Hormones, Fertility & Perimenopause After 35 with Naturopathic Doctor Aumatma

Hey guys, welcome to today's episode of the Learn Feng Shui podcast. I'm very excited to have a guest with me today, Dr. Matma. She is a boardcertified naturopathic doctor and endocrinologist with nearly 20 years of experience specializing in fertility. She's a best-selling author, a creator of Refertile Foundation Supplements, and the host of the Egg Meat Sperm Podcast, helping couples optimize their health and environment for conception and pregnancy.

Welcome. Thank you for having me. It's great to be here. Yeah, this is a conversation, you know, I haven't necessarily thought to have because I myself and beyond the years of childbearing, my kids are all grown. My youngest is 16.

But I think we can have a a really interesting conversation about fertility. In traditional Chinese medicine, health and fertility are shaped by what are called the three treasures. The first one's called Jing. It's about our inherited essence, which you cover a lot when you talk about epigenetics. The chi, which shapes our daily life force and then shin, which is our emotional and spiritual vitality.

So there's a lot of connection there. just looking at um fertility and pregnancy in a holistic way to have this conversation. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

I think that Chinese medicine is it's like such a beautiful philosophy and a way of thinking about health and well-being. And I think that there are just so many correlations and so many even I see it come up a lot like knowing that for example liver is associated with stored anger and it's like okay your liver is like stuck let's get it moving and that is going to help move some of the emotion as well. So it shows up a lot in in the way that I think about stuff. I was I studied a little bit of Chinese medicine in naturopathic medicine school. So I got that like enough of a taste to be like it's just so cool.

So cool. Yeah. I really love how everything kind of integrates together. And of course in holistic medicine uh it's the same thing. But one of the things I really thought was interesting about um your your podcast and your work is that you don't only look again at these things as let's just let's look at your hormones, let's let's get you pregnant.

But it is looking at your environment, your the amount of sleep you're getting in your nutrition and everything. It's it's very fascinating. Yeah. And it's it's for I feel like fertility is probably the way that we think about it in our culture and our society is it's so focused on your hormones. But we know that our hormones are correlated with so many things.

Yeah. So giving someone and this comes up all the time. So giving someone progesterone for fertility is such like a surface level way to approach fertility versus thinking why does this person not make enough progesterone? Are they too stressed? Do they have issues in the gut where they're not processing hormones properly?

Or is their liver clogged? Is their egg quality poor? like there can be so many reasons why someone may not make enough progesterone. So yeah, as we go through this conversation, I'll definitely like just keep bringing us back to that because I think so many people when they listen to fertility content, they're like, "Well, just tell me what supplements to take or tell me if I should take progesterone or not." And I'm like, "Well, it depends. It depends on so many things that if I don't ask you a bazillion questions, I'm not going to know the right answer and I could do do more harm if I don't really fully understand what all of the situations are.

So, yeah, you really go through thoroughly and get a I guess a a larger view addressing just the environment and you kind of go through all of that with your clients. I was I was hearing uh from your podcast and everything. Yeah. Let's circle back to progesterone because that's really interesting. You talk about gut health.

Talk more about that. That that's very interesting to me. Yeah. So, our gut is kind of related to hormones in multiple ways. One is the absorption of nutrients from the food that we consume happens in the gut.

If we have deficiencies, not because we're not eating enough food or the right types of food. Let's assume we're having an amazing diet, but if I don't eat in a way that supports the absorption of nutrients, that food is not actually the ROI quote unquote on the food that I eat is very nominal. So instead I want to start from the beginning and I want to say okay let's get yes you should have a good foundation of a diet right and there are lots of different philosophies and we can dive into diet and what the right diet is for people but let's assume that you're eating the right foods for your body. Then we want to make sure that that food gets broken down and absorbed into your body so that the nutrients that your body needs are going to be absorbed in and used in the way that they should. When it comes to progesterone, the biggest impact of those nutrients on progesterone is going to be actually I guess there's two big nutrient things.

So the first set of nutrients is going to be your ability to make good quality eggs. And good quality eggs are going to reflect in whether or not your body has adequate progesterone because the part of the it's like the shell of the egg, it's called the corpus ludium. The egg and the corpus ludium are developing together. And when that egg is ovulated, that corpus ludium, the shell is left behind in the ovary. And that's literally what's producing progesterone.

Mhm. So if you didn't have good nutrients, you didn't make good quality eggs, that's actually being reflected in whether or not your body makes progesterone or not. So that's going to be the first. The second is going to be if you have too much stress, then you're burning through specific nutrients a lot faster. Things like B vitamins, magnesium, minerals, you're going to burn through those a lot faster.

