If you’ve been trying to conceive for over a year and want this level of detective work on your case, apply to work with me and my team here: drjanelevesque.com/application.

It takes about 5–7 minutes to complete. If we can help, we’ll invite you to a free Fertility Clarity Call with one of my team members. On that call, we’ll go through your story, see what’s been missed, and walk you through our simple 3‑step Clarify → Correct → Conceive process that’s helped over 70% of our clients finally bring home a healthy baby.

Episode Summary

In this solo episode, I walk you through a real fertility case to show you why “unexplained infertility” doesn’t actually exist. I break down how I assess a complex case, from blood work and gut health to hormones, methylation, and metabolic functionand why fertility is never just one issue.

If you’ve been told everything looks “normal” but you’re still not getting pregnant, this episode will help you understand what’s being missed, why IVF isn’t always the first step, and what it really takes to prepare your body for a healthy pregnancy.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Fertility involves every system, not just the uterus.
• Unexplained infertility often has underlying health issues.
• Comprehensive testing is crucial for understanding fertility.
• Inflammation and metabolic issues impact fertility.
• Gut health is vital for overall fertility.
• Methylation affects DNA repair and energy production.
• Holistic care can improve fertility and overall health.

About Dr. Jane’s Practice

I’m a Naturopathic Doctor and Natural Fertility Expert. My team and I work 1:1 with couples who’ve been struggling with infertility for 1+ years to get to the root cause of their fertility issues so they can conceive and bring a healthy baby home, using advanced lab testing and personalized protocols.

Our mission is to make science-backed, natural fertility care the standard so more couples can build healthy, thriving families.

If you want this level of support on your own case, apply here: drjanelevesque.com/application

Hi, welcome to this episode of Natural Fertility with Dr. Jane. Of course, I'm Dr. Jane and today I'm writing solo and I'm going to talk to you about the number one reason why you're struggling to conceive. And there's actually not a one reason. So I'm going to dedicate this podcast episode to help you understand how complex fertility really is and that there isn't one reason why you're not conceiving and you're not the only person that is involved, even if the partner is told that his sperm is fine.

I'm not going to talk about the male partner. I'm actually just going to talk about the female partner today because there's a lot of complexity to every single fertility case that we see in my practice because I think that fertility is complex. It involves every single system in the body. So when you are pregnant, you, it's not just your uterus that's carrying the baby. Your entire system has to work in order to make that happen. So the

nutrients that are in your blood are coming from your digestion and your liver function and the ability of your pancreas to produce the pancreatic enzymes and the bile to flow and to break down all of the food that you are eating to then making sure that the nutrients are delivered in the blood. You are also looking at the kidneys and the lungs and the, I mean, the stomach actually increases its capacity to absorb and digest food, but then the liver.

has to work a lot harder. The blood volume almost doubles. You have kidney function, you have liver function that becomes really important. So if you have been stuck in this mentality, I'm looking for the root cause, just know that there are root causes to your infertility struggles, not root cause. And I'm going to use a case study to help you understand what we do and why we do what we do, because ultimately our goal is to help you have a healthy baby, not just to get pregnant. And

I have a summary of what this patient came with, then what are the testing that we did? And I'm going to share my screen. So if you want to watch this, if you're driving, I'm going to try to walk through or you're walking, I'm going to try to walk through things as much as I can in terms of what I'm seeing. But if you want to tune in and actually watch it, I think it will be super helpful for you to see all of the tests that we run and why we run them. So the it's SH 38 year old female.

She came to me or there, we're working together, but I'm just going to talk about her because there's lots and she was really focusing on the fertility herself because he was fine. And turns out he has a lot of stuff too, but I'm just going to focus on her case right now. She was told she had unexplained infertility. She is obese, so she has a hundred pounds to lose. She has HPV, but

basically she's just trying to manage it on her own and she kind of found some supplements online to see if that's going to help with the HPV and her plan was just to retest. So by the time we have HPV, I'm like, there's so much that's going on already here. Like I can't believe they're saying it's unexplained infertility. She had a miscarriage in her twenties and she bled for basically a year straight and all the doctors just told her it was normal.

She spiraled into a big bout of depression as any woman would. And that's when the kind of the weed use came in and then the food came in and you know, it was just a lot of stress and she just kind of used that as a coping mechanism. And you know, now she's gone through multiple rounds of different diets and lifestyle changes and tends to lose a little bit of weight and things kind of work, but then tends to just come back to the same issues.

