Dr. Jane Levesque [0:23 - 22:17]: 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 Doctor Jane Levesque. I'm a naturopathic doctor and a natural fertility expert. Tune in every Tuesday at 09:00 a.m. 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. But before we get into this uninterrupted conversation, here's an update on my latest offerings. All right, you guys, today I want to talk to you about hormonal imbalances. This is probably one of the most common things that I hear through the DM's when I ask a question, why do you think you're having a hard time getting pregnant? The women will always respond, hormonal imbalances. And I want to break this down because this is a very vague diagnosis. And if it's not a diagnosis and it's just something that you assume you have, I want you to be able to break that down a little bit more because a vague diagnosis provides us with vague results. And we can't be specific in our treatment when it comes to treating hormonal imbalances. So when we're speaking about hormonal imbalances, first of all, we need to understand what hormones are out of balance. Is it your insulin? Is it blood sugar, dysregulation? Is it your thyroid? Is it prolactin? Is it fsh and lh? Is it estrogen, progesterone, testosterone? Is it cortisol or stress hormones? Even though all of these are connected, they are not all going to be impacted for everybody. And what is really important to remember is that hormones are actually not the root cause of our issues of the symptoms that you're experiencing. Okay? So in my experience, when my patients are sitting down with me and we're doing the initial consultation or we start to work together and they say, I have hormonal imbalances, it's usually because their doctor told them that they have hormonal imbalances or they've spent some time googling and researching and they read that x, y and z symptom that they have means they have hormonal imbalances. So I want you to be very careful putting labels on yourself because you can then start to identify with that label and actually go in a completely different direction when it comes to treatment because that diagnosis is really vague. Just like I broke down all of the hormones that could be involved. If you're thinking that you have low progesterone, but you in fact do not have low progesterone, but you might have some symptoms of low progesterone. So, yeah, it's confusing. But I've had a patient struggling for five years with infertility, and she was convinced that she had low progesterone, and so she put a lot of time and energy into building her test progesterone back up. But in reality, she's never actually had her progesterone tested. Now, it's hard to test hormones. Hormones are pulsatiles. They're also dramatic and they do shift and change, especially, obviously, within the female cycle. So it's hard to catch them at the right time to make sure we get a realistic picture of what's going on. So I still test progesterone. There's some practitioners who won't test it in the second half of the cycle because they feel like it's not super representative. Uh, you know, just a one day progesterone number. Really, realistically, you'd want to get seven days in a row in that second half of the cycle. But it's very time consuming and obviously uncomfortable to get poked all the time. And there's no, like, a lot of doctors are not going to do it unless you're obsessed with data and you want to do it and you want to know. I still run that seven days post ovulation because I really teach my patients to understand their own ovulation. And if they can't tell that they're ovulating, I know that they already have low progesterone because that's usually really a quality of the egg issue. But we still want to test it so we can see how low it is. And it's a data number thing that we can track. Point being is hormones are not the root cause. There's something causing hormones are messengers, and so there's something causing the hormones to do what it is that they're doing. For example, low progesterone. We have to ask, why is the progesterone low or high estrogen or low testosterone or high testosterone or even cortisol? Right. Stress management. It's not just about managing stress, it's understanding why does your body have an increased response to stress? Is it because we're not sleeping? Is there blood sugar dysregulation? Where's the blood sugar dysregulation coming from? What I'm getting at is there is a deeper rabbit hole that you need to dive into instead of say, I have hormonal imbalances, because vague diagnoses is going to get you vague results. And the worst thing that you can do, in my opinion, to say that natural medicine doesn't work, and I guess my body is different and it just doesn't respond to the herbs, to the supplements, to the natural therapies like someone else's. And I just don't believe that's true. Usually when we're working on our health and we're putting a lot of time, energy and money into it, but it's not improving. It actually tells me that you're working on the wrong thing versus that natural medicine doesn't work. And a lot of the times it doesn't work because you're very much working on the wrong thing that the body's not going to respond to. So, for