I want the fairy tale, I want the prince charming.
She how do I put this? Isn't a fan of my kissing style with.
A boyfriend and girlfriend for about twelve hours. He's in a trash bin. He's non recyclable catching them.
Mus I love being love, I love love.
On today's episode of Where's Your Head At, we are welcoming nat crn goodis healthcare practitioner and natural fertility expert to the studio.
It's time to chat all things women's health and find out more about how you can improve your fertility. I'm also going to ask a few questions about mine.
Stick around to hear all things hormones, birth control, and PMS. Where's Your Head At is a podcast that talks all things relationships, breakups, reality TV, trending shows, and everything in between.
This is your new go to destination for laughs, gossip, intimate details, advice, and.
Much more.
At Thank you for having me, I'm good.
Thank you for coming in. Yeah.
So, Natt is my natural path and she has helped me so much.
Like obviously, I've done it all.
I've done the pill, I had the rod in my arm, hated them all, had the marina and then I kind of spoke to Nat actually about taking out the marina, and she was like, this is a great idea, right, I loved it first.
I did love it at first.
I did love it first, and I think that's important to actually point out because a lot of women do love it first, and there's nothing wrong with that if it works for you. About having all the information.
It's interesting, right because I was like the biggest advocate for the marina, which I kind of feel a little bit bad about it.
I don't think that you have to feel bad because it works until it doesn't.
True.
So the first my first experience, because I don't know if I've told you this, Matt was a really great experience. Actually getting it in was a terrible experience. But after it was put in, I had five years of bliss, like didn't think about contraception once.
It was great.
The marine is the right, Yeah, no, the marina goes Oh that thing that you just had goes in the.
Yeah, it sits in like a little T shape in the uterus. Yeah, it's like a little it literally is a rod that sits in there.
Say it's like oh okay, well yeah, I like I don't know much about this sort of stuff.
So you're about to get it in education. So yeah, so great experience. Second time I had it in, I went under because of my first bad experience of getting it put in. But then after that I felt really uncomfortable and like during sex it was quite sore, just you know when intuitively something feels wrong, like I felt like they put it in wrong.
But I didn't want to be like, hey, I.
Think you put this in wrong, because they'd probably be like, what are you talking about?
You know nothing?
How do you know how you feel?
That's the thing, right, is like we aren't really taught growing up to listen to our bodies.
We're not taught at all. And this is my I'm not here to say you should or you shouldn't. I just want everyone to have information, and especially I've got a fifteen nearly fifteen year old, and the more I can help her understand, the less she fears it, the more she knows when she's actually fertile when she's not, and she can make choices around that. But to flatline your hormones all the time, it doesn't come without issues.
As you worked out, and I'm so interested to see how you feel moving forward, not being on any birth control because women will say to me nine and a half times out of ten, I didn't know what it was like to feel like me. Yeah, because it changes your brain, it changes your hormones, and so therefore you don't feel like you actually are a different version of yourself. And I think that's what a lot of women are discovering.
I already feel better.
I'm not gonna lie like when I initially got the Marina taken out, I was in the dumbs like I was.
Soty got it. I googled it and it said I was having a hormone crash.
I think, would you say that the marina and that sort of stuff suppress your natural life?
Well, the marina works with the bit differently, so the pill definitely flatlines everything. We know that, so the hormones within the oral contraceptive pill just keep everything the same.
Correct it It's.
Not because there's there's benefits to your hormones cycling and how you feel and your mentrual cycle is different every single day. If you think about what my hormones were doing yesterday and what they're going to do tomorrow is completely different, and how is going to be correct and sometimes that's a good thing and sometimes but having said that, there are times where you're at your peak and you're awesome, and you would notice that whereas you don't get those
ebbs and flows on birth control. And let's just say also, there are people on birth control for many reasons, not just contraception. And so we're not sitting here going you should stop, but we've got to look at why someone's taking it.
For other reasons. Like I remember back at school, girls would take it, particularlyar their.
Skin up and stuff like that. Did you do it for weight loss? I don't know, you do.
I think you put it.
Yeah, you tend to most most girls put on weight. But the problem with the acne, which is really common, is it doesn't treat the reason why you're getting acne. So that's problem because when you come off, then your acne comes flooding back because it was never actually addressed. And the only way we can really know that is to test someone's hormones to see what they're doing. So it's a very end.
As a kid, that's probably something that's fucked up.
Well.
It can have long term This is the other thing. Any medication has side effects for implications and It's one thing to take it, but then what can you do whilst you're on that to support your body. We don't I live for this day where your GP says, hey, we're going to give you a marina, but we kind of know it does. I imbalance things, it does upset our gut health. It does that, which has a flow
on effect. How about also you take a multivitem multi mineral of fish oil and maybe some probiotics to support you and that when not there yet, that still doesn't We're.
Case a morning wine and an evening wine and.
It's like you're probably o ding on vitamins, so let's carry well.
Nah, I just sing up with so much other shit in my body, Like may as well like level it up with some clean stuff.
Yeah? Good, Absolutely.
Yeah.
It's definitely interesting because I had a chat with NAT and then I went to my gynecologist and he was like, this is a terrible idea. He's like, because I said, I just want to get it out and he was like, I'm going to give you a week.
To think about this, and I was like, so we can't get it out today and he was like no, he said.
Something that's stuck with me is he said, women aren't supposed to get their periods every month. Back in the olden days, women would get pregnant at like seventeen, and then they would probably keep getting pregnant throughout their life, and so you're not meant to have your period every month. And I was like, that just seems so contradictory to anything I've ever heard.
I this is a common conversation that people are having with their health providers, not all health providers, but to me, it is extremely lazy to suggest that you're not supposed to have a period, because here's the reality of that. Say you're seventeen and you fall pregnant and then you're lactating as well, so you're breastfeeding your baby. A lot of women don't get their period when they're breastfeeding, so you go through a period of time where you don't.
