5 Ways to Balance Your Hormones Fast – So You Can Optimize Your Fertility | 223

Good morning and welcome to the birth experience.

Today's guest is so special to me.

Her name is Dr. Kayla Smith, and she is going to talk all things fertility, but when it comes to functional medicine and holistic.

Healing.

She has what is called her hormone puzzle.

And so join me as I talk to Kayla today, and we talk about five ways that you can take control of this infertility fertility journey that you are on.

Good morning and welcome to the Birth experience.

We have such a great episode planned and this one is so near and dear to me, and I'll tell you why in just a minute.

But Dr. Kayla Smith is with me and we are gonna talk all things fertility.

And changes you can make hormonally to get pregnant, which a lot of you guys know I got pregnant with Grayson at 42, so I'm super excited about this conversation.

Welcome Kayla.

Dr. Kela Smith: Thanks Trish.

I'm really excited to be here too, so thanks for having me.

Yes, and fun fact, Kayla and I met each other.

We are in a mastermind together and we.

Just hit it off.

Then we found out we live close by.

Although we both work from home, we don't leave our houses often, so we have not met in person, which we're going to, I mean, besides at events.

Yeah.

But, Dr. Kayla is gonna talk to you guys about some dietary hormonally like I, I'm assuming, but I would love for you just to tell everyone like what it is that you do and also why you do it.

Dr. Kela Smith: Sure.

Well, thanks Trish.

Well, I am Dr. Kayla Smith, like you said, and I am a holistic fertility and hormone doctor and a nutritionist, and I created a company called The Hormone Puzzle Society out of my own personal struggle with infertility.

I got married.

I thought it would be very easy to get pregnant.

That's what we're taught our whole lives.

But I found out very quickly that was not my story.

I started in conventional medicine.

And was told at 36 I was advanced maternal age and that IV F was my only option to get pregnant.

And then in that same breath told I had unexplained infertility.

And I'm like, wait a minute.

There's nothing medically wrong with me.

I should be able to get pregnant.

I'm 36, I'm not 56.

Like, what the hell?

36

is so young.

What are we talking about right now?

I know.

Dr. Kela Smith: Crazy.

Gee.

So I, that led me down this.

Journey of not wanting to do IVF to start.

And I dove into research.

I thought, okay, what do I need to do to get as fertile as possible?

And so that's what I did.

I looked at my diet, my lifestyle.

I had undiagnosed hypothalamic amenorrhea, which I know now, but I never was diagnosed back then.

I had no cycle.

And so I just went down this road and, and I found.

Figured out what I needed to do to get as fertile as possible, and I ended up getting pregnant, not once, but twice.

And now those children are 12 and nine.

And when I had a newborn and a 2-year-old, I thought, I have to teach this because if they're telling me this, then who else are they telling?

Yeah.

So I went back to school.

I started getting credentials and I started my practice and this was about nine years ago.

And today I work with women and couples all over the world.

I help them figure out why they're not getting pregnant.

I help.

Them solve and heal and so they can get pregnant and have a healthy baby and an easy birth and postpartum.

So that's a little about me.

I've written a bunch of books, I've got a podcast, and I'm just really excited to share, share my journey and my story.

I, this is what I love so much.

There is nothing quite as powerful as a woman and a mom who has a reason to impact the world and.

I having gone, so let, let's just go back.

In my twenties, I, I, the joke was like, you could look at me and I would get pregnant because I had, so, I had, you know, I had all four boys by the time I was 25.

Wow.

And my oldest four.

And so.

Having that experience.

And then like I was telling you, I had three losses before I got pregnant with Grayson, which my first loss was at 40 and I wasn't trying to get pregnant.

I got pregnant and then I just had this hole in my heart and I was like, well, that was a fluke, right?

I've always gotten pregnant and had a baby.

So I got pregnant again and had the loss, and then again it had the loss.

And I was like, what in the flipping am I doing here?

I don't need another baby.

Like this is God telling me.

But there was this.

There was a whole, a Grayson size hole inside of me, you know?

