November 12, 2025 • 53 mins
What if fertility wasn’t just about reproduction — but a reflection of your entire body’s vitality?
In this episode, Kelly sits down with dietitian, researcher, and author Rachel Swanson, whose upcoming book Trying!: A Science-Backed Plan to Optimize Your Fertility is redefining how women think about reproductive health.
Rachel shares her groundbreaking “Fertility 2.0” framework — a whole-body approach that connects gut, oral, and vaginal health, metabolic balance, and even sleep to hormone harmony and long-term vitality. From how your partner’s microbiome might affect conception (yes, even kissing!) to the most common disruptors quietly impacting your hormones every day, this conversation offers science-backed insights and simple, empowering shifts every woman should know.
Whether you’re trying to conceive or simply trying to feel your best, this episode reframes fertility as a vital sign of overall health — one that reveals how well your body, energy, and emotions are truly aligned.
(Rachel’s book, Trying!, releases January 6, 2026.)
Instagram: @rachelsrx
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HOST: Kelly Henderson // @velvetsedge // velvetsedge.com
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Rachel Swanton has become one of the top voices changing
the fertility conversation. She's a dietitian, researcher and author of
the new book Trying a Science Back Plan to Optimize
Your Fertility. She works with everyone from pro athletes to
Vogue models and Fortune five hundred execs, and she's reframing
fertility as a sign of vitality, not just reproduction.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Hi, Rachel, Hi, it's so nice to be here with you.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Well, I'm so glad you're here. We were just talking
a little bit before the podcast, and I said, we
just have to press record because I'm doing the podcast
with you before the podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
But I'm glad you said that, by the way, or
else would have kept.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Going, Oh totally. I was feeling like we were going
to talk for an hour before the podcast. But so
we'll just do this with the listeners listening and everyone
can participate. But I was telling you, it's been a
minute since we've had any sort of fertility conversation on
this podcast. And you know, I went through my own
fertility journey. I think that was back in twenty eighteen
and twenty nineteen. I was trying to freeze my eggs
(01:10):
at unsuccessful two round attempts. But my experience with that
felt a little bit harsh and scientific and cold, and
so when you were brought to me, it was a
refreshing objective on fertility, and I really wanted to bring
that to the listeners because we do talk a lot
about root causes overall health, diving into spirituality and emotional
(01:35):
connections with your health, and so I just really feel
like what you're talking about is very in line with that.
So I know you talk about fertility two point zero
and that's kind of like an overriding conversation for all
of the work that you do. Can you explain to
the listeners what that means?
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Yeah, definitely. Well I think well, first, I mean, look,
I'll talk about fertility two point oh for an hour
all day, but I guess I'll tell you a little
bit of the backstory and how I write, because I
think what you'll find is it aligns what you just experienced,
you know, the coldness, the harshness, the clinical aspect. It
actually aligned with what I view a lot of times
(02:15):
going on with practice. So I guess to give you
context and backstory for a minute. Well, for context, I
do work full time in clinical practice. I've been doing
that since twenty seventeen. Well, I think of myself as
really a conduit to help people achieve their goals through
natural ways being you know, diet and lifestyle. So over
(02:35):
the years, more and more women came to me with
the goal of getting pregnant. And yes, so what was
interesting about this is that, you know, all these women
were quite successful, you know, business professionals. They had already
achieved so much in life, but yet they were presenting
feeling completely disempowered about the whole process, about themselves, about
(02:59):
what they were going through, and they had either received
coming with me, they received super generic advice. They were
kind of playing whack a mole with their symptoms. Overall,
it just felt cold and very reactive. And now this
is ironic, not just because I'm saying, oh, they had
all this earlier success, but it's like, take a step
back and think about it. This should be one of
(03:20):
the most exciting times, Like you're here wanting to and
hoping to create this miracle of life inside your body,
but instead you're feeling like your body is the adversary.
It's like working against you. Right, Yes, I think, so, really,
what I did for all of my clients is I
took this what I call a first principles approach to
(03:43):
their goal. That just means kind of looking at reproductive function,
not in an isolated way, but kind of from this
root cause based perspective, like what you're speaking to, that
root cause based perspective, that first pristap potion that is
fertility to two point zero, because it takes a consideration
your whole body. It's proactive in nature. It's just a
(04:06):
very very different approach from kind of this conventional medicine
or kind of the traditional advice that you're given, because
I look at, like, how can we optimize how the
body functions, but in doing so improve your chances of
conceiving if that's in the cards for you, right, but
also just set yourself up for success for the rest
of our lives. And you know, professionally, that did kind
(04:28):
of lead me to this crossroads where you know, I
was either going to kind of go back to school
for more education to pursue my PhD, or I could
spend kind of the equivalent time and research on a
book to kind of get more of this information out
to women sort of outside of the practice. And I mean, Kelly,
I think if I didn't do that, you and I
(04:48):
want to be have you this conversation.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
No, yeah, absolutely, And I love that you brought up
the generic nature of how fertility is discussed, because I
find it to be something that should be so personal.
It's individual, and that's what you talk about is looking
at each individual person as a different you know, not
experiment with out a patient I guess whatever the word
(05:12):
would be in that world, but as a different situation,
and how do we approach this for your specific body?
Because I remember going into my gynecologists and at thirty five,
they're starting to tell you like, you'll be in a
geriatric pregnancy, and I'm like, what does that even mean?
You know, I feel like I'm thirty five? Why am
I getting talked to you that way? And then it
was kind of just a little bit like a cattle
(05:32):
call going into the egg freezing situation, and it because
it wasn't successful. It wasn't like anyone was talking to
me about the whys other than my age. But I
was thirty seven, so it doesn't feel like it was
really There wasn't any like deep dive into maybe what
my specific blocks were, anything like that, and so I
(05:54):
really appreciate your approach to looking at the whys, talking
about the food we're eating and creating the holistic just
environment in our bodies for optimal health overall, right, like
hormones and all of that. So can you talk a
little bit about.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
That, Yeah, exactly, And you know the process definitely, like
you know that the process of egg retrievaled IVF. That
certainly will kind of feel very you know, cold clinical.
But I want people to go into that actually with
profound self confidence because they were empowered with information about
(06:32):
their body beforehand. And actually, you know, it's not about
like what I didn't do or what I did do.
It's about like, no, you have the information. You absolutely
took care of your body and optimize it to the
extent possible. I mean, like what is more empowering than that? Right,
But without any of that understanding the why, understanding your
(06:53):
body and how your body works, it's kind of like
you're just either do nothing. You do kind of like
a one sheet of information that they that they gave
you beforehand, or you're gonna be like stuck in Google
searches and like Reddit threads at two am trying to
like piece together, all of all the pieces, and I
can only imagine after this process for you is when
(07:14):
you started doing that. I'm only guessing and taking this
sort of like looking at the holistic picture, actually looking
at the spiritual elements right and kind of bringing all
of this together. But I just wish that you had
what you have right now going into the journey. Would
you say that that probably would have even if the
outcome was the same, wouldn't have that made your life
(07:37):
experience a whole lot different kind of before and after.
But I mean you certainly you speak to that's that's
your journey well completely.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
And that's why I'm so grateful for books like yours
coming out now, because I do think it's a conversation
that we don't really have until we get to the
place of going through the process. And like I said,
I was thirty five. At thirty five, I don't think
many women are really if you're a high achieving woman
who's very work driven, you probably are just like, Okay,
(08:05):
I got to really start thinking about this, and you
mentioned that you worked with a lot of successful women,
and that was how I felt at the time, was
like my business was booming. I had gotten to a
place in my career where I felt satisfied and like, Okay, yes,
time is ticking. I need to think about the family
thing because I know the biological clock is ticking. And
also I felt very disempowered in this one area of
(08:30):
my life because I didn't have the knowledge about my
body that I probably needed to have. And also I
had always known how to work hard to achieve the
things I wanted, and this was a thing that I
was like, I don't even know what to do, you know,
like I didn't know anything I could be doing to
help myself achieve my goals. And that was that's weird,
(08:51):
Like you just kind of are like the doctor says,
go to this appointment, so you go, but yeah, you're right,
Like I've researched a ton after and now reflecting back,
I'm like, oh, I could have done this or that
or that. Are looked into this and so yeah, I
think it's.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Well then well then it's like to your point, you
go this journey of like self afterwards, this self doubt,
you probably either have challenges or questions with like sense
of identity or sense of and hopefully yeah and hopefully
not projecting.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
That's exactly to you.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
But it's more like this is kind of these are
just like the emotions I've experienced from other women, right,
And it's like, well, several things, and we'll certainly kind
of go back to this the holistic approach and how
we can support our body and just my feelings in general,
how things need to be sort of proactive. We need
to we need to set women up for success, especially
(09:40):
for a goal that's that's really a lifelong goal. It's
and you just may not have focused on it beforehand.
And like you said, like at least the people of
my practice absolutely are not focusing on performed. They're like,
you know, building, building their life right and doing all
these other things. But I hate that in general. It's
like all of the disappointment, all the negative emotions you
(10:03):
feel after it's kind of taking a step back. You know.
This is a mismatch between expectations and reality, right, That's
all it is. And I think maybe at least for
some of my women, maybe for you, maybe not for you.
What people need to recognize faster and sooner is that
that is only one version of reality that you can
(10:26):
play out. And look, if someone has the goal of
building a family, like why is that. Well, it's probably
because you know that you just want to be around
people that you love for the longest time possible on
this planet. So it hopes that everyone can pursue their
passions and purpose while on this earth. But again, it's
(10:47):
like there's so many ways to achieve that if that's
the goal. And so again I just kind of wanted
to take a step back because we have to like
reframe what's going on and all of these emotions it's
really just going to cloud your path forward, right, It's
going to be very conflicting with seeing things with clarity
and taking the next step in building that that goal.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Yeah, well, I know you've mentioned you describe fertility as
a vital sign, like it just you know, even equitable
to like your heart rate or blood pressure. So can
you unpack maybe like how we do this perspective shift
because I don't think that that is how anyone is
thinking about it at this point, And so what got
(11:32):
you to that kind of thinking and how do we
shift our own narrative about that?
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Yeah, so this is just what I view for any
health condition or the goal, So that perspective in that
frame of mind, and you're right, and Look, I'm gonna
be honest, that's this is exactly why I wrote the
book because I'm like, why is this not? Why is
this not that standard?
