EPISODE SUMMARY:

In this episode, I share why gut health is the foundation of every fertility case, even when there are no digestive symptoms. I break down a smarter, more strategic approach to healing the gut: assess first, then clear pathogens and finally, rebuild the terrain with the right tools. It’s not about guessing or just taking a probiotic - gut health is complex, and getting it right can transform your fertility journey.

ABOUT DR. JANE’S PRACTICE:

Dr. Jane is a Naturopathic Doctor and a Natural Fertility Expert. She and her team of expert practitioners help couples navigating infertility for 1+ years, get to the root cause of their struggles, heal and bring healthy babies home.

After having a family member struggle with infertility and experiencing a miscarriage herself, Dr. Jane realized how little support and education women receive. She is on a mission to change that. Since 2020, she has dedicated her practice to fertility, where she and her practitioners work with couples 1:1, running functional lab work, customizing treatment plans and providing her couples with the support they need to get pregnant, have a stress free pregnancy and a healthy baby.

Learn more about Dr. Jane’s practice: www.drjanelevesque.com/practice

Apply to work with Dr. Jane & her team: www.drjanelevesque.com/application

CHAPTERS:

00:00:01 Introduction to Gut Microbiome

00:00:29 The Mysterious Gut

00:00:57 Gut and Health Interconnections

00:01:26 Natural Fertility and Gut Health

00:01:50 Conventional vs. Natural Approaches

00:02:18 Understanding Pathogens

00:02:45 Gut Health Strategies

00:03:15 The Gut-Reproductive Link

00:03:42 Microbiome Testing and Insights

00:04:09 Fiber, Probiotics, and Gut Health

TAKEAWAYS:

The gut microbiome is crucial for overall health and fertility.

Understanding and treating pathogens is essential for gut health.

Fiber and probiotics play a key role in maintaining a healthy gut.

The gut and reproductive systems are closely linked.

Proper hydration and electrolytes are vital for gut function.

Prebiotics are more important than probiotics for gut health.

A diverse diet supports a healthy microbiome.

Testing the gut is crucial for addressing fertility issues.

Antibiotics should be used intentionally and with understanding.

The body's ability to heal is often underestimated.

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Individualized care is essential for effective treatment of chronic fertility issues.

Hey, thanks for being here, for tuning in and listening to another podcast episode of Natural Fertility with Dr. Jane. I of course am Dr. Jane. I'm an astrophatic doctor and a natural fertility expert. And today I want to talk to you about the gut microbiome. How I'm thinking about the gut microbiome has been shifting a lot based on clinical experience, based on everything that I've been learning from my mentor. And Dr. Leah Hichman just did a webinar on the gut microbiome, the digestive microbiome.

there was actually like an eight part series. She was only part of the first three lectures, I believe, or two. And I'm going through the series and I'll probably record another podcast about this in the next six months because honestly, there's so much more information that's coming out and that's really exciting because truthfully, I still think we just don't know that much information about the gut and it's this big mysterious thing because of the amount of bugs.

and the different types of bugs. And then of course the environment and how that has changed our microbiome drastically and how it continues to change it. And then of course the issues that we're seeing with fertility, with cardiovascular, metabolic health, neurological conditions, you name it. So the gut microbiome doesn't get enough attention and maybe it is getting finally enough attention, but truthfully, when we say our health starts in the gut, nothing...

It's it's the epicenter of our health. And so when someone comes to me and I am shocked by how many couples come and will say, I am going through all these fertility treatments, but I have IBS or I have Crohn's or I have this and my doctor said it has nothing to do with it. So understand that I'm a natural fertility expert. I'm a naturopathic doctor. My belief in the fact that the body...

is capable of healing and that the body is super, super smart and that the body is on your side is so strong, you can't convince me otherwise. Where if you're going to the conventional doctor, I think the way that they are taught is literally how to fix something when it's broken by giving it medication or, you know, essentially looking at symptoms as the fault of the body as opposed to the messenger. So in the conventional system, you're just faulty.

