Practically Fertile
If you wanted to get pregnant yesterday, but you're confused and overwhelmed by all the noise on the internet, then this is the right podcast for you. Hosted by Dr. Adrienne Wei, Doctor of Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine, Fellow of the American Board of Oriental Reproductive Medicine (ABORM), functional medicine practitioner, and functional nutritionist. Here, you'll find zero fluffy, useless information or rah-rah motivation. You'll only find practical strategies and "how-tos" for identifying the root cause and amplifying your fertility by using a proven method of combining science with tradition.
Practically Fertile
Episode 16 - The Five Emotions and How They Affect Fertility
Drawing from 16 years of clinical experience helping women conceive naturally, I've observed that mindset blocks fertility more often than most realize. While physical symptoms are easy to identify, recognizing how emotions sabotage conception requires deeper awareness.
Chinese medicine reveals fascinating connections between emotions and organ systems crucial for fertility.
Follow me on instagram @dradriennewei
Website: www.adriennewei.com
Welcome to the Practically Fertile Podcast. I'm Adrienne Wee, doctor of Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine, functional Medicine Practitioner and Functional Nutritionist. I specialize in using an evidence-based method, blending principles of East Asian medicine and modern functional medicine to help women optimize fertility and get pregnant. I believe in a world where every woman who wants to be a mother becomes one. If you're tired of being told that you're infertile and you want to take the right steps to get pregnant naturally and quickly, this podcast is for you. Hey, fertile friend, I do want to take a moment before I get into the episode today and let you know about the restructuring of my online programs. I know that this day and age, there isn't a lack of information. You can find out so much about fertility just by simply typing in a few words on Google. That's good and bad. We all know about Dr Google. It gives valuable insights, but it's also a scary, scary place to live in. Everything on Google leads to cancer, terminal illness. You're never going to get pregnant and that's by design, because healthcare providers are not legally allowed to make any types of claims and they also want to be careful. They don't want to take the responsibility of telling you that for sure you'll get pregnant by doing something and then get sued for it. Unfortunately, we live in a litigious society, just like the McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit. Common sense tells us that coffee might be hot, but we still need to put a label on the cup that the coffee is hot, just in case someone doesn't know that coffee is hot, and they should be careful. What you don't need is more information. You need an action plan.
Speaker 1:My flagship program a few years ago was extremely successful. We had an overall pregnancy rate of over 50% for the people who stuck with a program. You might think that's low, but it's actually higher than the national IVF average. And keep in mind that this was a work at your own pace program. I had very little control over how fast or slow someone learns the material and, quite frankly, I don't really know how much they were implementing the suggestions. But those who get pregnant they got pregnant very quickly, usually within six months. However, times have changed. A long program might not be practical. You don't really need a lengthy explanation on why sugar is bad for you. You just really want to know why am I not getting pregnant and what do I need to do about it? That's why I'm going to meet you where you are. I am planning on smaller, shorter, more actionable programs in addition to my normal flagship program. So, whether you're just starting out or you've exhausted all your options, my team and I will be able to help you, and I will give you more information as these programs are released.
Speaker 1:All right, so let's get on with today's episode. I know that you love the tips and tricks, but one common theme I keep noticing over and over again, based on my 16 years of clinical experience, is that what is preventing you from getting pregnant could very well be mindset. I do think that a lot of us are in denial about our state of mind. It's harder to quantify the effects of a certain state of mind. Physical things are easier to notice, like if your digestion is off, your sleep is off. This month, your cycle seems a little weird. These things we can notice, but it takes a long time for us to realize that we're getting in our own way, sometimes, right? Certainly, for me that's the case sometimes, and I'm sure you are too, and this is not going to be an episode where I tell you that you can't feel a certain way, because that's not how I do things.
Speaker 1:But what's really interesting is that in Chinese medicine, each emotion is tied to a certain organ system and can absolutely have an impact on the functions of each organ system. So far on this podcast, I've talked about the basic principles of Chinese medicine and the four phases of the menstrual cycle and the five archetypes, and I've touched on various organs and how they are linked to one of the five archetypes. Like spleen is the earth archetype. Kidneys are linked to the water archetype and liver wood. So each organ has a job so that your body functions properly. But I haven't talked in detail about the emotions that are associated with the functions of each of the important organs for fertility. This episode would definitely make you evaluate your emotions in a whole new, different way, and I hope that it can actually help you to get out of the trap of certain emotions quicker if you understand the impact that it has on your fertility.
