In this episode, I’m joined by Ellie Anderson, functional dietitian, founder of Elevated Integrative Wellness and a mother of 6! We talk about supporting women’s health through every stage - fertility, pregnancy, postpartum, and beyond - and how to create lasting vitality through root-cause healing and hormone balance. Tune in to learn more.

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CHAPTERS

00:00 Introduction and Personal Journey

04:00 Understanding Trauma and Its Impact on Fertility

09:05 Navigating Fertility Options: Trusting Your Body

12:58 The Role of Nutrition and Hormones in Women's Health

20:55 Aligning Cycles with Nature: The Lunar Connection

29:55 Empowering Women Through Education and Awareness

37:01 Self-Care and Intentional Living for Mothers

45:59 Closing Thoughts: Trusting Your Body and Positive Affirmations

TAKEAWAYS

Your body is not broken; it's trying to communicate.

Trusting your body is essential during pregnancy.

Understanding trauma can help in fertility issues.

Nutrition plays a critical role in hormonal health.

Aligning your cycle with the lunar phases can enhance well-being.

Education empowers women to take control of their health.

Self-care is vital for mothers and should be prioritized.

Positive affirmations can reshape your mindset about fertility.

Women often normalize symptoms that should not be accepted.

Holistic approaches can optimize fertility naturally.

ABOUT NATURAL FERTILITY

Pregnancy is a natural process, so if it’s not happening or it’s not sticking, something is missing. Join Dr. Jane, a naturopathic doctor and a natural fertility expert, every Tuesday at 9am for insightful case studies, expert interviews and practical tips on optimizing your fertility naturally.

If you’ve struggling with infertility, pregnancy loss, women’s health issues or just want to be proactive and prepare yourself for the next big chapter in your life… this show is for you.

ABOUT DR. JANE LEVESQUE

https://www.drjanelevesque.com/about-me

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ABOUT MY GUEST

Hi, I'm Ellie Anderson, a functional dietitian and integrative health expert. I help women reclaim their vitality and transform their health naturally by addressing root causes, optimizing nutrition, and restoring hormone balance. As the founder of Elevated Integrative Wellness, I’m passionate about empowering others to become educated, thriving participants in their own healing.

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Individualized care is essential for effective treatment and management of vaginal health issues.

Hi, Ellie. Thank you so much for being here and congratulations because you just welcomed your sixth child into the world.

Yes, yes I did. Thank you so much.

I loved your entry speech on Cellcore Stage. You were right after me at EECO. How many months pregnant? Seven or

I was 37 weeks pregnant at EECO. Yeah. Very pregnant.

Yeah, yeah. love that. this baby girl is probably going to have some sort of leadership, skills. Just the time. No, thank you for being here. And I think we are very in line in terms of who do you treat primarily in your practice? Let's start with that. And then we can kind of relate it to fertility and what we'd love to see for women happen so then they can be fertile and have as many children as they would like to.

Spitfire

Yes. So thank you so much again for having me on. I'm a huge fan of yours. I love the way that you approach handling and taking care of the whole woman. And that's something I'm very passionate about as well. So my background is in dietetics. I'm a registered dietitian and I've been working in the world of holistic health for over eight years now. And I started in my basement bedroom to a shed in the backyard to building a building and having other clinicians who work with me in this mission field, because I truly believe that that's what it is.

And my primary demographic through all of that time, through that large expanse of evolving this practice into what it is, has always been women ages probably 25 to 55. I would say I have about a 30 year span of women we're working with. And that drove my passion towards hormone care.

also drove me to really get to the root of a lot of that. So yes, nutrition is absolutely critical. Toxins are absolutely critical, but the soul and stress is absolutely critical. So when I was pregnant with my fifth child, I went back to school and got my master's degree in integrative health with a trauma focus. So I could really figure out the biology of stress and what that stress, whether it's acute stress, you stress, bad stress, good stress, and what it's doing to our body.

and especially our hormones because I found that and I'm sure you see this clinically too, especially with women.

dealing with fertility, there can be so many psychological blocks that are preventing people from achieving their health goals, whether that's hormone and pregnancy, whether that's long term and chronic body pain, you you name it. There are reasons why the body doesn't feel safe enough to heal. And I wanted to learn the science behind it. So every step that we've taken in practice, every step that I've taken to enhance my education has been to better understand the way God designed us and complement

that in our way of allowing people to heal in a personalized way. So I've been doing this for eight years. Hormones are the biggest crux, I feel like, for women. They are so under attack. And having six children is such an immense blessing. All my kids are under the age of nine. I have them about every two years. They are

It is so intentional with the way that I take care of my body and my first pregnancy, was not, I was, I was coming from a totally Western medicine approach and I was doing all the things they tell you to do and doing none of the things they tell you not to do. And I think the more you dabble in the world of holistic health, the more you start to question those things as well. Right. It's like, wait a minute, I feel like trash. Why do I feel like trash this pregnancy? And why, why are my, why is my mental health an absolute disaster? And so seeing where my pregnancy

was with my first to even my second to then all the subsequent pregnancies after that they've really only gotten better in terms of how I feel and if I don't feel good I know I have the tools to feel better which is also a gift and something that I look to provide.

other women with. So working a lot with that, you know, 25 to 55, whether they're in that peak fertility wanting to conceive or just regulate their hormones to perimenopause and menopause. Those are a lot of the client demographic that we're working with and based on my own experience, I love to work with them.