And the doctor told her it was unexplained infertility, which to me is, I mean, not only is that medical negligence, but they're just like straight up lying to you. So if you have gone to a fertility clinic, you are probably were unpleasantly surprised that it's not a fertility clinic. It's an IVF clinic. We need to be really transparent about that. When you're going to your conventional fertility clinic, all of the testing and the diagnosing that they're going to do.

is just simply to see if IVF will work. That's it. Not why is this couple not getting pregnant naturally, or why is this couple not getting pregnant? When they test, they now they did not want to do IVF. It's it is something that they're still potentially considering, but she feels unhealthy in her body, which obviously she feels unhealthy in her body. And she wants someone who's going to help her understand what's going on and how can I optimize my fertility knowing that it's not going to be just about treating the HPV or

not about just losing weight or the anxiety and the, you know, the sleep that's not good or the stress that's high. She understands that she needs help with all of it and that it's all connected. And my hope is that you guys also will start looking at it as such, because even if you're seeing holistic providers, I see so many of you not piecing information together from different providers who don't specialize in fertility. So the information is so fragmented and

we want to provide this fertility lens for you. Why are things, why are you not getting pregnant? Pregnancy is a natural process. So if it's not happening, something is missing and it's our job to figure out what that is. Some things are going to be super obvious. So we're just going to look at those things and tell you that it is important. If it has anything to do with blood sugar, if it has anything to do with your liver, with inflammation, with your hormones, it is important because it's not just your uterus.

that's carrying the baby, your entire system has to work well in order to make a baby. You're making a baby from scratch. And it is such a tremendous amount of resources and energy that it takes to do that well. And then you have to push that baby out and you have to feed that baby with your body and not spiral into postpartum depression or anxiety or not be able to produce milk or whatever it is. It's so oversimplified to just say you're struggling with infertility.

let's do IVF and then you'll figure it out. Then the body will figure it out from there. It's like, no, it won't. You have to help the body figure it out now. So then it can do the thing that it's built to do, right? That it's designed to do. So let me go right into it. And we're just going to go into the tests because I think it's going to be super valuable. So, we run a lot of testing as you guys know, and day two and three,

There's a couple of things that we look for and she didn't actually have a lot of things that were happening on day two and three. Her image was at 1.3. Her testosterone, you know, the free testosterone, I don't want to say that's not a great marker for females, but I'll still take a peek at it. It's 4.3. The range is, you know, 3.6 to 5.1. So she's in there maybe starting to creep up a little bit on the higher end, but it's not bad. Her DHEA is, you know, an optimal range. Her FSH and LH.

are in good ranges. anything, LH is a little bit on the low side. usually in PCOS, for example, she was never diagnosed with PCOS, but she was thinking that's probably what I have because of the blood sugar imbalances, because of the obesity. And even though she has a regular cycle.

is she never confirmed it with ovulation. So we did start tracking it with a needle so we could see if she is ovulating and sure enough, she's not. We've only have a month and a half of information right now, but we'll see if that changes because obviously her progesterone was really low in the second half of the cycle. So it's like, she's not ovulating. And if she is, it's just very, very weak. The LH when it's low,

And then if the other brain hormones are low as well, I'm thinking about stress and I'm thinking about, you know, the hypothalamic and the ovarian axis and how the brain and the ovaries are communicating essentially. The prolactin was good and her estradiol was not detected, which is usually

Not great because it's like, okay, well, she's not making it's this is on day two. Is this in perimenopause? She is in perimenopause because she's 38 and most women will start that transition at about 35. But it's not a very quick transition, meaning you don't just go from having beautiful like.

robust ovarian function to your ovaries completely shutting down, just like in puberty, that process is over 10 years. You know, by the time the brain starts the puberty to like you actually developing breasts and having a menstrual cycle to then the brain finishing development, it's like a 15 year process.

So it's the same for perimenopause. It's the reverse of puberty and it happens gradually over time. And I find that most women 35 on start to experience some perimenopausal symptoms and some obviously sooner now because higher inflammation, all of that stuff. that kind of, you know, right away I look and I go, what's going on over here? Does she have enough hormones and what's happening with her ovarian function?

The date 19 to 23, we have a whole other picture that's now showing up. So when I look and you can see if you're watching this, there's a lot of red stuff. So her fair tin is low. It's at 23. Her iron total is low at 35. Her saturation is very low at 10%. The iron binding capacity is good, but you know, it's like everything is low.

She has thyroid antibodies, she has Hashimoto's. She also has a really low HDL, so good cholesterol, and her triglycerides are high. They're almost 200, which again leads to metabolic disease. Her LDL is on the upper range, which is common for women in perimenopause slash inflammation. Her glucose, fasted glucose, is at 140, which is very high. And I think she had it even higher at certain points before she met me.

