Marie Lee

a blog by marie lee, Jan. 21, 2010

You need to wash your clothes. You should wash your clothes. In fact, you HAVE TO wash your clothes. Especially, when they are new. My friend who writes the enormously popular Green Babies organic blog warned me about all the crap they put on clothes to make them look brighter and more attractive in the store. Ready? Some special shiny “sizing” stuff which makes them fold better; pesticides if they are going to sit in the warehouse a long time; formaldehyde. She said this even happens with organic stuff, as once it leaves the factory, there’s not a lot of control. So wash up!

Now, laundry. My Chinese acupuncturist told me about these weird nuts they used to wash clothes when he was growing up. Then, I received some samples (per FTC disclosure rules, I received the samples for free) of something called Maggie’s Soap Nuts, and my doctor said, yep, those are the ones. The nuts are these little marble-shooter-sized things that are sticky with sap. You put four in a little cloth bag and toss is in the wash. I was skeptical at first — those little nuts? Where’s the foam, the strong smells, etc. -- there was none. Of course, all that stuff comes from CHEMICALS.

Amazingly, the clothes are not only clean, but they smell great. And the nuts are so gentle, I’ve used them on silk and wool with no problem.

On to drying. What could be wrong with a dryer? Actually, several things. Some experts claim that drying clothes outside in sunlight naturally disinfects them, while the dryer raises the heat enough that things like e.coli survive on the clothes (which is why I use paper towels and NOT the hand dryers in restrooms).

More importantly, though, dryers emit positive ions, which can make you feel weird and stressed. An accumulation of positive ions naturally (e.g., the Santa Ana winds) can make people go a bit crazy. The opposite of positive ions, of course, are negative ions, and they make you feel nice and calm. Hanging your clothes outside encourages negative ions and, at the very least, avoids the positive ones.

This is true particularly with synthetic fabrics (which you shouldn’t be wearing, anyway!). Notice these clothes in the dryer have an icky staticky feel, while clothes dried outside seem very stress free. Even in the winter, we use a huge laundry rack, set up in the warmest part of the house, and dry some (admittedly not all) of our clothes.

So what’s my New Year’s wish/resolution about my wash? Yes, I have one: Get a whole house water filter to keep chemicals out of the wash.

a blog by marie lee, Jan. 6, 2010

I’ve been collecting amazing fertility stories because they are the happiest kind.

If you want to read about a woman who was diagnosed with infertility, her FSH at 42 when she was 42, check out Julia Indichova’s book, Inconceivable: A Woman’s Triumph over Despair and Statistics. Julia decided to prove her doctors wrong and do everything she could to get pregnant and have a baby naturally. The result: I met her daughter!

Recently, I met a mom who has a special needs child (as do I). Her daughter is blind, which stems from a condition in her pineal gland. This girl, against all odds, when to Holland by herself to study, and met her husband (a seeing Dutchman). They wanted to have kids but their doctors told them it would be impossible not only because she didn’t make enough hormones due to her condition, but ALSO because her husband had some unfortunate condition where his sperm lacked tails. This woman said her daughter cried and cried and then resigned herself to being childless.

Then one day she had a positive pregnancy test. The doctors said it HAD to be wrong. It wasn’t. They said she would miscarry. She didn’t for the first trimester. Then the doctors said she had to be put on all these hormones so she could carry to term. She told them to forget it. (They were wrong about her being able to get pregnant, so she was going to do it her way.) She had a remarkably easy delivery. Her daughter is now a year old.

My best friend from high school was told that because of her endometriosis, she was infertile. No need to bother with the birth control, they said. She didn’t. And then became pregnant. Her doctors told her she’d never carry her child to term, anyway. She did. She called me one day out of the blue to tell me she’d had a baby. I had to fly back to Minnesota to see for myself, I was so convinced she was joking. “Oh well,” she said. “They said it was a once-in-a-lifetime fluke.” To make a long story short, she now has two kids. Two wonderfully healthy sons.

