Fertility, Hormones and Skin with Dr. Aumatma Shah

Dr. Cates: Hi there. Welcome to The Spa Dr. podcast. I’m Dr Trevor Cates. Today we’re talking about fertility hormones and skin. We’re tying it all together with a holistic approach. But before we dive into the interview, I want to take a moment to thank everyone that has left a review on iTunes about the podcast and I wanted to talk about some of these reviews because I started to look through them and realize how much great feedback there is in there. And I love seeing this feedback because it helps me create even more content, better content for you, understanding what you want more of. So I really appreciate when you leave a review on iTunes. So I’m going to highlight one today and I’ll do these for some of the upcoming podcasts as well. This is a review from one of our followers:

Dr. Cates: “One of my new favorite podcasts. I stumbled upon Dr. Cates’ podcast after hearing her interview on the bulletproof radio podcast. Within the first few minutes I could tell Dr. Cates was one of those people who got it. I really loved her inside out holistic approach and was pretty much hooked at that point. Her glowing skin summit was also full of AHA moments, so you can imagine how excited I was to find that she had her own podcast. I really appreciate her information, motivation and attainable recommendations. Thank you, Dr Cates.”

Dr. Cates: Thank you girlg21 that’s your, your iTunes name. Thank you so much for leaving. That review really does help me understand what you want when you leave these reviews. So if you have a moment, go over to iTunes. I have an audio and a video version on iTunes. You can leave a review on either one. We always love to hear your feedback.

Dr. Cates: So let’s go ahead and dive into today’s interview. My guest is Dr. Aumatma Shah. She is a naturopathic doctor and nutritionist and practice for over a decade, a decade specializing in women’s health and is the bestselling author of Fertility Secrets: What Your Doctor Didn’t Tell You About Babymaking. And she is a sought after speaker on topics related to women’s health and women’s empowerment.
Dr. Aumatma was awarded the Best Alternative Medicine Practitioner wordly locally in 2015 and has been interviewed on TV, podcasts and summit’s worldwide. She is the host of her own podcast, Egg Meets Sperm and has a training program for practitioners who want to specialize in fertility. In today’s interview we cover signs and symptoms on your skin that might indicate issues with fertility and we talk about and naturopathic approach to addressing infertility and optimizing overall health. So please enjoy this interview.

Dr. Cates: Dr. Aumatma is great to have you on my podcast. Welcome.

Dr. Aumatma: Thank you so much for having me I’m excited.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. So we’re gonna talk about infertility today and you just had a baby not that long ago since the last time I saw you. You’ve had a baby, so obviously what you do works.

Dr. Aumatma: Yes. You know, um, my, I went into fertility with kind of a personal journey aspect of feeling like I was with someone that I wasn’t really sure I wanted to have a baby with and I kind of deep dive into the conventional fertility world, what naturopathic medicine can offer. And just went really deep with it and decided, I’m not going to do this with someone that I’m really not committed to having a child with. And thank God I didn’t do that. And years later I met the right person. We have a relationship, all of that stuff. And finally, last year we decided, okay, we’re ready. Or in 2017 we decided we were ready. So I worked on myself, I did my whole program on me and then we definitely got pregnant on our first try. So, yeah.

Dr. Cates: That’s great. So I know we’re going to talk some about skin, some of the signs that show up on the skin that, that indicate issues with fertility. But first let’s talk about how big of an issue is and fertility. It’s, it’s on the rise, right? How big of an issue is it for people?

Dr. Cates: You know, it’s like in the last 50 to a 100 years, infertility rates have been rising. So the current is one in six couples, between the age of 18 and 44 have difficulty conceiving or staying pregnant. And we can kind of base it on the number of sperm counts that are decreasing. So, about a hundred years ago, it was completely standard for men to have sperm counts, upwards of 120 million to be considered normal count. And we’ve way lowered that rate. So if you get to like 20 million now we are considering that really good, um, so we’re changing the scale of what we consider normal based on the number of men that are like average, it’s like normal is always based on the average and if the average is, is so significantly on the decline, we’re just, we’re like, okay, well the new average is 20 million. But it’s not, it’s not actually like conducive to people being able to get pregnant. And the truth of it is more and more couples are, are struggling, more and more couples are waiting to later in life and they’re being fed this fantasy of oh, I’ll just go walk into an IVF clinic and walk out with the baby. But that’s not the reality. Right. So, um, we can really start trying to shift our mindset around, hey, this is a really important issue and it’s not something that we need to be afraid for or have fear around, but that we’re just planning and knowing in advance that we need to take care of our health. We can take care of our hormones way before we get to that point of I want to have a baby.
Dr. Cates: Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s so important and such an important topic to talk about. And so why do you think it’s happening? Why do you think that we are seeing these changes?