So just right there, the fact that people told her she has unexplained infertility is a lie. Like it's a straight-up lie you guys. She can see it. Her iron is low. She has thyroid antibodies. So she has autoimmune disease. Her cholesterol is elevated.

and inflamed and cholesterol is the backbone of us making hormones and we need good mitochondrial function and good liver function in order to be able to make cholesterol into hormones. she doesn't, estradiol doesn't look good and progesterone doesn't look good. So her body is trying.

by increasing those, that cholesterol, but it's not working. So we're going to keep going further down, but right off the bat here, you're like, what's happening here? I'm not even thinking about pregnancy at this stage. I'm just worried about her long-term health as a 38 year old. If she has another even five years of this, she's not going to do very well and her ovaries are going to shut down. She's going to lose bone. Like metabolism is going to get even worse and all of, know, if the glucose continues to stay, you're talking about.

This isn't good. This isn't just fertility now. This is your health, you know, so We look at liver enzymes and those those look pretty good her electrolytes in my opinion are really low So that sodium at 136 is really really low Potassium at 3.9 is low for me. So she definitely needs those things supplemented. So we just add that into the process

or into our protocols, her vitamin D is low, her CRP is really high, so again, pointing to cardiovascular risk, insulin is really high at 39.2, fasted insulin, that's metabolic disease, insulin resistance, and I mean, she's feeling it with her inflammation and excess weight. Her CA125 marker.

the cancer antigen marker is really high in that second half of the cycle which tells me that there's a lot of endometrial lining inflammation so that marker alone I think by until it is down we cannot

tried to conceive because essentially the chance of implantation failure is really high. So miscarriage risk is really high and she's already had a history of miscarriage where her body in the way that we took the history down and one of the questions I asked her and I was like, Hey, do you think you ever recovered post that miscarriage that happened, you know, 15 years ago? And she's like, honestly, I don't know. Like she doesn't, her gut says that probably not, which is crazy, right? So for 15 years, her hormones, I mean, her hormones were imbalanced before that, but

that was a big trigger for her. that's something that we're working through and stabilizing and regulating. Her HbA1c is at 7.3. So this is full blown diabetes. The fact that she was told she has unexplained infertility and she should just do IVF is medical negligence. I think it's criminal. I think that's why she didn't want to do it because she knew there was a lot of things that were wrong. And this is why, you know, she came to us. I know that this is an extreme case, but we see these things all the time.

that like to me it's embarrassing that women are being pushed into IVF when they're this inflamed because it is just dangerous and there are so many studies showing the risk.

of going into IVF with higher inflammation and the risks to the mother, the risks to the baby, the risk of the pregnancy and the complications that you can have. And the more inflamed you are and the more like the woman and the male partner, the higher those risks because essentially you are now putting more stress on the body. Like the drugs are a lot, the emotional toll, the financial toll, all of that stress that you feel in the body is a lot. And when we just go blindly into

to IVF, think we can get ourselves into so much trouble. And there's so many things that we can do to essentially optimize and it's not happening before going to IVF. So right now our goal is can we clean this up? And in three months, so in another month, I started working with them right at the end of December, we got all of our results sometime in January. So it's been about two.

two and a half months and I'll show you and tell you the results that we have so far, but we will be retesting every three months to make sure that these markers are improving because it's bananas. You know, it's just bananas. and you can feel how inflamed this person is and you know, she has full blown anemia. It's her white blood cells and her red blood cells are still hanging in there and it's not so her red blood cells, her hemoglobin, all of that is still hanging in there. But I think that iron is so low and that ferritin is so low.

because of the level of inflammation in the body. And I'm not convinced at this point, cause her ANA screen became negative, but I'm not convinced at this point that she has like full blown autoimmune disease, or it's just because she's so inflamed that the immune system and the thyroid is overreacting. And that is, that happens all the time. So we are, I'll tell you some of the things that we're doing. So you guys know.

And we'll retest and see if the immune system is a big component for her versus it's just the blood sugar. And if we can get that blood sugar regulated, everything else is going to do much better. Her progesterone after ovulation was a 5.4, which basically means that she's barely ovulated. It's not a big corpus luteum that's producing that progesterone. So obviously that's a concern. Her thyroid surprisingly is doing pretty well, but in terms of like the TSH and the free T3 and the free T4.

the T4 is low, but it's impressive that it's not lower. So the thyroid doesn't look like the weakest point, but it's obviously the antibodies are impacting it. And then the B12 is low, the estradiol is. In the blood, it's not super high. I would say that it's in good range, but it's not super high. blood work is super, just from the blood work, we can see, I'm not even thinking about dealing with the HPV because I just think that there's...

so much inflammation and there's so much blood sugar dysregulation and there's so many other things that are going on that the HPV is there because of the immune system being really dysregulated basically. So when we look at the gut, now we're gonna look at, you know, what's going on. Is she digesting and absorbing her food? Is the gut a source of inflammation? And it is, right off the bat, you see that this calprotectin is at 417.

