You see women all the time with their children. Some have one, two, three, four…Some look like great moms. You wonder how some were able to have so many kids. Why were they able to have children? What is wrong with you?
I used to ask myself these questions all of the time. I wanted to have a baby so badly, but no matter how hard I tried…nothing.
My story begins when my significant other and I decided we wanted to be together forever. We didn’t know when we’d officially get engaged, or married for that matter. But we knew we’d be together. We decided, that I would stop taking birth control pills. In fact, we decided we weren’t even going to prevent a pregnancy anymore. We would let nature take its course.
That went on for two years. Now, we weren’t “actively” trying to get pregnant during that time. But we really weren’t preventing a pregnancy either. And even though we weren’t trying, it was still in the back of my mind each month, “could this be it?” And every month, it would still be a letdown when I’d get my period. I thought that getting pregnant was supposed to be easy. At least that was my impression.
During those two years, my period also changed by quite a bit. I had taken birth control pills for nearly two decades. Six months after I stopped taking the pills, my periods changed drastically. My periods were no longer arriving every 28 days like clockwork. Now, they were coming every 22-24 days. And they were accompanied by terrible cramps. Additionally, I dealt with extreme bleeding after intercourse, every time!
My OB/GYN informed me that the bleeding was normal. Sometimes capillaries break during intercourse and cause bleeding. Perhaps, this is true. But it was unusual that it was happening now, after not happening the entire time I was on birth control pills. And what about the short periods and the cramping? I wondered if this could be endometriosis. My OB/GYN dismissed this, also, and suggested that perhaps these were just my normal periods.
I didn’t know what to think or what to do. I wanted to believe my doctor. But something didn’t seem right to me. I felt that there was something wrong and my doctor wasn’t going to help me.
We started actively trying to get pregnant after we finally married, two years later. My monthly cycle conditions were still the same. Every 22-24 days, aunt flow would arrive. Now it became devastating when my period would arrive.
Ladies, if you’re trying to get pregnant, you know by now that the same symptoms that suggest you are pregnant are the same symptoms that suggest you are about to get your period. Every month, before my period, I would experience the tender breasts, nausea, fatigue, bloating… I’d get my hopes up again. “Could this be it?” And then nothing…again…
Taking Matters Into Your Own Hands
One of the things I did was read the book “What to Expect Before You’re Expecting,” by Heidi Murkoff. It’s fun to read and I learned a lot of things about male and female anatomy that I never knew before reading this book! I tried to follow as many suggestions in her book as I could to improve my chances of getting pregnant. But nothing seemed to help.
I needed some way of tracking my periods, since I wasn’t on birth control anymore. And I also wanted to try to pinpoint my ovulation. One of the suggestions in Heidi’s book is to use the basal body temperature method (i.e. BBT) (Also known as natural family planning or the Fertility Awareness Based Method.)
With this method, you take your basal body temperature first thing in the morning, preferably at the same time every morning, and always before you get out of bed, talk, sit up or do any other activity. It’s best if you take your temperature after at least three to five hours of sleep. You can use a special BBT thermometer or a standard one. I started doing this using just a standard thermometer. I also kept a pad of paper and a pen on my night stand to record my readings.
During the first part of your cycle, before ovulation, estrogen is the dominating hormone in your body, keeping your temperature at a normal degree. When you ovulate, there is a surge in progesterone, which helps your uterus prepare for a fertilized egg. This surge of the progesterone hormone causes a rise in your body temperature.
If you’re charting your BBT, you’ll notice the rise in your temperature a day or two after ovulation occurs. This can really help you decide when the best time to “try” is. We followed my BBT chart to increase our chances of conception.
During this time, I tried to eat healthy by following the USDA recommendations for eating a healthy diet. I gave up drinking caffeine for the most part. I exercised as much as I could. And although, it was difficult to achieve during some months, I tried to get a good night sleep each night.
I was a tax manager in a CPA firm and getting a great night sleep during tax season was tough. But I tried. I wasn’t on any medications, I didn’t smoke and drank moderately. By all accounts, I was very healthy. So, why wasn’t I getting pregnant? Some women made it look so easy!
It seemed I was getting nowhere with my OB/GYN. I decided to consider alternative methods after six months of actively trying to get pregnant. The first person I thought of was my acupuncturist. I had gone to see her before for other things, such as sinus infections and neck pain. But I’d never asked her to help me get pregnant. She was up to the challenge.
She first did an analysis of my current state. My periods were short, I was cold all the time, and my temperature was abnormally low (my resting temperature was 96.5 ֯ to 97.0 ֯ ). I had severe cramping and bleeding during intercourse. I was about 30 pounds overweight, despite my efforts to eat well and exercise. Her diagnosis was that I had a severe hormonal imbalance.
She started giving me fertility and hormone balancing treatments 1 to 2 times a month. She also had me start taking Chinese herbs to help warm up my body.
During this time, I continued to eat a healthy diet and exercise. I also continued to take my BBT every morning. Each time it appeared I might be ovulating, my husband and I continued to “try”.
