Episode 25: Preparing your body for pregnancy with naturopath Elysia Humphries
When it comes to conception, most people focus on when to get pregnant – but what about how to prepare your body for pregnancy?
In this episode, Sam Lindsay-German speaks with naturopath and nutritionist Elysia Humphries about the essential steps to support your reproductive health – whether you're thinking about trying soon or simply want to optimise your fertility for the future.
They cover everything from egg and sperm quality to the key lifestyle, diet, and mindset shifts that make a difference in your ability to conceive.
🎙️ Listen now to find out:
🍃 Why fertility isn’t just about egg count – and how to improve egg quality at any age.
🍃 The impact of hormonal contraception and why coming off the pill early matters for conception.
🍃 How stress, sleep, and nutrition influence reproductive health – and practical ways to optimise each.
🍃 The essential nutrients and supplements for egg and sperm health (and why preconception care matters for both partners).
🍃 How fertility is so much more than biology – what emotional, energetic, and lifestyle factors can impact your ability to conceive.
This episode is a must-listen if you’re planning for pregnancy or simply want to be more informed about your reproductive health.
Additional resources:
💻 Our online course, Unlocking the Power of Your Cycle is designed to help you deeply understand your menstrual cycle – so you can identify your most fertile days and support your body for a healthy conception.
We would love to hear from you.
If you have any questions about you’d like us to answer on a future episode of the podcast, please email them to hello@verawellness.com.au or contact us on Instagram @verawellness.com.au.
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Episode transcript:
E25: Preparing for conception with naturopath Elysia Humphries
Sam: [00:00:00] [00:01:00] So welcome everyone to another wonderful episode of women of the well. Today it's just me and I am lucky to be here chatting with Elysia Humphries, who is our resident, which is not resident actually, she lives on the Gold Coast, but she is the naturopath that we go to at Vera and. At least she's coming on today to talk on the subject of fertility.
Now we're going to have a number of chats quite a few on different topics, but today we're going to continue that conversation that we've been having the last few weeks around fertility and how to prepare to be the most fertile that we could possibly be. So first of all welcome, how are you today?
And I didn't say this, but we normally talk about where we are in our cycle. Do you, where are you in
Elysia: Yes, I, yes, I am day two. Very heavy. Uh, very heavy periods of perimenopausal. So, I'm in the heavy period phase of my life and [00:02:00] I'm day two and I'm taking it a little bit easier and being gentle on myself because I have my period, so I'm not trying to expend too much energy today. So having a chat, it's actually quite lovely. Yeah.
Sam: Yeah.That's brilliant. And congrats, I always think when we're at this stage of life, congratulations on actually bleeding, that's the first thing. I'm always like excited when I get my bleed each month. So it's really good. I'm day 16, so I'm like,
Elysia: Oh yeah, yep.
Sam: so it's like, I'm still on the, on the high and it's all good.
Life is good for me right now. So, yeah, so we're on opposite ends of the spectrum, which is interesting and nice too. So let's, well, let's work with that today and feel those energies. Okay. Let's dive in. My first question, and then you can just. Launch into your magic is if I'm a 20 year old, a 30 year old, or even a 40 year old deciding that I want to be as fertile as I can to conceive naturally. is it that I need to do? When is it that [00:03:00] I should be starting to prepare my body to be ready to conceive? you know, that's a massive subject, but that's where I want us to go if we can.
Elysia: Well, absolutely, because a lot of women start to think about it and do wonder about their fertility or when they're ready to have babies. I guess the first thing is also realizing that if you have a partner, if you're heterosexual and had a male partner, that it takes two to tango. It's just as important for your partner to be on board, who will be providing care.
Sperm and 50 percent of the DNA and all of the love and nurturing of the child to sort of Do whatever you're going to do to get ready. So preconception care is that it's what you want to do to create a beautiful space in your, your body, your nervous system, your work, your surroundings and your relationship to make space to carry a baby.
So there's that, [00:04:00] I guess, metaphysical lifestyle, social aspect, but then say if you're in your twenties, I mean, statistically much easier to fall pregnant the younger you are. So the first thing is, have you been on any contraception like the pill? If you are on the pill or anything that's been suppressing ovulation, then you really want to come off that a good 6 12 months before you want to try to conceive.
Don't get me wrong, some people can stop the pill and might get pregnant straight away, that's a blessing,
Sam: I've heard that, that sometimes after being on the pill, you can actually kind of get pregnant quite quickly sometimes. Maybe that's just a old wives tale. I just, have this thing in my head.
Elysia: no, it's totally possible, like the pill stops you from ovulating. So it stops you putting eggs out every month. That's the whole point. It's called the oral contraceptive pill. So it's doing its job, stops, stops your eggs coming out. That's why it was developed.