You just have heavy menstrual cycles. You just have acne. You just have blood sugar dysregulation or whatever it is. You just have hormonal imbalances. Let's give you birth control. Your body is faulty. That's the genuine belief of the conventional system and probably some brainwashing in there where as a natural fertility expert, I genuinely believe that the body is so, so smart and it's constantly trying to talk to us and tell us what's going on so we can correct.

and obviously reap the benefits of having long lasting health and being able to have babies and not being stuck with our symptoms for the rest of our life. But that's my belief. So, and I know there's many of you that believe that as well, which is why you're here. And when I look at any symptoms, my lens is now, what is the body trying to tell me? And how do I correct it? So if someone's coming to me and they have Crohn's,

and they say that when my conventional doctor didn't say it has anything to do with my fertility outcomes or my poor quality eggs or the fact that I keep having to do all these transfers or I'm not getting pregnant naturally, that just tells me that they're not really up to date and potentially they're not really looking at the whole system. They're just looking at the reproductive system and the reproductive system and the gut are so closely intertwined. If you think about just the location,

We, I remember studying this in school and thinking, here's the gut and the liver, know, large intestine, small intestine, pancreas, that's over here. And then the uterus and the ovaries and the fallopian tubes, that's over here. But in reality, it's all in the same abdominal cavity. And it's like the intestines are surrounding, they're surrounding the uterus, the fallopian tubes, the ovaries. And for those women who are listening, if you have endometriosis,

then you know if you've had to go in for surgery, you know how much the endometriosis can actually disrupt the bowels because everything is so close. So just because the endometrial tissue is growing outside of the uterus, a lot of the times it's gonna really impact the bowels. So your gut function is really important. And so what I wanna talk today a little bit about is how my view has changed on what the gut microbiome is and how we actually get it to be.

quote unquote healthy versus unhealthy. And the use of fiber and probiotics and even antibiotics and how that plays a role in creating that perfect environment within the gut, which will transfer into good absorption for nutrients, good detoxification, hormonal production, and obviously transfer into good microbiome in the uterine, vaginal microbiome, skin microbiome, so on and so forth.

The gut is really where it starts. The gut is the microbiome that's studied the most and it's probably one of the easiest ones to get information. And the fact that it's studied the most is, you know, we don't have a lot of information on the uterine microbiome, for example, because there's not a lot of, there's lots, but there's, it's not as much as we want. And the women that will get their uterine microbiome tested are usually having a lot of issues.

nobody is going to go in and do this wildly invasive procedure when they don't have any issues within their uterine cavity. And so we kind of have these skew results, if you will, where for the gut microbiome, there's, I, for example, that's like, you know, when people say, what's the top recommended test to get, everybody gets, everybody gets in our clinic, we'll get a gut stool analysis just because we cannot fix anything unless the gut is working really well. So we have a lot of information.

on the gut and everybody can get tested. You don't have to have Crohn's, you don't have to have IBS, you don't have to have digestive symptoms. And a lot of people don't have digestive symptoms and I will still test their gut microbiome just because they have symptoms in other areas, whether it's their skin or their mood and their energy or their hormone imbalances or brain fog or ADHD, it all can be drawn back to the gut. And so the old way that we used to look at

what's going on with the gut as practitioners is you, number one, you want to get rid of any of the weeds. So you want to get rid of any pathogens. They don't have any place there. Let's get them out. And then you're going to repopulate essentially with the good probiotics and making sure that you feed those probiotics on a regular basis with the good prebiotics so they can stick around. And that's kind of the old, you know, those are the three things that you do.

where in reality now I think it's really, really important to start with a proper review and not to treat pathogens blindly. I can't, so like I'm so glad that now everybody's talking about parasite cleansing and they're like, we have to get rid of parasites. Everybody has parasites so everybody needs to do parasite cleansing. But when you're blindly treating parasites without really understanding the full picture, the immune system, how the ability to absorb.