Speaker 1:So let's start with the five basic human emotions Joy, worry, anger, fear and sadness. So joy is associated with the heart, worry is associated with the spleen, anger is associated with the liver, fear is associated with the kidneys and sadness the lungs. You may have heard a lot of energy healers talk about the heart chakra and opening the heart chakra. If you do yoga, you'll hear the teachers talking about opening poses that open the chest and that if we're closed off in the heart, we're closed off to opportunities and possibilities.
Speaker 1:In the Chinese medicine world, the heart is our commander in chief and it's super, duper, duper important because it's like the hypothalamus, and hypothalamus is at the top of the chain. It starts the menstrual cycle every single month. If the hypothalamus isn't working, you're not going to have a period A lot of times. If someone has been trying to conceive for a long time, it's hard to be happy, right, if every month you're getting a big fat negative. But think about it this way Knowing that and that joy is the emotion of the heart and the heart is like the hypothalamus, at least in the Chinese medicine world. Do you see how just a little bit of joy and happiness can really enhance that energy and really help your fertility? What does that look like for you? Maybe it's going on a trip, maybe it's picking up a hobby that you've pushed aside because you're busy with the trying to conceive things. A lot of you tell me that you are struggling with putting your life on hold because of trying to conceive, like putting off a trip because it doesn't coincide with an IUI or something. So maybe now it's time to take that trip. Whatever brings you joy, you need to start adding them back into your life, and that would really enhance the heart energy and really help those of you who are the fire archetypes and really help those of you who are the fire archetypes.
Speaker 1:Next up is worry. Worry is associated with our friend spleen, the digestive organ, the gut health, the supplier of energy to all of our organs, including ovaries and uterus, egg quality, lining quality, a lot of things. And worry is an emotion that all of us are too familiar with because that's what we do, especially being women. We worry about everything from what to eat for breakfast to whether or not our shoes match our outfit, to whether or not others are talking about us, to what's going to happen an hour from now. I don't need to elaborate here. You know what I'm talking about, but overwarring damages the spleen.
Speaker 1:We talk a lot about diet and lifestyle and how certain things can deplete your spleen energy, but overwarring will for sure damage the spleen energy. And what good does it do to worry? Absolutely nothing, because you can't change the past and you can't predict the future. Nothing, because you can't change the past and you can't predict the future. So why spend that precious energy? If you're an earth archetype, one of your patterns of imbalance might be qi deficiency. You might also refer to yourself as the worry wart, because the earth archetypes are more likely to worry. But even if your spleen energy is not affected now, overworrying will for sure get you there. So we can't stop worrying.
Speaker 1:But one very effective strategy taught to me by one of my really good friends who is a therapist and she does work with women who are trying to conceive a lot of times she talked about a very effective procedure to get over this, and that is to set aside some time to just worry, to think about all the worst possible scenarios and then move on. So for you this might look like after dinner you have 30 minutes to yourself. Maybe this is a good time to do that. Maybe a good time to do that is when you're walking your dog. Whatever works for you, the point is to set aside a time where you can just just be negative, think about all the things that you're worried about and then moving on. So the important thing here is to cut yourself off. So try that and see if that helps you.
Speaker 1:Okay, moving on to anger, anger is associated with the liver, the wood element, and before some of you think, well, I'm never really angry there are various degrees of anger, because liver is most affected by stress and anxiety. Although we use this general emotion, anger this anger emotion actually encompasses irritability, resentment, depression, bitterness. So think about the feeling you have sometimes. When someone announces a pregnancy, it's probably coming from the liver, and liver is what we call the commander of qi. The spleen makes the qi, the energy, but it's the liver that's responsible to make sure that this energy flows to where it needs to go, like the ovaries and uterus and everywhere else. When the liver is affected, energy flow becomes stagnant or stuck, and then you might get trapped in the cycle of qi stagnation, causing qi deficiency, and that causes more stagnation and more deficiency. Everything in Chinese medicine goes around in a cycle, so you have to remember that deficiency in one place is going to affect another.