And some women can stop it, and their ovaries are like, Oh great, I'm going to ovulate straight [00:05:00] away. Whereas other women, say if you're in your mid thirties or early thirties, you might have gone on the pill when you were fifteen, uh, for acne, or for menstrual issues, or contraception in your teens, early twenties.
And your ovaries haven't been chatting to your brain, and haven't been having that communication for many, many years. So sometimes you went on the pill with your training wheels on your ovaries in your team and, you might not have had regular cycles. For some women it can take a little while to establish.
regular ovulatory cycles where you're having an egg released every month and that's how you get pregnant. So it can just be good to factor that in. So if you were in your mid thirties and you've been on the pill for many years, I would allow those 6 12 months to just allow your cycle to come back and to know your cycle and to track that you're ovulating.
And also the pill can deplete a number of nutrients that are essential for conception and such as B vitamins and folate. So if you've been on the pill a little bit longer and then otherwise, I like to [00:06:00] say like a minimum of four months, because, uh, biologically, eggs take four months to develop.
So four to six months out, you want to be thinking, of getting your body ready, getting your mindset ready, getting in that space. There's some very small things like nutrient levels and hormone levels and things, and there's some big things like getting your life. ready for that baby. So yeah, a good, a good four to six months.
If you're in your forties, then you really need to be, or even say 35 to 40 and over 40. Our fertility declined sharply after 35. It's still very possible to have babies. But for example, if you're a woman in your thirties and you're like, for me, I was completely on the fence as to if I was going to have a family because I was um, Had a great career, and I was also a singer, and a naturopath, and I was very filled, and I just didn't even really know.
But, I was keeping a good eye on some of my fertility markers, because I did want that option. So, I think [00:07:00] it's good to see a GP or gynecologist, or a naturopath that does fertility to sort of Get a bit of an idea of if you should be considering having a family earlier, because what is very heartbreaking is when women get to their late 30s or early 40s and think, I'm going to have a baby now, and it's very difficult for them.
So, just to be informed and aware, hearing you're early to mid 30s and you're not sure, is to go and have that discussion. That's a big part of the preparation too. It's just knowing your fertility and knowing your body. Hmm,
Sam: Yeah, absolutely. So interesting. I think most of the time we don't generally think about preparing for pregnancy. It's just a sort of, I'm going to get pregnant, then, you know, I mean, we think about it from the terms of when will I have sex. But we're not actually thinking about preparing, I like to say the vessel.
Because really our body has to be in a state where it's okay to conceive. And we were just [00:08:00] talking about this, actually, that you can, this is a good time, I think, to talk about that, that it's safe for it to conceive. So what does that mean to you? What, I mean, I understand when you come, when people come and see you, I'm presuming they're going to talk to you about a whole.
Spectrum of things around their life and what's been happening for them. And what are you most interested in, in terms of how their vessel, their nervous system is?
Elysia: Absolutely. I mean, I don't want to minimise a journey for anyone because, some people, I think, if they hear that stress might impact their fertility, if they've been on a very long journey to conceive and they are stressed, they feel like it's their fault and they're ruining everything, which is not the case.
It's more about how can we make Your sort of window of tolerance time. So you're in that more calm, receptive, safe space. A little bit wider or being in that space for longer. So I do [00:09:00] look at a lot of things for men and women to reduce stress. So a big one for, for busy people is often their job.
And you're at your job a lot of times, so if people are in a job that doesn't align with their values, or a job that's really burning them out, we sort of look at that, see what changes they can make in their work. I almost say, pretend, make space for that baby, like, work like you've already got the baby in your life.
Sam: Oh,
Elysia: you notice is as a person without children, you can see workmates and co workers might have to leave a lot earlier to go and care for children, or they can't work all night, or they're not contactable constantly, like there's changes that happen in your workspace when you have children.
So if you're going into something quite burnt out or quite stressed, I like to say let's make those changes now. And that's what I did. I dropped a day of clinical practice before I had children. My children, because I was a bit, I was stretched a bit thin, and I [00:10:00] just thought, you know, if you go into a pregnancy and you have a unicorn pregnancy, then what a blessing, fabulous the whole time, and, oh, my sister was doing, you know, spin bike class, and right up until she delivered, but I was the The one with all of the dramas and all of the issues and, or if a woman has a pregnancy where they're vomiting all the time and can hardly keep anything down, you want to go in nurtured with a full tank.
You don't want to go in with an empty tank, burnt out, exhausted, because pregnancy can sometimes can be pretty exhausting and a bit of a marathon. And then once you've got a baby, you're not getting any sleep. You really want to build yourself up, resilience wise, as much as you can. So that does involve very basic things like improving your sleep quality and the quantity.