Yeah, I love that. There's so much you said. So I want to take you back to the trauma and because I literally just had a patient, which is why I was a couple minutes late where we were talking about your cells store memory. And I don't know if you, you have children and I have two. And so I can look and see what I have passed down and what has been passed down from my husband. And there is this weird like, I want to be perfect.

doesn't exist, if we all wait to be perfect, we'll never have children. But I see and watch the evolution of my child and I see what has been passed down and how I can support her in helping her process some of the things. obviously, like she's eight years old, my eldest, there is no, it's gonna be a while before she is ready to quote unquote, actually process any of these things, but I can work with the body and I can work with the energy.

to make sure that it doesn't over accumulate, if you will. And it's just like such a weird experience when we know what we know to say like, hey, you could see it. Like you could see from start to finish. So when I see someone sitting in front of me when they're 35 and they're struggling to conceive, I'm like, tell me about your, when you were a baby, like what do you know? Because we know that that a lot of that stuff starts, right? Like if the baby is coming and they have,

cradle cap, that's normal. a little eczema and rash, that's normal. you have allergies, that's normal. The kid is having a hard time focusing, totally normal, where you're like, no, no, it's this pathogen or this trauma that has been part of this child now for 30 years instead of five. So I don't know if you've noticed that and you see that in your kids and sometimes wish we could do a redo, you know?

100%. I think that with like what you're saying, there's so much intentionality as a parent when you step into that, when you can see that larger picture, but also as a child, like as a child of my parents, I see such a greater ability to be empathetic to my parents, like to have the awareness that this didn't start with me. It didn't start with my mom or my dad. It probably didn't even start with their parents. Like these are generational traits. And as someone who is like,

with science and even psychology and the brain. It's like nature versus nurture. Okay, but what about what's past that we don't see? Like there's not a niche for that. That's not nature, a little bit nature, yeah, but it's not nurture. It's these unseen genetic pieces, these brain paths that are passed on from mom to child or dad to child. And I think that it's so critical to be aware of those things because some of these habits, these ticks that we quote unquote call ourselves are just the brain paths

that have been trod for years before us. And so knowing that the brain is plastic, knowing we have the opportunity to change those pathways as a mom is super empowering, but also as the eight-year-old me who needs healing as well, it's like, okay, I have to be actively working on these things for myself too. And it's so interesting because like you said, the 20 to 35-year-old woman who's coming in who really, really wants to conceive and have a baby three months ago.

is not realizing that there's hurt from her childhood she needs to work through from ways that she had to step into being a mom way too young. And so there's, it's so...

And maybe she's still parenting her partner. She's likely. Or her parents.

Yes.

So I see that so much where it's like, just because that's what you had to do and it shaped you into who you are, doesn't necessarily mean it was okay or the path you were supposed to take and learning to coexist with that can bring women a lot of peace. It doesn't bring closure. That's something they need to work through as well. But just being able to admit like, yeah, having to step into a mothership, a mother role when my mother was severely struggling with postpartum depression after the birth of, you know, my

second sibling, it's that realization of, I've been a mom longer than I've wanted to be a mom, and I didn't want to be that mom. I wanted my mom. It's complex. It almost seems like this ham.

Use me goosebumps.

It almost seems like this hamster wheel as women start to process it, but really it's like, yeah, this is what your body and your brain is ruminating on. It's like, I've done this. I've been doing this for a long time. I didn't want to do this when I had to do it. Now that I want to do it, I don't want to do it. So allowing that psychology piece to really process for your hormones to feel safe and secure, it's essential because you don't realize how much that hijacks your thought patterns. And so much of your endocrine system is rooted in the brain. So that communication is so important.

important.

Yeah, it's why are you the way that you are? Yeah. know, I like arguably, I just like to challenge people to think differently all the time. And even for myself, when I'm feeling stuck, I'm like, why am I thinking about this pattern like this? What if I didn't have this pattern? You know what, how would I think about it differently? It's crazy. That does bring me to one of the things we want to talk about is women don't feel like they have options for fertility because

We are over here when women sit down in front of us, we're gonna unpack all of the things. Because we know that it all matters, right? Whereas on the conventional world, they're not, they're just kind of pushing you into IVF. Tell me what's your experience been seeing these women who are pushed into IVF, are they doing IVF? What is actually going on at the root and why are they not getting pregnant?

Yeah, I feel like we get quite a combination of people within our facility who want and desire to trust their body.

and want to seek a natural way to approach their fertility, but also feel like they have to, again, just coexist with, well, my OB says I have to start with Clomid and then move forward to IUI if the Clomid doesn't work and then from there to IVF. So they also have this plan in their mind that maybe is what they think of as their backup plan, right? But they're trying to coexist with that. And I think that that creates a divide within

you know, your soul of I want to trust my body, but I actually don't. So I'm going to have this backup plan and I'm going to be moving forward with this backup plan. And it doesn't neither of them then work like I it's not that we're opposed to working with women who are seeking out these other options. But at the same time, I think you either trust that your body can do this or you don't. And really starting to dissect why is so critical. And that takes time. And a lot of

by the time women are thinking about having a baby, the last thing they feel like they have is time. And so that's one thing that I really am trying to get across to my younger clients coming in the door is you don't have to be thinking about having a baby right now. What I want you to be thinking about is what are your hormones doing and why? Because for so long, your body's been showing you something's wrong and you've just been told it's normal. It's normal to have karate.

It's normal to have PMS, it's normal to get headaches, it's normal to have painful ovulation. It's normal to have these things. As a 13, 14, 15 year old, it's like none of those things should be normal, they're common, but we're normalizing these symptoms that are already showing us there's endocrine stress. And a lot of times too, from one person who struggled with those things, my mom was like, oh yeah, I had those things too, it's fine. So we've been- It's genetic. Yes.

We've been normalizing this pain and discomfort for generations where your hormones just screaming at you like, no, my bucket is too full. My toxins are too full. My gut is not happy enough. My anxiety is too high. My cortisol is too high. My adrenaline is too high. So we're creating this world that's not conducive to fertility from the minute young women start getting their hormones, start getting their cycle and their hormones start changing.

So I really tried to teach that to the younger generations of like you, if you're an athlete, especially if we're seeing athletes fuel your body like an athlete. If you are a woman, fuel your body the way a woman should fuel their body. That looks different for different points of your cycle. Your hormones are going to lend yourself into working out different at different points in your cycle. So just training women to be educated on what their hormones are doing when from very early on can be so much more empowering than capturing these women.

when they're like, I wanna get pregnant and I wanna get pregnant now and it's my understanding that I can get pregnant anytime in my cycle. It's like.

