two or more treatments a week for a series of treatments to get that momentum going is probably what would be recommended to see a difference. Briefly, I just want to talk again about reversing your biological age and then we’ll talk about a few more things and wrap up here. There was a naturopathic doctor by the name of Kara Fitzgerald who published a book based on her research called Younger You, which made me really think about reproductive health because we want to be as biologically young as possible. And in her study she showed just in eight weeks with diet and lifestyle alone, they were able to reverse the biological age and they saw a significant decrease in triglycerides, a drop in total cholesterol and the bad cholesterol, LDL weight loss in those that needed to lose weight.

They saw a lowering of inflammation, improved energy and mood, resolution of skin issues, less joint pain, fewer headaches and improved gastrointestinal. And they even looked at some of the methylation markers and they saw an improvement in methylation markers, which they measured by levels of homocysteine, B12 and folate. And this was without any supplementation. I share this with you because we’re talking often about the approaches of this multidisciplinary holistic approach, which is an appropriate diet and an appropriate lifestyle, right? We talked about that. So sleep, rest, movement and stress reduction. So what was their intervention? So to get the positive influences for reversing the biological age, the markers I just shared with you in just eight weeks was having the right diet, they said. So again, call out for you to go to Acubalance.ca. Contact us for the Acubalance fertility diet because that is the right diet for regulating inflammation and lowering blood sugar, relaxation, cuddling meditation.

So those are tools and techniques to help elicit the relaxation response to help elicit parasympathetic nervous systems, which is important for reproduction, sleep movement and good gut bugs. So I’m going to say that again. Diet relaxation, cuddling their meditation, sleep movement. So there’s the diet lifestyle and then addressing the microbiome, having good gut bugs can reverse your biological age. Then we talked about what we do for good gut bugs as well. The low level laser therapy, certain supplements, nutritional iv, there are other ways that we can support that, but those things that are very simple that are available to you, diet, relaxation, sleep movement in the gut microbiome, this is something I’d invite you to focus on and to implement to improve in your life. So to maximize egg and sperm quality so they can reach their peak fertility potential at the time of ovulation.

So conception or at the time of egg retrieval when you bring the egg and sperm together in an IVF setting is we’re looking to improve mitochondrial health. We’re looking to improve blood flow to the reproductive system. We want to have hormonal balance. We want to improve nutritional deficiencies. Think of the soil again, regulating inflammation, reduce your response to stress and lower oxidative stress and improve the gut mu microbiome. We do this with diet and lifestyle, lifestyles, movement, sleep, rest, eliciting the calm and relaxed states of the body, and having community. And then we also at our clinic use acupuncture, low level laser therapy. Chinese herbal supplements, nutritional IV therapy, and we like to do functional medicine testing above and beyond conventional testing to see where these imbalances are so we can choose how we want to address them. So putting this back into action, I want to share another story of a woman that came to me after her IVF cycle where she had seven embryos tested, which is an amazing number of embryos to get tested.

So she was able to grow seven embryos to day five. She’s 40 and all seven came back abnormal, which was devastating for her, her profile, her symptoms, age 40, she described herself as somebody that was highly inflamed. So basically in that sympathetic dominance, a nervous system, she had skin issues, she had body pain, a lot of neck and shoulder tensions and struggled with headaches. She had insomnia. She couldn’t lose this mid abdominal weight. She struggled with anxiety and had cold hands and feet, really cold hands and feet. She was needle phobic as well. So our focus was on diet and low level laser therapy and laser acupuncture. And my conscious fertility program that I do the conscious work, belief change work as well as herbs and supplements. She did have some acupuncture, but it was minimal acupuncture because of her severe needle phobia.

And so the focus was on conscious work and on diet lifestyle and low level laser therapy. And we worked with her for six months and she had good improvement in all the weight. She lost weight, her mood improved, her hands and feet warmed up. She saw a reduction in headaches, great reduction in headaches and shoulder tension and her sleep improved. And so again, there’s that chronologically 40, but biologically, overly inflamed and probably much older biologically than 40. And she came to this place for the conscious work where when she first came, she was desperate to have this baby. She was in panic. She was looking at places to go around the world to try these experimental IVF techniques. And after our six months of treatment, she developed so much resilience and confidence in herself. And I remember she’s saying that I want this baby, but I’m now okay if I don’t have this baby.