I often get people, even if they're getting a lot of sleep, but if they feel very tired in the morning, or non refreshed, or they're often emotionally reactive, we'll see if they can track. With like a Garmin or an Apple watch or a Fitbit if they're getting enough deep sleep and REM [00:11:00] sleep And often people might be getting their eight hours or their seven hours But they're getting 20 minutes of deep sleep that explains a lot. Your nervous system needs to be in that deep rest and refresh Zone for your fertility and your hormones
Sam: a, um, maybe you could talk on that. Cause I think there's a few people, I mean, I just think everyone's got these watches and rings and things now. So. And just generally and particularly in this idea of bringing us to our optimum sort of state of well being in terms of fertility, what sort of ratio of deep sleep and REM should we be getting?
Elysia: Yeah. So for each of them, so deep sleep, you want 20 to 25 percent of your total sleep time to be deep. So if you had slept for eight hours, you really want a good sort of one and a half to two hours of deep sleep and exactly the same for REM 20 to 25 percent is where you [00:12:00] dream and.
Your brain makes all the connections and processes all your emotions and unpacks all the emotional stuff that happened in your day. So they're both really important to process your mood and to refresh and restore your body and with anyone that does have access to any kind of sleep tracker, they're actually pretty accurate.
I've nerded out and checked the accuracy compared to sleep study. Some of them are pretty, pretty decent because I want to be recommending, you know, the right thing. and a lot of my clients are like, Oh, you're going to be getting half an hour of deep sleep. And I thought I was fine because I was getting eight hours of sleep.
But, and then we work on that. We might do yoga nidra you know, deep restorative breathing practices. Or we might look at herbs or supplements that help that. We might look at what they're eating, so that their blood sugar is really stable through the night. That can affect sleep quality. so getting, Getting sleep right is really important.
Getting your job and your daily stress right is important. If there's, you know, toxic people in your life, remember [00:13:00] working on that. And also just feeling safe in your relationship. Like if there is any issues in your relationship you've been trying to conceive. With a partner and not a donor. creating that beautiful safe space and, and having, you know, oxytocin, having cuddles and having date nights and just being affectionate and having your love languages mesh.
And feeling loved up has actually, oxytocin just makes a massive difference to our ability to conceive. So Some of those very simple things and then a big picture Yeah It's diet and lifestyle and supplements and there's hormones and there's all sorts of things we can we can test and really tease apart if someone's Having trouble conceiving But there's basics for preconception and then there's going down the rabbit hole for infertility But yeah, just starting to consciously prepare
Sam: so if we've, if we've looked at our sleep and things like that, we're thinking, Um, because if I was in my thirties and thinking to get pregnant, one of the things that I know we've talked about, or the doctors have talked about in [00:14:00] the last couple of weeks is egg quality.
Now I feel like I've got a new sort of understanding of the idea of what happens to our eggs as we get older. are there things we can be doing? Like, is there things we can be eating or are there herbs we can take that helped you, I don't know, like. Make her eggs have a better
Elysia: Juicy and ready to go. like as a woman we are born without eggs So a lot of what our mum did during her pregnancy does influence our egg quality so to divert If you are to carry a female baby, you can influence the next three generations by doing this preconception care.
Sam: got a bit of a, one of those goose bumps because normally I think about, yeah, I was inside my grandmother. That's always been quite interesting. And now it's a bit late for me because I didn't know this. I'm really sorry girls that I didn't know this, but now that's a real [00:15:00] aha moment for me.
So my capacity as a mother transcends just my children, but goes on to, Ooh,
Elysia: That's right. So if I I have a daughter, her eggs were formed when she's inside me. And if she has, you know, so you're passing on you know, you're trying to influence the next, the next few generations, which
Sam: health. Yeah, Your health is affecting the ongoing
Elysia: offspring, your generations, absolutely. And so does our mindset and our traumas and all of the things influence our genetics. So it's a great, it's great to sort of, prepare in that way. So yes, our egg quality, I mean, we're born with our eggs as women, but what happens is we've got all our eggs inside our ovaries.
There's, you know, millions of them. before the egg ovulex, you ovule one egg a month. Then that egg went over a four month period. blooming process where she got bigger and bigger and bigger and got to the right size to be able to be fertilized by a [00:16:00] sperm. So you're not making new eggs, but as they bloom and get bigger, the four months before you use them for ovulation.
Sam: how many are doing that? Because they were talking about this last week and saying we have a number of eggs that go sort of go forward. It's almost like a competition. Like which one will it be? And only one..