So your body again is in a deficient place to make adequate levels of progesterone. So that's the direct like nutrient connection to the production of progesterone. Then we have Yeah, that's crazy. Uh then going back to the gut, we have the second place in where the gut is going to make a huge difference on your hormones is going to be the metabolism of estrogen. And estrogen and progesterone are frenemies.

They kind of usually they exist in two different parts of the cycle. But the lutal phase, the phase that the progesterone primarily dominates, is also going to have estrogen to a certain level. Mhm. The problem comes when estrogen is higher than progesterone. And in that case, you don't actually have a progesterone deficiency, per se, but your body is making or has too much estrogen compared to progesterone.

Then we call that woman estrogen dominant, quote unquote. And I don't I don't like that verbiage at all. But it's basically saying that you have this like flip scenario where the body's making too much estrogen and because of that it looks like there isn't enough progesterone to neutralize it or offset it. In that case, we go back to the gut and we say, "Hey, are you excreting the estrogen out of your body, which is based on the the microbes that are in your gut that are deciding whether or not to recirculate the estrogen or to excrete it." And there are essentially like the bacteria that are in our gut are making these decisions for us. And if there's too much of the bacteria that says, "Let's recirculate it," then you keep way more of that estrogen and you create or have an estrogen dominant state where now your progesterone isn't adequate.

And when you have that flip, it makes it really hard for pregnancy to happen because even if you are making good levels of progesterone, your body says too much estrogen. that's telling me you're not ready to get pregnant. Yeah. So, it it hits in like a very interesting way. And then the last piece about the gut is the inflammation and inflammation slash autoimmune conditions Yeah.

are going to start almost always in the gut. So the degree of inflammation that we have in our gut is going to have a direct impact on which hormones are being created and when. Mhm. And they can get all out of whack when we have too much inflammation happening. I have a funny story about this.

We always around the holidays, Thanksgiving to Christmas to New Year's E essentially, people will come in and they'll say, "Oh, I've been following my diet. I'm doing really good." D and I will look at their temperature charts, which is something that we use for tracking people. Mhm. And almost always I can look at their temperature chart and be like, "You fell off of your diet." And they're like, "What? How are you in my house?

Why are you spying on me?" And I'm like, "Well, you just told me you were on your diet." And they're like, "Well, yeah, I I fell off for a few days. It's the holidays." Yeah. What we will see is that the temperature that reflects progesterone in the lutal phase will start getting super wonky. It'll go up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down. And it happens every year and guaranteed like the instant.

It's Thanksgiving. We know we're going to see these weird charts. They're like that fast. That's crazy. It's like instant feedback loop.

you have it will show whatever you did will show in your very next cycle. So if you fell off of your diet, if you started eating foods that were more inflammatory, the direct impact of that is on your gut and it will show on your progesterone levels. So that's very interesting. And you know that that can go kind of beyond fertility. I know we're focused on fertility, but I'm at the age where I've started having irregular cycles.

I went to the doctor and he put me on birth control, you know, the estrogen and progesterone. But it's very interesting you talk about the stomach connection because for the past couple years, I would say I feel like I'm having some autoimmune issues and I feel have a lot of stomach issues. And so I've really this past year I've been like, I need to kind of eat according to Chinese medicine. I need to settle my stomach. think I needed to be calm, you know, all the things.

And have my digestion going good. And it kind of makes me wonder if I should have tried nutrition before I tried the hormones, but he wanted me to to start them. So, I mean, I I think we could even carry this into like, you know, per menopausal or premenopausal, you know, very interesting. Although I and I I have been we are seeing this like uptick in conversation around pmenopause and menopause. Yeah.

And I keep going back to the people that are continuing to follow their fertility plan through postpartum, through the next phase of life, which like I put myself in that bucket. I have lots of patients who have worked with me years ago that are still like on it. They're like, "Oh my god, this is my way of life, right?" and they're not having the same permenopausal symptoms that we see in the general population. Yeah. And I do believe that we like we are normalizing this idea that we're going to have symptoms and it's going to be a 10-year period where things are going to be wonky and my hormones are going to be all over the place.

But the more I like see it, the more I'm like, you know, maybe that's not the norm. Yeah. Like that's what my doctor told me. He said, "No." I was like, "Oh, I thought irregular. I had never been irregular." I was like, "Oh, okay." Yeah.

Yeah. And like I think that we are more susceptible to um modifications in our cycles. Mhm. But I think that it's actually an increased sensitivity to the environment, to the food, to the the things that we are doing in our lives where prior to pmenopause, we might have been more less susceptible, right? Like more resilient.

