Like I can't be in a lab not talking to

humans.

So I really like was in this like unknown for a long period of time.

And the month before graduation, I got a pamphlet from a naturopathic medical school at my parents' house.

I happened to be there that weekend, which wasn't frequent.

And I like look at the mail and I was like, what is this? Mind, body, spirit, what is this? And I like rip it open.

And it was literally like I was on the floor and just like having this moment of this is it.

It's a big one.

What are some underlying factors behind recurrent pregnancy loss that do get overlooked in that standard fertility workup?

Yeah, I think one of the biggest ones is probably thyroid autoimmune condition.

And all degree of autoimmune conditions are kind of disregarded or passed over in the process of really addressing and trying to understand why someone had a pregnancy loss.

The second and third, I would say, are actually male factors, which in the research that I've seen are bigger factors than the side of the female.

So the big ones for men are methylation and estrogen.

methylation dysregulation, and blood sugar and insulin dysregulation.

And those two, there is definitely an impact to the sperm.

So once we get a genetic or like a chromosomal issue identified, why isn't that always the end of that conversation?

So can you speak more to that of like how much nonsense that is? Yeah.

So this idea of 35 being the cutoff comes, at least what I trace back to, is 1800s France, where there are records of churches, not science, churches, recording that women were not coming to get their children baptized after the age of 35.

And to me, I was like, OK, well, what's life expectancy for women? 1800s France.

And the life expectancy on average was like 32.6, 32.8, something like that.

And then you go one step further and like, what are they dying from? And the biggest cause of death for women in that time period was childbirth, right? So they were literally dying trying to have a child.

And to me, that's a really like we've come so far from that place.

Right.

going on under the surface.

Um, I'd love to just, yeah, hear a little bit about you and your journey in the, in the naturopathic endocrin- en- endocrinology and then the fertility work that you do.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

So I have been a naturopathic doctor for 20 years.

I got into it because I really believed in this, uh, mind, body, spirit.

I believe that we're integrated as a human, so why shouldn't our medicine be? Uh, so it, it, like, drew me long before I knew what naturopathic medicine was and, uh, went to naturopathic medical school.

Loved it, loved it.

Loved all the things.

Fantastic.

... yeah.

Like, instead, what is the priority? How do we want to address these things in the, like, starting at the foundation of what makes the body function properly, right? Gut health is gonna be way more vital than giving you end quality supplements because if your gut health is shot, sorry, you're not gonna absorb any single nutrient that you put into your body.

So, uh, like, thinking of it as foundations and kind of building up rather than trying to hit it all at once simultaneously seems to work really, really well for us.

And then our protocols are really designed based on, I try, I c- I call it, like, research informed rather than research based, right? So research based is like, we read the research, we follow it exactly to the T, and we hope for the best.

Research informed is we take the research into account, but we filter it through clinical experience, through what's happening for you, the person in front of us, and what's the, the, your body giving as feedback through the process.

And as we're going through that, we may say, "Actually, research says-" 400 milligrams of CoQ10, but you actually need 800 milligrams of CoQ10 based on your epigenetics, your gut, your et cetera, et cetera.

So it's being able to drive a process for someone based on what's happening under the surface, and clarity about that-

[laughs]

So listen closely.

Welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me, Shauna.

I'm Dr. Amatma.

Good to meet all of you.

And for like, why are we talking? So for the last 20 years, I've been a naturopathic fertility specialist.

And what I've seen again and again in my practice is the burnt out women trying to have babies.

So in that space, like how would you, apply that to i mean for me i want to say marketing but i want to take it one step back how would you then apply that to just a work-life balance i say that very loosely yeah

Um, so what are some of the things that can put us in that survival mode, right? 'Cause we can talk about like wars and threats and so on and so forth, and of course these are very real examples, but they're usually like less than 1% of the time what's happening in modern times, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

I think it's, um, I group it into several categories.

So one we've talked about already, which is the things that trigger our immune system, and I feel like autoimmune conditions is part of that.

Mold I feel like is a bigger and bigger part of that in a very, like, scary way.

Um, so we're seeing that a lot.

We're also seeing, um, like uncovered dental infections that are happening kind of under the radar.

[chuckles] Just keep trying for next year." Um, and then the other advice is like get IVF, right? Like can you speak to what holistic fertility is and how perhaps that differs?