There was a shift that happened for her and she was able to conceive at 41 naturally her baby. Now remember she did IVF. All seven embryos were tested, all said abnormal. She conceived her baby naturally after six months of the interventions that we did. And she saw a shift in her soil, her health improved, quality of life improved. And then shortly after the birth of her baby, within a few months she conceived baby number two naturally. But unfortunately that miscarried and she came back to our practice. She wanted to tune up. So we did laser therapy again, some herbal medicine, and we just reviewed the tools that I teach in the conscious work that I do usually over five to 10 sessions. So we just did a review and she started using those tools again at home, the conscious work and what some of my patients nicknamed the baby manifestation technique, but it’s really just conscious work.

And she was able to conceive at age 42 and a half, a baby. Number two, naturally. So somebody who went through IVF, all embryos tested abnormal, became chronologically older, but I believe biologically younger and was able to conceive both baby one and two, baby one at 41 and baby two at 42 and a half naturally. What about men? Does sperm matter? Absolutely. One of my podcasts on the Conscious Fertility Podcast, I’m Dr. Paul Turk, who’s a reproductive urologist, shared some data on how the male sperm can impact unexplained infertility, poor embryo development and miscarriages. So often when the woman is over 35, they’ll blame the female even if they can’t find anything, if she’s under 35, then they start to think about the man. I think regardless, we should think about the man. It takes two to make a baby. And so if you’re struggling with unexplained fertility or in the lab, you’re seeing poor embryo development those first five days or you’re getting pregnant miscarrying, then even though the semen analysis may look normal, there may be some other underlying issues that are not being picked up by the semen analysis that are contributing to your infertility and miscarriages.
And this is me talking or sharing some of the points from the podcast from Dr. Paul Turk. So it still takes sperm to make a baby. And I’ll share a story. The gentleman that came to me, he was 37, his wife was 31, and they had done an IVF ICSI. So the sperm was so poor because his count was 7 million. They did icsi, which is where they inject the sperm into the egg. And they had three nice embryos on day three, but they slowed down and none of them grew to day five. Now, just to share, when she came as a couple, they both came. She’s 31. She had constipation, was freezing cold, and had terrible menstrual pain. Reminding me of the story I shared with you earlier about the woman with twins at age 40, but she’s 31 because she’s 31. They looked at her age and said, you’re fine In Chinese medicine, if you’re freezing cold, if you have constipation, menstrual pain, that is not the optimal environment to create the peak fertility potential or uterine receptivity.

You cannot plant the seed in the winter into frozen soil, right? And so from a Chinese medicine concept, if somebody’s always cold, that is a poor prognosis for fertility. So we want to warm you up with acupuncture, moa, herbal medicine, and dietary therapy. So she got treated as well, by the way. She had herbal and acupuncture treatments and supplements, and then obviously him, his count of 7 million in the IVF clinic referred him to us because they did what they could do, which was icsi and it didn’t work. So we changed his diet, we changed his lifestyle. He came twice a week for acupuncture for about six to eight weeks regularly. We gave him Chinese herbs and supplements. After about six weeks, we reduced his acupuncture to once a week continuing on the supplements in the herbs. Four months later he did a semen analysis and his count was 25 million for 7 million to 25 million.

And the love that the reproductive endocrinologist at the IVF clinic over at Olive said to him, when you came to us, I-C-I-S, I-V-F was warranted, your count was 7 million. Your semen analysis now shows your counts are 25 million. So from this you probably can conceive naturally. So why don’t you try three more months naturally? And if that doesn’t work, we can do another IVF. And they did conceive within that three month window. Naturally they come back to my practice two years later because they’re trying to conceive baby number two. And the semen analysis was poor again. And so we went back to the diet, he went back to all his old habits. So we changed his diet, his lifestyle, we did the supplements, Chinese herbs, and just a few acupuncture sessions. And we never got to do a second SEMA analysis because they conceive baby number two naturally if you stick around Now, I’m going to just talk a little bit more about low level laser therapy and then I’ll talk also at the end about the conscious work I do low-level laser therapy way, way back when used to be called cold laser therapy.

The scientific term is photobiomodulation. That’s how it’ll be described in research now is photobiomodulation, photo photons, bio, your body modulation. So having these changes in the body through using photons, light therapy and low level laser therapy is still the more common name. I learned about low level laser therapy. Fertility from two fronts. One was back in 2009 where they did, or 2008, a study was done using laser acupuncture and transfer day acupuncture on transfer day sham laser. So it was a fake laser and a control group. And the laser group had a 15% increase in implantation on transfer day, when it was done on transfer day over the sham laser, over acupuncture and over the control group. So we introduced laser acupuncture and transfer day 2008, 2009 after this abstract was released. What really got me interested was its effect on improving embryo quality. So not transfer day, because remember on transfer day the embryo is in the lab.