Elysia: All right. Yeah. You have a series over the months that are sort of lining up. So you've got a little one in there. You've got the baby bear, mama bear and the papa bear, like your bear. They're lining up and, eventually we'll recruit. In an IVF setting, you're trying to artificially give you so many hormones that a whole bunch of big ones pop out.
But yeah, they take turns and they're nice and neat. So you'll get generally one big one a month. Occasionally you might ovulate too when you have, have Twins that way or whatever, but normally one egg a month and they sort of line up nicely and take their time. So as they develop you can influence a lot of things.
So the eggs are bathed in this beautiful fluid [00:17:00] called follicular fluid and that's full of electrolytes and full of antioxidants and full of calcium and all sorts of things that make, bathe the egg in this juicy goodness. To make her nice and ready to accept nutrients in and, you know, accept the sperm in.
So egg quality is so important because I mean, the eggs like the sun, it's absolutely huge compared to the sperm is like, you know, an itsy bitsy planet like Mars. So she does all the work and I like to say to my clients and they always have a giggle. Where if you've got a little bit of crappy DNA in the, in the sperm, in the DNA of the sperm, the egg has to spend all of her energy cleaning up any defects in the sperm's DNA.
So it's like running around after your husband, picking up his undies and his socks off the floor and gathering everything together. And so She can get exhausted if she doesn't have enough energy and antioxidants on board and if the partner has done his job with [00:18:00] amazing sperm quality. It's a lot less work for the egg and she's not running around cleaning up after everyone and she just gets to divide and then turn into an embryo and gets fertilized and helped that way.
So, so egg quality is important because it helps the initial embryo. Because we can see the now fallopian tube, so the egg and sperm fertilize, the cells turn into a five day old embryo, and then it rolls down the tubes and implants into the urethra, so into our beautiful fertile garden beds, so to speak.
And we might have conceived, but then it didn't implant because it was too hard for the egg to split and turn over. So that's where your egg quality makes a massive difference, and with my IVF patients. You can see that under the microscope. The embryologist gives us a report on how the eggs fertilized, what day the embryos got to, when did they start to die off, like, and so once you work on egg quality, you see sometimes you're getting maybe more eggs, but even if you don't get more, the quality improves because more of them [00:19:00] fertilize and more of them turn into embryos.
So Equality is so important. Yeah, and to answer your question, diet is massive. Like, protein intake hugely influences um,
Sam: protein? Is it all protein or,
Elysia: oh, good question. So the most research is on the Mediterranean style diet. So, good quality grass fed lean meats lots of fish, lots of nuts and seeds and, and legumes.
I give, give my clients lots of recipes of how to include legumes, because in Australia we're not big lentil and chickpea and bean eaters. So the protein can influence embryo quality big time for men and, and women, egg inspecting quality and embryo quality. And there's a number of antioxidant supplements that really, really boost egg quality as well.
So I might, someone that's just trying to conceive for the first time, I'll put them on a, on a few basic ones. And then someone that, has come to me with failed IVF, I'm putting them on a huge list of [00:20:00] things compared to someone that's just preparing for conception. Yeah, it's very different, but, getting um, sort of more organic or spray free produce and eating the rainbow and lots of colors will ensure you're getting a lot of antioxidants and feeding the gut.
There's a lot of research now on the gut microbiome. influencing egg quality because it influences how we absorb our food and our nutrients and it reduces our inflammation. So covering a lot of ground here, but I do kind of with my patients you know, break that down quite simply into some easy dietary sort of, protocols and easy things you can throw in your diet, which will cover a lot of those bases. Yeah.
Sam: Yeah, okay. is there like a sort of super fertile herb? is there like the fertility herb?
Elysia: Oh, I wish there was, I mean, there is. there is definitely herbs that are amazing for fertility, but in herbal medicine, as herbalists, we learn to read people and to read patterns and to read, hormones or [00:21:00] body types, and we sort of match the herbs to the person. So it's quite individual.
And it would depend on if someone's Quality of menstruation wasn't great if they had very scanty periods, or if they weren't ovulating. They had a very short window of time after ovulations when their period comes. There's progesterone herbs there are general tonics, like for example, when you asked me that question, something came to mind, there's a There's a member of the asparagus family called shashavari, which is an ayurvedic herb, and it's a traditional reproductive and female sort of tonic to boost energy.
And the colloquial term of the herb is like, it gives the woman the strength to deal with 100 husbands.
Sam: Very good.
Elysia: So, you know, that one is good, but don't ever run, rush out and go on that herb. It depends. Some women, I don't put on any herbs. I just maybe put We do diet and check their vitamin D and their iron, increase their protein, and they're fine. And there's certainly supplements though, like there's a lot of [00:22:00] research on decent natal maltese.