So anything above 250, you're thinking about ulcerative colitis, you're thinking about, you know, chronic IBS, IBD. She said she had zero gut symptoms. And this is this classic symptom where this is this classic story where you don't know how bad things are until we fix them. Because as soon as we started optimizing her digestion, she was like, yeah, I didn't realize that that wasn't normal. So she's always just had loose stools. She's always had multiple bowel movements.

But when I see calprotectin levels like this, and I see them elevated for a chronic period of time, it's not even ulcerative colitis. I'm thinking about colorectal cancer. So this isn't good. You know, there's a lot of inflammation. So she's getting in.

another test in three months and she's just gonna go and test it with her PCP and we're just gonna look at the calprotectin and make sure that it's decreasing. And then I usually recommend retesting the gut anywhere. You could retest it in three months, three to six months you could retest but you know if you're getting stuck it's a year to make sure that things are moving through. If I see a really big infection and we're working through stuff.

And I'll talk to you about, cause we started doing an infection protocol and it was actually just too much for her. So we had to pull back and we just kind of have to stabilize until we're ready to do some killing. Cause the system was not ready for it. So we always have to respect the system, but the scalp protecting is very, very alarming. Not even from a fertility standpoint, but from health and this beta glucuronidase also is very alarming because we're now thinking about estrogen that's being recycled. And then I'm thinking about estrogen type.

cancers, what's running in the family. Now there is HPV. Now do you have breast cancer in the family, cervical ovarian, uterine cancers, you know, it's again, you do not want these really high levels of estrogens that's recirculating. And usually it just tells us about the health of the gut, which is it's very unhealthy. And, you know, she has some bacterial overgrowth. I'm going to kind of keep scrolling.

There is the fatty liver risk and ulcerative colitis risk and the reason that risk is popping up is because of the gut microbiome. So when we have certain bugs in the gut, you are going to have either a high risk of developing a certain disease or a lower risk. So this is, there could be a genetic predisposition. And so you ask about the genetics or you can test the genetics, but then it's, is the environment.

optimal or suboptimal and is the environment going to tell this gene to turn on or to stay off? And so when the environment is really inflamed, it's essentially going to tell that gene to turn on the disease genes and then keep the healthy genes off. So we obviously want to flip that again. It's not just about fertility. It's not just about pregnancy. Are you going to be around for that baby? And then what are you passing down to that baby if the pregnancy is even going to happen? So

That's a really insightful thing to know. It was good to see that there wasn't any really nasty big infections, which to be honest, it's not to say that there isn't anything. If we tested a stool, four stools in a row or three stools in a row, you probably would catch something different. But you could see the overall health of the gut in kind of the things that are gonna be the most prominent.

And she definitely had some pathogens and some opportunistic bacteria that are quite high in terms of the percentage. So the bacteria diet, bacteroides at it should be less than 3%. And she's at 11.2. So there's a lot of bacterial overgrowth in the same, the full, the full coca cola of all guidance is at 7.5 is where you should be under. And she's at 16.2%. So very, very high, I would say, causes a lot of bloating and digestion, IBS, IBD.

all those kinds of things. And then as we scroll down and we look at the good bugs, there's basically nothing is there, which is a problem because if I look at fertility as a garden and the soil is where we're gonna plant the seed, there is no soil. The soil is flat. The soil is, you know, there is no hydration in there. Now the electrolytes were really low, so we know that there is no charge in there. There's no good bugs. There's no life in that soil.

So very, very concerning, obviously, for just the overall health and some of them where they're not detected, like below detection limit, like the Archimensea species and the Rosburia hominis. It's a sign of a really unhealthy gut, essentially. And so, okay, her gut is super unhealthy. Well, that's gonna be reflected in her fertility and there's so much inflammation there. So that's not good. Let's keep looking further and let's now look at the vaginal microbiome.

So the pH was high, but she didn't have anything really detected except a little bit of this enterococcus vacuallis that's starting to creep up. Again, usually around hygiene and even hygiene for the male partner is really important. But then again, you go to the total lactobacilli, nothing. Like it's just, there's nothing there. So this is a very vulnerable vaginal microbiome, meaning if there's anything that comes across, you can get that infection pretty quickly.