These stories are not ones of infertility, but ones of “Anything Can Happen.” I don’t know you and your situation, but I do know these people, and guess what? Their doctors didn’t have the last word, did they? So if someone says you can’t, consider the Chinese proverb: The person who says he cannot do should get out of the way of the person who is doing.

a blog by marie lee

Earlier this year, I wrote "Are You Too Sexy for Your Eggs?” suggesting TTC women avoid wearing tight bras (and nipple rings) because constant breast stimulation may delay ovulation. Now I’m back with some suggestions for the guys out there: Don’t be too sexy for your sperm.

Everyone wants to look nice, but successful fertility requires moderation and there may be some fertility busters in the everyday things your man does to look sexy.

We already know the first: Cool it on the smoking. Sure, it looks great in the movies, but it breaks DNA, affects sperm motility and morphology, and it promotes free radicals, which is exactly what your man is taking those antioxidants for (hopefully he is).

Ditto for the marijuana, not just for the reasons above but ALSO because the plant may have estrogenic (oops!) properties. This will not do him any fertility favors.

Sweaty exercise? Sexy and good for sperm, but don’t overdo it. Biking can squish and cook sperm (although new seats with cutouts prevent this). And excess crazy-beast exercising again can promote free radicals.

What about that manly steak he loves to eat? Hormones! Again, it’s best to eat organic and GRASSFED to get the extra benefits of vitamin K and omega 3s that come in naturally through grass. Organic produce may seem a bit fussy, but pesticides often work by jamming up insects' endocrine systems, and that’s not something he wants to be doing.

How about all that yard work and manly weed killing with Roundup? Leave the pesticides alone for now. Atrazine weed killer, for instance (used a lot on golf courses) has already been clinically shown to decrease male fertility.

Lastly, here’s something you might not have thought about: Propecia. First, it has these crazy warnings that pregnant women shouldn’t even touch it (which makes me a bit uneasy right off the bat). But the way it works is by BLOCKING TESTOSTERONE. Studies have shown this not only decreases sperm count but also sexual desire — kind of the opposite of what you want.

Rogaine is a blood pressure drug and blood pressure affects erections (this is how Viagra works), so I would be suspicious of that, too.

Think of it this way, you love your man enough to have kids with him, it shouldn’t matter by now too much what he looks like.

a Green Fertility blog by marie lee

There are a million diets and health books out there, so what do you look to when cleaning up for better health and fertility?

I’m a big fan of the writer Michael Pollan, who writes about our food culture. In his latest book, In Defense of Food (he’s also the narrator of the documentary on industrialized food, Food, Inc., that just came out), I was amazed to see Pollan's a big proponent of the work of Dr. Weston Price. Dr. Price is someone whose work I base our diet on, but who I thought was very much a fringe figure (even though what he says is so logical).

Basically, Dr. Price, a dentist, traveled the world in the early 20th Century trying to figure out why so-called “primitive” people who didn’t have dentists had perfect teeth. Along the way he found that they all shared certain dietary characteristics that seemed to contribute to their good health: no cavities, no crooked teeth, and awesome fertility.

His findings aren’t surprising: People in remote villages in Switzerland, the Pacific Islands, Africa, South America etc., etc., didn’t eat any processed food — duh. Their milk was unpasteurized (raw). They ate a lot of fish eggs for fertility.

The fish eggs thing made me laugh because I remember a fish-egg Korean soup that I thought was disgusting, which I mentioned to my friend that I should start liking it. Now, my friend (who is 40, mind you) is so dang fertile, she forgot a SINGLE birth control pill for only a few hours … and oops, there’s her daughter. She reached into the fridge and pulled out these little Korean fish things (whole fish) that she loves to eat for snacks. “Hey, these things are FULL of eggs!” she said. (I now eat them for snacks, they aren’t bad, but there are other ways to get fish eggs: salmon eggs will do; that Greek dip, taramosalata, is all eggs.)