Dr. Aumatma: You know, I think it’s probably multifactorial. I feel like there’s a lot of reasons why, but I know that one of them is the steady rise in the toxins in our environment. And I know you talk a lot about that, uh, in terms of like what are we putting on our skin and the skin care that we use, which is significantly impacting our hormones. And similarly, we have toxins in our air. We have toxins in the food that we’re eating. It’s, it’s everywhere. So I think toxins play a really big part of it. I think also just the amount of stress that people are exposed to in our society is steadily growing and we haven’t, as humans, I feel like we can, we’re eventually going to adapt to being able to handle stress differently, but we haven’t gotten there yet. So we’re in this place of really struggling with something that, um, we, we, our bodies don’t have quite the answer to yet.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, yeah. No, I definitely agree with that. And, and I know people have heard me talk about the endocrine disrupting chemicals that you’re talking about that, that, that can bind a hormone receptors and mimic or mimic hormones function or, they make it difficult for the hormones to function properly and that definitely impacts sex hormones. So that impacts people’s fertility. And that’s one of the big things that we are seeing with more endocrine disrupting chemicals and the environment. Right. So those include pesticides and food and they include, like phthalates in plastic water bottles and phthalates in skincare products. And fragrance and parabens are so many different ones that works suppose to, and it’s very unfortunate that they’re just so, so common in our environment and that, but there luckily there are ways to reduce our exposure, right?

Dr. Aumatma: Yes, exactly. We can reduce it. We can detoxify. Right. I feel like you just told me a few minutes to go, you’re on juice cleanse, which is the perfect way to at least jumpstart that, liver function and make sure that if you’re doing it on a regular basis, you’re really getting those toxins out of your body. Yeah.

Dr. Cates: So what are, what else, what else is playing a role and this increase in infertility, what else do you think is happening?

Dr. Aumatma: Hmm. What else? I know that lot’s of women that come in, by the time they come into me, they already know that they have lots of hormone imbalances. But often when women are younger in their, maybe teenage years, they had those same hormonal issues. They just weren’t treated very effectively or even diagnosed very effectively there. It was just like, here, here’s the birth control pill. And good luck to you. And sure, a lot of those women’s quote unquote problems disappeared when they got on the birth control pill. But unfortunately that didn’t actually solve anything. It was just a bandaid. And the years of being on birth control and thinking like, oh, my hormones are completely fine because I bleed every day, every month on the same day of the month. And, and, and like, we’re, again, it’s like that aspect of education and, and knowing our bodies and when that gets taken away and we don’t even realize that it’s happening. If we’re on birth control because we had abnormal periods are pcos or endometriosis or something else under the surface that only, that didn’t go anywhere. So when you get off the pill 15 years later and you’re like, hey, why isn’t fertility happening? Or why can’t I get pregnant? And, we don’t realize that it may have had, like, we had the inkling of it when we were 15, we just didn’t realize that it was happening.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, absolutely. And, and I know we’ve had people talking about these different aspects are hormonal health and, and the way that, I mean we had Dr. Jolene brighten on for example, on the podcast talking about birth control pill, you know, birth control pills and, and how those can create more health issues and birth control syndrome. So for people to learn more about that, I think it is an important thing to realize is that let’s get to the root cause and, and, and the sooner you do that, that earlier, do you do that? The better off you’re going to be with your hormonal health and all aspects. And so it’s not just about trying to get through your menstrual cycle without a lot of pain and inconvenience. But also if you don’t address the root cause, it’s going to show up in your health and some other way. And you know, skin is one of those things, right? It definitely shows up on your skin to these root causes show up on the skin. And you also mentioned, women waiting to have, have babies and couples waiting really both men and women waiting, which impacts of fertility that that impacts it too. And not that people shouldn’t, but it just makes it a little bit more challenging. Right. And then you have to really make sure that you’re addressing those root causes to make sure the body is optimally healthy. You know, it adds a little extra layer of complexity to it. It’s not impossible to get to get pregnant and your forties you know, but it does add a little bit more complexity if you haven’t been addressing the root cause especially. Right,