Again, nothing is going to grow in this. Crispastis, Lactobacillus, Crispastis and Geyseri are associated with positive fertility outcomes versus, you know, Lactobacillus inaris. When we have too much of that one, it is associated with negative outcomes, but kind of depends on where the individual is coming from because we do have different microbiome mapping depending on where we are in the world as well. So,

There was nothing like really bad that came out, which is good, but there was also nothing good. And so we know long-term we're going to need to support that. And, I'm screening for these infections because I'm trying to figure out where the inflammation is coming from. Like why, why is this person so inflamed? Then we look at the methylation panel and you know, we've done some really good podcasts on this now, but the methylation panel is super, super insightful because it shows us

Methylation is this biochemical process that happens in every single cell of the body. And if it's glitchy, you're basically not going to be able to repair DNA. You're not going to be able to, and that's DNA for egg quality and sperm quality. You're not going to be able to make energy. You're not going to be able to detox. You're not going to be able to repair tissue. And when we think about getting pregnant and the everything that has to happen during pregnancy, the replication and how quickly those things need to happen.

it heavily relies on methylation. And so when this methylation is so glitchy, you know that the risk of miscarriage is really high, the risk of complications, if and if it does happen is really high. And so our job, right, as practitioners, as natural fertility experts is to not just hope you get pregnant, but to have a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby. And we support all of our clients through pregnancy and postpartum. We don't have any contracts. People work with us month to month, but they continue to work with us because they see the value

of, my God, I'm feeling so much better. I'm reversing cancer. I'm reversing diabetes. Like I'm reversing these chronic diseases and I get to like pass these good genes to my baby. There's, how could you put a price on that? You know? So I think if you're thinking about a fertility clinic, that's really an IVF clinic and it's very transactional. Like you're either going to get a baby or not. It's so different from how we view the body and how we see it because we're looking at like

What is the genetic code that you're passing to your baby and how can we create an environment where all the good genes are on for you? And that preconception care is arguably the most important thing that you can do before conceiving for the health of your child. So she obviously has a lot of stuff, like all her amino acids are really low, the methyl donors and the...

the SAMI and the SAHI is building up, which is huge cardiovascular risk and because her cholesterol is elevated and we know that blood sugar is elevated, we wanna make sure that we clear this through. She also had the COMT gene that had a double positive, which now I'm concerned more about the estrogens and we saw that in the gut. And then she does have some family history with estrogen cancers, like breast cancer. So like I'm...

I'm not even concerned about fertility now. I'm concerned genuinely about the future of her health and what her life is gonna look like in the next five to 10 years. So of course we're still focusing on fertility, but we have to fix all of these things first because the quality of her life is really, really important. And she's up for it. She's ready. She's been trying to conceive for three years and was down the rabbit hole of doing stuff on her own and essentially just decided, I don't wanna do it on my own anymore. It's very confusing. It's too much.

And that's why she decided to reach out. So my hope is that, you know, it short, it bypasses some of that trial and error for you. And you make a decision to either work with someone, or at least you go into the right direction because there's a lot. So, you know, she's not detoxing properly. She is really tired because that iron is low and the B vitamins and the vitamin D is low. Her immune system, like she's very, very inflamed. And the last test that, you know, I'll go through is the nutrient panel. So,

She did quite a bit, obviously. There's still more that we could do, but her mineral analysis is really low. So now I know that she needs cobalt, so methylcobalamin. Mellibdimin is low, so that's not a surprise to us when we see the transulphuration pathway in the methylation. My apologies, I wasn't sharing it. The mellibdimin is really important for the transulphuration pathway, which also supports with estrogen detoxification.

and methylation support. you know, she needs that her vanadium is low and that's blood sugar related. So it's balancing the blood sugar versus adding this mineral. Her chromium surprisingly was pretty good, but magnesium is low. Zinc is on the low side. There are some heavy metals and that's usually more environmental exposure. Her free copper is high. And I want like, this is really, I've

I've talked about this a couple of times, but basically what we test is we'll test the copper, we'll test the zinc and the plasma. So you're testing the blood as a whole and then the serum. you want to test within the red blood cells and then outside, again, different nutrient panels are testing different things and there's more there, there will be more that will come through cause not there's, there isn't a test that's perfect, but I really love this section of it. Cause then we look at the copper and the zinc ratio, we look at the seroplasmin and we look at the free copper. So,

Copper on its own can be quite neurotoxic, especially when it's free and unbound in the system. So she has 42.8%, which is very inflammatory. And whether you are feeling that as migraines or as anxiety or this restlessness or just infertility or high estrogen levels, because copper, ferritin and estrogen have this kind of triage, if you will, and they feed into each other. We want copper ratios to be one to one.