Anyway, fish eggs are just part of it. I was happy to get a copy of Healing Our Children: Sacred Wisdom for Preconception, Pregnancy, Birth, and Parenting, by Ramiel Nagel. Nagel has basically taken much of the Weston Price philosophy and made it user friendly for people (men, too) who are specifically trying to conceive. It’s a great book, one that not only gives ideas, but also gets into the spiritual side of conception, pregnancy, and childrearing, something that is often forgotten in the quest for the pregnancy.

The other reason I think this wisdom makes so much sense is that Dr. Price noted that in cultures where people get proper nutrition, their jaws are wide enough that people have perfect teeth (i.e., don’t need braces) and don’t get cavities. My parents left Korea in the 50s and had us shortly thereafter, and until they came to America, they didn’t have ANY processed food. White rice was about as processed as it was, so they ended up eating whole foods, TONS of vegetables (especially raw), lean meats, organ parts, fish eggs, seaweed, odd sea creatures, even insects.

So my father passed away without a single cavity. None of us kids had braces, and we have perfect teeth. (I don’t have any cavities, either. I also notice when my pH seems balanced, I don’t even get tartar.)

At the very least, Nagel's book might help in this recession to keep your dental bills down! Check it out. You can get a free chapter download at the site.

a blog by marie lee

Let’s talk spem quality.

If you are having trouble getting pregnant, this is one time I might suggest seeing a specialist. But if the quality and quantity is fine and you’re still having trouble, a recent study in Australia suggests that having MORE SEX might help reduce the number of DNA-damaged sperm.

This is interesting because many specialists recommend abstaining from sex before an IVF procedure (I’m not sure why; admittedly, I don’t know a whole lot about IVF as I don’t plan to ever do it) and before sperm donation. But my late, wise, fertility consultant-doctor used to chuckle and suggested we do it every day leading up to and past ovulation. And he sure has had some success. So who knows?

There are actually a lot of things you can do to help sperm quality besides the obvious. To start, don’t overheat the little guys: no tight pants, too much bicycling, laptops, etc.

And there are a number of supplements that are available. At this year’s annual American Society of Andrology meeting, a study was presented suggesting that most men (small sample size, though) experience sperm improvement taking this product.

Some other herbal ideas: At my CSA (community supported agriculture — sort of like a farmer’s market that comes to you) we used to get this herb called “sacred basil.” Apparently this plant is often worshipped in India, hence the name. It’s also known as “tulsi,” and it’s an overall health promoter, plus it has a reputation as being spermatogenic (i.e., helping the production of sperm). Generally anything that contributes to overall health (stopping smoking, reducing stress, antioxidants), can help sperm.

Acupuncture is another sperm helper. A study published in the aforementioned Archives of Andrology shows that, with acupuncture, sperm quality can improve in as little as one to three months.

And if you are interested in knowing how the little swimmers are doing without going to see the doctor, there is an at-home test available. My husband seems to have great sperm quality (though I’ve miscarried, we got pregnant with our son the very first time and have gotten pregnant (often while trying not to) a bunch of times). But for fun we tried out a test called Fertell, which measures both motility and number, and he scored high on both, so the test, at least in for us, seemed to be accurate. Fertell kits can be found all over the place including Amazon and Walgreen’s.

Goofy, yes, but in the ‘70s women’s consciousness raising groups used to do things like do a group speculum look into the vagina so you could identify its parts. They talked about the Moon Cycle, a.k.a., Aunt Flo, a.k.a. your menses.

Now, women don’t even know what’s going on “down there” because of tampons, mainly. Plug it and forget about it.

Well, I’ll write a whole other blog on why plugging up the drain is not the best thing for your fertility, but right now, I want to ask: Do you know what a normal period looks like?

Readers seem puzzled and they ask questions all the time: Is diarrhea before a period normal? If I bleed through a tampon in an hour, is that normal? Is spotting between periods normal? What about clots?

To help give us an idea of what constitutes “normal” for a period, I consulted with Dr. Randine Lewis, L.Ac., Ph.D, author of The Infertility Cure and The Way of the Fertile Soul. Dr. Lewis has spent much of her career as a traditional Eastern medicine practitioner looking at just that — the menses — for clues to fertility and overall health, and she has successfully helped women in their 30s and 40s get pregnant.