You've got to have iodine and and, you know, vitamin D. If your vitamin D is low, really influences the fertilization capacity of the egg and sperm and how they meet. And a lot of people's vitamin D is low because in Australia we slip, slop and slap and um, are very sun sick. So if you work in an office, chances are your vitamin D isn't optimal.
I like people's vitamin D to be at least 80 to 100 on their blood tests. If it's around 50, that can just be too low and it makes a big difference to regulating the cycle. Yeah, so there's, there's general preconception nutrients and then if something's going wrong or someone's very stressed or they're not sleeping or they're burnt out, we always use tonics.
So, you know, beautiful herbs that nourish our adrenals. Like rhodiola or or gin scenes, uh, or ones that calm cortisol and calm our nervous system down like skull cap or passion flower. [00:23:00] or if, if appropriate, St. John's water for not on certain medications. Beautiful herb to help with resilience and stress levels and things.
Sam: Yeah, and I, Yeah. and I really I, I like what you're saying about that it is specific.
to individuals because I think we have reached a stage in our society where it's very easy to be sort of influenced by the adverts that pop up on our Instagram feed. And the influence of just walking into a chemist and seeing oodles of things on the shelf.
But I feel like sometimes it is, you know, these are the stages of life when it's good to go and see someone who can actually, yeah, look at your bloods and say, this will be good for you. and that's, That's what you get. I mean, that, that's the beauty of coming to see someone like you is that it's actually, you're prescribing for the individual. It's not a blanket. One size fits all, which is what those multivitamins on the shelf tend to, tend to be. And [00:24:00] I think we do sometimes just want to grab a quick fix, but we don't really know if our body needs that quick fix.
Elysia: I agree, to tailor it is so, so, so important. I mean, everyone should really be on, men and women, a good preconception. Multi. I'm not a big fan of some of the big multinational brands because they abuse. It's pretty synthetic ingredients, like, so a good preconception malty um, that's, you know, some naturopaths recommend it.
And then Omega 3 fish oil is amazing. A lot of people are quite deficient in Omega 3 and that does regulate a lot of hormonal and fertility pathways. And then at least getting your vitamin D and iron checked. Because a lot of women go into pregnancy with low iron. And iron is an absolute, sorry, pregnancy is an absolute iron marathon.
The baby, baby are beautiful iron parasites. They just fuck it all out of you in a rain and sea. And um, you want to go in with, with optimal iron levels. So if you're someone that's got quite heavy periods or vegetarian or knows [00:25:00] you've been low in iron in the past, we want to really build that up in preconception care as well.
So that um, you're not running on empty, during um, a pregnancy. And if, and if a woman might be, little overweight or might have polycystic ovaries or might have any insulin problems, we look at insulin and look at beautiful herbs. Like genema, or magnesium, or chromium, or inositol, things that lower insulin.
Because lowering insulin is shown to improve ovulation and to improve embryo quality. In men and women actually. So, it's quite a number of specific things that we'll look at. And then there's general leg health. Like for women over 4 years, there's a lot of research now on NMN or NAD. It's a B3.
Sam: Okay. Yeah,
Elysia: people talk about it for biohacking or life extension or energy, but it's also there's Professor Hayden Homer is a, researcher. He's actually a fertility doctor and gynecologist in Brisbane, but he did some research at the University of Queensland. It was on mice, but, basically on [00:26:00] reversing the signs of aging in older mice eggs using NMN and, NMN is a type of B3, but the cool thing is, is this, if you remember high school biology, but the Krebs cycle with mitochondria in our cells, the way our cells spit out energy.
So basically, as naturopath, I use a lot of the things that support the mitochondria, the powerhouses in our cells, in our eggs to spin, because that's. gives our cells energy to split and replicate. So NMN is one of the things that goes into that cycle to help that. But CoQ10 and other B vitamins and magnesium and zinc, there's so many other things that also help that cycle.
So if you're in, if you're on a good broad spectrum of those, if you're older, especially like 30s, early 40s, I go quite hard on the the cellular energy support nutrients because that will get. The embryo across the line, so that does make a big difference. But yeah, but he did the research on mice and it reversed the size of aging and accident by upping [00:27:00] antioxidants in the eggs, which is super cool.
Hasn't studied it in humans, but I mean, I'm, we're all using it and we have seen it work under the microscope. So, you know, I think it's something of value there.
