Fertility and the First 1,000 Days

In today's episode, Katy discusses the small but mighty nutrient iodine. She reveals the system in the body that completely relies upon this mineral, and why getting the balance right is SO important, particularly for people with Hashimotos.

WAYS THAT YOU CAN GET KATY'S HELP:

Fertility and the First 1,000 Days Membership:

https://katybradburyhealth.thrivecart.com/fertility-and-the-first-1000-days/

Fundamentals for Fertility online course:

https://katybradburyhealthltd.vipmembervault.com/products/courses/view/1130954/?action=signup

Book a discovery call to talk through your needs for working together 1:1:

https://p.bttr.to/378gAXH

More info can be found about Katy on her website:

https://katybradbury.com/ 

Instagram: 

https://www.instagram.com/katybradburyhealth

Email:

[email protected] 

Love the show? Don't forget to leave a star rating and a review to share the love and help it reach others who need to hear this!

Today, Katy makes some reflections on the podcast and her current practice, and discusses how widening out her focus to Women's Health can better serve YOU. During the episode she reveals her brand new comprehensive fertility service, which is designed to be a one-stop shop for fertility support, supporting you to reach your goal sooner than ever.

00:00

Hello, I am Katie Bradbury, a registered nurse, and nutritional therapist. Today's podcast episode is called, why I'm branching away from fertility, and how I can still help you.

00:27

So hello, hello. Welcome to today's episode, I'm really happy to be back for the second week on the trot after having a bit of an extensive period where I was getting quite sporadic with my podcast episodes, and what I wanted to do today, as I alluded to last week is just to come and chat to you, I guess a bit of a behind the scenes chat to just fill you in. Because I know that I've got a number of listeners who are really regular listeners to the show and who really enjoy it. I've had quite a few people get in touch to kind of ask about the absence of episodes when things had slowed down a bit. And I think what I realised is that part of the reason that I hadn't been coming to record the podcast every week is because I was just I don't know, I was finding that there was a resistance there. And usually, when we find some resistance in our lives, it's really worth actually sitting down with that and exploring it a little bit and hadn't had the chance to do that I was just it was just coming under the kind of the excuse, I guess of like, Oh, I've just been really busy. As you know, the summer has been really busy. But then, of course, the summer came and went and I was still putting off doing the podcast whereas actually, it used to be something that really lit me up. It used to be something that I used to really look forward to coming and doing. And I do, I enjoy coming into the studio at the bottom of the garden and making myself a cup of tea and coming and chat chatting to all of you, I really do. And so I was a bit puzzled as to why I was putting things off. And so this is what I'm here to talk to you about today. And I'm going to spend the episode just having a little chat through where I'm at at the moment. So it's a bit of a self-indulgent episode but hopefully, I'll just help you to make sense of things for where I'm at just now. And what it's made me realise is that I need to switch up the way of doing things a little bit. So what I've come to tell you today is just a little bit more info on where I'm going to be going next in terms of the services that I'm offering to you. So don't feel disheartened. Please, please listen on, I'm not saying that I'm packing in my fertility work at all. Very, very different to that. In fact, I'm figuring out a way to make it more comprehensive than it's ever been. But do stick around and listen to the episode I hope that you can join me today in whatever you're doing whether you're out for a walk or cooking or you know walking the dog or doing some chores or in the car or on your commute. Just settle in and have a little listen because I realised actually that I'm coming up to my two-year anniversary of when I set up my limited company Katie Bradbury Health. And although I was practising before that the birth of Katie Bradbury Health was really when I started to put my energy into supporting people in my private practice as opposed to anything else. So um, so that's kind of what my main focus has been for the last two years now.

04:26

My when back then in November 2020. My own fertility journey was still so raw, then actually and I'd, I'd not long had had my second child who I'm, you know, extremely blessed to have had. So she was born in June 2020. And then in November so when I set up as Katy Bradbury Health as I say my own fertility was just really still quite raw in. And for anyone who doesn't know about my own fertility journey that there is a previous episode, I can't remember what number it is off the top of my head, but I'll link to it in the show notes. So if anyone just want to go back and listen to my story, who doesn't already know it do, do go back and listen to that, because I go into the backstory a bit there. So if you're interested, you can do that.

05:33

But I so really still quite raw from my own fertility journey. And what I was determined to do then was help as many people as I could. And so I was at the end of embarking in a year-long programme that specialised or that taught me exclusively about fertility nutrition. So it was really so I was already you know, a nurse, I was already a nutritional therapist, I already specialised in women's health, I'd already got, you know, eight years of clinical experience by then, but this additional year's training was solely on fertility, male and female side, you know, fertility is a is an all-encompassing topic and looking at the underlying causes. And I was really determined, to specialise in fertility and to help as many people as I could, what I didn't realise two years on, is that I would end up holding the space for quite as many people, as I do, and that's an amazing thing, right? You know, I'm, I'm doing what I set out to do, which is helping as many people as I could. But what's happened recently is I've been feeling a little bit depleted. And I think that part of it seasonal, you know, of course, I think as we move away from the summer, that it's natural at this time of year, isn't it for your energy to shift. But part of it is because and this is, this might sound a little bit dramatic, but, hopefully, you can understand and, I will explain a bit further. But part of it is because for every person that I speak to who is struggling with their fertility, and whether that's, you know, an intensive one-to-one client, whether it's people who are in my membership, and that I support as a group, whether it's people in my Facebook group, whether it's people that reach out to me on the DM'S and Instagram, whether it's people who I speak to in this podcast, whether it's people who I indirectly work with, through a company in the states who I do some clinical mentorship for, it's, you know, there's a lot of people out there, and for each of those, and this is I don't mean for this to sound dramatic, but this is just the impact in me. But for a little, for each of those people, a little piece of me goes with them. And it's because it's a topic that I care so much about. It's very, very difficult to be really boundaries and to just leave that behind at the door, right? And so, what happened recently a couple of weeks ago, is I was at a bit of a crescendo, I guess, with quite a few people, you know, these journeys, of course, they ebb and flow, right? And so, sometimes you're up sometimes you're down. And the thing is, it's such a long journey, in a lot of cases, because lots of the people who come to me have actually got some really complex stuff going on. And it's not instantaneous, you know, it takes, can take time. And so the journey can last quite a long time. And then even when, you know, if a pregnancy does occur, it's not always all sunshine and roses, it's then Oh, hang on, we need to wait at least three months now before we can actually relax and then even then it can feel worrisome. So as I say, it's difficult to kind of be boundaries and leave that behind. And whilst I have got a lot better with my boundaries, in terms of I don't know, you know, being very clear in the way that I respond to people. It doesn't, you can't just leave, leave the emotional aspect of that out and so what happened a few weeks ago, is a few, I had a few people in my world who had you know, were coming to a bit of a kind of a crescendo whether that's, you know, they had IVF going on, or they've been pregnant, you know, they got pregnant, but that had a history of miscarriage and you know, there were quite a few people that I was talking to and it was quite intense and I was quite anxious for all of these people and I started in one of my journaling practices, I started writing out a prayer. And I started writing out a prayer for and it started just fit for each of these, I think there were about five people who one of them is a close friend.

10:16

And, you know, it's, it's I, as I said, one of them was like, in and out of hospital whos a client. And so I started writing about this prayer. And in this prayer, I, you know, I was asking for each of these people to get what they say, wanted, I was asking that, you know, that these, these IVF cycles would be successful, or that they, these pregnancies would work out. And I wrote, I wrote quite detailed messages in this in this letter, in this prayer. And then it all started spilling out. And I ended up then starting to think about other people who weren't kind of in this it sense of immediacy, you know, who didn't actively have this stuff going on, but who were still in my world and that I was supporting. And so I just carried on writing. And I carried on writing and writing and writing and pages later. And lots of names and lots of hopes and wishes and prayers later, I and I hadn't even stopped you know, I was full flow and I just realised my goodness, no wonder I'm feeling a bit on edge recently, because I'm holding this, right? And this isn't me being dramatic, by the way, because I have every, I completely know that it's far, far more intense for you than it ever could be for me. But a lot of it is, there's an element of kind of, and again, this sounds very dramatic, but it's just me being completely open, there's an element of, of re-traumatising there, because it's so close to my own heart in that I went through this myself, even though I'm so blessed and thankful to be on the other side of that. These are all feelings that I hold inside me because I've seen them and I felt them. And so I wrote out this prayer, I just realised like, gosh, okay, I'm holding this for a lot of people. And I realised in writing out this prayer that I can't actually keep going in the same way that I am, I can't, I can't keep going like this, because I really want the people who I am committed to, to get the absolute best of me. And that's not just my clients, and, the people that I speak to about their fertility journeys. But my family, my friends, and of course me, you know, I want me to get the best of me too. And then also very recently, sadly, my neighbour died. And it was really sad. He was, you know, any death is sad, of course. But he, you know, he left behind a wife and two twin boys, not young boys, not young at all, you know, they're at university now, but it's still really a really, really tragic loss. And it just, losses that are so close to home, really, really do make you reflect on how short and how precious life is. And so, you know, I want as I say, I want everyone in my world to get the best of me and I want me to get the best of me I want to be the best, the best I can be for everyone. And so I realised this is very self-indulgent podcast. But as I say, I think it's really important that I speak about this because this is the reality.

14:13

So what I found naturally recently over the last few months is that I've started attracting people coming to me for supporting me with other aspects of women's health, not just fertility. So I've had people coming to me to support them with the hormonal roller coaster, that's perimenopause. And even you know, lots of my, some of my current and former clients are also navigating peri-menopause. So it's kind of been an area that I've been quite interested in. And, also I've had some people coming to me for help with their Hormonal Health, or their women's health issues who aren't actually trying to conceive it's, it's just they just want to, they want to help regulate their cycles and to just feel as good as they possibly can. And as I say, for people who are coming to me for things around their Hormonal Health, it is about helping them to feel as good as they possibly can and to help them enjoy their lives and to do what they want to do with flow and with joy. And helping people like that as like a bit of a balance, it really helps to restore my battery as a practitioner and as a person, because the focus isn't entirely dependent on this thing happening, that they're so desperate for, and that I can remember so clearly and vividly how desperate it feels. So it's helped me to feel that bit more balanced. And when I've reflected on this, what I realised is that actually, what I do is the same regardless, because, in terms of my approach, there's no, there's no fertility, you know, there's no magic approach that's specialist to fertility. And then another approach that specialists for people who are struggling with their hormones that don't want to conceive. There's no you know, there's no different approach for people who want help with their perimenopause, for example, or their post-menopause. You it's all the same? Well, it's not all the same, because it's, the point is, it's different for everybody. But what is the same is investigating the underlying drivers. And that's different for everybody. So what is the same is that you know, someone comes to me with X, Y, Z. And typically, the thing with our hormones and our reproductive system is that it is essentially it's like an extra vital sign, right? Because our reproductive health is often a reflection of what is going on with the rest of our health. And of course, some things are unavoidable, you know, there is no stopping the menopause. Of course, it looks different for everybody, and it happens at a different time for everybody. But in essence, there are fundamental things that are the same regardless. And so reproductive health in general, is, is really what I'm passionate about. And that that's, you know, that's not, that's not bound by just being fertility or just being perimenopause or anything like that. So it's, it's made me realise that I just need to have that little bit of balance. And this, what I'm about to say is why you don't need to worry. Because if you're listening to this thinking, Oh, my goodness, you know, it, especially if you're a current client or someone who's in my world, at the moment, it doesn't mean that I'm gonna dump you don't worry. It just means that I'm going to be changing the way that I work a little bit. And so if you are already a client, that absolutely we will carry on working together in the same way that we have that will not change. But in terms of the way that I do things now. I'm going to be changing slightly and particularly for fertility clients. What I've been reflecting on as well is how, not reflecting on but thinking hard about is how I can really, really accelerate people's results and maximise their chances of success. Because I'm, I'm at the end of the day, I'm a lone practitioner, right? And without tooting my own horn, I'm a good practitioner, I'm comprehensive, I'm very well informed, I'm well educated, I've got good clinical experience, etc, etc. So, as far as practitioners go, I, you know, I know that I'm a good practitioner, but I'm only one person. And what I know and what I teach, of course, if you've been in my world a little while, you'll know this, is it can't just be one thing, right? So if we're just focusing on nutrition alone and nothing else, it's not going to be anywhere near as effective as if we do things in a really comprehensive way.

19:41

So if we were combining the nutrition piece, with the investigations into underlying causes, which again, it's another big part of the way I work in my one-to-one practice, but you know not everyone I work with does get that kind of really digging into the underlying causes. And that's, that's either because, you know, they don't want to, or they don't have the funds to look at that. But certainly, the people that I support on a group level, don't get that, because it's so it's general support is not personalised. But then, so there's the nutrition piece, there's the investigations piece, there's, but then there are these whole two other pieces, which are really significant, which is movement, which is huge, you know, really really important. And then there's the stress side, okay. Now, I do talk about movement, a lot, I advise on movement. But at the end of the day, I'm not a qualified personal trainer, I'm not qualified in any kind of physical therapy at all right, or movement. So I can advise, you know, and my advice is, usually make sure you are moving, and you know, do something you love, you know, doing anything that you love is better than doing nothing in the movement front. I often advocate strength training as well. But I can't go away and give you a strength workout to do, because I'm not qualified to do that. And the other side is stress. And again, I do everything I can to help buffer people's stress levels, I try my best to create a really nurturing and supportive environment. So my sessions are, my one-to-one sessions are, I'd like to think quite therapeutic. And I have my membership for that group-level peer support. And I have my Facebook group. And I have people within my online programmes, I have a number of tools, videos, workshops, etc, that can help with the stress side. But again, I'm not qualified in any additional modalities that help with the stress piece. So what I am really blessed with over the last few years is that I've really built up an incredible network. And I've been fortunate to meet some amazing practitioners on my journey. And so what I want to do now, in terms of the fertility package that I offer, for one-to-one work is to bring it all together into a really comprehensive package. And what that will look like is essentially I'm going to be getting a team of people together, to help me to actually carry out this really important work in the most effective, and the best possible way where you're getting everything all together in like a really nourishing and nurturing package. So I've spoken to a number of practitioners, and I got some incredible people on board. And so what I want to be offering now, moving forward for my one-to-one work, yes, for my, for my one-to-one work is you will be seeing one of my team, one of my fertility nutritionists who have got the exact same fertility, nutrition training as I have and who have been seeing clients in the same way that I do, because there is a group of us. And we're all amazing, even if I do say so myself. So you will be seeing one of my team of amazing fertility nutritionists. For your nutrition support, you will be getting included, so rather than having all of the testing done separately, the tests that you need will be included in the package. So everyone that comes on board will have these tests done, that will start to look into the underlying causes, because the way I describe the fertility of the reproductive health piece, is that you need it.

