Dr. Jane Levesque [00:00:00]: How can I make different decisions to turn out in a different place? So how is this connected to pcos? I know I started talking about pcos and now I'm veering up. Point being is that disease doesn't develop overnight. It probably has been something with you for a long time. And I think when we look at something like PCOS and the different aspects of it, you know, the five pillars that I'll use for my patients to help them kind of put it all together, is, okay, we want to increase drainage, and we want to support your energy. We want to reduce inflammation, we want to make sure we get rid of infections, we want to make sure we detox, and then we want to make sure we optimize our nutrients. That's like a broad stroke of how I do things. Pregnancy is a natural process. So if it's not happening or if it's not sticking, something is missing. After having a family member go through infertility and experiencing a miscarriage myself, I realized how little support and education women have around infertility. I want to Change that. I'm Dr. Jane Levesque. I'm a naturopathic doctor and a natural fertility expert. Tune in every Tuesday at 9am for insightful case studies, expert interviews, and practical tips on how you can optimize fertility naturally. If you've been struggling with infertility, pregnancy loss, women's health issues, or you just want to be proactive and prepare yourself for the next big chapter in your life, this show is for you. All right, ladies, I have not talked to you about PCOS for a while, and let's break it down. There's a couple of cases that I'm thinking about that I want to share with you. So pcos, if you're struggling with pcos, polycystic ovarian syndrome, maybe you know it, maybe you don't. Maybe you're like, I think I have it, but I don't have any cysts on my ovaries, but I have X and Y symptoms. I kind of want you to step back. And when I get someone, whether they know they have the diagnosis or not, I think the diagnosis is helpful for me to see. So I know I'm like, okay, they're likely to experience these things. And then I'm just trying to compartmentalize them into what kind of PC PCOS they have. Like, do they have more blood sugar dysregulation? Do they have more androgenic system symptoms? So your testosterone levels are all over the place? Or is it more thyroid issues? Is it More adrenal. So, like stress, inflammation, then. I'm trying to compartmentalize. But the truth is, the diagnosis itself doesn't really explain anything. You could say, well, I have pcos and that's why I have high androgens. Then the question is like, well, why do you have high androgens? Or it's because I have pcos. Oh, so you have PCOS and you have high androgens, but then you don't know why you have the high androgens? Because I have the pcos. And so you see how we get stuck in this loop. That's actually not helpful, and it's not digging for root cause. I'm always trying to get my patients to think further back than what they think is necessary, if you will, so we can start to understand when the development of this disease actually started. And for most people, it started not even in the teenage years. It potentially started in the womb. And the reason I say this to you is not so you feel helpless, because, you know, the easiest thing for you to say is, I guess I was just born with it and. And my mom had it. Or maybe your mom didn't have it, but you have it, and it's just you drew a bad card and it's just your genetics. What I want you to know is that we can absolutely reverse the symptoms of pcos. You will always have the gene that can turn on and get your PCOS going again, but you can turn that gene off. I was on a Instagram live lately, and someone's like, well, is there any data showing that you can reverse endometriosis or you can reverse pcos? When we're looking at data in the research, what you're looking for is, are there treatment protocols, is there supplements, are there medications, are there herbs, are there lifestyle factors that we can do that help to improve the symptoms? And that's what you're looking for, Research. In research, you cannot say, when I did this, my PCOS was completely gone. What usually they do is there's a scientific breakdown of this. Many patients, like 50% of patients had a 50% of reduction in their symptoms. 10% of patients had a 90% reduction. 10% had no reduction in symptoms. So you're not claiming any cures, because, let's face it, that's just a lawsuit waiting to happen. But I think what's important is we want to look at the research, but we actually need to look at what's happening clinically. And one of my mentors, Dr. Leah Hechman, who I've been working with. And if you've been listening to me for a while, I've been talking about her for a while because she's a fascinating practitioner and she is so research heavy. And I remember sitting on a call with her and being like, I need to make more time to do more research and read all the papers. Because she literally gives you like a hundred of papers for one of the modules that you watch. And she has 50 modules in a course. So, like, you guys do the math of how much research is. And obviously she's not the one doing the