But the minute your body starts ovulating again, you're going to get a period. Now, if you fall pregnant again, then of course your period's going to go away. But if you don't, your period's still going to be there every month. So I was like, that doesn't even make sense, because if you're not pregnant or lactating, then you're going
to be hopefully ovulating and getting a period. I understand that times have changed, but to shut down any body system, it's like saying, oh, I don't think you need to move your bowels anymore. We're just gonna literally just gonna stop that. It's like, that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. There's nothing in our bodies that don't serve a purpose, so to suggest that, it's very common to suggest that, and it's believed that we don't need it.
But in the circles that I exist in especially, and I think you're going to see a lot more of this. In functional medicine, your period is really a report card of your hormones and you get that feedback every month, and if there's a problem with it, then you get to look at that and you go, Okay, i've had pain this month, or it hasn't been comfortable, or it was early or it was late, Like what is my body telling me? And you can use those symptoms and signs as clues as to what to do next.
Well, look, I.
Had a chat with you, and I think after coming off of contraception, sometimes it can be hard for women to get their period back, So you did an acupuncture point on me to help me get it back, and literally woke up the next morning had my period.
I was like fuck, I was. I was like, thank you that, but also damn it.
I think it was the sum of many things. I think it was the timing of the acupuncture. I think it was like, you know that there are accupuncture sequences that you can use to promote ovulation and get a period, and sometimes it can help to speed things up for women that have missed circles. Altogether, it can help with that as well. But I think it was it was good, good time, and look the thing when you came in you were also really sick. So I was like, we
actually have to treat that first. That's my priority over you getting your period back. You don't need your period right now to be healthy. We need to support your immune system a little bit better. But we got we got the double way.
I let's talk about acupuncture because I feel like not a lot of people know about it. I did a poll saying on my Instagram story saying have you ever had acupuncture before? And I think it was like thirty percent of people had had it and.
Different yes, yes, but different. So dry needling is really common. I think a lot of people have had dry needling. They've gone to their my therapists, their physio, their cairo, their osteo, and it's that dry need a little bit. It's a little bit stick it where it hurts and stimulated until you're like feeling like you're, you know, been nailed to a tree.
They were bringing it in my shoulder and that's something I actually felt, not too bad.
He walked out like this. So dry needling, yes, intercepts the message to the brain helps to relax the muscle. Like it's really good for musculoskeletal treatments where you get pain within the body. But acupuncture is another layer to that again where I mean, I went to university for four years to learn how to properly use acupunture as a tool. And there's many ways that it's it's been proven to work, and there's many theories about how it
does work. Traditionally, it's it's a little we use meridians and it's it's a little bit like corridors. I explain it that you open and close doors to influence how energy in the body is moving. And we say that every organ has a meridian and a maridian you know that goes down an arm or down a leg, and so we use various points to change the way the
body's working. Essentially, we know that certain points, well, there's one acupunch of point that's been researched because there's no money in researching acupunch of points, let's be honest, So why we're researching it. But it is definitely been proven to reduce all inflammation in the body.
Wow.
And because it communicates with the vagus nerves, so we know it works. And when it's been studied under observation where they've injected die. These meridians that I talk about, which aren't like a vein or a vessel or they're not actually something that we physically see, but they are a space that exists between muscles, tendons, bones, and there actually has been proven that the meridian exists. So we've
got a lot more to learn. But I want to know who the first person was that was sitting under a tree one day three thousand years ago. I'm just gonna pop this point down here and oh, look, your headaches gone. So there's lots of theories as to how it works. At the end of the day. I've been utilizing acupunchy inclining for nineteen years, which makes me feel really old, and the results still surprise me today, Like I'm still ark and it's you know, so it's good.
It's really good. And I think one of the other things we know is it reduces stress dramatically. So therefore, when someone we can move them out of a state of fight and flight into an optimal state, then their body's going to work better.
Now, I say, you've moved me out of some fut and fly.
At times I've gone in and there's been I've been like, I'm very stress and I'm not sleeping that well, had some acupuncture. I actually do feel better. Yeah, migraine's good for migraines.
I want to try it out.
Come on in.
Yeah, what you can do to me?
Go to the Pokoda tree.
You love it.
Take this challenge up for a challenge.
That's like, I'm riddled with anxiety.
Good right now, I love some Look did you bring your needles with you?
Actually? Sorry, we should have done.
This live done like that.
There's so many different forms of birth control, and obviously I have now at thirty, decided.
I don't want to put any more hormones in.
My body, and I have decided to use the Daisy, which I feel like a lot of people wouldn't.
Know about because I had no idea what the Daisy was.
So maybe do you want to explain the type of birth control that I am now using? Yeah?
Sure, So Daisy is a device almost like a tiny computer that you take your basil body temperature every morning and it records it. And we've been using basil body temperature to record cycles for ever, for moons, so that part of it's not revolutionary, But the fact is that Daisy learns your cycle and over around three months, it's able to become more and more accurate in pinpointing your fertile and nonfertile days. So it's pretty cool. It's been
around for around forty years. This technology and the rhythm that it used is based on over five million women's cycles, so you're getting very accurate data to the point where now it's around ninety nine point four percent accurate at pinpointing your non fertile days.
So what do you do?
So the device itself, you literally it kind of looks like a thermometer on one end, and it's got a little tiny computer on the other end, and you just every morning, Yeah, you just press the button, put it under your tongue and it beats when you finish, and that's it. That's all you have to do. And then you can sink, well you would want to probably at some point over the circle, sink it to the app so you can see the data on an interface.
And it says like fertile, not fertile, or like still working you out.
Yeah, so it's like a like a flow app sort of thing, but it grows off your temperature.
So great, great question. So yes, any app that you're using that you're not putting in data as your basil body temperature is only guessing your ovulation based on the last month. This is actually able to predict and confirm correct. So the temperature is the key. And there's other devices out there that use these methods.
Now.
