Balancing Your Life to Optimize Fertility with Dr. Marc Sklar – #28

0:27 Charlene Lincoln: Welcome back to another episode of The Fertility Hour. Today I have Dr. Marc Sklar, the Fertility Expert. He’s a natural fertility specialist leading a team of fertility experts whose mission is to help you believe in your fertility and empower your body to create a healthy pregnancy by supporting and coaching you during your journey to motherhood. In addition to as Doctor of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, Dr. Sklar trained at the Harvard Medical School Mind/Body Medical Institute. He is the creator of MarcSklar.com and ReproductiveWellness.com, the co-author of Secret to Conception, and a fellow of the American Board of Oriental Reproductive Medicine and medical advisor for Natural Health International. Dr. Sklar lives in San Diego with his wife and two sons. If you’re ready to start a family, the Fertility Expert can help. He can help you get pregnant wherever you are through his virtual consultations and online programs. Sorry, I kind of flipped up that last part. But, welcome, Dr. Mark. Thanks so much for being here.

Marc Sklar: No worries. It’s a mouthful so it’s quite alright. How are you? Thanks for having me.

1:45 CL: I’m great. Thank you so much. I found you through YouTube. You’re quite active, you have wonderful videos and you have rabid fans on YouTube. It looks like they really appreciate the information you’re putting out there. So, you know, very cool. And I wanted to reach out to you because I know you’re helping a lot of people and you have a unique perspective being a Doctor of Oriental Medicine and just being in this fertility game. So yeah, I’m excited to talk to you.

MS: Thanks, I appreciate that. I’m always honored when someone reaches out and wants to interview me. But also, I have a lot of pride in the information we put out and the YouTube channel that we’ve got such a big following and really it’s something that keeps me going and wanting to continue to put out more information and motivate those couples from around the world who’ve been struggling because there’s certainly a fair number of them out there and we all need support.

2:50 CL: Absolutely. Kind of our focus here at The Fertility Hour is to, obviously, interview leading experts from around the world, but give really practical tips. So I loved what you sent me. Tell us a little bit about it, what you’ve created here to help couples.

MS: Yeah. So I created and this was created quite a bit of time ago, many years ago, the Fertility Wheel or Fertility Balance Wheel, and this was something that I use to and currently use to assess patients and allow patients to assess themselves. So it’s a way for you to look at different sections or different categories of your health and your life and be able to assess them hopefully in a very practical manner, and then assign a score to each category and then at the end of that you’re tallying up the score and seeing where you fall. And then knowing which areas you need to work on, right? If there’s areas that are lower on that score then you’d certainly want to spend a little bit more time paying attention to that. So I created it and actually we’ve used it for quite some time. And then there was a little period of time where things happen in practice and you just forget about something and you start using something else. But I found it so valuable that it came back to my attention and now it’s something that we’re incorporating quite a bit. It’s also helpful for us as we’re designing a plan for patients because it also allows us to understand and prioritize where patients’ needs are and where we need to start.

There’s always a myriad of things that you can do with a patient and many patients, they want to do everything and anything all at the same time and oftentimes it’s too much. You’re bombarding patients with too many things. They are overwhelmed. Actually just gotten off a call right before this where the patient, she’s doing all these wonderful things and she’s so rigid and strict with herself that she’s losing another part of herself. So this wheel is really helpful because it allows us to just reassess things and so you can use it periodically just to check back in and understand where you are. But also know where to prioritize so that you’re not trying to just do everything and anything and reading anything online and saying, “Oh, that’s good for fertility. Okay, so let’s reach for that as well.” So hopefully this gives some structure and guidelines and allows you to prioritize as a patient where you need to be and kind of where to start.

5:46 CL: Something that you said. You said that this woman, she sounds very disciplined in what she’s doing and then there’s rigidity and then losing another part of herself. What does that mean?

MS: Well, so in her strictness to follow my guidelines, which she’s done beautifully and has seen some wonderful change, she has stopped socializing. She has stopped going out for dinner, going out with friends. Just being out and living a normal life. She controls how she sees and interacts with her friends because she’s concerned about breaking her diet or other things. And so, her and her husband, everything has gotten so rigid and so strict. And what I communicated to her at that time was like this is okay and the diet that I proposed and that you were doing is an excellent diet, but it’s not meant to be as strict as you are. It’s impossible to maintain the strictness and the rigidity of the lifestyle and diet that she’s currently doing for any extended period of time. We need to find flexibility for her.