research. She has research assistants. She's doing some of it, but her experience is she's seeing patients clinically and she's seeing something come up. So then she goes to her research team and goes, can you find research supporting what I'm seeing in practice? And they always find the research supporting it. Like, I'm seeing that this herb is helping with X, Y and Z. Can you find research to support it? I'm seeing that this infection is causing this inflammatory response which is then responsible for the PCOS development. Can you support that in research? And they go and they find it. So when she told me that, I'm like, just let that sink in for a second. She's not going to the research and saying, oh, the research says that this works for X, Y and Z. She's going into her clinical practice, getting to know her patients. She has a deep understanding of physiology and biochemistry and biology and like everything. And even energetics and presence and, you know, just everything, putting it all together. She's present with her patients, she's seeing how the body is responding to stuff. And then she's going, huh, I wonder if there's research to back this up. And turns out there is. So if we're just looking at, well, the research says this, don't get me wrong, I think it's important to look at the research. And I've been looking at the research a lot more since studying under Dr. Leah Hechman. But what was freeing for me as a practitioner is to hear her say, go in practice and just be present with your patients and get your physiology, biochemistry, biology really nailed so then you can support and find research behind what is going on in the body. So when we're looking at something like pcos, I have not seen a single case that's presented the same. And the two patients that I'm thinking of right now, they're literally the exact opposite. And they both have a PCOS diagnosis which was both not really diagnosed most for a While. And so to me, it's like, I don't care about the diagnosis. I'm looking at how is the body presenting? So one of my patients is like, cannot keep any weight on, has really low libido, has really low energy, very just like frail, tired, nutrient depleted, thyroid issues, really low period, really, like, light and scanty period, while the other patient is, cannot lose any weight, has dysregulated blood sugars, insane amounts of inflammation, has. But her thyroid is fine, her periods are fine. And it's just like, there's still a PCOS presentation. Whether it's. We're actually seeing some cysts on the ovaries or when we're going in for an ultrasound on day eight to, let's say, day 11, there isn't a dominant follicle. So for one of my patients who is thin, like, she just doesn't have any dominant follicles. She doesn't have any cysts, but she doesn't have a dominant follicle. So the follicles are not responding and they're not growing. Whereas the other patient has this kind of string, the string of pearls, and there's no follicles that are also seen. But now you're seeing some cysts around the ovaries as well. Point being is it's still pcos. It's under the same umbrella. But how we're approaching the case is very, very different. So I'll give you a little bit of, kind of background of how I approach the cases and why it's important. Because to me, every disease, the development of every disease, I don't care what the label is, starts at some point in the womb or in the childhood, and then it expresses itself the older we get. Okay, so when I sit with my patients for the first time, I write out a timeline. A lot of the times we spend a bunch of time on understanding the fertility history, how many losses they've had, when were the losses, interventions they used, when did they have hormonal imbalances that started, and we just start to draw it all out. And then we go back to kind of the early 20s and see if there was a really high toxic load. For example, if you were a big drinker or there was drugs or a lot of partners, sexual intercourse, because you were exploring. And while. And like, were there STIs or STDs or bacterial vaginosis, yeast infections, all of that stuff. And then we go back to teenage years when the period first started, and we look at how the level of stress that you Were under what was going on? Was there a move, a divorce? You changed schools, was there, you played a lot of sports and there was high levels of stress. What was happening during the time where the brain and the ovaries were trying to make a connection? And then we go back to childhood in the years of 0 to 5 and seeing if there was any big traumas or any big, whether it's divorces, again, moving, anything that you would consider that, like, this was a big event in my life, I remember it and it impacted me quite a bit. And then I go back to what was pregnancy like? When your mom was pregnant with you, did she have any issues? Did she have any issues getting pregnant? Did she have any issues, issues during the pregnancy? What was the labor like? Did she breastfeed you? And a lot of people have no idea what that history looks like because they just haven't asked. And so I encourage you to ask that and to see if there was any stressful events that happened