example, that I use for progesterone, the most common thing that you're going to see in the alternative world is, well, you need to increase your B vitamins, you know, B vitamin B, six. More specifically, you need to increase vitamin C and, uh, you know, a high quality fats, your hdl, because that's cholesterol, backbone of all your sex hormones. You should also start taking chastity or vitex, which is more of a hormone that works on the brain and helps to support ovulation. And when the ovulation is strong, that corpus luteum in the second half of the cycle is the thing that's going to produce more progesterone. And so in theory, that's a nice idea, that if I just take some vitex and some vitamins and minerals, then I'm going to have my progesterone raised to its normal level. But it doesn't address the question at the very beginning, well, why am I low in those nutrients and why am I not ovulating very strongly? And this is where we have to get deep down into the root causes. There is multiple different root causes, but some of the ones that I'm finding in my practice is, for example, parasites. Parasite infections are really common now. And part of that, one of the reasons for that is because we have a very high environmental toxic load. So the parasites are there for a reason, actually. They help to soak up heavy metals and even mold and yeast. And so they thrive in that environment. And we have to treat the parasites first. But usually it's just the beginning of our treatment protocol. I've had patients who have treated parasites, and they had their progesterone levels almost triple within a couple of months, because here's the. The other layer of connection for you guys is at the root cause. We're seeing a lot of infections, environmental toxins, that are causing disruption in the physiology of how our cell functions. At the core of our cell is the mitochondria. The mitochondria is this little powerhouse of the cell that's really critical to cell function. It's not in every cell, but it's in very important cells, if you will. So we have a lot in muscle cells. We have a lot in the liver. We have an insane amount in our nervous system, in our brain and our neurons, of course, in the heart, because that's also a muscle. And then we have an insane amount in the reproductive system, both for females and males. The human oocyte has the most amount of mitochondria in the mitochondrial DNA than any other cell type. So we also see a correlation between a healthy egg and more mitochondria and a poor quality egg and less mitochondria. So the level of that mitochondria is going to change as the oocyte matures. And obviously, the quality of that egg is dictated by how much mitochondria there is. The mitochondria, one of the reasons that I love cellcore so much. So Celcore is a company that I have used since 2019, and they've really changed the way that I practice and I see my patient cases, and therefore, of course, the way that I provide results. I've had the opportunity to speak on the stage at Eco as well, in their last conference in May, speaking about this same thing, where there's two roles of the mitochondria, it can either be a powerhouse or a battleship. So when it's in a powerhouse mode, this is when it's producing us energy. This is when it's making us sex hormones, like testosterone, estrogen, progesterone. It also helps us with cortisol production, our stress hormone, it helps with hydration. There's many other components that we're basically learning about that the mitochondria does for us. So at the root cause of all fertility issues, I believe, is mitochondrial dysfunction. But at the root cause of all hormonal imbalances we have to look at the mitochondria. And so when the mitochondria is in the powerhouse mode, then we're doing good, right? We're producing sex hormones. We have good regulation of cortisol, inflammation, blood sugar, all that jazz. But when it's in battleship mode, it goes into this, like, crisis mode, essentially, where it's trying to protect the body in fighting infections, fighting industrial environmental toxins, heavy metals, mold, yeast. And that is what depletes a bunch of our nutrients, because it also jacks up our immune system. It takes a lot of energy for the body, but also increases the response in our immune system. So now, instead of having a powerhouse cell, we have a battleship cell. And because the mitochondria is so critical in helping us make so many of our hormones and make so much of our energy, we have to treat the mitochondria, like I said. And we're seeing this huge spike in infertility in both male and female. And we've seen a huge increase in environmental toxins and how much we're surrounding ourselves with our toxins in the water, in the air, in the skin products, you know, and even the social media, the toxic world that we can live in now with all the bombarding of information, that can be very, quite toxic to a lot of us, especially if you're more sensitive energetically, that all will impact the mitochondria. And I know this is probably not something you expected to hear when you're, like, hormonal imbalances and fertility. She's going to tell me how to balance hormones, and I will. But I don't want you to fall for