Optimizing Your Natural Fertility: A Fertility Doctor Explains How to Get Pregnant Naturally

hi friends welcome back today I want to talk about natural fertility and the things you can do to optimize your chances at getting pregnant each month [Music] hi friends welcome back today we're talking all about optimizing natural fertility so this is a really broad topic that I probably could have an entire youtube series about but I'm gonna dive into just the basics if you're looking at hey I'm starting to try to get pregnant where do I start so that I have the best chance to get pregnant I always view this as taking control of the things that you can because there's so much when it comes to getting pregnant that you're not in control of and one of the most ironic parts is you've probably spent some of the years before this point preventing pregnancy so suddenly now you're in the place where you want to get pregnant but you don't necessarily know what to do when to do it and what other lifestyle factors do you need to modify it to have the best chance I'm going to dive all into that right now so let's dive into some lifestyle factors that you can do to try to have the highest chance of getting pregnant first of all take a prenatal vitamin this is essential prenatal vitamins have lots of vitamins and nutrients that we need and the number one is folic acid folic acid is important for cell division and for replication and so for your body to make a baby you need adequate folic acid interestingly most sites in the u.s. don't really have enough folic acid and your body needs about three months of a store a folic acid to really be in its best place I recommend my patients take a prenatal vitamin with folic acid in addition to a vitamin d3 supplement vitamin D because it has been shown to be important in reproduction and there are some low levels of vitamin D that have been associated potentially with some bad outcomes when it comes to fertility it is important for a lot of different processes in the body and so I recommend all my patients take at least a thousand IU's that's how vitamin D is measured of vitamin d3 I check vitamin D levels some of my patients need prescription strength vitamin D but it is a good starting place so prenatal and vitamin D go for everybody one of the top questions I get asked is what brand of pre needles do you recommend guys I'm not a vitamin spokesperson so you can go find the one that's best for you I usually recommend not ordering fancy prenatal vitamins but looking at the ingredients and making sure they don't have lots of fillers usually there's some natural ones that are out Walmart Walgreens your pharmacy that will be just fine there's a lot of other supplements the supplement industry is really big and I talk about supplements with all of my patients depending on your unique medical situation a supplement might be beneficial coenzyme q10 can help some patients with low ovarian reserve or with poor eye quality DHEA may be helpful for a certain subset of women who are low in androgens and have poor egg quality or do our myo-inositol may be helpful for women who have insulin resistance or features of PCOS there are many different things here the truth is you shouldn't just go start taking all the supplements that you find oh I'm gonna take kokyu and DHEA and myo-inositol no these are things that talk to your doctor about but in general if you're trying a prenatal and vitamin D are safe for everybody and then we can look at the different types of supplements based on your unique situation so replace your body with what it means another thing to think about is the food that you put in your body and how does that impact things food and toxins really go hand-in-hand so I'm gonna dive into toxins first we know that toxins can build up in your cells and that's across a variety of things a great example is smoking so smoking cigarettes has been associated with running out of eggs and having bad quality your tissues break down and your body's not as strong and you have a decreased chance of getting pregnant even if we do IVF the most advanced treatment if you're a smoker that's because cigarette smoke is a toxin so we want you to eliminate as many toxins from your life as possible these toxins definitely include cigarette smoke marijuana they include other toxins like those found in plastics so BPA phthalate and pfcs so a lot of these BPA validates pfcs they can be found in some of the unnatural substances that we use in everyday life plastics Teflon things like that there are motor seats for paper sometimes you a receipt that uses that thermal paper that can actually have some of these chemicals in it so we want your body not to be absorbing these say yes to electronic receipts switch your cookware to be stainless steel something that's not Teflon based don't put things in plastics especially not heated plastic so don't put plastic in the microwave or the dishwasher make sure plastics are only for cool things because that heat with the plastic can leach some of those chemicals please remember just because something says bpa-free often they're replacing it with other plastics which are also harmful so I recommend no plastics if you're coming in my office and you got a plastic water bottle I'm usually telling you to go get pull them around or glass or something else different that can help us limit those toxins to your body now one thing to consider is that