How to Naturally Boost Fertility (And Why 1 in 6 Couples Can't Conceive Today)

Today, I want to walk you through how to support fertility naturally using foods, herbs, and lifestyle medicine. I've worked with thousands of women helping them regulate their hormones and their cycles in order to get pregnant. And the good news is that if you follow biblical and functional medicine principles, you can naturally improve fertility. Listen to this study. Harvard followed more than 17,000 women for 8 years to answer one question. What can you eat And how can you live that actually changes your odds of conceiving, that improves your fertility? And here's what they found in the study. Yes, what you eat makes a major difference in your fertility and your chance of conception. Let me ask you a really important question. Do you feel chronically run down, foggy, and inflamed, like your body is carrying a load it can't seem to put down, and you're tired of being told everything looks normal? Now, here's the thing. When toxins and oxidative stress build up faster than your cells can clear them, it quietly drains your energy and drives symptoms head to toe. And conventional blood work simply isn't designed to catch these things. I'm currently offering a simple at-home blood test designed to measure the right biomarkers, the ones that reveal what's really driving your hormones, inflammation, and metabolism. You'll also get a full hour— with one of my senior health advisors to help you connect the dots between your symptoms and your cellular health and discover ways that you can work with the Health Institute to finally find lasting healing. If you want to check it out and grab one before they're gone, just go to mybloodwork.com now. And so headlines broke this week that showed that Dr. Anthony Fauci was texting another doctor, and he believed it was plausible that the COVID vaccine was a risk to pregnant women, especially increasing the risk of miscarriages. Dr. Fauci wrote specifically in his text, word for word, I asked around a bit more and another issue came up that you need to be aware of. Since many people have significant cytokine storms and fever after the second dose, this theoretically could be associated with miscarriage in the first trimester. So he actually knew that there was a risk there and said nothing. Now you might be asking, is there any proof or evidence that there was an increased risk? Well, there is some. There was a 2025 Israeli study, and this was done on over 200,000 pregnancies. And this study looked at data that actually compared fetal losses after vaccination with expected losses based on pre-pandemic data, adjusting for things like gestational age and other individual risk factors. So all those things were removed. Women receiving dose 1 of an mRNA vaccine, almost entirely from Pfizer, during the weeks of 8 to 13 had about 13 fetal losses per 100 pregnancies versus only 9 should have been expected. So that's in excess of 4 per 100 pregnancies. So this potentially could have caused 4% more miscarriages. And then they looked at this for the third dose and it showed an excess of 2 losses per 100 pregnancies. So in this study, again, large-scale study done over 200,000 women, there was absolutely an increased risk according to the study. This was also done in a Scottish study. A peer-reviewed Scottish study found that women receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine had a 17% higher odds of miscarriage compared with historical controls. However, the results in the study were not as clear as the Israeli study. So here's what I want to tell you. There are studies that say that yes, this likely did increase the risk. There are other studies that were done that said, you know, there really— there was no difference. It's very hard to tell based on the studies with absolute certainty, but I can tell you this from a father's perspective and knowing my wife. We deserve to know, right? We deserve to know if something potentially was increasing the risk of conception and miscarriage. By the way, you also might wonder, well, how could it cause that? Well, here's how this works. You know, with a vaccine, chemical messengers called cytokines are released, triggering an immune response. Cytokines tend to be also connected to inflammation, so inflammation and immune response, which can also lead to symptoms such as fever, chills, fatigue, and body aches. But the cascade would look like this. You get a vaccination, you have a strong immune activation, you have increased cytokines, then you have an inflammatory response or something like a fever, and then this is a stress on the body, and for some women, significant. If you have this around early pregnancy, especially in the first trimester, the embryo is attached to the uterus and the placenta is just beginning to form. Because this is such a sensitive stage of development, Some scientists believe that strong inflammatory response could increase the risk of miscarriage. So that excess inflammation is impacting placental development. Now, I want to move past that news now, but I think it's important to know what's increasing