The difference with Daisies, it's been around for forty years. It's the og. It's the og of this. I've I used to work with the brand years ago, and even then I was like it was streets ahead of the rest. One thing I do want to say is we can't call it contraception because it's not a device, so like a marina is an actual fitted device, it's not a
barrier method, so a condom is a protection contraception. But this is actually helping you to practice what we call fertility awareness, knowing when you're firtile, knowing when you're not, and doing whatever the hell you want to do with that.
It's up to you.
Yeah, you know what I mean. And then it's making decisions based on that, so you know, to me, it's a game changer for a lot of women. Some women can't be on birth control for whatever reason that doesn't agree with them. Some women want to come off but don't trust themselves. And also, if you've been on birth control for ten fifteen years and you come up off, you are not going to have a clue what's going on.
So to have something that confirms that you can feel like, Okay, well I'm actively watching what's happening here and learning is a bit of a backup plan.
Well that's interesting, right, because I feel like growing up, my mom has drummed into me, do not have sex without using protection you will get pregnant. And after talking to that, I realize that that's actually a full blown lie.
But we're all taught that. We're all taught that.
And it's just not the truth. Like only fertile for like twelve hours or something.
Well, yes, but then we would still if we wanted to be cautious, we would generally we pulled that over three or four days, just to be kextra safe. Well, A, we don't know at what moment of the day you ovulate. B Sperm can last for up to five days, so we want to have we want to be and date. This is the thing I love about Daisy. It's extremely conservative. It won't tell you your non fertile if you're not
out of that window, which is nice. Also, you'll be able to line it up with your own body clues. So when you ovulate, it's the day you look in the mirror and you're like, uh oh, really good to that.
I've heard this right you hotter?
Yeah you do right? Can I tell you you probably?
Yes?
Absolutely. But also just to the point of your mum, your body is trying to set you up for pregnancy every day of your circle. It doesn't mean you're fertile every day of your cycle. It's trying to put you in an optimum position for pregnancy to occur, and it should conception not happen. That is that egg that's released in ovulation and sperm not meat up. Then the circle repeats itself again and it gets ready for the next month. So you know, mum wasn't completely wrong in that sense.
She's wrong in the sense that you have sexful pregnant every time. But we've got to understand that, yes, there are certain peaks and troughins in the circle, but ovulation you generally feel good. Your body wants you to go out and meets I want to make a baby. It makes you lak fabulous I heard.
I've heard so many interesting things, like I heard that when you're ovulating, your face looks more symmetrical men, And then I've also heard that you want to dress and sexier clothes and.
Your voice is higher pitched because for some reason that's attractive. Sounds like a chipmunk and we attracted. Isn't that hilarious though? When you're ovulating, Oh yeah, you're like basically a whole vibe when you're ovulating, and then they would come down the other side and then you're like wanting to kill.
You didn't get me pregnant again. Oh God, how funny.
But it's all this stuff we were never really taught, or if we were, we never connected the dots. I think we were taught. Ovulation has to happen for conception at least there has to be an egg and a sperm have to meat, but the process of that only happening once a month. We weren't taught that. I wasn't anyway. The other thing I do want to say, and I
think it's really important. A couple of things I want to say to that is that barrier methods the only way to protect we protect ourselves against sti's And if you're on birth control, chances are unless you're using a condom, you're not protecting yourself. And I think that's really important, especially for I say, my you know, the younger generation, my daughter's generation. I'm like, you guys need to realize this.
We always promote safe sex. There's enough of it in Australia.
About enough sex, or.
I mean like promoting safe sex, like like I know, I spoken to a couple of like American girls, and over there it's pretty big that they're hounded that they need to wear condoms all the time.
But I don't feel like here it is.
I think everyone's a bit more like that.
We're too relaxed, relaxed about it.
Yeah, really relax it's almost like cool to not wear a condoms because it's like, I don't want to wear a condoms.
Especially if you're having sex with multiple partners. Like I think it's really important for young this next generation to realize that just being on the pill doesn't actually help you there at all. And I'm at the point where I also treat a lot of women for fertility reasons, and STIs can be a big factor for fertility as to why women aren't falling pregnant, and sometimes.
It's undiagnosed for a long time.
Yeah, what type of STDs would have?
What is it now?
Yeah?
Safe, change it to SDI. But STDs is what I grew up.
What type of STIs hinder women's fertility?
That I'll never forget the one time I sat in on surgery a laproscopy with a surgeon and it was for they were doing a laproscopy for fertility purposes. This woman wasn't falling pregnant. So the only way we can really know sometimes what is actually happening is with a laproscopy, you can't. Sometimes you can't detect endometriosis or other issues virus scan. In fact, most times you can't. I'd say every time, you can't always, And so it was for
fertility purposes. This one was trying to feel pregnant and she wasn't having any success. And that's I remember sitting there and he's gone and he's like, oh, she's full of chlamydia. Close her up, like that's it done, and so he could see it.
You can see it, you can see what does it look like.
I don't know. I'm a surgeon, how I'm picturing gremons. I would say it would look it would look pretty infected. I would say it would look pretty bad. And also, if you don't know this about you, I teach women how to read their signs. So this is gross, but women have discharge and it changes, and if you're not used to seeing that, and the pill will absolutely suppress that, then you don't even have these clues yourself. You don't
know how to read them. Whereas I have been through personally changes with my cervix where I've had to monitor that and you know that's because of abnormal patsmes and whatever else. And truly you can see when something's not healthy, and you can see when something is and it's either that it's a funny color, or it smells, or it just isn't right. So if that's you, and don't be
afraid of that. It's important. Your body is serving you signs that you need to go and then get answers to And a lot of these things are treatable.
Yeah.
Wow, Well chlamydia is just the two pills, isn't it.
Yeah, But I think the problem is when it's left over a long period of time, it becomes really tricky to treat and has other implications as well.
So didn't you think you had chlamydia and you were like, just give me the medication.
I had a girl message me and say, hey, I've got chamydia.
Get yourself checked.
And I was like all right. So I went to the doctors and he's like, well we need to test.