24:31

In order to make a healthy baby. It's like a chain of events has to happen, okay? And this chain of events is quite comprehensive. And there's a lot that has to go right in order for a successful pregnancy and a healthy baby to come out the other side of that. So what we're doing is within this chain of events through doing this testing and through investigating the underlying drivers for you as an individual is we are looking for any gaps across that chain? Okay? Because it is a game of odds at the end of the day. And so if we can find where your gaps are in the chain that is your life and your health and all of the systems in your body that are connected, then we can, we can then plug those gaps, we can find what your unique gaps are, we plug each of those gaps, and then we can move forward. And so each gap that you're plugging is increasing your chances of things going, right? Okay? So, um, so it's going to include the testing, it's going to include the nutrition side, and the personalised supplements that will help, be helping to plug those gaps. But then you will also be working with a fertility specialist personal trainer, who will be so so she works on an app. And so she will get you onto her app, and then you get regular fertility-focused exercise routines, just for you to do you get interactions with her, there's a little community on there as well. So you get the movement side incorporated into your programme as well. You also get so, also onboard is a wonderful hypnotherapist that I've been doing some work with, um, I'm not giving any names out at the moment because we're still in the final, the final stages of planning here. But I'm just letting you know what will be involved. So you will also then get a package of hypnotherapy with this fertility-focused hypnotherapist and that can be focused around natural conception and also that it can have some focus on IVF if you're on that journey. And so that then is an incredibly powerful combination, because we're doing the investigations. So we're doing the digging to look at you and the messages that your body is giving us so that we can then plug those gaps. You've got a specialist nutritionist that's giving you your tailored protocols and your tailored advice and supporting you through actually making the changes to your nutrition and lifestyle that will help to plug those gaps that we find. You've got the movement, so you've got this support from a personal trainer who is very well notified in fertility. So you've got support from her as well to get the movement side in. And then you've got this hypnotherapy support as well, which is really then focusing in not just on the stress piece, but on that subconscious piece as well. And working through some of that. So it's going to be really, really comprehensive programme. And far, far more than the sum of its parts, okay? So this is what I'm going to be delivering now. And it's you know, that is what is going to be available for people coming to me, as you know, the top level of support that we can offer. So you know, there can be varieties of this as well. But this is what I want to offer people so that we are really doing everything we can to maximise the chances of this healthy pregnancy happening, which is ultimately what you're wanting if you're listening to this. So as for this podcast, I did talk at the beginning about the podcast and kind of how all of this was started by me reflecting on why I'd been a bit resistant to recording some of the podcast episodes.

28:58

What I'm likely to do is continue recording for the rest of this year, for the rest of 2022 and finish the micronutrient series that I've been involved in quite a few of you have been enjoying that so far. So I'm really glad about that, that you've been finding that helpful. But for 2023, I'm going to butterfly out a bit. So I'm going to start talking about I'm going probably actually change the fertility in the first 1000 days podcast, I'm probably going to actually start a new podcast with a different title. And this will still be here, don't worry, all of these episodes will still be here and I can still direct people back to particular episodes that will be helpful for them. So this will always be here as a resource for you. But I'm going to probably talk, start a new podcast that's talking about women's health more broadly. Because as I say there is so much the same when it comes to women's health in terms of addressing the underlying causes. So what I don't want to do because my passion really is women's health and family health across the board. I don't want to alienate anyone or leave anyone out by just focusing on fertility. And especially because lots of the people who have been my clients who have, have needed help with their fertility and then, like me have come out of the other side of that journey. Lots of people actually then want ongoing support. They want the support with navigating their pregnancies. They then want support with like the crazy ride, that is parenthood, they want the support with perimenopause. And so I'm really here for all of that. And so, as I say, I'm probably going to be branching out to talk a little bit more about women's health in general, and the other thing, of course, is that if you are on a fertility journey, yes, of course, that is like your massive focus, and it can be really difficult to find anything else. But such a significant part of that journey for me, and what made it so traumatic, is because I was focused on that, above anything else. And I was not putting myself first, I was not thinking about all of the things that I could be enjoying, and feeling, gratitude and love towards in my own life, all I could do was everything on this thing that wasn't happening. And so lots of what I talk about in my group is around that is around, finding you, again, actually, and who you are, as a person, as a woman. And the things, you know, focusing in on the things that do light you up. And so I really do want to explore that side of things a little bit more within, within the things that I talked about in the in the show, as well. So that is my plan. If you have listened all the way to the end, thank you so much for sticking with me. I know I've wittered on. But I'm very, very excited about my slightly new way of working, I'm really excited about this new package that I'm going to be offering for one-to-one clients, that is going to be just so comprehensive. And really just trying to you know, move through this process as quickly as you can and actually get your baby you know, as quick as we can. And of course, as I say it's for some people, it is a slow process. And there's nothing we can do about that. But I'm really confident that this new package is going to be helping people in the most comprehensive way. So that's it for me today. Thank you for listening. I'd love to know if you've got any thoughts. Excuse me, please do share. drop me an email. I love hearing from people listeners of the show, drop me an email on [email protected]. If you are listening, and you're thinking actually, yes, that programme does absolutely sound like a bit of what I need right now. Please do get in touch. I'm not taking bookings for it at the moment. But hopefully, we'll be up and running with this new programme imminently. So if you want to be one of the first people to actually benefit from that, then do drop me an email at [email protected] as for my other offerings. I still do have my Facebook group fertility in the first 1000 days. So if you want to come along and join that, please do and I also have what else do I have? I also have my membership in which we meet every Wednesday at 5 pm UK time. And so if you want to come and really get involved in that peer support, then you know, please, please do drop me an email and I can tell you a bit more about that as well.

33:58

All right, have a lovely, lovely week everyone. I will be back next time to carry on with the micronutrient mini-series and continue to talk to you about the minerals that are really important for reproductive health. Take care bye bye.

WAYS THAT YOU CAN GET KATY'S HELP:

Fertility and the First 1,000 Days Membership: Fertility and the First 1,000 Days Membership

Fundamentals for Fertility online course: 12-Week Fundamentals for Fertility Course with Katy Bradbury (evergreen)

Book a discovery call to talk through your needs for working together 1:1: Practice Better

More info can be found about Katy on her website: https://katybradbury.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katybradburyhealth

Email: [email protected]

Love the show? Don't forget to leave a star rating and a review to share the love and help it reach others who need to hear this!

Today, Katy discusses the minerals potassium and sodium, with regard to their utmost important functions in the body. Whilst these minerals may not directly be linked to fertility, you'll find out why they are so important for everyone to be thinking about, as well as the reason they are so imbalanced in the modern Western diet.

00:00

Hello, you are listening to Katy Bradbury, a registered nurse and nutritional therapist. Today's podcast episode is called the micronutrient series, macro minerals, part three.

00:15

So that is a bit of a mouthful, the micros and the macros. And it has been a little while since I released an episode. I did mention in the last episode, why some of my podcast recordings have been a little bit more sporadic recently. And it's a lot of it is around perhaps wanting to switch things up a little bit. Now just to give you a little update on where I'm at with that, because I've been getting my thinking cap on for the last few weeks about how I might best address this because I don't want to have fallen out of love with my podcast, you know, this is a passion project, for me. It's something that my listeners really value. And so I've been trying to get my head around the best ways that I can serve you as my listener using this podcast as a platform, whilst also meeting my own needs, frankly, and keeping it as something that I actually really enjoy doing. And I look forward to doing it. So I will come and talk to you probably in the next episode about some of my thoughts around that. But for today, I wanted to just continue and finish off within the micronutrient series that I've been doing. So back earlier, in the summer, I decided that actually it probably be really helpful to talk about some of the micronutrients in a little bit more detail as to their importance for health and well-being and particularly of course, around fertility. So I have been doing that and I've covered the vitamins so far. So if you are a new listener, or you're a regular listener, although my episodes haven't been regular recently, if you are a devout listener, I should say then you might want to go back and just revise some of those because some of those particularly the vitamins that we've been through so far, is really really important to understand in the context of reproductive health. So do go back and give those a listen. But I wanted to cover today the last in macro minerals, if you like which are, I guess four of the main minerals that our body uses. Now, I covered in the last two episodes, magnesium super duper important mineral and as I said in that episode, magnesium is probably the most nutritional therapy if you ask them what their favourite mineral is, and yes, that is a valid question. Most would probably start spouting off about magnesium because it is just such an important nutrient. But today, I wanted to talk to you about two together. And I did talk about calcium, of course last, last episode as well. So do go back and listen to those. But today I'm going to cover sodium and potassium in one go. And that's because it's very difficult to talk about one without the other. And what I think you'll probably learn from this episode, and it's going to be a fairly quick episode actually because the sodium I know that most people are listening to this because they're really keen to hear about the way things might impact their fertility and their reproductive health. Now, there are not really links as such around sodium and potassium directly to fertility. But they are essential, essential minerals for human health. And they are essential because they are involved intricately or inextricably, I should say, in homeostasis. And homeostasis is really the narrow balance that our body needs to be in, in order to stay alive. And so you know, with that in mind, it is, it is important to all aspects of our health. So I'm just going to briefly give a summary today about sodium and potassium and how we might be able to think of them in the context of our health and our diet. So sodium, first of all, is essentially salt, so sodium and chloride together, equal salt.

05:22

And so is one of those things that has had a bit of a bad rap over the years. And it's been, it's hard to the finger pointed at it for, you know, risks of hypertension, which is high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease. So we're going to talk about sodium and potassium today in the context of blood, high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease risk because it's a really important one to understand. And this might be ringing bells for you, if perhaps if you have high blood pressure or cardiovascular disease running in your family, and it might be ringing bells for you if you've had genetic testing done. And some of the genes have come up for you, which puts you at higher risk of some of those. It might be that you have had a previous pregnancy, where you had issues come up with your blood pressure or had something like pre-eclampsia during pregnancy. And so that might be why alarm bells come up for you at the mention of blood pressure. Um, but sodium is it's an electrolyte. And so what that means and there are other minerals that are electrolytes too, potassium is one of the other major ones. But magnesium and some of the other ones that I have spoken about, and will talk about are also electrolytes. But typically speaking, we talk about sodium and potassium as being some of the key electrolytes in the body. And what electrolyte means is that it has an electric charge, guess what? our bodies need electrical charges, in order to function because we need to be able to create energy. And you know, our hearts, for example, our heart conduction requires electricity, you know it, it requires an electrical charge, in order for it to actually beat. So. So as i say really, really important just in this context of staying alive and maintaining homeostasis. So sodium is an electrolyte it has this electrical charge, and sodium and potassium have this electrical charge at a cellular level. And so every single cell in our bodies has got pumps, essentially. So, so pumps on in and out of the cell, that are designed purely for managing the traffic of sodium and potassium in and out of the cell. Because sodium is mostly supposed to be outside of the cell, and potassium is mostly supposed to be inside of the cell, sometimes they can get muddled up and that balance can get shifted in the wrong direction. So these pumps have to work hard to make sure all the time, that they are in the right place so that they're not causing havoc, because that would be dangerous. So this is what's happening at a cellular level all the time. Now sodium is also linked with fluid balance. And so sodium is connected with our kidneys and our renal function. And it's involved in our ability to wee. And you might, you know, weeing might just seem so fundamental, such a kind of everyday occurrence that you don't really think about. But again, it's an essential part of our health, not just because it's excreting things that we don't want to be in our body anymore. It's one of the modes of excretion alongside pooing and sweating and various other things, but it's and breathing, but it's also maintaining that, that really important fluid balance in the body. So blood pressure and fluid balance, again, are inextricably connected because our blood pressure is, our blood is fluid, right? And so the pressure of our blood in our body needs to be maintained by sodium and also by potassium.

09:54

So sodium, as I say, does get a bit of a bad rap for being responsible you know there's again a massive drive perhaps in the 70s. As this science emerged in the connection between sodium and blood pressure emerged around having high blood pressure and having cardiovascular disease and a high salt diet. So lots of people went full pelt the other way. And this is the same with fat. And this is one of the things that I talk about a lot is the fat piece, we're not going to go into that today. But this kind of this notion that all fat is bad, it's complete rubbish. But that's, that's a topic for another day. But salt got a bad rap because of this association. And so then lots of people ran, you know, the other way, and it's low salt, this low salt that must include salt in my diet. But again, guess what? Salt is really important. So then subsequently, there is a bunch of research that came out, that showed that actually people who had like, low salt in their urine, because that's a marker of seeing how much salt is in the body. Were also at risk of these cardiovascular events and cardiovascular disease and hypertension. So just like with everything else, and I feel like a bit of a broken record here, it has to be in the right balance. So salt, if we think about the typical Western diet, I guess, the take home message here, and I'm not going to start talking about how many milligrammes of salt you should be having, because actually, I think that that kind of information can be really unhelpful. And what that does is adhere to this one size fits all approach for health, which actually just, it just is simply not true. Essentially, I guess what my advice would be to you, if you did want to consider this is just this notion that most people in the Western world, the majority of the salt, the majority of their sodium intake, comes from refined and processed foods, right. And refined and processed foods are laden with refined salt, which is also full of loads of additives and undesirable things. So most people in the Western world would benefit from significantly reducing the amount of processed foods that they're eating. And then so if you move away from processed foods, and move towards whole home cooked foods, then you're naturally going to be drastically reducing your sodium intake, at which point, you can safely be including non refined salt in the food that you're cooking. So, you know, again, it's really about balance. So it's that that's really the principle that I would be teaching here is really trying to move away or significantly reduce those processed foods, and then including some, some unrefined salt, so not like your typical table salt, you know, again, that's, that's kind of heavily processed, and has lots of undesirable additives in it. But just like, you know, a good quality sea salt, you can't go wrong, really. So adding, adding that into the food that you're making at home, then you know, fine, do it. Now, of course, this is different for everyone. You know, if you have got hypertension, if you're on blood pressure medication or anything like that, these you know, these recommendations probably need to be made more personalised to you. But for the for the Average Joe for kind of, you know, a healthy member of the population at reproductive age, which is what this podcast is aimed at essentially, then that that would be a good idea. So moving on, oh, and just a couple of other notes about sodium is just to say that if you you know, things that might be reducing your your sodium or increasing your sodium output would be things like sweating. So if you're really active if you work out a lot, if you're just one of those people like me that sweats a lot naturally.

14:34

If you if you like wee a lot if you have frequent loose bowel movements. Even if you purge, then you might need to consider replacing some of the lost fluids and salts or if you live in a hot country, you might need to consider replacing lost fluids and lost souls. So those are just some of the things to consider when it comes to sodium.

