Release the Real You with Traditional Chinese Medicine

Fertility Yoga is Yoga practice that benefits Fertiltity Health. There are different levels of influences on Fertility Health and the Yoga tradition has therapies, exercises, practices that address these different levels.

The different levels include the physical body and the emotional ‘body’. Disharmony in one can show symptoms or changes in the other. Relating this to Fertility and Fertility Yoga, a good example is – feeling stressed a lot. If you feel stressed a lot, there is an unhelpful interplay going on between your emotions and some physical processes in your body. This toxic dance gets in the way of feeling good but can also have a negative effect on your hormone systems and your adrenals which is Fertility unfriendly.

This is one aspect of Fertility Yoga, the calming of the nervous system. You can benefit in these two ways:

1. A quick fix benefit – simple techniques can be used in a “first-aid” sense to instantly calm down the nervous system.
2. Used regularly, Yoga for Fertility will get you used to feeling calmer even though you may have some challenges in your life. This helps to break the cycle of feeling stressed a lot and you are likely to gain more self-awareness of the ways in which you feel stressed.

Check out a simple breathng exercise on my blog. It is simple and yet very effective…..

Coffee and Fertility

I feel like a real kill joy writing a blog linking Coffee with Fertility because coffee seems to be so intertwinned with enjoyment of life. For some people, giving up coffee to boost Fertility success can be like loosing a special friend or even one of your own limbs. Think you’re not addicted? Then try giving it up……….yikes.

For most of us, we can live with our coffee addiction and perhaps even keep it under control. There are after all some medicinal benefits, so a certain dosage of good quality coffee can be regarded as medicinal. Perhaps you are one of those people who can take it or leave it? I do meet new clients who can.

If you have a Fertility issue. If you are having difficulty to get pregnant or if you have had any miscarriages, then research has shown it is in your very best interests to eliminate coffee. There are some startling facts. The risk of infertility is 55% higher with just 1 cup per day and a woman is twice as likely to miscarry with 5 or more cups a day.

One explanation for this is to do with the effects of coffee on blood sugar. Coffee raises the blood sugar and can encourage high insulin levels. It can also contribute to the overstimulation of the adrenals. Both these effects are Fertility unfriendly.

Now could this be an issue for you?  I see two issues.

1. Is coffee having an adverse effect on my ability to get pregnant?
2. Am I physically/emotionally dependant on coffee whereby it will be difficult to give it up?

How you react to those questions will also affect how you will act….Will you?

1. Decide to just give up coffee without proving to yourself that you need to?
2. Need proof first before deciding whether to elimate, reduce or do nothing?
3. Do nothing but feel really guilty?

How you react will depend on your personality and perhaps your circumstances. Sometimes your own “inner strength” needs to be called upon to bring the necessary energy for you to take action. Sometimes we need a therapist to help get through to the subconscious mind to help in this process. The act of giving up something needs linking in your belief system, to the success you are aiming for, a healthy child.

If you would like to give up in stages here’s some ideas you could use to build your own personalised method to move away from coffee during this important time while you trying to get pregnant.

1. Increase the amount of water you drink per day and flavour with a dash of lemon or lime juice.
2. Replace coffee with green or white tea.
3. Use a smaller cup and only drink half. Steadily reduce the amount you drink over a time scale that makes the transformation comfortable. At the same time have another drink that has an refreshing quality, that you like. I keep coming back to warm water with fresh lemon. It is invigorating and cleansing. Enjoy how it makes you feel vital but calm.
4. Drink your coffee slower so it ends up going cold and you don’t drink it.

I will add more to this blog. Please feel free to share your ideas on how to take a break from coffee.

There is so much to say about diet in relation to Fertility Health. I plan to write a whole guide about it. For now I want to mention probably the most common issue that arises in my Fertility Clinic about diet.

It’s about eating in a way that supports health blood sugar balance. This is so important because if blood sugars are regularly out of balance it can lead to hormone imbalances, adrenal depletion and brain function distruption. And all of these affect Fertility Health directly.

It is thought that 90% of the population have blood sugar issues but that most do not show up in blood tests. This will include women who have no problem to get pregnant, however for women that do have some problem, sorting out blood sugar issue can make a big difference to their overall Fertility Health.

Modern dietary habits include more coffee, more alcohol and processed foods. All of these can cause blood sugar problems.

So here’s some simple to remember recommendations. They may not be so simple to follow because foods that affect blood sugar tend to have an addictive quality, so you may need to bring changes in gradually. I will write a lot more about how to do this in the next few days. For now here’s some points to ponder…..

1. Eat wholefoods as much as you can.
2. Eliminate coffee, alcohol
3. Include protein in your breakfast
4. Avoid sugar and artificial sweetners
5. Dont eat on the move. Take time to enjoy your food.