your risk of infertility and conception, and that very may well have caused this in some women. Now, what I want to do now is I do want to move forward and walk you through exactly how to support your fertility, Starting today. And so here's the reframe. Your body will not prioritize building a baby if it believes the conditions aren't safe. Not enough fuel, too much inflammation, your blood sugar is swinging, your thyroid is running slow, your stress hormones are exceedingly high. Because, right, your body's smart. It says, well, if there's this high, high level of stress, I don't have the energy and resources to create new life. So your body waits until it feels safe and secure. Before it creates. And so the reality is 1 in 6 couples worldwide face infertility. Think about that, 1 in 6. This is far more common than people realize. And when we're talking about root causes, here's a few things to look at. Okay, where does the infertility typically come from? Infertility gets treated actually most— more commonly, or has for a long time, as a women's issue. And the workup usually starts and ends there, but the male factor is contributing nearly half, not quite, but very close, okay? So around 35% of infertility tends to be more of the female factor, but 30%, very close behind, is due to the male factor. Both partners typically being the issue together is 20%, and unexplainable is around 15% according to medical research. So if you're looking to conceive, It is important that both the woman and the man both look to improve their fertility simultaneously. Now, before I dive deeper, I do have a quick favor. If this is already helping you better understand your body and the truth about fertility, hit the subscribe button. It's free, it takes 2 seconds, and it helps this episode reach someone who needs it right now and also keeps you up on the latest of what's going on in natural health. Now, let's dive in and look at the root causes from a functional medicine standpoint. Okay, number 1, Blood sugar and insulin issues. Okay, this is the most common cause of infertility I see, and it's also the most reversible. High insulin tells the ovaries to make more testosterone, and it disrupts the signal that triggers ovulation. By the way, that's also the biggest issue that causes PCOS or PMOS, polycystic ovary syndrome, or now as it's termed, really more of a metabolic syndrome. And by the way, you don't have to be overweight for this. There are plenty of women with normal BMI that have a high fasting insulin throwing their blood sugar off. So that is the number one root cause I see in practice. It's the number one cause of PCOS and PMOS. So it's just bringing your blood sugar back into balance. And the great news is that's incredibly easy to do if you know how to do it. And here are the big 2: eat more protein, eat more fiber, right? Less sugar, less refined carbs, protein, protein, protein. Fiber, fiber, fiber. What that could look like is meat, right? Grass-fed burger, filet of fish, eggs, chicken breast, but get more meat and pro— you know, protein shake, but get more protein and then get more fiber. Vegetables, high— low glycemic fruits like berries and pomegranates and apples, sweet potato, avocado, more healthy fats, extra virgin olive oil. If you follow that diet, it will make a tremendous difference. Difference. The number 2 cause of infertility, this is especially in women, are thyroid issues, especially high thyroid antibodies. The thyroid sets the metabolic tempo for the whole body, and reproduction is extremely sensitive to it. Even mildly low thyroid function is associated with anovulation, luteal phase problems, and oftentimes a higher miscarriage rate. And here's the part that gets missed. You can have a normal TSH, thyroid stimulating hormone, and still have elevated thyroid antibodies, which is independently associated with pregnancy loss. I'd say the most important things to look at truly are free T3, okay, so your T3 thyroid hormone, and your TPO antibodies, okay? Making sure those are in balance or working to get those in balance is more important than the other thyroid markers. Root cause number 3. Your body doesn't have enough nutrients. You cannot build a healthy pregnancy if you don't have the raw materials, right? Vitamin D is probably the most important. Vitamin D acts also as a hormone. It actually acts more like a hormone than a vitamin, and its receptors sit right in the ovaries, in the uterus lining, okay? So incredibly important for fertility. Low iron is also very important, that, you know, because if iron's low, your body's lacking oxygen. Low vitamin B12 and folate. Those affect egg quality and neural tube development. I do want to also mention in men in particular, zinc is critical. When I'm looking at blood work on men, 2 tests I'm always looking for, I'm looking at vitamin D and I'm looking at zinc because those are also the 2 nutrients that impact testosterone the most. So knowing what those numbers are or generally supporting your body with those nutrients is very important. The root cause number 4 is stress and safety signals, okay? If your body does not feel