You're like day.
Mother was like, just give me the just told me this, but he's like, no, we insist you do the test as well.
So did the test. I actually never had an STI right, believe it or not.
So he took the meds and not.
Actually, I did the test before I took the med so I didn't. They came back and he told me we didn't have anything. But I was like, well, I've already taken the meds.
Yeah yeah.
I was like this girl message you saying that, don't waste your time like the test. But I did it. So I went and did it. And then yeah, but I've never had one.
You were negative.
I was negative. Good job positive mind though, yeah.
Saying positive, keeping the test, but yeah, I've never had one in my illustrious career.
Yeah, let's keep it that way.
I wanted to ask you a question in regards to the daisy because I found this interesting. So you told me that if the daisy comes up that I'm not fertile at the moment, that I can still technically have sex and it can be unprotected.
You can be unprotected, and and you won't for pregnant.
And I won't fall pregnant with a complete finish involved with ejaculation.
I don't want to. I think she's waiting for me. It is like charades.
Comes inside me. But I mean, here we are.
We were talking about periods discharge. Now we're at sperm and.
The generation ejaculation.
Absolutely once Daisy has learnt you. Yes. The nice thing about Daisy is that she will give you non fertile indication, fertile indication, and unsure, and if she's unsure, you should be unsure as well. That's where you would use a barrier method, especially as she's learning you. So she'll give you a red light for when you.
Are fertile, like, don't do it, it's red.
Unless you are obviously, we also women use it to for pregnant. Yeah, and Daisy can also tell you if you're pregnant. That's something else that just to put on the radar.
Oh my god. So if the three lights come on, then I'll know I'm pregnant. I will have a heart attack.
But that's never happened to me, so so yeah, you can when you're When you're green, then you are absolutely out of the woods and you will not be in a position.
Green means thank you, Matt.
Yeah, he's smart.
To reassure everyone can.
Daisy will know if you're pregnant, which actually is amazing for the environment because plastic pregnancy tests and landfill and especially if you've been trying for a long time, you will go through a lot of those. So I've gone through a lot of pregnancy tests and I've always been on like hormonal contraception, so I'm really unsure why I have done them.
Also, though it seems like you're just being a bit dramatic.
Drama, but the efficacy of birth control. Birth control fails people all the time. Yeah, people feel pregnant whilst on birth control. So you know you're not crazy. Yeah, it does happen.
What was that trick you told me that the man just has to we.
Before Oh, that's withdrawal method. Yes, so if you are not if he's not ejaculating, and he's withdrawing the correct way, the correct method of withdrawal, that makes it ninety four percent effective. Is what I always learned when I did all of my education, is that you have to make sure that his peede. And if you were to have sex more than once in a sitting sitting, I don't you call that a session, then they need to pee again.
In between classifiers having sex.
Then if he is ejaculated, he needs to pee before he ejaculates again because they can still be live sperm, you know, in they're ready to in the chamber.
It's funny that we're a little lingo we've got going.
I just think a whole other topic is are recounting it when he ejaculates and finishes.
Because it is because she's not at any risk of making herself pregnant unless they're sperm.
There having but sex finishes when he finishes.
That's a whole.
Argue with the messenger. But yes, and obviously again it needs to be practiced with perfect use to be ninety four percent effective. You know, people will say, oh, but do you ejaculate them, like, yeah, well, hello, that could definitely result in pregnancy, So there's a reliability on the male to actually know that as well.
How does being on hormonal contraception affect your gut health.
Any medication, not just the pill? But I would say the pill is one of the most common medications that women use.
Would you say taking anything orally is going to like if mess you up?
Unfortunately, that's what we know. We know that it impacts the bacteria. We know that the pill specifically depletes vitamins and minerals except for iron. It's the only thing it doesn't deplete because you're not bleeding, so well, if you are, it's kind of controlled and a lot of women will use it for heavy bleeding without looking at while they're bleeding heavy, which is another conversation. So we know it does that, and it really on on the overall. It
really does disrupt the integrity of the gut. So that can be the gut wall, that can be the lining, that can be the bacteria and other things that exist. It's just that's just the way it is, just what it does.
I've spoken to.
You about how I'm a little bit worried about my gut health because I have been on for most antibiotics, like especially in the past year. I reckon I have just been doing like back to back antiotics, and I feel like I'm just so off balance. If anyone else is at home listening to this, also worried about their gut health, what's some things that people can do to really improve that.
I love that question. I think we underestimate food when it comes to we want the probot, it, give me the tablet, give me more, give me more things. Is there another thing that I can take for that?
What did I have the other day?
Oh, I have a sunburn and I was like, I was like, my girlfriend, I will just take a tablet that I'll get rid of it.
And then she's like, there's no tablet that fixes. That's my mentality.
I'll just like, you can take fish oil for some burn you can increase your dose. I don't advocate for you being some burnt, but but if you were to be, you can use fish or for the inflammation. It works really well.
I take three in the morning.
Three I would have probably added an extra dose in there just while you were burned. You might have need some more visits to the bathroom. But so pre and probiotics really important. Probiotics. We see them, you buy them
over the counter. They helped to re establish the good gut bacteria because after antibiotics, everything gets cleared out, and that it's like chopping down all the trees in a forest and then maybe just releasing some snakes and rabbits and that's it, and that's all you've got colonizing that that forest. What we you want to do is recolonize everything that's in the forest, and that takes time. But
also it's not just the probiotic, it's the probiotics. It's the foods that help the probotics to flourish that are actually more important. Than the probiotic. So foods that are rich in fiber are generally those that are the probiotics. So I love patients to have high fiber yeah, in their diet as a way of doing that. And then obviously less processed inflammatory foods, so the sugar, the gluten,
and the dairy. A lot of people can't have those in the first place, but if your gut's compromised, it's not really in its best performance to actually assimilate those, So we might need less of those whilst we're recovering, and then once we've recovered, we can introduce those foods.
Will we talking about high fiber stuff in hum? Was that on an episode?