There’s also value and strength from your diet or strength from your lifestyle because it brings balance and it brings normalcy. It brings socialization with her friends and family members. So there’s a lot of things about that that even though it’s awesome, and if she could do it 100 percent and still maintain the other things, I wouldn’t be as worried about that. But she can’t and she’s not. So that concerns me, right? I never like to give up our life for our fertility journey. Like one of the things she says, “I’m getting away from traveling because I have to take all my supplements and then diet and this and that.” So, I don’t like to stop our lives, stop living just because we’re trying to get pregnant. And she in my mind based on what she just told me, she’s not living her life. Right? So I needed to coach her and guide her on bringing a little bit more balance and starting to restore some of that normalcy because we’re humans. We thrive on social interaction. We want to see the world. She loves to travel. You can’t take away the things we love from our life. So maybe for others if those weren’t important things for them this wouldn’t be as big of a deal. But for her, it was. So she wasn’t saying it was a problem; I was hearing it was a problem.

8:32 CL: Sure, okay. I could see that being tricky because if you’ve been struggling with fertility for a long time and then you’re put on a plan, I mean, I can totally relate. You’re like, no more social drinking, I need to revamp my whole lifestyle in a sense. And so you feel like, “Okay, I need to pull back a little bit. But yeah, you lose some of the joy and the spontaneity of life and the connection. Yeah, definitely you have to finetune that for yourself. Let’s talk about, you know, when I was going through the wheel, this is sort of a reality check. This could be used for anybody, right? It’s not just a fertility thing because this is how we live a balanced life — all the different components and we’ll talk about them. It was great for me to read through them. Okay, you know, asking myself different questions, how balanced are these aspects of my life. So that’s wonderful. So let’s go through the different components and talk about them as we touch on each.

MS: Sure. Was there a specific place you wanted to start?

9:45 CL: Well, there’s the beginning there. Let’s see.

MS: You’re looking at the guidebook that goes with it.

9:51 CL: Yeah.

MS: And I’m not. I’m just looking at the wheel.

9:54 CL: Oh, okay.

MS: For all intents and purposes, even though that guide does start, I think it starts in sleep or diet or something like that.

10:03 CL: Okay, right.

MS: The reality is this. It doesn’t matter where we start to assess ourselves. As long as we know what we’re assessing within each category. So we can start anywhere along that wheel. For me, quite frankly, I would probably start with digestion because that’s just my weakness. I would always start there as a place to say, “okay, I want to make sure that this is where it needs to be,” and decide where I go from there.

10:28 CL: Digestion is everything.

MS: Yeah. And then I’d probably just go in some sort of order. I would just probably go around the wheel at that point.

10:37 CL: I love digestion. Let’s start there.

MS: Yeah. I think digestion is one. It’s an interesting one to talk about also because it’s not one that we think about or that I should say not one that patients think about when we talk about fertility. They’re so used to the way western medicine works in terms of specialization. I mean, we do too in natural medicine. Everybody specializes now especially if you live in the west. But we’re so used to compartmentalizing our body based on specialty because when we need to see a doctor, we go to see the specialist based on that system that wrong. So because of this, we don’t really think too much about how our systems interact with one another. And it’s like the old song ‘our hip bone is connected to our leg bone,’ right? All these things. Just because they’re two different bones or two different systems doesn’t mean that they’re not connected in some fashion. And so for me, one might be because that’s my weakness, so digestion is always a big thing that I talk about with patients. But two, in Chinese medicine, the digestive system plays such a big role in almost any other system and without it functioning properly, at some point in time, some other system is going to be harmed from it and it’s going to be compromised. And so we have to make sure that our digestive system is functioning properly.

I mean, just think of it just logically. If we’re eating and we can’t metabolize and digest all the food that we’re eating, then we don’t get all the nutrition from that food. Right? Let alone the type of food that we’re trying to get nutrition from. Right? But that falls into diet. But if we can’t metabolize and assimilate the food and absorb the nutrients that are coming into us, we can’t use that in other systems to create our baby — let’s just say in this case we’re talking about fertility. So we can’t use that to support our ovaries or our sperm. We can’t use that to create a healthy embryo.

So digestion is really big. We also don’t realize that the beginning or the start of kind of strength and finality, if you will, I’m losing my word here, for our immune system really begins in the gut, in the small and large intestine. So if we’re having recurrent pregnancy loss, miscarriage issues and potentially it’s due to an autoimmune issue, then we’re not addressing that autoimmune issue if we’re not addressing diet. So there’s so many things that really need to be assessed here. One is, do you have any digestive issues that are known? Two, if they’re not known, then do you digest your food well? Do you have bloating? Do you have gas? Do you have loose stools? Do you have constipation? Do you eat regularly throughout the day? So these are some general things that I ask patients about their digestive system and digestion so we can get just some general information. But if we have symptomology in those areas, then we dig deeper. Some of that digging deeper might be in question, might be in lab tests or both.