and digest nutrients to ability to detoxify and get rid of those. What I'm seeing now is that people are creating a really big mess within their own digestive system and then obviously all around their health. I've seen women who have depleted their hormones so drastically after doing really intense parasite cleansing or yeast candida, but even bacterial infections or Lyme because they're just convinced that this is the infection and they never actually had a proper review and they're doing

the same treatment over and over again. And so if you're that person that's listening to it, I'd love for you to just stop and take a step back and have someone take a look at the whole picture and get a full review of not just your gut, but typically I want to look at blood work. I want to look at methylation. I want to look at nutrient status and I want to understand what is the actual pathogen that we're dealing with and how long has it been there? And are you able to overcome it? How much has it intertwined into your

genetics, if you will, and into your personality. So every pathogen has an energetic component to it as well. And when I go in and I start killing things, I make sure I bring that out because people don't realize how much their personality has actually is just this pathogen or this toxin that's driving it. I know that's a little bit out there, but I have to talk about this because I'm just seeing people change so drastically as they go through a detoxification process.

And whether that's through a heavy metal or getting rid of a parasite or getting rid of, you know, urea plasma or any other nasty infection, they literally change their personality changes and the desires change and how they interact with people change. So we have to acknowledge to the fact that these bugs are also energy and they impact more than just our gut function. So we need to get a really good review of what's going on. We absolutely need to make sure that we get rid of the pathogens that

are not supposed to be there and remove them completely or just help the body reallocate. Sometimes we're seeing the bugs in the right, we're seeing the right types of bacteria, but they're in the wrong ratios. And that obviously also impacts, so like the bacteria, dieties and for me, I don't want to take you down too many rabbit holes because it's really hard unless you see that stool analysis and obviously with the knowledge, but sometimes you just need to reallocate.

which bugs versus to remove, that's an important part of the process. Then we need to replace what we've killed. I have done, don't know how many, like hundreds of stool tests analysis now, in the amount of times that most people do not have good beneficial bacteria, even when they have been on probiotics for a really long time. And I'm gonna go into that a little bit more of why I'm seeing that. We need to restore, we need to repopulate.

and we need to rebalance. And I'll tell you a little bit about the fiber and the probiotics and how I've been thinking about it. So the first thing is you need to remove the pathogen. Whatever it is, there is no room for pathogens. And what I'll say is there's some really like nasty pathogens and certain parasites that we absolutely just need to get them out or ureoplasma. That's usually more in the vaginal microbiome that you catch it, but you get the idea. You need to get the pathogen out.

There is some pathogenic bacteria or opportunistic bacteria that, and this is where we don't know a lot of information, but some of it is beneficial because it keeps our immune system strong. When the pathogens overgrow and there's too many of them, then what causes the issue and starts to deplete nutrients and take nutrients away from us. And I just think about it, I always use the garden as the analogy here. When the soil is really dry,

when it's really nutrient depleted, you're gonna have different things grow. And when you have a lot of weeds, if you had a garden ever and you've seen that there's been a lot of weeds in the garden, you can almost tell that that's where the weed is thriving because of the type of soil that is in that portion of your garden. And so the first thing is like, we gotta pull out the weeds, we have to rehydrate the soil and we have to add nutrients back in.

there will be weeds that will come and grow anyways. It's just, they shouldn't be the primary thing. And if they become the primary thing, then if you're growing, let's say potatoes or cucumbers or tomatoes or peppers, the weed is gonna steal nutrients from that plant. And so that's the same thing that's happening in our gut. When we have this giant weed or weeds, they're stealing nutrients from our own microbiome.

which is what helps to dictate our neurotransmitters, our absorption ability, our ability to detox, all of that jazz. And so naming the pathogen that you're trying to get rid of is super duper important. Instead of doing this general, everybody has parasites, what kind of parasite, what is keeping the parasite there? Do you have heavy metals? Do you also have Lyme? Do you have another bacterial infection or fungal infection that needs to be addressed as you're pulling out the parasites?