Uterine linings are all but ignored in Western reproductive medicine, but are considered at least as important as egg quality, according to Chinese medicine. In Chinese medicine, the uterus itself is thought of as “the palace of the child.” Doesn’t that make sense?

“The attention the body pays to the uterus is directly related to the attention the body pays to the ovary,” says Dr. Lewis, “and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) considers them a unit, affected also by the messages they receive from the brain chemistry, blood, and hormones. The uterus is an incredibly complex organ, and must secrete proteins and chemical messages to communicate with the embryo in order for implantation to occur.”

Here are Dr. Lewis’ general guidelines:

A period should come on almost invisibly every 26 - 32 days.

It is normal to experience slight premenstrual tension due to the fact that, as progesterone levels drop, the body's energies are directed inward, inducing liquification of the uterine lining and initiating menstrual flow. But it’s not normal to experience crazy cramps, etc. (Case in point, my mother, coming from the Eastern culture where perhaps she was already more balanced, has no concept of things like “cramps” and now “hot flashes.”)

The normal period should last from 3 - 7 days.

During this 3 - 7 day flow period, the normal quantity is expected to be from 50 - 100ml. Flow less than 50ml indicates deficiency; more than 100ml indicates excess.

Ready to get into the nitty-gritty? Here’s a rule of thumb for a regular tampon and pad:

Tampon:
1/3 full = 1 ml
1/2 full = 5 ml
full = 10 ml

Pad:
1/3 full = 1 ml
1/2 full = 10 ml
full = 20 ml

The color is expected to be fresh to dark red, sometimes with a little bit of brown at the end as the blood flow tapers and oxidizes. If the color is largely brown or black, it indicates the menstrual blood is not able to be released properly, which may mean your lining may have difficulty regenerating. Bright red, thin blood that flows rapidly like a fresh cut indicates the lining isn't being properly liquefied along with the blood.

Also, consistency: If the blood is too thin and watery, it indicates a deficiency in the underlying reproductive energies. If it is thick, clumpy, stringy, or clotty, it indicates an excess condition where the flow is compromised.

Sharp pain is not normal, nor is heavy cramping. A light ache in the center of the pelvis is considered normal as well, as the contractile function of the uterus is involved in releasing the blood.

One more tidbit I’ve picked up is to NOT have sex during your period as this is the time the cervix is slightly open and the last thing you want to do is introduce infectious pathogens there.

If your menses are weird or painful in any way, might I suggest seeing an alternative practitioner, such as an acupuncturist, who specializes in these conditions? Once I started seeing an acupuncturist/herbalist, I started to realize that these conditions (mine: spotting, clots) are very common and I got treatment. My menses has gotten a lot better — brighter, better flow — since I’ve been following his protocol.

And think of it, if your Palace of the Child is not fresh, springy, and healthy, how can you expect an embryo to thrive there?

a blog by marie lee

I’m a big believer in feng shui (the Asian belief that the way you arrange things in a room can affect things). That is, ever since my poet friend was hanging out in my office and said, “Man, the writing feng shui of your office is ba-a-a-a-ad.” Not exactly a believer, I still grabbed him by the lapels and screamed, “What do you mean by that????” The thing was, I was having a bit of writer's block at the time.

I guess it was because my desk (in an attic office) was facing a sloping wall. He said, simply, that to counteract the ceiling sloping (blocking energy), I needed to get a clear crystal and suspend it over my head. (This is particularly odd because my name in Korea means “clear crystal” or “brilliant crystal.”) So I went to the local bead store and was impatient and annoyed because of all the weird things they had in there, they didn’t have any quartz crystals.

As I stomped out, I ran into some guy SELLING CRYSTALS ON THE STREET. Whoa! I’d never seen him before though I walked the same way every day. Anyway, to make a weird story ever weirder, after I picked out a crystal I wanted, he GAVE it to me for FREE. He said I looked like I needed it. WEIRD. And I never saw him AGAIN.

