Which one of these women looks more likely to get pregnant?
We see a very common type of patient coming to acupuncture for fertility here in San Francisco. This type of patient is what I like to call a Damn Hard Worker. She has generally made a very nice career for herself, has a razor sharp intellect, and takes obsessively good care of her body. There is practically a socio-economic strata made just for her in cities.
She goes to yoga, she goes to boot-camp, she goes to her Bar Method or spinning classes and approaches these with the same focused determination that she’s been applying to her job for the last decade. She excels at everything, has a killer toned figure, loves her smoothies and salads and 1-2 cups of coffee per day. She gets up for market hours and can still make it through a fancy dinner outing at the end of the day. She basically doesn’t know how to not be perfectly driven.
So when it comes time to have a baby she approaches it with the same focused determination…
And the longer the process takes, the harder she works at it and the more she wants it- because she’s never not gotten what she wants. In Chinese Medicine we have a diagnosis for this that we call Liver Qi Stagnation and it loosely translates to mean Unfulfilled Desires. The irony of this diagnosis is that the more you want something, the more stagnation builds in your liver and literally blocks the whole process. We are extremely effective at counteracting this blockage with herbs and acupuncture, but it requires some participation on the part of the patient. So in order to enlist the cooperation of my patients I’ve put together a very basic fertility checklist called the UnBoot Camp.
1. CHILL… do not work out every day. It takes energy for the body to make a baby. If you are constantly expending your max daily allotment at the gym, and work, and out with friends then the body will not have any left for reproduction. And do not go around doing high impact work-outs while you’re waiting for an embryo to implant (this is the time after ovulation when waiting to see if you’ve conceived). You’ll shake the little embryo right out of there.
2. EAT FAT… it was a sad sad day half a century ago when fat became the scapegoat of modern marketing. Fat is good for you. Especially the saturated kinds like butter and coconut oil. Eat abundantly of these. The body’s entire neurotransmitter system is coated in fat so it literally makes you happy. We store hormones in our fat. Too little, no baby. Too much, no baby.
3. SLEEP MORE… when I ask my patients how much they are sleeping I frequently hear numbers like 5, 6, 7 hours. Why? Sleep is wonderful. It is so restorative and your body does it’s best healing and balancing while sleeping. Again, if you aren’t storing up some reserves during this time, where is your body going to draw from to support and grow a whole fetus?
4. FOR GOD’S SAKE EAT NORMAL MEALS… when I see some of the extreme restrictions people put on their diets my immediate reaction is, “Why are you punishing yourself?” Eat regular meals, at regular intervals, every day. Cook your food. Get plenty of protein. Listen to your body and give it what it wants. Are you constantly thinking about a big juicy burger? Remember Liver Qi Stagnation?
5. GET OUT OF YOUR HEAD… you don’t make a baby in your brain so why are you spending all of your time there? Take up a meditation practice. Download a breathing exercise into your iPod or mp3 player and do it for several minutes a day. Let your belly be soft and full to increase blood flow to this region. And if you’re really ready to go for it… SIT STILL while you do this. Find a peaceful place inside yourself that is free of time and obligations and the pressures you put on yourself. Invite a relaxed and balanced version of YOU in. You never know what might follow.
*photo acknowledgement FreeDigitalPhotos.net
