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Today, Lydia and I welcome Sara Russell to the show. Sara is a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner, Certified GAPS Practitioner, and Weston A. Price chapter leader currently residing in the Tuscan countryside. She is the founder of the Build Nurture Restore website and works with clients across the globe.
We are going to be talking about fertility and healthy pregnancies. We’ll cover the most common reasons that women deal with infertility, as well as what we can do to improve our fertility naturally. Sara speaks a lot about her personal experience with helping women deal with infertility issues and go on to have healthy pregnancies.
Missed previous episodes? You can find them all here.
Links From This Week’s Episode:
- Sara Russell’s Website
- Sara’s Feed Your Fertile Body Course
- Jessica’s Extensive Real Food Library to Help You Eat Clean for Fertility
- Jessica’s Extensive Natural Living Library to Help you Live Clean and Naturally (which also helps your body prepare for pregnancy)
- Real Food 101: Your Free Quick Start Guide to Healthy Eating
- Health Assessment with Lydia
- Hair Analysis with Lydia
- Information about HTMA and Minerals
- How to Create a Game Plan to Keep Your Whole Family Healthy
Listen to The Vibrant Health Podcast :: Episode 37
Read The Vibrant Health Podcast Show Notes :: Episode 37
Fertility and Pregnancy Planning Show Notes
Make sure you check out the Links from the Episode section for lots more information on today’s topic.
Today, Lydia and I welcome Sara Russell to the show. Sara is a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner, Certified GAPS Practitioner, and Weston A. Price chapter leader currently residing in the Tuscan countryside. She is the founder of the Build Nurture Restore website and works with clients across the globe.
Sara helps clients worldwide and specializes in fertility, pregnancy, and young children. She is the creator of Feed Your Fertile Body!™, a pre-conception preparation and fertility optimization program available to individuals and couples preparing for conception, as well as to Nutritional Therapy Practitioners and Nutritional Therapy Consultants who wish to run fertility-focused groups in their practice.
Sara enjoys wildcrafting local herbs, preparing probiotic foods, and working on complex client cases. Today, she is joining us to talk about one of her favorite topics, fertility and preparing the body for pregnancy.
What Are the Common Causes of Infertility and What Can We Do About It?
The most common causes of infertility and repeat miscarriages (in Sara’s experience these are the top three):
- Undiagnosed Hashimoto’s
- Poor blood sugar handling (with and without PCOS)
- Underconsumption of healthy fats
Food sensitivities and excess inflammation are two other strong contributing factors in stubborn cases.
How Do We Improve Fertility Naturally?
There are multiple things that we can do about this and ways that we can improve your fertility naturally.
First, it’s important to eat real food in its natural state. Then, I recommend getting a full thyroid panel, including antibodies (even if you have to pay for it out-of-pocket). This will help determine if you have Hashimoto’s disease.
You also need to get over any fears you have about healthy fats and remove refined and artificial sweeteners from your diet. Remove any form of processed foods, flours, sugars, etc.
You may also try a low-allergen, nutrient-dense diet, especially if you are having food sensitivities. It is definitely worth doing a 6-12 week gluten elimination trial to see how you feel. You must go gluten-free for life, if diagnosed with Hashimoto’s. One way Sara likes to view this is that you have celiac disease of the thyroid.
Additional Things That Can Play a Role and What to Do
Besides diet, thyroid issues, and imbalanced blood sugar, there are other important factors at play when it comes to our fertility:
- Overload of toxicants from air, water, food, and agriculture
- Home and body care products loaded with chemicals
- Medications
Some solutions are:
- Clean up your nutrition
- Look into your water quality and what you can do to improve that
- Look at your home and body care regimen and see how you can reduce exposure to chemicals via greener, safer products
Also, as you improve diet and lifestyle and reduce stress, you may not feel the need for as many medications and will have fewer cravings for sugar and toxic processed foods.
Sleep and Stress
Diet, water, chemical reduction, etc. are all important, but let’s not forget about stress and sleep!
Excess stress and insufficient sleep are the bane of health, sanity and proper hormonal production. Poor sleep can lead to hormonal and detoxification processes, which disrupts our fertility.
What can you do?
Do the best you can and don’t stress about being perfect. Good enough is good enough! It’s about progress, not perfection.
One of the best things you can do when you are ready to start a family is to sit down and make a plan. Really identify what things you need to do, what you can let go of, how you can get the support you need, etc.
Getting Additional Help
If you are dealing with fertility issues, then know you are not alone and there is help. When it comes to this area, making the changes we talk about above can do so much for your health and fertility, but sometimes you need a little extra support.
That’s why it’s a good idea to get support from a trained practitioner and that is also why Sara designed the Feed Your Fertile Body!™ program. This program was a passion project for Sara. After her third child was born, she felt a huge calling to help people rebuild their bodies and improve their fertility. She saw a huge need for education in this area and her program was born from this inspiration and desire to help families bring healthy, happy babies into the world.
This flexible and fun 6-week program is offered to the public through Sara herself, or through trained Nutritional Therapists and Nutritional Consultants. Depending on the practitioner, you can go through this program as a self-study, in-person, or online (or a combo of all). If you want learn more about the program or find a practitioner to work with, you can do that here.
If you would like to connect with Sara, you can find her on her site Build Nurture Restore and can contact her through her site.