After about six months of doing all of these things, I still wasn’t pregnant. My husband and I decided that maybe we’d try going on a diet together. He really wanted to try this crazy diet call the HCG diet. We thought that it might help both of us conceive a baby if we lost some weight. I was willing to try anything.
Before we started our diet, we saw a nutritionist and had full blood panels done. The results of these tests gave us our baseline health. The nutritionist would use these results to get us started on our diet. This blood test told me I was gluten intolerant. This would start me on a new health journey that I did not see coming. But by all other accounts, I was pretty healthy and could start the diet.
We were about to start our diet. However, it occurred to me that I hadn’t gotten my period yet. My husband joked that I was probably pregnant. Haha! I’d better check before doing anything crazy. I geared up the next morning, expecting to be letdown for the umpteenth time. But this time was different. I actually was pregnant!
I never did start that diet. My husband did. He lost a lot of weight, too. Instead, I started eating a gluten-free diet, which you can read about in my article, How I Lost 30 Pounds Eating Gluten-Free.
I went on to have 4 healthy bundles of joy in five years. Perhaps I had to balance my hormones in order to boost my own fertility. And each time I had a child, it seemed to boost my fertility even more!
Dangers of taking birth control
I wish I could go back in time and warn my younger self to not ever start taking birth control pills. I truly think that this was a huge factor in causing my infertility.
According to Gerard Migeon, in his post “Does the pill cause infertility?,” taking hormonal birth control for an extended period of time can impair a woman’s chances of getting pregnant. Hormonal contraceptives work, not only by suppressing ovulation, but also by stimulating the body to produce a thicker cervical mucus, known as “G” mucus, providing an additional barrier to sperm, incase ovulation still takes place. These synthetic steroid sex hormones (synthetic estrogen or progesterone) take over a woman’s natural hormones and operate the cervix in a non-natural way.
In a study done by Dr. Erik Odeblad, a Swedish physician, it was discovered that hormonal contraceptives cause premature aging of the cervix and the loss of “S” cervical mucus is accelerated. Each year a woman takes the hormonal contraceptives, her cervix ages by an additional year. That means that if a 20 year old takes the pill for 10 years, she’ll end up with a 40-year old cervix at the age of 30! It can take a long time after a woman who stops taking these contraceptives for her cervix to function again.
To make matters worse, if a woman starts taking Clomid, thinking this will increase her fertility, it will do the opposite. A known side effect of this drug is that it reduces the production of cervical fluid. In order to be fertile and achieve a pregnancy, a woman needs an abundance of the “S” cervical mucus that is stretchy, similar to a raw egg white. This mucus allows sperm to pass through the cervix and into the uterus, as well as provides nourishment to the sperm while it’s there. Clomid reduces this cervical fluid, making it more difficult to achieve a pregnancy.
Without any intervention, a cervix may take up to a year to regain a functioning production of mucus. In the meantime, it is recommended that couples wait before they to take drastic measures, such as IVF (In-Vitro Fertilization) and other costly and emotional medical procedures. It is better to wait and find other ways to improve the production of their cervical mucus.
This is a great reason to avoid hormonal birth control and use a natural family planning method of birth control, instead. For more information on family planning methods, see this article. I used the basal body temperature (BBT) method, using my body temperature as a fertility indicator.
Battling Hormones
If you thought you only had to worry about balancing your female hormones to get pregnant, think again!
As it turns out, leptin is the master hormone that controls the action and release of all the other hormones made in the brain, adrenal cortex, thyroid gland and in the gut. This hormone was discovered in 1994 and helps regulate hunger and appetite. It also controls fertility and selects the immature egg cell in the ovary for fertilization every month.
If you have a problem with your leptin hormone, you will most definitely have a problem with your other hormones. According to Dr. Jack Kruse, in his book Epi-Paleo RX, leptin is the first hormone we must regain control of to re-engineer ourselves back to our biological potential.
But that’s not all! Your body’s insulin level directly effects your leptin hormone. In fact, it overrides leptin’s effect. When a person eats a diet high in refined grains and sugars and/or eats too frequently, their level of insulin continuously rises in order to lower their blood sugar. When this happens, the person is considered insulin resistant.
Both leptin and insulin hormones act at the same hypothalamic areas of the body to regulate long-term energy. Insulin stimulates the production of leptin when fat cells are exposed to glucose (sugar) to encourage a feeling of fullness. Leptin, known as the satiety hormone, decreases insulin and enhances tissue sensitivity to insulin, leading to more glucose (sugar) consumption to be used for energy utilization and storage.
Insulin signals our body to store food energy in the form of body fat. In a normal situation, excessive insulin leads to an increase in the size of the fat cells. These fat cells then produce more of the hormone leptin, which travels to the brain and signals that we’re too fat. Our appetites decrease, we stop eating and insulin lowers. This signals our body to start burning fat, instead of eating and storing fat and it returns us to our desired body set weight. A body set weight is created when insulin and leptin are balanced.