One of the biggest digestive issues that I find that affects almost all health issues but for sure the endocrine system is candida, and I see this quite often. Or other bacterial infections, parasites, whatnot. So oftentimes with patients, that’s something that I dive into as well.

14:13 CL: Well, okay. I mean, absolutely the more we learn about, like you said, the immune system, there’s actually like arms of the immune system that start in the gut where they say like 85 percent of the immune system is actually originating in the gut. So obviously it’s so important. And I like what you said about conventional medicine. They tend to reduce women to sort of numbers, like what’s the FSH, what’s the AMH levels and assessing them that way. But it’s like that’s the big difference between Chinese medicine/functional medicine is, okay, you’re trying to have a baby but we’re looking at still a holistic process. We’re looking at the entire body in the system and how it’s working together.

MS: Absolutely.

14:58 CL: So most of us, let’s say, need some digestive system support. I think that’s pretty fair to say.

MS: Sure.

15:12 CL: What are some practical tips that you can give? I know in Chinese medicine even things like you don’t drink cold drinks with ice in them and that’s a very American thing to do. But what are some lifestyle things that you can give us that kind of supports our digestion on a daily basis?

MS: A couple of lifestyle things. One is just make sure that you’re eating regularly. And we’re not going to get into every type of diet that’s out there now because those are restrictive diets and some of those are fasting diets, and there’s a place for all of those. But in general, one is to make sure that we’re eating enough calories, getting our meals in during the day which I often see with patients is not the case because everyone is stressed, everyone is working, everyone is busy. They’re just trying to do what they can.

Two, and this is a big one, because I don’t know if we’ve polled everybody. You know, how many people would say they eat at their desk while they’re working and whatnot. Or eating in the car on the way to work. Taking time out of your day to sit down and consciously sit and eat a meal, stress-free, is invaluable. So even if that time is literally 5 minutes, as long as that 5 minutes is not also while you’re on a conference call at the same time as answering 10 emails and driving in the car or whatever it is, as long as you’re not multitasking and you are focused on your meal, I think that’s also very, very important.

And then three, chew your food. Just chew your food. How many of us, we think we’re chewing but we’re really not? We take one or two bites and we swallow. But the first part of your digestive system begins right here in the mouth between the upper teeth and the lower teeth, and that’s because we’re biting and chewing and breaking down the food and the saliva that comes out that’s also starting to release some enzymes to help break down the food. So that’s essential as well. So if we can just incorporate those simple tips into our regular daily routine, we’re improving our digestion a ton.

17:29 CL: Okay, cool. Let’s talk about sleep because sleep, I mean, you come across this too. Women have a hard time sleeping. The quality of sleep is really, I mean, I guess we process a lot at night. We’re waking up at 3/the 3 AM wake-up or the difficulty falling asleep. Most men for some reason are they could be really stressed out and they’re like, “No problem.” Head hits the pillow. So, what’s going on? What are some tips? And from a Chinese medicine perspective too because a lot of women wake up in the middle of the night and so if you can give some…

MS: Some connection between them.

18:09 CL: Yeah, a connection on that.

MS: Yeah. So the first thing to recognize is it’s easier for men to fall asleep than women primarily because men, you know, we think differently. Men think very linearly and women think very circularly. When that happens, there’s a lot of ruminating, a lot of thought process goes into each specific category or worry and analysis that goes on. And so it’s harder to turn off your brain in that sort of fashion. It’s more because we’re different creatures in how our bodies function.

Now, certainly I also think women will have easier and difficult times sleeping at different times of their cycle based on their hormonal shifts and regulations. So that’s something to take into account. And oftentimes we’re not really conscious of the fact that where we are in our cycle and how that’s impacting our daily routine or sleep in this case. So I think it’s important to say, “Oh, my sleep is off. What could be different?” If we ask ourselves this important question like “What is different right now? Did I eat something different? Did I do something different?” “What’s the time in my cycle? Is that different?” Those are things that can help at least bring some clarity as to why these things are happening because if not, we’re just left confused and then we think there’s something wrong with us. Right? Whereas like if we think there’s these regular occurring fluctuations, then, “Oh no.” “Okay. Oh, I’m ovulating. Oh, that makes sense.” “Okay, I’ve got a little bit more energy, I’m warmer,” because progesterone is starting to take hold. Like these are all things that would make a little bit more logical sense.