So I did climb on a chair and suspend the crystal from the ceiling, much to the amusement of my husband. And I did finish that story and get it published! (You can read it here.)

Another thing my friend told me was to clean up my desk and office. He said clearing the office would help my chi flow more easily.

Ah, so let’s talk baby chi. Making a baby takes lots of energy, so, surprise surprise, when I casually asked my friend about fertility chi, he did say to clean up the bedroom, especially around the bed to not obstruct the baby chi.

Some other tips:

• Close the bathroom door! Not just out of politeness, but chi can escape down the toilet!
• Red is a major fertility color, add some to your bedroom.
• Yes, clean your bedroom, but don’t sweep/dust around the bed at conception time.
• Keep a statue of Kwan Yin, the goddess of fertility in your bedroom. She is also known as the female Buddha and the Goddess of compassion and mercy. I have a really cool statue where she is holding a baby in one arm and feeding a dragon (my astrological sign) with the other. (Any fertility acupuncturist who knows their stuff will have one.)
• Rose quartz is a fertility enhancing crystal to have around. A friend told me the raw, unpolished kind was the best.

Most importantly, have fun!

a blog by Marie Lee

Now this may be putting the cart before the horse, but I found it SO TRUE for my viable and non viable pregnancies that I kinda wish I had known it so I could have known better what to expect. Basically besides your ‘betas’ (the rate at which your pregnancy hormones are doubling), three markers in an early ultrasound can predict with up to 94% accuracy (slightly less for women over 40), whether your pregnancy outcome will be successful.

From the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists:

Investigators performed transvaginal ultrasound at postconception days 33 and 36 to measure fetal cardiac activity, gestational sac diameter, and yolk sac diameter.

On postconception day 33 to 36, investigators found that if they could identify fetal cardiac activity, the success rate was approximately 90%. Without cardiac activity, the miscarriage rate was approximately 88%. If the gestational sac was more than 12 mm [in diameter], the pregnancy's success rate was about 92%; if it was less than 8 mm [in diameter], the miscarriage rate was about 96%. Gestational sac size diameter between 8 and 12 mm was a gray zone; the success rate was about 66%," said Dr. Bae.

Thus, the presence of fetal cardiac activity, a gestational sac diameter of more than 12 mm, and yolk sac size between 2 and 6 mm in diameter were all associated with a successful pregnancy. If all 3 markers were visible and within those stated ranges on days 33 to 36 postconception, successful pregnancy could be predicted with 94% accuracy for women younger than 40, Dr. Bae observed.

Now my first pregnancy, which ended in miscarriage, I THOUGHT was going just swimmingly so I was devastated when I miscarried. The doctor was all sorry, etc. BUT when I ordered a copy of my files and ultrasounds, I saw that they’d made all sorts of notations (“small for gest. age,” “subchorionic bleed?”)

If I’d seen these notes, I would have known the miscarriage was coming and not been so shocked and traumatized.

My second pregnancy, I was bleeding all over the place and was sure I was going to miscarry for about seven months and the nurses kept saying they’d never seen someone bleed so much and carry to term! But I had all the “right” signs from the get-go, from the 12 mm gestational sac, etc.

Geez! Is this is too much information? Sorry! But if you have had miscarriages before, it's a handy dandy guide to what the docs won’t tell you.

Of course, my GreenFertility caveat is to NOT overuse ultrasound, and I would especially not do it just to see “what’s inside”.

(Apparently you can even make DVDs of that, which I think is crazy.)

a blog by Marie Lee

Especially for older women and women (and men!) with “unexplained” infertility, antioxidants may be your new best friend. Basically, the process of aging produces free radicals and, the older you are, the more free radicals you are exposed to. These things cause all the things associated with aging (including chromosome damage that can result in birth defects and miscarriages). Free radical damage can also be caused by things in the environment such as radiation (including sunlight), exposure to chemicals, etc.