because even I myself was stuck in a place where it was been nine months and I'm still killing parasites and I still feel all the symptoms and in reality it wasn't a parasite it was a bacterial infection that was keeping the parasite there that if I had to remove some of the parasites but I had to get rid of the bacteria infection in order for that parasite to actually not want to be in my gut in my microbiome it's the terrain the terrain allows for that parasite to stay

So we want to be very specific in terms of what are we actually killing and then making sure that we follow a protocol. And this is where I think working with a clinician is really, really important. So if you haven't found a clinician that actually understands this concept, that's okay, but you need to find one. And I say that because, you know, I've been in practice for 10 years, 10 years now, five years in the fertility space. And this is not how I was practicing 10 years ago or even five years ago or even two years ago. It's, I knew it.

and I was trying to learn and go through these processes. But at the end of the day, I had to learn through my own experience with my patients to understand why am I not getting this? Like, why is this patient still struggling with parasites, even though we've done X, Y, and Z? You know, so I always thank my patients because you guys are really genuinely always teaching me and helping me propel forward. And because my belief is that the body has the capacity to heal. So if it's not doing something that we want it to do, it's actually

It just means that we're missing a piece of information versus that your body is faulty. And so that's what keeps driving, you know, my learning and keeps me moving forward. So you have to name the pathogen that you are treating and you have to go at it for long enough and hard enough. If you have a certain infection, like there is time and place for antibiotics. There is time and place for antiparasitics or antifungals, or if you're doing antimicrobial herbs or antifungal herbs or antiparasitic herbs.

make sure you know which herbs you're doing and why, what you're after, and you're actually retesting to make sure that that infection is in fact gone. We often see people do the one test and then go, there is the infection, we're gonna take three months of these herbs and we're gonna assume that it's gone. And sometimes it's not gone because that person needed four months or six months of the anti-parasitic herbs or the antifungal herbs or whatever it is.

And, you know, in the fertility space, I always do focus on, I get this person quicker results? Which is why I will pull out the big guns and actually use pharmaceuticals for the right person in the right dose for the right amount of time to help support the healing process to be a little bit faster. And just because, like I said, you know, in the fertility space, depending on how old you are and how long you've been trying for,

And even for a regular person, how long, I don't want to be feeling crappy anymore. And if we named this pathogen and I'll use my patient example, this was actually done through the vaginal microbiome. It turns out she had urea plasma and to treat urea plasma, you know, the standard protocol is two antibiotics, doxycycline and azithromycin, and you need to treat both partners. And then you go in with antimicrobial herbs. So garlic and berberine for at least four to six weeks. You retest and see if the urea plasma is still there.

And then potentially you might need another four to six weeks of the antimicrobials before the infection is completely cleared. She was like, I'll do whatever, because she's 45 and she's ready. But her partner, he was like, I've just read so many bad things about antibiotics. I don't want to take them. And here's the truth. You can probably still, like, I know you can still clear urea plasma without antibiotics, but my God, it's probably going to take you six to 12 months instead of three.

instead of six weeks, know, depending on the infection, depending on the methylation patterns and how quickly the person can get rid of it. And this is the conversation that I had with him. And this is I decided to record this podcast is how I think about the gut and the impact of the antibiotics on the gut has changed a lot. I think what's really damaging is when we just throw antibiotics without knowing what we're doing. And it's like, it's a prophylactic that you had, you know, the egg retrieval, just do a

a Z-Pak or you had whatever DNC procedure, you just needed an amoxicillin for two or three days. And so when we start throwing, and don't get me wrong, again, there's a time and place. I'm not telling you not to do it. All I'm saying is that when we just start throwing antibiotics at people without really understanding what it is that we are trying to get after and not being intentional or tracking anything, this is when we get into trouble. And she messaged me.