Speaker 1 (11:53):
When I unders yes, in.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Terms of looking at this, because just the more and
more research that I found, it's just showing that it's like, look,
all of these sort of vital signs that we monitor
over time, none of them is fertility. But this goes
for men and women. Think about the men if there's
issues with say sperm, you know quantity or quality, that's
(12:18):
actually giving you a much earlier indicator that something is
likely not going the way that it should. And we
at least my job is to help find and unblock
what's holding the body back from achieving its highest potential
in this case. Right. So again that's just how I
(12:39):
look at it, like where can we really optimize the
body so it can function as it's intelligently designed to do?
And I guess I want I do want to point
out really fast, you know, nothing I said will apply
of course to individuals who like a male who has
you know, vericasile. That's just basically something that you need
(12:59):
to go or urologists for completely fixable, right, so that
can also lead to sperm challenges and for females like, look,
nothing i'd help you with is going to help if
you have, say a tubal blockage like that is based
off of your anat I mean, so I did want
to kind of set this stage because I think everything
is sort of like, oh, we're against the system. It's
(13:20):
like right, all this, but I'm like, no, no, like
there's time and place for both. But going back to
what you're mentioning, this is just how I believe the
standard of care should be, where we can look at
fertility as an indicator to what is going on with
our health and is there an opportunity to optimize this
(13:41):
in order to achieve the goal. And that's absolutely the case.
So we look at sort of unblocking these biological hurdles
and that will optimize your chances of conceiving. And I
have over really four hundred studies in the book proving that.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Let's get into some of those because I think it's interesting.
We've mentioned there's obviously the root cause, and then physically
and emotionally and energetically, I know there's a lot to
fertility there as well, and so maybe we can touch
on some of that. But your framework really looks at
the full system, and that's that's what I love about it.
One of the things that I was fascinated by was
(14:16):
gut health and like oral health and all of those
those pieces of it, because I don't really think people
are connecting the two. There was one thing you said
about our partners oral hygiene really can matter and fertility.
Can you tell us why? Because I did not see
that coming.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
I remember distinctly like this specific bullet point I think
I had in the in the oral health section because
the people that we are with and you know, our partners,
there's this microbial like transfer, and I think I was like,
you know, the whole uh you know you are.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Who you spend time with is kind of takes on
this entire new reading because there's a transfer of microbes.
So the reason I'm bringing this up is because it's like,
you could be doing all the things needed to optimize
your oral health and I'll get into why that's important,
but if your partner is doing none of it, I'm like, no, no,
(15:20):
this has to be a shared effort because then it's
kind of like all the work that you're doing, but
then you know you're with him and you're you know,
kissing and things like that, and you're like having this
microbial transfer, some of which not all, some of which
kind of take up residence in your mouth. And so
the whole underlying theme of the entire book, like, yes,
(15:40):
it's heared to women, of course, but every single chapter
and every single section basically has a part about the
male counterpart, right, and what.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Can make you good? I mean, because we all talk
about it as the woman needs to do all this stuff,
but it's like, okay, well there's also sperm in making
a child, so like that is a big piece. There
is an exchange of all of these Mike, I don't
know the technical terms.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, But the same goes for
I mean, I don't know if you want to get
into this too, but the same goes for vaginal health too. Right,
It's all of this kind of microbial transfer, and just
think of all these microbes on different places of your body.
These are ecosystems, and you don't want to power imbalance
happening in any of those ecosystems because it's not going
(16:28):
to support you in the best way possible. So take
a step back. We'll look at kind of the overarching
goal of why I discussed well why I have an
entire chapter just on the microbiome, not just the gut,
but you know oral microbiome for example. But think of
each of these ecosystems as reproductively relevant and so you
know they are going to help either support you or
(16:51):
if they're out of balance, like there's a there's a
power imbalance happening between sort of these opportunistic bacteria and
your good bacteria. So what that's creating is this inflammatory
cascade that can happen in the body that ultimately can
impact clinical outcomes, meaning chances of conceiving. And it is fascinating,
(17:13):
and I needed to bring all of this research to
WIBIT because I doubt they know about it. And guess
what the reason I put it in the book isn't
just to talk about it. I'm like, no, you can
leverage diet and lifestyle changes to optimize every ecosystem in
your body. Like what's more incredible and powerful then that
(17:33):
that's how we improve our chances and sort of this
microbiome aspect that is one of the root caused levers
that you have in your power, Like, it's incredible.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
So why would your oral micro biome matter in fertility,
because I'm sure people are like, wait, what, that's your mouth,
Why does that matter in how your fertility operates?
Speaker 2 (17:57):
I actually I love this, love this reaction so much
so when so with your oral health if you have
let's say, poor oral health, and then going a step
further to what's called, you know, periodontal disease. About half
of the population in the US has periodontal disease, which
actually is a stat that blew me away. I think
(18:18):
I've read the paper about three times because I'm like, no, no,
this is no way perrydontal disease, which think of like
inflammation in your mouth. This is gum disease. Right, So
there's dys biosis, which basically means an imbalance of the
microbiotic in your mouth. There's inflammation going on. There's a
lot of inflammatory things happening in the mouth. What can
(18:42):
happen with that? Do you know? Are you familiar with
kind of this term leaky gut?
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Okay, So I like to describe it this way and
you'll see why. What happens is sort of for two reasons. One,
those microbes can actually go like hitch a ride in
your bloodstream, right because they see through just visualize the
kind of the leaky gut, what happens that can happen
in your mouth, and all of this then goes systemically,
which is why it's not everything going down in your
(19:09):
mouth isn't just about your mouth. It can actually happen
throughout the body. So basically, you have the microbes that
can hit you right in your bloodsream that can also
cause inflammation and induce your immune system to respond. I mean,
think about your immune system. It's like, hey, these microbes
literally belong in the mouth. What the heck are they
(19:29):
doing here? That's why your body kind of mounts this
inflammatory response. And if I may, I know this kind
of is going to segue or to a different subject.
But even if you're listening to this and you are
not trying to get pregnant, everything I'm saying right now
is relevant in other ways. So in terms of the
translocation of this pathogenic bacteria that is now associated with
(19:55):
the higher risk of certain cancer types, they have found
this in the plaque in the brain. They have found
this in plaque in part All of these are associations,
but they are becoming a very very strong association. So
again I just want to we'll zoom out, We'll kind
of zoom in and zoom out on every topic we discussed,
but I have to say, this is relevant for your
(20:18):
entire lifetime. And I'm just kind of bringing this forward
in context of fertility because periodontal disease has been shown
to increase preterm birth, miscarriage and chances of conceiving. Wild,
isn't it.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
I am like mind blown when over half the population, Yeah,
that is insane.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
And so with this, I don't want anyone to extrapolate
that I've said, like, well, fifty percent of the population
therefore is going to be less likely dancy. That's certainly
not scientifically accurate. But the reason I say that because
I'm like, well, again, this is a massive leverage point
in the population. Same with metabolic heal, same with everything
(20:58):
else I discuss, And so I kind of just wanted
to bring that to light that we can between a
lot and think about it. Oral health is one of
the easiest. It's like the in my mind, this is
the lowest hanging fruit. Absolutely, like the lowest hanging fruit.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Yeah, and if it's one of those things, like I
don't think that we would associate the reason I was
so mind blown by that status. I would just never
associate that with fertility. And I do think it's a
very important conversation to have about all these different places
in our body and our gut and our vaginal health.
And we'll talk about that in a second. But like
(21:34):
your mouth, I would never think, oh, that was really
important for me and my overall health or my fertility
or anything like that. You just think about it with Okay,
I need to go to the dentist every six months
or a year or whatever, you know. So I think
it's just an interesting one to connect our health and
these different microbiomes in general, and the fact that so
(21:55):
many people are not looking at that. Of course it's
contributing to our overall health issues probably in our society.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Yeah, and this is it's it's entirely and by the way,
I will be a broken record on this point. I
would probably say it ten times until we're done. But
this is something that everyone can leverage. We cannot leverage
our age at the end of the day, right spoke
to at the beginning. Yeah, They're like, there are factors
we absolutely cannot control, but this is one of them.
(22:24):
It's the lowest hanging through. So I that's why kind
of this is feeding into our how we started this
conversation right about like, no, I want people to be
so empowered about their bodies and like and bring that
sort of confidence into this whole journey, like I have
supporting my body in the best way, in the best
way possible, right, supporting the life inside of my body.
(22:45):
If you want to kind of bring it back into
this bigger picture. I mean, at the end of the day,
that's what getting pregnant is, right, It's being able to
support life. But I'm kind of giving you an opportunity
that you can support your the life of these ecosystems,
of these microbes inside your body way way before then
something that you can think about it that you'll you'll
(23:06):
never forget. This is so and I should have probably
said this at the at the beginning. I got way
too excited clearly about this. I think about also, I
describe it like leaky gut. But you can also think
about the mouth in a way that you know how
sometimes if you've ever taken like a sublingual vitamin like
B twelve and you like scored it under your tongue,
or you let something dissolve under your tongue. Okay, so
(23:28):
the mouth highly vascularized and it literally like takes in
all of these things that gets absorbed into the blood streams.
Think about B twelve. That's a way to like bypass
the you know, the the oral route is just to
go right under the right under the tongue, and that
increases your BE twelve levels. Right, So think about that
in terms of like, wow, that is literally, you know,
(23:50):
affecting systemic B twelve. We just aren't. It's just not
we aren't taught to think about or or have the
information to That's what's also happening with different inflammatory molecules
or microbes or this sort of thing. The same if
you want to kind of go to the vaginal health side,
you can think about this in the exact same way.
(24:12):
So for other women's not for fertility, but an example
from clinical practice, this of course isn't me prescribing. It's
one of our physicians. They might prescribe a woman's a
vaginal estrogen for maybe like vaginal dryness or something like this,
depending on the time point in their life. Why are
we putting it there? Because that area is highly vascularized.
(24:33):
It's good. It's literally takes up right these hormones. And
so think about this in relation to all of the
synthetic things that we are putting down there to strip
our microbiome away and strip these layers away that is
meant to protect us, and putting sort of again all
(24:53):
of these endocrin disrupting chemicals down there which have hormone
effects just like hormones. So again, so much much bigger
picture has massive relevance outside fertility.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
As well well, speaking of all of the foreign substances
and objects that we're putting down there. I mean every
month I'm putting tampons, you know, using tampons or then
what about like loube and how is that possibly disrupting
our vaginal microbiome.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
I think a lot of things are unfortunately disrupting it.
Not everything has been studied, of course, but for example, loob, yes,
I think about that, and I really really think it's
very important to if you're trying to conceive, for example,
we need to have a loop that is not going
(25:43):
to be harsh to our microbiome. It's like we're literally
putting chemicals right on for a different feel that is
not helping in any way, So we really have to
look at that. And of course for fertility specifically the
Gold standards kind of your own natural arousal. Right, this
is all kind of fertility friendly. It's not introducing other compounds, chemicals,
(26:07):
this sort of thing. Now. Of course, you know, if
you can't have sex without that, of course that's that's different.