And so then what's funny is that I did the same thing.

I went to the doctors, they wanted me to go on Clomid, and I was getting ready to take a travel assignment in California, and I just prayed and I was like, why am I doing all this?

God?

Like, I, I can't do all this.

What I inadvertently did.

Was I decided I was gonna focus on

I wasn't really overweight, but I was over more overweight than I'd ever been, so I really focused on losing weight and I inadvertently.

Up to my fertility.

And so he came to visit me and went back home to Genesee and like five weeks later I was barfing and like, what is wrong with me?

And one of the doctors at work.

Where I was working in California, did a test and I was pregnant.

But what's really cool about that cycle, which is totally unrelated, but it was cool, is that that was the same travel assignment.

I had it when I was 40.

I was at that same hospital when I lost the first baby.

And I was in the, OR doing a C-section, and that whole team of doctors and nurses like were so loving to me and so kind to me.

So they walked through the first miscarriage and then they were there when I got pregnant with Grayson.

So it was kind of a full circle moment.

However, back to those of you guys who are listening, I wanted to say all that, and I love that Kayla said all that because it is such.

you practice not getting pregnant.

Like, everybody's like, don't get pregnant, take birth control.

Uh, don't get pregnant.

Yes.

And then suddenly you're like, wanna get pregnant?

All they have to do is stop being careful, Uhhuh, and then, and then it doesn't work.

Dr. Kela Smith: Yeah.

So I know there's a lot of women who are listening that are in that same boat.

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Kela Smith: And infertility is so common.

I mean, one in six women and couples around the world are struggling.

One in six that she just says like, 1.3 billion people globally are struggling with infertility.

And so I like to take it a step back in my practice and say, well, why is that?

Why are we having so many fertility issues?

And, and I have my thoughts on that and we can get into that.

I know we have a very short amount of time, so could it be all the crap we put in

our

Dr. Kela Smith: body

and the process and all the electronics and all those things?

Yeah, it's all of it.

Okay.

So.

That many women.

And don't you agree that each and every one of us feel very alone in it?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And isolated.

And

Dr. Kela Smith: then we're pushed into Clomid letrozole know and fertility treatments.

I-U-I-I-V-F.

Mm-hmm.

All of it.

And, and some people, yes, we do need that, but some people, for majority of people you don't.

I'm seeing it younger and younger people being recommended these procedures and they just don't need them.

Yeah.

Their body just needs support.

And so that's what we're gonna talk about today.

Well, I'm so excited.

I had a guest on here.

I cannot, her name was Dr. K, she's from San Francisco.

I'm trying to think.

But she works with women who have been diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome.

And it was really interesting listening to her, 'cause I think she leans more into our side of town where, let's start with what are we doing and healing our body.

So let's jump into your five tips.

So tell everyone what we're gonna talk about.

Dr. Kela Smith: Yeah, so we're gonna talk about five ways to balance your hormones fast so that you can optimize your fertility.

I love

that.

And for those of you guys listening, I just wanna throw out here because I know Dr. Kayla so well that she also has some options for you guys that if you want to like fast track and you wanna work with her, we're gonna have that in the show notes and we'll tell you at the end how you can do that.

So if you're on your way to work and you're like, just.

Save this and listen to this later 'cause she has some really concrete proof.

That she can help you.

Okay, so way number one, I guess.

Yes,

Dr. Kela Smith: way number one.

So I would not be a good nutritionist if I did not talk about nutrition first.

What we put in our body and what we don't put in our body makes such a huge difference in how our hormones are made, how they respond, how they act, if they're imb balance.

Or not.

So what does that mean?

Well, it's more than just eating healthy.

It's really looking at your meals and eating balanced whole food, nutrition, and really, I don't subscribe to counting calories or counting macros.

I created something called a magic plate, and so every plate and every cup when you have a meal, I want you to think about this.

This needs to have three different things in it.

So the first thing is protein.

This is animal or plant.

We want a third of that plate to be protein.

Really focus on protein.

I feel like a lot of women are scared of protein.