And I'm not sure if you know this, but during, before pregnancy, the copper ratio should be one to one during pregnancy, it will jump to two to one. And that's the state of pregnancy. And then as you get further along and closer towards labor, you'll go three to one or even higher as four to one. And that is one of the components that will trigger labor. So if you test the woman as she's getting closer and closer to labor, you could see that like

progesterone will do certain things, the copper and zinc ratio is going to shift. So you can literally tell when the woman is getting ready for labor. The problem when you have this free copper that's at 1.5%, sorry, the copper zinc ratio is 1.5 to one, is now that's closer to pregnancy than it is to the non-pregnancy state, especially because that free copper is quite elevated. If you're not pregnant, but your body thinks it's pregnant because of the copper and zinc ratio,

Well, it essentially is not going to ovulate properly. It's not going to, the egg is not going to send the signals to the sperm to attract it, to get fertilized because the body thinks it's already pregnant. It's like, would this free copper be so elevated? Well, the seroplasm is a protein that binds excess free copper and zinc tends to help with the metabolism of copper. So it helps to balance it out.

Sometimes people are supplementing copper with zinc because they were told that don't just take zinc, make sure you take copper. Well, that's not true for everybody. this, for her, if she's getting copper in her supplements, that's actually causing her so much more inflammation than in it's not offsetting the zinc. So she actually needs more zinc. And then we need to work on the seroplasmin, which is a protein, which are amino acids.

to make sure that the excess copper gets bound. Malybdimin is another mineral that's really important for copper metabolism, and the molybdimin did show up really low for her. So there is the estrogen piece, we need to make sure we detox the extra estrogen, because that's keeping the copper around. We need to bring the inflammation down and get the immune system regulated so that surroplasmin can go up and that protein gets really tanked when the immune system is tanked. And then there is the...

the zinc and the minerals, the molybdenum ratios for her. So again, I'm sharing this with you guys so you can kind of understand that there's so much more to just looking at a panel and going, I get it. this is, let me just do the zinc. It's putting all of these pieces together and looking at it through a fertility lens that allows us to create protocols that are very, very extensive for our patients. So let me continue sharing the screen.

as we finish this off.

So, you know, then we look at the fatty acid index and honestly, when someone is that inflamed, the omega-3 index is going to be super low because you're going to shuttle those omega-3s into the inflammatory pathway to just help come bring that inflammation down. This is one of those cases where I do consider supplementing with things like a high quality fish oil and making sure that it's tested properly. It's only small fish. It's in a glass bottle. It's kept in the fridge.

And, you know, making sure that it's tested for all the PFAs and the plastics and the heavy metals, because when people say we test for 200 things, I'm like, great, there's 90,000 things that are been released into the environment just in the last two years or over a hundred and however many thousand you've tested 200. That's not enough. You know, and some of these companies who are like, it's BPA free, but they'll use BPS, which is basically the sister of BPA or the brother of BPA. And it's

you're testing for BPA and you're going, there's no plastics. And it's like, yeah, but the companies are getting really smart and trying to so use the same material, but just a slightly different variation. they're naming it differently. so, you know, there's, there's that food for thought for you, but you know, her fatty acids, the main reason that I think they're off is because she's so inflamed versus she's potentially not eating enough. And the same with the amino acids is the taurine comes up here again.

the asparagine that's actually a lot for inflammation and the cysteine comes up a little bit low, the glutamine because we know that she has leaky gut and gut is super inflamed. you kind of go down, I start going down these rabbit holes like the glycine and the searing. Those are things that we did notice on the methylation panel as well. So her methylation is really quite deficient. And then some of the other metabolites where she's getting stuck.

is essentially just contributing to that inflammation. This nutrient panel also has organic acids. So then we can kind of look at what's going on with her carbohydrate metabolism. And there's no surprises there, but she's lighting up on all the carbohydrate metabolism. So there is this kind of quote unquote typical diabetes picture where it's insulin resistance. The body has a lot of carbohydrates. It does not know how to use them. And if I go up to this graph that shows the citric acid cycle, which is the

Crab cycle, might know it as that in the mitochondria. So how your body makes energy and they're testing all of these things that are in the green. know it's not super big, but you can kind of just see that like she has this food source and glucose and then it gets stuck in the pyruvate and then it shuttles into this lactic acid. And in order for it to shuttle back into the pyruvate, it, needs good levels of B3. And in order for it to go from pyruvic acid to acetyl CoA, she needs B1 and B3 and biotin and manganese.

and magnesium and potassium and zinc and glutathione. And it's like, and she's low on all of these things. So she, she's not low on all of those things, but most of those things. So yeah, absolutely. She is getting stuck and her metabolism isn't good and the mitochondria function isn't good. So she's actually not very good at making energy, which is concerning because pregnancy is a high energy demanding thing. So.