But the good news is that taking antioxidants can prevent and even reverse this damage. The best place to find antioxidents is in foods called “superfoods” because they contain high levels. Examples include goji berries, blueberries, mangosteen, noni, and acai.

Acai keeps coming up as good for fertility. There aren’t, as far as I can find, any clinical studies proving this, but given its superior nutritional profile, it can’t hurt. It grows freely in the Amazon, and friends who’ve been to Brazil say you can just buy it on the street. It has an appealing, deep purple color, and there is some suggestion that it also revs up your metabolism to help weight loss. A writer friend who keeps ridiculous hours even claims it give him endurance!

Since there aren’t any studies to point to, my husband and I drank acai juice and smoothies for two months to see what would happen. We drank Amazon Thunder organic juice and made smoothies from Sambazon’s smoothie packs.

Acai isn’t cheap, but we wanted to go organic and these were the only two organic products I could find. Amazon Thunder (which is mixed with a grape concentrate) definitely tasted the best. The Sambazon pulp tasted good if we mixed it with other fruit. My favorite thing to do was to make a smoothie out of vegetables (kale, lettuce, etc.), one apple with skin on, some flax, and a Sambazon packet. You can find Amazon Thunder in health food stores like Whole Foods and Sambazon on its website (10% discount for FertilityAuthority readers!)

Not sure what it did for fertility (the jury is still out), but we did notice a nice energy boost. PLUS, as I wrote in a previous post, I am being treated for immune problems and my immune markers during this time dropped fairly significantly. Maybe that’s why I was feeling better?

I’d file this under “Can’t Hurt, Could Help.”

p.s. I was encouraged to try the Mona Vie product, which is mostly acai, but there were some chemical preservatives in it and it wasn’t organic. Blech.

a blog by Marie Lee

For you ladies who chart, you know your hope can rise and fall like the stock market according to those eensy-weensy, maddening tenths of a degree.

The Oracle of the basal thermometer can hint to you: Luteal phase defect! Anovulation! Spleen chi deficiency! When the thermometer is nice to you, it can give you a feeling of achievement—nice post-ovulation spike, etc.

When I was writing an article for Natural Health on drug-free fertility, I’d been given some charting software to try and found it fun to see a history. I’d bring in the charts to my acupuncturist and we could see if the treatment was working or not (it was!)

My obsession, however, began was when I was newly pregnant (i.e., three days late on my period, + pregnancy test). I knew that a drop in temp meant progesterone was pooping out and the bloody Sunday (or Monday, or Tuesday, etc.) of a miscarriage was coming.

This is when the tyranny of the thermometer begins. Instead of being an informational tool, it becomes something further to stress about. Now, in addition to the temptation to peek at the tissue every time I’d go to the bathroom, I’d find myself checking my temps five times a day! I cheered when it was still high; felt depressed and disappointed when it was not.

The other problem, as a reader of GreenFertility wrote, is that the temps aren’t always accurate. Her case in point? She got pregnant on a month when she thought she’d “missed” her fertile days according to the old thermometer.

For me, I’d find a morning temp that barely made it past 97 degrees (a vigorous, post-ovulation temp should be above 98). As I cursed the beeping telling me the reading was done, I decided to try an experiment: instead of being mad at the thermometer, mad at my body, mad at my hectic schedule, I relaxed and thought happy, fun thoughts. Nothing deep, but lo and behold the temp actually started rising. And not just going from 97.04 to 97.05, it was like the little engine that could. It climbed and climbed to the promised land of 98 and even a little over. And then it beeped again. I didn’t even know it could take second readings. I’ve tried this trick several times, especially when I feel cold and sluggish. There IS a mind/body component to all this.

So the lesson is, don’t let your mood be dictated by the little digital numbers on your basal thermometer! You take charge of your mood and outlook, the rest will follow. Unless you like being pushed around by an inanimate pink and purple wand.

Your fertility is something to be loved and nurtured like a GREEN garden, not something to be bludgeoned, bullied, and terrorized into doing your bidding (or vice versa).