Our bodies are like, "It's cool. I got it. I can handle it." and your period stays relatively steady and you don't have as many symptoms, you're still going to see some changes, but you're not going to have as fluid of a change. Yeah. But you get to that per menopause time and you're like, you know, I'm way more susceptible now.

I'm in a similar stage. So, I'm in that stage where if I don't get enough sleep, if I don't eat well, if I fall off of the foundations that I need for my health and well-being, my next cycle will be different guaranteed. And I usually, even now, I think I'm probably like 5 years into pmenopause. I don't really know cuz my hormones are still regular. But I I can like there's some like mild changes that if I'm super aware I'm like something's shifting.

But my cycles are still relatively regular until every now and then I'm like oh I fell off of my plan because last month I had a 25day cycle and I was like oh my god what I do not have 25 days changed in there. Yeah. Yeah. and and then I like instantly was like, "Yeah, I didn't really sleep that well the month before, so okay, maybe that's what's happening here." Yeah. So really like thinking about things in that that like time period where change is the norm.

I do think that stability and creating that foundation that's based on good solid health and wellness choices are likely to promote less symptoms and less changes. Yeah. Until we get to menopause. And that's that's where I'm at now. Maybe that will change as I don't know as things get more severe or closer to menopause.

I have no idea, you know, like I'm going through it. I'm just like observing, but I'm observing from a place of if we live a fertile life style and if we continue living that lifestyle throughout our years, does something is something going to be different than the average person going through pmenopause? So, that's my that's my theory right now. Yeah, it's very interesting. It's something I I haven't really because I've never had irregular cycles up until this past year, but there was some other there was some other health issues, but and so I, you know, may have been kind of linked to some of that stuff going on.

But yeah, well, kind of talking about the cycle, one of the I guess one of the questions and it you kind of answered a lot of them, but just supporting clients through each each different phase of the cycle. What does that look like? That's a good question. So, um, I will backtrack and say we assume that the female body is just like the male body and that we can do everything men can do. And that is true, but we're we're not the same.

We're different. Yeah. And the biggest difference between the male and female is men run on a 24-hour clock. So their clock is wake up, they make testosterone, that testosterone subsides throughout the day. By the end of the day, they're done.

That's that's it. That's kind of their hormone. And yes, they're making steady. Yeah. Yeah.

Very steady, very repetitive. There's no fluctuations throughout the month. They are making some estrogen. They're making LH and FSH, which women have also, but they don't cycle in the same way that we do. They cycle on this 24-hour clock.

The sun is also a 24-hour clock, which I think is very interesting. So, they're driven by solar energy. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. Um, women are a 28 day clock.

So, if we take away this idea that we need to function on a 24-hour cycle, but really understand that we're on a very different cycle and rhythm than men are. And if we are operating from that assumption, then we're going to do things very differently life. I'm in a different phase of life. So I think about the same rhythms and cycles, but if my let's say for the women that are in perry menopause that are going to like, oh, I bleed once every 5 months or I bleed once every eight months or whatever. That's okay.

You can still follow this 28 day rhythm. You just sync it up to the moon. So instead of okay keeping your body as the rhythm, you can sync up to the new moon is menstruation and full moon is ovulation and then everything else falls into place with that. That's so interesting. Thank you.

I think that's very helpful. Thank you. I know this was supposed to be more like fertility centered, but man, I'm like this fits exactly into like where I'm at right now with my with my own cycle journey, you know? I want this to serve everyone. So this is, you know, like my specialty is fertility and I can help a lot with that.

But I think that uh like my bigger hope is that women in all stages of life can help and get benefit from the stuff that I think really drives a lot of what we do in the fertility world. Yeah, I think so too. And just kind of I just listened to your podcast. I was like, "Oh my goodness, this is very it's very beneficial." I think not even just to somebody who's trying to get pregnant, but it made me think about you had an episode about how sleep could impact your fertility and but not just, you know, female fertility, also male fertility, which I thought was interesting to you. Yeah.

Yeah. One thing I wanted to ask you, what made you lean towards fertility and and um how did how did you get started on this path? So, I have a funny story with that. I was married to this person who wanted to have children and I like my intuition was a strong no and I was like, "Oh crap, I already got married. What am I going to do?" Um, and I was in my like early and what I had learned about fertility was that it drops off of a cliff at 35.

And that was literally all I could remember from medical school. And I was like, "That time is coming very soon. So, if I'm not going to have children with him, do I want to have children? Yeah. Um, so I went into a period of just trying to figure out what it is that I wanted, what it is my intuition was saying.

And I came out with, well, I do want to have children, just not with him. And that was the start of my divorce. Um, but as I was going through that divorce period, I was also like, what what can I do to support my fertility? Because I may not be ready to have children at 35. Mhm.