Yeah, we were. We were talking about having more fiber.
I have to say so I've always advocate for high fiber, but actually in more recent times, I've been getting patients to have their fiber at the beginning of their meal and it's been an absolute game changer. It balances your blood sugar, which for my patients helps to balance their hormones. It reduces inflammation. So it would mean starting your meal with a small salad or eating your broccoli before your protein, or maybe a handful of almonds or a handful of popcorn.
It's kind of like you know how you stretch before a workout. It's like setting the gut up to digest.
So I like that I had an apple on the way here.
Good job, well done, because I was feeling up the car and I was like, Nat did tell me to have an apple?
And there was as I was waiting, it was just staring me in the face, and I was like, I'm gonna have to buy that.
You read something better than like two coffees for energy or something.
Probably they have good coffee as well. We have to have balance here, don't We.
Don't get up.
We've taken our lists on a coffee.
We sometimes talk about coffee for like fifteen minutes when we've like not had our coffee early enough in the morning.
It's not okay.
We're actually both like really raining it in this year because we were doing back to bad coff That's why.
We've got this small regular and they gave me a small and.
Like to take the small anything.
I tell you, if you were to have an apple, a handful of almonds, an apple and the coffee, your blood sugar wouldn't spik if if you just had either the coffee or just the apple. The will make the difference. So a bit of a combination. Also, you don't probably want the coffee on an empty stomach. You probably want to my This is.
Some information that I've always taken with me. My year ten drama teacher, she said she was like finishing her lunch because we come back from lunch and she was eating an apple, and she was like, an apple cleanses the pellet. It works better than the palette, palette your mouth. So I always eat an apple.
Last. There you go, cleans your mouth.
Out, beautiful. And he doesn't have to carry a toothbrush.
Well, I still carry a toothbrush. I'm really, I'm really.
Mouth Look, I'm just going to dumb myself in I start my date with coffee. What's something that I can do before that to kind of make what can I eat?
I guess? Or can I drink water?
You could? You could start with some fiber, like even just carrot, a handful of almonds, some raspberries. It doesn't have to be a lot. It doesn't have to be a lot at all, but it's probably going to spike your court. Well, it's going to spark your boy. Sugar and it's going to spik your quartersole depending on how you have your coffee, unless it's black. If it's black
and nothing else in it is different. But even then it's it's better, especially if we're talking about hormones that you have something with it.
Well, I start my morning with my vitamins, so I have my fish.
Oil that make you feel nauseous. Really, for like ten years, I can't have vitamins on an empty stomach.
Really, I do it like thirty minutes because I've got some stuff that apparently meant to start your metabolism. Good vinegar and the one that starts with G glu.
Yeah, I can't pronounce it.
It's either glue to thion or glue to mine.
It's something like that. It's meant to start your metabolism. So that's in there. Then there was something that I got for male tobido that's in.
There, Horny goat we.
Four seasons. Then I've got my PCT. I just got everything in there. I just take it and showing off.
Well, I'm proud of you. You can have it on an empty stomach, because I sure as heck can't.
Well, I try to have my smoothie, right, within half an hour or I would have faced the day with it.
Yeah.
Okay, Well what's your top three vitamins that people should be taking?
Man, that's a good question. Like I said, you can't outsupplement a bad diet. So starting with nutrition for me is far more important than the vitamins that you can take. To me, they're the icing on the cake. So if you don't have a known issue and you're on birth control, I would definitely be saying a multi vitem, multi mineral FISI or probiotic if you're not, and then I would still probably say, let me think about this. Vitamin D
are probiotic, and magnesium. Magnesium, magnesium, v vitamins and zinc are all together generally in formulas. Magnesium's hands down the one thing we can't get enough of through food because of a couple of reasons. We've sterilized our soils, so we're not getting it in the actual food itself or enough in the food itself. But secondly, we're all living very far paced, highly stressed lives, and higher stress requires more magnesium, so we're depleted, and then we depleted more.
So yes, I would say magnesium is a game change.
I take made by itself and magnesium with the B three. But then I also take zinc by itself in the morning.
End.
But you you're like a walking farmer.
I was just about to say, you really are. That's how your cash money is going mad?
F Do you feel good generally? Though?
Well, it's so funny.
Girl I was dating a couple of years ago, went to her family Christmas and her I was like, I'm just fucking.
Tired all the time.
I'm like, I'm so tired, and she said, oh, my husband was, and then he got on like this plan, this plan of like vitamins, and it made him feel better.
And ever since then, I've just done it.
And do you feel better than men?
Sometimes you feel down, but for a better part, I feel good. Yeah.
Good.
So it's a tip.
Like all my girlfriends I have had over the years. They always laugh because I always sit there on a Sunday like tipping them out. My roomies would walk in and that seeming like divving them out, and I got them onto it as well, get them onto a plan of it all.
Absolutely absolutely. I think that there's so much merit to it, and I think that the more we can actually work out actually what's actually happening for us and making it detailed.
Magnesium.
I used to have magnesium baths as well, in magnesium salt.
Do you write that, Yes, absolutely, it's great for recovery.
My dad just get them through work like samples are like so the.
Perfect Okay, Well, look, let's talk all things in fertility next.
You're just.
What do you think of this?
Like, this is not a this is not a one on one appointment.
Math al right, Like I said earlier, I've been what would you say, diagnosed or told that I am infertile. So I'm shooting blanks.
How long ago was that diagnosis?
Oh twenty twenty okay.
And you had your sperm tested.
Because well I had understanded testicles when I was born, and then they told my parents around the age I was twenty five that I should get a tested. Right then, I want to actually clear the air on this. My girlfriend at the time said, my ejaculation is the same consistency as a guy she used to sleep with who had the phasectomy.
There is no correlation to that at all.
My doctor told me that, but it did something that I was like, oh, we're going I told my mum and.
She said at this age, they said to get tested, so I did, and then.
You knew about the underscended testing, Yes, I knew.