Sam: Yeah, Okay. That's fascinating. And when you're talking about this, I'm just conscious that we haven't touched on it yet, but we have been talking a lot about the egg. Let's just talk a bit about the sperm, because it's not
Elysia: absolutely. No, no, it's not. yeah, I mean, I also deal with, I also have a lot of beautiful Same sex lesbian clients who might be conceiving with donor or single women who are deciding to conceive by themselves and they're using donors so a lot of the donor sperm and thing is generally screened and of pretty good quality and things like that but if you're conceiving with partner absolutely, if you can influence his sperm quality and get him on board.
I think it's, I, I love to see men and women, like I, I don't want to treat a woman on her own because if your partner's off binge drinking on the [00:28:00] weekend or smoking or vaping or, you know, not eating well, that can make a big difference to the sperm quality. And so, If both partners are involved and seeing it as this beautiful opportunity to nurture a, a healthy pregnancy together from before they conceive, I, that's great.
And yeah, for men um, even things like testicular temperature are really important. So not having saunas and hot spa baths, or if you're a mountain bike rider or a motorbike rider for prolonged periods, you want to reduce. that's why your scrotum, that scrotum is outside the body.
They like to dangle in the breeze and be nice and cool compared to the rest of the body. That's why we, uh, men evolved that way. Yeah.
Sam: this is all part of the, yeah, this is all part of the don't have your mobile phone in your pocket
Elysia: Totally. Yep. Totally. Phone out of your pocket. Yeah. And um, ejaculation frequency is really important for men as well. [00:29:00] So if,
Sam: talk about that. yeah,
Elysia: yeah, so if like, say if they've got a partner who works away, FIFO, or they're a long many years in a relationship, not having intercourse super frequently, if you're not turning them over and then you just go to conceive and the woman's ovulating in the middle of the month, they could be a bit sluggish or old.
So even in the IVF clinic, some of the brochures for men say this, to ejaculate every two to three days. all months long to sort of keep the sperm fresh and it reduces the level of DNA damage in the sperm
Sam: It's fascinating. Does Sper, Does Sper, regenerate? So is it. not the
Elysia: they do. No, men make sperm every, they make new sperm every day. But if a man was to ejaculate today, those sperms started to be tiny mini baby sperms three months ago.
So every three months men will make all new sperm, which is why someone like Mick Jagger can conceive a baby in his late 60s, 70s.
Sam: Okay. And that will keep going
Elysia: for women.
Sam: That keeps going until they
Elysia: Yes, yes, but I [00:30:00] mean it declines over time. Like it's not as good as it was when you were like, 19. Um, But yeah, yeah, men can still keep producing sperm. Yeah.
Sam: eggs are old,
Elysia: Yes.
Sam: but the
Elysia: Yep.
Sam: is
Elysia: Younger. Yeah, absolutely. Yep. Yeah. I mean, sperm quality has declined, like, hugely in the last 50 years with environmental chemicals and toxins and the counts have gone down and all sorts. But, yes, absolutely. So, if a man comes to me and he's worried about um, he might have had a semen analysis and it's got something that's abnormal on there, low count, or they're not going to be properly or something, we don't worry about that as clinicians unless you've had a semen analysis.
Three tests in a year that are abnormal because a man could have been out on a bender or a butt's night that weekend and, and absolutely had, or had the flu, like COVID or the flu will absolutely knock your sperm out temporarily and they'll bounce back. [00:31:00] So I've seen men with excellent um, semen analysis and then we've done it again and it's.
It's really, really low and I've just been called them and said, did you just have the flu? Yep, had influenza A. So um, sperm of the canary in the coal mine, they're really sensitive, they're really little. So, it's a great opportunity for men to like, cut out alcohol or cut it right, right, right down, not smoke eat really well.
Danish should be on a men's preconception, multi official and other things as well. Yeah, because you know, some guys really struggle giving up alcohol for example. And just think about your partner is about to be pregnant and breastfeed and not be able to drink. Because it's not very long to have to do all of that for.
And I have seen it in my clients. They might be going through IVF and their partner might be quite a heavy drinker. It hasn't changed that. They're not getting pregnant when he finally gives up the six beers a night. Lo and behold, they all fall pregnant, you know.
So, those are, those things in Australian culture [00:32:00] might seem like, Oh, I just have three beers every night, no big deal, actually is a big deal.
Yeah, amount, amount of coffee a man can drink. You know, I really get people to cut that down to one to two shots maximum a day. or cut it out if you can.
Sam: yeah, Why would we cut out coffee? just, just, what? Why? Why
Elysia: Oh, just, just, just, yeah, for men, I mean, one to two shots are normally fine, but if I've got a guy that's having like three double shot coffees a day, there is some studies that show that level of caffeine could impair the DNA But a little bit's fine, yeah. Yeah, so there's a lot of things that help, like, CoQ10 helps the swimming ability of the sperm.
