HH347: Stress Affects Fertility

Melissa Deally: 00:00:00

Welcome back to another episode of health hacks as I continue my theme of talking about stress and how it impacts our health and longevity, and today, I want to share how it impacts our fertility. Stress can interfere with our reproductive hormones, because when the body is in the stress state. It is producing cortisol and adrenaline in order to get us to safety, and we need energy to be able to fight or flee, and the body is setting us up to be able to do all of that. And in order to have that kind of energy, it has to shut down other systems in the body in order to give you what you need in the moment. And so it will shut down your immune system. It will shut down your digestive system. You can't be in, you can't be in your rest and digest system at the same time that you're in your fight or flight system. And it will also shut down procreation, because you're not going to stop and make a baby when you're trying to get to safety, and when we are in this fight or flight state, it is supposed to be short lived. And then when we get to safety, now we can get back into our rest and digest system. And that's where we really want to spend most of our lives, is in that calm, parasympathetic nervous system. And yet, in today's world, we're not we're spending most of our lives in our sympathetic nervous system. And so over the course of time, if the body's always having to produce cortisol and adrenaline, it has to be able to do this. It's doing it at the expense of other things. And so it is producing these at the expense of producing progesterone. And without progesterone, we can't actually hold on to a pregnancy because we need that progesterone in order to create the lining of the womb. And as a result, our fertility and our ability to hold a pregnancy is negatively impacted because of the stress that we are under. And so if that's you, look at the stress in your life and look at what you can be doing in order to balance that out. There are some stresses. There's that you can't do anything about, however, there are other stresses that you can control, and steps you can take to mitigate them. And one beautiful way to really calm the nervous system is to spend time in nature, taking walks in a local park, enjoying outdoor activities to rejuvenate your mind and body, planning to get out for hikes close to home on the weekends, just a little bit of time in nature where you can go for walk. Sit on a bench, close your eyes, gaze up to the sun. Breathe deeply. Listen to the birds, listen to the wind in the trees. Notice the different colors in nature. All of these things help to calm your nervous system. And you'll notice that the moment you step into a beautiful natural surrounding, that very soon after that, you'll feel the stress leave your body. It's an incredibly powerful way to get out of that fight or flight state. And throughout this series on stress, which started back at episode number 445 and we're now 10 episodes in each episode, gives you different tools that you can use to calm your nervous system. So check them out. See what works for you, because not everything will work for everyone. Find one that works for you, and if you need support with your fertility, please reach out. Melissa at your guided health journey.com. We can certainly run labs to determine the state of health of your body right now, where your hormone levels are at, where your cortisol levels are at, where your mineral levels are at, is your body healthy enough to sustain another life? And we want to make sure that you are as healthy as possible, so that you can and so that you're not becoming deficient throughout those months of pregnancy. So reach out, Melissa, at your guided health journey.com. I would be happy to help you get into your healthiest state so that you can have a wonderful, happy, healthy little bundle of joy down the road.