So we can only help with uterine receptivity. We can only help with implantation when we do a treatment on transfer day or when we’re doing treatment leading up to a frozen embryo transfer, which I mentioned earlier, twice a week for at least three weeks leading up to your transfer. And if you again have endometriosis, PCS or other imbalances or repeated failures, then you probably want to start even sooner than that. But back to this research I want to share what got me more excited is this study by Dr. Ro, who’s a medical doctor and pain specialist in Japan in the mid nineties, treating women going into the retrieval. So this is impacting again, the egg quality, therefore supporting embryo quality. And this is where I think your naturopathic physicians, your Chinese medicine doctors, this is where I think the strength of the medicine is leading up to conception naturally or leading up to an IVF retrieval when we still have a chance to impact the soil, which will impact you reaching your peak fertility potential.

And what had happened is he discovered this by accident. And so he was treating a woman in her early fifties for back pain who was a menopause, and he’s treating her and over a series of treatments, her back pain is resolved, but she comes back upset because she starts to have a menstrual bleed again on a monthly basis for about five days every month for a series of months. And he dismissed it thinking it’s not what he did. And because you’re in menopause and you’re starting to bleed, we need to make sure there’s nothing serious going on. So he sent her to the gynecology department. It happened a second time. Another woman came in for back pain who was in menopause, and her cycle returned. So he thought about it and said, since the laser therapy increases blood flow from head to toe everywhere. So he was doing this because he wants the blood flow to go to the lower back and he wants to regulate inflammation in that area and he wants to improve the mitochondrial function to help the back heal.

That’s the idea of why he used low level laser therapy for back pain. He realized the blood goes everywhere, so maybe he’s helping rejuvenate the ovaries, the fertility, because the blood also goes to the ovaries. And he thought maybe we’re bringing more blood flow to the ovaries and this is why we’re improving. This is why their cycles came back. And so they did a study, a pilot study of about 74 women. The English translation of the study is severe infertility, because they had struggled with infertility for many years. They had multiple RT cycles and they put them through the laser therapy sessions and they had over 23% got pregnant. And of those that got pregnant, 68% had a live birth, live birth, which was impressive for that demographic. So they expanded the study to 701 women, similarly, 23% got pregnant and about 50% live birth rate for that demographic.

So that is kind of what low level laser therapy, now known as photobiomodulation for fertility started, it was in the nineties in 2018, a manufacturer of lasers, the paramedics group that has a Gigalaser published clinical data of eight clinics where women were coming three times a week. Remember we talked about dosage. So they came three times a week for the two weeks leading up to ovulation. So they got six treatments a cycle, three times a week leading up to ovulation. And they did this for three cycles. So that’s on average 18 sessions. And they just showed some pretty impressive success rates from the clinical results. This wasn’t a study, this was just self-reporting from clinics. We have that Gigalaser, by the way, at Acubalance among many other laser systems. I love my lasers and so I get lots of them sent to me to try to do studies with.

And so we do have that Gigalaser at Acubalance, the mechanism behind low level laser therapy. And again, dosage matters when we treat people for pain injuries pre and post-surgery. Again, it’s two to three treatments a week for two to three weeks to get the momentum going, and then we can pull it back depending on what your reproductive issues are and your diagnosis. I don’t know how long that would be until I would see you, but on average, most people will do two or three a week for at least three weeks to get things started. And the mechanism behind laser for fertility, low level laser theory has been shown to improve mitochondrial activity in a TP production. So that’s that cellular energy that’s important. Going back to our soil analogy, a plant absorbs the sunlight, turns into photosynthesis, into energy. Our goal is, can we improve the mitochondrial function of the follicles because that egg that becomes the embryo is going to be needed for energy, for division, for embryo division, and for implantation.

And the follicle, this is the baby house. It’s what’s going to support the egg’s development, nurturing it, nourishing it over those hundred days, right? And so we really want to improve follicular health. Low-level laser therapy has been shown to increase blood flow. This is what Dr. Shiro believed was the reason why those women came out of menopause and why they saw a good result for that demographic where they had a 50% live birth rate is because he believed it was the blood flow to the ovaries. I think it’s the other mechanism also that’s really important is that it regulates inflammation because chronic systemic inflammation known as inflammaging leads to accelerated biological aging, which leads to premature degenerative diseases and I believe fertility decline. The other mechanism is the gut microbiome, which is why I think the Gigalaser did so well, is because it covers such a large area.