when mom was pregnant with you or if there was any known toxic exposure. Unfortunately, a lot of the times the moms are not aware because it's just not something that we brought awareness to. But with both of these patients that I'm thinking about, there's usually something like there was a divorce a year after I was born. So even though you don't remember the divorce, there's obviously lots of tension, lots of confusion, lots of maybe even fighting or suppression. So there's something going on there energetically that you likely picked up on. Then we're looking into just the levels of nutrients that the mom had. And was she able to breastfeed you or did she have to go back to work after three months or she decided not to breastfeed? Did you have a soy based formula versus a dairy based formula? The reason that's important is so I have kids now and the way that I prepared for my first versus the way that I prepared for my second. So for my first one, I didn't do anything. I didn't know to do anything because I didn't think I was supposed to. And this is why I'm here. Because that first pregnancy rocked me and because of the way that the pregnancy and the labor and the postpartum was. I know that I've created quote, unquote trauma for my child. Now I have forgiven myself for that because I didn't know any better. And every day I'm working with my daughter to heal that relationship. So whether it's she gets frustrated really easily or during the Full moon, she's a bit more emotional, or if she didn't sleep enough, I know how to work with her in the triggers that she's creating for me and that me working through them. I know that now I have to work on that because I didn't do any work beforehand. And I know that she's different because of the state that I was in the first pregnancy versus the state that I was in my third pregnancy after the miscarriage. And it's night and day difference. I think it's silly for us to say, and it's a bit ignorant for us to say that period in life didn't matter. And how could it matter? The energy that or the feelings that my mom had. I had one patient tell me that she's chronically felt super stressed and in her early 30s, she's 33. She basically has no hormones, so she's in premature ovarian failure and basically has gone into perimenopause. Going into menopause at 33. When we did the history, turns out there was a stressful event. Like all her twenties were stressful. Teenage years were really stressful. Zero to five, there was a lot of movement. And then it turns out when her mom was pregnant with her dad at that time, he was struggling with drugs, I believe, or alcohol. And he actually tried to attack her mom while she was pregnant with her. And the mom obviously got scared, ran away, had to like jump off a second story building. And I'm like, do you think that the way that you experience stress would be different if your mom didn't have that experience? Like, if she was married to a guy who loved and supported her and she wasn't fearful of her life. Do you think as a baby and then as a child, you would have a very different experience? And I think the answer is always, like, obviously would be so different if everything was the same in terms of diet and lifestyle, but some. One pregnant woman lived in a highly stressed state, while another pregnant woman lived in a optimal, peaceful, calming environment. Do you think those pregnancies would turn out differently? I think sometimes it's like not palpable, if you will. You're like, well, I'm not sure it's 100%. Like, I'm telling you that it just based from my own experience. So there's the physical stuff that we have to work at, but there's also the energetics. And what was going on before in our relationship with our mom, you know, is going to be reflected as well with our own frustrations with how Even our own menstrual cycle and our fertility journey and all of that stuff, you know, our ovaries are connected to our genetic line, right? For better or for worse. And I always think it's for the better because it gives us an opportunity to work through the generational trauma and to understand why things happen the way that they did and how can I make different decisions to turn out in a different place. So how is this connected to pcos? I know I started talking about PCOS and now I'm veering up. Point being is that disease doesn't develop overnight. It probably has been something with you for a long time. And I think when we look at something like PCOS and the different aspects of it, you know, the five pillars that I'll use for my patients to help them kind of put it all together, is, okay, we want to increase drainage and we want to support your energy, we want to reduce inflammation, we want to make sure we get rid of infections, we want to make sure we detox, and then we want to make sure we optimize our nutrients. That that's like a broad stroke of how I do things. But at the end of the day, if you don't get rid of infections, if you don't detox, if you don't change some things about your energetics and how you are in this world and why you choose to be the way that you choose to be, and whether you realize it's a choice or not, you are choosing to be that