We have to have it.

You know that the diet I did was a high protein, low fat, low carb diet.

Dr. Kela Smith: I love it.

I love it.

Now, this is not in carnivore.

We're not saying cut out anything.

I'm just saying focus on protein.

Yeah.

The next thing, well, that's what I

was focused on and I got pregnant.

Dr. Kela Smith: I love it.

I love it.

Yeah.

So many of us.

Next thing is I want you to fill your plate with the colors of the rainbow.

2, 3, 4 different varieties of vegetables.

If you have something like PCOS, endometriosis, fibroids, I want you to focus on cruciferous vegetables, because that's gonna detox the estrogen that's feeding those conditions.

So this is going to be things like broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts, getting in those into each meal.

But also getting a bunch of different varieties and different colors.

If you can do two to three colors on that third of your plate, that's perfect.

Third of your plate, I want a slow burning carb or a grain sweet potato pumpkin squash.

If you don't have a sensitivity to grains or you don't have an autoimmune condition and you can handle grains, then you can throw in a little bit of like quinoa, buckwheat, grain.

Even a little brown rice is okay, but brown rice doesn't have a ton of nutrition other than fiber.

So be careful with that and have a small portion.

And then one to two tablespoons of a healthy fat.

So this is going to be avocados, fatty fish, nuts and seeds, olive oil for salads, avocado oil for cooking.

Make sure you get one to two tablespoons of fat per meal.

If you're trying to lose weight, maybe lean more towards one tablespoon.

If not, you can go to two.

But your hormones are made out of cholesterol and that is fat.

So this is another macronutrient that we've all been told to eat low fat.

If you're trying to get pregnant and you need fat, you need your hormones to be balanced.

So that true magic plate, that's the first thing I would focus on is nutrition.

Okay.

Second thing number two is detox.

We have got to make sure that our body is detoxing every single day.

So what does that mean?

We wanna make sure our detox organs are healthy and working appropriately.

That's focusing on things that feed your liver and.

Heal your liver.

So this is going to be herbs like, parsley and cilantro.

Even things like dandelion root and nettles and, milk thistle, really making, even drinking lemon water every single morning if it's not hurting your teeth.

That's gonna help your liver to detox and then anything you can do to let yourself sweat.

Getting in a sauna, walking outside when it's hot, get getting some movement in every single day.

We wanna be sweating every day.

If you're not sweating, your body is clogged and you're reabsorbing toxins and they're circulating, causing inflammation.

So we have to make sure that we're sweating and those detox pathways are open and those detox organs are working appropriately.

The other thing that goes, I'm, I'm blown away by this because my husband is the sweatiest person I've ever met and my oldest son as well, and I always am like, I never sweat.

You sweat so much.

Something's wrong.

But you're saying it's opposite.

Dr. Kela Smith: No, I'm saying you want to sweat.

That's what I'm saying.

I've told him there's something wrong with him for sweat being

so sweaty and I am not, there's nothing wrong with me because I don't sweat.

But you're saying there is something wrong.

I need to sweat Uhhuh.

Dr. Kela Smith: Yeah,

you need to sweat.

Interesting.

Dr. Kela Smith: Yep.

Okay.

Um.

Dr. Kela Smith: The other thing.

I'm not gonna tell him that though.

Yeah, right.

I know.

So you know what I would say?

Side note, if you have access to an infrared sauna, that is the best way to get sweating because that opens up all those pores and it gets down deep, deep and really helps that sweat to come out.

And once your body starts to do that, then you'll start to do it more and more.

Yeah.

Do

I really want to sweat more and more?

I don.

Dr. Kela Smith: Yes.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

All right.

You don't just sweat, like I'm not just sitting here sweating, but like every day I'm in my sauna getting out my toxins.

Okay.

The other piece to detox is focusing on your kidneys.

And this is hydration.

We wanna make sure we are drinking enough water.

We're also adding electrolytes.

All women, every age.

You need electrolytes, fertility, you know, preconception, pregnancy, postpartum.

Everybody needs electrolytes.