We have so much work to do. We have so much work to do. Yeah.

I don't teach you in school.

Yeah, and I mean, it's probably by design a little bit, right? Because like to give a prescriptive medication for someone who doesn't actually need the prescription, aka birth control, right? Like, hey, everybody should be on birth control starting as soon as you start your period, it doesn't matter. I will say that I am seeing a big shift. Like I don't meet a lot of 20 year olds. Like I have some 25 year olds who have never been on birth control and they've never touched it. Whereas I have not.

I meet very few mid-30 to late-30 women who have never been on birth control. So, you know, my generation, our generation of women are the ones that got sold the birth control story, and we probably were on it for some period of time, but now we're speaking up about it. So the younger generation is like, I'm not touching that, that makes sense. And my hope is that that starts to happen with IVF because there's this big...

Yeah.

And don't get me wrong, like I've walked people through IVF and I think that there is a right way to do it. there's very much, depending on the person's beliefs and their family goals, like there is a very much a right way to do it, which I didn't know either because I just assumed they were the, they were the kings like this, that was their spot. They knew. And then I would have patients come in and be like, no, they're not doing any testing. They're just putting me into IVF. no, like they just told me to start trying for six months. And if nothing happens, I'll do IVF. And I'm like,

Wait a minute. know what you guys are just prescribing stuff versus, this is what's going on. Let me track her cycle. Let me understand. We'll use the lowest minimal dose of anything. We'll nudge. We'll optimize a quality first. We'll optimize this. It's like, no, none of that is being done. You're literally are just being thrown into as much drugs as possible, depending on what your case is. If you have endometriosis and blah, blah, blah. It's like, yep, you'll go on birth control for three months and then you'll do

like what a hot mess. know? So just my hope is that women who are going through it start to talk about it because as we were talking off camera, it's like, it's not guaranteed. And it's not faster than natural approach a lot of the times like it's minimum six to nine months if it's going to work at all. if it's going to work.

Yes, it's and the and they're so straightforward with the the success rates. It's like I have a 40 % chance. I have a 30 % chance. I have a 60 % chance. I I just think that's not good enough. Women deserve better. Women deserve better than artificial hormones, than feeling like trash. They deserve to understand why their body doesn't feel safe enough in the first place because also as someone who has been in this, you know,

industry for eight years. I've worked with a ton of women who, like you said, the post pill pandemic almost of just like so depleted, their bodies so depleted, and then their embryos and their children that are conceived and born with through IVF are so

Depleted I don't know if you see this and I don't know if you work with a lot of kids I do work a lot with family so I get the mama's in and then I get the kiddos in IVF kids are so much more depleted and I might catch some flack from for saying that but I've been doing this long enough where I can confidently say that and then kiddos with vaccines That's a whole nother podcast for a whole nother day, right? But I have been doing this for so long that the kiddos that are whether we capture them You know right away and their newborn or I'm getting them five six seven years down the road. They're the most

immunocompromised kiddos. They're the most prone to histamine issue kiddos. And it's just so not shocking anymore, but it was for me as a young girl clinician, I'm like, my gosh, how can I help these kids when this is going back to the embryonic cellular development stage? And then, you know, insert mitochondrial support that makes all the difference in the world, it's not, it's supplements are not the be all end all for correcting some of these things.

So I just think we're, we're poisoning women into thinking like, okay, we're going to put you on this very, and I think there is security in the IVF approach of like, I'm doing this for two weeks and then I'm doing this and then I'm doing this. It's like control. And when you don't have control over your fertility, it's nice to feel like you can check those boxes. And so it's like, okay, I like this very regimented approach. I like knowing what's going to happen, whether or not I get pregnant. I don't know, but I'm just checking these boxes and I'm doing everything I can.

and everything they're telling me to do. And I think that we're realizing the effects of birth control are depleting everything essential for a healthy embryo, for healthy hormones. Like it's so black and white now that I'm hoping like.

I mean, let alone the brain development and everything else that it causes for women and yeah.

Yes, and those babies. So I think that I'm so fortunate that I was never, like you said, like the 35 year olds, I was never on birth control.

It for four years. It was four years. then I just remember my big, the doc that I had and you're 16 years old, like you're not going to challenge your 30. But my doctor was just like, Nope, you can be on it forever. And then you can just go on HRT. And at that age, like I was not, yeah. Like I knew I was like, that doesn't sound right. Like I just said, yeah, yeah, yeah. But inside I was like, that doesn't sound right. And I'm like, I'll just take the prescription for now because I was going to be sexually active and I just didn't want to get pregnant. But

It was like, even then I knew it. the goal is to like, Hey, can we listen to that? Because that's crazy, right? When someone tells you something, you're like, I smell bullshit. Yeah.

We can be on this forever. I, I, they tried to sell it to me in so many ways, like, Oh, you have horrible cycles. Let's, actually this is a pretty cool story. So, you know, I had cystic acne, horrible cycles, actually all really related to a mission trip I took and got a parasite. And I was told that all my symptoms were very normal. Um, but then I went to a doctor that specialized in napro technology and.

I just, I did not feel good. I have always been like, I don't want to take a pill. And I really don't know where I get that from. Cause my parents, they've just never been on prescriptions, but they weren't opposed to it. It's just not our norm. So I'm like, I don't want to take something every day of my life. This doesn't sound appealing to me. It doesn't sound like anything I want to do or believe in. So I'm just going to say no. And my mom found a doctor for me through someone at our church who's like, go to doctor.

Dr. Lind is her name and have Ellie see her and see what they can do about her cramps before her cycle and she's the first person that ever introduced me to any sort of cycle tracking any sort of awareness of ovulation that was the first time I've heard of ovulation I was like 17 years old first time I'd heard about what ovulation

You've already had your cycle for like three years. Yeah.

Yeah, at least for three or four years. So I'm like, this is so helpful. So even just having an awareness of my symptoms and then taking calcium and magnesium instead, that was like, when I think about all the things we have now that can help women, it's like...

so past that, but for the 17 year old me, it just lit this fire in me of, my gosh, there's a better way to do this. There's a better way to support my body. And I was very athletic. So was trying to do everything I could to take care of my body, you know, in the ways that Google told me to take care of my body. But it just was it.