In his book, The Obesity Code: Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss, Dr. Jason Fung explains that obesity, by definition, is a disease caused by too much insulin. As fat cells continue to store fat, they produce more and more leptin in an attempt to fight insulin. It’s a constant insulin vs. leptin battle in the body and becomes a fat storing cycle, if not kept in check. Eventually, the high levels of insulin cause insulin resistance and the high levels of leptin cause leptin resistance.
When leptin resistance occurs, not only are high levels of leptin present in the body, but the brain experiences inflammation and blocks the leptin hormone from entering the brain. When this happens, leptin cannot tell the brain what the energy status of the body is.
Dr. Kruse’s analogy is, it’s “like driving 80 mph from New York to Los Angeles with mud smeared across the windshield and a broken gas gauge. You have no way of knowing how much gas you really have!” “Leptin controls all the energy production in the human body. It controls the entire hormonal response of the brain and all the signaling energy generation pathways in the body.”
According to Dr. Kruse, “evolution first checks with the hormones that control energy balance to decide whether we can reproduce. Those who are profoundly leptin resistant cannot have children.” Why infertility clinics do not routinely screen people for insulin or leptin resistance is a mystery to me.
Who Is Insulin & Leptin Resistance?
How do you know whether this hormonal battle is taking place in your body and that you are, in fact, insulin and leptin resistant? Generally, if you are obese or overweight by 25 pounds or more, you are most likely insulin and leptin resistant. However, a blood test showing your insulin and leptin levels will confirm this assumption.
If you are obese, most doctors will tell you to eat less and exercise more. They might tell you to go on a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet. You might be prescribed a laundry list of medicines to treat your symptoms.
However, according to Dr. Fung, this type of diet is a recipe to keep you fat and possibly make you fatter. You will increase your insulin and potentially become insulin resistant (if you aren’t already) and your metabolism will slow. To make matters worse, having regularly high insulin and becoming insulin resistant is a precursor for having Type 2 Diabetes later in life.
It’s easy to think that obese people are just lazy or gluttonous. But in fact, obesity has nothing to do with laziness or gluttony. Obesity is an inflammatory brain disorder caused by a hormonal imbalance. It really has nothing to do with caloric intake or expenditure.
This hormone imbalance, not only causes the person to become obese. It also causes them to have burned-out cortisol levels and crashed sex steroid hormone levels, thereby causing infertility. I fell into that category, by being at least 30 pounds overweight.
Can You Reverse Insulin & Leptin Resistance?
If you find that you are insulin and leptin resistant, the good news is that it is reversible! Both Dr. Fung and Dr. Kruse have excellent ideas for resetting your leptin hormone and reversing insulin resistance. Although I would highly recommend you do your own research and talk to a doctor, here are the things I suggest concentrating on to reverse insulin and leptin resistance, as well as balancing all other hormones:
A. Follow a Paleolithic diet or Ketogenic diet.
- Avoid sugar.
- Eat little to no refined grains.
- Consume a moderate amount of protein.
- Include lots of natural fats in your diet.
- Eat more real, unprocessed foods (that have little or no insulin effect from high amounts of unrefined carbohydrates and sugars)
- Reduce the number of meals eaten each day to only 1-2 meals a day.
- NEVER snack
- Practice time restricted eating or intermittent fasting (IF)
B. Be conscious of your circadian rhythm.
- Wait until after 5pm to exercise to stimulate fat burning during sleep. Do not work out before or after breakfast, since cortisol is already high. It will cause adrenal fatigue and cause your sex steroid hormones to dip, worsening your body composition.
- Allow 4-5 hours between meals and sleep.
- Within an hour of sunset, make your surroundings as dark as possible.
- Try to get plenty of sunlight during the day.
C. Consider supplementing with High Vitamin Fermented Cod Liver Oil, which will provide the body with 10,000 IU of Vitamin A and 1,000 IU of Vitamin D daily, per the Westin A. Price Foundation suggestion.
Once the leptin hormone is reset and insulin has been reduced, the hypothalamus will respond to food in a new way by sensitizing the leptin receptor to account for electrons from food in the way evolution designed (i.e. you will have altered your genetic expression by altering your diet and synchronizing it with light cycles.)
I wish that I had known, a few decades ago, that by taking hormonal contraceptives and eating a diet high in refined carbohydrates and sugars would cause me to have a severe hormone imbalance later in life. Add in working long hours in an office with artificial light and having an irregular circadian rhythm, and I had a recipe to be infertile. Had I been healthier with more balanced hormones earlier in life, perhaps it would have saved me years of anguish in trying to reverse my own fertility and improve my overall health later in life.
I happened to stumble upon acupuncture and changing my diet, which helped me balance some of my hormones. However, I still feel like there is work to be done. But the small changes that I did make over time helped me regain my fertility. I hope that it helps you in your journey.
If you think you may be infertile, see my article on 13 Ways To Boost Your Fertility.
What did you do to get pregnant? Do you have questions or concerns about getting pregnant? Please share below.