It’s a big surface area, this laser. So it’s not only over the ovaries, but it was over the gut. And so I think that Gigalaser helps the gut microbiome, which helps regulate inflammation and also we’re doing that, increasing the blood flow. And so mechanisms improve mitochondria, I’m just going to review them and then there’s more. I haven’t finished. Increased blood flow regulates inflammation and can improve the gut microbiome. It’s been shown to engage the parasympathetic nervous system, which is your rest and digest and breed and feed nervous system emphasis here on breed. It helps reduce oxidative stress. It’s been shown to soften scar tissue. So I think if people that have had C-sections or abdominal surgeries or uterine surgeries, so potentially maybe it’s helping that way because it can soften scar tissue. We often use it in our clinic for people that have discomfort around their C-section or any other surgeries that they’ve had and seen improvement there.

And it’s now being used. It’s still new, the data is still coming out, but for brain health and mood. And so to me it just has so many mechanisms to improve overall health. And when we improve overall health, we get to that idea that Dr. Paul Magaralli said at the very beginning of this talk at the fertility conference, that we help people get pregnant better. IVF helps people get pregnant faster. And so low-level laser therapy has so many mechanisms to improve the soil, the cell environment, which can help you get pregnant better. Not all lasers are created equally. I think a lot of people are using lasers at home and in their practices, quality of laser does matter. Power matters, wavelength matters. I’m not confident yet that the home systems are enough. However, I do consult people that want access to photobiomodulation and they’re nowhere near Vancouver and they don’t have anybody in the area.

So they do buy home systems and I consult them on or coach them. I don’t really consult coach ’em on how they can use it. Realistically, I think the clinical lasers are still, if you have a good quality one like we have at our clinic, I think they’re necessary still. And then these home systems can be in between treatments and after you have a series of that hundred days treatment, it can be the maintenance if you’re not pregnant already. So I do see a place for these home systems. I just think they could be used in between your professional treatments and maybe after three months of treatment to continue on. But I don’t know, nobody’s done research on it. So I don’t know if the home systems are enough, but I get why people want them because they want to do everything they can and maybe they will be the thing that puts you over the edge to have a baby.

There is some treatment skill on where you are putting it, and so are you addressing the parasympathetic system? Are you addressing the gut microbiome? Are you addressing the area around the ovaries? Are you addressing the nerve roots that come out to innervate the uterus in the ovary? So in our practice, we’re doing a lot of that. I have the good fortune to travel to Toronto and Australia to get somebody to connect me with a clinic in Japan and really see what other people were doing with their laser for fertility and came up with our protocol at Acubalance and then got to talk to Dr. Nakamura in Japan. Funny story is that I wanted to find Oshiro. So I created a letter, put it through Google Translate and sent it out to all the clinics in Japan I could find with Xero’s name on it.

I didn’t hear back from anybody, but I also put it on social media. I’m looking for a translator that speaks Japanese, and I found an acupuncturist that speaks Japanese that lived in California, and he connected me with a clinic with Dr. Nakamura and his clinic. On a side note, my colleague and translator said that the Google translate wasn’t very good and there’s a way to speak in Japan for respect, and he wasn’t surprised that my letter didn’t get any responses. So thank you, Google translate. But going back to this story, Nakamura back, this was pre Covid. He had 10 years of data where people did the acupuncture and laser. So he’s an acupuncturist in an IVF clinic. So they did acupuncture and the level laser therapy for three to six months. They showed a doubling of a basis rate, so they did some IVFs and then they had no success.

Then they would do a series of laser treatments and then they would see a doubling of how many embryos would grow to day five. And our approach was really similar. So I felt really happy and confident to know that the protocol and approach we came up with here at Acubalance already had 10 years of clinical data in Japan. That was doubling blasts. So how we incorporate the low level laser therapy for fertility, whether you’re trying to conceive naturally or through IIS or IVFs, I recommend a hundred days of preconception. So while you’re going through these IVF cycles, I’d recommend that at least twice a week, the laser and acupuncture leading up to conception retrieval for at least three to six cycles. Keep trying while you’re doing this by the way, but give it three to six cycles to see if it makes the shift if you’re going through an IVF, then twice a week during the stimulation phase, so while you’re stimming to grow those follicles.