15:00

Potassium. So again, as I say potassium, it goes hand in hand with sodium. So also an electrolyte works with sodium, as I say, in every cell in the body. And, you know, through via the sodium and potassium pumps in the cells to make sure that the balance is right. So really, really important. And really, one of the big themes that we see here, in terms of maintaining that homeostasis, maintaining that healthy body, maintaining a healthy blood pressure and, and reducing cardiovascular disease, one of the big themes and part of the reason that cardiovascular disease has been on the rise is because, again, a lot of the modern Western diets does have, does include these diets that are really high in processed foods that by proxy contains lots of refined salt. And then they are also diets that are very low or a lot lower than they should be in things like fresh fruits and vegetables, which would be containing the potassium. So potassium is widely found in the Fruit and Vegetable world, but not in that high an amount. So you do need to have a diet that is really abundant in plant foods, in fruits and vegetables, in order to actually make sure that you're getting enough, you know, covering your basic needs for potassium. And if you're not, so if you're not eating as much fruit and veg as you need, and you are eating refined, processed foods that contain lots of salt, then the combination of those two things is going to be increasing your risk of cardiovascular disease, right. And so I know that this has turned into an episode that is talking about cardiovascular disease and not fertility. But as I always talk about, there are so many moving parts when it comes to reproductive health, that we need to make sure that this ground work, this is a part of our foundation, right? This is a foundational piece when it comes to health. And if this part of our body is out of whack, if our blood pressure is through the roof, and we're battling with, you know, with a metabolic imbalance, that means that we're at risk of cardiovascular disease, our body is going to be focusing on that, our body is going to be focusing on desperately trying to maintain the homeostasis and not perhaps going to be prioritising as much the reproductive health because it's got other things to be worrying about. So that's mostly what I have to say about those two, to be honest, sorry, it's not more linked to fertility. But you know, I didn't want to just leave them out because they are so important. So I just thought I'd include them and talk about them in that context. So in terms of where we can find potassium, as I say, they are available in lots of different fruit and veggies. But check this. So in order to get like your really basic needs for potassium a day, you're looking at, if we take leafy greens, which are some of the highest sources of potassium, we need to have between three and five cups a day of leafy greens, right to get our basic needs for potassium. So as I say, lots of other foods do contain potassium. So celery is a really nice one. And if you want to give your body a really nice boost of potassium, then juicing celery is a really nice idea. That's like a nice way to get that potassium boost. Potatoes contain some potassium, bananas are like the classic one people think about with regards to potassium. And really, the truth is, as I say, there are lots and lots of foods like fruits and vegetables generally do contain potassium, but just in small amounts. So we need to make sure that we've got lots and lots, this is why we talk about, you know, 10 plus portions of fruit and vegetables a day, in order to actually meet your micronutrient needs. So this is, this is a part of that this is a part of the picture. And part of the reason that people like me are always banging on about getting enough of the fresh food, the fruit and vegetables in your diet.

19:16

So that's it. That is it from the episode today. Thank you for bearing with me, as I say it's a little bit of a diversion from exclusively talking about fertility today. But, you know, we all know someone, don't we either through that we're related to or just through people that we know, that have got high blood pressure or who are suffering from cardiovascular disease. And so this is never more prominent than it is now today because cardiovascular disease is one of the biggest killers and for women, for people with ovaries who are listening to the show. I know that right now your focus might really be on fertility and reproductive health. But if we fast forward a few years down the line into those Peri and post-menopausal years, which is something that will happen, it's an inevitable part of life. Really, it's cardiovascular disease, post-menopausal, that is the biggest killer for women. And it's to do with the impact that our hormones have, or the lack of oestrogen and progesterone having a protective role to play in terms of our cardiovascular health, that puts us at greater risk of cardiovascular disease later down the line. So, I know that you might not be thinking about this now. But if we're thinking about future proofing, then what you do now with regards to reducing your risk of cardiovascular disease, that's what matters for the future. So, I'm not trying to scare monger you know, it's just to say that this stuff is important, wherever you are, whatever kind of health journey you're on, you know, minimising your risk of cardiovascular disease is an important message for everyone to receive. So thank you. Thank you so much. It's nice, actually, to be back, and back on the mic and talking to you. So thanks for listening. And I will be back next time. I'll probably have a little just bit of a meander podcast episode next time and give you some of my musings about where I'm at with regards to the podcast and what my plans for the future are. And then I'll probably spend the rest of the year. Then just finishing up on the micronutrients and going through some of the other really important minerals because although these four, the sodium, potassium, magnesium and calcium, that I've just covered are as I say that the kind of the macro minerals. By macro, I mean that we have them in, we need them in milligrams rather than micro grammes. The micro minerals, the smaller ones that we need to trace amounts of they are really, really important too. So, you'll find out about those in the subsequent episodes that I will cover across the rest of the year. So, thank you, again, really lovely speak to you. If you've got any feedback about the podcast, of course, do drop me an email on [email protected], give me a few stars give me a rating. I always love to hear from you. Of course, you can always come and join my free Facebook group as well. Fertility and the first 1000 days, or if something in this episode has spurred you to think, I really need a bit of extra support with this stuff. I don't really know what I'm doing or I'm worried about my health. I'm worried about my fertility and I really need some personalised guidance. Then you can use the link in the show notes in the description of the episode in whatever player you listen to on to book a 30-minute call with me to kind of talk through your needs and talk about what it would look like to work together on a one to one. So, thanks again and I will speak to you again soon. Take care.

WAYS THAT YOU CAN GET KATY'S HELP:

Fertility and the First 1,000 Days Membership: Fertility and the First 1,000 Days Membership

Fundamentals for Fertility online course: 12-Week Fundamentals for Fertility Course with Katy Bradbury (evergreen)

Book a discovery call to talk through your needs for working together 1:1: Practice Better

More info can be found about Katy on her website: https://katybradbury.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katybradburyhealth

Email: [email protected]

Love the show? Don't forget to leave a star rating and a review to share the love and help it reach others who need to hear this!

**COMPETITION TIME** - listen to the first 10 minutes of the episode to hear about the competition in more detail - or head straight to this link to enter! 

00:00

Hello, you are listening to Katy Bradbury nutritional therapist and registered nurse. Today's podcast episode is called The Micronutrients Series, Macro Minerals, Part 2.

00:15

So hello, and welcome to this week's episode, I really hope that you're doing well, I can't believe that we are now in September already. And I don't know about you, but it really feels like the season is changing already. I'm really noticing here in the UK anyway that the nights are starting to draw around now. We've seen a shift in the weather and you know, it's broken, finally. The drought has lifted a bit and we've seen some rain over the last week or so. So it really feels like there's quite a lot of change on the cards at the moment. So I'm feeling quite excited about that actually.

01:14

I'm continuing the episode today with the Micronutrient Series. So if you're a regular listener, then you will know that over the last few weeks with one or two things, intermittently, punctuating it, I've been doing a Mini series or not, not so mini series because there's a lot to cover on micronutrients. So I've covered the different vitamins so far from the fat soluble vitamins to the water soluble vitamins. And now I'm gradually working my way through the minerals. So i've been starting with what we call the macro minerals because there are four minerals that are just of upmost importance for the body when it comes to maintaining homeostasis and really needing to have tight levels, serum levels in the bloodstream of those vitamins so that so that we can stay alive actually so and we measure the macro. The reason I'm referring to them as the macro minerals is because we refer, we measure them in milligrammes or sometimes even grammes rather than micrograms. So we thought that those four would be a good place to start. Now, last week, I covered actually it wasn't last week, which I'll cut I'll come back to in just a moment. But last episode, I covered magnesium. Today, I am going to talk about calcium. And in the next episode, I will talk about the other two together in all likelihood, rather than doing an episode each on potassium, and sodium. So it might not feel like particularly exciting, but actually, feeding your knowledge with information on these micronutrients, and the role that they have to play in the body. Sometimes directly related to fertility and sometimes indirectly related, then it is really important to just help empower you. And to help you understand why some of the principles I talk about are so important. So when I talk about things like the Mediterranean diet, when I talk about things like including a range of, you know, multicoloured, eating the rainbow, and all the different range of plant foods and eating enough protein, and all of these kinds of things i'm not just telling you those things for the fun of it. Part of that is because of the macronutrient content. And part of it is because eating a nutrient dense diet, like the covering the principles that I've just mentioned, will enable your body to get enough of the micronutrients that it's so needs in order to improve your fertility and make a baby ultimately.

04:13

So I wanted to before I actually get started on talking to you about calcium today, because I've got a few things that I wanted to share with you on calcium. I did just want to cover what I touched on very briefly there, which was that I didn't do an episode last week. And indeed, if you are a regular listener, you might have noticed that over the summer. These episodes have been a little bit sparse. They've been a little bit few and far between. Now, I'm going to be perfectly honest with you about this because, you know hopefully, if you have been listening for a little while then we've got to know each other and you know, you know that a lot of what I talk about is around being congruent and being true to yourself. And so I've been sort of making excuses over the summer of you know, or well, you know, it's the summer we going away, we've got this on, and we've got that on. And that's why I'm not recording a podcast episode this week. Actually, if I'm going to be really, really true to myself, a part of the reason that I haven't been recording the episodes as regularly as I have previously, is because in some ways, I feel like I've started falling out of love with the podcast.  Now, that's not because I don't enjoy coming to talk to you, I really, really do, I guess I feel in some ways that I might have lost my mojo with it a little bit and run out of steam. And so when I was thinking about that, because I actually feel sad about that. When I, you know, I've toyed with the idea of maybe stopping doing the podcast. But actually, I do think that would be a real shame, because the feedback that I have had from people is that most of my regular listeners do really love it. I guess how it feels, sometimes, if I'm going to completely put myself in a vulnerable position here is sometimes it feels when you're recording a podcast that you're just speaking to nobody. And I know that I've got some of my regular listeners. And that's great. Most of the people that I know, are my regular listeners are people who are already in other parts of my world. So there are people that I interact and engage with, either in my Facebook group fertility in the first 1000 days, or through working with them directly. So in my group work, like through my previous group programmes, or through my membership, which is also called fertility in the first 1000 days, all through direct one to one work. So I do connect with those people directly. And I'm so grateful to have them in my life, because you know that this is who I do it for right? I do it for you and to connect with you. Because I know exactly how difficult this journey can be. But I guess where it feels a little bit ungratifying is that I know there are lots of people out there that do listen, that I've never spoken to me that have never reached out. And it feels a bit like I'm talking to thin air sometimes in that respect. So what I would, what I was thinking about is, how can I get my mojo back with the podcast? And how can I get your mojo back as well, because you might even be feeling like, oh, you know, you know, it could be better, or, you know, I'd love to get a bit more on board with it or a bit more engaged with it, or even, you know, reach out to me to chat to me for the first time if you haven't before. So what I thought I would do, and I'm going to be running this over the next few weeks is, is do a little competition. And what the competition is going to involve, it's actually very exciting for you, because I'm giving away a huge amount of value in prizes. And is do a do a prize draw. So I'm going to be doing a prize draw. And in order to enter that prize draw, which is going to have hundreds of pounds worth of prizes to give out. In order to enter the prize draw, what I'd like you to do is fill in a feedback form for me. So I've created a Google form. And it's something like 10 questions, they're all pretty straightforward. There's nothing crazy in there, you can really put as much or as little as you want in them, obviously, the more the better. But you know, it shouldn't take you too long to complete. So it's 10 questions, and I'm going to pop the link to it in the episode description. So whatever platform you listen to the podcast on, you should be able to click on the episode to look at the description. And I will add the link there's a few links in there as well of like ways you can work with me and this kind of thing. But I will add in there the link to the competition and to the to the feedback form in order to enter the competition. And what that feedback form is gonna give me is a little bit of a contact with you with my listenership so that I can start to feel a bit more connected to you. Because my aim for this podcast and I hope that this is true and certainly the feedback I have had so far. This is the case for, is I want it to feel like I am sitting in your living room having a chat with you and having a heart to heart that's that is my goal for this podcast. It's also to provide information and empower you and all of the other stuff but you know the reason why I just do it is me talking to you is because I want you to feel connected to me because this is a field that I have committed years of my life too, and I want you to know that I see you and that you are not alone in your journey. So I'm hoping that if you are a regular listener, then you do feel connected to the podcast, you do feel connected to me in some way. And what I will get out of this feedback form is I get to then feel a bit more connected to you and understand you, my listeners a bit better. Now, I do also recognise that not all of my listeners are going to be people that are struggling with their fertility. Some of my listeners might be other practitioners, or might be just people who are interested or just like listening to podcasts or, you know, have a have a passion for women's health. So I really, really want to get a sense of what proportion of my listeners are other practitioners, what proportion are people that are just interested and enjoy listening to health podcasts, and what proportion of my listeners are actually people who are going through this fertility journey, and are benefiting from a bit more directly from the content of the episode. So whatever your status is, in terms of who you are, and why you listen, I really want to hear from you. So as I say, I'll send out the the form, the google form with the questions. And at the bottom of the form, you can enter your email address in order to win one of the three prizes. So the three prizes are, drumroll drrrrrrrrr, I need a little, I need a little pad, don't know which sounds but that's, that's my version number drumroll. So professional. So the three prizes are a one to one consultation with me. And that is actually worth £279. So that is huge value. And that is a 90 Minute initial consultation with me, one to one. And that what that will involve is me looking at you in more detail looking at all of the systems in your body, chatting through things in more detail with you. And at the end of that conversation, I can then give you some of my, my recommendations in terms of things that you could be doing to improve your circumstances, whatever they may be, probably helping with your fertility. So really helping to understand where some of the root causes might be and helping you to understand whether any additional testing might be helpful. I can also then give you a personalised supplement plan, and just really personalised recommendations on the things that I think based on my extensive clinical experience, you should be focusing on next in terms of improving your fertility. So that's worth £279. The second prize is my fundamentals for fertility online course. Now this is a DIY Do It Yourself course it consists of six modules designed to be undertaken over a 12 week period. And they cover gut health which is at the start, its got to be the foundation of all things with related to fertility. So it starts with gut health. It goes through fertility, like the nutrition for fertility, it goes through egg health and vaginal health goes through sperm health, it goes through discusses stress in great detail. And it also discusses lifestyle. So it's it's really comprehensive, it covers the six fundamental things that you need to be addressing in order to improve your fertility. So that is worth £149, you will get that for free. If you are one of the lucky three winners, or you if you if you, Yeah, so one of the prizes, not, Oh my goodness me I'm tripping over my words  now. Not all of the winners will get all three prizes. Of course one one winner will get one prize each. And so and then third and final prize is one month free trial in my fertility and the first 1000 days membership now that at the moment is still on the low cost offering of £50, the price will be going up soon because that is it's insane value for money, the £50 a month, but the one month free trial will be given to you absolutely free. And that is to come in to our membership, join our weekly support calls and get access to an online library of really practical resources of things that you can be doing to support your fertility. We also have a monthly guest expert coming in. And so we've got we've had a we've had a session on movement for fertility, we've had an amazing breathwork session, and we've got someone coming in to talk to us and help us do an audit of our sleep. Coming soon, we've also got a hypnotherapist coming in soon. So there's lots of exciting people coming in to talk to my members. So that's a really, really great offer as well. So those are the three prizes that you can win, I will put the link in both the show notes. So if you do have a look at the show notes on my website, then there'll be there and also in the description for the show.