way every day. So for somebody who is really high strung and constantly going and can't sit down, that's. Your level of cortisol is always higher than, quote, unquote, an average person. And you're just used to that. And so it's easy to say that's the norm for me. But in reality, it's still high levels of cortisol, and it has an impact on every single hormone in the body and inflammation level, blood sugar levels, all of that. So it's learning how to not have that much cortisol ripped through your system, because that's what feels like home. And it's like chaos, even when it feels like home is still damaging. And so it's teaching your nervous system how to flip the switch. And that's a new skill, and that's a skill that is possible for you to learn. And so the point being, with any disease, but let's say with pcos, there is an infection, there is a toxin that's driving the inflammatory process and then driving the hormones to be out of whack and increasing the stress in your body. And therefore the connection between the brain and the ovaries is in the strong and the. The ovaries are essentially not responding to the connection to the message from the brain. And they're not growing the follicles. There's many follicles that are growing instead of just the one. There is an infection. There's some sort of microbial imbalance that's causing that. But if I take you one level deeper, it's like, well, where's this infection coming from? The bugs hold the space for what we energetically have not processed. So they're there to challenge us and to help us overcome the energetic piece of our life, whatever that is. And maybe that's setting boundaries and maybe that's right, like learning to say no, not doing things for yourself, instead of constantly people pleasing. Maybe it's getting out of toxic relationships and learning to speak your truth and getting your needs met. Maybe it's learning how to get your nervous system calm because you're just so tired of doing all of the things for everybody else, but not yourself. And I think with every bug there is an energy that holds with it. So with parasites, parasites are very big. They're going to take over so much space in your body that they will literally change your personality. So whether it's your mood, it feels like it's erratic, you don't feel like yourself. There could be anxiety or depression. Lots of nutrients are being leached. As we get rid of the parasites, you too have to set boundaries and you have to learn, learn how to set those boundaries and to speak your truth and make sure that there's no parasites that are coming in again. You have to make the energetic shift as you're clearing out the pathogens, the mold and the fungus is all about suppressing, especially your emotions. Guys, males get impacted a lot by mold because there's a lot of suppression. But the truth is most of us are suppressed in some way, shape or form. It's just some of us. It's something that we really struggle with expressing our emotions and we're kind of worrying about everybody else. Where bacteria, there's so much overgrowth of bacteria, there can be really overwhelming, they can take over, but it still feels like there's something just outside of you that is not part of you, but outside of you that is causing all of the issues. And then there is the viral. And the viral is because viruses are like part of our DNA and we can see how they've Developed through the history of like human evolution and how much they have become part of our cells that it's really hard to tell if it's you or if it's the virus because there's just. They're part of us. And so when I coach my patients and these two pcos, you know, patients that I'm thinking about, they both had parasites, they both had bacterial overgrowth, they both had some fungal expression, and it all came at different times. They both had some viral. So as the way that the body heals is through expression. So the bug has to express itself so then we can get it out of the way. So I get really excited when people get sick when they start to express, because then we know the body has enough energy to overcome the pathogen. So we're giving you the nutrients, we're supporting your methylation, we're supporting your mitochondria, we're supporting your immune system. And then we're giving you the right herbs or even the right drugs to basically over come this pathogen. So whether it's a parasite, a fungal, you know, yeast or bacteria or viral, we're supporting you along that journey. And so with pcos, the general things is you gotta decrease inflammation, you gotta get the stress down. You have to start improving the functions of your detoxification organs like the gut, the liver, the lymphatic system. You know, you have to prioritize the sleep, but you have to. That's when you're doing all that, and then it only takes you to a certain level. No, it's not because you're just meant to live with pcos. It's that you actually have to go much, much deeper. And that deeper level is usually treating these infections and then doing some detoxing because, let's face it, heavy metals and some of these nasty environmental toxins like glyphosate and atrazine and even BPAs, other herbicides