So I think it’s important to ask ourselves that question. I think the biggest thing in terms of why we don’t sleep well is because we don’t prioritize our sleep into our day. Everything else gets prioritized and the thing that gets prioritized over sleep most is “Oh, I’ve got to clean up the house and I’ve got to prepare for tomorrow and there’s all these things that I’ve got to do.” It’s that 1 or 2 hours before bedtime that turned to another 2 or 3 hours because you’re trying to accomplish all these things as opposed to using that as time to actually wind down. We actually use that as time to say “Okay, I’m going to turn off the switch and I’m going to wind down right now. I’m going to read a book or I’m going to meditate. Or I’m going to take a nice bath or shower, drink a little bit of tea. And I’m just going to get ready for bed, turn on some nice soft music.” That sleep process would be much easier. But we’ve come to our bedtime routine is, “Well, okay. So now this is my time to check in with my friends so I’m going to surf Facebook and then I’m going to check out the cool new video on YouTube.” If it’s mine, you’re allowed to stay up. No, I’m just joking. But exactly, yeah, like I’m going to check out the new video and then I’m going to see what the news is which is probably the worst thing to do before bed because now you’re getting all anxious because God knows what’s happening in the world right now.

21:21 CL: No wonder we can’t sleep. I know.

MS: Right. So there’s all these things that we do instead of actually trying to go to sleep. I think that’s to our detriment. Now, as a little tool to help us get into that pattern of sleeping, if we’re one of those who our mind just goes and we’ve got a lot of thoughts and everything is just ruminating, we’re worrying, my recommendation is that about an hour before bed you take out a pad of paper or a journal or whatever you want to call it and you write, you go through your day. “How was my day? What’s going on? How did I feel during those times? Anything that really worried me or bothered me about today.” Write it down. Why did it worry me? Write it down. Anything that I need to remember for tomorrow. Oftentimes before we’re going to bed we tell ourselves, “Okay, I got to remember this for tomorrow so that I don’t forget to do this.” Well now you’re asking your brain to stay awake. You got to remember to remind yourself to do this tomorrow morning. Instead, just write it down.

22:25 CL: Release that. Okay.

MS: These are the things I want to take care of tomorrow. Okay, great. All of this is that you just cleared your head. Now you drink a nice cup of tea or you put on some nice soft music, close your eyes, turn off the lights and go to bed. So I think if we just developed different routines for ourselves than what we currently do, we’re going to have much more success going to sleep.

22:52 CL: I love that, the journaling at night. Kind of reminds me of the artist’s way. You know, all the clutter is basically, I forget, four pages that you have to kind of… anything and everything that’s just coming out of your thought processes. You just get on paper, release that and opens up creativity and fertility. Just all the gunk that we accumulate during the day. And so, yeah, you talk to a lot of people and they’re like, “Oh, my gosh. 8 hours of sleep? I don’t remember the last time I got an 8-hour sleep.” How do you function? Because if you’re not getting an 8-hour sleep, how are you sort of compensating drinking a lot of caffeine during the day, eating some type of stimulant-type food to keep yourself going, just mostly sugar, and that’s problematic.

MS: Yeah. And then our work suffers, everything else suffers. Our relationships. Sleep is so important and it’s the one thing that I think we neglect the most.

24:02 CL: Is there like a natural sleep aid that you recommend? Because people do that and then sometimes they’re like, “Oh my gosh, I’m doing all the sleep hygiene rules and I’m still having a really hard time.” Is there something that you recommend? I know it’s not one size fits all but…

MS: Yeah, it isn’t, which is where my mind was trying to filter. I don’t like to use a lot of melatonin in patients. If I do, then I do recommend the very low dose like .3 and most people are like, “0.3? That’s nothing.” It is nothing, but that’s more typical and more in line with what your body regularly produces and so if we’re just giving it that little bit, it’s not going to be as addicting and you’re not going to be as reliant and dependent on it. I do like just simple things like chamomile, Sleepytime tea, just the teas that are just more relaxing and sedative-like. I do think that those are very helpful. People used to drink a warm glass of milk. I just have a warm glass of water, a warm glass of tea. It just starts to relax and calm the body. So those sorts of things are things that I like. We can use a little bit of valerian if we needed to but, again, these are things you don’t want to be dependent on.

25:27 CL: Yeah, okay. I heard acupuncture helps.

