Four common causes of infertility and addressing the root cause
Infertility is a common reason women seek care at the Acupuncture and Optimum Health Clinic. Our lifestyles are filled with impediments to fertility, including stress, environmental toxins, hormone imbalances, and poor diet, which can make unraveling the root cause feel overwhelming.
Fortunately, our bodies often provide clues to what the underlying factors are, and it can be easier than you think to identify and address the problem to restore fertility. Through Nutrition Response Testing and acupuncture, we can help you identify any underlying imbalances, dial in your nutrition, and address environmental factors to ease your journey to healthy conception and pregnancy.
How do I know if I’m infertile?
Generally, if you’ve been trying to conceive for over one year without becoming pregnant, or you’ve experienced more than one miscarriage, it’s a good idea to seek help. The problem can be with the woman or man, or sometimes it’s unclear. For women, signs that something may be imbalanced include irregular cycles, a lack of fertile quality cervical fluid around ovulation (“egg white” cervical fluid), or lack of libido.
There are about six days each month when women are fertile: up to five days before ovulation and the day of ovulation, with the most fertile days being the two days prior to ovulation.
Sometimes, all that’s needed is identifying when you’re ovulating and targeting your fertile days. By the time women reach our clinic, however, they’ve tried tracking cycles to no avail, and are experiencing other symptoms. If you’ve been unable to identify the root cause of the problem, we can help.
Common causes of infertility
Growing a baby takes high levels of energy and resources from our bodies, and our bodies are wise and intuitive. If your environment isn’t optimal for growing a baby, your body can respond by reducing fertility. The good news is that we can address and rectify the most common factors affecting fertility.
- Hormone imbalance
This is the most common cause of infertility I see in the clinic. Women often present with light, heavy or irregular cycles; headaches; and cramps. Balance of the female sex hormones is essential for every part of the conception process, including building the uterine lining, ovulation and egg quality.
Estrogen and progesterone, made in the ovaries, must be in balance for a healthy menstrual cycle. Estrogen peaks in the first part of the cycle and is proliferative, meaning it promotes tissue growth, including the uterine lining. Progesterone is antiproliferative, or antigrowth. This is why you don’t want estrogen dominance, which can cause unhealthy tissue growth like fibroids, endometriosis, and breast cancer. This affects fertility.
Progesterone peaks after ovulation, in the luteal phase of the cycle, and balances the effects of estrogen. Low progesterone is commonly involved in infertility or inability to carry a pregnancy to term, and is easily treatable.
Another common hormone imbalance that causes infertility is polycystic ovarian syndrome, or PCOS. This occurs when there is too much testosterone present in women, which can delay or stop ovulation completely. Symptoms include:
- weight gain
- irregular or absent cycles
- fatigue
- unwanted hair growth on face or chest
- thinning hair on head
- acne
- pelvic pain
- sleep and mood changes
- headaches
Environmental endocrine disruptors, stress, insulin resistance, and poor diet can all affect hormone balance.
- Chronic or acute stress
When you experience the ‘fight or flight’ response, your body releases hormones to cope with the threat, like cortisol, epinephrine, and norepinephrine. While these hormones improve your chances of survival in a life-threatening situation, they are at odds with the hormones necessary for conception. Your stressors may not be life-or-death, but your body responds as if they are. In other words, your body is prioritizing survival over conception.
Reducing stress may seem impossible — especially if you’ve been struggling to conceive for some time! — but it’s imperative for creating an optimal environment for conception to occur.
- Obesity or underweight
If you’re on a conception journey, your body weight matters, but it’s not about a number on the scale — it’s about how body fat affects fertility.
Excess body fat can interfere with insulin, increasing insulin resistance which may contribute to PCOS. Excess body fat can also affect hormone balance and increase inflammation in the body, all which can affect fertility.
On the flip side, however, too little body fat can also be detrimental. If we don’t have enough, we are not able to produce estrogen and progesterone at adequate levels to sustain pregnancy. And if we don’t have the resources necessary for pregnancy, our body communicates that pregnancy isn’t sustainable. - Diet and nutrition
You already know you should be eating a healthy diet, with plenty of fruits and vegetables, that’s low in added sugars. An overall healthy diet improves fertility and can help you become pregnant more quickly.
Nutrients especially important for women trying to conceive include:- adequate dietary protein
- healthy fats
- folate
- vitamin B12
- omega-3 fatty acids
If your diet is too high in processed foods and sugar, especially sugar-added sodas and energy drinks, this can affect your insulin resistance and negatively affect fertility.
- Environmental stressors and immune activation
In our clinic, I also see a lot of environmental stressors that affect fertility, such as specific foods, household or other chemical exposures, and metal toxicity. In these cases, the stressor is particular to each woman, and something that is contributing to infertility for one woman may not be problematic for another.
There is extensive evidence demonstrating that immune activation negatively impacts every aspect of human reproduction. If your immune system is reacting to a particular stressor that you’re exposed to over and over again, this could be affecting your fertility.
Nutrition Response Testing, which we offer at the clinic, is a powerful tool for identifying any potential environmental stressors.
How can I improve my fertility?
Among our patients, I have seen success when all five of the above factors are addressed: hormone balance, stress, body fat levels, nutrition, and environmental stressors. Through Nutrition Response Testing, we can identify any underlying imbalances, and what your body needs to address them. This is usually a combination of diet, supplementation, and lifestyle recommendations.
Acupuncture is another modality we use to improve fertility. This traditional Chinese medicine technique promotes fertility by stimulating blood flow to reproductive organs, balancing hormones, and relieving stress.
Our approach is always individualized. If you have questions or would like to schedule a consultation, please call us at (319) 236-3363.