Dr. Aumatma: Exactly. Yeah. And it’s, it’s really, I think that it’s less about the age, our chronological age. It’s more about what are the things that you were doing leading up to that age. Right. So a lot of doctors, especially reproductive endocrinologist, will tell women, oh, it’s your age, you’re 40 oh, that’s the problem. And I’m like, no, that’s not the problem. The fact that you were drinking and partying and stressing yourself out and working 80 hours a week for the last 10 years has probably some effect on what happens with your reproductive system. And in order to help these women get pregnant, we really have to reverse the clock a little bit and and like help support their bodies to feel like their actual age. Sometimes these women have hormone numbers that are like lab tests that are coming back with what you would see for a 45 year old in a 30 year old and you’re like, okay, well you know like let your lifestyle, all of the things that you’ve done leading up to this point contributed in some way to where you are now and it’s not reversible. It’s just easier to prevent it.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, absolutely. So when we, when we look at early signs that there might be something going on when there are imbalances going on that fertility might be an issue. We know that skin is one of the early indicators of a lot of health issues. And so I want to talk for you to talk about what, what are some of the signs, the early signs that show up on the skin that might indicate issues with fertility? Knowing that skin is our largest organ, it’s right on the surface of our body. We know that this is a great tool to use to give us information about what’s going on with our health.

Dr. Aumatma: Absolutely. I think one of the easiest is acne, right? Like the number of women that experience acne, is a lot and often we’re experiencing it at a pretty young age. So it’s starting when we were teenagers, we think, oh, it’s, oh, it’s just because I’m a teen and it’s going to just kind of whittle away as I grow older. And that’s just not the reality. Like you can get acne as an adult. I have one of my patients right now who is 33. Um, she’s said she has acne for at least the last 13 years of her life. And before she joined our program, she had no idea what to do with all of it. And I don’t necessarily treat acne, per se, but just as we’re balancing your hormones, cause she’s like, oh my God, my skin is clearing up. And I’m like, yeah, that’s good. And she’s like, no, you don’t understand. I’ve had this forever. And I’m like, yes, it’s completely normal. Like I expect your skin to clear up. And she’s like, but why didn’t my doctor tell me this? You know, like that’s the most common response I get is like, it’s so simple. I needed to stop eating dairy or whatever it is and my hormones would have been better. I probably wouldn’t have had the acne that I have, you know, the things, things of that sort that I feel like we have these early signs and unfortunately we’re not talking about them enough or doctors aren’t telling their patients about them enough that, people are like taking action about it.

Dr. Aumatma: So acne I feel like is one of the easiest signs. Often also we’ll see inflamed skin or redness. Which to me is usually a sign of underlying inflammation in the body. And it often starts in the gut. Um, so looking to the gut for like what’s happening under the surface and, and the connection between the gut and the reproductive system is huge. And yet, you know, most most of our patients that come in, they’re like, why do I have to change my diet? I’m like, well, because we’d be to decrease the inflammation in your body and you know, like get things working and in order to get things working that God is really at the core of it. And I’m sure you practice the same way in terms of like, let’s get to the root and often the root is in your gut. So that, that’s another sign that I, I see often that shifts when like, it’s one of the first things to start to shift is the skin. And people are always like, oh my God, my skin is so much clearer. Oh my God, I feel amazing. And I like the number of patients that are like, oh my, I keep walking down the street and people are telling me I’m glowing and I didn’t do anything different. And I’m like, yeah, it’s totally normal. But people don’t really necessarily expect it because they’re like, oh, I’m here to have a baby. And it’s like that interconnection of our whole body is so important to remember because it’s always telling it’s like our skin is one of the clearest ways that we’re seeing what’s happening inside the body. On the outside.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. And I think in general were taught in the public is taught that all of our systems work separately cause he go see a gynecologist for our lady parts, we go see a cardiologists for our heart. We get no, we go to the terminologist for our skin. And we said on average it’s a seven minute appointment in the doctor’s office. So I think people are taught to think that these things aren’t connected because they go to see specialists and the specialists don’t have time to talk about other things and they become a specialist in their area. And then, okay, well you need to go see so and so doctor the gastroenterologist or the endocrinologist to go take care of that part because I’m just, you know, doing your exam today, here, you know, your pap. And that’s not, that’s not my specialty. So we’re, you know, our society was, we’re taught that everything functions separately. And so I think it’s, it’s great that nature pathic physicians also functional medicine doctors and integrative doctors, they have that more holistic approach and it’s great when doctors have time to bring it all together and then we can still use the specialists when necessary. But you know, one of the things of this podcast that I want to educate people on the interconnectedness of this and you know, it’s so fascinating. When of course everybody knows I focus on skin and, and then when I have other guests on and they’re talking about the same kind of approach to treating the skin is the same kind of approach to addressing some of the same things is to addressing fertility issues. And so I definitely want to get into that. But I think you still have a few, I mean, there are a few others, skin signs, right?

