Gut Health + Infertility
Around 2500 years ago, the Ancient Greek physician Hippocrates said, “All disease begins in the gut,” but for some reason, it’s taken us a while to get the memo. And as a consequence, we’re now seeing record high cases of allergies, heart disease, alzheimers, infertility, food intolerances, anxiety and depression, asthma, cancers, inflammation, and chronic autoimmune disorders like psoriasis, eczema, and Type I Diabetes in people of all ages. You might think those things are genetic or just happen to occur as we get older, but it all stems from the gut.
Your microbiome is the totality of microbes, all their genetic elements, and how they interact with all the bacteria that live in and on us. It weighs about two pounds and is made up of over 100 trillion bacteria cells.
You were probably taught all about your organ systems, DNA, and chromosomes in school, but there’s a good chance your science teacher never told you that those things only make up 1% of who we are on a cellular level. That stuff only accounts for about 10 trillion cells, which means we’re actually 10x more bacteria than human. This whole time you thought you were made up of bones, organs, muscles, and tendons when you’re really more like a walking, talking rainforest with thousands of small ecologies hard at work.
All of those tiny microbes play a significant role in how your brain functions, the foods you crave, and even how stressed, anxious, or depressed you feel. Microbes are everywhere-in our mouth, eyes, organs, and skin; but the vast majority are in the digestive tract. This is why the ecology within your gut is the foundation for your overall health.
Your Digestive Tract is the Central Control System of Your Body
Approximately 80% of your body’s immunity is found in the lining of your gastrointestinal system. This means you can’t ever completely heal any health condition without treating the gut as well. And in most cases, you can look to the gut for why that condition is even present in the first place. Who would have thought that everything from knee pain, to brain fog, and even infertility can get better when you learn how to utilize the power of the microbiome?
It all starts with the digestive tract. When it’s healthy, you’re healthy. But when it’s out of whack, your body isn’t able to respond effectively to the world around you. This imbalance leads to food cravings, an inability to properly absorb nutrients, and even autoimmune disorders where the body begins to attack itself.
It may seem like we’re all doomed, but there’s good news. You can heal your gut! Better yet, you can grow your future baby’s microbiome right from the start to give them a healthy head start in life.
The Bacteria Your Baby is Exposed To During Their Birth Affects Their Health For The Rest of Their Life
Unborn babies have little or no microbiome and acquire their first strains of bacteria when they pass through the birth canal. The bacteria your baby is exposed to at birth affects their health for the rest of their lives. This is why it’s important to have a vaginal birth when possible, avoid the use of antibiotics, breastfeed as long as you can, and enjoy lots of skin-to-skin contact. Everything your baby is exposed to in the first 2-3 years establishes the microbiome that they’ll have forever.
So whether you think it’s time to improve your gut health to help with infertility or to simply set your future children up for happy, healthy lives, there are a few things you can do.
What You Can Do Right From The Start To Grow A Healthy Microbiome In Your Baby
We live in an over-sanitized world that exposes us to so many toxic chemicals in the name of being “clean.” But the germs everyone fears aren’t as evil as people think they are. They’re just misunderstood. Most bacteria are beneficial, even critical for our survival. Plus, bacteria is everywhere (good and bad) so perhaps we should call off the war on germs and instead find ways to expose ourselves to more in a healthy way.
Probiotic Supplements
The easiest thing you can do to begin balancing the bacteria diversity in your gut is to take a probiotic. This is especially important for anyone who’s ever taken antibiotics, which is most of us. In fact the average adult in the United States is prescribed 17 rounds of antibiotics before they’re 20 years old! And it takes years for your microbiome to recover after just a single round. While probiotics are good, more is not better. We recommend starting low and slow so your gastrointestinal tract can ease into all this new TLC you’re giving it.
Foods that Heal and Seal The Gut
Bringing in a bunch of new strains of bacteria isn’t the only step you need to take to repair your microbiome. More importantly, we need to create an environment in the gut that favors the growth of more beneficial bacteria.
Leaky gut is a term that’s trending lately, but most people don’t really understand what it means. Leaky gut is the driver for virtually every chronic illness we suffer from today. It happens when the lining of our gastrointestinal tract gets worn down from toxins, opportunistic bacteria, and parasites. Once there’s an opening in the wall lining, pathogens escape the GI tract, travel through the bloodstream, and wreak havoc on our health.
But how does this happen? Poor diet, antibiotics, low digestive enzymes, exposure to toxins, blood sugar imbalances, and stress are all to blame.
The good news is that eating gelatin-rich healing foods like bone broth and meat cooked with the bone in can repair a leaky gut. These foods seal and heal the mucosal lining of the digestive tract, help regenerate cells, and aid in the absorption of nutrients. Adding bone broth to your diet will also support your immune system, strengthen your connective tissue, repair healthy joints, and give your hair and skin a major glow-up.
Fermented Foods
When you eat food, you’re not just feeding you. You’re feeding the trillions of microbes within your gut, and those little guys are picky eaters. They like variety and prefer healthy nutrient-dense foods over processed stuff. Adding in fermented foods and beverages like kefir, sauerkraut, kimchi, and kombucha is the best way to repopulate your gut with a diverse variety of healthy bacteria. Expanding your diet to improve the fertility of the microbiome will also improve your own fertility!
Heal Your Digestive System and Improve Your Fertility
When your body is experiencing digestive problems, you end up living in a constant state of fight or flight. This is terrible for your fertility. Plus it’s just simply no fun constantly feeling like you’re in survival mode. Let’s change that.
Book an appointment at Magnolia Wellness to learn how to get the blood flow and life-force energy back into your womb area to boost your fertility using a combination of functional medicine and Traditional Chinese Medicine. Better yet, join us for our next Overcoming Infertility webinar. It’s free. You have absolutely nothing to lose and everything to gain.