So you know, get a clean version.

There's a lot of good ones on the market right now.

Make sure it's low sugar.

Okay?

So feeding those electrolytes, getting in your water, two thirds of your body weight per day in ounces is what I recommend.

If you're like, holy crap, that's a lot.

Just start small.

Start with about eight ounces.

Go up until you get to that.

Key amount.

One way to tell if you're dehydrated is when you go to the bathroom, look at your urine.

We want pale yellow.

If it's darker, you're dehydrated.

If it's clear, you need electrolytes.

So pay attention to that every time you go to the bathroom and try to hit pale yellow.

Okay.

So that's the second thing.

Detox.

The third thing is we wanna look at our stress.

Everybody loves when I talk about stress, but stress is, yeah, because that's near impossible.

Uhhuh stress is a killer of all hormones.

And there I like to talk about stress as there's no way we're going to eliminate it completely.

Mm-hmm.

But what I want you to focus on, instead of trying to eliminate stress, I want you to focus on play.

I want you to play and have joy in your life.

Every single day do things that make you smile, that make you laugh.

It's very hard to be stressed when you're smiling and laughing and you're doing things that make you happy.

Now, does that mean you go every day and that's all you do is play?

No.

But yeah, we wanna put in small pieces of play throughout our day.

And then on the stress side, I want you to take a hard inventory of your life.

Is everything in your life serving you?

If it's not and it can be eliminated, then let's eliminate it.

And I always joke, you probably can't get rid of your mother-in-law or quit your job, but you can put a boundary in place mm-hmm.

On how you let that affect you.

So really take that hard look and say, can I eliminate something or can I put this boundary in

place?

Well, and doing that now before you get pregnant and have children is a really smart move hundred because that is like, if you think it's hard to set boundaries now, like.

You're gonna be called to do it so many times during pregnancy and birth and motherhood.

Yes, for sure.

So good practice that muscle.

Dr. Kela Smith: Yes.

Yes.

And, and two, doing things that calm your nervous system on a daily basis.

This will also lower your stress.

It'll put you more into a parasympathetic state, which is your rest, digest, and reproduce if you're trying to get pregnant.

So we wanna do things like.

Breathing.

That is the most powerful thing that you can do when it's free because it actually tricks your nervous system into thinking you're calm when you, maybe you're running around.

Yes.

Like a crazy person.

Your head's, you know, spinning around.

It's my favorite labor tool too.

10 minutes.

Yep.

And do some breathing.

Yeah.

And then also, you know, you can do things like meditation, journaling, walking outside, grounding your.

Feet into the grass or the sand and just really get solid in that.

That will help also lower your structure t

tapping.

Yes.

Which you do inside the membership.

Yes.

That's a really good

Dr. Kela Smith: one.

Yes.

Yeah.

So that was three.

Number four, we really wanna focus on sleep.

I feel sleep is so underrated.

You know, so many of us struggle to get to sleep, to stay asleep, and so I have some tips around sleep.

We wanna make sure we're getting at least six to eight hours per night if you're not getting that amount of sleep.

If you have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, we wanna look at what the root cause of that and try to treat that accordingly.

But some just general tips for improving sleep.

Quality and quantity would be getting early morning sun in your eyes.

This is going to activate your penal gland, which is the gland right between your eyes right here.

You can also tap that gland to activate it and doing some EFT, but this is going to start the production of serotonin.

It tells your body it's time to wake up.

The same happens at night.

We wanna minimize our blue light exposure because this is going to tell our body it's time to sleep, it's time to relax and wind down, and that will start the production of melatonin.

Some foods that help with melatonin are tryptophan and tarp cherry juice trytophan is actually a precursor to melatonin production.

So eating, you know, some Turkey or some chicken or something that is heavy in tryptophan for dinner can really help get, start that production of those two hormones.

And then I love to recommend a power down hour.

This is when you go from sleep, from work mode to sleep mode, and you kind of give your body time to unwind and relax.

This doesn't mean watching a crazy show on Netflix that's gonna jack your, your, or scrolling Instagram.