Uh, folate in B12 helps the, the DNA in the sperm. Selenium, essential fatty acids, help, you know, the structure of the sperm. So, what's important to concede naturally is that the motility, that they're swimming well. an IVF. It doesn't really matter if they're not swimming well their meals pick one out and pop it in to the egg But if you're conceiving [00:33:00] naturally, you've got to have really really good motility, which is the swimming ability of the sperm.
Sam: And that's about it being an energetic sperm which comes from it just
Elysia: Yeah, yeah.
Yes from diet and lifestyle and cutting out smoking But then if they've done all that and their motility is still low on a test there's things like Supplements like MAC or ubiquinol or carnitine which can make huge difference to swimming ability. And, you know, there's specific supplements for different aspects of sperm issues.
Yeah, so there's a lot to do there. But mostly it's about, I get most of my clients with a diet. Most of them probably increase their protein intake. And they greatly increase the level of colorful vegetables on their plate. I like to have about half a plate of the, the rainbow veggies. And they probably start having you know, legumes and black beans and chimney beans and things like that in their diet.
More nuts and seeds and olive oil and fish, things like that. And [00:34:00] also addressing if they've got any gut issues or IBS, we need to sort that out because we want to lower inflammation and microbiome as well.
Sam: Yeah. I'm going to do a podcast with Desi to go, go over the Mediterranean diet and talk about this. So, but presumably, you know, you just work hand in hand if, if the diet is right and then you can be supporting that with helping with supplements as well. So it's. It's just important to get both spectrums.
And I think like you're saying, what's so important to understand is there's never going to be a better time than now to prepare to be fertile in life. Women need to be fertile through life. It's not really even a question of, do I want a child today or do I ever want a child? But we want to be fertile so that we continue to ovulate so that we can continue to cycle well so that we continue to do our womanly things. And that's all about following, you know, living that [00:35:00] healthy lifestyle, eating those good foods,
Elysia: Yeah, a lot of, exactly right, Sam. Like a lot of the things that help our general hormone health and gut health and nervous system health and mental health just help us feel healthy and wonderful, also help our fertility because Fertility is not, it's not essential to make babies, like if you're going through a, a war or a famine or a, you know, a dreadful time, the body might be like, hmm, or you're, or you've dropped a lot of weight and you're very underweight or if you're very overweight, the body's like, hmm, let's reserve some of that energy for other things at the moment or for how stressed you are, don't necessarily need to conceive right now and protect you.
Having said that, I mean, people conceive during all sorts of, World events and wars and famines and it's still possible, but it just means the optimum environment is to feel safe and and balanced So
Sam: Oh
Elysia: it's not rocket. Some of it's not rocket science. It's the diet, the lifestyle, the sleep, the [00:36:00] getting enough movement in, feeling Connecting in your relationship, feeling useful in your work and not, not too overloaded.
But then, if someone's having issues with fertility, I'll put my thinking cap and my microscope on so I can pull things apart and really get down to nuts and bolts of, you know, cellular medicine and things. But then, yeah, the basics are the basics for any healthy lifestyle, regardless of if you can see them or not.
It's just, you know, basic healthy. Healthy living and sometimes, you know, when we're conceiving, it's the peak of our careers and we're busy and we're not looking after ourselves as well as we perhaps could have been, so it's a lovely reminder to create that space. And when you have a child, you also want to model, you know, the way, the way we want to eat and the way that we, we want to feel and, and the way we want to treat each other, so it can be lovely to just create that space in your life to nurture yourself and then to pass that on to creating
Sam: yeah.
Elysia: energetically as well.
Sam: I can really feel that. And [00:37:00] one of the things that I'm just feeling from sitting here with you is how lovely it would be to have someone like you on my team if I was. going on this journey, just because exactly as you say, if you're going on this journey, if you are considering getting pregnant and you are in the busy period of your life, then sometimes you need to have a helping hand.
You need someone who can. I don't know, just put you in the right direction because I, I feel, and it's what I say all the time on these podcasts, I feel like there's such an overwhelming amount of information out there
that sometimes even though I feel that I'm quite knowledgeable around health, I get confused and overwhelmed.
And I know I've asked you about questions about things before, because I just think it's too much information and I can't figure out what's real and what's not.
that's why I'm always just saying, as much as I think we have the power within ourselves to do everything we need to look after ourselves, sometimes we just need someone who can sit with us and guide us and be that person who has some really [00:38:00] good, stable, and hopefully science backed knowledge can, Yeah just, just ground us in knowing the direction to take.
I just really want to acknowledge that I felt that today sitting here with you. that it would be so wonderful to have
Elysia: Thank you.