MS: Acupuncture works wonderfully for it, yeah. And I have seen my patients say they sleep awesome after treatments and usually that lasts and they say they kind of know when they have to come back when their sleep patterns start to go off a little bit.

25:46 CL: Yeah, absolutely. So let’s talk about another part of the wheel.

MS: So diet is a big one that I talk about a lot. People always have a lot of questions about. I mean in general, we can spend hours on this. Just to keep it simple, is that we have to get away from processed foods. We have to get away from our reliance on sugar and stimulants. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I’m telling you you can’t have a little bit of caffeine. But if you’re having more than one cup of coffee or tea a day as a means to keep you going, that means you’re reliant on it to keep going and you need that stimulant. So that’s something different.

And so, cleaning up our diet, just making sure we’re eating whole foods, healthy foods as organic as possible, as clean as possible, less processed foods. And many of us rely on eating out all the time versus cooking. If you can just find 5 meals that you like to cook or 3 meals you like to cook and 3 meals your husband likes to cook, you know, there’s nothing wrong with that and it gives you a bigger, deeper appreciation for the quality of the food that you eat, how it’s cooked and a better appreciation for the quality of food when you go out to restaurants and what you’re looking for. So really just cleaning up our diets overall. I mean, my issue with diet category overall is that there’s always a new diet. There’s always a fad diet. I’m not saying that some of them aren’t good. I’m just saying that it’s not a “one size fits all” when it comes to diet. We are all unique individuals and we all require something a little bit different. I mean, unless you’re an identical twin and you guys are exactly the same, odds are that even those identical twins still need some tweaks and changes from one another with their diet.

And so, you know, I always get these questions like “What should I eat?” These general questions in my email. I’m like, I don’t know what’s going on with you so I can’t tell you what to eat. It’s difficult, right? I would just say just really focus on eating healthy, cleaning up your diet and cutting out the junk. You know what that is and if you don’t, do a diet journal for 7 days. Eat the way you normally eat. Just write down everything, document everything and then with introspective eyes, as if you were evaluating somebody else’s diet, look at it and see what could be better, what can you improve. Now again, like I said with this patient before, sometimes with some patients I am pretty strict initially, but it’s not about being 100 percent perfect. It’s about being 80 percent perfect.

28:57 CL: Okay. Because when you say “eat healthy,” I could see why people need that defined because the definition of eating healthy —

MS: Is different.

29:05 CL: And it’s a moving target also, right?

MS: Yeah.

29:08 CL: Because like 5 years ago eating healthy was a lot of like whole grains and so I was like, “Okay, what does that exactly mean?” I think summers are really, you know, we’re in warmer weather hopefully across the country — it’s easy because you can eat like a clean protein and a lot of vegetables where in the winter you want to warm it up a little bit with stews and soups. I recently got the Instant Pot and I was sort of intimidated by it but I busted it out it’s a  pressure cooker Crock-Pot. It’s pretty cool and I hope I get a sponsorship for mentioning that. Just kidding. But you can make like, I don’t know, kind of like I get grass-fed cuts of meat that are sort of maybe a little bit tougher and it just cooks it up in an hour and there you go with a ton of veggies, and that seems like a really good combination for most people. A protein and vegetable, don’t get too complicated on the plate, right? And keep it organic.

MS: For me, my basic plate is protein, veggies, fat. Maybe a little bit of grains depending on who you are and depending on the type of grain. And I think if you can do that, I think that’s the foundation for every good, healthy basic meal. Right? Then you want to spice it up and add some things to it. But that’s your framework that you’re working with and then going from there.

30:42 CL: And that’s easy.

MS: And that’s easy. It should be easy. Now, we all like carbs because we want to fill full, but that’s exactly what they’re doing, like the bread is just filling you up. It’s not giving you all the things that you really need. And so we’re so used to feeling full as a means of having a good meal, and that doesn’t constitute a good meal. You should feel satiated. You should feel satisfied. But you shouldn’t feel stuffed as a means for constituting what a good meal is. Right? And so I think we need to separate those things.

We also come from a culture where we reward and value being a little bit more slightly full, if you will. I say this because when I lost a lot of weight and when I was playing with my diet, my mom always used to say to me, “You look so sick.” But I felt awesome.

31:46 CL: They don’t like you gaunt-looking.