the trap of thinking that if I just take some vitex, if I just take some calcium, d glucarate or dim or whatever you heard on another podcast or Internet to just help balance my estrogen, then all of my problems will be solved. Because don't get me wrong, those are really powerful tools. And when used at the right time, they can do magic for people, but it has to be the right tool at the right time. It's just, like, advice. Good advice at the wrong time is bad advice. And I see way too many women tell themselves that they have hormonal imbalances, and then they go down the rabbit hole of searching the Internet of how to fix their hormonal imbalances, where in reality, there's so much vagueness, there's no specificity there, and therefore, you're going to get really vague recommendations. And those recommendations, a lot of the times, are going to be fed to you based on the algorithm of the information that you have been searching before. So if you've searched estrogen, going to say, oh, do you have estrogen dominance? These are all the symptoms and you can check off all the marks. So if you really want to figure out what hormonal imbalances you do have, you have to get a really good picture. Some like get a really good assessment with a practitioner where you're going to look at all of your symptoms, not just the ones that you think impact your fertility, but everything. This is probably one of the biggest aha moments for my patients through going through an initial consult. They're like, I didn't think this thing had anything to do with my fertility issues. Now, for example, like getting a Lyme disease when I was really young, or having a lot of digestive distress, or having a really stressful period when I was in puberty, I had a patient that I just took on. She was literally during there was a war that broke out in her country when she was a teenager, which will actually dictate the way that her brain registers stress and ovulation, because that's the time where the brain and the ovaries are learning how to communicate and how to connect with one another. So we really underestimate how some of these really big events in our life will actually impact and continue to impact us today. And so taking just vitex for it, or taking some vitamins and minerals, I'm sorry to say, it's just not going to be the fix it is for some people, but that's luck, essentially, or they worked with a professional, they told them and they addressed, um. They addressed the thing that was truly missing for them. So what I recommend is getting a proper health assessment. You also do need to do some lab testing. I always say there is lab testing that shows us what's happening and then there's lab testing that shows why it's happening. The what lab testing is your hormones. We want to get an idea of what's going on. Do you have low progesterone or high testosterone? Or low testosterone or high estrogen? What's your LH and FSH doing on day three of your cycle versus progesterone on day 21 ish, depending when you're ovulating? Do you know when you're ovulating? What about your blood sugar regulation, fasted insulin? And you can go down the rabbit hole of testing cortisol as well, and looking at how your body is responding to stress. So if you really want to get an idea of what hormonal imbalances you have. The point being is you're going to have to do some testing, and you probably need a professional to help you put the information all together. Because like I said, what I hate is these vague diagnoses because they give us really vague results. And I hate it when people say natural medicine didn't work, because to me, it is the only medicine that works. Don't get me wrong, there is a time and place for the conventional system, but pharmaceuticals weren't designed to be taken long term. And I see women taking these medications that are designed to stimulate their ovulation, and they're taking them for months, if not years at a time without truly understanding the impact that it's having on their overall hormones, and even sometimes on the internal response that can happen with the histamine and estrogen reaction in the microbiome, not to mention the uterine lining. So sometimes we're doing a lot more harm than good when we're just jumping into treatments without really understanding what is causing the issue, especially when we're using conventional, because conventional is going to be a lot more aggressive. That's just going to block whatever it is that's going on and give you a bunch of synthetic hormone, but that doesn't mean your body is going to respond to that. Sometimes I think when the fight, the body fights back. I have some patients who are quite sensitive to medications, and they had really bad negative reactions when they went on, you know, clomid or letrozole, if that's you. I almost think, like, that's just your body saying, like, I don't want this shit in my body. I don't want, like, let me figure it out. I see so many women blame themselves when the medications don't work. And I'm like, what are you talking about? That like, you don't have a deficiency in medication in your body, but you do have a deficiency of some nutrient that's probably caused by some toxin or an infection. So once