Speaker 1:And what's really, really important about the liver is that it controls ovulation every month. If you have late ovulation or irregular cycles, think about your emotional state. How many times have you told me I'm probably too stressed? Well, now you know exactly how stress affects ovulation, you can start managing it better, or at least be more aware. Ovulation you can start managing it better, or at least be more aware.
Speaker 1:I do have to warn you when we're talking about liver and stagnant energy, don't run out and start a liver cleanse. It is not going to be productive for you. You can't cleanse a specific organ. It doesn't work that way and our livers are made to be a natural detox machine. You just can't rush to process. You got to let your body do its job and provide the environment for it to do the job. Plus, the liver goes through a three-step detox process anyway. The first two steps it converts a toxin and then it gets rid of the toxin in the second step. So you can easily end up with a ton of toxins build up in your blood and no way to get rid of them.
Speaker 1:So just because your liver energy is stuck, it doesn't mean that you need to cleanse. You need a better stress management system, all right. So some things to think about, like how you're stressing yourself out, symptom watching during the two-week wait. Are you obsessing over everything that you're doing? A lot of perfectionists tend to fall into the liver-tee stagnation category, but of course, anyone can be affected. If you let the stress get to you. The liver-wood archetypes are just a little bit more prone to this. Wood archetypes are just a little bit more prone to this.
Speaker 1:One of the best ways to release stuck liver energy and I'm not even joking here is to just let it all out and have a good cry. I hear a lot of my patients tell me like I don't want to cry, I don't want to cry, and I tell them no, you need to cry, you need to let it out. My team and I have this joke around the office that whenever a patient has this huge emotional release, they've reached a breaking point and they melt down and they're sobbing, crying and there's lots of tears. Whenever we see this, we're so happy because we know that this person's letting go of all the pent up emotions. I kid you not nine times out of 10, this person becomes pregnant that very next cycle. I kid you not. Nine times out of ten this person becomes pregnant that very next cycle. And yes, there's evidence that crying releases endorphins and reduces cortisol, so maybe that's one of the contributing factors. Now, of course, not every good cry will mean that pregnancy happens the next cycle, but maybe it's a cycle after that. Any way you look at it, letting go of the bottled up emotion will help to unblock the energy flow. So if you feel like crying, go for it.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about sadness next. I want to save fear for last, because it is one of the most important emotions and it has to deal with the kidneys, and I just did a huge episode on the kidneys, and it has to deal with the kidneys, and I just did a huge episode on the kidneys. Sadness is associated with the lung organ, and the lung organ is something that we haven't really talked about. It's not part of the Chinese menstrual cycle, but it is still very much involved in the process, because the lung in Chinese medicine is the immune system. It is the defense of our body. So much as what I want to teach you to do is to strengthen your body so that it's at the most healthy and fertile state. When you get pregnant and we're surrounded by toxins that damage our immune system, and if your system, if your immune system, is weak, you're going to get sick more often or you might have an autoimmune condition that pops out out of nowhere. These are all the things that a strong lung function will prevent, and the lung is affected by sadness.
Speaker 1:One of my teachers from when I was in acupuncture school had this really, really interesting perspective on Dana Reeves' death. I don't know if you remember Christopher Reeves, the iconic Superman. He was in a horseback riding accident and left him completely paralyzed and Dana, his wife, took care of him for a number of years. But within a few months after Christopher died, dana, out of nowhere, died of lung cancer and no one saw that coming. She lived a really healthy lifestyle and my teacher brought up the fact that Dana had been carrying this sadness and grief for years about Christopher's accident because she was the caregiver and her entire life was turned upside down and then, after Christopher died, the grief and sadness just took over. So this is a super interesting perspective, but I want you to maybe look into your own life and see if you can correlate any incidences of a sudden loss or a period of extreme sadness and if that had any effect on your health whatsoever. But anyway, trying to conceive with no success is going to bring a certain degree of sadness, especially if you've suffered miscarriages. That's why it's super important to allow yourself time to grieve the losses and talk through the emotions. The losses and talk through the emotions.