And when we sat down and talked, because she's like, I have good energy. She actually has a lot of anxious energy. And then as soon as we introduced a couple of things, she's like, I'm tired. And I'm like, you should be tired, man. You have no iron in your body. You can't use up the carbohydrates that you're using. Like you're not sleeping properly. You have all these nutrient deficiencies. You're so inflamed. You should be tired. And so what actually started to happen is she started to feel more tired. So she started to,

set more boundaries with her work and do less things and sleep more and sleep deeper. And, know, she's tracking her sleep and we could see that over time already increase and improve. And she has less tolerance to be able to less. So like, if she's not getting a good night's sleep, she gets very agitated. She's tired, which she should, because that essentially, you know, is why she's not, that's why the issues are there. So the oxidative damage,

marker, one of them is quite high. And again, I think that's just the inflammation. There's some, a lot of yeast and fungal dysbiosis that came up. So we'll test the urine, we'll test the vaginal microbiome, we'll test the stool, because you never know where the infection is hiding and where the infection is sitting for people. For some people, we'll see a lot.

sitting in the gut for others will see sitting in the urine for others it's the vaginal microbiome sometimes if obviously we test the partner and we see the seminal microbiome it's putting all of those things together and understanding like okay what's happening here and what do we need to get after first in order to help clear.

The oxalic acid, when that starts to get elevated, most people will be associated now with gout. And so it's like, my God, am I eating too much spinach? And it's like, no, it's not that you're eating too much spinach is that there's so much other inflammation and you're essentially, this is coming down to the liver function, to the gut function and even bile production and your body's ability to be able to disc to excrete it. And then your minerals.

So like the calcium, the magnesium, the zinc in the imbalance there to again, be able to excrete some of these metabolites. when I look at this, like now in this, I don't want to say this isn't everything because obviously it's a lot. Patients love it.

This is their favorite time when they look at all the labs and they go, my God, I feel so validated. And I can't believe they told me it was unexplained infertility because there's literally nothing unexplained about this case. And that was the case when we first met. didn't have to, like, I mean, I looked at some of her previous labs and we knew blood sugar was an issue, but we didn't realize how bad of an issue it was. And I'll tell you kind of her progress, but it's, there was nothing unexplained about this case. But if,

I just jumped in and said, let's just do the blood sugar, start eating better, start eating more protein, start moving your body, start sleeping better. And I didn't look at all of the nutrients that are missing. I didn't look at the hormones and the progesterone or the iron or the immune system or the gut.

whatever effort she was going to put into stabilizing her blood sugar would only take her so far. And that is essentially what was happening before she met me. She would put all this effort because she knows I want to lose weight. I need to start eating protein. I know my blood sugar is dysregulated, but she can't seem to get to the other side of actually doing it sustainably. Why? Well, because her body is actually really depleted and really exhausted. So when she starts this big new adventure, if you will,

She runs out of steam pretty quickly because she doesn't have the minerals. Your body cannot use the carbohydrates properly, which is a source of energy. She's not sleeping well. She's anxious. Her hormones are all over the place. She has a lot of inflammation in the gut to the point where it's alarming and scary that don't get me wrong, she is still

eating more protein and optimizing her fiber and she's learning to move her body. But now we're supporting all of these other things that have never been supported before that within, she just finished the 10 week detox and they jumped into it right away. So after two and a half months, she's lost 25 pounds. She's lost an insane amount of inches. So she's lost a lot more inches than weight, which is amazing. Her sleep is much better. Her mood is much better. She just feels this anxiety tone come down and we started her on progesterone basically right away.

some adverse reactions to it at first because her body was almost not used to having like peace and calm in the body. And the digestion got much, better. And then when we actually introduced the killing protocol, things didn't go well. So she started to experience a lot of diarrhea and

just a lot of bowel movements, a lot of pain in her guts. Like she just didn't feel well. So we had to pull back on the killing protocol. We're re-stabilizing some things and then we're going to try again. But my theory is that we just tried to go a little bit too quickly and she wasn't ready for intense killing. Like we needed to stabilize a bit more because there's so much inflammation. So I share this because I work with my patients, all of us in the clinic, we work with our patients to help them go through the process.

and...

We don't know everything about you. Like we have no idea how you're going to respond to a killing protocol. have an idea based on X, Y, and Z and you know, my experience and what's in research and what I've learned from my mentor. But ultimately we just have to start doing it and then we're going to adjust as we go. So one of my pet peeves is when you go to a, to a holistic provider and they're like, start this, go for three months and I'll see you in three months when you're done this protocol. Well, for somebody like S age two weeks into the killing protocol,

she started to go, I'm not doing well. So we had to make adjustments.

and quickly so she didn't spiral negatively and then think that she's failing or that her body is broken. And we didn't cause more damage because it was like, no, no, no, body's not ready. Let's pull back on this. Come back here. Let's see if we can stabilize. And sure enough, every day she was like, yep, I'm stabilizing. So, you know, we message our patients and I just tell them, like, make sure you're updating me and send me pictures of your needle so I can see where your hormones are and let's do that. So then we can walk you through some of these rocky patterns. And that's what I think is really missing in the holistic space.