And now it's AI, right? Like you could just punch it in and...

Let's plug it into chat GPT and see what we got. So I just, think that that was huge for me and it really inspiring at the time of how come I'm not learning anything about this when I'm having my cycle forever. And I feel like, you know, the basic sex ed for our generation was mean girls, like don't have sex, don't have sex, sitting down, standing up, you get pregnant.

Here's how to put a condom on a banana.

Good luck. Bye. So it's like, I think that there's such a piece of education missing for women, especially as they seek out these really intimate realities of how they're feeling, when they're feeling it, when they feel depressed, when they feel sad, when they feel like they're failing, when they feel like they're riding these highs. So much of that has to do with our hormones. And so we feel like we're failing when really we just don't know biologically what our progesterone, estrogen, testosterone,

FSH what it's doing and so if we can just give a baseline understanding of here's what we're doing at what time and why you feel this way it's way more empowering when I have women who are like I just feel like the last week of my cycle I'm such a bum well this is why and if we actually tailor what you're eating the activity you're doing how much sleep you're getting

to that time in your cycle, you're going to give yourself so much more grace. And then you're going to learn to maximize when you feel really, really good, which is around ovulation.

I just think you prioritize different things. How I feel in the first half of the cycle versus second half of the cycle, it changes what I'm good at. I'm so intuitive in the second half and this is when I can dream a little bit more and bring things in process and really get in tune of what's bothering me versus in that first half of the cycle, I'm going to be working out more and I'm going to be so much more productive. I'm better on camera, I'm better to create content. But some content, I'll create

in that second half because I'm like, this is what people need to hear. And I very aligned with this. It's just different. The energy changes because the hormones that are dominant in your body has changed. And I think it's so valuable to know that.

I totally agree with you. I think it's really empowering for women when they start to learn it.

Yeah, I do. I thank you for being brave. you know, I think we're the practitioners that are on the front line. And we do see some pretty terrible things and whether it's babies that are super depleted, or moms that are really depleted or children that have these issues that like we just I don't remember having friends who had these issues, you know, and I take my daughter to school and it's like,

Everybody has allergies. Why don't I have an allergy, mom? I want to have an allergy. And it's like, that's weird. I want to have an allergy.

Yeah, yeah, there's so much more attention on

The person that has the allergy. Yeah. And so it's like, well, we're getting you out of that school. But, you know, I just tried to teach her to be like, you're going to be a leader. So you have to understand that, like, mommy teaches you things that most people don't know. And so, you know, when she says like, mom, you got to, you can't believe the sugar that they were eating at lunch. We were talking about that, I think, at EECO, right? So I like, I need some para three. And I think our kids can be so intuitive, but it happens because we are teaching that.

And for anyone who is pregnant through IVF, we don't, I don't want to.

You'd have feel scared.

Because I think when I say there's a right way to do it, there's like the body needs a nudge and then you have all these beautiful supplements that you're taking and you've cleaned up all of your microbiome versus like you were a hot mess and then somehow they tricked your body into being pregnant and your nutrients are still depleted. You were itchy the whole time you were pregnant, which is a sign of poor liver function and your toes and your feet swelled up and you're...

100%.

that's normal during pregnancy and you had all of these signs that your body was not managing and everybody just kept telling you it was normal. it's like, but deep down you knew something must have been off. How do you speak to that part of the woman who knows something is off, but it's like, you're just so used to being written off. How do we rewrite that for women? You know what I mean, right?

Yeah, I think just like you said first just continuing to get out there and I think a lot of moms have that innate a lot of women men probably do too but women have that

as much as women.

Not as much, but they trust their woman. Usually they're like, OK, if you say so. I think a lot of women already have that intuition of like, this doesn't seem right, which is why they bring it up and continuously bring it up. They're not just bringing it up to their OB. They'll bring it up to their mom or their friends or their coworkers or their colleagues. And for a really long time, when I started this journey, I would just let people talk. I wouldn't try to steer them because I didn't want to come across as pushy like, hey, I can help you. But the longer I've been doing this,

and the more social media has grown, it's like getting out there to women. You're right. You are right. This is not normal. It doesn't need to be your normal. Fixing it will not be super fast, depending on how long you've been working on it. But you can fix it because you're right. Your body is trying to show you something is not balanced.

or something is not working the way that you want it to. And so just that continual validation. And when clients come in the door for us, it's like, you're the captain, we're the co-captain, you know your body better than anybody else. So we're not here to dismiss you. We're not here to say, that'll just go away. It's, okay, what do you want to do about it? How should we approach this? Because we want to help you tune into your body better.

And I think that that level of empowerment for patients and clients is empowering. Just like I said, it's just like, my gosh, I'm so glad I trusted my intuition. So many people need that validation to feel safe. creates safety for their body. It creates safety for their hormones. I always tell moms, like, never ignore your motherly intuition. Never ignore

Yeah, you feel validated.

feeling like you need your baby closer to you, never ignore feeling like you don't want your kids to go somewhere, trust that gut. You will never regret trusting your gut.

Yeah. Amazing. So powerful. I'd love to hear what you're seeing in clinic like right now. You know, any cool cases or themes that are coming up? Because I do find there's themes usually. What are you seeing? Yeah.

It's super interesting. Well, I've been out for a month because I had a human, but I think we're seeing a lot of interesting COVID symptoms. Again, a viral presentations here that are causing some interesting like headache.

kind of neurological symptoms, some vascular symptoms, so just swelling. And we have been using a lot of cell core cytome for that, that seems to be working really, really, really well. The full moon is coming up. So we're seeing a lot of the upticks and discomfort for kiddos. We always go through a lot of cell core paraproducts around the full moon as well as energetic products, energetics for like

homeopathics for kiddos those tend to work super well, but it's always interesting hormonally around the full moon. Ideally, I tell women you're getting your cycle or you're ovulating with or close to the lunar cycle. Now it's not going to be spot-on for everyone because cycles are anywhere healthy cycle as you probably see 28 to 32 days. So it's not going to be just spot-on all the time, but if you can try to align that very closely with nature and biology's rhythms, I find for women they can see a lot of symptoms

alleviation with getting with ovulation around a newer full moon and getting their period ideally around a full moon but it doesn't have to be perfect for just that natural cleansing property and what the full moon does. So I always try to have women

I don't know if people know about that. Will you tell why it's important to have the period around? my gosh!