your diet definitely plays a role in your fertility it is hard to study diet and fertility that's one of the hardest things you can't do a randomized control trial which is our best type of trial to look at your diet and if you get pregnant so you're going to have to use common sense and use the literature that we have available what we know is that women who eat more of a healthy diet pattern high in fruits vegetables whole grains low in processed foods sugars and lower in meat tend to get pregnant faster they have higher levels of fecund ability which is a monthly pregnancy rate and so that's exactly what I tell my patients cut out processed foods cut out your refined carbohydrates and cut out your sugars as much as possible I'm not saying you can't have a cupcake on your birthday but I'm saying control these factors on a day to day basis you don't need dessert every single day so make sure that you're putting the healthy foods into your bodies meat are really interesting and there's definitely some studies showing that higher meat intake has lower rates of ovulation and lower rates of pregnancy and potentially higher rates of inflammation with endometriosis specifically red meat fish may have some anti-inflammatory benefit so when you group all meats together there may be a little hard to say for sure but I say limit meat servings to one per day fish are preferred over red meat so try to cut red meat out but overall just lean meat base and be careful on how you prepare me so you know frying meats and other things that is processing it and adding extra fats and foods into your body that maybe you don't need you do have to be careful with fish you don't have too many servings of fish because you can have mercury overload a mercury can damage your cells as well so I usually tell my patients to limit fish servings to three to four times per week it really does depend on what type of fish you're eating the bigger the fish the more mercury it has them a littler fish that's because big fish eat little fish but in general I'm really encouraging a plant-based eating program doesn't mean you can't ever eat meat but fill your day with as many fruits vegetables whole foods and whole grains as you can and then there's the other things so what about coffee what about alcohol truthfully with alcohol if you're trying to get pregnant and you know you're pregnant you should stop drinking alcohol completely fetal alcohol syndrome is a real thing it is associated with mental retardation and developmental defects and babies and sometimes it is not perfectly correlated with the amount of alcohol that you may drink during your pregnancy so if you are pregnant no alcohol what are you're trying to get pregnant I get asked this all the time can I have a glass of wine here there now I always say a glass of wine here there is not the end of the world but if you're having it constantly then that may stress your system a little bit so don't let that be your crutch that you're going to if you're stressed out let it be just simply here and there for occasions and preferably in the follicular phase of your cycle and on the luteal phase when you could be pregnant so alcohol at extreme moderation and not at all if you're pregnant coffee well I'm a huge coffee drinker I've got my mug right over here what studies have shown about coffee is that the more coffee you drink the higher your risk of miscarriage there have not been birth defects associated with coffee usually we recommend about 200 milligrams or less of coffee a day that's of caffeine and so that's about one cup of home brewed coffee now you have to be careful because of how strong you or somebody else may bring your coffee interestingly places like Starbucks one tall coffee this their brew has about 200 milligrams of caffeine one shot of expresso has 75 so if you want to get a grande latte that's 150 milligrams that'd be great but if you want a grande brew that would be too much so please know what you're consuming their tea and chocolate have much lower levels of caffeine in them and so those are usually not concerning unless you're drinking or eating a ton of time so I wouldn't worry about that importantly you need to look at the rest of your health some women have medical problems and you're on medications to manage those some of these medications may not be compatible with the pregnancy and you may need to see your primary care doctor or your specialist in order to transitions to medications that are safe and pregnancy and not to rat a genic teratogenic means associated with birth defects there are definitely some demonstrated medications that your doctors will put you on knowing that they cause birth defects that you need to switch off of before you get pregnant so if you are taking any prescriptions medications please let your care team know that you are trying to get pregnant or want to get pregnant and make sure that your medications are appropriate for that all right and some basics about timing first of all I've said this over and over again if your periods are not regular go see a doctor right away you don't need to worry about exactly what you're eating I mean those things can be helpful but you need help figuring out if you have a medical problem causing your abnormal cycles but if your periods are irregular that is step number one so you can simply just stop your birth control pills or stop your contraception or stop using condoms