A Bun in the Oven

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Having a warm place to grow your baby is one of the healthiest things you can do prior to falling pregnant. A warm environment for your baby allows better blood and fluid flow so they develop as healthy as possible. I see so many women with cold digestive systems and cold lower abdomens, that it’s no surprise a baby hasn’t developed in there. You can’t cause bread to grow in cold oven and neither will a a baby.

How do you know if you are cold internally? Feel your abdomen below your belly button with your whole hand with a slight amount of pressure. If you feel cold underneath your palm, you have cold in your lower abdomen. Symptoms you may get include frequent urination, low back pain, digestive complaints, diarrhea and period pain.

Also, only eat warm foods. Steer clear of smoothies, acai bowls, juices and ice creams. Drink herbal teas and eat soups, broths and casseroles. Also keep a wheat heat bag on your low abdomen as often as you remember to warm you up.

Acupuncture and moxibustion directly on your lower abdomen work wonderfully well in removing cold and warming the uterus to just the right temperature for a healthy baby to grow and thrive.

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Thinking of Your Children (not yet conceived)

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The health of your children starts before conception. In Chinese medicine, parents pass on a very important life energy to their babies. We call it Jing, Western medicine call it genetics. Jing is root of all health and is stored in the Kidneys. The Kidneys are the source of birth, growth, development and reproduction – all of life’s big events. Jing cannot be replenished after birth, but it can be expended quickly. It’s kind of like being given a sum of money when you’re born with no chance to have more. You can spend it wisely or you can waste it all. Either way, what you have left, will be what you can give your children. Stress, poor diet, poor lifestyle habits all consume Jing, which leaved you with limited genetic health to pass to your children. Jing can be nourished by acupuncture, eating well, managing stress and implementing mind calming into your daily routines. What you give to your children, will be what they have to work with and who doesn’t want to give their children the best health possible?

So if you’re finding it hard to stick to a healthy eating plan or to get up in the morning for exercise or can’t help binging on chocolate while you’re trying to fall pregnant, think of the future health of your children. What you do before you’re pregnant affects your child more than you know.

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Keeping Calm the Morning of your Embryo Transfer

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After all the bloods, scans, dietary changes, acupuncture treatments, supplements, medications, side effects, tears and worry, embryo transfer day is finally here. Many women wake up feeling anxious and worried and this can negatively impact blood flow and energy flow through the body. There are a couple of simple things you can do the morning of your transfer to help reduce anxiety and keep you feeling excited and positive!

  1. Get to bed before 10pm the night before so you can wake feeling refreshed
  2. Wake at your normal waking time and go for a short walk or stretch as movement will help with increasing blood flow around the body
  3. Have a nice warm shower and dress with shoes that keep your feet warm
  4. Go through a mindfulness 10-20 min app (eg. Headspace, Smiling Mind)
  5. Make a warm, healthy breakfast which includes eggs, vegetables or porridge
  6. Drink plenty of fluid with room temperature water or herbal teas
  7. Pack a snack (apple, nuts, nut butter on rice crackers for example) in case you get hungry, especially if the doctor is running late
  8. Have an acupuncture treatment by someone experienced in acupuncture IVF protocol – this is great for reducing anxiety and improving blood flow to your lining to better prepare for implantation

Best of luck!

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What is Fertility to You?

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Fertility is about so much more than just the meeting of DNA….if it wasn’t, IVF would have a much higher success rate.

So what is fertility to you? Is it about health? Is it about your relationship with your partner? Is it about your relationship with yourself, your mother, your father? Is it about your will power, your strength or your perseverance (or lack)? Is it about learning to love yourself first (or last)? Is it about learning to ask for help?

Discover what fertility means to you and find a supportive team who can help.

Unexplained Infertility in Chinese Medicine

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Being diagnosed with ‘unexplained’ infertility can feel worse than being diagnosed with any functional problems. From a medical point of view, it means there are no more avenues to go down to ‘fix’ anything. Hormones are working as they should, sperm is working as it should but conception is still not happening.

One of the great things in Chinese medicine, is that we don’t have ‘unexplained’ conditions. Every single person has a diagnosis or an energetic explanation for why their desired health outcome is not being achieved. Sometimes patterns are more difficult to explain than others depending on clinical history. However, there will always be a possible solution. It just may not meet your time goals and it may mean you need to change some dietary and lifestyle habits, but there will be a treatment plan for you.

Sometimes the reason can be as simple as a concern with body fluid production for women. The only sign could be a lack of cervical mucous at midcycle and symptoms of dry mouth. Often, I see emotional causes of infertility especially in women who are under a lot of stress. Liver Qi gets stuck when we have any serious emotional changes, and Liver Qi is responsible for moving blood through the body (to the uterus and ovaries) and encouraging the egg’s smooth journey down the fallopian tubes. Acupuncture treatments can help both of these conditions plus many more.

Sometimes the most difficult problems, have the simplest solutions.

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Your Daily Juice Could Be Causing Your Period Pain

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In Chinese medicine, the temperature of the food we eat can play a huge role in our overall wellness. Unfortunately in the Western world, we follow too many ‘food fads’ which move as quickly as the seasons and don’t promote ideal health (despite what they tell you). If you’ve seen me in clinic for help with hormones, period pain, weight loss or fertility, you know I’ve told you to stop with juicing and smoothies and instead start having warm, nutrient dense foods, especially for breakfast.

To understand why this might be a problem, let’s imagine your digestive system is like a boiling pot on a stove. Your Kidneys are the fire/heat under the pot, the pot is your stomach, the contents of the pot are what you eat and the vapour escaping the top of the pot is the energy that goes to all your organs to maintain wellbeing.

If you continually put icy cold food into the pot, the Kidneys have to use more heat/energy to turn the cold food into something your body can use as energy. As blood for your menstrual cycle is formed from your Kidneys, placing too much pressure on the Kidneys to warm your cold food, can slow blood production resulting in weak blood flow, long bleeding times and pain.

Because the cold food can take so much longer to digest, it can sit in the Stomach for longer fermenting and giving off a type of ‘dirty’ energy that goes to the rest of your body, making you feel lethargic.

Over time, this internal cold slows down blood and contracts blood vessels which is why it is a main cause of period pain and infertility. Our bodies are designed to be warm, to move blood and energy easily and consistently, to incubate an embryo and fetus and to digest our food quickly and efficiently for energy and health.

So stop with the daily juice, smoothie or Acai bowl for breakfast. If this has been your diet for quite some time, you may also need warming up, which is where acupuncture and moxibustion can come in. Ensuring your low back and low abdomen are covered and keeping your feet warm will also help.