two days after starting antibiotics and was like, this is the best I have ever felt. She just couldn't believe the surge of energy that she had. And the reason that's happening is because she's getting rid of the infection. And so all the nutrients that we've been taking in and everything else that she's been doing, she can actually feel it in herself. So there isn't time and place for the antibiotics. And I think when you're very intentional, you're like, I'm naming this infection and this is what I'm getting after.

then you can actually see and feel it come out. So you have to get rid of the infection and then make sure that it's gone. And the biggest thing that I think is really underestimated right now is prebiotics and fiber. So what I have seen in the gut lining, in the gut stool analysis is this lactobacillus, the bifidose species, all these beneficial bacteria are super low, like undetected in people. And the...

initial reaction is like, my God, I need to throw all of these probiotics at this person. And then I, that's, that was what I was initially doing, you know, five years ago, 10 years ago, however long now. And then I'm testing, testing, still testing and looking, and it's like, it's still low. It's still low. It's still low. They've been taking probiotics for years and it's still low. And so here is the analogy of how I had been.

using it to understand myself and explain it to my patients. If I look at this garden soil, and there's a bunch of weeds in there, it doesn't matter how many seeds I throw in it, that soil is still dry, it's still missing nutrients, and there are still weeds within that soil. It doesn't matter how many seeds I put in, it's not going to stick. And so we have to, like I said, pull out the weeds. But even if you pull out the weeds, if you don't do anything with that soil and you just leave it as is,

What's gonna grow again? The same weed. It might grow in a different location, but it will just, the environment is set for the weeds to grow, not for the good seeds to plant and to flourish. And so what do we have to do? Well, we have to rehydrate the soil. And I think so many people underestimate electrolytes and proper rehydration to optimize the function of the gut. That's not something that I thought of myself as well, but even if you think about,

sodium, it's NaCl, sodium chloride. We need to take that in, chloride and HCl, the stomach acid. There's so many people walking around with poor stomach acid and it's actually just coming down to really poor electrolytes and not enough sodium, high quality sodium in their diet. I know, it's wild. And when I made that connection, HCl, sodium chloride, like that's...

It makes sense. And I've had people improve their digestion just by optimizing their electrolytes. And then the other piece of that is actually adding stuff to the soil so then the seeds can grow. So now you've rehydrated, but now you need to add nutrients. This is where the fibers and the prebiotics kick into place. And this is what I'm going to finish off with. There's the two different types of fibers, the soluble and the insoluble. And then there's prebiotic fibers.

And I want to define those three things for you so you get an idea of what's what and what should I be focusing on more. Because to be honest, fiber works. It's amazing. And you want to eat a lot of fiber. Most people are not eating enough and we want to have as much variety as possible because that's the microbes are going to talk to one another and they're going to flourish in that environment where there's lots as opposed to very little.

So the soluble fiber is the one that dissolves in water and will form this kind of gel-like substance. And then that really helps to lower cholesterol and stabilize your blood sugar. This is your things like chia seeds, your oats, your psyllium husk, your flax seeds, even citrus foods. So like your oranges and grapefruits, carrots, sweet potatoes, barley.

those are your soluble fibers, okay? They're gonna bulk up the stool, that gel-like, they're not gonna bulk up the stool, they'll dissolve and make that gel-like substance, and they really do help lowering cholesterol. The insoluble fiber, that's the one that really will add a lot of bulk to the stool, and then will help to support regular bowel movements, making sure that you're emptying well and efficiently. So this is your whole grains, whether that's your wheat, your brown rice, your rice.

Nuts and seeds fall into this category. Vegetables fall into this category. So all your broccoli and cauliflower, zucchini, green beans. The skin on the fruit really helps. This is why we want to eat skin on the fruit. So think apples and pears, your leafy greens, your spinach, your kale, and even corn and cabbage fall into the insoluble fiber category. Now the prebiotic fiber is one that feeds the beneficial gut bacteria and it supports the microbiome on the gut health.