So that's when I told my mum and she said about this age they said to do that. That doctor clarified that there's no connection through that. So it's just one of those things that happened to be set and then was brought me to this this outcome.
Yeah.
So I mean it's interesting because a lot of men won't know that they potentially don't have live sperm until they try and ready to have children, or they've been trying for a year or more. And so I'm in a different you are in a very different and unique position. There's always a reason someone doesn't have sperm in the ejaculation and so, and it's not usually where you'll start. So I have to often prompt patients to say, could you see if there's a var seal or there's some
type of blockage or something. It's not the first place that they look, which blows my mind because it makes sense to look there.
Anyway, How would you be able to tell that there is a blockage.
They would have they could do an ultrasound, They might have to actually have a look and see.
I've had a couple of ultrasounds on my balls over the years, right, Like I remember one time a girl was feeling it. She said that lump doesn't feel good.
Right, and there was nothing wrong, and they descend this is like personal, but they descending.
I had the surgery when I was a year old.
Yeah, right, well, I mean there's a couple of things that they haven't tried to do a biopsy to see if there's lives.
So that's the surgery, right, Yes, So the doctor said, either I do the surgery now I find out and I live my life knowing, or I wait till I'm actually trying with a girl.
Then you're going to have.
The best right chance of if to get the sperm and put it into an egg for ivy death.
Right.
So he said, I recommend doing it then because and I want to go get it done, but I'm sort of like, do I need to right now?
And how much is it going to cost?
It's gonna be like six grand back here, imagine what it is now.
Yeah, well, I mean there's there's a chance that there is still sperm.
Yeah, there's a very high shoe. So this I got sixty six percent chance, Yeah.
Which is great. So I have my little boy has a condition called cystic fibrosis. They also have an issue where basically they're not ejaculating live sperm either, So I will go down this path with him. So it's interesting to have the conversation. But what I would still say is you still want to do whatever you can to support whatever might be there. Of course, and sperm is interesting.
Sperm regenerates every one hundred and twenty days, so what you if you are ejaculating spom, what you ejaculate now and what you ejaculated in one hundred and twenty days can be vastly different based on your lifestyle. So there's a lot you can do. And even though you're not ejaculating it because there's a blockage, sure it's not actually able to be ejaculated live, you can still improve what's there.
They said.
One of the things that could be wrong is when they tied well, when they did all the tubes and surgery, that something why I'm.
Not linked up.
They could be blockage, which we, like I said on hum when we spoke about it, would be that would be not a bad outcome, but it would like f lift my life with a sack to me, then we're going to get a reverse.
One, right. I think you should always live your life with the intention of if you want to have children, you want to do everything you can to make sure you're in the best possible position, not assume that you can. Sorry, not assume that you can't, and do everything that you can to help support that.
I've sort of gone down the route that I can't, yeah, right with in my relationships and that sort of stuff.
And how well you can't get someone pregnant right now like that, which is right, but you would there's obviously, like you said, there's every chance through IVF that you can unless they find even if they do find that something's not connected as such, that it's probably still going to be safer to leave it as it is and you know, be able to extract that sperm and then
use when you're ready. So you kind of, whilst it's a bummer, at the same time, you're kind of lucky because you know, as it stands, you're not getting anyone pregnant, and you probably can down the track. But this is a conversation I'll have to have with my son as well. We will have to do the same thing. He's eleven, he's definitely not at that point. He'll be wrapped when he finds out. Really, mum, but you should. There's so
much you can do. And like I said, to the point of improving sperm over one hundred and twenty.
Days tips for that, anyone listing that.
Yeah, absolutely, So this is really important, I think because a lot of men will be told that where their sperms at today, they're a candidate for IVF at this point. Now that's not necessarily wrong, but I need to put it on the record. Medicine meets you where you're at. It doesn't actually go, oh, we've got a drug to make this better because it doesn't exist. So therefore you may not get that advice from your specialists because that's
not their job to do that. So we want to look at what else we can do to improve that. And like I said, that's not taking a drug because no drug exists for that. That's taking vitamins and minerals and leading a lifestyle that's supportive of that. We know that sitting down for long periods of time can really almost cook the sperm, so that's not ideal. Cyclists often have issues and horse riders have issues because you can kind of work that out.
They're kind of you know with that cooked thing.
I haven't watched a TikTok and I don't even I don't wear jocks or anything to better anymore.
Yeah, let them free. Let them.
Also, high stress really.
Really disrupts anyone's hormones, but you know, equally men and women. So in terms of supplements that are safe to just recommend to anybody, anything with high level of antioxidants zinc, yeah, vitamin A and yeah, they're the they're the main, they're the main ones that I would be recommend that are pretty safe for anymore. And coq ten co qzyme is really grateful. It helps with cellular function, but it's really it's been proven to help with both sperm and egg quality.
Because I can I'm trying to write them down, but I can't spell them.
So let's talk about like lifestyle as in like alcohol or like going out on the weekends. What can that do in regards to that with a lifestyle change.
So what I can say is binge drinking is worse than moderate drinking. So even if you were to, like, you know, binge drink once a month is worse than going out on a Friday and Saturday night and having three or four drinks and just calling it a day. At that point, men can get away with more than women can. For women, it messes their estrogen. Alcohol mimics estrogen, so for men it does the same. You don't need a whole lot of estrogen, so having that in your
system isn't ideal either. But smoking and drinking would have to be the two things that unfortunately definitely impact fertility alongside. But let's also be logical here and sort of say, all right, well, I do a lot of things to support my body, and how much can I get away with? And you also know how you feel after that too, So I think being able to check in with yourself and be able to say, oh, I feel recovered really
quickly is very different too. I feel sick four days later, so just checking in with that is really I think the other thing to look at.
I feel.
I don't know how you feel.
Every week, and I'm not doing this again.
Well, I think it's it's hard because it is one of the things that's really difficult to pull up on. And the more alcohol we drink, the more alcohol we need, so It's one of those things that has to be conscious, and I don't have good answers for that. It's not my area.