And if there's pain involved. So I'm not saying forego
it completely. I just want people to start thinking about
everything they're putting down there and how a lot of
it's stripping out sort of this delicate ecosystem that is there,
these microbiota that's there to support you literally use inflammation
(26:31):
to keep your immune reactivity balance, and if it's completely
out of balance again, vaginal microbiome has very strong data
in terms of pregnancy outcomes. It's it's wild. So it's like,
this environment is here for you, it's here to support you.
We can at least support it by not trying to
strip out this entire ecosystem, we can we can support it.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Yeah, I mean, That's what I'm always talking about on
this podcast too, is I don't I think we are
just kind of unconsciously moving through the day every day
and not fully thinking about all of the ways or
all of the things that we're putting in our body
that we're around or surrounded by, that we're taking in
in general, just in our environment. And so is the
point to really trying to balance out all of these
(27:16):
ecosystems and microbiomes systems just to make sure that our
bodies are in the optimal place for conceiving or fertility
journeys or just health in general.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Yeah, and it is for health in general, to be
very clear. So even if someone's like listening and like
they're like, I'm not trying to like conceive, or like
maybe they already did, this is very relevant for women's
health sort of put by each decade. Right in practice,
I think I'm working with women in their fifties and
sixties and seventies, and we're all of these conversations actually
(27:50):
still have relevance. It's just towards a different goal. Why
is that the case, Like, how is this fertility related
to this? It's because again we're addressing a root cause,
So that has relevance no matter what the goal is.
So yes, and I don't want anyone to feel kind
of overwhelmed by you know, we have to support this
and do this and do this. It's not to do this.
(28:12):
I just want people to take a step back and think,
how can we support the life in our body because
it will then better support us in our health goals.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Yeah, that makes so much sense to me. Okay, well,
I know you're a dietitian, so I have to talk
about food in relation to fertility. Are there specific foods
we should be eating to balance hormones if someone is
trying to conceive, Like, how do we learn about those
kind of pieces of this puzzle?
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Yeah, and this is actually something that I take probably,
I mean, dare I say, even like a wildly different
approach compared to my colleagues and compared to probably what
you find on Google. So to set the stage, it's like,
what do we know? What do most people know? It's that, well,
a Mediterranean diet's pretty healthy right for fertility, despite the
fact that not a lot of people eat that pattern
(29:02):
at all? And what does that even entail? Nor is
it personalized at all? And even in research, like all
the definitions are different. So we kind of have, like
we have this Mediterranean diet aspect, what else do we have?
We have you know, thousands of articles at this point
saying like eat these ten foods for fertility, right or
avoid these ten foods. Okay, So I do not practice
(29:24):
any of that whatsoever. And if we're to do sing
sort of down nutrition and this like amazing substance that
you're putting in your body that has the capacity to
support all of your cells, like we aren't doing sort
of a list of ten and that's not against sort
of tactical takeaways again, like that's what the entire book is.
But we are going to optimize the diet based off
(29:47):
of what we're trying to optimize. So far, we discussed
the microbiomes, so let's just kind of like double click
on that even further. One of those ecosystems is the gut.
We know how to sor the guts by doing things
like eating a you know, ideally at least thirty different
plant foods a week. That's going to support the diversity
(30:08):
and the gut, so diversity of plants, diversity of gut.
We also know that it's beneficial to have prebiotic sources
of fiber, so that's like fertilizer for your good gut microbes.
So again we want to feed those guys well, because
they're producing anti inflammatory molecules for us for our body, right,
(30:30):
it's wild. So there's that. There's other things that you
can do to support the gut microbiome, like you might
be able to introduce a small amount of fermented foods
that's been shown beneficial. So again, all of these I'm
painting really broad strokes here because in practice we go
ultra ultra personalized. Right. That's one way to kind of
(30:52):
support the ecosystem in a very non nuanced way. There's
about one hundred nuances we could get into if we want,
but let's just leave it broad jokes for now. That
can be kind of how you support the ecosystem. But
how the heck do you personalize this? Well, you can
start using sort of your body's signals that are available
to you every day, right, and one of which is
(31:15):
your your bowel movements. If things are really off, Kelly,
that tells us there's something off with the system or
what you're putting in to this amazing system of a
body that you have. So it's like we can kind
of start personalizing this food based off of that. So again,
all of this, you're like, what the heck we just
(31:35):
talk about food in relation to microbiome, not a fertility
But let me connect this entire picture real fast. Okay,
the gut microbiome is related to fertility because number one,
like we discussed with oral vaginal, it directly impacts inflammation.
This also directly impacts circulating levels of hormones. This impacts
(31:59):
are immune system functioning. All of these are like, are
fundamental to supporting fertility. I know from at least some
doctors and online, you're like everyone says the goal, it's
like the goals to lower inflammation in the right the body,
But like, what the heck does that even mean? But
even go about that?
Speaker 3 (32:17):
Right?
Speaker 2 (32:18):
This is one of the reasons of like how you
actually go about that? And so hopefully that connects like
the little dots we discussed, but also the big picture
of like why we're doing what we're doing. I'm all
about the why. That's how we empower more women about
their bodies and about their health.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Absolutely, what are some of the sneakiest fertility disruptors? I mean,
I actually think we've talked about a couple one being
the oral hygiene and all of that, but are there
(32:55):
any other sneaky ones? That people might not be thinking of,
but they're really participating in every day of their lives.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Oh my gosh, I think there's there's so many. It
kind of depends on the path that you want to
go down right now. So I'll ask you a question,
what interests you like? Is there does metabolic health interest you?
Just kind of this these environmental toxins interest you, like?
What is kind of which we can go down? So
many paths right now.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
All of them interest me. I think knowing about just
base level ways that we can make sure that our
body is like a good holding space. I guess yeah,
that would be the way to put maybe the first
thing that I would be interested in.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
One of them. That's very very important and I look
into with every single client is your is your blood sugar?
So this plays into a metabolic function overall. So if
this is really sort of misaligned with our goal, it
can it can be somewhat of a blocker to get pregnant.
(34:04):
And if it's not and you still do get pregnant,
it's going it can increase your risk of having a
lot of these conditions while pregnant. You've heard of these
like gestational diabetes, stational hypertension, which is high blood pressure.
There are some reasons why you can develop these and
that's completely out of our control, but there's a lot
(34:27):
of it within our controls. So that's what I'm trying
to focus on right now. But if we improve our
metabolic health and how our body is fundamentally handling the
food that we eat, it's also going to improve the
system of role for chances of getting pregnant. So in
terms of blood sugar control, this goes back to what
(34:50):
you think it is. It's making sure your body is functioning,
taking in food, being able to process that food convert
it to energy. Right, kind of all goes back to this,
and so that's certainly one aspect that I think is
so not appreciated. It's not discussed in.
Speaker 1 (35:09):
Context at all.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
I looked into this a lot, and unfort all the
researches is there, but it's just it's not being translated
into the into the public. And this is a huge
lever that we have in our favor.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
That's interesting to me because I've had multiple either holistic
practitioners or doctors talk to me about my blood sugar
levels and I don't even eat a lot of sugar.
But I think it's something with how my body process
is feed and now that you're saying it is connected
to fertility, I'm like, I wonder if that was part
of my stuff too. I have no idea, but like,
what how does that play into our fertility?
Speaker 2 (35:44):
So what your doctors might be pointing out, well, I
mean if if someone if you're seeing someone who's like
sort of holistic and functional medicine base, I would assume
that it's not just the level of blood sugar that
you're looking at. They're probably looking at something what's called
achema like costellated heemic globing. Basically, how much sugar is
like stuck to your red blood cells. Say what, you
would want to look at that as well, you would
(36:06):
want to look at insulin. So basically, how much of
this hormone is your PingER is pumping out to get
that sugar from your bloodstream into your cells right to
be utilized for energy. What we're really wanting to avoid
and or correct is something called insulin resistance, which just
think of it as like, there's this hormone and your
(36:26):
cells are not responding as well as I could to
that hormone, So then your ability to again, take in
sugar like nutrients from the bloodstream is impacted as well.
Why the heck do we care about this for fertility?
It's because if there is a problem, you know, with
(36:46):
that signaling, it's more of a root cause problem that
there might be more inflammation in there in your body,
there might be more oxidative stress in your body, and
kind of going back to the microbiome, these are the
things that we want to avoid or correct or you hack,
use them as an opportunity to optimize.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
So you mentioned stress, and that's another thing I've been
thinking about a lot, because you also talked about the
women that you were seeing at the beginning being these
high achieving, kind of successful women. So there's obviously usually
an amount of stress that comes with that, maybe lack
of sleep. So what are those two pieces of the
puzzle as far as like stress and sleep and taking
(37:29):
care of our body and creating this environment that's a
good hosting spot for of fertility. So how did those
things play into it?
Speaker 2 (37:39):
With stress? The first thing that I think about is
if you're kind of living your life full of stress
or in another way you know you can think about it,
you're living in this sympathetic states kind of like flight
fight or flight. How that is, and if our goal
is to get to a state where we're trying to
(38:00):
create something, meaning we want to operate from a place
of abundance, right, those are completely conflicting sort of energetics.
You know this and you could probably speak to this.
It's like that is going to sort of cloud the
goal we have. Then everything feels much harder, you're more overwhelmed.
(38:20):
I'm not even going to touch the sleep aspect for
a second, but just think about stor of these emotions
that you're balancing and how you're pursuing the goal. One,
it's going to be very cloudy. You're going to be
very reactive. You're coming from a place you're doing these
changes out of a place of anxiety and because you
feel like you're constantly behind right, you're behind the clock
(38:41):
on anything advanced maternal age, so on and so forth.
So that's why you're making changes. But that is not sustainable,
nor do I want anyone to make changes from that state.
So if we're really stressed out, that just is an
opportunity to drop back into what is our goal? What
are we trying to pursue and are we trying to
(39:03):
get there from a place of you know, clarity, and
like what signals are we sending to ourselves? Like all
of these things really really matter. Did you feel that
the stress that you experienced during kind of your journey
and like how did you overcome that? Are you? Is
what I'm saying making sense in terms of like, yeah,
(39:24):
when I'm super overwhelmed, like stressed out of my mind
doing all this, I certainly don't have clarity of thought
about my goal and what I'm pursuing and I'm in
present in the moment, because that's not possible, right, I mean,
like this bucket of emotions and this bucket of emotions,
what was your feelings? Like, how were what was your
life experience?