15:22

So without further ado, I can now go ahead to actually talk to you about calcium. So I'm going to just have a little cheeky sip of water, I'm not going to bother pausing because you know me. Okay, so I have been talking really fast there because that was a lot of information that I wanted to cover without wasting too much of the episode. So what I want to talk to you about, I'm going to just slow down my pace a little bit now and slow down my thinking, and just consult with my notes here. So I've already mentioned at the very start of the episode that I am continuing now, with the macro minerals, which are magnesium, which I covered in the last episode, calcium, sodium and potassium. So calcium today I guess calcium, I wouldn't say it gets a bad rap because it doesn't get a bad rap. But it's not the most sexy of minerals. Put it that way. Like I think I mentioned last week or last episode, rather when I was talking about magnesium. That magnesium, if you ask any nutritionist what their favourite mineral is 90% of them are gonna say magnesium, because it's just so it's such an important one. And it helps so many people. And it's responsible for so many things. Now, calcium is so so important. But there are I don't know that there are many nutritionists out there where if you ask them what their favourite mineral was, and yes, that is a question that a nutritionist might ask each other. I doubt that anyone would say calcium. So it's not a sexy mineral, it's not like, it doesn't get a lot of attention these days. And so it's often then overlooked.

17:17

Now, although calcium status or calcium is a is a nutrient might not directly relate to fertility, it's really important to know that a growing baby and a nursing baby need it in abundance. So in order to grow a baby, you know, you need calcium. Now, the good thing is your body does have a lot of calcium, you know every body contains calcium in abundance. But that doesn't mean that it's available calcium flowing through the bloodstream, it means that the majority of the calcium in your body is locked up in the hard tissue so it's locked up in your bones and your teeth. And that's where it should be like your bones and your teeth need calcium in order to stay strong and dense. But what will happen if you're if you're if your blood levels if your serum levels of calcium are not high enough, and this is monitored very carefully and feedback loops in the body, if your body senses that there is not enough calcium in the bloodstream, it will leach calcium out of those hard tissues in order to bring the the serum levels of calcium up. And that's because as I said at the start of the episode, calcium is such an important mineral in terms of it's a life or death mineral right we need enough calcium in our bodies to stay alive. So it's as I say it's required for homeostasis. So what I mean by homeostasis is things like your blood pH volumes, your blood pressure, your heart conduction and so your blood levels as I say need to be the right range and if it's not if it gets low, then it will bleach the calcium from the bones if required. So whilst I don't worry that you, whilst it's not a matter of life or death for a grown baby in utero because the fact of the matter is if you're you know your baby will leach calcium from from your bones in order to grow in during pregnancy. And the same for nursing as well. You know breastfeeding can, requires calcium because you are probably aware that dairy milk is one of the biggest sources of calcium. So breast milk requires a lot of calcium too so whilst your breast milk is not going to be calcium deficient if you if you end up breastfeeding, and whilst you're, your baby is not going to not grow bones properly, if you don't have enough calcium in your blood, because it but it will take from you. So what it means is that you will become depleted, your bones will become less dense. And then what that does is put you at risk for a number of health conditions later in life. And especially for women, especially for people who menstruate later in life in those postmenopausal years, that is when you are at higher risk for osteoporosis and other conditions anyway. So this is something that we really need to be thinking about.

20:45

Now, I know that for a lot of my clients, and a lot of, probably a lot of people who listen to the podcast, you're not, you're so fixated on, you know this, this outcome of getting them so pregnant, that that is dominating a lot of your thoughts and your priorities. But I ask you to just when we're thinking about calcium is just to zoom out and take a bit of a macro view of the situation in terms of you as a person and your lifespan and health risks for the future. So as I say it doesn't directly relate to fertility as such. But what it does do and, I'll give an example, shortly of some of the things that, to just help it make a little bit more sense and a little bit to click into place for you as my listener and as to why this might be important. So although it doesn't directly relate to fertility, there are reasons why it is still important. So as I say, really important nutrient for things like cell signalling. So this is involved in like, blood vessel dilation and constriction. So in terms of your blood pressure, as I say, your heart conduction, muscle contraction, and nerve cell conduction as well. So the nervous system, calcium plays a really important role. So really, really important nutrient.

22:08

Now, some of the things that can impact calcium status, as well as what we're actually eating is vitamin D status. So vitamin D is required for calcium absorption. Now, I did cover vitamin D in, in an earlier episode as part of this micronutrient series. So if you're interested in vitamin D, because vitamin D is a super important nutrient for fertility, and for pregnancy, do go back and listen to that one, it was covered just a few episodes ago. And the optimal vitamin D levels, of course, for where we thinking about fertility are between 100 and 150 Nano moles per litre. Now that unit of measurement might differ, depending on where you are in the world. So you know, you know for example, if you're looking at the American units, then that's going to be a very different number. So what else impacts calcium absorption, sodium, so I'm going to be talking about sodium next time. But just important to be aware in the context of calcium, that sodium is associated with increased calcium loss in the urine. And that's because it competes with sodium. So people who have a really high salt intake, that may mean that they are excreting more calcium in their urine and losing it that way. Another factor that impacts calcium status is low protein. So low protein in the diet or not getting enough protein in the diet is also associated with reduced calcium absorption. And also reduced magnesium status, as I spoke about last episode is often associated with low calcium status as well because the too often go hand in hand. So in terms of risk factors, and things that low calcium levels can be linked to is having hypertension, so high blood pressure. So if you have a family history of high blood pressure, that might be something that you need to be mindful of. PMS, so this definitely relates to a lot of my clients in terms of hormonal disruptions. Pre-eclampsia as well. So again, a risk factor for pregnancy, osteoporosis, which I've already mentioned, kidney stones, the relationship between calcium status and kidney stones is quite a complicated one. I'm not going to go into that in detail here and the literature is a bit mixed on this but it's It's just something to note is that the association between calcium status and kidney stones, and also colorectal. So risk, there is a risk factor in terms of calcium status and colorectal cancer as well. So come really practical examples of some of the situations that a lot of my clients might find themselves in. And things that I see a lot in my clients are things such as people who come to me on a plant based diet or a vegan diet. So, as you're probably aware, dairy is one of the highest or most abundant sources of calcium. Now, there are other sources as well, which I'm going to mention in just a moment. But people who avoid dairy either because they are vegan, or because they avoid dairy, because dairy causes some issues. Now, I have done a podcast just on dairy, I will link to that in the show notes. Dairy is a bit of a complicated ones. And for some people, I do recommend that they actually give up dairy. That doesn't necessarily mean everyone trying to conceive should be giving up dairy. But lots and lots of people don't tolerate dairy very well. And lots of people that don't tolerate dairy very well don't realise that they don't tolerate dairy well. So that is definitely one to experiment with. And you know, to come and chat to me about directly if you do want additional support on that.

26:31

But if you are avoiding dairy for whatever reason, then that could mean that your calcium intake is suboptimal. Low vitamin D as I say, like, I routinely blood test vitamin D for everyone that comes through my doors as a new client in terms of one to one work. And I see it suboptimal a lot. So low vitamin D status could be impacting calcium status as well. So high salt diet as well, like lots of people who are struggling with their fertility and you know, have complex relationships with food because that, you know, it's such an emotional journey. And then there can be emotional eating. In my experience, emotional eating tends to either look like sweets, or sugary foods are the go to or like the salty like crisps and those kinds of foods. So if you do have a high intake of refined salt in your diet, then that could be impacting your calcium absorption as well. And then another kind of possible picture in terms of risk factors for osteoporosis in the future, as I say, which is something that I worry about for anyone who might be depleted in calcium is also people who have hypothalamic amenorrhea. So lots of people that come through my doors as clients or who are in my world through various means, do not have a menstrual cycle, because of hypothalamic amenorrhea. Now, if you don't have a menstrual cycle, because of hypothalamic amenorrhea, then you may be or who for people who have premature ovarian insufficiency and you know, who have like go through the menopause early, it may mean that your sex hormones, so low oestrogen and low progesterone also are impacting that bone density. So it may be putting you at even higher risk of osteoporosis. And then if we team possible not enough calcium in the diet as well, then that is an additional risk. So it's kind of to two risk factors playing in together. So you know, these are all reasons. These are all examples practical examples of people that I often see in my practice, where I might be thinking, actually, we do need to make sure that they've got enough calcium in their diet. Now calcium is best consumed via food. It's very, very rare that I would recommend a standalone calcium supplement. So it is, it is best consumed by food. So I wanted to give you a list of some of the foods dairy not included. That are nice rich sources of calcium. So generally speaking an adult. The adult kind of daily recommendation is about a gramme to. A gramme is 1000 milligrammes so 1000 to 1200 milligrammes of calcium a day. So, just to give you a rough idea, it is actually really quite easy to get enough calcium in your diet if you are having a really nice nutrient dense diet. So, so, this again, this, this first example is a bit of a controversial one as well. So, tofu. Tofu is actually really, really rich in calcium. Now, again, tofu is a bit of a complicated one. I don't know recommend everyone go in and start having tofu every day. Lots of people do struggle with with soy products for various reasons. But for the sake of talking about calcium, then 115 grammes of tofu equals 775 milligrammes of calcium, so you're getting like, you know, three quarters of your daily intake from 150 grammes of tofu. Nought point, so a quarter of a cup of sesame seeds is 350 milligrammes and the nice thing about sesame seeds is you don't have to go and eat a whole load of sesame seeds but one of the big, really great source of sesame seeds is tahini. So adding in tahini, to your smoothies or your spreads or like into your hummus or, or just having a spoonful of it, you know is is a really nice way to increase your calcium and sardines. So eating sardines, the types of sardines that have the bones in them because as we know, calcium is in the bones. So 90 grammes of sardines is about 346 milligrammes of calcium, and then we're looking at the greens so dark green, leafy veg, so, one cup of collard greens is about 268 milligrammes, a cup of spinach is about 245. A cup of bok choy is about 160 A cup of swiss chard is just over 100 A cup of kale is about 100. So there's, you know, eating a diet rich in dark green leafy veg is going to keep your calcium levels nice and high too, as well as your magnesium and then cinnamon, so, two teaspoons of cinnamon, which again can be added, you know, into like your pancakes or your smoothies or, you know, sprinkled on top of food, and two teaspoons of cinnamon is 52 milligrammes of calcium, and then back to the Greens again, so, a cup of cabbage is 63 milligrammes, a cup of broccoli is 62, a cup of green beans is 55, an orange is just over 50, a cup of fennel is almost 50, half a cup of parsley is almost 50, a cup of asparagus is almost 50. So you can see that those green veg are really the way to go. And if you do have an abundance of green veggies in your diet, then you will be getting a nice amount of calcium.

32:41

So that's all from me today. As I said at the start, please, please do go and fill in the Google Form to A, give me some feedback and B, enter into the amazing competition where in which there are hundreds of pounds worth of prizes for you up for grabs. So I will link to that in the show notes. And in the description of the episode today. So you can easily just go and click that form takes about five minutes or so to complete so I really cannot wait to hear from you, my listeners about where your at and just get a little bit more interaction going on with you. So take care really, really great to chat to you today. And I will be back again next week to talk about potassium and sodium. Take care. Bye

WAYS THAT YOU CAN GET KATY'S HELP:

Fertility and the First 1,000 Days Membership: Fertility and the First 1,000 Days Membership

Fundamentals for Fertility online course: 12-Week Fundamentals for Fertility Course with Katy Bradbury (evergreen)

Book a discovery call to talk through your needs for working together 1:1: Practice Better

More info can be found about Katy on her website: https://katybradbury.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katybradburyhealth

Email: [email protected]

Love the show? Don't forget to leave a star rating and a review to share the love and help it reach others who need to hear this!

00:00

Hello, you are listening to Katy Bradbury, a registered nurse and nutritional therapist. today's podcast episode is called Micronutrients Series, Macro Minerals, Part 1.

00:27

So hello, and welcome to the show today, I'm really happy to be talking to you again. It's been a couple of weeks. So, if you're a keen and regular listener, you might have noticed that episodes over this time have been a touch sporadic. And that is, by no means a reflection on my desire to come and speak to you. It is just a reflection of how busy this summer has been in being away. And quite frankly, me just not being organised enough to pre-record episodes too, you know, so that I'm releasing them while, while I'm away. So accept my apologies for that. I'm actually going to be getting back on to the micronutrient series, this week. I took a little break from it with the last episode and shared a few strategies in the last episode I recorded a couple of weeks ago on how, how to navigate some of the trickier times some of the trickier points in the road when you are on this fertility journey. So, it just came at a time for me when quite a lot of the people that I was talking to were at a bit of a crossroads with regard to their fertility journey. And I just thought, Look, if I'm talking to a lot of people for whom this is relevant for right now, I'm sure it's going to be helpful for a lot of you. So if you did listen, I hope that you found it helpful. It involved a practical exercise. So please let me know how you got on with that I love hearing from you can always contact me on Instagram @katybradburyhealth or by email on [email protected].

02:36

But anyway, without further ado, I'm going to continue talking about micronutrients this week, which for me as a nutritional therapist it is a super exciting topic. And I hope that I've been able to keep your interest in talking. As I have so far I've covered the range of different vitamins. So I've covered the fat soluble and the water soluble vitamins as they pertain to fertility and getting and staying pregnant. So hopefully, what I've shared so far has been interesting and informative. And I'm going to move on now from the vitamins to cover some of the minerals and what I've decided to do is divide it into what we call the macro minerals. And, and then some of that some of the smaller minerals, the trace minerals, so when we're talking about macro minerals, we're talking about the larger minerals, so minerals that we might typically measure in milligrammes rather than microgrammes. And there are four main macro minerals, and they are calcium, magnesium, sodium, and potassium. So, I'm going to talk to you today, just about magnesium, because if you ask any nutritional therapist, and this may not be a question that you ask people very often, but in my world, it's a fairly common question. If you ask any nutritional therapist, what's your favourite mineral? I can guarantee that 90% of nutritional therapists would say that magnesium is their favourite mineral. And the reason for that is because magnesium is responsible for so, so much in the body.