MS: They just don’t like you thin. They want you to look fuller. Right? And so then we start to internalize then and be like, “Oh, okay. I need to eat more.” It’s what our parents tell us, right? But there’s a disconnect going on there. There’s a disconnect. And a lot of this comes from, at least from my parents’ generation where they didn’t have enough so we always wanted to have more and holding on. If you look fuller, it means you had enough food. So there’s all these cultural things that go on that we get passed on by our parents that we just don’t understand generationally. And so, what’s okay now is not necessarily what was okay then, and we have to also be accepting of that.

32:34 CL: But also it’s kind of tricky because with women, like too low a BMI and…

MS: Right. I was saying it before, I was like, “yeah,” it’s a little tricky. But too low or too high in BMI or weight is an issue for sure. And I have plenty of patients who I’m saying, “you need to eat more.”

32:53 CL: Get some fats in there.

MS: Let’s load up the fat. Yeah.

32:59 CL: I was interviewing William Davis. He is the author of Wheat Belly and he brought up a really good point about the whole gluten-free craze. He said people feel like they’re going to — well, I’m eating gluten-free and then that sort of has sent us down this weird rabbit hole. We’re eating a bunch of this gluten-free kind of garbage in a sense because it’s like, “okay,” it’s gluten-free, that’s great, that component is taken out. But what are we adding in all these things? Tapioca flour, rice flour that are spiking our blood sugar causing a lot of… And I was like, “Gosh.” I’m so guilty of that. I had to kind of retrain myself because a couple of years ago I’d be like, “Gluten-free cookies! I’m eating 10.” Because somehow my mind made up that that was okay.

MS: Yeah. I always tell my patients that just because I’m asking you to be gluten-free, and I don’t ask all my patients to be gluten-free, although I think everybody thinks I do. Those patients who I ask to be gluten-free, I said, “This now doesn’t give you a right to eat every packaged food that says it’s gluten-free because they’re full of crap.” Right? They have all sorts of junk. Gluten-free doesn’t mean that I’m going to replace my gluten with other packaged food. It just means that we’re going to avoid gluten and replace it with fat and veggies and fruit and protein, and these are the things that we’re not replacing with other junk.

34:34 CL: Yeah. It’s very deceptive. Because you feel like you’re going towards something healthy and it’s like, “Oh, really? I didn’t know all that stuff was in there.” It’s actually tons of sugar and everything else. All right. What’s the next section of the wheel?

MS: So we’ve covered digestion, we’ve covered sleep, diet. Stress. Stress is huge and it’s not about — I mean, if we can all get rid of stress, that’s great. But I think it’s more about how we manage stress. What are we doing to accommodate for this sort of thing? We all have stress. I also would like to say that stress is just not emotional stress. It’s physical stress. Stress comes in other forms and we need to be aware of that. And then understand what triggers us and then how are we going to manage that better. So for me, I like to start my days slower. That’s what makes the rest of my day more manageable.

35:44 CL: What does that mean?

MS: So if I’ve got to get up and I’ve got to make lunches for my kids, I’ve got to cook breakfast for my kids, I’ve got to run out the door and I’ve got to do this all in less than an hour, that’s rushing. That’s mine.

35:59 CL: Super stressful

MS: Super stressful. And then I’ve got to figure out how I’ve got to come down from that stress and manage things. So I like to start my day off just slow. Okay, start the pot of water, make my coffee, slowly make breakfast. And I like time; I like a little bit of time to get going in the morning.

36:21 CL: Okay. You’re just getting up earlier so you’re not condensing it into that.

MS: Right. So I’m not condensing it into that. Sometimes it has to happen but if I can prevent it, I try to prevent it.

36:30 CL: Sure.

MS: That’s one of my main triggers and if I could start my day differently then it makes a huge impact on the rest of my day. So for others, it’s dietary stress; it’s physical stress, they use their bodies more in their work. So how are we going to manage that? Or, they don’t like to sit in rush hour traffic because that brings stress to them. So it’s about understanding what triggers your stress and then figuring out how to manage that or accommodate for that. So for me, I don’t think anybody likes to sit in rush hour traffic but if you’ve got to do it and I have to do it one day a week, then I know what I’m going to do to manage that. Okay, one, I call home, my family lives on the east coast so I call home, I use it as a time to check in with my family so that the time goes easier. Two, I listen to a ton of books on audio.

37:27 CL: That helps so much, yeah.

MS: It helps so much for me. So there are certain things that even though they bring stress into our life, we can’t change that. Right? But I can make that better. I can manage that situation in a different way. So even if you have no other stress in your life, if you’ve just been on the fertility journey, your life is stressful. I mean, in and of itself is a stressful process. How are we going to manage that better? Are we just going to continue to fly by the seat of our pants? What are the things that bring stress or anxiety to you based on that process? Is it because you don’t have a plan? Is it because you don’t have someone who’s guiding you? Is it because your partner is not supportive? What is it? And then once you understand that, then it’s about figuring out a way to improve that situation and make that manageable. So that’s more of like what I mean by stress.