And I mean, definitely in the conventional space is this guide that can walk you through all the ups and downs that are going to happen through your health journey, because it's not a smooth journey. It's not a straightforward journey. And the more clients that I have worked with and the more complex the cases get, there's a lot of simplicity in what we do. Like you're gonna for her was like, you have to cut out complex carbs. Like you cannot eat oatmeal, you cannot eat bread, you cannot eat potatoes. And as soon as she did that, that was a big hitting point of like,

she started to lose weight. You, have to start progesterone, you have to start. And as soon as we did that, she started sleeping better and you have to eat more protein. You have to eat more fiber. You have to start moving. So there's, have to hydrate properly. So there's so much simplicity in what we share. But when I see all of the tests and I have all the exact nutrients that you need,

That's what makes the difference. And then finding the right nutrient or the right protein powder for the person or the right electrolyte balance or curating it. So maybe you've heard me say like, I don't recommend prenatals anymore because I curate your prenatal. When I have this much information, I know exactly what your system needs. And then obviously we're going to retest every three months for her for the calprotectin and the blood work because those things need to be improving every single month. That's how we know.

three months, that's how we know we're moving in the right direction. And then, you know, we'll do the CGM, we'll do the continuous glucose monitor in a little bit, because it was obviously like, I don't want to say that there's no point, you're just going to make so many changes anyways. Let's see where that takes us. And then in the next couple of months, you'll put in the continuous glucose monitor so then you can start to make deeper tweaks. So I hope you guys find this helpful. And like I said, my goal is to help you understand that fertility is actually quite complex and that's just her.

there's a lot that we're working with him as well. And they, you know, sometimes they meet apart. Sometimes they meet together that just whatever works for their schedule. And that's true for all of our couples. then men will often present with like, I don't have that much going on. I just kind of want to support her. And then I'm like, that's cool, man. Let's just run some data so I could see if things are in fact good, because most men are just going to get a sperm analysis. And his sperm analysis wasn't terrible, but there was a few like the morphology was it like

2 % and I'm like, you know, let's just run some of these other things. And sure enough, it's like, look at your blood sugar, look at your liver enzymes, look at the gut, look at these nutrients that are depleted, look at your methylation. And as we tie together with symptoms, he goes, yeah, I do experience all those things. I just kind of got used to living with them. Right. But just because you got used to living with them doesn't mean it's normal. So.

Is that also going to impact your fertility and the sperm quality? Absolutely. Is that going to impact the way that you age and the quality of your life as you age? Absolutely. So I wanted to share this case because, you know, like I said, there were so many obvious red flags. Like I just could not believe she was told she has unexplained infertility, but the...

Reality of the situation is unexplained fertility doesn't exist. There is so much testing that you're probably not getting done or if you are getting it done No one's actually sitting it down together with you and helping you understand how all of these pieces are connected And so I wanted to show you

how we are connecting it, just to give you a lens. So you want to come and work with us, please fill out an application. But even if you don't end up working with us, this is what works. The reason that I developed this system is because when I study with mentors that have been in practice for longer than I have, so for 20 or 30 years instead of, you know, 11, and I look at their track record and the results that they provide for their patients, this is what they're doing.

This is what they're doing. They're not guessing. They're not seeing their patients every however long, whenever you feel like it. They're going, this is the testing that we're gonna do. You're gonna check in with me on this time. This is what we're gonna do next. This is when we're retesting. This is, you're gonna use this tracker now, cause I wanna see. So we do a lot of hand holding, not obviously every practitioner does.

I just want to set my couples up for success. So I find that that has what allowed me to have over 70 % success rate. And when I'm recalculating it as I have some more pregnant patients right now, but I essentially don't add them into the success rate until there is a live birth. I know that that number is actually going to rise and be closer to 75, if not 80%, which is super, super cool. And I just share this with you because we do not work with everybody. We only work with couples and we

with couples who go, I'm ready for a transformation. Like, I am done.

spinning my wheels. I'm done trying to put it all together myself. I want somebody who is going to just take this fertility journey off my hands and just tells me what to do. And I've had clients and women tell me, I just feel so much less stressed because I know you're going to do it and you're just going to tell me what to do. And I don't have to research this anymore. And it's like, you're welcome. That's what I want to do. That's exactly what I want to do. Let me worry about the data. Let me worry about the numbers and I'll tell you exactly what you need to do. And you know, I'll keep you updated on this case because I think it's super valuable for you guys.

to hear cases and just know that there are so many more answers that are out there. So thank you guys for being here. Thank you for listening and I will see you next week.