safe and secure, and if your body already feels overwhelmed, it impacts your hormone in such a way that causes infertility, right? Especially high cortisol, right? Those adrenal hormones are just constantly going. That's also impacting the thyroid hormones. That's driving estrogen, progesterone down. That's a big deal. Now, and any woman that has been pregnant knows that there is this thing that starts happening, even sometimes before you're pregnant, where you wanna feel nested, right? You wanna feel tucked in. Again, I've explained this before, and here's how I like to describe it. Here is how you should start to feel if you want to get pregnant. You should feel like you're cuddled up on a couch with your favorite blanket on. It's winter, it's snowing out. You've got a fireplace, Christmas tree. You've got your favorite hot beverage, whether it's coffee or hot cocoa in your hand. Your family is around, and you just feel so cozy. Safe, secure, peace, joy, wrapped in a blanket. You just, you have that sense, that heightened sense of safety and fulfillment. That's what you want. You wanna get there mentally, spiritually, and then that's gonna impact the physical. If you do not feel safe and secure, if you don't feel the word nested, I'll tell you, I tell you a quick note. Chelsea and I, when we were looking to have our first child, we were at the time actually renting a 2-bedroom apartment 'cause we had just moved from somewhere. And Chelsea said to me, she said, hey, I wanna get a house. I said, okay, well, you know, can we, you know, wait 6 months at this point? She's like, I'd really like to do it now. I'm like, why? She's like, because I'm starting to nest. Like, I feel like I need to have that extra bedroom, get that ready for the baby. And you know what? I didn't fight her. I thought, you know what? I understand that. I understand. And so let's go ahead and get you safe and secure and feeling that. And for men, that should be your primary goal. What can you do to make your woman feel nurtured, loved, safe, and secure? Start bringing her her favorite coffee. Start doing everything you can to make her feel that way. And sometimes that alone is the biggest cause of fertility issues. Okay, number 5, sometimes there are chemicals in the way. There are so many endocrine disruptors in our homes today. Phthalates in plastics and fragrances, BPA in receipts and can linings. You know, these forever chemicals in nonstick cookware, glyphosate on our food, these chemicals are everywhere. And listen, do not stress yourself out about it feeling like you have to avoid everything because you don't. You just want to do your best to avoid much of it, right? And make the simple swaps. Glass instead of plastic, cast iron or stainless steel instead of more plastic, drink filtered water. If you do that, that's going to cover most of it. Okay, root cause number 6. This is the half nobody test. This has to do with the men out there. Sperm counts in industrialized countries have fallen more than 50% since the 1970s. A semen analysis costs a fraction of what one IVF cycle does. And generally, men getting blood work done to look at their testosterone levels and what impacts testosterone is incredibly helpful. And so root cause number 6 is men, do everything you can To support your testosterone. Lift weights, get deep sleep, don't drink a lot of alcohol because that turns into estrogen in your body, or at least causes more estrogen conversion in your body, right? So get good sleep, lift weights, stop drinking out of plastic containers, do all of those things you know you should, and keeping cortisol low, right? Have fun, stay active. All right, I want to walk you through when I'm doing blood work, some of the markers I really like to look at when it comes to a fertility panel. The first ones here are Fasting insulin and looking at your HbA1c levels, right? Looking at blood sugar is critical. The other thing I like to look at is the thyroid panel. What do your thyroid hormones look like? Number 3, vitamin D, right? You want to be at least 40, if not 50 or above. Ferritin, let's look at these iron stores. Let's see where your iron's at. Number 5, this is for men, looking at your free testosterone levels. We need testosterone, especially it needs to also be freed up. to do its thing. Number 6, let's look at estradiol and estrogen, and also if you can, FSH and LH. Number 7, progesterone, and also looking at you, are you ovulating? Number 8, zinc, that's really important especially for male fertility. Number 9, high sensitivity CRP, so that's looking at inflammation levels in the body. And number 10, if needed, semen analysis. Okay, these are probably the most important things to know. Now here's what I'll say as well, you don't have to get testing done. If you do a lot of the things I've talked about, you're gonna naturally improve your fertility and you'll probably be just fine, but if you wanna do extra or you're stuck, these are some of the blood markers that matter most. By the way, I wanna share with you a study that just proves that your lifestyle makes a huge difference in fertility. There was a study done