Speaker 1 (39:44):
Yeah, I mean I think for me, when I look back,
I'm thinking, well, no, wonder it didn't work because I
was under so much stress and traveling a lot, like
my body was under a lot of stress. It was
a stress I was accustomed to, So I don't know
that it like stood out to me at the time. Yes,
but when this process for me did not go the
(40:07):
way that I wanted it to go, it was the
first time I think I had to take a step
back and really start to evaluate my lifestyle and the
amount of fight or flight I was living in constantly,
the level of burnout that I had, you know, just
not really fully being conscious of the impact that my
lifestyle was having on my physical health, emotional health, and
(40:29):
mental health. I mean, they're all connected, you know, But
it was just more of a survival mode that I
was living in because I was building so much in business,
and then truthfully, it probably wasn't the right time for
me to try these fertility things, but that what didn't
feel like a choice. It felt like, oh God, time
is running out, so that's adding more stress because it's
just like the clock is taking the go, go go,
(40:51):
You've got it, you know. So it's kind of interesting
that we just think that we can will ourselves to
get to this place of fertility, and it's kind of
it was a big lesson for me of like, hey,
there's a lot that I can't just control or will
myself to do physically with this situation. Does that make
(41:11):
sense how I just said.
Speaker 2 (41:12):
That, Oh my god, are you kidding me? Completely? And
I mean, heck, you are not alone. There's so many
that is going to deeply resonate with exactly what they're experiencing.
And so it's wonderful that you are so open to
talking about this because we need to have this discussion
as women. And guess what the goal isn't to like,
you know, quit your job and go on vacation, right
(41:34):
It's like no, no, no, no, not at all. But right,
so afterwards, I mean, did you like, was this weeks afterwards,
months afterwards, a year as words afterwards that you were like,
did you feel like you had built up kind of
a more of a resilience because of all of this,
Like what is your perspective on this, on this now?
Like reflecting back.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
Yes, I think well, for me it was it was
twofold because the pandemic happened right after this experience for me,
so it was like I was forced to slow down. Yes,
like it was a very It was very much the
time of like I was sent into reflection and so
then I was able to have a different perspective that
I might not have been able to had the world
(42:17):
not slowed down at that time. But I think looking back, yeah,
it definitely is like it has taught me a lot
about myself in that I'm very resilient. I am very driven.
I will work very hard at the things that I want.
I don't think I had prioritized this in the way
that I thought. I that looking back, if this was
(42:37):
something that I really wanted in my life, I would
have done differently. You know. I feel very content in
where I am now and just like, okay, in this lifetime,
that's not part of my journey. That's okay. But there
was a lot of grief tied to it, and there
was a big emotional component for me of feeling unworthy
and less than as a woman, because you think, as
a woman, this is the one thing I'm supposed to
(42:59):
be able to do. And look, I've gotten all these
accomplishments in my life and this is the one I
could not do, and I felt like deficient. There was
like a big piece of yeah, just feeling like not
good enough or worthy enough for it. And so I
really had to sit with that for a while and
appreciate and start to really build an appreciation for my
body separate from this, because it felt like, why aren't
(43:23):
you doing this? You know, I was just frustrated, and
like I said, it was this thing where I've always
willed myself to get to the places I've wanted to
get before that, and this wasn't one that I could
do that with, you know, And so it was really
this like, Okay, I had to sit with my body,
appreciating it for the beauty that it still held and
all that it does do on a daily basis that
I think we forget all that our body does. And
(43:44):
then yeah, just really reflecting back on what I would
do differently if this was a priority for my life, Like,
if this was something I've really truly was passionate about
and desperately felt like I wanted, I would have taken
a step back from a lot of the show dress
and the work that I was going through. But again,
like I said, I didn't really realize how stressed I
(44:04):
was at the time until the pandemic made me stop
and I was like, oh, yeah, this is I mean,
this is a slowdown. This is what that looks like.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
I have to say, well, well those kind of two
two comment. One, I think it's amazing that you have
a arrived to a space where even though like you
recognize and you're saying like, oh, this is is actually
not part of my journey right now, it's actually incredible
that you're still willing to talk to me about a
(44:34):
goal that you know affects other women. I mean, it's
just it's so selfless of you, and it's just kind
of I mean, I did want to point that out
because I'm like, wow, right, like just because it wasn't
your path, You're like, yeah, but there could be some
people's path, and we want to vise their body and
hopefully with this with this book too. I mean, look,
I hope you got some takeaways as well, absolutely for
(44:55):
women's health, but yeah, that's one muota the second that
I was kind of thinking about. It's almost like, not
only did you have to sit with the emotions, it's
basically forcing you to broaden your idea of self worth
because like you said, it's like, oh, I'm supposed to
like do this as a female, as a woman, but
it does kind of force you into doing that, which
(45:18):
is not a bad thing I think for any woman,
because you know, I guarantee if you don't do that
kind of broaden your sense of self worth and sort
of value and purpose in life, life will absolutely find
a way to keep like slapping you in the face
with difficulties until you figure it out right until you
(45:40):
figure out a different mindset and philosophy by which to
for it. So yeah, that's kind of interesting. And I
guess one other thing is this is very very hard
to appreciate in the moment, Like you said, like there's
no way that you could be speaking about this when
you were sitting with the emotions right kind of like
very narrow, like that is your world. However, I have
(46:04):
the opportunity for people like coming into office, for us,
having this conversation right now, to just remind them. It's
like I have them think about a woman that they deeply,
deeply respect and admire. So not just not just like
an actress because she's super famous on like the you
know the movies, like just a woman that's like, oh
(46:25):
my god, she's really really incredible. There has not been
one time that someone has told me that they respect
that individual and look up to that individual because she
had a child, right, So like think about that in
terms of self birth and what you're capable of and
(46:45):
everything you get to do in this life. Like sure,
maybe you value because she has a big family and
she can balance sort of like X, Y and Z,
you could probably you probably like that attribution, right, but
it's not because like she had a baby, think.
Speaker 1 (47:00):
About it, right, it's true. And also why don't we
look at that, Like why I kind of really with
this fertility conversation when it wasn't just going like very
smoothly like I expected it to. I started to really
appreciate the fact that babies are born every single day,
like multiple times. How intricate this whole process is, Like
(47:23):
we don't really talk about their respect, or we don't
talk about fertility and pregnancy and having a child with
the respect that I think it deserves because there are
actually so many things that can go wrong and the.
Speaker 2 (47:36):
Fact that everything has to go right, like yes.
Speaker 1 (47:40):
Have to go right, and then it just happens and
we go, oh, someone had a baby, and it's like, no,
that's a miracle that that happened, and it's in a
beautiful thing that bodies can ever do that In general,
I just walked away with so much more respect for
that whole process. And also, I was when you're talking
about the self worth piece, I think that it's important
(48:02):
to talk about those pieces as a woman because I
would imagine that carries on into motherhood as well, and
just the balancing of life and work and you know, motherhood,
all of those pieces. I think I went through a
piece of that kind of that's.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
Going to serve you, you know later in life where
whether you're whether you're a mom or not. And again
a mom that can have multiple definitions.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
It doesn't matter.
Speaker 2 (48:23):
We don't even need to go we don't even need
to go down that put. But yeah, that can have
so many definitions and how it looks. But when you
are taught sort of resilience and to go through these
hard things, let's say, if you didn't do that, I mean,
how are you going to transmit that to children or
other people in your life if you don't have sort
(48:46):
of that that resilience, Right, So I just think all
of this does kind of transfer to to other humans
that you spend time with. That that's a beautiful thing
as well.
Speaker 1 (48:56):
Yeah, well, there's so many pieces of it, like we said,
that can go right or wrong. And I think what
you're talking about is so important about just creating an
environment of health in general. And like we've said in
the book Trying, which comes out in January, by the way,
there's so much about building. There's all these tangible takeaways
which I love to give the listeners, But there's just
(49:18):
so much about building the environment to support not only
your health for the baby, but also your health for yourself.
And I know as I move into my forties, hormones
and all of those conversations are you know, menopause, that's
all coming up and so this matters for that too.
Is there anything else that you would say you want
listeners just to walk away with, whether they're trying right
(49:39):
now to have a baby, if it's something they want
in their future, or if they've already gone through the process,
Like why is this an important conversation to you?
Speaker 2 (49:47):
Yeah? Well, what first point when you talk about you know,
it's whether it's perimenopause, menopause kind of thinking about those
transitions too. Again, I'm not saying like, oh, well you
should still get my fertility book. I do want to
point out that if you're really looking for just a
root cause approach to health, that yes, that gives you
(50:08):
like hundreds of tangible takeaways. And I think what kind
of comes to mind when you said that is this
environmental component, these kind of microplastics, endocrine disrupting chemicals. So
there's research on how sort of your exposure to this
and your collective sort of cumulative exposure to this that
(50:28):
can sort of accelerate the process of reproductive aging. So
they even found I'll just gott to give you one
tidbit of other information that the women who had the
highest exposure entered into menopause four years earlier, which is
mind blowing. So again, this stuff has relevance because it's
(50:51):
affecting our physiology. So just put that in the back
of your mind. That is so important to protect your body.
And I just hope if I achieve one thing, it
is that one woman can go into the journey that
so many experience like you experience, and actually have that
deep empowerment and also have that deep respect of like
(51:14):
self worth and confidence. That's what I want for every
woman then and really throughout her lifetime. The one thing
that I want people to take away, because yeah, I'm
all about the tangible takeaways, but I won't give you one.
I'll just say that there's always more than one path
to accomplish the goal, and if you are not seeing that,
(51:36):
it just means you're locked in to one version of reality,
whether that's based off of comparison to your peers, which
is a thief of joy anyway, or whether that's based
off of societal expectations. That is living inside of a box,
and I just want that's really kind of my last
takeaway for everyone is don't you know, don't live in
(51:58):
that restricted mind.
Speaker 1 (52:01):
I fully support that as the takeaway. I love that
because I think all of us are so individual and
to me, this conversation about overall health in general is
something that I want everyone to feel empowered by, not disempowered.
So again, the book is called Trying a science backed
Plan to Optimize Your Fertility. I'll put a link for
(52:21):
you guys to go pre order. It comes out in January. Rachel,
Where else can people keep up with you if they
want to follow along on your journey?
Speaker 2 (52:28):
Yeah? I have a website, so Rachel Swanson dot com.
And you know, Kelly, I'm I'm always behind the scenes
like that. That's where I like to be just one
to one with people. But I will become more social
with this whole book launch or else my publishers might be.