04:46

At, we're learning more and more about magnesium and indeed all nutrients but I think at last count it was it was, you know, over hundreds of processes in the body that magnesium is associated with. And that's because there are things that directly require magnesium. And there are also things that require magnesium as a co-factor. So a part of the process in, you know, some kind of conversion within the body that requires magnesium to be there. So, and that includes things like hormone production. So, I wanted to talk to you just about magnesium today, I may group some of the other minerals together in future episodes, but magnesium, there is quite a bit to say about it. Now, I'm not going to go into detail about the hundreds of processes that magnesium is responsible for, but I am going to give an overview.

05:44

So one of the first things that we think about when we think about magnesium is its role in energy production. So the unit of energy in the body, so that the currency, if you like, for energy is called ATP. So every cell in your body, every process that happens in your body at any given time, requires units of ATP to be able to work. And so it's, it is just like, as I say, it's the currency for energy in your body. And magnesium is directly involved in the production of ATP. So there's something called the Krebs cycle and the electron transport chain. And they are parts of the energy production process. And they require magnesium. So really, really important. So often, you know, people who are like super tired, super low energy, we might be thinking about magnesium for, for those people. Now, I know that that doesn't pertain to fertility, in the most direct sense, but you know, if we're thinking, as I say about every process in the body, requiring energy requiring ATP, then it's pretty fundamental. One of the things that actually links into that, I'm just going to jump slightly from my intended order of play, if you like. And one of the things that that links to in terms of the energy and ATP is sperm, because what needs to move pretty quickly and in the right direction, its sperm, so ATP, so magnesium has a role to play in the motility of sperm. So if you're, if you or your partner has had their sperm tested, then you'll know that one of the measures of sperm is motility. And that is how efficiently the sperm actually moves because it needs to get to the right place. So magnesium is involved in that process, because those those little guys need ATP, they need magnesium in order to actually get to where they need to go. So that's, that's one consideration.

08:11

Now, the next thing that magnesium relates to, when it comes to processes in the body, involving fertility or things, fertility is a pretty important one. And that is that it is required for a number of steps during the synthesis of DNA, and RNA. So when we're thinking about, again, making a baby, so once we've got a fertilised egg, the thing that needs to happen next is that, yeah, that needs to be the DNA needs to be synthesised, right. So really important for there to be adequate magnesium, amongst other things to actually help that DNA do what it needs to do to actually make that baby. So really important in DNA synthesis its also involved in glutathione synthesis. So glutathione for anyone who is not familiar, is is kind of known as the master antioxidant. So there are lots and lots of different antioxidants. A number of the vitamins that I've spoken about already within this mini series are antioxidants of their own accord. There are other antioxidants as well and I often talk about having a diet rich in antioxidants. And one of the best ways to do that is by eating a whole range of different colours in your fruit and veg because all of the different coloured pigments contain a different type of antioxidant. But glutathione is yeah it's seen as the master antioxidant. And we know that these antioxidants, what they're important for when it comes to fertility is we're really thinking about the health of the egg, and the health of the sperm. Because it's oxidative stress, which can be higher as we age, it can be higher as we are exposed to different stressors, whether they are chemical, whether they're things that we're breathing, you know, air pollution, whether they are like exposure to plastics, whether they are pesticides in our foods. Lots, you know, stress even, you know, actual emotional stress, all of those things can cause oxidative stress and reactions in the body. So, the antioxidants, what the antioxidants do is help to mop up that oxidative stress. And of course, this directly impacts, so the oxidative stress, the level of oxidative stress in the body does have an impact on the health of your sperm and the health of your egg. So if you, you know, if you've got issues with sperm, if you are worried about the health of your eggs, then really important thing to consider.

11:51

Some of the other things that magnesium plays an important role in is, one is methylation. So methylation is something that I talk with my clients a lot about. It is a process that happens constantly in your body in most cells all of the time. And methylation is actually involved in again, DNA synthesis and repair. And it's also involved in the way that we metabolise hormones, particularly oestrogen, but also thyroid hormones and other things. So really, magnesium acts as there are lots of co-factors within the various methylation cycles that have to occur. And magnesium is one of the co-factors along with all of the B vitamins, zinc and a number of other compounds. So really important to consider in the context of methylation as well. And hormone production. So we're already building up a picture, that magnesium is pretty essential across the board, for many of the different things that we might be considering with regards to fertility. Some of the other things that magnesium is involved in so is involved in our, it has a role to play within our kind of absorption process, for vitamin D and calcium. And then some of the other, I guess, less direct things that magnesium has a role to play in. And this is a really interesting one is that magnesium has been linked in the research to systemic inflammation. So I talk about inflammation a lot. It is something that we really want to try and reduce or avoid when it comes to fertility for a number of reasons. If you don't know why, then do go and check out my one of my earliest podcast episodes that I refer back to all the time, which is called the Fire thats stopping you from getting pregnant. It's a really, it's an essential listen if you're trying to get pregnant. So please do go back and listen to that episode, if you haven't already. So systemic inflammation, so there was a study, this is interesting, there was a cross sectional study of over 11 and a half thousand women. And what that looked at was women who had the highest quintile, so the highest fifth of magnesium intakes had the lowest prevalence of metabolic syndrome. So metabolic syndrome is linked. It's linked to inflammation. So metabolic syndrome is it's a bit of a, an umbrella term that covers things such as it's things like insulin resistance, obesity, hypertension, so high blood pressure, dyslipidemia, and those are, people with metabolic syndrome are people who are at higher risk of developing things like type two diabetes, cardiovascular disease and some types of cancer. So when we're thinking about cardiovascular health and diabetes, they link to inflammation because inflammation is bad news for the body. And inflammation is also bad news for fertility. And so this inflammatory condition metabolic syndrome was in lowest prevalence in women who had the highest fifth of magnesium intakes. So it's associated with inflammation in that respect. And there are also a number of randomised controlled trials that report a reduction in C reactive protein CRP, which is a direct blood marker of inflammation, following magnesium supplementation, so lower inflammation has been found in people who supplement with magnesium. So that's, that's really interesting. Now I realised that this is talking, you might be wondering why cardiovascular disease and diabetes and those kinds of things are linked to fertility, they may not be directly but as I say, they are linked to inflammation. And inflammation is one of the things that we really, really want to try and reduce when we're thinking about trying to get pregnant.

17:09

So, as I say, links to high blood pressure. So when we're thinking about a bit later down the line, so you know, still part of the fertility journey, but once you're actually pregnant, you know, a fertility journey doesn't end there, Right? The end goal is having a child and having a safe pregnancy. So hypertension, high blood pressure, is of course, a risk factor in pregnancy, so women who are pregnant will get their blood pressures checked regularly. And that's because of the risk of developing pre-eclampsia, which, which can be quite dangerous in pregnancy and put both mom and baby at risk. So really, when we're thinking again about moving on to have a healthy pregnancy, then having a good magnesium status can be linked to you having a healthy blood pressure. And also studies have linked it specifically to to pre-eclampsia as well. So that's really interesting as well, I thought and just generally speaking, magnesium is helpful for ensuring good blood flow to and through the placenta and into the uterine environment, which is important not just for getting pregnant, but for during pregnancy as well. So lots, lots and lots of different links to magnesium and fertility. And one of the other ones which I kind of touched on there with regards to diabetes is the role that magnesium has to play in terms of insulin resistance and blood sugars. So magnesium again, really, really important nutrient for maintaining a healthy blood sugar. Again, if you have ever done my blood, done my sugar reset challenge, then you will know just how important a healthy blood sugar balance is. For fertility, for hormones, for getting and staying pregnant. So that's really important too. And if you haven't done my sugar reset challenge in the past, then you can go back and listen I do have a couple of previous podcast episodes around, around the the impact of sugar on fertility as well. So do go back and listen to those and I can't remember the episode numbers off the top of my head but I will link to those in the show notes for sure. So do go back and listen to those again, If you haven't already.

20:02

So as I say, there are lots of other things like things around bone health, which you know, perhaps less linked to fertility. I'm just trying to look through my notes here to see if there's anything, Oh, the other, the other one that I wanted to mention actually is around with the other two, in fact, are around mood. So, magnesium is a nutrient that is involved in the production of serotonin. And what we find, or what we often associate, magnesium with is, is mood. So mood disorders. So people who have got a current or history of mild to moderate depression, and or mild to moderate anxiety, magnesium will often play around in the therapeutics there from a nutritional therapy point of view. So magnesium, you know, it's so, so important for our emotional health and well being as well. So lots of people again, who, who I work with do have problems with mood, whether that's a history of anxiety, or whether that is as a result of the fertility journey. And I know I certainly did, I struggled massively with anxiety when I was trying to get pregnant and to the point where I really started having panic attacks and you know, and all sorts, so magnesium is is strongly implicated or indicated there as well.

21:42

Now, one of the other things I said, there were two more things that I wanted to mention. Another thing that I wanted to talk about is bowel movements. So magnesium, another reason that I will often prescribe magnesium for my clients. And these are this is a particular type of magnesium is helpful here is if they struggle to open their bowels regularly. So magnesium is really helpful for people struggling with constipation because it helps to relax muscles across the board. So it helps. It helps with it's a muscle relaxant. So people who have any kind of like tight muscles, muscle spasms, things like twitchy eye any of those kinds of things, I'm often wondering what their magnesium status is. And similarly that that kind of bowel motility, the magnesium can help with that. So it can help to, it can help people to have regular bowel movements. So that's a really important factor as well, because again, anyone who has listened to me for a while will know that having regular bowel movements is really important, not just for having a healthy microbiome, but also for having, clearing out your sex hormone metabolites. So, to have really, you know, great healthy oestrogen function, we want to make sure that the bowels are moving really regularly and not getting stagnant, not getting stuck. So magnesium can be a really helpful mineral there as well.

23:31

So lots of things, guys, lots and lots of really helpful things in the context of fertility. Now let's talk about food sources. Because actually, magnesium is really really widely found in the food world. And if you are having a diet as I advocate that is mostly centred around all foods, then you will be eating magnesium. So things like dark green leafy veg, so chlorophyll that's you know, the pigmentation in the green colour that that is magnesium is a part of that so magnesium is a lovely sorry dark green leafy is a lovely source of magnesium. So are nuts and seeds, so are like beans and legumes and avocados and whole grains. So lots and lots of really great sources of magnesium in the plant world. So you might wonder like, well hang on a minute, why are we surely we must be getting enough if we're eating you know, a diet that does contain lots of plant foods as I do indeed advocate. And yes, absolutely. You should be getting a decent amount of magnesium from your diet. If you do eat a diet rich in plant foods. However one of the things about these minerals is that because of our modern farming practices like mass farming, what we're finding in the modern world is that magnesium, well, once it might have been abundantly available in a lot of those plant foods, it's actually getting less and less. And that is because of the farming practices we use today. And it's really because, you know, we're using because magnesium is found in the soil. And that's why it's available in these plant foods, because it comes from the soil. Because we're using, you know, fields over and over again, and crops, you know, we're kind of just doing crops and crops and crops and crops, we're not really giving the soil that time for the magnesium to naturally replenish. So it, it can become depleted in the soil and therefore depleted in the foods we eat. So magnesium insufficiency is becoming quite a widespread problem. And also what, you know, if we're thinking about magnesium being used up you know, more quickly, so, you know, for example, in, in ejaculation, then, you know, that is that requires energy, right? So it's going to use magnesium, and lots of these other factors, like, you know, if we, if magnesium is involved in antioxidant production, and we need our body is finding that it needs to produce more and more antioxidants to counter the impact of our modern lifestyles, which are naturally higher in things that cause oxidative stress. Then again, we're gonna be using more and more magnesium. So perhaps, and this is my hypothesis, rather than any specific research that I found, but you know, that perhaps we're using magnesium in our bodies at higher rate as well. And, you know, what we know as well is that we live more and more stressful lives, right? So stress is at an all time high in the modern world, and if our magnesium is involved in the stress response and serotonin production, and again, it may be that we are using, burning through that magnesium at a faster rate. So it's, you know, it's two pronged, it's that we are, magnesium is depleted in the soil. So magnesium rich foods are perhaps not as rich. And also we are likely using more magnesium than we might have done once upon a time. So lots of people do you know require a bit of extra supplementation with magnesium. Now, it is not my job to start prescribing magnesium supplements to you on the show, because I hope that I've made this very clear by now. But I really am a strong advocate for, things being individualised in terms of prescribing because magnesium comes in lots of different forms, I use different forms for different people, depending on their clinical presentation. It also there are drug nutrient interactions with magnesium. So I really don't recommend, you know, just taking magnesium off the cuff unless you are doing that with under the, you know, under the guidance of a professional like myself. So, if you do want some one to one advice, and you want to know, you know, whether you need magnesium, whether you need any of the nutrients that I speak about on the show and getting really personalised recommendations, you know, looking through test results during investigations. These are all things that I do on a daily basis with my clients in terms of trying to get to the underlying causes of fertility issues. And then, you know, prescribing really individualised protocols, dietary recommendations and supplement protocols to help plug any of the gaps that we find which are going to be really unique to you. Then please do go ahead and book in a call with me to talk through your needs. And talk about what it would look like to work together, one to one. So the link is in. It's in the show notes. And it's also if you go into the show description, you will find a link there to booking a discovery call with me. I do have a couple of slots opening up in September. So if you want to take one of those slots, then please do book in a call and we can we can talk through working together. All right, all the best to you and I will be back next time talking about one or perhaps two of the other mackerel, mackerel. It's nearly dinnertime, I've got fish on the brain, not mackerel, minerals, macro minerals.

30:13

Alright, nice talking to you today. Have a lovely, lovely week and I'll speak to you again soon take care.

WAYS THAT YOU CAN GET KATY'S HELP:

Fertility and the First 1,000 Days Membership: Fertility and the First 1,000 Days Membership

Fundamentals for Fertility online course: 12-Week Fundamentals for Fertility Course with Katy Bradbury (evergreen)

Book a discovery call to talk through your needs for working together 1:1: Practice Better

More info can be found about Katy on her website: https://katybradbury.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katybradburyhealth

Email: [email protected]

Love the show? Don't forget to leave a star rating and a review to share the love and help it reach others who need to hear this!

In today's episode, Katy talks about some of the places she often feels people feeling stuck and unable to know what to do next on their fertility journey. She walks you through a practical exercise to enable you to open up to whatever the future holds.

00:00

Hello, you are listening to Katy Bradbury registered nurse and nutritional therapist. Today's podcast episode is called 'How To Know When It Is The End Of The Road'.

00:28

So hello, and welcome to this week's show. I'm taking a little break from the micronutrient miniseries having wrapped up the conversation covering all of the vitamins from the fat soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K to the water soluble vitamins, C and the various B vitamins.