that found that women who followed 5 or more healthy lifestyle factors, such as eating more fruits and vegetables and meat and being more physically active, made a major difference in their fertility. In fact, healthy lifestyle habits increased fertility by nearly 70%. So think about that. The food you're eating, going for walks during the day, doing these natural lifestyle habits could improve your fertility by 70%. By the way, these habits stack. For every one of the better habits you implement, right? Eating a healthy diet, moving and exercising, taking the right supplements, keeping stress low, they compound and your fertility goes up and up and up. Hey, I want to ask you for a favor, and you may know this, you may not know this, Pre-orders make or break a book launch. So if our new book, myself and Dr. Will Cole, Heal Your Cells, has been on your radar, now's the time to order it. And here's what I have for you. If you go to healyourselvesbook.com, I'm going to give you over $500 in free content bonuses, including a cellular peptide guide. You may wonder, hey, how do I use peptides? I walk through every peptide, how to use them, the dosage and everything. They're in that guide. I also have the ideal supplement guide for cellular health, reversing organ aging, promoting longevity. You'll get that for free. Also, you'll get a Heal Yourselves masterclass where myself and Dr. Will Cole dive deep into advanced nutrition and healing principles, and also 40 incredible longevity recipes. You'll get all now. That's $500 worth of content for free if you go to healyourselvesbook.com and get it today. Now, there's one other bonus I want to give you. You can also get an at-home blood work kit that goes through cellular markers so you can actually see what are your levels of inflammation, what's your blood sugar, are you deficient in key nutrients like vitamin D, all in that blood kit. In fact, this blood work can typically cost anywhere from double to triple this amount. If you want to do this now, it's only $79 for a very limited time. It's our lowest price ever. And with it also comes a 1-hour consultation. So you'll have real answers in hand. Again, that's healyourselvesbook.com. Just want to say thank you so much. I appreciate it. I appreciate your support. All right, so we've looked at things from a functional medicine lens. I do want to take a minute now and talk about fertility from the Chinese medicine point of view. Okay, it's incredibly important, and I have helped a lot of women get pregnant through focusing on improving their health via Chinese medicine. And there are really a few patterns we see that can cause infertility that you can improve. Number 1 is called a kidney yang deficiency. Now, kidney yang deficiency tends to be tied to Hypothyroidism, okay? The body is cold. So yang is tied to being anabolic and healing and regenerating, and the kidneys are really tied to— that typically means adrenal glands in Chinese medicine. So it's your adrenal glands and thyroid are worn out. That's what that is. It's also a mitochondrial deficiency. Your mitochondria are worn out. And so what happens is your uterus is cold, your extremities are cold, you have low basal body temperature. You know, you take your body temperature and you're in the 97s, not the 98s. This can lead to late ovulation, cold hands and feet, a pale tongue. So what do you need to do there? You need to warm up your body. Stop drinking ice-cold drinks. Stop eating salads. Warm your body. Foods that boost yang heat and generate more heat in the body are red meat, grass-fed beef, bison, lamb, especially extra virgin olive oil, herbs like cinnamon and ginger. Doing things to— you know, you're much better off drinking a lot of soups. than you are doing salad. So you want to think about like Thanksgiving, doing soups, that's the sort of diet you should follow to warm up the body. Pattern number 2 that affects fertility in Chinese medicine is what we call blood deficiency. Your blood is deficient. By the way, in order to make a placenta, there's so much blood that it takes to build that. And so what you'll start to see is like, I'll see on pictures, somebody sticks out their tongue and rather than being bright pink, it's like a pale pink. It has almost a whiteness to it, not on the top, but the tongue itself. And again, this tends to be tied to low iron or ferritin, sometimes low vitamin B12. And in order to fix this, we just build the blood. Again, it's red meat, it's grass-fed beef, it's dark poultry, it's dark green leafy vegetables, it's beets are fantastic, one of the best things you could eat, drinking bone broth, eating dates, baked cherries, foods that build the blood make a tremendous difference. Pattern number 3 is called liver qi stagnation. It's all about your liver's backed up. When that happens, it causes symptoms of PMS, irritability, breast tenderness, cramping, clots, cycles that shift unpredictably. This is the pattern of women under sustained pressure, high cortisol. It's all about that. Cortisol's high, the liver gets backed up. Sometimes women also have constipation. That can happen. And so the thing you