Speaker 1 (52:43):
Very sent me.
Speaker 2 (52:44):
So my Instagram is at Rachel's RX, so I'll be
posting a lot more there as well.
Speaker 1 (52:50):
Amazing Again, I'll put all of that in the description
of this podcast. For you guys, thank you so much
for being here and having this conversation with me.
Speaker 2 (52:56):
Thank you, Kelly Ivan, you are just a beautiful soul.
So thank you for inviting me in and talking about this.
Speaker 1 (53:01):
Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 3 (53:07):
MHM.
Rachel Swanton has become one of the top voices changing
the fertility conversation. She's a dietitian, researcher and author of
the new book Trying a Science Back Plan to Optimize
Your Fertility. She works with everyone from pro athletes to
Vogue models and Fortune five hundred execs, and she's reframing
fertility as a sign of vitality, not just reproduction.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Hi, Rachel, Hi, it's so nice to be here with you.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Well, I'm so glad you're here. We were just talking
a little bit before the podcast, and I said, we
just have to press record because I'm doing the podcast
with you before the podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
But I'm glad you said that, by the way, or
else would have kept.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Going, Oh totally. I was feeling like we were going
to talk for an hour before the podcast. But so
we'll just do this with the listeners listening and everyone
can participate. But I was telling you, it's been a
minute since we've had any sort of fertility conversation on
this podcast. And you know, I went through my own
fertility journey. I think that was back in twenty eighteen
and twenty nineteen. I was trying to freeze my eggs
(01:10):
at unsuccessful two round attempts. But my experience with that
felt a little bit harsh and scientific and cold, and
so when you were brought to me, it was a
refreshing objective on fertility, and I really wanted to bring
that to the listeners because we do talk a lot
about root causes overall health, diving into spirituality and emotional
(01:35):
connections with your health, and so I just really feel
like what you're talking about is very in line with that.
So I know you talk about fertility two point zero
and that's kind of like an overriding conversation for all
of the work that you do. Can you explain to
the listeners what that means?
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Yeah, definitely. Well I think well, first, I mean, look,
I'll talk about fertility two point oh for an hour
all day, but I guess I'll tell you a little
bit of the backstory and how I write, because I
think what you'll find is it aligns what you just experienced,
you know, the coldness, the harshness, the clinical aspect. It
actually aligned with what I view a lot of times
(02:15):
going on with practice. So I guess to give you
context and backstory for a minute. Well, for context, I
do work full time in clinical practice. I've been doing
that since twenty seventeen. Well, I think of myself as
really a conduit to help people achieve their goals through
natural ways being you know, diet and lifestyle. So over
(02:35):
the years, more and more women came to me with
the goal of getting pregnant. And yes, so what was
interesting about this is that, you know, all these women
were quite successful, you know, business professionals. They had already
achieved so much in life, but yet they were presenting
feeling completely disempowered about the whole process, about themselves, about
(02:59):
what they were going through, and they had either received
coming with me, they received super generic advice. They were
kind of playing whack a mole with their symptoms. Overall,
it just felt cold and very reactive. And now this
is ironic, not just because I'm saying, oh, they had
all this earlier success, but it's like, take a step
back and think about it. This should be one of
(03:20):
the most exciting times, Like you're here wanting to and
hoping to create this miracle of life inside your body,
but instead you're feeling like your body is the adversary.
It's like working against you. Right, Yes, I think, so, really,
what I did for all of my clients is I
took this what I call a first principles approach to
(03:43):
their goal. That just means kind of looking at reproductive function,
not in an isolated way, but kind of from this
root cause based perspective, like what you're speaking to, that
root cause based perspective, that first pristap potion that is
fertility to two point zero, because it takes a consideration
your whole body. It's proactive in nature. It's just a
(04:06):
very very different approach from kind of this conventional medicine
or kind of the traditional advice that you're given, because
I look at, like, how can we optimize how the
body functions, but in doing so improve your chances of
conceiving if that's in the cards for you, right, but
also just set yourself up for success for the rest
of our lives. And you know, professionally, that did kind
(04:28):
of lead me to this crossroads where you know, I
was either going to kind of go back to school
for more education to pursue my PhD, or I could
spend kind of the equivalent time and research on a
book to kind of get more of this information out
to women sort of outside of the practice. And I mean, Kelly,
I think if I didn't do that, you and I
(04:48):
want to be have you this conversation.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
No, yeah, absolutely, And I love that you brought up
the generic nature of how fertility is discussed, because I
find it to be something that should be so personal.
It's individual, and that's what you talk about is looking
at each individual person as a different you know, not
experiment with out a patient I guess whatever the word
(05:12):
would be in that world, but as a different situation,
and how do we approach this for your specific body?
Because I remember going into my gynecologists and at thirty five,
they're starting to tell you like, you'll be in a
geriatric pregnancy, and I'm like, what does that even mean?
You know, I feel like I'm thirty five? Why am
I getting talked to you that way? And then it
was kind of just a little bit like a cattle
(05:32):
call going into the egg freezing situation, and it because
it wasn't successful. It wasn't like anyone was talking to
me about the whys other than my age. But I
was thirty seven, so it doesn't feel like it was
really There wasn't any like deep dive into maybe what
my specific blocks were, anything like that, and so I
(05:54):
really appreciate your approach to looking at the whys, talking
about the food we're eating and creating the holistic just
environment in our bodies for optimal health overall, right, like
hormones and all of that. So can you talk a
little bit about.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
That, Yeah, exactly, And you know the process definitely, like
you know that the process of egg retrievaled IVF. That
certainly will kind of feel very you know, cold clinical.
But I want people to go into that actually with
profound self confidence because they were empowered with information about
(06:32):
their body beforehand. And actually, you know, it's not about
like what I didn't do or what I did do.
It's about like, no, you have the information. You absolutely
took care of your body and optimize it to the
extent possible. I mean, like what is more empowering than that? Right,
But without any of that understanding the why, understanding your
(06:53):
body and how your body works, it's kind of like
you're just either do nothing. You do kind of like
a one sheet of information that they that they gave
you beforehand, or you're gonna be like stuck in Google
searches and like Reddit threads at two am trying to
like piece together, all of all the pieces, and I
can only imagine after this process for you is when
(07:14):
you started doing that. I'm only guessing and taking this
sort of like looking at the holistic picture, actually looking
at the spiritual elements right and kind of bringing all
of this together. But I just wish that you had
what you have right now going into the journey. Would
you say that that probably would have even if the
outcome was the same, wouldn't have that made your life
(07:37):
experience a whole lot different kind of before and after.
But I mean you certainly you speak to that's that's
your journey well completely.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
And that's why I'm so grateful for books like yours
coming out now, because I do think it's a conversation
that we don't really have until we get to the
place of going through the process. And like I said,
I was thirty five. At thirty five, I don't think
many women are really if you're a high achieving woman
who's very work driven, you probably are just like, Okay,
(08:05):
I got to really start thinking about this, and you
mentioned that you worked with a lot of successful women,
and that was how I felt at the time, was
like my business was booming. I had gotten to a
place in my career where I felt satisfied and like, Okay, yes,
time is ticking. I need to think about the family
thing because I know the biological clock is ticking. And
also I felt very disempowered in this one area of
(08:30):
my life because I didn't have the knowledge about my
body that I probably needed to have. And also I
had always known how to work hard to achieve the
things I wanted, and this was a thing that I
was like, I don't even know what to do, you know,
like I didn't know anything I could be doing to
help myself achieve my goals. And that was that's weird,
(08:51):
Like you just kind of are like the doctor says,
go to this appointment, so you go, but yeah, you're right,
Like I've researched a ton after and now reflecting back,
I'm like, oh, I could have done this or that
or that. Are looked into this and so yeah, I
think it's.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Well then well then it's like to your point, you
go this journey of like self afterwards, this self doubt,
you probably either have challenges or questions with like sense
of identity or sense of and hopefully yeah and hopefully
not projecting.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
That's exactly to you.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
But it's more like this is kind of these are
just like the emotions I've experienced from other women, right,
And it's like, well, several things, and we'll certainly kind
of go back to this the holistic approach and how
we can support our body and just my feelings in general,
how things need to be sort of proactive. We need
to we need to set women up for success, especially
(09:40):
for a goal that's that's really a lifelong goal. It's
and you just may not have focused on it beforehand.
And like you said, like at least the people of
my practice absolutely are not focusing on performed. They're like,
you know, building, building their life right and doing all
these other things. But I hate that in general. It's
like all of the disappointment, all the negative emotions you
(10:03):
feel after it's kind of taking a step back. You know.
This is a mismatch between expectations and reality, right, That's
all it is. And I think maybe at least for
some of my women, maybe for you, maybe not for you.
What people need to recognize faster and sooner is that
that is only one version of reality that you can
(10:26):
play out. And look, if someone has the goal of
building a family, like why is that. Well, it's probably
because you know that you just want to be around
people that you love for the longest time possible on
this planet. So it hopes that everyone can pursue their
passions and purpose while on this earth. But again, it's
(10:47):
like there's so many ways to achieve that if that's
the goal. And so again I just kind of wanted
to take a step back because we have to like
reframe what's going on and all of these emotions it's
really just going to cloud your path forward, right, It's
going to be very conflicting with seeing things with clarity
and taking the next step in building that that goal.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Yeah, well, I know you've mentioned you describe fertility as
a vital sign, like it just you know, even equitable
to like your heart rate or blood pressure. So can
you unpack maybe like how we do this perspective shift
because I don't think that that is how anyone is
thinking about it at this point, And so what got
(11:32):
you to that kind of thinking and how do we
shift our own narrative about that?
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Yeah, so this is just what I view for any
health condition or the goal, So that perspective in that
frame of mind, and you're right, and Look, I'm gonna
be honest, that's this is exactly why I wrote the
book because I'm like, why is this not? Why is
this not that standard?
Speaker 1 (11:53):
When I unders yes, in.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Terms of looking at this, because just the more and
more research that I found, it's just showing that it's like, look,
all of these sort of vital signs that we monitor
over time, none of them is fertility. But this goes
for men and women. Think about the men if there's
issues with say sperm, you know quantity or quality, that's
(12:18):
actually giving you a much earlier indicator that something is
likely not going the way that it should. And we
at least my job is to help find and unblock
what's holding the body back from achieving its highest potential
in this case. Right. So again that's just how I
(12:39):
look at it, like where can we really optimize the
body so it can function as it's intelligently designed to do?