Speaker 1:All right, so we're on to fear, and I saved this for last, because fear is one of the hardest emotions to overcome, but it has the greatest impact on fertility, since it's associated with the kidneys. You're a reproductive energy savings bank, and if you have no idea what I'm talking about, I just did a huge episode on the kidneys, and that's episode 15. The reason fear is so hard to overcome is because it's a survival mechanism that's literally hardwired into our brain. Fear is what stops us from jumping off a roof, from touching a hot stove, from running in front of a bus. Fear is what keeps us alive. If you don't believe me, just Google why we're fearful, and there are lots of resources about this.
Speaker 1:One of the biggest fears that you might have is no matter what you do, you are never going to get pregnant, and this fear drives your decision making. You could be self-sabotaging and not even knowing it. But, most importantly, constant fear is going to deplete your reproductive energy savings bank exponentially. So just a review our reproductive energy saving bank is what we inherit from our parents. It's what we were born with, and if you're upset about how it's taking you so long to get pregnant. Just think about this the more time you give yourself to do all the preconception work, the more you have to give to your baby and the more that they have to give to their baby and their baby's babies. So you're not just really prepping to get pregnant, you're prepping for your future generations. So all this reproductive energy reservoir is affected by lifestyle, diet, all the things we talked about, but it's also affected by fear.
Speaker 1:I really want you to think about where fear is showing up in your life. Now that you know it's affecting your fertility in a huge way, maybe you'll look at it differently. It's impossible to just turn the fear switch off with the snap of a finger. I wish that it would, but instead here's what you can do when fearful thoughts creep into your brain. I want you to first acknowledge the fear. Don't fight it because you can't. It's again hardwired into our brain, and then I want you to start a conversation with yourself about this fear, something like I know. This fear isn't real. It's protecting me from being hurt. I can think of so many examples of this, and I'm sure that you can think of some fears that you have about the trying to conceive process and that when you sit down and really think about it, you probably will find that they're actually trying to protect you either from disappointment or something that might cause you harm in some way.
Speaker 1:I remember talking to a woman one time at this event I was hosting and I mentioned dairy. Her comment was hell, no, I'm never going to give up dairy. Nope, not ever. And I saw that it wasn't. She didn't see the value in giving up dairy, but she was afraid that even cutting out dairy wasn't going to be enough to help her get pregnant. So she stops herself from even trying it out. So that't going to be enough to help her get pregnant. So she stops herself from even trying it out so that she wouldn't be disappointed. But maybe cutting out dairy would have helped her. And so many of us have fear of being criticized. I definitely have that huge fear and you know I freeze up whenever I had to go on Facebook Live. I've done a lot of work and I'm getting better, but my fear was stopping me because it was protecting me from being hurt by negative comments.
Speaker 1:So after you have this conversation with your fear, the next thing to do is to move your attention to something else that's more positive, and this is critical, because your emotions follow your thought pattern you have a thought first and then you have an emotion, not the other way around. Move your emotion to something more positive, like a picture of your wedding day, maybe YouTube videos that are funny. Move your attention to something that will bring you joy and open the heart. When you feel yourself overwarring, being too angry about another big fat negative, or feeling so sad about something, you can use this method First acknowledge, then have a conversation about where it's coming from and then move on to something more positive so you can experience joy and happiness.
Speaker 1:But fear shows up very often in our lives and it has a huge impact on fertility and health. Any of these emotions that I mentioned. You might be thinking well, I'm this archetype, so I don't have to worry about this emotion. I'm a wood, so fear isn't a problem. The truth is, if you experience one emotion for long enough, it is going to start to affect all the other organs and it will have an impact on your health.
Speaker 1:Okay, we're wrapping up here. I hope this episode has gotten you to look at your emotions in a whole new, different way and that you now have a better understanding of how emotional well-being is a crucial piece of the puzzle when it comes to trying to conceive. If we can manage our emotions appropriately, we're going to be able to influence our health and therefore improve our fertility. All right, friend, I'm so happy that I got to spend some time with you today. I really appreciate you tuning in. If you have any comments or suggestions, please send me an email to info at adrienneweecom, or send me a text through the podcast. I will be happy to answer any more questions that you might have. Until next time, take care of yourself and your amazing body. You are one fertile cycle away from getting pregnant.