Okay, so I always tell my clients, know, men are like the sun up and down every day. Their hormone cycles are very non-complex and that's good because ours are complex. We have this beautiful follicular phase. We have our ovulation. We have our luteal phase and then we have menstruation and each of those phases have beautiful hormone.

ebbs and flows that go along with it. And so when you have the ability to try to sync your cycle up, and there are different hacks that you can do around each time.

have to tell us what those hacks are. they're a couple.

So for women who are in perimenopause and menopause, one of my favorite ways to hack and fake a cycle is to just follow the lunar cycle. So around the full moon, I have them start like day one of their cycle and they're doing liver castor oil packs. They're doing some parasite cleanses and then they're eating very projec or estrogen friendly foods if their body can tolerate it from day one to ovulation day 14.

so that they're faking that estrogen ebb and flow for their cycle. So that's also the time they can pull in extra liver support if they need it to help and always getting 30 grams of fiber every day to help make sure the gut is really regulated, super critical. And then from...

ovulation fake ovulation to getting their period or fake period right kind of confusing but if you could just imagine with me so from new moon to full moon again i'm having them omit estrogen

friendly foods, we're focused on progesterone enhancing foods, we're on gut health, again, probiotics, and really moving the castor oil pack from the liver to the uterus and ovaries. Because even if they're not cycling, if they can continue to support the body's natural rhythms and go from liver to uterus, ovaries, liver to uterus and ovaries, it actually helps align what hormones they do have left and boost them.

And then we can also supplement whether it's a bioidentical topical progesterone depending on their symptoms. I very rarely reach for that. Or if it's just specific organ support if they need it, depending on what their symptoms are. That's the approach I take for all women whether in...

in their fertility window or in their perimenopause menopause because if we can start to support the liver at specific times and then the uterus and ovaries, I've had women who can successfully get their cycle aligned with the full moon. And why I like to do that is because during the full moon, the barometric pressure changes, the brightness of the moon, they all play into your melatonin, your serotonin, and then what those parasites or other natural critters are doing within your body and within your gut, they become more active during the full moon.

because of the brightness of the moon, a little less melatonin, a little bit more gut activity, and then the barometric pressure changes. So I like to try to line up the cycle or active bleed with the full moon because it's a natural way for the body to detox and you can just further enhance that detoxification by lining it up with the full moon.

Usually if you can do full moon cleanses around that time, it's going to control some of those highs and lows that some women feel with their hormones. And those naturally begin to stabilize with the liver support, with the gut support, with the castor oil, et cetera. So you're not needing to do full moon cleanses every time. But for women looking to optimize their fertility, I really like to do that because a lot of times the dysbiosis within the gut, whether it's parasitic in nature, fungal and yeast, it's going to be healthy with those full moon cleanses.

big time. So I really like to take that approach and it's been very, very successful, especially for some of the mental stress that women feel those highs and lows with anxiety and depression that come with their cycle, really just regulating the gut and starting to kick out the pathogens within the gut that shouldn't be there and aligning it with the full moon can create huge success for women. It's so cool. It's such a great bio hack.

But one that can be a little intimidating if parasites are not something people are comfortable with talking about,

I think there's more people talking about it, like thanks to Cellcore and to just like practitioners in general. do think a lot of people are underestimating what they actually have to do to get rid of parasites and how long like it's a nice idea to do a seven day cleanse or even a 30 day cleanse and then be like, I don't have parasites anymore. I'm done. Where you're like, what's under the parasite? Why is the parasite even there? What else is going on? With a full moon, I have like a question.

you don't mind. I heard that sometimes it's full moon for, you can either ovulate around the full moon or have your cycle at the full moon. What is-

I agree. I tell women to...

Because ovulation and I think full moon egg colic.

I usually tell women, especially if they're trying to align their cycle with the full moon, so I'm an ovulator on the full moon and I get my cycle around the new moon. It's typically how I go to.

But for women with a lot of dysbiosis, typically it's reversed. so optimizing that full moon until we get them regulated is really so helpful. I also tell them to intuitively pay attention to how they feel. How do you feel around the full moon? How do you feel around the new moon? If you're feeling like the full moon is

I'm feeling great. I'm feeling ready to go. Yeah, that's probably a sign that ovulation should be happening around that time. But if you're feeling like down out exhausted, like you need a nice cleanse that and those are usually the toxic buckets a little more full. The body's just trying to detox one and where it can. So I always defer it to how do you feel? Are you feeling like more of those estrogen dominant? You're getting going to get an LH surge and feel so good.

symptoms around the new or the full moon, then that's when we want to hack your ovulation, or that's when we want to hack getting your period. So I think it's totally dependent on the person where their cycles are at. And so I never like to slap on a one size fits all approach to the new moon and the lunar cycle, or the full moon and the lunar cycle just because everyone's body is starting in a different place. So let's meet them where they're at, hack where it's at and get them feeling content with that approach.

And more connected to nature in general. remember my naturopath, his recommendation was like, just go out in the full moon, like go outside. Yeah. go look at the moon. And I was like, okay. But like weirdly you're like, if the water, and I was in Vancouver back then BC studying naturopathic medicine, and I'm like, the tide is so different during the full moon. there's gotta be...

write a poll or something that you feel like you genuinely a lot of us are just so connected to fake energy that you actually feel the energy of the earth or the pulse of the earth and what's that what that's like

And don't you find that to be so important? feel like again, for the fertility crisis we're seeing, so many people are just out of touch with nature. When you tell clients to just like go ground, watch the sunrise, it's like that camp, that's too simple. it's so...