00:57 Now, I thought I'd take a break - I do want to revisit the micronutrient series and run through some of the really important minerals, because minerals have just as important a role to play for fertility as the vitamins do, particularly some some key minerals. As it's quite a long miniseries, I wanted to scatter a few other topics into the mix as well and I thought that ending the vitamins was a good little opportunity to do that.

01:37 Now, I wanted to talk to you today about how to know when it's the end of the road for your journey. Now before you switch this episode off thinking that either it's not relevant for you, or that it just feels a little bit too bleak and it feels maybe a bit too painful even to listen to an episode like this, please, please give it a chance. Because actually, regardless of where you are on your fertility journey, whether it has felt like a road that is far too long travelled or if you're just starting out the contents of this episode, it's a practical episode today. And the contents of the episode is really to give yourself some warm, nurturing space to actually explore some of these options in a really safe setting and will allow yourself some space to feel what comes up and to explore in writing what some of your options are for the future. So I urge you - even if you're not at a point on your journey where you're thinking it might be time to pack it in - I urge you to listen and to take part and to actually do the exercise with me today because so much of the fertility journey (and I remember this so well from my own) is tainted with fear. And it's tainted with the fear of 'what if it never happens'. And I can remember that that was the thing - that was the thought that was in my mind the entire time for me. And that is a horrible thought to be living with every day. So regardless of whether you feel like you've got a long battle ahead, or you don't know, or you're nowhere near giving up just now, the purpose of this episode isn't to tell you to give up, absolutely not. It's just to have that space to explore.

03:44 So the reason I'm recording this episode is because it has come up as a bit of a theme across a few of my clients recently. They're people, typically, who have undergone multiple rounds of IVF, or they've had losses that have been really painful emotionally. And perhaps they feel like they've got a decision to make. So for a few of them, they've got embryos in the freezer, and they just don't know if they can handle doing it again. I've got a couple of people in that situation. I've got a couple of people who feel like maybe they're just too old now and at what point do you call it a day when when you're getting older and it hasn't happened? So there are a number of people in my world who I speak to, who have got these thoughts running through their head and I thought, if they do, then there's a good chance that you do too, as a listener. Some of the circumstances that you might find yourself in at the moment - I've given a few examples already - you might be tearing yourself apart as to whether to put an embryo (if you've got an embryo) in the freezer, whether to put it in, whether to give it a go or not. It might be knowing whether to invest in one more round of IVF - and that could be because you said the last one was going to be the last one - or whatever it might be. So knowing whether to invest in one more round of IVF. It might be making the decision with your partner to stop actively trying, it might be deciding not to go ahead with a donated cycle and changing your mind. As I say, the circumstances in which you might find yourself are vastly different, but it's such an important exercise, regardless of your situation. This exercise gives you that little chance and that opportunity to actually face some of those fears that you might be living with every day and that you might have lived with for a very long time. What I'd love for you to do today is actually (and I don't know where you listen - maybe you listen while you're doing something else, so perhaps you listen while you're on your commute, or if you're walking the dog or or cooking) and now might not feel like the best time to sit down and do an exercise and by all means just listen along and use this episode as a reflective tool. But if you can give yourself the space to actually sit down and do the exercises that I'm going to walk you through today, I promise you will feel (you might not have the answer) but you will get some clarity and you will have some emotional processing that happens as a result of this, that can just help you with day to day life, of feeling the weight of such big decisions ahead.

07:00 So first of all, I really want you to sit with a question. So we're going do some some deep breaths in a minute together. But before we take the deep breaths, I want you to close your eyes and have a think about what that question might be for you. And it's a 'what if?' question. It's going to be pertinent to your situation - it might be 'what if we don't go ahead with the next round of IVF?'. 'What if we never have a baby?'. 'What if we never give my child a sibling?'. Whatever it is, whatever your biggest fear is at the moment, whatever the question is that's causing you the most turmoil at the moment, I want you to sit with that question: 'what if'. So, whatever comes up for you here, this is your opportunity in a really safe space (because you are safe at the moment listening to this, listening to the sound of my voice) you're absolutely safe, and I want you to sit with whatever feelings come up and whatever feelings come up for you are completely valid. Maybe those feelings are so raw for you right now that it brings up tears straightaway and you might even feel that blubbery 'can't control the tears', and that's okay, let them come. Let those tears come if that is where you're at right now. But it might be that different feelings come up, so we're going to just sit down now, we're going to do some breathing together, knowing that you're safe and knowing that you're going to take the time to do some journaling after this so that you're allowing yourself the space to let these feelings pass through. So it's perfectly safe to feel whatever comes up. So let's do some deep breathing. I'm going to guide you through deep breaths. We're going to breathe in for the count of four, hold for just a moment at the top of the breath, and we're going to breathe out for six.

08:59 If you're listening to my podcast I'll be counting along with you but if you're reading this and doing it yourself at home, repeat the breathing in and out for two or three minutes to relax yourself.

11:41 So just giving yourself a little moment to reflect on whatever feelings came up for you by allowing yourself that time, allowing yourself that space and allowing yourself those breaths, to sit with the question, or those questions, whatever it was that you asked yourself at the start of the exercise. Now what I'd like you to do is get your pen and paper ready because we're going to do some journaling and we're going to ask some questions around what came up, so you might want to press pause after each question (if you're listening to the podcast rather than reading!) to really give yourself the space to answer the question properly. So question number one is, 'what feelings came up for me?'. And when we're talking about what feelings came up for you here, I want you to be really specific, I want you to really get into the nitty gritty of what feelings came up. So if it was a sadness, what kind of sadness was it? Was it a longing? Was it a feeling let down? If you were feeling scared, what was what was the fear? Was it feeling terrified? Was it like a dull feeling in the pit of your stomach? Really trying to get specific on what those feelings were and what those feelings are that are dwelling within you, that you've been living with, potentially for a long time. Get as specific as possible about the feelings. Then question number two, once you've had a chance to talk through and explore some of the feelings that came up specifically, is 'what thoughts came up behind those feelings?' So some of the thoughts - really, really give yourself the chance to sit with this. And if you need to sit down and rewind and do some deep breaths again, to really sit with yourself and allow whatever thoughts they are to come up so that you can write them down, that is fine. Do whatever it takes because what I want for you is to get down, physically on paper, using your hand, what your feelings were and what the thoughts were. And some of these thoughts, as I say, could be surprising - some examples (I'm not putting these thoughts on you by any stretch of the imagination) that could have come up for you might be 'I don't know if I'd be a good enough mother'. 'I've let everybody down'. 'I can't imagine a life without children'. 'I feel so hurt from this journey, I don't know if I can do it any more'. 'I'm scared my partner will leave me if we can't have children'. All of those are really valid thoughts and there are hundreds of other thoughts that might come up for you. Those are just a few examples. So sit with it and give yourself the space to explore what those thoughts are for you.

15:09 The next question is to ask yourself 'what are my options?' 'Where could I go from here?' 'What would life look like with each of these options?' So we're talking about options that can help you with your decision, if you feel like you've got a decision to make, if you are exploring if this is the end of the road for you. And really be very clear on what your options are here; is your option to try a round of IVF? Is an option to use the embryo that you've got in the freezer? Is an option to just keep trying for a while longer and can you put a time on timeframe on that? Is the option to accept a child free future? Is the option to consider other options, such as surrogacy, such as egg or sperm donors, such as adoption even? And I do realise that that is a really, really sensitive topic and by no means, please do not mistake this as me saying, 'oh, well you can't get pregnant, you can always adopt'. That's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying allowing yourself to explore what options will be possible for you. Some of them might suggest really exploring, again, on paper, and writing down what all of the feasible options are for you that you might consider. And then I'd like you to narrow it down, to between one and three options. And they could be completely different options. They could involve accepting a child-free life, or they could involve trying again for another five years, just narrow it down - they don't have to be the same or similar options, but narrow it down to between one and three options. And do write this all down as well please, so that you've got it on paper. And then finally - because this isn't about you having to make or force a decision right now, this is purely you giving yourself the space to explore and throughout each of these questions that you're asking yourself - is exploring the thought processes and the feelings that go with those. So in writing down your options you might have a whole page of things to write about what that option brings up for you. It could bring up a whole host of thoughts and feelings, so it's really, really important to try and get those out on paper. So write down the options, and then write down what that option brings up for you as well. And then once you've narrowed it down to your one to three options, this is the final part of the exercise. It's quite a simple exercise really, but it's just my way of helping you process.

18:09 The final step is to write an 'I Am Enough' statement. 'I Am Enough' statements are really powerful and for each of those options that you've narrowed it down to, I want you to write an 'I Am Enough' statement. So you need to insert the word -  you are 'what'? enough, so some examples of 'I Am Enough' statements include:  'I am strong enough'. I am good enough. A really big one -  'I am powerful enough'. 'I'm content enough'. 'I'm happy enough'. 'I'm open enough'. Again, sit with those words, or any word that comes up for you, but choose which one is most pertinent to you or where you'd like to be and write down an 'I Am Enough' statement and write it down for each of your one to three options. For example, I'm going to use the word good, because 'I am good enough'. I think a lot of us think that we're not good enough ultimately and have that really deep seated belief so: 'I am good enough'. I think if you can't think of an 'I Am Enough' statement, then go with 'I am good enough', because that does underpin a lot of what a lot of us think about ourselves. So I'm going to use an example here; 'I am good enough to try IVF again', 'I am good enough to accept a child-free future'. 'I am good enough to explore options for an egg donor'. For whatever your one, two or three options are that you're going to explore, I want you to write down your 'I Am Good Enough' statement for each of those options. And if you could write down your three 'I Am Good Enough' statements on a piece of paper on its own, or write it in the notes of your phone (Ideally, if you write it down by hand on a piece of paper) and take a picture of it, and then have it in the background on your phone, or put it as something that you look at often and it's just there to serve then as a reminder that really, whichever of those options that you go with (and you don't have to choose right now, you don't have to choose even in a year's time) you just know that you've given yourself the space to explore those options, and you know that whatever happens, you are good enough, you are strong enough, you are content enough or powerful enough, whatever it might be. And you've got those there as a reminder - a regular visual reminder - that you are good enough, you are strong enough, or whatever it might have been. So that's the end of the exercise, I really hope that you did do it, I hope that you actually did go away and pause and do the deep breathing. And if you didn't, and if you were in the middle of something, and you didn't have the space to do that right now, that's okay. But please, please do come back to this episode and please do find yourself a half an hour, or an hour, where you can actually sit and do this exercise. So that's it for me today.

21:29 I did want to just let you know - a little reminder - about my 'Fertility and the First 1000 Days' membership; there are four slots available left at the introductory price of £50 a month. What you get for that £50 a month is worth way more than £50 a month! What we do is every single Wednesday evening as a small group, is get together and talk through where you're at on your journey, how the week has been; it's all about debriefing, it's all about being able to share your experiences and you'll also get the opportunity to have some accountability, some focus. So I'm there to advise you around nutrition, I'm there to advise you around all of the lifestyle things that impact fertility and together, we form the loveliest and most supportive group space - it really is the most wonderful group. So if that sounds like it would be helpful, this is the kind of exercise that that we might do, so I might recommend that people do similar exercises to this in the group depending on where they're at that week. It's always really individual to where you're at. If you feel like you could use a bit more personalised guidance and group level support in a really, really lovely, fun and emotional and nurturing space, then I really do welcome you to come and join the 'Fertility and the First 1000 Days' membership. I'll pop the link in the show notes and in the description of this episode. There are just four spaces left now at the introductory price of £50 a month before it goes up to £75 a month so if you'd like to be one of those four to come and join at that hugely reduced price, I'd love to see you there. Take care and have a lovely week! Bye bye!

WAYS THAT YOU CAN GET KATY'S HELP:

Fertility and the First 1,000 Days Membership:

https://katybradburyhealth.thrivecart.com/fertility-and-the-first-1000-days/

Fundamentals for Fertility online course:

https://katybradburyhealthltd.vipmembervault.com/products/courses/view/1130954/?action=signup

Book a discovery call to talk through your needs for working together 1:1:

https://p.bttr.to/378gAXH

More info can be found about Katy on her website:

https://katybradbury.com/ 

Instagram: 

https://www.instagram.com/katybradburyhealth

Email:

[email protected] 

Love the show? Don't forget to leave a star rating and a review to share the love and help it reach others who need to hear this!

00:02

Hello, I'm Katie Bradbury, nutritional therapist and registered nurse. Today's podcast episode is called The Micronutrient Series - Water Soluble Vitamins - Part Three.

00:15

So hello, and welcome to today's episode. I really hope that you're doing well. I am continuing this episode with the final instalment of the vitamins section of my micronutrient mini series. Now, that might be a bit of a mouthful, and it might not sound particularly exciting. If you're on a fertility journey, and you're new to the podcast, you might want to start an episode that feels more relatable to you in terms of where you're at right now. I've got plenty of previous content, including things such as how gut health relates to fertility, and I've got episodes on pregnancy loss, I've got lots of episodes on nutrition and nutrition as a whole and its' impact on fertility. I've got episodes on stress and impact of disordered eating and vaginal health and sperm power. So lots and lots of things to choose from. If you're a bit of a 'Fertility and the first 1000 days' podcast connoisseur, then this is absolutely the right place for you. And even if you've got an in depth knowledge or an in depth interest in nutrition, then this could be really interesting for you. So the micronutrient mini series, I've been just shining the spotlight on the micronutrients. So the micronutrients, mainly we're thinking about the vitamins and minerals - and there are lots and lots of different vitamins and minerals. I'm slowly working my way through them because I speak a lot about the balance of the macronutrients in terms of carbohydrates, and proteins and fats. I speak a lot about proportions - what sort of proportions on a plate we should be looking at, ideally in terms of those three food groups and how vegetables fit into that as well. But really, within that are these little superheroes, which are the micronutrients and the micronutrients are responsible for hundreds or thousands of processes within the body. That includes for fertility; whether that's to do with hormone synthesis, whether it's to do with egg health, whether it's to do with gene transcription, when we're actually creating a baby, whether it's to do with any kind of chemical messaging within the brain. Each of the micronutrients has a super important role to play and if you've been listening to the micronutrient series, within this podcast so far (because I have already covered the fat soluble vitamins, so vitamins A, D, E, and K, and I've covered most of the water soluble vitamins, so vitamin C, and I gave a bit of an overview of the B vitamins last episode) if you have been listening to that so far, then hopefully you're starting to get an idea of the importance, individually, of some of these nutrients. So it really is a matter of letting no man be left behind when it comes to these micronutrients. I'm hoping that with these episodes, it will help you to reflect on what your current nutrient intake looks like at the moment. I'm not thinking about supplements here; I'm thinking about diet, I'm thinking about what you're what you're actually consuming, because we always need to be thinking about nutrition first, the diet always comes first and the supplements are there to supplement that. So thinking about your own diet and hopefully this might help you, this micronutrient mini series, to identify whether there might be any possible nutrient, even if not nutrient deficiencies then nutrient insufficiencies, like not getting enough for your needs from a fertility point of view. So without further ado - I said last episode that there are quite a few B vitamins, so we've got B1, B2, B3, B5, B6