Dr. Aumatma: Yeah. A keratosis Pilaris that’s the bumps under the arm. And those are usually related to a vitamin a deficiency, which is crucial for hormonal function. So if you have these bumps on your arms, that’s probably a really clear sign that your hormones are out of whack. Maybe it’s not a symptom, but it’s actually like, a correlated thing. Um, and then the circles under, under the eyes, like often the women that have the deep dark circles, uh, it often has to do with stress. It can be related to lack of sleep of course, but often if they’ve had it for a long time, it may actually be related to nutritional deficiencies or food allergies, sensitivities. So, these symptoms are showing and it behooves us as the, as the physician to say, what is causing this symptom and how are all of these pieces connected. So most patients are really surprised when I say, Oh, my first visit is four hours. And they’re like, oh my God, what are you going to talk to me for four hours? Like what do you have to ask me? And I’m like, well, I’m just going to dig in and ask you everything I could possibly ask you so that I know that I’m connecting all the dots and that I truly understand what’s happening and what’s possibly contributing to you not being able to get pregnant. So yeah, I think that again, the skin is so, such a vibrant indicator of our hormonal health as well as our possible fertility.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, absolutely. So when someone does come to see you, what are the things that when you spend a lot of time with people, what are, what, what’s the treatment plan? How do you address these hormonal imbalances?

Dr. Aumatma: Yeah, that’s a great question. So our, our first step is, is discover the root cause. So I want to know, like someone saying, Oh, I’m infertile. I’ve been diagnosed with infertility. I’ve been through three IVF cycles. I can’t get pregnant. Or, they get maybe 10 eggs, but none of them fertilized. Like, I want to know the nuances of where they are on their fertility journey and what we can figure out about why they might be experiencing what they’re experiencing. Our sub specialty is repeat pregnancy loss. So when women have miscarriage after miscarriage after miscarriage, and they’re often told, doctors are often telling these women for the first two miscarriages, oh, it’s normal. Just go try again. And to me, I’m like, oh my God, if even if I had one miscarriage, I would be devastated. Like, I can’t imagine going through two, three of these before a doctor even takes a look and says, oh, I can help you or we can do some tests to try and figure out what’s going on.

Dr. Aumatma: So, our goal in that first visit is really to understand the, the fullness of the symptoms that they have as well as, what they’ve been through on their fertility journey. So, because so many of these patients come in having experienced IVF or been through a few IUI cycles, I can say, hey, it was so what happened? You took these medications and what happened? Or you went through IVF retrieval and they didn’t get any eggs that tells us maybe they’re, you know, like there’s aren’t any eggs for them to harvest versus if we get 10 eggs and there not making it to embryo stage, hey, that’s telling us, maybe that’s an egg quality issue. So we’re really trying to get to the point of, okay, we’ve got it, we’ve got some idea of what might be happening. Um, or we can look at the hormones and say, oh, these are like, these levels are really out of whack and here’s too much estrogen, not enough progesterone and whatever it is, and have a better sense of why pregnancy isn’t happening or why it’s not able to sustain.