38:28 CL: Well, a couple of things like when you say you wake up earlier, I’ve been looking more at rituals. I was like, I need more rituals in my life but those are wellness rituals. Even just giving yourself that extra hour in the morning like the little rituals I have during the day. “Oh, I’m going to wake up earlier,” so I can just sit and have a cup of tea and just have my thoughts and it’s quiet before everything starts. Or, “Oh, I can’t wait to sit in traffic so I can listen to that great book or podcast or whatever” during that time. That’s me time instead of like, “Oh, that terrible traffic.” And then they were saying like dealing with fertility is like getting diagnosed with a chronic illness, like being told you have cancer. Obviously we don’t have to tell people that. They’re like, “Oh yeah. I know it’s stressful.” But really, give yourself just that space to know that yeah, you’re dealing with something that’s monumental and you do need support around it. You need support around it.

MS: That’s exactly what I was going to say. So that research that you cited was done I think in like 2000 or somewhere around there, right? And it’s absolutely true. But I think most people don’t realize that and the stress of dealing with fertility issues is as stressful as dealing with cancer or any other life-threatening illness. So we need support around that. And so you need to get that support for yourself, for your partner, as a couple, as an individual. We don’t honor ourselves in that way.

The other thing I would say is when it comes to fertility challenges, as I reverse it, is if you were diagnosed with cancer or your loved one was diagnosed with cancer, you’d go get a second opinion, potentially a third opinion, maybe more. Most people don’t do that with their fertility. They get diagnosed with infertility by their OB-GYN and then they get referred to the fertility clinic, the IVF clinic, and that’s it. You are shortchanging yourself when you don’t ask for a second opinion or a third opinion from somebody else. Even if those opinions end up being the same, at least you confirmed everything. Right? So I also think that’s a thing that I see all too often that I don’t like.

40:48 CL: Absolutely. Okay, I want to talk about that and then I want to pop back to stress again so I can remind myself to do that. But this is what I can’t stand and I think we talk a lot about this in different podcasts, is that just like you said the scenario, and then women get sent to an IVF clinic. The thing, I don’t know if they always know this, but they’re getting evaluated if they’re a good candidate for IVF. Not if they’re a good candidate to be a parent or fertile naturally. It’s like, “No, you don’t fit our narrow criteria. You’re not going to make our numbers look good at the end of the year.” That does not mean… There are so many women who were not good candidates for IVF. I mean, we’re human beings. The natural fertility, that’s the natural part. But women go, “Well, if a doctor cannot get me pregnant and I wasn’t able to do it myself, how is this going to happen naturally?” They feel like it’s a miracle when it happens naturally. No. I mean, your body can do this.

MS: Yes. It’s what your body was made to do.

41:53 CL: Anyways, I just wanted to beat that point in if you’re listening and you feel like, “Oh.” I had a woman go, “They told me I looked menopausal.” She’s 46, she just had a baby 5 months ago. It’s like, if she just listened to the IVF doctors, because a lot of people do and then they feel deflated and they think game over.

MS: Right.

42:13 CL: But also another thing about stress and I have to ask this, but I’ve always been surprised with myself because I feel like I’m sort of in touch and yet I get really out of touch. I’ll be like, “I’m not even stressed though I’ve developed this eye twitch that won’t go away.” Where really, I don’t feel stressed and then maybe you start crying.

MS: I’m glad you brought that up.

42:35 CL: And you’re like, “Well, maybe I have some stress going on.” Are people really out of touch?

MS: Stress tolerance is what I think with all that. We’ve become so accustomed to our reactions to stress that we don’t even think that’s because of stress anymore. Our eye twitching, our insomnia, our digestive issues, whatever it is. “Oh, I don’t feel stressed. I’m fine.”

43:05 CL: Yeah. Where is this coming from?

MS: Because we’re so used to feeling amped up and running at 100 miles a minute that that’s now become the norm. So it’s no longer that stressful; it’s just that that’s just what normal is. But it’s not. That’s not normal. Right? So I do think that that’s something that needs to be a evaluated and I’m glad you brought that up, it’s an excellent point.

43:30 CL: Oh gosh, I had another thing to bring up and I forgot. So let’s go on to, is there another portion of the fertility wheel? We’re almost out of time, but this has been cool though. We’ve covered a lot.