And I guess I want I do want to point
out really fast, you know, nothing I said will apply
of course to individuals who like a male who has
you know, vericasile. That's just basically something that you need
(12:59):
to go or urologists for completely fixable, right, so that
can also lead to sperm challenges and for females like, look,
nothing i'd help you with is going to help if
you have, say a tubal blockage like that is based
off of your anat I mean, so I did want
to kind of set this stage because I think everything
is sort of like, oh, we're against the system. It's
(13:20):
like right, all this, but I'm like, no, no, like
there's time and place for both. But going back to
what you're mentioning, this is just how I believe the
standard of care should be, where we can look at
fertility as an indicator to what is going on with
our health and is there an opportunity to optimize this
(13:41):
in order to achieve the goal. And that's absolutely the case.
So we look at sort of unblocking these biological hurdles
and that will optimize your chances of conceiving. And I
have over really four hundred studies in the book proving that.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Let's get into some of those because I think it's interesting.
We've mentioned there's obviously the root cause, and then physically
and emotionally and energetically, I know there's a lot to
fertility there as well, and so maybe we can touch
on some of that. But your framework really looks at
the full system, and that's that's what I love about it.
One of the things that I was fascinated by was
(14:16):
gut health and like oral health and all of those
those pieces of it, because I don't really think people
are connecting the two. There was one thing you said
about our partners oral hygiene really can matter and fertility.
Can you tell us why? Because I did not see
that coming.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
I remember distinctly like this specific bullet point I think
I had in the in the oral health section because
the people that we are with and you know, our partners,
there's this microbial like transfer, and I think I was like,
you know, the whole uh you know you are.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Who you spend time with is kind of takes on
this entire new reading because there's a transfer of microbes.
So the reason I'm bringing this up is because it's like,
you could be doing all the things needed to optimize
your oral health and I'll get into why that's important,
but if your partner is doing none of it, I'm like, no, no,
(15:20):
this has to be a shared effort because then it's
kind of like all the work that you're doing, but
then you know you're with him and you're you know,
kissing and things like that, and you're like having this
microbial transfer, some of which not all, some of which
kind of take up residence in your mouth. And so
the whole underlying theme of the entire book, like, yes,
(15:40):
it's heared to women, of course, but every single chapter
and every single section basically has a part about the
male counterpart, right, and what.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Can make you good? I mean, because we all talk
about it as the woman needs to do all this stuff,
but it's like, okay, well there's also sperm in making
a child, so like that is a big piece. There
is an exchange of all of these Mike, I don't
know the technical terms.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, But the same goes for
I mean, I don't know if you want to get
into this too, but the same goes for vaginal health too. Right,
It's all of this kind of microbial transfer, and just
think of all these microbes on different places of your body.
These are ecosystems, and you don't want to power imbalance
happening in any of those ecosystems because it's not going
(16:28):
to support you in the best way possible. So take
a step back. We'll look at kind of the overarching
goal of why I discussed well why I have an
entire chapter just on the microbiome, not just the gut,
but you know oral microbiome for example. But think of
each of these ecosystems as reproductively relevant and so you
know they are going to help either support you or
(16:51):
if they're out of balance, like there's a there's a
power imbalance happening between sort of these opportunistic bacteria and
your good bacteria. So what that's creating is this inflammatory
cascade that can happen in the body that ultimately can
impact clinical outcomes, meaning chances of conceiving. And it is fascinating,
(17:13):
and I needed to bring all of this research to
WIBIT because I doubt they know about it. And guess
what the reason I put it in the book isn't
just to talk about it. I'm like, no, you can
leverage diet and lifestyle changes to optimize every ecosystem in
your body. Like what's more incredible and powerful then that
(17:33):
that's how we improve our chances and sort of this
microbiome aspect that is one of the root caused levers
that you have in your power, Like, it's incredible.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
So why would your oral micro biome matter in fertility,
because I'm sure people are like, wait, what, that's your mouth,
Why does that matter in how your fertility operates?
Speaker 2 (17:57):
I actually I love this, love this reaction so much
so when so with your oral health if you have
let's say, poor oral health, and then going a step
further to what's called, you know, periodontal disease. About half
of the population in the US has periodontal disease, which
actually is a stat that blew me away. I think
(18:18):
I've read the paper about three times because I'm like, no, no,
this is no way perrydontal disease, which think of like
inflammation in your mouth. This is gum disease. Right, So
there's dys biosis, which basically means an imbalance of the
microbiotic in your mouth. There's inflammation going on. There's a
lot of inflammatory things happening in the mouth. What can
(18:42):
happen with that? Do you know? Are you familiar with
kind of this term leaky gut?
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Okay, So I like to describe it this way and
you'll see why. What happens is sort of for two reasons. One,
those microbes can actually go like hitch a ride in
your bloodstream, right because they see through just visualize the
kind of the leaky gut, what happens that can happen
in your mouth, and all of this then goes systemically,
which is why it's not everything going down in your
(19:09):
mouth isn't just about your mouth. It can actually happen
throughout the body. So basically, you have the microbes that
can hit you right in your bloodsream that can also
cause inflammation and induce your immune system to respond. I mean,
think about your immune system. It's like, hey, these microbes
literally belong in the mouth. What the heck are they
(19:29):
doing here? That's why your body kind of mounts this
inflammatory response. And if I may, I know this kind
of is going to segue or to a different subject.
But even if you're listening to this and you are
not trying to get pregnant, everything I'm saying right now
is relevant in other ways. So in terms of the
translocation of this pathogenic bacteria that is now associated with
(19:55):
the higher risk of certain cancer types, they have found
this in the plaque in the brain. They have found
this in plaque in part All of these are associations,
but they are becoming a very very strong association. So
again I just want to we'll zoom out, We'll kind
of zoom in and zoom out on every topic we discussed,
but I have to say, this is relevant for your
(20:18):
entire lifetime. And I'm just kind of bringing this forward
in context of fertility because periodontal disease has been shown
to increase preterm birth, miscarriage and chances of conceiving. Wild,
isn't it.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
I am like mind blown when over half the population, Yeah,
that is insane.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
And so with this, I don't want anyone to extrapolate
that I've said, like, well, fifty percent of the population
therefore is going to be less likely dancy. That's certainly
not scientifically accurate. But the reason I say that because
I'm like, well, again, this is a massive leverage point
in the population. Same with metabolic heal, same with everything
(20:58):
else I discuss, And so I kind of just wanted
to bring that to light that we can between a
lot and think about it. Oral health is one of
the easiest. It's like the in my mind, this is
the lowest hanging fruit. Absolutely, like the lowest hanging fruit.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Yeah, and if it's one of those things, like I
don't think that we would associate the reason I was
so mind blown by that status. I would just never
associate that with fertility. And I do think it's a
very important conversation to have about all these different places
in our body and our gut and our vaginal health.
And we'll talk about that in a second. But like
(21:34):
your mouth, I would never think, oh, that was really
important for me and my overall health or my fertility
or anything like that. You just think about it with Okay,
I need to go to the dentist every six months
or a year or whatever, you know. So I think
it's just an interesting one to connect our health and
these different microbiomes in general, and the fact that so
(21:55):
many people are not looking at that. Of course it's
contributing to our overall health issues probably in our society.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Yeah, and this is it's it's entirely and by the way,
I will be a broken record on this point. I
would probably say it ten times until we're done. But
this is something that everyone can leverage. We cannot leverage
our age at the end of the day, right spoke
to at the beginning. Yeah, They're like, there are factors
we absolutely cannot control, but this is one of them.
(22:24):
It's the lowest hanging through. So I that's why kind
of this is feeding into our how we started this
conversation right about like, no, I want people to be
so empowered about their bodies and like and bring that
sort of confidence into this whole journey, like I have
supporting my body in the best way, in the best
way possible, right, supporting the life inside of my body.
(22:45):
If you want to kind of bring it back into
this bigger picture. I mean, at the end of the day,
that's what getting pregnant is, right, It's being able to
support life. But I'm kind of giving you an opportunity
that you can support your the life of these ecosystems,
of these microbes inside your body way way before then
something that you can think about it that you'll you'll
(23:06):
never forget. This is so and I should have probably
said this at the at the beginning. I got way
too excited clearly about this. I think about also, I
describe it like leaky gut. But you can also think
about the mouth in a way that you know how
sometimes if you've ever taken like a sublingual vitamin like
B twelve and you like scored it under your tongue,
or you let something dissolve under your tongue. Okay, so
(23:28):
the mouth highly vascularized and it literally like takes in
all of these things that gets absorbed into the blood streams.
Think about B twelve. That's a way to like bypass
the you know, the the oral route is just to
go right under the right under the tongue, and that
increases your BE twelve levels. Right, So think about that
in terms of like, wow, that is literally, you know,
(23:50):
affecting systemic B twelve. We just aren't. It's just not
we aren't taught to think about or or have the
information to That's what's also happening with different inflammatory molecules
or microbes or this sort of thing. The same if
you want to kind of go to the vaginal health side,
you can think about this in the exact same way.
(24:12):
So for other women's not for fertility, but an example
from clinical practice, this of course isn't me prescribing. It's
one of our physicians. They might prescribe a woman's a
vaginal estrogen for maybe like vaginal dryness or something like this,
depending on the time point in their life. Why are
we putting it there? Because that area is highly vascularized.
(24:33):
It's good. It's literally takes up right these hormones. And
so think about this in relation to all of the
synthetic things that we are putting down there to strip
our microbiome away and strip these layers away that is
meant to protect us, and putting sort of again all
(24:53):
of these endocrin disrupting chemicals down there which have hormone
effects just like hormones. So again, so much much bigger
picture has massive relevance outside fertility.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
As well well, speaking of all of the foreign substances
and objects that we're putting down there. I mean every
month I'm putting tampons, you know, using tampons or then
what about like loube and how is that possibly disrupting
our vaginal microbiome.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
I think a lot of things are unfortunately disrupting it.
Not everything has been studied, of course, but for example, loob, yes,
I think about that, and I really really think it's
very important to if you're trying to conceive, for example,
we need to have a loop that is not going
(25:43):
to be harsh to our microbiome. It's like we're literally
putting chemicals right on for a different feel that is
not helping in any way, So we really have to
look at that. And of course for fertility specifically the
Gold standards kind of your own natural arousal. Right, this
is all kind of fertility friendly. It's not introducing other compounds, chemicals,
(26:07):
this sort of thing. Now. Of course, you know, if
you can't have sex without that, of course that's that's different.
And if there's pain involved. So I'm not saying forego
it completely. I just want people to start thinking about
everything they're putting down there and how a lot of
it's stripping out sort of this delicate ecosystem that is there,
these microbiota that's there to support you literally use inflammation
(26:31):
to keep your immune reactivity balance, and if it's completely
out of balance again, vaginal microbiome has very strong data
in terms of pregnancy outcomes. It's it's wild. So it's like,
this environment is here for you, it's here to support you.