And I may not even have a partner at 35. So, I was in this like major life change. I've made a decision that could potentially affect the rest of my life. And um fertility was kind of the focus of all of my research. And what I found was that our fertility doesn't automatically decline at 35.

um there's a much slower transition. I believe there's lots of ways that we could be supporting delaying that transition if that's what we chose. Um and I did have a child at 38 with a new partner with the right person. We're still married. So, I I came out of all of that with, hey, we're we're the more I talked about what I was finding in my research and what I was studying and processing for myself, people were like, "Oh my god, you can help me with my fertility." And I was like, "No, I was just doing research." That's awesome.

But before I knew it, I just had a whole um like whole group of people that were like, "You're going to help me. please help me. And then as soon as people started getting pregnant, that was just it. It was like the best thing in the world to see people get pregnant. And I think the aspect of really being able to bring healthier children into the world is what keeps me going.

It's this like the scary statistics that children are born with like 300 plus toxins floating around in their bloodstream and Um, there's just like more and more diseases that are getting diagnosed younger and younger. I really think that there's a way that we could be doing a lot more to prevent so much of it. Even if it's not proven, quote unquote, it's still like, well, why wouldn't we do these things? Like, I'm going to be healthier. My child's potentially going to be healthier.

Let's just do it. So that is what keeps me going and keeps driving this mission to reach more people and really have people understand that we have choice in the matter and we have responsibility to do something different. Yeah. You know, I think I think that's such a good point. I I notice a lot of women either choosing not have children or have like delaying it.

I think I feel like a lot of women are waiting nowadays and and my sister, she was pregnant with her youngest on her 40th birthday. She she didn't know if it would happen for her either and she has two little ones. I think a lot of women do worry. What are some things that if a woman was over 35 and she wanted to try to have a baby, what are some things she could start implementing? Yeah, I think um there is a lot and it's and some of it is very simple that I think everyone can do.

So I would call it the fertile lifestyle which is the foundation of food, water, um our environment and sleep. So foodwise we're eating good nutritious unprocessed food. Um, lots of fruits and vegetables, ideally more vegetables than fruit. We're eating whole grains. We're eating lentils, beans, that kind of stuff.

And then adequate levels of protein. So that and then healthy fats, of course. Sorry, not to forget the fats. So that makes for a good foundational diet. Mhm.

You can customize this with like let's suppose someone has GI issues and we think oh you might have food sensitivities. You maybe want to limit some of the sensitivities that are causing more inflammation in the gut. Yeah. And then you can like repair your gut lining and all of that kind of stuff. But at the core of it, a good healthy diet.

The things that are more inflammatory are going to be things like dairy, gluten, soy, corn. Those are probably the most inflammatory foods. So, if you're not sure, taking those foods away sometimes is helpful. Then the next is water. And water is really I've been thinking about it a lot because people are on this thing that I see on social media which is like the hydration kick.

Yeah. And everyone is like electrolytes, electrolytes, everything is electrolytes. And I have to say like a lot of it is kind of hard to believe because is gobs of salt mixed with gobs of sugar. So I'm having a little bit of a hard time believing that that is the path that our bodies need. Yeah.

Like I don't know where this trend started. Like someone please contact me and tell me what is happening. But I've been like researching just different types of electrolytes and trying to find things that are more natural electrolytes rather than salt and sugar in your water. And I would say coconut water is probably like the best go-to electrolyte. I've also messed around with some formulas of chlorophyll and sea minerals and stuff like that into water to give electrolytes instead of taking water, salt and sugar.

Mhm. But really getting good quality water is the core of it. So you have a good filtration system, ideally one that takes out major toxins. It takes out chemicals, medications. There's a lot of stuff in our water supply that is not being reported.

Yeah, for sure. So testing your water where you live and then figuring out what kind of filter or filtration system you need to get all that garbage out. Most of the time people will say, "Well, I have a Brida. Isn't that good enough?" No. Bridas are not good enough.

I'm sorry you guys. Yeah. Or the the refrigerator like default refrigerator filter not adequate. It just kind of gets some of the big stuff out, I suppose. Like some of the heavy stuff, but Yeah.

taste but it does not get everything out. You can taste it. Yeah. So that water is the second building block. The third is going to be sleep.

I think I said it in a different order earlier but sleep is going to be the foundation for men and women. So for men the circadian rhythm is their cycle. Right. That is interesting. the basis of testosterone, sperm production, everything that's happening in the male body is based on the circadian rhythm.

