Clean Up Your Act! For Fertility’s Sake

Are you a woman looking a have a baby in the near future or years down the road? Then you NEED to read this!

We live in a toxic world. A simple statement with a huge impact. There are SO many things that we can do to minimize our exposures and help our bodies get rid of the toxic junk that builds up in our tissues and cells. So don't worry, or overly stress. Learn about things to avoid and do your best.

Why should you care? Not only can having a high toxin load set you up for many health conditions and make you feel less than your best today, it can also hugely impact your fertility potential.

In my philosophy on medicine, good fertility equals good health. Meaning that if you are your healthiest self, you will have the best fertility potential. Now, I can’t promise that following this plan will preserve your fertility long-term, or you won’t have a baby with health challenges, but I can promise that YOU will feel your best self and your reproductive system will be it’s healthiest.

Fertility optimization’s goal is to have the healthiest baby possible, which starts before conception and continues after birth. The steps below are just one piece of fertility optimization. I believe that the first 1000 days of life, starting at conception, are the most important for determining the long term health of the individual. Beginning optimizing the health of the parents at least 3 months (the time it takes for the egg and sperm to fully mature and develop) before conception along with support for the first 1000 days, from conception to infancy, will result in the healthiest child, and parents, possible. Because let’s be real, once that baby comes it’s a lot of long nights and trying times, so making sure you are as healthy as possible ahead of time will really help.

If you are early in this process, not thinking of having a baby for several years, and on a reliable form of birth control then a real gift to yourself and your baby would be to do a detox. Toxins in the mother’s body can make it difficult to get pregnant, can be a factor in miscarriages, and are eventually passed to the baby. An important principle in environmental medicine and detox is to stop, or limit, the exposures to harmful chemicals and toxic metals. This means clean up your life! The food you eat, the water you drink, the air you breathe, the home you live in, the things you put onto your body, the thoughts you think (not environmental but still very toxic), all affect you.

Basic Life Clean Up: Removing exposures

Home: Take a thorough look at your home cleaning products, how you wash your clothes, dryer sheets. I recommend a scent free, natural detergent, and NOT using dryer sheets. For cleaning products, buy low-to-no chemical products, or make you own! Stay tuned for recipes.
Body and Beauty: Take a hard look at your lotions, soaps, shampoo, conditioner, and cosmetics. You can use the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep website or app for body and cosmetic products. There are so many chemicals added to our beauty products! I've been making my own lotions, deodorants, and toners for years and you can too!
Food: Eat mostly vegetables and start choosing local, season, and organic food. Organic foods are lower in endocrine-disrupting pesticides and herbicides. This time of year the farmers markets are a great way to eat organic. If this is financially difficult for you think about growing your own vegetables! It’s inexpensive and can be a great way for you to get some connection with nature. Remove alcohol, energy drinks, soda, and other drugs during your detox.
Water: Another common exposure is through water, I recommend getting a water filter that filters out chemicals, pharmaceutical drugs, and toxic metals.
Air: Indoor air quality is up to 10 times worse than outdoor air quality. Get an air filter, look for HEPA air filters and HEPA vacuums.
Sweating: Fat and water soluble toxins, including toxic metals, insecticides, herbicides, solvents, and natural body waste, leave the body through sweating. Your skin is the largest organ in your body. It’s such a beautifully designed system we have that we can very effectively get rid of toxins through sweating from our skin. Gently get your sweat on through exercise if you are actively trying to get pregnant, or if there is a chance you will become pregnant. Don't push is with more intense sweating protocols like sauna. This is because when you sweat you release toxins from storage. They are now released and are moving around your body and will either be sweated out, peed out or pooped out and if that doesn’t happen, then they will find a new place to be stored inside you or your babies body. In the meantime, while they are moving around your body for days to weeks, before begin stored or excreted, they are causing damage.

Work with a qualified professional about your individual health & fertility situation. The VITAL FERTILITY team's experts are available anytime to come up with a plan that will work for you!