But then you have people who go away. just had a client earlier today who's like, we went to Mexico for a couple of days and it felt like a different person. And I'm like, how many hours a day did you spend outside? It was like, well, the whole day is outside. I just go into sleep. Exactly. Right. So how can we bring some of that into our everyday where we're so used to this, but

In reality, it's like minimum you should be one hour a day outside, minimum, but ideally you're spending a good chunk in the morning and then a little bit, like even if you're just having breakfast and you have the door open or something. I had a patient who was on Adderall, not because he had ADHD, but because he was a CEO and he needed to focus and outperform. And as we got him off, he's like, I was sitting by my computer, I was working, but I had the door open and I looked outside and I was like, huh, that's nice.

And I was like, welcome, buddy, welcome. I was so excited. Like, was so good. I know we got him. Like, my God, like, look at the trees. Like, that's right. Like, he just had this urge to go outside. And I'm like, yeah, it seems so silly, but fertility is very much being in tune with yourself. And it's something that I think happens when we're in an abundance state. Obviously it can happen when we're depleted.

We're so true.

But as you know, and I want to talk about your experience through not each pregnancy, but just like, how do you take care of yourself? When I think of someone who has had six children and six healthy children, I go, wow, she knows how to take care of herself.

Yeah, think just, I really live a simple life. Like I don't, we live a simple and nourishing life. And as someone who owns a very large health practice, it probably doesn't sound true, right? But, how do you?

You do it.

I have really I have learned how to set really healthy boundaries so that I can flourish because I've been in states where I haven't and I've had pregnancies where I haven't and I at 100 percent impacts the health of myself and the health of my children. And that's just not worth it. So I think I think just like you said, having the expectation not just for myself, but for my kids and mommy's not just taking care of mommy. Mommy's teaching us how to take care of ourselves. And like you said, kids are

so intuitive, but they learn that from somewhere and allowing them to see how we eat and how we live and how it's different. actually one of my, have a podcast as well. And one of my top podcasts was my interview with my daughter and she is nine as well. And just talking about how we live and how it's different from other people and how it's not always the most fun, but it's our health is so worth it. And you can tell with our health.

And so going into my pregnancy with my first daughter, I was like I said, doing everything that they tell you to do. I was very stressed. was I was very conventional. Yep. Just Western. I yes, I was taking a gummy gummy prenatal if you can imagine it's like.

Whose day? You mean the conventional? you were... Were you taking folic acid or folic?

Yes, I can.

I know I like look at I look at my daughter and I'm like, I could like Let that go right? like you know better do better. Yeah, I just I I Really feel like everything about her pregnancy was exceptionally harder than it needed to be because I was not well I was not eating meat That was the other really interesting thing when I first met my husband when I was going through my undergraduate in college nutrition and dietetics

What could I have done better? so sorry. I have to let it go. Yes.

I was like, I could be a vegetarian forever. I never need meat. I was a mess. I was a mess. honestly think there are people who can maybe do well eating more of a plant based diet for my blood type and for who I am. I'm not one of them. So like the brain fog, the anxiety, the zinc depletion that I was experiencing, the parasites I was up against, it was just, I was so unwell and actually it was after her birth, anxiety, postpartum anxiety was so high. My husband's like,

I need you to see my practitioner and he had been doing holistic health his whole life and I had not and I thought he was crazy and cuckoo could chew and I'm like there's no way there's no way. Yeah the good Lord loves to keep me humble. I know I know I'm like I'm fine he's like nothing about you is fine but I love you too much to let you keep living this way and so

Leave my gummies alone.

What a blessing that was right. It just started me on this holistic path and it's made me who I am. But my my goodness, just the difference between starting a whole food nutrition supplement program with a practitioner and how much better I felt in two weeks than I had felt for this the previous six to seven years. I'm like, there is something to this. I have to learn how to do this so I can help other women feel the same way. And I

got pregnant with my son Wesley and my whole pregnancy with him was exceptional. His health was exceptional. And then I had a pregnancy with my daughter Eden. So I've had one girl, her name is Anna, three boys, Wesley, Walker and Clayton, a very healthy pregnancies with the boys. My pregnancy with Eden was full of stress. I was so stressed. It was such an unhealthy level of stress. I had every biohack and every nutrition supplement and everything in my toolkit.

to do better, but I was dealing with past trauma, current trauma, current stresses. And that's also when I was getting my degree in trauma. So unpacking a lot of stuff as well, right? And it was so interesting when she was born, my placenta with her was calcified. And I had been doing so much fascia work and so much fascia release, and there's a calcium shell that can build up around your fascia. When it's rigid and stiff and structurally just not moving the way that God intended it to move.

And I looking back now, I'm like, it's because I was so stressed and so rigid in my pregnancy with her that like she was my placenta protected her from that, but it didn't give her everything she needed. So she's got a lot of sass and I think it's because of the residual trauma I was working through, but man, she's so sweet. I just really look at how, how can I take care of my body right now? What does it need in this moment? And I'm blessed enough to have.

flow.

the tools at my fingertips to do that. But I think for me, for my blood type, it's doing the biohacks, it's doing the red light, it's doing the flopresso, it's doing the sauna, it's learning about your genetics and how your body handles pregnancy. My pregnancy with Eden, I also was dealing with more depression than I had ever dealt with. And when I got my blood pulled and where labs can be so valuable and micronutrient analysis can be so valuable, my iron was so high and that's so uncommon.

A lot of the high iron symptoms are similar to low iron symptoms. so figuring out for my body what I needed to do to protect not only myself, but this baby was really important. And then I had Ayla, my last baby, shortly thereafter, knowing, OK, I'm going to do low, slow saunas during this whole pregnancy to try to control my iron. I'm going to take my binders multiple times a day to try to control this iron. It helps my mental health. It helped my physical health. It helped how my body was feeling the pain.

that I had physically that was associated with high iron. And it's so interesting because if I just would have gone off of, I have a friend who's an OB and she's great and I love her so much. And I'm like, here's my symptoms. What do you think is going on? Before I got the lab results back, she's like, I would 10 out of 10 gas, low iron. Let's just get you on an infusion. Let's get you pumping some iron in. And then when I got the blood results back, my iron was through the roof. And she's like, my gosh, this is why labs matter so much more than just symptoms.

looking at those numbers and seeing what's going on because I would have. my gosh, it would have been horrible. would have been.