and start having unprotected sex if you want to be as laid-back as possible about it you could just have unprotected sex about two times per week and you should hit the fertile window so 2 to 3 times per week and you are going to be fine now if you want to be more specific if we were gonna pick one or two days for you to have sex the entire time in your cycle it's going to be while the egg is released the egg dr. ovulation lives for about 24 hours that means for us that we really want to target while the egg is enroute getting sperm to that egg so that would be the day before and the day that you are ovulating will be to talk two days in your whole cycle I dive into this really hard in the ovulation episode that I'll link at the end of the video and here it is right here but that means that you may want to consider tracking your cycles in some fashion 100% I recommend using an app to track because you can at least see if your cycles are regular if you search to notice that your cycles are varying by more than one to two days per month there may be something going on and maybe they're not regular but presuming their regular most apps will use a mathematical calculation based on the average length of a luteal phase to tell you when you are ovulating in the five days prior they're gonna say this is your fertile window and that's gonna be the target of time to have sex now for most women with regular cycles that's accurate and you can use that if you want to be more specific you can use other metrics of fertility awareness methods or a fans including BBT so basal body temperature o P K's ovulation predictor kits and CMM or cervical mucus monitoring these things will let you target the day of ovulation better so you can really target in on that best day to time intercourse a couple questions I get asked all the time are does it matter for sex the position or if we have sex every day let me just dispel these if you sex everyday people have sex every day it doesn't matter you don't now need to go start having intercourse less often as you're trying to get pregnant that doesn't make any sense the truth is we don't want to burn you out on intercourse if you're not having it that much every other day during the Fertile window is one option two to three times per week is one option targeted solely on the day of predicted ovulation as an option or every day if that floats your boat whatever works for you the other is that no position is better than another one so as long as a jocular is achieved then good for you so you don't have to worry about is this better than that what's going to be the best as long as that job is completed you are good and there's no need to have to sit with your legs up in the air for 10 minutes or not go right to the bathroom urinating after intercourse can prevent urinary tract infections and so feel free to go to the bathroom right away the sperm are rapid swimmers and they swim out of that ejaculate into the cervix and into the uterus very very quickly alright guys so in general you want to adopt healthy eating patterns you want to avoid toxins you want a time intercourse the best as possible you want to start a prenatal and you want to check with your other medications and the last thing I want to say is that you should reduce stress and as much as possible we know that high cortisol levels can be hard for the body to interpret if it's a good time to get pregnant or not high cortisol is from high stress and this means that your body may think that you're living in a pandemic or famine or a warzone and it may prevent you from getting pregnant this doesn't mean you should be stressed about getting stress or that there's some magic pill that you can take you need to find a good support system so please please don't let the burden of infertility become too much please share your journey with those around you please find support whether it's online through our great community there or in other places please take time to be honest and open with your partner if you're doing this with a partner then you guys need to be on the same page develop your relationship as you're trying to get to this next stage of parenthood also don't dismiss the important lowering stress properties of taking care of yourself getting enough sleep per night exercise acupuncture meditation journaling mindfulness the things exist for a reason getting in tune with yourself trying to be the best version of you possible and try not to let stress dictate your life is gonna set you in the best position to get pregnant moving forward I want to say a huge thank you to you guys I just love you guys so much thanks for subscribing to this channel and if you're watching this and you haven't please subscribe and click the thumbs up button as always you can listen to the as woman podcast to get more information there I have topics on basic and fertility stuff fertility treatments diving into a hard depth reviewing literature science and I'm just talking about being a woman in medicine you can always follow me on instagram at natalie crawford m.d. and i just want to thank you guys so so much you

Channel: Natalie Crawford, MD

Views: 383,887

Keywords: Natalie Crawford, Natalie Crawford MD, As a Woman, fertility, natural fertility, infertility, pregnancy, pregnant, getting pregnant, trying to conceive

Id: j4eF4htvDGo

Length: 14min 30sec (870 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 22 2020