Exercise, anything you can do just general health, I guess can help.
With for fertility. For fertility, oh yeah, absolutely, being active is really important. So you know, the research is definitely telling us that we need fat and protein more than anything. Our hormones are made of fat and protein, So if we're not actually eating enough, then we're not going to go on to make our hormones. As we get older, we need more of those. So in our twenties and
thirties is different to forties and thirties and forties. We definitely need more fat and protein as we get older to be more fertile.
Would you say that anything in my last style over the last couple of years would have affected my fertility. It might not have been the unsentded testicles. Even you're saying that, do you think that, like when I was modeling that, like having a crash diet would have done anything to it?
Potentially, everyone's different. Men are different to women. I would say it's probably worse for women than it is for men. Not to dismiss that.
Yeah, if you said that I thought like, i'd like would hardly eat and like crash doll right to the point.
Of course, because it sends a body into a state of stress and then it does what it can to survive under the surfircumstances. If you're doing that frequently enough, for ye, it can absolutely impact that. I mean the other thing too, is I would say, just to be truly sure, I would probably do a scene an analysis somewhere along the line. Although if you actually are having unprotected sex, done another one with a healthy laster.
Yeah, oh no, not with health because it's interesting hearing that say that it's one hundred and twenty day cycle.
I never heard that.
Now, Well, you are creating every hour, but you're creating and based on what you're at where you're at right now. So if you were to be diligent, so I say to patients, all right, I need at least six weeks of you to be diligent with what I'm advising, and then we should retest. I've had patients pregnant, I've had zero viable sperm zero if pregnant within two months. Now, that's not something that I would say happens all the time. But we have seen it happen, so you know, it depends.
I haven't seen your analysis, so I don't know whether there's some things that I could look at and say completely no or completely yes. But I think there's definitely merit to that regardless though, even if you're needing to do a biopsy to get sperm, you still want to make them as good as possible.
Of course, if I was going to get that surgery, I would make like you said, one hundred and twenty days.
Yeah, no drinking, just clean.
Yeah, if you did that, that would have a massive impact on your stem health.
Yeah, yeah, I would definitely do something like that.
That's so interesting, and it's really interesting because I don't know if you guys have seen it, but there's that show on at the moment, and it's.
Like a big miracles.
I think it's called, yeah, the Infertility Show, And like I think they were saying like one in five people have infertility issues, which is crazy because it's just not spoken about it at all.
I know there's not enough awareness. We spend our whole life trying not to fall pregnant, only to find it's not as easy as we thought it was going to be. When it's time to feel pregnant exactly. And that's that's you know, you can't learn that until you're actually in it. I remember saying to my husband, I don't know if I can fall pregnant. I've never been pregnant, so I don't know. And the next month we were pregnant. Feels
like I thought you didn't know. I'm like, I didn't know. Sorry, now don't touch me.
Well, it's interesting because I feel like we always talk about how like women have a biological clock and like, you know, men have all of this time up up their sleeve. But I mean, recently, I've found out that men at the age of twenty four to thirty four, like at thirty four you're half as fertile.
Which is crazy because no one, no one talks about it.
But the other thing that speeds up aging and then therefore takes us closer to being less fertile is stress. Yeah, and we all live with more than it than ever before. And our hormone our ovaries as women, and I mean the men's men's declines a bit slower, a lot slower, but your overyfunction starts to decline from thirty five or in our early thirties. It doesn't mean you're not fertile. And I can see patients that are more fertile in their thirties and they were in their twenties purely because
of their lifestyle. So it's not a definitive scenario. Yes, you might have less eggs in the tank, but it doesn't mean that those eggs aren't viable. And what are you doing to make them as good as possible because we can improve that.
When I saw the gynecologist, he said to me, because you're thirty, you really need to start looking at egg freezing.
Well, that's a really common offering at the moment. There's a lot of women that are freezing their eggs, and I think, again, I wouldn't go into that blindly. If you look at some of the women that are being vocal about this, they're like, this was so not as easy as I thought it was going to be. I think it's a nice insurance policy if you are absolutely not in a position to have children, or you are mid thirty. I mean they're going to say the younger
you are to freeze your eggs are better. Their quality is going to be There's no one that can make this decision other than you. I think what I don't love is the fear that's put in women that if they don't do this now, they're not going to have chillildren. And we help women have children into their late forties.
So I've faced that recently as well with my relationship that I am my partner.
She's thirty nearly thirty one, and.
I've had not the fear, but like the concern for her because of where I'm at my age and all that sort of stuff.
Yeah, I think the thing is that we still discount looking after ourselves. We bypass that partner. God, it's fine, I can party my life away and just go and free some eggs. The quality of what you freeze if you're not diligently looking after yourself in the lead up to that and then during is going to be sub average anyway. So it really is. And the difference is also when you make the decision to have children, you
are going to look after it. Well. Most people are going to look after themselves at that point, not just a month before I decide to do an egg collection and freeze them. So you know, there's lots of variables. I say to patients, you know, if you're not in a position to have children and you are really stressed out about this, or you actually are in a position position, but you're not ready yet. And there's plenty of people in this scenario and there, you know, in their mid
to late thirties. Yeah, better to be safe than sorry, But nothing's ever going to be better than your own your own natural conception. Yeah, and you're using assisted conception. Should that not work?
Yeah? Yeah?
Could Matt potentially not to talk on your behalf.
But I'm just wondering if he got the surgery and they did find sperm in his testicles.
Would he then be able to freeze that sperm?
Yeah, so that would be the idea of what they would do. That would then freeze that because or because I'd never can unless they found a blockage. Then I think then they would unblock it.
Yeah, well that's what I'm wondering. They may they.
May or may they may do that, But if they if there's no blockage and they're just not swimmers, then they will take the sperm and freeze it, and then I would have to have Ivy have to have a kid.
I mean, isn't that something you can think about? Just for the peace of mind.