and pesticides, cause a lot of issues for us. They cause a lot of issues for the body, for our endocrinological system. So our hormones, if we don't address those, then of course our hormones are gonna be out of balance. So. And then we optimize. I see people all the time trying to optimize when they haven't laid the foundation. So I know I did a lot of rabbit holes on this podcast and I apologize. But this is just some things that I've been learning about and stepping back and, and not looking as disease. Like, I know if you have pcos, that's all you're Searching for how do I treat pcos? Can I overcome pcos? Can I get pregnant with pcos? What does this mean? And if I can get you to take a step back and say, okay, you have pcos, great, but what does that actually mean? When did that disease actually start to develop? Because there's a difference between it developing in the womb because the mom had a toxic exposure, or she had a very high stress, or she had dysregulated blood sugars where she had thyroid issues, versus it was when you were a teenager, versus it was in your 20s and it got triggered by birth control. How we approach PCOS will depend on how far down the line it goes, because then how long has this dysfunction been part of your system? And it will just feel like it's the way that you are because this microbe or this pathogen or this toxin has been with you for your life. And so if it's there, we have to get it out. But just know you're not going to feel off because it's just been part of you. So when we figure out when it became part of you, if it's in the womb versus, you know, in your 20s or even in your 30s, when then that treatment approach is going to be very, very different. The basics are going to stay the same. Like I said, and I always talk about the basics, but once the basics don't work, and it's not that they don't work, they stopped working, it's not because, okay, that's it, you need to give up. It's that the basics stay the basics. Like you can't get away from sleeping, eating well, hydrating yourself, moving your body, managing your stress. Like that never goes away. You have to do that all the time. That is the price you pay for being a human and taking care of your physiology. You just have to do that. But once it stops working and you plateau, it actually means you need to go deeper. And this is where we're going deeper into detoxing and into getting rid of infections. And this is where I encourage a lot of people to get the lab testing done, because the lab testing done can be so specific to exactly what you need to do, instead of some random nutrients that you heard on the Internet or the influencer, because let's face it, again, that's not specific to you. So it might work and it might not work. And so then you're wasting supplements, time, money, energy, all that jazz. So I hope you guys find this helpful. Like I said, I know I rabbit hole, but I just want you to step away from the diagnosis and zoom out and help you understand a little bit more about history when things started to develop. And what was the pregnancy like with your mom? Does she, like, be curious about that? Because I think it has a much bigger foundation than we realize. And because I've had these two very different pregnancies and two very different births and now two very different children. That's what I'm really passionate about. It's like I wish it is still a regret that I work through every day with my daughter. It's like I wish I knew better and I wish I did some sort of preparation for my firstborn. And I'm glad I am who I am, that I can forgive myself, but that I can also teach my daughter how to heal. But I know exactly what I passed on to her, and I did that out of awareness. And I know exactly what I need to do with her to help her overcome those issues so she doesn't have to struggle with them down the road. And so if we do the work ahead of time, then we can have a very, very different experience and create a healthy generation of kids and parents. And, like, that's what I'm really after. You know, it's like, yep, getting pregnant is exciting. But you know what's more exciting is having a healthy kid that you can actually enjoy life with and you can heal a lot of your past childhood trauma. Because when we have kids and babies, it really helps us. I think it really challenges us humans to grow. And it's really a cool growth that my husband and I have experienced. And obviously I love my couples, watching them go through that as well. And I wish that for you too. So thank you so much for joining in. I hope to see you next week. Thank you so much for listening. To read the full show notes of this episode, including summary, timestamps, guest quotes, and any resources that were mentioned on the episode. Visit drjanelevec.com podcast and if you're getting value from this episode episodes, I'd love it if you took 2 minutes to share it with a friend. Rate and leave me a review at ratethispodcast.com forward slash Dr. Jane. The reviews will help with the discoverability of the show and who knows, I might share your review on my next episode. Thank you so much for tuning in and let's make your fertility journey your healing journey.