Sam: Um, I
Elysia: try and break it down to really simple concepts and give people a plan and, you know, recipes are really easy to follow. Fertility plants, very specialised that fits in with your lifestyle, with where you're at. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And we are lucky to be living in such a time where we have access to such fantastic information that, yeah, it can be confusing trying to navigate it yourself.
Sam: that's right. I think it's a lot and, and it's hard to figure out which is the stuff that's relevant for us individually. Which leads me on to I think we, you know, we've, we've had a, such a great full conversation and I did really want to touch on talking about if we got to the point where unfortunately for whatever reason we weren't able to conceive naturally [00:39:00] and then we decided to go down the IVF path,
I'm guessing that there's some things we can be doing to prepare for that. that's probably gonna be a whole nother chat.
Elysia: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. There's like preconception care. is wonderful just to generally increase the equality of egg and sperm and then also create space in, in your lifestyle and things and your diet and then for anyone that has actually been struggling to conceive and might be going down an IVF pathway.
All of that preconception care is extremely valuable. Like I might have people come to me that Went straight to IVF and didn't really do much preconception care, and then we kind of just had a pause and do the preconception care. The basics are the same, except we normally just step up the level of support.
So if somebody is 40 and isn't getting many eggs or they're not fertilizing very well, then I'll step up all of those nutrients and herbs that really support the energy of the egg and the cellular energy of, the egg. [00:40:00] We also look at Either gut or vaginal microbiomes as well, because there's getting pregnant and making the embryos and IVF and some people have good embryo quality and then they go to transfer them and they're not sticking, they're not falling pregnant even though their embryo quality is excellent, they're not receiving them or they're immune system's rejecting the egg, the embryo, sorry.
So. we look at reducing inflammation and beauty, building up the beautiful garden bed of the uterus and John looking at enhancing or testing the microbiome to see if there's any bad bugs that are making it hard to live there and we increase the good bugs because studies show. The lactobacilli in the vagina and the uterus can really influence implantation.
So, we can break it down into lots and lots of steps, or we can just do the basics. But yeah I guess IVF support is again another whole conversation and lots of individual things to look at. But sometimes, for example, And they might have looked at a man's sperm, but then I do see clients that have never had an extra semen [00:41:00] analysis called a DNA fragmentation study.
And so, they add that onto a sperm test and see that a lot of the DNA in the sperm is very damaged. And that's just a temporary thing. It might have been from the flu, or it might be from smoking, or it might be from a varicose vein in the testicles. So, there's hopes to improve that. So, yeah, there's There's levels of what we can do, uh, as fertility, you know, naturopaths, to, to investigate, uh, that and to dig a bit deeper. Absolutely. is
Sam: Yeah. Well, yeah, no, absolutely. So I think, Yeah.
I think, thank you for coming on today and talking about, that was really good chat. I my big takeaway is that, that wonderful realization of just how powerful it is for us to focus on the egg quality. So that we can influence that onward generation.
So I think that's um, And I think about that just from that, the way we feel [00:42:00] inside ourselves to also how our health is, you know, it's just, that's really struck a chord. And I'm going to have a chat with my girls about that. So that's good. Uh, cause I might not be able to go back and do my pregnancies again, but I can help them with their onward journeys.
And so.
Elysia: Mmm.
Sam: And I always think about that. So Yeah, so thank you, but yes, let's come back together if you can make time and let's talk about IVF fertility. And then I think we're going to, we were discussing the other day, we'll have lots of other juicy conversations about topics that excite us,
Elysia: Yeah,
so much to share. Yeah, fantastic. No, thank you for the chat. lovely chat this morning and on day two of my cycle, just to
Sam: Yeah.
Elysia: a chat and not have too much to do.
Sam: Oh, that's good. Well, I hope that you can go and put your feet up and have some quiet time before you pick your children up
and. then we'll see you again soon. thank you. Um, Is there anything that you want to, any last words that you want to share with people?
Elysia: Oh, I [00:43:00] just think it's a lovely time of your life to be considering starting a family and have a chat to your partner, uh, if you have one about when you would like that to happen and just, yeah, start planning ahead. That, give that six or twelve months out to make that space and you're worth it.
The next few generations of your family are worth it and hopefully you'll have a beautiful, beautiful pregnancy or a much easier journey if you, uh, come in with a, you know, beautiful full take. Yeah, I think that's what the preconception care is, is all about. It's just, you know. nurturing yourself to then create a life.
So that's the special thing about it.
Sam: It's beautiful. Thank you so much for being here.
Elysia: Pleasure. Thanks for having me. [00:44:00]
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DISCLAIMER:
This podcast is for information and educational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