So for them, sleep is crucial. Like if men don't sleep, I'm like, "Yeah, we're not going to help your sperm at all. There's going to be nothing I can do." And we have a guy that will like go to bed at 3:00 in the morning. And I'm like, "Yeah, it's just not going to work. It's not going to work for us." So that sleep is super important for men.

For women, the circadian rhythm is the foundation for the infraian rhythm, which is our menstrual cycle. So the lack of sleep will inform and influence what happens with our hormones. It's not the core of it, but it will influence it a lot. And for women, it's are you able to get into deep states of sleep, stay asleep through the night, and are you waking up rested? And if those things are not happening, then potentially you have a underlying issue that's going to make your hormones be more out of whack.

So interesting. That's going to be the third important thing. Good quality sleep. you're gonna disrupt your sleep with things like blue light, which is coming from screens. Yeah.

In the evening, not getting sunlight in the morning. So, those are some like tools that you can use that are free. Wake up, get some sunlight. 5 to 10 minutes of the sun helps your circadian rhythm reset. You're going to make better cortisol.

You're going to have better hormones throughout the day. This is true for men and women. At night, make sure you try to stay off of screens or if you're going to use screens, have blue light filter glasses so that you're blocking the blue light at nighttime so that you can get better quality sleep. So, those um those two shifts are really easy. And then if you have sleep issues where you're not getting good quality sleep or you can't sleep through the night or you're not waking up rested, then it needs a little bit more evaluation and fixing.

So that's the sleep piece and then the last piece is the toxins and our environment and our environment goes beyond toxins to be truthful you do fenue. So it is there's a lot to it but even going to the degree of I'm going to just get rid of toxins in my environment is going to make a huge difference in your fertility. And there are three toxins that I pick on the most because they are the most researched for causing reproductive issues. The first is bisphenol compounds. So this is BPA, BPS, BPF.

It's most of the stuff that will show up as plastic. So, anything in your environment that's plastic, starting with your cooking utensils to um the food storage containers to the Starbucks cup that's lined with plastic to not leak on you to yoga clothes that you wear to go work out are all going to have an influence on your hormones. So those are going to be ideal to get rid of. And then the second one is phalates. And that's going to be all of the things that smell good.

So you're going to see those show up as lotion and shampoo and conditioner and cleaning products and the car like a car freshener things that guys love to have in their cars. literally all of it is um phalates which are endocrine disruptors and are extremely problematic for fertility. And then the third one is going to be uh glyphosate. And glyphosate is going to be it's basically Roundup and it's sprayed on fruits and vegetables. A lot of the stuff that we eat is going to be sprayed with glyphosate.

So trying to get organic wherever possible is really helpful. And then for women especially to watch out for non-organic pads and tampons which are going to be cotton is the most sprayed plant outside of food that we eat with Roundup. So putting that tampon for example vaginally where your a it's attacking the microbiome that's local is going to have an impact on fertility. It's going to actually if we get people to switch their pads and tampons, they will have about an 80% decrease in menstrual pain. Wow.

Within one cycle. So, they go Yeah. like crazy menstrual pain to just like just switch make that one shift is going to drop off menstrual pain significantly. That's so interesting. And then Yeah.

So that also helps support the vaginal microbiome which has a lot of research with fertility and how it impacts fertility as well as just how you feel and that the mucous membranes down there just absorb everything that goes into it. So it's probably having a broader effect than just the local microbiome. But that's what we know based on research. Yeah. Exact man.

It makes us wonder how we got here as a society, doesn't it? Doesn't it make you think, you know, how did we get to all these chemicals? And we got Yeah. Yeah. We got here because we want everything cheaper and more convenient.

Yeah. And the like anytime we make something more convenient, we're going to have a loss to our body in some way. If anyone wanted to start on uh their journey, they could definitely download your app. Yes. So you asked like what could someone do to get started if they were trying to get pregnant.

So obviously like the foundational things you can do them just from listening to this podcast. But if you are in that stage of life where you're like hey we've been trying for a little while. We're not sure why it's not working out. The app is is essentially my brain turned into technology and they can go to madrefertility.com. It's a free assessment, so you go through the questions.

It'll take maybe 15 minutes, 20 minutes at the most, and it will give you a very detailed report of what are the potential things that are happening under the surface that are contributing to this per this couple's struggle in conceiving. It's going to give things like gut inflammation or stress or whatever. And then it'll have things that you can do about it to help support your fertility. Awesome. And that's uh madre m- a d r e like the Spanish word.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Nice.

And of course um I'm going to link in the show notes everywhere people can get a hold of you. And thank you very much for joining us again. I feel like we I could I may have to have you back because there were so many questions and it was very interesting conversation. Thank you for joining me. Thank you for having me, Candace.