Are you too sick to get pregnant? Intestinal health and its relationship with infertility
Whether you’re having trouble getting pregnant or have had one or more miscarriages, you’re not alone. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), about 10 percent of women (6.1 million) in the United States ages 15 to 44 have difficulty getting pregnant or staying pregnant. Currently, to treat infertility, drugs are used to stimulate ovulation or adjust hormone levels. There is intrauterine insemination, commonly known as artificial insemination, where the woman is injected with specially prepared sperm. There is also assisted reproductive technology (ART). ART works by removing eggs from a woman’s body and then mixing them with sperm to produce embryos. The embryos are then put back into the woman’s body.
Now, I’d like to talk about an alternative approach. Let’s not just focus on hard get pregnant but get the body healthy enough to become pregnant. It’s one thing to get pregnant. Another is to achieve a healthy pregnancy and deliver a healthy baby. Standard treatments do not address the general health of the mother. This information also applies to women who plan to have a child in the future or want to achieve general good health and weight loss goals.
Before you get pregnant, you must first address and restore the integrity and functioning of your health and immune system. This seems to be lacking in standard care. When a woman becomes pregnant and also suffers from leaky gut, sugar balance problems, multiple food allergies or intolerances, or toxicity, she is putting her baby at risk of developing autism, eczema, asthma, and food allergies. Pregnancy is quite stressful for the body and if you do not start the process in optimal conditions, it will take its toll on your health and that of your baby. In my practice, my primary goal is to address a woman’s general health and determine if she is healthy enough to become pregnant. If a mother has health problems, it is most likely that she will pass them on to her child.
There are several conditions that can decrease a woman’s ability to get pregnant, including digestive problems, immune disorders, adrenal fatigue, blood sugar problems, food allergies, chronic inflammation, hormonal imbalances, nutritional deficiencies, and toxicity.
The first place I like to start, before tackling anything else, is the digestive system. In simple terms, the digestive system works as follows: we eat (good diet or bad diet), digest (complete or incomplete), then eliminate (good bowel movement or poor bowel movement) or assimilate (good absorption or malabsorption). The gut is commonly known as the “second brain” because the enteric nervous system is a collection of neurons in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract that constitutes the “gut brain” and can function independently of the nervous system. This system controls motility, exocrine and endocrine secretions, and microcirculation of the GI tract. It is also involved in the regulation of immune and inflammatory processes. Hippocrates has also said that all disease begins in the intestine. About 70 to 80 percent of the body’s immune system is located in the digestive tract.
Poor digestive health involving acid reflux, bloating, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), or constipation is an extremely common and overlooked condition in this country, affecting an estimated 70 million Americans. This represents billions of dollars in annual sales of over-the-counter digestive aids that only provide temporary relief. Unresolved or ignored digestive problems lead to worse problems down the road. With any health condition, including pregnancy, it is important to restore gut health.
When trying to achieve a pregnancy, the focus cannot be solely on the ovaries, fallopian tubes, or other parts of the reproductive system. Because “every system affects every other system”, the body must be considered as a whole. Infertility is often a side effect of something else. For example, poor gut health leads to blood sugar problems and that leads to constipation. With constipation, the body can’t get rid of unnecessary hormones, and estrogen builds up. Food that is not digested properly due to a lack of hydrochloric acid (HCL) results in fermented, putrid food that goes rancid in the stomach. Low HCL results in reduced ability of the gallbladder to secrete bile for the emulsification of fats. Low function of the gallbladder causes a sluggish liver and it is unable to efficiently detoxify the body of hormones, toxins and other metabolites. When the gallbladder malfunctions, there is no signal for the pancreas to secrete digestive enzymes. Thus, poorly digested food moves to the intestines. Rotten food in the intestines causes inflammation, infection, and intestinal permeability, also known as “leaky gut.” This prolonged stress depletes the adrenal glands, and weak adrenal glands negatively affect the thyroid. This progress continues until the underlying problem is corrected.
A healthy gastrointestinal tract does not allow the absorption of bacteria, harmful food, or undigested food particles into the bloodstream. Chronic inflammation caused by a poor diet, poor blood sugar control, and chronic stress lead to harmful substances and undigested food being dumped into the bloodstream. Once again, this is leaky gut. These harmful particles are misidentified as foreign invaders or antigens that are attacked by the immune system. A stressed immune system leads to other health problems which in turn can result in infertility.
Proper bowel care requires supervision by a qualified healthcare professional. To repair the gut, the first step is the elimination of foods that create chronic immune responses. These are most commonly gluten, dairy, eggs, corn, soy, and yeast.
A health professional would help determine which foods to eliminate from the diet. Other nutritional strategies include: removal of inappropriate organisms such as bacteria, parasites, fungi, and yeasts, replacement of digestive enzymes, HCL, bile, and fiber, to fully digest protein, fats, and essential nutrients, repopulation with abundant probiotics to replace an overabundance of bad bacteria with good bacteria, and supporting the regeneration and healing of the gastrointestinal mucosa.
Repairing a ruptured intestine is not easy and takes time. But well worth the effort. It is important to restore bowel function whether one is planning a pregnancy or not.
For those women planning to become pregnant or trying to become pregnant, just remember that improving your overall health will benefit the health of your child. Other organs in the body may still need evaluation, such as the liver, kidneys, thyroid, and adrenal glands, but many of these problems cannot be resolved until the intestine is examined first.