Yeah, yeah.

Scrolling Instagram.

Nope.

This means grab a book, grab, you know your journal, do some meditation, sit in your sauna, do some meditation.

So, yeah.

Do something so your body and your nervous system can say, Hey, it's time for, you know, it's time to stop work and go into sleep mode.

But don't you

think if they're struggling with sleep and they start with the nutrition, they're doing the detoxing and they're doing the movement and the sweating and that, that's also gonna help with the sleep?

A hundred percent.

Yes.

Dr. Kela Smith: All of this works together.

It doesn't work in isolation.

And if you're thinking all of that's overwhelming, I'm not doing any of that.

Just start with one thing.

Start with one thing, and then do something, you know, kind of habit stack as you learn these habits.

And then, yeah,

I feel like women who are struggling to get pregnant are willing.

To do, to do whatever.

All five.

Yeah, exactly.

Because I, I would've done it whether I believed it would work or not.

I would be like, yes, give it to me.

I'll do it.

Whatever I can control in this is going to make me feel better.

Exactly.

And that's, this is

Dr. Kela Smith: my hormone puzzle.

And that's why I created all of these pieces because they all work together and they are all important.

So I was like jumping into all of it.

So I agree.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

So where are we?

Number four.

Number four.

So this is, if you are doing all of this and you've gotten blood work and everything is normal, but you're still not getting pregnant, then this is when you need to look further and you need to do functional lab testing.

And so this is one of the things I specialize in my practice, because most of the women that see me have already done all the things, and there's.

Still not pregnant, and they're trying to look deeper at that root cause of what the issue is.

Yeah.

And so I recommend you work with a practitioner, a naturopath, a functional doctor, and do some functional labs.

These are going to be different than just blood work.

Blood work is just a snapshot in time.

These labs are going to look at not just what your hormone levels are, but how you're methylating, which means neutralizing how you're detox.

Seeing how everything is working together.

It also looks at your stress hormones, your sleep hormones, and so it's just a really deeper look into that piece of the equation.

So I recommend the dried urine test for hormones.

I also like to look at the microbiome and look in the gut.

So many of us struggling with gut health and mm-hmm.

That's a missing piece that your fertility clinic is never going to touch.

And there's so many studies now that show it's a direct link and it impacts fertility so much.

So that's another piece I like to look at.

I also like to do mineral testing.

I'll look at this through hair because 90% of us are mineral imbalanced and we don't even realize it.

This is a big one.

If you had a baby recently, especially if you're breastfeeding and you're struggling with secondary infertility.

We wanna look at your minerals to make sure that you're not, you know, your minerals are not out of balance.

And minerals are so important because they give us energy.

There are spark plugs.

They control our mitochondrial, our energy, and what is energy heavy.

Conception, egg health, sperm health, all of it.

Yeah.

So we need our minerals.

Yeah.

Okay.

And then the last thing I'll look at is detox.

I'll look at do you have heavy metal toxins?

Do you have mycotoxins, do you have environmental toxins?

What is your toxin burden?

So many people will come to me as well and say, I live a nont to life.

I don't have any toxins, and I run a test and they light up like a Christmas tree.

All of their body has just got so many toxins in it.

And if you're tox, if you're.

Endocrine system is clogged with toxins, then it's going to block your hormone balance and you're going to struggle with infertility.

So we need to address that.

Interesting.

Mm-hmm.

Yep.

So that's the testing.

We could do a whole show on testing, but I think for time we're gonna stop there.

But those are probably my four favorite ones that I like to run.

Okay.

And then number five is get support.

If you're trying to do this on your own and you're still struggling, you need an outside perspective.

You need a professional to come in and really evaluate your specific case to tell you what you need to do next.

And on the other side of that, if you're working with a professional and you've been working with them for, you know, six months to a year, and you're still not seeing results.

You need somebody else.

That person is obviously not finding what we need to find and not treating you, you know, to solve this issue.

And so that's when I would say, find a new provider.

Let's look a little deeper.