05:02

B9 and B12, so there are quite a number of them - and rather than shine the spotlight on every single one of them as an individual in each episode as I've done it in the previous episodes, because the B vitamins, as I explained last week, work really well collectively together. That's why they're often found in a B complex in supplements and in vitamin products. And there's a lot of overlap, there's a lot of crossover in the roles they play. So overall, as I said, last week, we're thinking about energy production, we're thinking about gene transcription. And I thought I'd just following last week's episodes, where I gave a bit of an overview on the B vitamins as a whole, I thought I'd just shine the spotlight this week on three of my favourite B vitamins because I do have favourites. And these are ones that I'm often thinking about in the context of fertility, and they're often ones that I'm wanting to ensure are found in adequate amounts for my fertility clients. And I often check their levels of some of these B vitamins using blood testing. So starting from B6, where as I explained last week, about the B vitamins as a whole being linked to energy production and metabolism, and I guess, being quite excitatory in that respect for our cells, B6, although it is involved in energy production, it's genuinely seen as quite a calming micronutrient. And the reason for that is because it's linked in with our neurotransmitter production. And it's specifically it's a bit of an enzymatic precursor to serotonin, which is, you know, it's quite, it's a bit of a happy hormone, I guess. And so, I'm often thinking about vitamin B6. And I'd love to know if this is you, because this is a lot of my clients. And a lot of my clients are really caught up in their head. And that's easily done when you're on a fertility journey, because it's a rough ride, and I get that, but lots of the people that come to me as one to one clients are, and I'm the same I've done a lot of work on this, but my predisposition, is to be quite high anxiety and lots of people are and so if you are typically a bit of an anxious person, and especially if you get anxious or angry even around the time of your menstrual cycle, so you know, in that pre menstrual period, then I'm often thinking about B6 for those kind of clients. And wondering whether their B6 might be either a bit on the low side because of dietary intake, or because they're using it up a little bit faster. And because of that anxiety disposition, so B6, that's why it's one of my favourites because it is quite a calming one and it's often overlooked as well. So B6 in terms of its, of course, it does still do all those other functions around helping to convert food into energy. It helps to make red blood cells as well which is super important. And critically, it helps to maintain and these three super B vitamins if you like these B6, B9 folate and the B12 that I'm talking about today, these all worked together really beautifully these three to help maintain normal levels of homocysteine in the blood. Now homocysteine is an inflammatory marker. So when homocysteine is elevated over time, for various reasons, it can contribute to long term inflammation and it is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease and those big killers in the modern world. Now I know this podcast isn't about kind of cardiovascular disease and overall health. However, if you listen back to my most quoted podcast in the series, which is the fire that stops you from getting pregnant, we can really pinpoint that inflammation and various inflammatory mechanisms over time

09:57

is really one of the key drivers that we want to be minimising, we really want to be dampening down those inflammatory responses when we're thinking about fertility, because when we're thinking about if the body is inflamed for whatever reason, then it's going to be prioritising that, because inflammation is critically associated as far as that on a cellular level with a threat to life. And so our body will always be prioritising the threat to life over reproductive health. So we want to be keeping inflammation in check. And so these three B vitamins work together to actually help recycle homocysteine into another product called methionine, which in turn turns into a product called SAM-e, which is called a methyl donor, which just helps in the methylation process, which is responsible for normal hormone production and general metabolism, detoxification and gene transcription. So all of those things, all of those processes are really important in the context of fertility, the three super B vitamins that I'm talking to you about today, the B6, B9 and B12, they all work together to help to normalise levels of homocysteine in the bloodstream and thus lower inflammation. So good sources of B6 include fish, so things like salmon, tuna, halibut, any kind of fish really, but those three are probably the highest. Poultry - so chicken, turkey, duck, and also nuts. So hazelnuts, walnuts, pistachios, those are all really nice sources of vitamin B6. So to move on to vitamin B9, which is folate, so I do have a whole podcast episode related to folate in a previous one. So this is a bit more of a snapshot of folate, but if you do want to hear more about the importance of folate, and how critical it is for reproductive health, please do go back and listen to that episode. I'll link to it in the show notes. But folate, vitamin B9, you may know it as folic acid. So lots and lots of people do supplement with folic acid and indeed the NHS recommendations of everyone who's trying to get pregnant to supplement with folic acid for at least three months before trying to conceive. And the reason for that is because of this link. And it's actually because of this link to that methylation process that I just mentioned. But how that plays out is, it was found in the research, that people who had lower levels of folate are at higher risk for having birth defects, namely neural tube defects like spina bifida. So as a preventative measure for that the NHS guidelines is to take 400 micrograms of folic acid prior to conceiving to help reduce the likelihood of that, now, that is a bit of a contentious issue. I'm not going to sit here and talk about the debate between folate and folic acid today. If you want to know more about that, feel free to talk to me come and join my free Facebook group 'Fertility and the first 1000 days' and we can definitely get the conversation started in there about the difference between folate and folic acid. The key difference just to briefly touch on it is that folate, or 5-methyltetrahydrofolate (5-MTHF) is the natural and active form of folate. So if you take folic acid, it has to be converted into 5-methyltetrahydrofolate in the body in order to do what it needs to do within the methylation cycle. And what

14:12

a lot of people have going on is that they have genetic variants. So up to 40% of the population have genetic variants, which can impact their ability to actually convert that well, from folic acid, which is the synthetic form, into folate, or 5-methyltetrahydrofolate, which is the active form. Now, whether that applies to you or not, we don't know - things that I run in my practice to help us ascertain that include doing DNA testing, so we actually facilitate people to run genetic tests in my practice to see whether they have these predispositions but also just testing the levels of folate in the blood as well. So these are all a really important part of your clinical picture. So before any of you run to go and take really high doses or choose which form is right for you, just from listening to this podcast, please know that it is different for everyone. And I couldn't possibly tell you in this podcast, which would be right for you. If anyone does want to explore that, though, if anyone is interested in looking at testing, for fertility in these kind of really in depth ways and wants to get really specific nutrient advice for them as an individual, then please do get in touch. There's a link to book a call with me in the show notes if you want to talk about what it might look like to work with me. So the folate I've kind of given an overview there. So congenital abnormalities, neural tube defects, DNA transcription, again, modulating that impact of homocysteine and in the blood so that, that inflammation, all really really important part of the picture for folate, so super important. So specifically really important for the DNA synthesis, support cell growth and repair. And unlike a lot of the other B vitamins, folate is actually linked to the the Latin word, which escapes me now off the top of my head, but it links to the Latin word for foliage. And so when we're thinking about folate, it actually is found a lot more in plant foods compared to the other B vitamins. So things like dark green leafy vegetables are just lovely forms of folate. And also legumes, so things like beans, peas, and lentils. Any of your dark green leafys are going to be really great sources of folate. Folate is quite depleted in the population at large. So lots of products out there like cereals, breads, etc, are actually fortified with folic acid as well, just for your information. So that's it for folate, that's kind of like an overview of folate, and you can start to build this picture now of the way that these three vitamins work together. And then vitamin B12 is great, I love vitamin B12. Again, it's really, really associated with that energy production. But also, it is very much involved in the methylation cycle that I just described. And as that relates to homocysteine and gene transcription and everything else. But it also is an interesting one, because it takes a lot to actually absorb vitamin B12. Once you consume vitamin B12, it has to go through a hell of a process, starting in our stomach, that kind of breaks it down and then something else sticks to it and carries it to another place and then that needs to be broken apart. And then lots of lots of different actions have to happen before it's actually transported into the cell in its usable form. And what that really means is that our digestive health, and particularly our stomach acid, really needs to be on top form to actually absorb vitamin B12. And again, there are genetic predispositions that actually impact our ability to methylate vitamin B12, our ability to convert it into that usable form. And so, in some people, it's all very well and good having enough vitamin B12 in your diet, but if you're not absorbing it properly, then we really do need to be thinking about that.

19:05

So inadequate levels of vitamin B12 can actually cause inflammation in the gut as well so is very much linked with the gastrointestinal tract, and so vitamin B12 and folate as well are linked to a type of anaemia as well in terms of our red blood cells, called megaloblastic anaemia, so if we have folate deficiency or vitamin B12 deficiency, then sometimes that can present then with this megaloblastic anaemia. And if we've got any conditions, any kind of anaemia, regardless of the cause, then we really do want to be addressing that before pregnancy, because anaemia in pregnancy your blood volume increases by one and a half times and your blood is there to actually nourish your baby in utero. We really really do want to make sure that there isn't any anaemia happening before you even get pregnant. So it's definitely something that's worth looking at. So, vitamin B12 absorption or ability to absorb does also decrease with age because stomach acid tends to decrease with age. So it's just worth noting that as well. So really, as I say, thinking about the stomach acid. Again, to sound like a broken record, these three together do impact this homocysteine metabolism, and help to keep that inflammation in check. It's also involved in neurotransmitter reduction as well. So really important picture in terms of that. As with the B6, in terms of anyone who has that anxiety presentation, then I'm always wanting to test B12 as well. The other thing to say or to note about B12 is that it is involved in hormone production. And indeed, people who have been on the oral contraceptive pill for years and years and years are often depleted in the B vitamins by the time they come off and particularly B12. So overview of B12: It helps to make red blood cells that's why it's linked to anaemia, required for proper nerve function and helps to maintain normal levels of homocysteine in the blood. Lots of people who have numbness in the their extremities or tingling in their extremities - that can often be linked with vitamin B12 deficiency as well. So if that is you, then it's always worth getting your B12 levels tested. Another point is that over the counter antacids, so any medicines that are there to help with heartburn that actually reduce your stomach acid, as I said at the start, because you need adequate stomach acid to actually start that B12 absorption process, and the over the counter antacids will impact vitamin B12 absorption as a result of that. So as I say symptoms of B12 deficiency include low energy, tingling and numbness in the extremities, nerve damage and memory loss even, so it's really important to note, so in terms of sources of B12. Vitamin B12 is only found in animal products. So what that means is that if you are a vegan, unless you're supplementing, and unless you're having foods that have B12 added in, then you will not be getting any. So seafood is really good source of B12, poultry, red meat again. So more or less any animal product is going to contain some vitamin B12. So really, just be mindful of that, that if you're on a vegan diet, that is something that we need to look out for. And typically this often happens that, vitamin B12, we can store vitamin B12 in our body. And usually after about a couple of years, our B12 stores will run out if we're not consuming it. So

23:33

lots of people who move on to a vegan diet feel really, really great at first because they're naturally having a lot more plant foods. And so lots of people feel really great at first and then after a couple of years, the energy levels will plummet, they'll be like 'what is wrong with me, I felt so good when I started doing this'. And actually that is the reason why, typically speaking is because their B12 stores have run out. And once they run out, then they're not getting any through the diet. So really interesting stuff. B6 is not something that you typically get tested in your blood, but folate is and so is B12. And those are tests that I run really commonly with a lot of my clients. So I will always do comprehensive blood testing as standard with all of my one to one clients so that we look at this. And it's really important to get a unique picture of where you're at, so that we can take you as a whole individual person into account and make a plan that is suitable for where you are at and the messages that your body is telling us. So overall, I hope that's been helpful. That really wraps up the vitamins as a whole. It's been a real pleasure to come and talk to you. I hope you can tell that a lot of this was the real bread and butter of my studying nutrition. We went into so much depth about the vitamins and I just find it fascinating. I really do. So I hope that you have found it interesting too. And I look forward to coming back and speaking to you next time, where I'll be starting to talk about some of the minerals which believe you me are equally as exciting! So I will speak to you again soon. Have a lovely, lovely week and take care. Bye bye

WAYS THAT YOU CAN GET KATY'S HELP:

Fertility and the First 1,000 Days Membership: Fertility and the First 1,000 Days Membership

Fundamentals for Fertility online course: 12-Week Fundamentals for Fertility Course with Katy Bradbury (evergreen)

Book a discovery call to talk through your needs for working together 1:1: Practice Better

More info can be found about Katy on her website: https://katybradbury.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katybradburyhealth

Email: [email protected]

Love the show? Don't forget to leave a star rating and a review to share the love and help it reach others who need to hear this!

00:00

Hi, I'm Katie Bradbury, a registered nurse and nutritional therapist. Today's podcast episode is The micronutrient series, water soluble vitamins part 2.

00:29

So, in today's episode, I'm going to be introducing you to the second set of water soluble vitamins, and that is the B vitamins. I've thought long and hard about how to do this because there are actually quite a number of B vitamins. So there's vitamin B1, B2, B3, B6, B9, and B12, and they all work quite synergistically, so it's kind of difficult to break them down, like the other ones where I've done for the fat soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K, I covered those in an episode per vitamin. And again, with the water soluble vitamins part one, which was vitamin C, I covered that in one episode as well. So the B vitamins are a bit of a funny one, and I've wondered how best to actually present this episode because it felt as though there was too much to say about the B vitamins to do it all in one episode because some of them have particularly significant relevance for fertility. But equally, it didn't really make sense to go through and have a whole episode on each of the six B vitamins. So what I decided to do and I started writing some notes this afternoon about going through some of them, and I was going to group them together. I was going to do in today's episode, I was going to do B1 through B3, or possibly through to B6, and then I was going to do separate episodes on B9, which is folate. I have already done an episode on folate, actually, but it was quite a long time ago now, and I have referred people to it a few times, but I think because it is such an important nutrient for fertility, I think I will do an episode on B9 specifically and then on the B12 as well as that's also another really important one for fertility. But I will tell you what I'm going to do instead, and that is to just give you a general intro today and a general overview as to the B vitamins as a collective, and then in the next episode, I will shine the spotlight specifically on some functions around fertility. So I will shine the spotlight on B9, which is folate and B12, as I said, and the reason I'm going to do it like that is because I don't actually want to spend too long in my husband's studio tonight. And it's absolutely not because I don't want to come and talk to you because I love coming to talk to you. I've been doing it for a long time now, and I am especially full of VAVA voom to come and talk to you because if you're a regular listener, you will know that I took a little break last week when I was on holiday. And it was just delightful. So I'm like full of beans, and I'm raring to go. However, I'm gonna have to tell you this story as any of you who are based in the UK or Europe at the moment will know that we are in the midst of a bit of a heatwave. It's going to be descending in on us a little bit more over the next couple of days, but my husband and I today, as it's Sunday, it's been the weekend, so we've been around the house this weekend. My husband and I today have been adopting the principles in a bid to keep the rooms in the house as cool as possible. If it's hotter outdoors than it is indoors, then the windows and curtains stay closed to try and retain the coolness in the house. If it's cooler outdoors, then we open the windows and doors. So it's Sunday evening now, and we have just got back from my parent's house for dinner. And you know, the air has cooled down a bit, so we're kind of going through the process of opening all the windows and doors. So the studio where I record this podcast which is my husband's music studio at the bottom of the garden, which a lot of you regular listeners will know already, we'd thrown the doors open when we got back, and my husband devotedly set up the podcast for me.