Unexplained Infertility

Unexplained Infertility is that confusing place of uncertainty that some couples, who are having trouble getting pregnant, are placed into because medical tests do not reveal the cause of their trouble to get pregnant.  It is confusing because there is a reason and not knowing can cause even more anguish for couples.

Here in my clinic I often treat women with acupuncture, where the couple have been diagnosed with unexplained infertility. Acupuncture for unexplained infertility is very relevant and we have enjoyed some great successes here.

In this situation a Big Picture view of the woman’s fertile health shows the problem.

The Big Picture view of health is reflected in a woman’s signs and symptoms. If a woman’s body has some dysfunction there will be a sign that shows it. For example clotting in menstrual flow tells me that there is an issue with blood. If a woman has migraines this could be associated with hormone balance that may not be revealed in medical tests. There are loads of aspects of body function that are reviewed. Bringing this information together and relating it to Fertility is the Big Picture view we take here.

An objective Big Picture view that we use to guide and assess treatments is the information we gain from our client’s Fertility charts. With Fertility Charting it is easy for our clients and for me to identify the infertility issues and then to see the situation get better as acupuncture treatments progress. Please check my page on Fertility Charting for more info.

Sometimes couples with unexplained infertility will do IVF because they think it is their only chance. I would really love encourage women to take some time to do Fertility Charting and address their issues with acupuncture because good Fertility Health means more chance for conception and a healthy pregnancy. Fertility Charting reveals the Big Picture of Fertility Health.

Yoga for Fertility can be done in all kinds of unexpected places, so how about not waiting for a Yoga class to improve your Fertility Fitness? It is very easy to do simple Yoga techniques in the most unlikely places such as in a supermarket queue.

The right kind of exercise can be just important as the amount. Yoga for Fertility is a specialist form of Yoga that targets fertility tissues, body fluids and brain centres that have some role in a woman’s ability to successfully conceive and then move on to enjoy a healthy pregnancy and birth.

How about a simple exercise that works on your pelvic floor muscles? This one is perfect when you are waiting in a queue. It will probably make you smile   If you have a history of high blood pressure or dizziness then you should avoid doing the exercise in this way. Look out for other exercises that suit your situation.

So here we go……

1. Breathe in very slowly and quietly, through your nose.
2. At the same time imagine this air is coming up through your feet and moving up towards your head.
3. As your the breath moves up, tighten your anus and vaginal muscles, drawing them up.
4. Hold this breath and this tight squeeze of your muscles for 1 or 2 seconds and then slowly realease the breath and the pelvic muscles tension. Imagine this out breath moving down through your body and into deep into the earth. Repeat the cycle several times and build it up by perhaps joining longer queues in the supermarket.

So why do this exercise, you may be asking. Well in a nutshell this simple technique will reward you with a treasure trove of health benefits. Not only for fertility health but for good overall health too. These are some of the benefits……..

1. Tones the pelvic muscles and tissues leading to improved function giving these important benefits……….
2. More enjoyment in lovemaking
3. Healthy cervical secretions which play a big role in getting pregnant
4. Improved menstrual flow – important for fertility health too.
5. Calming effects – Can slow down the heart rate and the common fight/flight response experienced by so many people in supermarkets. And remember…..
6. A calm mind brings a clear mind where problems seems less overwhelming. This calmness is so much better for fertility health because important brain centres that affect fertility hormones, can be upset by stress reactions. It is all about balance. The right balance for you, as an individual. Your calm mind helps you to become aware of this.

Modern life encourages us to be busy, productive and successful and although these get up and go ideals should yield positive results they lose their power if a balance between ACTIVITY and REST is not respected.

In the context of fertilty, tension that comes from being busy all the time is a very common finding in some women who are having problems conceiving. There are two major ways this can affect normal physiological function.

1. The first is that the nervous system is over stimulated affecting hormone release in the first stage of the woman’s menstrual cycle. This happens because the pituitary gland in the brain is responsible for the release of 2 major hormones that ripen the follicles in the ovary.

2.  Another reason is that tension can lead to muscle spasm. The the smooth muscle in the fallopean tube can spasm leading to obstructed movement of the egg through the fallopean tube.

So how can we ensure good QUALITY rest?

A good place to start is to let go of the muscle tension we hold without realising. Muscle tension robs us of the free flow of energy that we could be enjoying and makes it harder to ‘let go’ and RELAX.

Here’s a Yoga exercise that we teach here at ETCM that is simple to do.  When done effectively this sequence is said to be equivalent of several hours of sleep. It involves 2 stages.

1.  Relaxation of the physical body

2. Relaxation of the mind

Please try it for 15 minutes and see how you feel afterwards.