Dr. Aumatma: And then once we’ve got that, our second step is to detoxify the body. So, um, detoxify food wise as well as everything that goes on our skin as well as what’s like, how are we cleaning our home? What products are being used in every part of the process. Lately I’ve stopped. We started asking people what kind of pots and pans they use because I had a patient who had a really high reverse t3 and, and I don’t, I just do reverse t3. It’s one of the thyroid hormones that is just an indicator of there might be some inflammation or some toxins in the environment. I don’t really use it as a diagnostic, but her reverse t3 came in at like 30, which is off the charts. Um, and I was talking to her and I was like, where else? Like is there something that I missed? And sure enough, I’m talking to her and she’s like, Oh yeah, we use these pots and pans that we got in the Philippines. My great grandmother had these pots and I inherited them and I brought them overseas and I still use these pots and pans. And I’m like, from the Philippines, what are they made out of? And she’s like, Oh, I’m not sure. It’s pretty lightweight material. It looks like metal. I was like, oh my God, aluminum pots and pans, please tell me that’s not untrue. And sure enough that was her, like it was coming in. Aluminum was getting into her system. We did a test for aluminum and sure enough it was off the charts. So we want to figure out and detoxify all of the areas of life, not just what we put into our bodies.

Dr. Aumatma: And then the next step is to rebalance. And the rebalance stage is, is dependent on what we figured out in the discover phase. So sometimes patients hormones are really out of whack. Sometimes the hormones being out of whack has to do with thyroid. Sometimes it has to do with the adrenal and sometimes it has to do with the sex hormones. So we’re really rebalancing whatever system wasn’t quite functioning the way that it should. And while we’re doing that, we’re also doing something called low level laser therapy, which is being studied and used a lot in Europe for helping to revitalize the ovaries to get more blood flow, circulation, decrease inflammation. And basically what they found is that women who went through these, they’re basically doing a six week protocol of two sessions per week. So 12 sessions. And what they found in these studies is that the women that went through the protocol had way better IVF success rates than women who didn’t, um, from having more eggs retrieved as well as having more eggs make it to the embryo stage. So, we do that low level laser therapy. We also do a six week protocol of something called visceral manipulation where we’re manipulating the ovaries and the uterus to make sure that it’s in the optimal position for blood flow to the ovaries to make really good eggs as well as once you are pregnant, you really want to ensure that that uterus is going to have the optimal blood flow for the survival of the baby. So that’s our, our third step.

Dr. Aumatma: And the last step is uh, um, receive, which is basically what I call to my patients. I say, oh, now we’re going to get into the woo woo stuff. Because we’re doing like mind body therapies that help to remove the blocks, emotional healing, all that kind of stuff that, you know, if, if, uh, most like the average couple who’s been on this journey for a year or two, sometimes up to 10 years, they’ve accumulated a lot of baggage, in between the couple between, oh, we had this miscarriage and we never were able to process it. There’s so much stuff that the body holds on to, and if we help to release it and, and, and kind of like remove the emotional blocks, then the fertility or the pregnancy happens quicker.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, that was going to be one of my questions is do you help work with emotional release of any kind? Because I know that with women’s health and hormones, there’s a, there it can be a lot of emotional trauma can be stored up and, um, the reproductive system and if there’s any sexual abuse history or just like you said, just, just the, the stress of having to go through you know, fertility treatments.It’s stressful. And I, you know, I think that most women experience something with their reproductive system, whether it’s just the stress of having your period every had the, you know, possibly getting pregnant when you don’t want to get pregnant. The sexual traumas is big, you know, as that to many women. And I imagine that creates a lot of, like a lot of blocks, but it also makes it harder to, um, you know, go through the additional, any kind of stress that might be associated with not being able to get pregnant right away.

Dr. Aumatma: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. There’s so much, so much emotional stuff there. And like what just says what you were saying, one in three women have experienced some sort of sexual trauma in their life. That’s a lot. That’s a lot of women. So yeah, and a lot of times women will be like, oh no, I’ve done so much work on the emotional stuff. I’ve already done like Reiki and this and that. And I’m like, that’s wonderful. And I encourage you to continue doing whatever you feel like, and we’re just going to make sure that this stuff is not being stored somewhere in the body. Right. You may have worked on the mind, you may have had a therapist for 20 years, but if your body is having like a sensory memory of whatever that is, it’s still going to come up as something that needs to be released.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, it’s true. The emotional stuff is important for men too. And not just women though. You’re helping women a lot. I mean, women and men, both the part in the partners, right? I think people think it’s the woman that is having the difficulty getting pregnant. But like you said, sperm rates are down.