We can at least support it by not trying to
strip out this entire ecosystem, we can we can support it.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Yeah, I mean, That's what I'm always talking about on
this podcast too, is I don't I think we are
just kind of unconsciously moving through the day every day
and not fully thinking about all of the ways or
all of the things that we're putting in our body
that we're around or surrounded by, that we're taking in
in general, just in our environment. And so is the
point to really trying to balance out all of these
(27:16):
ecosystems and microbiomes systems just to make sure that our
bodies are in the optimal place for conceiving or fertility
journeys or just health in general.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Yeah, and it is for health in general, to be
very clear. So even if someone's like listening and like
they're like, I'm not trying to like conceive, or like
maybe they already did, this is very relevant for women's
health sort of put by each decade. Right in practice,
I think I'm working with women in their fifties and
sixties and seventies, and we're all of these conversations actually
(27:50):
still have relevance. It's just towards a different goal. Why
is that the case, Like, how is this fertility related
to this? It's because again we're addressing a root cause,
So that has relevance no matter what the goal is.
So yes, and I don't want anyone to feel kind
of overwhelmed by you know, we have to support this
and do this and do this. It's not to do this.
(28:12):
I just want people to take a step back and think,
how can we support the life in our body because
it will then better support us in our health goals.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Yeah, that makes so much sense to me. Okay, well,
I know you're a dietitian, so I have to talk
about food in relation to fertility. Are there specific foods
we should be eating to balance hormones if someone is
trying to conceive, Like, how do we learn about those
kind of pieces of this puzzle?
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Yeah, and this is actually something that I take probably,
I mean, dare I say, even like a wildly different
approach compared to my colleagues and compared to probably what
you find on Google. So to set the stage, it's like,
what do we know? What do most people know? It's that, well,
a Mediterranean diet's pretty healthy right for fertility, despite the
fact that not a lot of people eat that pattern
(29:02):
at all? And what does that even entail? Nor is
it personalized at all? And even in research, like all
the definitions are different. So we kind of have, like
we have this Mediterranean diet aspect, what else do we have?
We have you know, thousands of articles at this point
saying like eat these ten foods for fertility, right or
avoid these ten foods. Okay, So I do not practice
(29:24):
any of that whatsoever. And if we're to do sing
sort of down nutrition and this like amazing substance that
you're putting in your body that has the capacity to
support all of your cells, like we aren't doing sort
of a list of ten and that's not against sort
of tactical takeaways again, like that's what the entire book is.
But we are going to optimize the diet based off
(29:47):
of what we're trying to optimize. So far, we discussed
the microbiomes, so let's just kind of like double click
on that even further. One of those ecosystems is the gut.
We know how to sor the guts by doing things
like eating a you know, ideally at least thirty different
plant foods a week. That's going to support the diversity
(30:08):
and the gut, so diversity of plants, diversity of gut.
We also know that it's beneficial to have prebiotic sources
of fiber, so that's like fertilizer for your good gut microbes.
So again we want to feed those guys well, because
they're producing anti inflammatory molecules for us for our body, right,
(30:30):
it's wild. So there's that. There's other things that you
can do to support the gut microbiome, like you might
be able to introduce a small amount of fermented foods
that's been shown beneficial. So again, all of these I'm
painting really broad strokes here because in practice we go
ultra ultra personalized. Right. That's one way to kind of
(30:52):
support the ecosystem in a very non nuanced way. There's
about one hundred nuances we could get into if we want,
but let's just leave it broad jokes for now. That
can be kind of how you support the ecosystem. But
how the heck do you personalize this? Well, you can
start using sort of your body's signals that are available
to you every day, right, and one of which is
(31:15):
your your bowel movements. If things are really off, Kelly,
that tells us there's something off with the system or
what you're putting in to this amazing system of a
body that you have. So it's like we can kind
of start personalizing this food based off of that. So again,
all of this, you're like, what the heck we just
(31:35):
talk about food in relation to microbiome, not a fertility
But let me connect this entire picture real fast. Okay,
the gut microbiome is related to fertility because number one,
like we discussed with oral vaginal, it directly impacts inflammation.
This also directly impacts circulating levels of hormones. This impacts
(31:59):
are immune system functioning. All of these are like, are
fundamental to supporting fertility. I know from at least some
doctors and online, you're like everyone says the goal, it's
like the goals to lower inflammation in the right the body,
But like, what the heck does that even mean? But
even go about that?
Speaker 3 (32:17):
Right?
Speaker 2 (32:18):
This is one of the reasons of like how you
actually go about that? And so hopefully that connects like
the little dots we discussed, but also the big picture
of like why we're doing what we're doing. I'm all
about the why. That's how we empower more women about
their bodies and about their health.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Absolutely, what are some of the sneakiest fertility disruptors? I mean,
I actually think we've talked about a couple one being
the oral hygiene and all of that, but are there
(32:55):
any other sneaky ones? That people might not be thinking of,
but they're really participating in every day of their lives.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Oh my gosh, I think there's there's so many. It
kind of depends on the path that you want to
go down right now. So I'll ask you a question,
what interests you like? Is there does metabolic health interest you?
Just kind of this these environmental toxins interest you, like?
What is kind of which we can go down? So
many paths right now.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
All of them interest me. I think knowing about just
base level ways that we can make sure that our
body is like a good holding space. I guess yeah,
that would be the way to put maybe the first
thing that I would be interested in.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
One of them. That's very very important and I look
into with every single client is your is your blood sugar?
So this plays into a metabolic function overall. So if
this is really sort of misaligned with our goal, it
can it can be somewhat of a blocker to get pregnant.
(34:04):
And if it's not and you still do get pregnant,
it's going it can increase your risk of having a
lot of these conditions while pregnant. You've heard of these
like gestational diabetes, stational hypertension, which is high blood pressure.
There are some reasons why you can develop these and
that's completely out of our control, but there's a lot
(34:27):
of it within our controls. So that's what I'm trying
to focus on right now. But if we improve our
metabolic health and how our body is fundamentally handling the
food that we eat, it's also going to improve the
system of role for chances of getting pregnant. So in
terms of blood sugar control, this goes back to what
(34:50):
you think it is. It's making sure your body is functioning,
taking in food, being able to process that food convert
it to energy. Right, kind of all goes back to this,
and so that's certainly one aspect that I think is
so not appreciated. It's not discussed in.
Speaker 1 (35:09):
Context at all.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
I looked into this a lot, and unfort all the
researches is there, but it's just it's not being translated
into the into the public. And this is a huge
lever that we have in our favor.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
That's interesting to me because I've had multiple either holistic
practitioners or doctors talk to me about my blood sugar
levels and I don't even eat a lot of sugar.
But I think it's something with how my body process
is feed and now that you're saying it is connected
to fertility, I'm like, I wonder if that was part
of my stuff too. I have no idea, but like,
what how does that play into our fertility?
Speaker 2 (35:44):
So what your doctors might be pointing out, well, I
mean if if someone if you're seeing someone who's like
sort of holistic and functional medicine base, I would assume
that it's not just the level of blood sugar that
you're looking at. They're probably looking at something what's called
achema like costellated heemic globing. Basically, how much sugar is
like stuck to your red blood cells. Say what, you
would want to look at that as well, you would
(36:06):
want to look at insulin. So basically, how much of
this hormone is your PingER is pumping out to get
that sugar from your bloodstream into your cells right to
be utilized for energy. What we're really wanting to avoid
and or correct is something called insulin resistance, which just
think of it as like, there's this hormone and your
(36:26):
cells are not responding as well as I could to
that hormone, So then your ability to again, take in
sugar like nutrients from the bloodstream is impacted as well.
Why the heck do we care about this for fertility?
It's because if there is a problem, you know, with
(36:46):
that signaling, it's more of a root cause problem that
there might be more inflammation in there in your body,
there might be more oxidative stress in your body, and
kind of going back to the microbiome, these are the
things that we want to avoid or correct or you hack,
use them as an opportunity to optimize.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
So you mentioned stress, and that's another thing I've been
thinking about a lot, because you also talked about the
women that you were seeing at the beginning being these
high achieving, kind of successful women. So there's obviously usually
an amount of stress that comes with that, maybe lack
of sleep. So what are those two pieces of the
puzzle as far as like stress and sleep and taking
(37:29):
care of our body and creating this environment that's a
good hosting spot for of fertility. So how did those
things play into it?
Speaker 2 (37:39):
With stress? The first thing that I think about is
if you're kind of living your life full of stress
or in another way you know you can think about it,
you're living in this sympathetic states kind of like flight
fight or flight. How that is, and if our goal
is to get to a state where we're trying to
(38:00):
create something, meaning we want to operate from a place
of abundance, right, those are completely conflicting sort of energetics.
You know this and you could probably speak to this.
It's like that is going to sort of cloud the
goal we have. Then everything feels much harder, you're more overwhelmed.
(38:20):
I'm not even going to touch the sleep aspect for
a second, but just think about stor of these emotions
that you're balancing and how you're pursuing the goal. One,
it's going to be very cloudy. You're going to be
very reactive. You're coming from a place you're doing these
changes out of a place of anxiety and because you
feel like you're constantly behind right, you're behind the clock
(38:41):
on anything advanced maternal age, so on and so forth.
So that's why you're making changes. But that is not sustainable,
nor do I want anyone to make changes from that state.
So if we're really stressed out, that just is an
opportunity to drop back into what is our goal? What
are we trying to pursue and are we trying to
(39:03):
get there from a place of you know, clarity, and
like what signals are we sending to ourselves? Like all
of these things really really matter. Did you feel that
the stress that you experienced during kind of your journey
and like how did you overcome that? Are you? Is
what I'm saying making sense in terms of like, yeah,
(39:24):
when I'm super overwhelmed, like stressed out of my mind
doing all this, I certainly don't have clarity of thought
about my goal and what I'm pursuing and I'm in
present in the moment, because that's not possible, right, I mean,
like this bucket of emotions and this bucket of emotions,
what was your feelings? Like, how were what was your
life experience?