But like I've said, I don't really I'm not in any position to be trying at the moment.
Or no, not not saying that you would like use it soon, but just like I.
Suppose yeah, But then like you said, then you come back, you circle back to like if they do find it, they want the egg there to put it in like straight away.
So I have the best chance.
Of But can't you just freeze it by.
Yeah, you can freeze it, but the best chance would be having the egg there and then to put it.
Into your fad.
Basically, what you're weighing up is if I did that, is it a waste of.
Money, money, time, effort to.
When I'm ready to when I'm ready?
So like so it's yeah, like it's one of these things where I say, what fuck do you? Wait?
Then you've got to be very open with your partner about it and you say, well, this is what this is.
My part is that yeah, you are going to get urgency. But also I want to say, when you're at this point in time where you are freezing eggs or you're going to your doctor for this, you know this is all they see all the time. So if I was to based my awareness on what I see, I'm going to have a skew opinion about birth controls. I don't see people coming into the clinic going I'm fantastic with my Marina, how are you today? Like, that's not what
I see. So I see people that aren't happy. And so if you're going into your clinic because you're worried, that's you're not the only person in there that day. So things get sort of skewed as to whatever environment that you're in. And I just think it's important for women and men to have all of the information to go and make an informed choice. Speak to other people,
speak to people that have done it. You know, again, your egg quality might actually be better when you're forty than when you were thirty two because you were not looking after yourself.
And on that skewed thing as well, it's probably best to get multiple opinions because you're like seeing one person they might have one pinion to like the next person, you're.
Absolutely And the other thing that I see happen is it becomes this hoarding game where women tend to get you know, oh, we got five viable eggs, We're going to put them on you know, freeze, Let's go again, Let's get your more, Let's go again. It's like, where do you draw the line. I've had patients have to say that's enough, I'm done, I don't need anymore. So I don't know, there's no I can't I can't speak
for the majority. I just think it's important that we get ourselves in a position and we have as much information as possible, speak to people about it, and put yourself in the best position to get the best outcome.
When I was watching the show on fertility, what was it Small Miracles, the way that IVF was kind of positioned on the show, it kind of felt like, if you're doing IVF, the sperm quality, You're like they're picking the best sperm that they can see, so then therefore maybe you'll end up with like a healthier or better baby.
Depends.
It depends on if they're doing IVF or IXY. So there's different processes for assisted conception. IVF is when they kind of just put it all in the one and let the sperm find the egg, WHEREASIXI is when they will take the best quality sperm and put it with the egg. So there's different ways depending on your sperm quality depending on hope.
If I do have sperm, they pick the most healthiest one. My genetics getting passed on. Yeah, a lot of people did say when I put the episode out there, like such a shame to waste those genetics.
A lot of those messages.
Now it's never met mad but now now she could.
Well, apparently we're going to have acupuncture, so you know.
Yes, is there any pressure points to find that can help generate sperm? Where it is.
Absolutely there's, but it would look at the person. It's an individual approach, so it's not like, oh, yeah, this is the sperm point. Having said that, there is a point for the cervix, so there's you know, stranger things have happened.
I'd hate to know if it's in.
Natural generally not in the local vicinity.
I mean, if I'm coming through some acupuncture.
Again, let's not press my stairmical points because I don't want to get pregnant yet.
Yeah, pick away from that.
I just have one last question for you, because we are running out of time, even though I feel like we could talk to you like for forever. We've had a couple of episodes where Matt's opened up about his infertility, and like the journey that he's been on, and there's been a lot of people who have reached out to
us who are struggling with infertility. So I guess my question for you is just like, what would you say to those people who maybe are kind of in the trenches at the moment, are really struggling.
Yeah, I think it's so hard the time that you decide to have a baby and then it doesn't go to plan, and everybody else around you seems to be falling pregnant announcing things. It is really difficult. I wouldn't wait to try and find answers, and I would actually try and find answers. Often women and men are told that they're just infertile, and they're put in the category of unknown infertility, which to me, there's no such thing as unknown. It's just we haven't looked hard enough yet
to figure out why. There's always a reason why. There's many pieces of the puzzle, and you can't isolate your reproductive organs. They work in conjunction with other things. So if you have ciliac or hashimotos, or there's lots of other things that exist outside that possibly need to be looked at. And it's not necessarily where if you're in a fertility clinic, that's not necessarily where they look because it's not the way that they look at it. So
first and foremost, let's find out why. Let's not accept unanswered infertility. That's not a diagnosis. And I mean, at some point, you have to start to believe in your body. This is and it's very difficult. When you've been met time and time again with negative outcomes, you stop believing in yourself. And it's literally the only thing that you can believe in is that your body can do it. So I have patients do something, whether they like it or not, plant the seed that when they leave the
clinic they need to think, act and behaviors. If they're already pregnant, we're very good at pushing away the very thing we want to come in as a protective mechanism. I'm like, what if you were pregnant today, if you wanted to be what if you were pregnant today, how would you act if you left here? Yeah, it's a very different energy. It feels already good, right and yes, okay, sometimes we can be met with disappointment, but living according
to what you want to bring into your life. I can tell you just through experience, you get higher outcomes by doing that. So start to think, act and behave. If you are wanting to be pregnant and you've been met a lot of times with negativity or negative results, start to think act and behaviors. If you are, make decisions as if you already are, be selfish. It's all about you at this point in time.
The power of the brain, I know, is very crazy. It really is.
It really is. And it's almost like, you know though, there are people out there you and I know these people and they say they're going to do something like my god, they're crazy, like as if, and they go and do it because they believe they can. So, you know, we we're living in a world where we're told about everything we can't do, especially fertility. There's a lot of negativity around fertility, and I think we need to change that. Our body knows what it's doing under the right circumstances.
It's up to us to create that environment that makes it.
Thank you so much.
This has been super interesting.
Matt's loved it.
Yeah, that's had a private session.
Over there, private session. Thank you on record.
Appreciate you coming in