want to do there is you want to consume a diet of a lot of steamed vegetables, a lot of things that are fresh. But you got to reduce stress, going on more walks, saying no more, getting things off your schedule, and actually doing things, hitting things is actually good, releasing, pickleball, tennis, getting acupuncture and personal care, just moving in general is going to help with that. And then the last one here, it's what we call damp phlegm. It's really tied to Candida overgrowth and insulin resistance. So it's Candida overgrowth and insulin resistance. It's too much sugar and your blood sugar is imbalanced. This is where getting a lot of cinnamon is great. This is good changing your diet to where, again, you get rid of processed foods, sugars, all the excess bread and the chips and everything else, and you do more things like sweet potatoes. You do more apples. You do meat. You do more vegetables. But you need to balance blood sugar and get rid of the excess Candida. And again, this is the pattern that most corresponds to PCOS and PMOS, and you fix that by typically balancing your blood sugar. And so here's what the diet would typically look like for most people. Rather than cold food, eat warming foods. Lots of soups, lots of warm dishes. So it's cooked meat, it's baked or steamed or sautéed vegetables, it's olive oil, it's avocado, it's baked apples and baked berries, right? You want to warm the body. It's doing beets. These will move the needle the most. Hey, no matter what you've been told about cortisol, it's not the actual enemy, and your goal isn't to eliminate it, it's to bring it back into balance. Now, chronic stress can throw healthy cortisol completely out of sync. And that ripple effect impacts more than just how you feel every day. Elevated cortisol can influence your appetite, blood sugar regulation, and how your body manages weight, which makes supporting healthy cortisol balance a real incredibly important part of weight management and overall health. That's exactly why I use Active Peptides Cortisol. It's not just about helping you feel relaxed. It's formulated to help bring your body's natural systems into balance and adapt over time. Inside this formula, you'll find clinically studied peptides paired with efficacious amounts of L-theanine, ashwagandha, magnolia root, and rhodiola adaptogens, which have a long history of tradition and backed by modern science. Right now, new customers can save $10 off their first order. by using my code DRAX10. Give your body the support it needs to handle stress the way God designed it to. Click the link to check out this incredible cortisol-balancing product from Ancient Nutrition. And then when it comes to supplements worth considering, a prenatal multivitamin. If you have MTHFR, take methylfolate. If not, regular folate should be fine. Vitamin D, omega-3 fatty acids, CoQ10. That supports mitochondrial health in the egg. Myo-inositol, this is especially good if you've got PCOS. Magnesium, and for men, zinc and antioxidants support motility and sperm count. And then from there, no, you've got about a 90-day window for improvement, right? Eggs take about 90 days to mature, sperm about 74, and today's changes you make now will show up in 3 months. You also want to fix your sleep schedule, 7 to 9 hours a night. This also helps your cycle run properly. Move most days, but don't overtrain. Very high volume can cause problems as well and suppress ovulation. And focus on both partners. This is a team project, and that's what the data says as well. And the last thing I would say is pray. You know, I love what Psalms 37:7 says, be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him. If you take one thing from today, take this: fertility is not a verdict on your body, it's a signal. And from it, here's the good news: signals can change. We can change your signals and your hormones, getting your body back into balance. And if we focus on doing the right things naturally, your body can heal and you can greatly improve your fertility. 2 ways to go deeper. First, I created a fertility foundation guide just for you. It walks you through an ideal eating plan of the foods. If you're wondering, what are the ideal foods and meals for me to eat? They're in there. The ideal supplements and the dosages, everything is in there for you to follow. You can get that if you go to the show notes and download my fertility guide. You can get it in there right now. And the second thing is, if you want to dive deeper into these advanced nutrition principles, you can check out my book, Heal Your Cells, on amazon.com. Now, I want to say thanks so much for tuning in here to the Dr. Axe Show. Remember, every week my goal is to help you heal naturally. Thank you. And if this has helped you better understand fertility, do me a favor, send it to someone walking through it quietly. Most people in this season never say a word about it, and knowing there are still stones left unturned, and you could really bless someone by sharing this episode with them. So I want to say, hey, thanks so much for subscribing. Thanks for sharing, and I'll see you on the next episode.