Speaker 1 (39:44):
Yeah, I mean I think for me, when I look back,
I'm thinking, well, no, wonder it didn't work because I
was under so much stress and traveling a lot, like
my body was under a lot of stress. It was
a stress I was accustomed to, So I don't know
that it like stood out to me at the time. Yes,
but when this process for me did not go the
(40:07):
way that I wanted it to go, it was the
first time I think I had to take a step
back and really start to evaluate my lifestyle and the
amount of fight or flight I was living in constantly,
the level of burnout that I had, you know, just
not really fully being conscious of the impact that my
lifestyle was having on my physical health, emotional health, and
(40:29):
mental health. I mean, they're all connected, you know, But
it was just more of a survival mode that I
was living in because I was building so much in business,
and then truthfully, it probably wasn't the right time for
me to try these fertility things, but that what didn't
feel like a choice. It felt like, oh God, time
is running out, so that's adding more stress because it's
just like the clock is taking the go, go go,
(40:51):
You've got it, you know. So it's kind of interesting
that we just think that we can will ourselves to
get to this place of fertility, and it's kind of
it was a big lesson for me of like, hey,
there's a lot that I can't just control or will
myself to do physically with this situation. Does that make
(41:11):
sense how I just said.
Speaker 2 (41:12):
That, Oh my god, are you kidding me? Completely? And
I mean, heck, you are not alone. There's so many
that is going to deeply resonate with exactly what they're experiencing.
And so it's wonderful that you are so open to
talking about this because we need to have this discussion
as women. And guess what the goal isn't to like,
you know, quit your job and go on vacation, right
(41:34):
It's like no, no, no, no, not at all. But right,
so afterwards, I mean, did you like, was this weeks afterwards,
months afterwards, a year as words afterwards that you were like,
did you feel like you had built up kind of
a more of a resilience because of all of this,
Like what is your perspective on this, on this now?
Like reflecting back.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
Yes, I think well, for me it was it was
twofold because the pandemic happened right after this experience for me,
so it was like I was forced to slow down. Yes,
like it was a very It was very much the
time of like I was sent into reflection and so
then I was able to have a different perspective that
I might not have been able to had the world
(42:17):
not slowed down at that time. But I think looking back, yeah,
it definitely is like it has taught me a lot
about myself in that I'm very resilient. I am very driven.
I will work very hard at the things that I want.
I don't think I had prioritized this in the way
that I thought. I that looking back, if this was
(42:37):
something that I really wanted in my life, I would
have done differently. You know. I feel very content in
where I am now and just like, okay, in this lifetime,
that's not part of my journey. That's okay. But there
was a lot of grief tied to it, and there
was a big emotional component for me of feeling unworthy
and less than as a woman, because you think, as
a woman, this is the one thing I'm supposed to
(42:59):
be able to do. And look, I've gotten all these
accomplishments in my life and this is the one I
could not do, and I felt like deficient. There was
like a big piece of yeah, just feeling like not
good enough or worthy enough for it. And so I
really had to sit with that for a while and
appreciate and start to really build an appreciation for my
body separate from this, because it felt like, why aren't
(43:23):
you doing this? You know, I was just frustrated, and
like I said, it was this thing where I've always
willed myself to get to the places I've wanted to
get before that, and this wasn't one that I could
do that with, you know, And so it was really
this like, Okay, I had to sit with my body,
appreciating it for the beauty that it still held and
all that it does do on a daily basis that
I think we forget all that our body does. And
(43:44):
then yeah, just really reflecting back on what I would
do differently if this was a priority for my life, Like,
if this was something I've really truly was passionate about
and desperately felt like I wanted, I would have taken
a step back from a lot of the show dress
and the work that I was going through. But again,
like I said, I didn't really realize how stressed I
(44:04):
was at the time until the pandemic made me stop
and I was like, oh, yeah, this is I mean,
this is a slowdown. This is what that looks like.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
I have to say, well, well those kind of two
two comment. One, I think it's amazing that you have
a arrived to a space where even though like you
recognize and you're saying like, oh, this is is actually
not part of my journey right now, it's actually incredible
that you're still willing to talk to me about a
(44:34):
goal that you know affects other women. I mean, it's
just it's so selfless of you, and it's just kind
of I mean, I did want to point that out
because I'm like, wow, right, like just because it wasn't
your path, You're like, yeah, but there could be some
people's path, and we want to vise their body and
hopefully with this with this book too. I mean, look,
I hope you got some takeaways as well, absolutely for
(44:55):
women's health, but yeah, that's one muota the second that
I was kind of thinking about. It's almost like, not
only did you have to sit with the emotions, it's
basically forcing you to broaden your idea of self worth
because like you said, it's like, oh, I'm supposed to
like do this as a female, as a woman, but
it does kind of force you into doing that, which
(45:18):
is not a bad thing I think for any woman,
because you know, I guarantee if you don't do that
kind of broaden your sense of self worth and sort
of value and purpose in life, life will absolutely find
a way to keep like slapping you in the face
with difficulties until you figure it out right until you
(45:40):
figure out a different mindset and philosophy by which to
for it. So yeah, that's kind of interesting. And I
guess one other thing is this is very very hard
to appreciate in the moment, Like you said, like there's
no way that you could be speaking about this when
you were sitting with the emotions right kind of like
very narrow, like that is your world. However, I have
(46:04):
the opportunity for people like coming into office, for us,
having this conversation right now, to just remind them. It's
like I have them think about a woman that they deeply,
deeply respect and admire. So not just not just like
an actress because she's super famous on like the you
know the movies, like just a woman that's like, oh
(46:25):
my god, she's really really incredible. There has not been
one time that someone has told me that they respect
that individual and look up to that individual because she
had a child, right, So like think about that in
terms of self birth and what you're capable of and
(46:45):
everything you get to do in this life. Like sure,
maybe you value because she has a big family and
she can balance sort of like X, Y and Z,
you could probably you probably like that attribution, right, but
it's not because like she had a baby, think.
Speaker 1 (47:00):
About it, right, it's true. And also why don't we
look at that, Like why I kind of really with
this fertility conversation when it wasn't just going like very
smoothly like I expected it to. I started to really
appreciate the fact that babies are born every single day,
like multiple times. How intricate this whole process is, Like
(47:23):
we don't really talk about their respect, or we don't
talk about fertility and pregnancy and having a child with
the respect that I think it deserves because there are
actually so many things that can go wrong and the.
Speaker 2 (47:36):
Fact that everything has to go right, like yes.
Speaker 1 (47:40):
Have to go right, and then it just happens and
we go, oh, someone had a baby, and it's like, no,
that's a miracle that that happened, and it's in a
beautiful thing that bodies can ever do that In general,
I just walked away with so much more respect for
that whole process. And also, I was when you're talking
about the self worth piece, I think that it's important
(48:02):
to talk about those pieces as a woman because I
would imagine that carries on into motherhood as well, and
just the balancing of life and work and you know, motherhood,
all of those pieces. I think I went through a
piece of that kind of that's.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
Going to serve you, you know later in life where
whether you're whether you're a mom or not. And again
a mom that can have multiple definitions.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
It doesn't matter.
Speaker 2 (48:23):
We don't even need to go we don't even need
to go down that put. But yeah, that can have
so many definitions and how it looks. But when you
are taught sort of resilience and to go through these
hard things, let's say, if you didn't do that, I mean,
how are you going to transmit that to children or
other people in your life if you don't have sort
(48:46):
of that that resilience, Right, So I just think all
of this does kind of transfer to to other humans
that you spend time with. That that's a beautiful thing
as well.
Speaker 1 (48:56):
Yeah, well, there's so many pieces of it, like we said,
that can go right or wrong. And I think what
you're talking about is so important about just creating an
environment of health in general. And like we've said in
the book Trying, which comes out in January, by the way,
there's so much about building. There's all these tangible takeaways
which I love to give the listeners, But there's just
(49:18):
so much about building the environment to support not only
your health for the baby, but also your health for yourself.
And I know as I move into my forties, hormones
and all of those conversations are you know, menopause, that's
all coming up and so this matters for that too.
Is there anything else that you would say you want
listeners just to walk away with, whether they're trying right
(49:39):
now to have a baby, if it's something they want
in their future, or if they've already gone through the process,
Like why is this an important conversation to you?
Speaker 2 (49:47):
Yeah? Well, what first point when you talk about you know,
it's whether it's perimenopause, menopause kind of thinking about those
transitions too. Again, I'm not saying like, oh, well you
should still get my fertility book. I do want to
point out that if you're really looking for just a
root cause approach to health, that yes, that gives you
(50:08):
like hundreds of tangible takeaways. And I think what kind
of comes to mind when you said that is this
environmental component, these kind of microplastics, endocrine disrupting chemicals. So
there's research on how sort of your exposure to this
and your collective sort of cumulative exposure to this that
(50:28):
can sort of accelerate the process of reproductive aging. So
they even found I'll just gott to give you one
tidbit of other information that the women who had the
highest exposure entered into menopause four years earlier, which is
mind blowing. So again, this stuff has relevance because it's
(50:51):
affecting our physiology. So just put that in the back
of your mind. That is so important to protect your body.
And I just hope if I achieve one thing, it
is that one woman can go into the journey that
so many experience like you experience, and actually have that
deep empowerment and also have that deep respect of like
(51:14):
self worth and confidence. That's what I want for every
woman then and really throughout her lifetime. The one thing
that I want people to take away, because yeah, I'm
all about the tangible takeaways, but I won't give you one.
I'll just say that there's always more than one path
to accomplish the goal, and if you are not seeing that,
(51:36):
it just means you're locked in to one version of reality,
whether that's based off of comparison to your peers, which
is a thief of joy anyway, or whether that's based
off of societal expectations. That is living inside of a box,
and I just want that's really kind of my last
takeaway for everyone is don't you know, don't live in
(51:58):
that restricted mind.
Speaker 1 (52:01):
I fully support that as the takeaway. I love that
because I think all of us are so individual and
to me, this conversation about overall health in general is
something that I want everyone to feel empowered by, not disempowered.
So again, the book is called Trying a science backed
Plan to Optimize Your Fertility. I'll put a link for
(52:21):
you guys to go pre order. It comes out in January. Rachel,
Where else can people keep up with you if they
want to follow along on your journey?
Speaker 2 (52:28):
Yeah? I have a website, so Rachel Swanson dot com.
And you know, Kelly, I'm I'm always behind the scenes
like that. That's where I like to be just one
to one with people. But I will become more social
with this whole book launch or else my publishers might be.
Speaker 1 (52:43):
Very sent me.
Speaker 2 (52:44):
So my Instagram is at Rachel's RX, so I'll be
posting a lot more there as well.
Speaker 1 (52:50):
Amazing Again, I'll put all of that in the description
of this podcast. For you guys, thank you so much
for being here and having this conversation with me.
Speaker 2 (52:56):
Thank you, Kelly Ivan, you are just a beautiful soul.
So thank you for inviting me in and talking about this.
Speaker 1 (53:01):
Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 3 (53:07):
MHM.
Host
Kelly Henderson
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