Dr. Aumatma: Yeah. Right. 51% of infertility is male infertility. And the number of times that I have patients come into my office, and it’s always couples. We don’t, we rarely work with just the woman, unless she’s going through like a single mama by choice or something like that. It’s couples only. So they come in together and often the guys are like, oh no, my doctor said my sperm are great. And I’m like, great, I just want to see it. I want to show me the numbers. And they’ll come in with like 4% morphology, which is sperm morphology is basically looking at the shape of the head, the shape of the tail, making sure that it’s normal. And normal forms are theoretically supposed to be between four and 14, so you’re supposed to have at least 4% normal, ideally closer to 14. Um, most of these guys come in towards 4% normal, maybe even 2% normal. And they’re told like, oh yeah, your sperm are great and I’m like 4% normal farm is not great. That means 96% of your sperm is abnormal. Does that sound like it’s, it’s a good thing and there are usually like “but my doctor …”, I’m like, I don’t care what your doctor said. It’s fine if trying to do IVF because they’re able to go in under a microscope and pick out the perfect sperm. But if you’re not doing IVF, like if your next step is we want to get pregnant naturally and you don’t want to have to go through another cycle, then we need to up your sperm and made sure that these are really good sperm so that if you do get pregnant, if you get your wife pregnant, we want to make sure that that embryo is the highest quality embryo that we could possibly have.

Dr. Aumatma: And they’re usually like, oh my God. Yeah, that makes sense. And then you talk to them about like, what are your energy levels? Like, how much do you, how about sleep do you get? How about stress? Do you experience? And most of the time they’re like, oh yeah, I guess I could use some improvement. And very quickly, like most guys respond very quickly to naturopathic medicine, I feel. And they often end up being the biggest fans where they started out like, I don’t know what you do. I’m just here because my wife made me too. Oh my God, this is amazing. And I have so much more energy and I’m feeling so much better. And they’re just so grateful to have someone paying attention to them, honestly. Like they had got turned into the sperm donor somewhere along the way and they’re so glad to be off that off that title.

Dr. Cates: Well and you know, you have to remember too then you’re trying to get pregnant. That means you’re going to be a parent and it takes a lot of energy and good health to be a good parent. I mean, there’s a lot of catching, a lot of running around a lot of mental work. You need to be optimally healthy, not just to, to conceive and to get the baby to term, but to be a good parent. All of that is just upsides. You’re having more energy so you can be a fun parent is as a big bonus, a big upside rather than just going in and doing it more of an artificial route and, and using conventional medicine for interventions. And of course, you know, it’s, it’s great that we have that as an option for people who really are struggling and maybe are further along and the whole process and they really want to go that route. It’s great that we have that as an option, but I think so many people turn that way too quickly. Right. So I want to ask you, how do you know someone is a good candidate? Like a couple that should come in to see you, maybe sometimes are people that maybe it’s not quite time or maybe they’re too far along than they need to go more of the IVF route.