MS: I’m going to mention the other categories and then if you want to pick one or two that you want to highlight, then we can do it. So we’ve talked about digestion, sleep, diet, stress. The other areas are: exercise, hormones, environment, mind-body, structural, autoimmune issues, inflammation, toxins. So those are the other areas of the wheel.

44:07 CL: Wow. It’s a full wheel.

MS: It’s a lot.

44:15 CL: Well, I love the topic of toxins because we’re surrounded by toxins. What does it mean to detox in a toxic world and preparing your body for fertility?

MS: Yeah. So I think this category ‘toxins’ we can actually cover too because when I use the term ‘environment,’ I’m talking about environmental toxins and the other one is toxins that we either put into our body that are chemical. So these are two different things. And so toxins absolutely impact our overall health and are one of the main systems that it impacts is our endocrine system. It affects our hormones dramatically. So toxins come in a lot of different forms. We know now through a lot of research they come in plastics. Right? And even though everyone says, “well, now they’ve got BPA-free everything.” Well, what have they replaced it with? Just kind of like the whole gluten, free thing, right? So what have they replaced that specific plastic with or that chemical in the plastic with? These are all things that are potentially impacting our overall health and our endocrine system. But also, have you been on birth control pills and for how long. That’s a toxin. Have you been on repeated use of antibiotics or medication? It’s a toxin. What else have you been exposed to? Does your work that you do, are you exposed to certain chemicals in that work that cause issues? I’ve seen that with patients frequently. The food that we eat, are there chemicals and toxins in the food that you’re eating? We could have spoken about this in diet. Right? But are there hormones, antibiotics, pesticides? And if you don’t think there’s pesticides in your food, you’re wrong. All of these things are impacting our overall health and we know it through research. It’s dramatic. We know it.

So cleaning up toxins can sound daunting whether they’re in your house, in your car, in the world around you, what you breathe in, what you eat, what you touch, what you’re exposed to. These are all things that it sounds daunting but it’s absolutely doable as long as you start with one thing at a time. You can but it’s difficult. Also, what you put on your skin; makeup, skincare. All these things are all toxins that impact our endocrine system, our hormones, and most specifically, the one I see the most is estrogen.

46:52 CL: Absolutely. Cosmetics are tricky because it’s that whole greenwashing movement. You talked about BPA. “No BPA” and let’s just put these other plastics in there. But also with cosmetics, a lot of things are called natural or there’s like a line. Well, I don’t want to get sued. But they do some funny play on the word ‘organic’. But if you actually look at the ingredients so I think then you have to… Isn’t there like EWG is the website where you can check chemicals?

MS: Absolutely.

47:23 CL: You have to be a really savvy consumer because it’s tricky out there.

MS: We have to remember we live in a world of tons of marketing and so marketing covers up a lot of junk. And so people can use the word ‘natural’ if it just has one thing. You know, there’s certain classifications that allows them to use certain words but as long as they fill that need, they can still put other junk in it. Right? So it doesn’t mean that it’s healthy. I always joke like arsenic is natural but it will kill you in high doses. Right? We don’t want to expose ourselves to that. So those are things that you have to be aware of for sure.

48:00 CL: I guess you have to be the ingredient reader and there’s a lot of things that you won’t know what the heck that ingredient is and maybe that’s the first clue that you need to eliminate it. I think cleaning products, those are crazy.

MS: Oh yeah, they’re crazy. Crazy. Look up just like healthy do-it-yourself cleaning products and you’ll be amazed at what white vinegar can do for you.

48:25 CL: You can make anything, I know. There’s a popular like those powder cleaners. I looked it up and it said it has 145 different chemicals in it, and like, it’s powdery so it just kind of poofs up into the air. We all grew up sort of using it too. It’s really a very common one and I’m like, “geez.” But hey, I love this conversation. Can you tell us how to find you again?

MS: Yeah. So if you want to read more about what I talk about when it comes to fertility then you can just go to my website MarcSklar.com and this wheel, I talk about that quite a bit. You can also follow me on social media, Instagram, Facebook, and then obviously as you mentioned when we started, my YouTube channel where I typically and try hard to and usually accomplish it about putting out a new video once a week.

49:24 CL: That’s a big accomplishment.

MS: Yeah. Sometimes they’re short, which is fine.

49:28 CL: Yeah, exactly. Hey, thanks so much, Marc. Great interview. And I’ll reach out to you in a few weeks when this goes live

MS: All right. Thank so much. I appreciate it.

49:39 CL: Okay. Thank you.