That would have caused so much chaos if you

could have even maybe lost the baby.

lost the baby, my kidneys are already sassy. like, I don't have time to do this. So it's that's where I feel like those labs are so essential for how what your body is doing. Why is it doing it? And then what can we do to help correct it in that moment? And so I love to pull micronutrient panels during pregnancy and postpartum. I think for my health and for the health of my children, knowing what I'm low on so that I can very strategically replete has helped me have very healthy pregnancies and figure out

Where are some of those outliers that are either too high or too low? How can we optimize it? And I love to pull that for women with their hormones. I don't know about you. I love the Vibrant America one because it can tell us where are we lacking that your body's like, hey, I'm missing this really essential component or five of them from being on birth control for too long. What can we do to help you have that? And a lot of times women's symptoms are much more associated to their micronutrient depletion than even their hormones.

but their body's just trying to tell them that. So how do we replace?

Well, we know like hormones are not the root cause, right? So.

They're just the byproduct of stress, toxins, all of the things.

Yeah, whatever else is going on. Yeah, I've been using the NutriStat a lot. There isn't a panel that I love that has everything that I need. Yeah, 100%. So constantly trying to create relationships and there's like better stool analysis stuff coming out. There's better things and you could see the evolution or like vaginal microbiome. But the nutrient panel is always like

to figure out.

this is really great, but you're missing all of these things. But there's crossover anyways. But it sounds like though you've had six babies, but none of it has really been easy. Because I think sometimes we look at someone with six children and we go, well, it must be easy for her.

Yeah, yeah. No, it's been really intentional every time. And I think honestly, as someone who's on her own health journey, a lot of people look at practitioners look at us and they're like, you've been healthy. It's perfect. You're perfect. It's like, my health is a priority every single day. And it's not perfect, but it's a priority every single day. And I would say as someone who has worked with women who

feel like, you know, maybe what's the goal? What am I working towards? Make it about yourself. The goal is, right, you want to have a child.

Having the best for yourself. That's the goal, is just to have a good life experience. Why I'm so passionate about health is I don't think you can fully experience life when you don't feel good in your body. It doesn't matter how much money you make, it doesn't matter. Literally, the experience of your life changes because you don't feel good in it. I have that first-hand experience and I try to post it more on social media. like...

When I was in my 20s, I wasn't healthy. Like I was very, very unhealthy. And I knew I had to figure it out because I was like, if this is my life, I hate it. I hate it. You know, and doesn't matter how much money I'm going to be able to make or who I'm going to help because I hate being me. And that's ultimately the issue.

Yes, you are 100 % right. And I think some something else that needs to be said too is a lot of women don't feel the self-worth that they need to put time into themselves. Or it might not be self-worth, but I think it comes down to that if that's not what I do think. Yes, and I truly think like, if I if

I do think it's what it is for everybody.

Maybe some people look at the way I live my life, my husband, like with six kids and okay, well, she's spending this much time doing taking care of herself every day. Is that selfish? No, that's how I take care of myself for my children. And if I don't show them how to show up for themselves, no one will.

And I think as someone who had my mom is the most loving kind. mean, she's the most beautiful person I've ever met in my life. She never made herself a priority. She still struggles to make herself a priority. I know that I want better for myself and my children and not better souls. She's got the best soul, but better health.

for myself and my children. And it comes with intentionality every single day. Doesn't mean you need to be perfect every single day. It means you need to be intentional. And we live by an 80-20 rule in our house. Again, a lot of people probably assume like, we're working the holistic world. Everything's 100 % natural all the time. No, my kids on the 4th of July, we're getting licorice thrown to them from the street parade and I let them eat it. But do we do that every day? Definitely not. You know what I mean? Like I just...

daughters are like, Can I have this? And I was like, you can have it today. Today is the day to do it. it's like, you can do it. And then when she feels bad, I was like, this is why. Okay, and then you just can give them a choice. You know, it's like, do you want this or this?

100 %

choice. And I think one thing my kids have that a lot of kids who are on a health path have is an awareness. Like they hold up the red licorice. My daughter's like, Okay, red die 40 makes me act not like myself. I don't want this one. But I'll have the chocolate, you know, and just like, Okay, if that's what you want to work through. Yeah, perfect. Let's do it. And I love that for them. I love that they get to feel and be aware of how

The fun stuff makes them feel because then they don't want to choose it all the time. They're like, okay, I had that and my belly hurt. Too much sugar. My four year old Klai is like, too much sugar, mom. I don't want that. I'm like, good, good buddies. That's great.

Well, and even when you say the fun stuff, then eventually it starts to shift perspective and say that, maybe it's not fun. Yes. You know, because sometimes we're changing our clients, you're like, how long do I have to follow this? And it's like,

you just go through period where you look at stuff and you go, you know what, I don't really like this anymore. And that's the shift, you know, and that's the shift more towards when I look at McDonald's, there's zero part of me that looks at it and says, that looks nutritious, or I know it's not nutritious, but I want it. Yeah. Zero. Was there a part of me that used to like it? Yeah.

Was it the part of me that had depleted neurotransmitters and gut function and parasites? Yeah, absolutely. But you know, like my kids don't know what McDonald's is. Like she just... And I almost want to make it as a social piece of content to like get chicken nuggets and then get the ones that we like and see which one they would choose.

I think that's a great idea!

Because we do that with organic, I've done that with organic kiwis. And it's like, my eldest is like, this one. My youngest is like, what am I doing? You know, she's just eating. Like she doesn't really get it yet.