Let's look functionally and through a naturopath lens.

Yeah.

And let's let you heal so that you can get pregnant and have a healthy baby.

Yeah.

And I, I love all of that because again, when you're going through that, you feel so out of control.

And the providers make you feel like, well, you know, like it's a crapshoot.

Like you, you don't know and they don't know, and they're just making like these guesses.

Dr. Kela Smith: And they have a protocol.

Every fertility clinic, every conventional medicine, they have a protocol.

It's written by the medical board, you know this?

Yeah.

And they don't stray from that.

Mm-hmm.

And so I always tell, I'll, I'll get, I'll talk to people and they'll say, well, my clinic says to do this.

We've done five rounds of IUI and two rounds of IVF, and they've all failed and we're just gonna keep doing it.

And I'm like, no, there's a reason.

It's, lemme help you.

So, yeah, they, they have their protocol and they can't stray from that.

Whereas, you know.

Functional medicine, naturopathic medicine.

Yeah.

We're looking at you as a person and how your systems are working, and we wanna work with you to heal, not put you through a protocol that's standard.

Yeah.

And I remember when I was going through this and I did so much research on my own and I ended up asking my fertility doctor to do labs that he wasn't even thinking of.

Mm-hmm.

And I remember going in and they did like 60 vials.

I swear it was like a counter full of vials.

And that was how I found out a bunch of information.

But I had them do, 'cause I was in a group that was like.

Do this and do that.

Like, and this was before there were people like us educating online, like, you know, 'cause he's 11 or almost 11 Uhhuh.

So, but I remember my doctor being like, all right, whatever.

You know?

Yeah.

Yeah, I, yeah,

Dr. Kela Smith: when I started, I mean my older boy's, 12 and so go two years before that, so 14 years ago, there wasn't these Instagrams same or podcasts?

Yeah.

I mean, nothing.

I was at the library like, what do I need to do?

Yeah,

me too.

I was online in like what?

They were like chat rooms or whatever we used to have,

Dr. Kela Smith: yeah.

Going into these fat rooms and these, I remember there was one from like, oh gosh.

It was like.

Are we expecting magazine or something and they had like a, a chat board and I would just read and read.

Yeah.

Yeah.

My mine was something like that.

A chat room or a chat board.

And that's where I saw to do all these labs, uhhuh.

And funny enough, I found out I had already had, you know, four, five pregnancies and I found out that I had factor five lead in.

I found out I had the MF or M-T-H-F-R, and I'm like, wait, what?

Like, so then that was all in my head.

But anyway, I am so happy that you came, and I love that you shared all this.

So now let's share where everyone can find you and how they can work with you.

Dr. Kela Smith: Sure.

Well, thank you again, Trish.

This has been so fun and I love talking to your audience.

But they can find me on my website@hormonepuzzlesociety.com.

And on that page you can grab many of our free resources.

We have a fertility meal plan that you can grab for free, and you can also book a call with me right on the home screen.

So.

Click that button.

Book a call.

We'll get on the call live and I'll hear your story and I'll let you know my professional recommendations on, you know, what you need to do to move forward and what it will look like to work with me if you feel like that's your next best decision.

Love.

So yeah, join me that.

Yeah.

My favorite place to hang out on social media is on Instagram.

I'm at Kayla Health Coach and I'm on TikTok at Dr.

Kayla's.

Smith.

I also have two announcements.

My Solving Infertility Summit airs our fifth annual at the end of January.

So check that out.

You can go to solving infertility.com to learn more and to register.

And my sixth book comes out in the spring.

We're not announcing the title, but it's gonna be all about what we talked about here and more so if you're on our mailing list, you'll get notified when that goes live.

I love it.

Thank you so much for coming

today.

Thank you.

All right, you guys, thank you so much for listening, and I am just there with you.

I've been there and I know that it's heavy, but I'm so happy that you guys have the resources like Dr. Kayla and things that you can control when it comes to your fertility.

So as always, hit subscribe, leave a review, tell us what you wanna hear more of, and we'll see you again next week.

Bye for now.