Dr. Aumatma: I think that there is the couple that is maybe just starting out that often. I feel like it would be easier if we just tested people early on so that they know exactly where they stand and they don’t have to feel like, oh my God, is this going to happen for me? I’ve literally had people who I offer a very low cost consultation on my website. It’s like the preliminary consultation where I look at people’s lab tests and get a sense of what’s happening with their fertility. And there are patients who I’ve said, actually, you’re fine. Like just go try for a little bit longer. And it takes the pressure off of like, oh my God, why isn’t this happening? Why isn’t it happening yet? Right. And that that pressure actually makes it harder to conceive. So if they’re able to be, if it’s realistic, if it’s like an honest of, yeah, actually you’re doing great, like just go, go for it. And those patients almost always will write back and within a couple of months they’re pregnant and I didn’t necessarily do anything except just tell them they’re fine and to go for it. Right. Other people that are, maybe they’ve been trying for six months to a year, maybe they’re, you know, honestly, I feel like everyone could use preconception care at the minimum. So like there’s no point in which it doesn’t make sense to have your hormones balanced and your nutrients looked sad and your gut health and like doing all of those things will almost always not only help you to get pregnant, but really to help increase the quality of the embryo to have a healthier baby and to be healthier parents, as you said, once you do have that baby. So I think that that as a baseline is a really good starting point. But for people who have been trying say six months to a year and are still not pregnant, you don’t know what else to do. I think that’s a really good point in which to seek out a naturopathic doctor who specializes in fertility, who can help to like take it to the next level, right? Like you’ve done what you can on your own. Now it’s time to really get some support and get a coach who can say, Hey, I see what’s happening here. Here’s a pattern that doesn’t really work for you. Let’s adjust it and make sure that you’re healing from it so that you can go get pregnant. And those people often tend to be a lot of my easier patients. The hardest patients are really the people on the other end of the spectrum who have been maybe doing this for five to 10 years and western medicine has kind of given up on them and they’re like, I’ve been through six, maybe sometimes 10 IVF cycles and none of it has worked. Can you help me? And those are, those are like heartbreakers for me because I’m like, man, couldn’t you come in like three years ago? I could have really made a difference here. But some of those patients, I would say like 50%, even of those patients who have been through cycle after cycle after cycle, um, we’ll get pregnant naturally after being on this journey for five years or 10 years sometimes. And those tend to be the harder patients that I have, but also like, you know, there’s, they’re kind of coming in with like, there’s nothing else for me. Can you help me? And they’re willing to do anything, right. They’re like, you want me to change my diet? I’ll do it. You always change my lifestyle. I’ll do it. I got this. I could do anything you want. If it will help, we have a baby. And they often are successful as well. So it’s, you know, the earlier people come in the better. Um, but there’s, there’s never a point, well I shouldn’t say there’s never, there’s actually a point when it’s too late, but anyone prior to that point, it’s perfectly fine for them to have an appointment.

Dr. Cates: I mean, and that’s the great thing about naturopathic medicine is there aren’t side effects. You’re only going to get side benefits and maybe it takes a little bit longer. Maybe, you know, you have to still go the conventional route too, but your body is going to be healthier overall. And Yeah, I’ll see your pregnancy healthier baby. And there were so many great things with that. I think that every week, every couple thinking about having a baby, should see a naturopathic physician and make sure that their health is optimize even if they’re not having difficulty getting pregnant. So, um, I’m so glad that you’re doing what you do and also you help educate other people. You have a podcast, I have a book. So tell everybody about how they can learn more about you and, and get more information.

Dr. Aumatma: Yeah. Awesome. So our website is holistic fertility center.com and I actually have a gift for everyone. Uh, it’s called cheat sheet for understanding your fertility through lab tests. And it’s basically inspired by the number of patients that are like, why did my doctor tell me that this is what this means? So I have, you know, a chart with all the labs and what the net normal values are and what it means if you’re over or under. It kind of helps empower the women to take charge of their own fertility and not wait for the doctor to say, here’s what I think is happening. So you can download that. I think you guys are going to share the, the link for the gift.

Dr. Cates: Yes we’ll have that in the show notes.

Dr. Aumatma: Yeah, thank you. And of course follow me on Instagram if you’re on Instagram, holistic fertility specialists. Uh, and yeah, that’s, that tends to be the way that I share so much information. These, you know, it’s taken over the blog.

Dr. Cates: All right, great. Thanks so much for coming on sharing information. I appreciate you being here.

Dr. Aumatma: Thanks so much for having me Trevor.

Dr. Cates: I hope you enjoyed this interview today with Dr Aumatma. To learn more about her and the free gift you can go to at the spa Dr Com, go to the podcast page with her interview and you’ll find all the information and links there. So you can go to thespadr.com/podcast and that’s where you’ll find the podcast on the website. And while you’re there on the website, I invite you to join the spa doctor community so you don’t miss any of our upcoming shows. And as I mentioned earlier, love it when you leave iTunes reviews about The Spa Dr. Podcast. You can just go over to iTunes, search for the spa doctor podcast. Remember that doctor is abbreviated DR, and leave a review. I love seeing those. And also I invite you to join me on social media, on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, youtube, Pinterest, wherever you like to go. Join the conversation and I’ll see you next time on the spot after podcast.