And then we do treatments post retrieval because laser, low level laser therapy has been shown to help with recovery, reduce pain and swelling when you do a series of treatments before and after surgery. And so if you’re doing the treatments before retrieval, that’s the STEM phase. Twice a week, there’s your treatments before surgery because a retrieval is surgery and then a day or two after retrieval, ideally the next day I’d like to do another treatment just to help with the blood flow, the swelling, the edema so we can get ready for a future transfer. And so just accelerate that healing. So post retrieval and if you’re doing a frozen embryo transfer, three weeks leading up to the frozen embryo transfer. So usually when you start ashtrays or if you’re doing a natural cycle, when you start your bleed, as I said earlier, if you have PCS, if you have endometriosis, if you have a history of already implantation failure or unsuccessful IVF cycles, then you may want to start more than three months, more than three weeks before your frozen embryo transfer because again, we’re not just going to use laser.

We want to look at diet supplements, lifestyle herbs, acupuncture, IV therapy. We want to see what we can do to shift your terrain to make it more receptive for more UNI reception. And then what’s really popular is we go onsite at Olive for the day of transfer and that treatment before and after transfer onsite at Olive. You do need to contact Akiba to schedule that. It’s not scheduled through Olive, it’s scheduled through acubalance and people that have PCOS, endometriosis, male factor, egg quality, these are the people that we’re usually introducing low level laser therapy for. I wanted to mention the diet and the MINDBODY work, just to remind you that we have the Acubalance fertility Diet available to you. You just got to contact us at Acubalance to get a copy. The Acubalance Diet and many diets out there reason they may look different, but they all can help if they lower inflammation, if they lower oxidative damage, if they can regulate blood sugar and provide adequate nutrition to the cells, they’re going to be helpful.

And so it’s more about what you take away from your diet often than what you’re putting into your diet because a lot of the things can insult your soil. And again, that’s available from Acubalance. You can contact us or see us at the clinic to find out the supplements we use. And then you’re here listening to the Conscious Fertility Podcast. Your issues are in your tissues. And our goal here is when your body’s an alarm, it’s using up resources to fight or flight. And that means these resources, this energy is not available for healing, creativity and reproduction. And when we can elicit the relaxation response and take your body out of alarm and into safety, then we free up these resources for healing, creativity and reproduction. And so I invite you to continue to listen to the Conscious Fertility Podcast and I do conscious work online through telehealth.

And also if you come to my clinic, I combine the acupuncture laser with the conscious work in my sessions as well. You just got to contact the clinic to learn more about that. And to just put this into context, where I think this baby manifestation conscious work is so important is one is it gives you that peace of mind, the emotional resilience, which we all need in life anyhow, and especially when you’re on a fertility journey. This woman came to me, age 35, diagnosed with premature ovarian insufficiency, her antral follicle count. They said they found nothing, no eggs. When they did the antral follicle count, her FSH was over 40. Her A MH was kind of undetectable under 0.1, and she wasn’t ovulating evident by a series of progesterone tests over several weeks and months. There was no change in progesterone level. So her diagnosis was premature variance efficiency.

We did conscious work with her. That was, I think, the main modality. We did low level laser therapy twice a week with acupuncture. We did do herbs and supplements. So again, comprehensive, multidisciplinary, holistic approach. The conscious work, you could just see the shift in her week by week, and she was able to go back to her. If you listen to some of the podcasts, you talk about inner child or younger self, she had a lot of work on her younger self. She was so great taking these tools and doing them at home. I’m the facilitator. Some people come and just have me facilitate once a week, but it’s meant that I teach, facilitate these tools and then you go and do them daily in your life. And she did this and she had that transformation in her life and she was convinced she was going to have this baby.

She knew it was IVF. She wasn’t open to IVF or donor eggs. This was it. It had to happen this way. And we treated her for nine months. So she came in for conscious work, she did the acupuncture, laser urgent supplements, and her cycles came back. Then her clinic put her on Letrozole. It didn’t work. And it started messing up her cycle again. So I requested in this case, we’ve done well so far, can we have three months with no medications? Let’s just continue. And after nine months of treatment, she conceived and had a baby girl. And so this is that complimentary, multidisciplinary, holistic approach. You don’t need a referral to come see us at Acubalance. So contact Acubalance and schedule your appointments. You can do a discovery call there. And then there’s other amazing clinics around the country, around the world that you can find sometimes I know who they are as well. So you can ask if we know and remember, nourish the soil before you plant the seed. And I wish you the best of luck on your path to pregnancy and growing your family.

Lorne Brown:

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, Lorne brown.com and acubalance.ca. Until the next episode, stay curious and for a few moments, bring your awareness to your heart center and breathe.