And so these are, can punch it into chat GPT, can punch it into Google. I'll name a couple of things that I just throw this on my patients list to be like, I want you to eat as many of these things as possible. So asparagus and garlic, onions, leeks, the Jerusalem artichoke, bananas, especially when they're less ripe. So there's certain prebiotic and fibers out there, like Designs for Health has one that's called RS, resistant starch fiber.

and it's literally green banana flower, and it works really, really great to help build up those short chain fatty acids that essentially help to feed the good bacteria. Then when we repopulate with the probiotics, then they tend to stick. So when it comes to the fiber, you wanna have fiber every day. I don't wanna say, don't go from zero to 100, because you'll definitely...

be very bloated and maybe poop your pants a couple of times because it's just a big increase. So I always start with really good hydration and then I work people up. So if they don't eat any vegetables, I go, you need to start eating one cup of cruciferous veggies a day. Let's start with one teaspoon of flaxseed. Let's start with some oatmeal and some chia seeds on there. And then essentially the more variety that you can include, the better. A good goal to aim for is 50 different types of plant.

foods in a week. So include the spices, include the beans, include all the fruits and veggies, but the more variety the better and really depending on seasonality. So right now it's fall and all the cauliflowers and the cabbage and the potatoes and all the root vegetables are starting to come in. The more you can create that variety within your gut, the better. And I am a big proponent of eat within the season where you are at. So you're trying to get things locally.

And if you can't get them locally, because in the middle of the winter, we don't have a lot of cauliflower, we don't a lot of cabbage. Don't get me wrong, I still eat it and I still get it. But we do focus on the squashes that are able to store throughout the entire winter. And we include more lentils and more beans and more broths, you know, and more pickled things to essentially, because those things can last through the entire winter. And so within the seasonality, it's really, really helpful for the gut to do that.

So, and then when it comes to probiotics, there's probably another podcast that I need to record about this because the way that I'm thinking about probiotics and how we actually help the probiotics grow and sustain is a lot more about these prebiotics and creating the right soil. And then being very strategic with the type of probiotic that we add and for how long. I'm still doing a little bit of research, you know, like personally, clinically, to be able to formulate that thought.

But so far, what I have seen in terms of really big improvements is being very specific with the pathogen that you're trying to get rid of, like get rid of that pathogen, and then make sure you know which pathogen you're getting rid of and get rid of it. And then really, really setting up that soil to feed and to be, to feed the good bacteria. So then when you seed with the probiotics, they will stick and you don't actually need these really high

volumes of probiotics all the time and you shouldn't just be on a probiotic no matter what. I think that the prebiotics and the fiber is actually what needs way more attention than the probiotics and that's just what I've been seeing in clinic and so just sharing clinical experience, personal experience and then I'll formulate my thoughts around the probiotics as I continue to complete some of my experiments. So I hope you guys find this helpful. If you're struggling with infertility it's...

imperative that you test your gut and you understand what is going on in your gut because it will absolutely connect everything else around your hormones or around your skin or why the egg quality has been bad. And this is true for males. I can't tell you how many of my male patients have had terrible prostate functions because they've just literally been constipated and they didn't really know that they were constipated and all that pressure on the prostate was causing issues for the sperm analysis.

So the gut, do not underestimate it. There's a lot more that will be coming out in research and that we will be learning and I will continue to share as it's coming out. And at the end of the day, you should be feeling better when you're taking a supplement or when you're doing something. Sometimes the change is not instant, but it's not as slow as people think. You shouldn't be doing a detox for two years. That's too long. You're missing something. Or you shouldn't be on probiotics for two years or a year or however long.

in still saying things like, but my gut is a mess. We just haven't addressed the actual root cause of why the gut is a mess. So I hope you guys enjoyed this podcast. Always excited to bring you the latest and the greatest information that I can, that I know of. So thank you so much for being here. I appreciate every single one of you and we'll see you next week.