you deal with the toxin and the infection, the nutrient deficiency will go away, or it's just a lot easier to replace it. So please, please, please, radies. Do not put this hormonal imbalances, uh, label on yourself. It's too vague and it's not going to provide you with the results that you want, and you're just going to go down a rabbit hole that you don't want to go down on. And like I said, hormones are just not the root cause. They are dramatic. They have, um, a lot of them are pulsatile, so it is hard to catch them. And you want a professional to be able to actually test it at the right times and explain to you what the results actually mean. Okay. That's the last piece of understanding your hormones. If you ran your hormone panels, but no one has ever really explain to you what the results mean, what each marker means, I think that's a huge red flag, because why would you run a bunch of testing and then trust somebody who sees literally hundreds of patients a week to say, oh, everything is great? So on the conventional side, I see that all the time. This is one of the reasons why, when I take people on for my initial consult, I get them to upload their previous lab results because. And I take them through it because obviously I go through it, and I'm like, hmm. I wonder if they know that they have low testosterone. I wonder if they know that this information is completely missed. I wonder. And a lot of my patients have no idea. Right. Nobody has ever explained labs to them. And I think it's very, very healing and empowering for you to actually go through the labs and be able to understand what it is that's going on in your body and then be able to be able to connect it to your symptoms, because as you start working on stuff, your symptoms will start to go away, and you can make that connection, and you can learn for the rest of your life. You know, when I always use the example, when I struggled with weight loss resistance, it took me, like, six years to figure it out. I hated being stuck in my body for 25, for an extra 25, 30 pounds that I would continue to carry. And I tried all the diets, and I over exercised, and, you know, I damaged my body quite a bit. But once I did figure it out, it's. I have a pathway. I know exactly what I need to do. So if I gain 20 pounds tomorrow, for whatever reason, I know exactly what to do. And I want you to be able to do this through your fertility journey. I. Especially if you're trying to have your first. It feels. I don't want to say it feels like you're giving up when you're going into IVF, but there's still a part of you that just goes, I couldn't figure it out. There was something that I couldn't figure out, and what if I want to have another child? Does that mean I have to go through this again? And even my patients who have been struggling with infertility for, you know, three three and a half years, when it's time to have another baby, they get that anxiety again, you know, because infertility can be very traumatic. I think it is very traumatic and it is the hardest thing that we go through and that infertility trauma can linger with us for a long time unless we understand what happened. When did the dysfunction start and what did we do to fix it? If you have this process and this steps outlined, and you were present and aware for that process, which you should be, because you're going through it, then it's a lot less likely to leave a mark on you for longer than it should. So I hope you guys find this helpful. Like I said, let's not give put vague blanket statements on ourselves like, oh, I have hormonal imbalances. I want you to dive deeper, get into understanding what hormones you have that are imbalanced, and more importantly, start asking the question of, well, why are they imbalanced? What's causing the imbalance? And this is where your functional medical doctor, naturopathic doctor like myself, is going to really dive into. And if they're not diving into it, then they're probably not the right doctor for you. I hate to say this, but not all naturopaths are the same, and it very much depends on the naturopath's story as well. Did they feel? What was their journey, their healing journey? And why are they, you know, specializing in fertility, for example, or specializing in another field? Why is it that they do what they do and even their approach to testing and helping you understand? Interview your practitioners so you can make sure that you can get on the right step on the right journey right away instead of spending all of your time googling vague symptoms that essentially brings you nowhere and, you know, just waste a lot of time and money. So I hope you guys find this helpful. Thanks so much for listening and tuning in. If you found this episode helpful, please send it to somebody that you think will find it helpful as well. And then if you can subscribe to the podcast, I would greatly appreciate it. We'll chat soon. Thank you. 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 drjanelevesque.com podcast. And if you're getting value from these episodes, I'd love it if you took two minutes to share it with a friend. Rate and leave me a review at ratethispodcast. 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.