That so cute. I think that too, for just like you said, it's a way of life. So working with clients, meeting them where they're at, and then educating them from the mindset of, I'm just going to do this temporarily, which I think is a really Western medicine approach to a lot of things except for pharmaceuticals for whatever reason. We're going to slap you on that forever. I want this to become your normal.

I want you to take it and mold it and make it what you want to make it, but you're going to feel so good that the appeal of these things will just go away. And it truly in my life has from as someone who like thrived and survived on really like shitty meat, shitty fruit, shitty vegetables for so long, carbs up the wazoo.

to someone who we eat real food the way it's given to us and we eat real high quality meat. It's so, it's, you feel so.

Delicious. Yeah, it has energy.

you feel food nourishing you and it actually makes you have more gratitude for the food that you're eating too or the things you're cleaning your home with or all those little things that you swap out you begin to feel so good that it's just a no-brainer and I found especially for women on this journey it's really important to have your partner on the same page because they might not necessarily understand it right away but I have a husband I can send to the grocery store and know he knows exactly what we get and what we want in our home because he feels just as good and

and he doesn't want to feel like trash. So just getting the family on the same page through small foundational shifts makes such a huge difference. And then you're lowering your toxic load and your liver can be so much happier so that your hormones can be so much happier. The foundational pieces of your hormones are gonna be so much more structurally strong. It just makes such a huge difference.

You can feel more connected to yourself. Like everything changes. Everything changes when you have this life in you, right? When you're eating dead food, it's you feel like there's nothing in there. It's like, can we just bring some life into the body? And then as soon as that vitality comes up and I, you know, it's what I think about when I coach my clients, I tell them like, imagine if you came to live with me for a week, like, do you think that you would be healthier? And people right away are like, absolutely. It's like, great. So like what would

Dr. Jane do, you know, I your day because it's if you if I came to live with you, I would be like, yep, I do this. We do this. that's interesting. I don't do that. And then I mean, that's why we love all the subcorp because we just get to chat and mingle about what are you doing? What are you doing? This is so fun. But for quote unquote, an average person, you'd be like, why didn't you take all these supplements and you do this and but then you do it for a week. You're like,

I feel so much better. It's like, yeah, welcome to being alive. Like this is what it's like to experience the world when you are on the same page as your body as opposed to plugged in and, you know, disconnected.

100%. I totally agree. I think that's so smart. What would you do? You know, I tell my clients to for especially for kids. I'm like, my name can be a swear word in your house. I don't care. Like Ellie said, we have to get rid of that. Curse you, Ellie. That's fine. If it just means you're thinking about it, having an extra thought or a pause before you do it, because you know, like again, that intuition intuitively, you know, what's going to nourish your body well, and you know, what's not. So just even having that pause,

beforehand and then if you choose to do it, own it. And if you choose not to do it.

My name worked. The devil and the angel. I'm always like, let me be like, what would Dr. Jain do? Would I do that? then my patients are always like, had you on my shoulder the other day. And I was like, good. you just need that. So you could borrow that if you find that's helpful.

I love that. I will. think that's so smart.

Tell me closing remarks, what do you want to leave people with?

always just want to leave people with the encouragement that their body is not broken. It's simply just trying to tell them something. I think that so many, especially women, especially in the hormone world, fertility world, feel broken. And I hate that for them because our bodies are so much smarter than that. And when you can turn that on its head to what is my body trying to tell me? What is my body trying to protect me from?

What is my body trying to protect my future offspring from? It makes such a huge difference in the way that you approach healing and functional health as a whole, because when you can start to spin what makes you feel broken and fill it with gold, I think that that makes you so much more empowered to keep going. And especially for the most beautiful, most intimate, most innate desire of a woman to be a mom. It's like

your body is so, so, so smart. Trust that and then get on the same page with it because right now you're just in two different chapters and you need to figure out how to get to the same page.

Yep. I love that. think it's.

During pregnancy, you have to trust your body. During labor, you have to, like, you have to trust that your body is doing what it's supposed to be doing. And when it's your first pregnancy, I don't know if that was the case for you, I'm like, I can't believe that I'm growing a baby. Like, I don't believe it. I just don't believe it. And then when the baby came out, I was like, my God, I made a baby. Like, it was just, I, mind blown, you know? And so we have this trust with our body and you have to have it. When you don't have it before going into pregnancy, I find it throws you into this really high state of vulnerability.

and anxiety basically throughout the entire pregnancy and hormonally you're going to see low progesterone and you know just all these other issues low nutrients that immune system dysfunction that pops up and so it's like hey can we get you to trust it now because that actually sets you up for success through the entire thing and with your babies because you'll know what your baby needs before your baby knows they

100%.

I think something that's probably a good takeaway too for women is start practicing positive affirmations. Just like you said, my first pregnancy, I was scared I couldn't get pregnant. I was scared the whole pregnancy, something was going to happen. I was scared. You're just scared and you don't trust your body and you've never been taught to trust your body, right? Especially in this disconnected, disassociated hormone world we live in. So I started doing positive affirmations and hypno babies and for another, for my next baby, and it made all the difference in the

world because I realized through the positive affirmations, I didn't think my body knew how to have a baby. I didn't think my body knew the right time to go into labor. So starting to pave a new path, especially struggling with fertility, I trust that my body knows how and when to ovulate. Say it until you believe it. I trust that my body knows how and when to get pregnant. Say it until you believe it. Just going through the positive affirmations to pave a new line of nerve in your brain. It's so powerful.

pathway.

Yep, I love that. Ellie, tell everybody where they can find you.

I am in Minnesota. No, I'm kidding. I'm on social media. Ellie's elevated health hacks. I have a holistic health practice here called elevated integrative wellness. We have two locations and we also offer virtual care as well. But we're right here. Elevated integrative wellness, Minnesota, central Minnesota. So I feel so thankful to have been on today. Thanks, Dr. Jane. So great talking to you. I feel like we probably want for. And I have a baby to nurse, otherwise I totally would.

Yes, we can.

Thank you. Of course. Thank you. I appreciate you.

you so much.