05:07

And then I came in, and I was just sitting here kind of just finalising, well, you know, carrying on with a few of my notes and preparing what I was going to say to you today, and we get quite a lot of mosquitoes around where we live, God knows why we live in the middle of London, well not in the middle, but we live in the East End of London, we don't live near any stagnant water that I know of, we live like fairly close to the River Thames, which is flowing water, I've no idea why there was such an abundance of mosquitoes in our area. And it's so bad that we can't actually leave the windows open at nighttime because we just get bitten to shreds. I'm sitting in the studio and just preparing what I was going to say to you, and the doors were wide open in this bid to keep the studio, to cool it down because my husband has to come and work in here all day tomorrow. And Oh, I noticed a couple of mosquitoes, right. And that's nothing unusual. As I say, we do get quite a few mosquitoes. And I kind of, you know, clapped a couple of my hands to kill them. Sorry, if anybody is a devout mosquito lover, you might want to not listen to the next part. And then I was like, do you know what, like there are quite a few mosquitoes in here now, and I'm in here with the light on, and the door is wide open, so I'm just going to shut the door while I record and then I will leave it open again afterwards to cool the room down. So I closed the door, and then I turned around to look back at the wall. The walls in this room are painted a brilliant white, and it was like something out of a horror story. I just turned around and looked, and they were just everywhere. There must have been about 30 mosquitoes in here just like sat like across the ceiling, and the wall was so just before hitting play on this episode. I've just been on a mosquito massacre. And yeah, my adrenaline was properly pumping. So that's what I've just finished doing. Thankfully, none of them were bloody, so none of them have got me, and I'm hoping that I've got all of them, and then there weren't any sneaky ones hiding. But you know, when you kill them, I'm gonna have to come and clean my husband's walls tomorrow because there are just mosquitoes smeared all over the walls. I feel really bad anyway. So for part of that reason, I don't want to spend too much time in the studio this evening because I don't want to get eaten alive by any, ah! And I've actually just seen one, there, Oh you little sneaky you. So there are definitely still a few lurking about, and they've got their eye on me because I've killed their cousins. So, yeah, that's my little story out of the way.

08:07

What I thought I would do today actually is just have, instead of going through the B vitamins one by one, just give you a bit of an overview about the B vitamins in general because B vitamins are really, really important. For fertility, yes, as for specific parts of fertility. But just generally, in terms of the way our body can function like we could not function without B vitamins. And the reason for that is because the B vitamins are the vitamin that is primarily associated with energy. Primarily associated with our body's ability to actually convert the macronutrients that we eat, so the proteins, the fats and the carbs into actual energy. And so the unit of energy that our body uses at a cellular level to complete hundreds of 1000s of different things is ATP, which stands for, can I even remember what ATP stands for now? It stands for adenosine triphosphate, which, as I say, it's the unit of energy that is used for so many cellular processes across the body, so energy metabolism. So, how many of you have low energy, right? Probably a lot. It's really, really common to have low energy. And I'm not saying that that's because you're deficient in B vitamins, necessarily; although you might be, B vitamins often have a lot to do with it. And so, there are lots of things that can deplete the B vitamins as well. And one of the big ones is the oral contraceptive pill. So that's really significant, isn't it and the amount of clients that I've had that have come to me, and I was in this situation as well, I was on the oral contraceptive pill for probably about 11 years or so before I came off, and I didn't even start to try to conceive immediately when it came off the oral contraceptive pill because I knew it might take a while for my body to regulate again. But one of the things that I would have been depleted in after taking the contraceptive pill for so long would have been B vitamins. So yeah, that's, that's really the overview of the B vitamins. And another really important role that they play is in DNA synthesis. So again, that's one of the reasons they are important for fertility. So those are huge reasons in their own right as to why B vitamins are really some of the first vitamins that we should be thinking about making sure that we have enough of from a fertility point of view.

08:52

Lots of us, as I say, the reason that you might be depleted in them is that you don't have enough of them in your diet. They are widely found, B vitamins are widely, and they're slightly different. Each B vitamin is found in slightly different or is high in slightly different sets of foods. But generally speaking, when we're thinking about the B vitamins, we're often thinking about animal products, right? So we're often thinking about meats, fish, and poultry, but they are found in lots of other things, they're found widely across the food world, but we just might not have quite enough of them to meet our needs a lot of the time. So all the things that I talked about if you're eating a Mediterranean diet, and you're having like your dark green leafy veg, and your nuts and your seeds and your variety of plant foods. And if you tolerate it well, then some dairy, and then there's fish, legumes, beans and also there are some fortified foods as well, that have been fortified with B vitamins.

11:19

So if you are eating that Mediterranean style diet, then you will have a nice amount of B vitamins in your body. And, but they can often become depleted because we actually have a higher need for them than normal. So as I say, the reasons for having low numbers of B vitamins in our system could be that we don't actually intake enough, but it could be that we have increased requirements. And things like strenuous exercise, stress, pregnancy, and the oral contraceptive pill, all of those things mean that we have a higher requirement for some of the B vitamins, so they can all have an impact as to why our B vits might be low. So definitely worth thinking about all of the above.

13:29

Some of the other things that the B vitamins do as well work to actually feed the brain and the nervous system. And like a deficiency in B vitamins can be associated with like some of those, I mean, this probably isn't something that you're thinking about right now. But for you know, in terms of future proofing is things like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, so you know, in terms of doing the work now to ensure that kind of health later on, so not just from a reproductive health point of view, but from a general health point of view, the B vitamins, I could not be more important.

14:08

So I'm gonna talk a bit more in the next episode. I'm gonna zoom in a little bit on as I say on folate and b 12, specifically, but for now, I just wanted to give you that really I guess, overview, and one of the most important things to say about the B vitamins is that they work synergistically. So if anyone is supplementing with B vitamins, which many of you may be, it's usually a good idea to take them, and as you know, I don't give supplemental advice over the podcast because it would be unsafe for me to do so. But just to let you know, as a general principle, if any of you are taking specific B vitamins, then you might want to consider taking them in a complex, which is a mix of all the B vitamins because they all impact one another and they work synergistically. And often, one can't work properly without another, for example, B1, which is thymine and if you have low folate and low B 12, that can impact the absorption of thymine, B1. So you know that, as I say, they all work synergistically. And one of the things that they do require is that solid, and please, please do go back if you haven't listened to the digestive health mini series that I did a little while back. But one of the big things is that you need really great digestion enabled to actually absorb and assimilate those B vitamins properly, because some of the B vitamins, especially b 12, which I will talk about next episode, a lot has to happen to B12 from the moment it actually enters our mouth to the point where it's actually able to be utilised by the cells. The critical part of the equation there is the B vitamins in the digestive tract being optimised from top to bottom. So if you haven't listened to the digestive mini series, please do go back and listen to that because you might think that digestion is not related to fertility, but I can promise you it is. And it's very, very uncommon for me to have a fertility client come through the doors that don't have some kind of gastrointestinal issues going on.

16:42

So I will leave it there for today. I hope none of you has been put off by my mosquito massacre story. I hope that if you're listening to this, you have a happy heat wave. I'm gonna say a happy heat wave because I feel like there has been a huge amount of scaremongering about this heatwave, and we've all got like really terrified about it. And if you are struggling with the heatwave, please be safe. Of course, be safe, but you know, enjoy it as well. If you can, you know, enjoy some snippets of sunshine if you get a chance to, and you know, just remember it's only a couple of days that we've got ahead. And if you're in the UK, that is, if you're in South Spain, then not so much. But yeah, okay, well, I will leave it there for today. Next week, will be a spotlight on a few really important B vitamins as they relate to fertility. If you've got any questions on B vitamins that you would like me to cover in next week's episode while I wrap up the vitamins section of the micronutrient series, then just let me know. You can contact me as always at [email protected], or you can find me on Instagram @katybradburyhealth, or you can, of course, come and join my wonderful Facebook group 'Fertility and the First 1000 Days' it's the same title as this podcast, and I'm always happy to answer any questions in that group too.

18:23

Alright, take care, and I will speak again next week.

WAYS THAT YOU CAN GET KATY'S HELP:

Fertility and the First 1,000 Days Membership: Fertility and the First 1,000 Days Membership

Fundamentals for Fertility online course: 12-Week Fundamentals for Fertility Course with Katy Bradbury (evergreen)

Book a discovery call to talk through your needs for working together 1:1: Practice Better

More info can be found about Katy on her website: https://katybradbury.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katybradburyhealth

Email: [email protected]

Love the show? Don't forget to leave a star rating and a review to share the love and help it reach others who need to hear this

00:00

Hi. I'm Katie Bradbury, nutritional therapist and registered nurse. Today's podcast episode is called, I'm taking a short break, and so should you.

00:14

So Hello, good evening. I'm saying good evening because I'm recording this on a Sunday evening, as usual. I would love to hear from you, actually, where you listen to the podcast and when I know that I do have quite a few loyal listeners. But I'd love to hear a bit more about where you tend to listen to the podcast, whether you sit down and listen, whether you listen to podcasts in the evening when you're all doing your relaxing, or whether you listen to them on the go, like maybe on your commute to work, or while you're out walking the dog or while you're prepping food. I'd really love to hear where you listen. You can always tag me on Instagram at KatyBradburyHealth.com or do a story and tag me into that story. So that I can hear from you as to when and where you listen, I'd love that.

01:33

But to get on with the contents of the show today. Some of my regular listeners might have been expecting a podcast to start talking about some of the B vitamins today, which is part of the micronutrient series I've been doing. I've been really enjoying it so far, actually. So I've covered fat soluble vitamins, which are vitamins A, D, E, and K. Last week, I spoke about vitamin C, which is the first of the water soluble vitamins. My plan for the next instalments of the series is to run through the B vitamins. However, I've decided to take a very, very short break from the podcast, mostly because I'm going to be away next week, so I'm not going to be here anyway to record next week. I'm just going to share with you why I'm not going to do a proper episode this week and why I've decided to come and talk to you briefly about this instead because I'm pretty sure that lots of you will relate to this. So as I just mentioned, I am going away next week, this coming week rather and in the lead up to me going away, so over the last couple of days, I've noticed that I started feeling quite stressed. I started getting a bit anxious, and I realised that it's because I've got a lot to do still before I go away, and I've had to slot in quite a lot of one-to-one clients; well, I haven't had to, but I wanted to, who were keen to get an appointment in before I went away. And over the last couple of days, like yesterday morning, I woke up, and I found myself being a little bit irritable with my husband. He was like, Oh, what's the matter? You know, he recognised this, he said, What's the matter? And I said, oh gosh, I'm just like, I said, Danny, I'm really sorry if I'm like a bit agitated over the next couple of days, it's because my mind is now starting to ramp up over basically just thinking ahead to the next three days and wondering how on earth I am going to fit in everything that I need to do before I go away, and that's like in terms of sorting out the house stuff, sorting out the washing stuff, sorting out family stuff, sorting out clients stuff, sorting out my stuff, and not even thinking about packing and sorting out who's gonna look after the cat and yada yada yada, making lists and sorting out travel stuff. We've seemingly barely any time to do it, and I was starting to get quite anxious, and I said look, you're just going to have to bear with me over the next couple of days because I might be a bit irritable, so I'm sorry in advance. I started thinking today, again, my mind was wearing with all the things, and I was like, oh gosh, thinking about all the things I had to do and on my list of things to do today, of course, with it being Sunday was to plan and record the latest podcast. And I just thought you know what, I'm going to lead by example here because I'm always saying to people, you need to do what you need to do. And a big, big theme for me over the last six months, so over 2022, has been looking after myself a lot better, being a lot more boundaries, trying to really, really reduce my own stress levels. I've like, implemented some really solid morning routines. I have really started meditating a lot more seriously, a lot more regularly, doing breath work a lot more and really, really trying to buffer my own stress levels. And lead by example, in that respect, and I've had the help of a fantastic coach who I've been working with. And I just thought you know what, sod it, I'm not going to do the podcast today. I will come because I love coming in talking to you each week, but I would just come and do a very quick episode and explain where my head's at.

06:31

A big thing for me is that, with regards to stress and well-being, is that I know from some of the genetic testing that I've done on myself, because I know I'm always talking to you guys about testing, and I do, I've done all the tests on myself as well. So I've done genetic testing on myself, and I know from that, that I have some genes that predispose me to have slow clearance of catecholamines. With catecholamines being some of the big fight or flight response hormones that are produced by the adrenal glands, so adrenaline, noradrenaline, and I clear those slowly. So once they're there, once they're in my system, once my body has had that release of those stress hormones in my body, it tends to, and this isn't always the case, the genes are the gun, and the environment is the trigger, right. But I know this to be true for myself, is that once those stress hormones, once those fight or flight responses have happened in me, it takes me a long time to calm down, and I get really anxious, and I get really jittery. And I know all of these things about myself, and I woke up this morning, I found myself getting anxious and jittery, and I said, you know what, I'm going to pare down wherever I can, I'm going to really take the time to not stress because what I really don't want to do and what none of you should be doing is that classic thing, where you, and I'd love to know if you can relate to this, I know a lot of people that I work with do, is where you go all out, you feel as though, there's thing isn't there, there's almost a cultural thing, even where, if we know we're going to have some time off, which we know we're going away we feel like we need to like work ourselves into the ground before we do. And it's almost; there's almost like a self-worth piece in there. Like, oh, I don't deserve this. I don't deserve to go away, and I don't deserve a break. I'm not worthy of that break, and therefore I must, must, must, must, must, must, must just like almost burn myself out before I go to even vaguely deserve it. And I know that's not true. I know that's not true for me. I know I deserve a break, and I know you do too.

09:06

So I'm here to ask of you today, and I'm going to wrap up in just a second, to use the time that you would usually spend listening to this podcast and thank you, by the way, for showing up and for being here as one of my wonderful listeners, I really, really appreciate you. So what I ask is that you spend the remainder of the time that you would normally be spending listening to me every week, so you know, half an hour or so. Do it today. This time that you've allocated, just spend the next 15 minutes or so doing something that's going to help you slow down. That's going to help you take a break. So whether that's sitting and doing meditation, whether it's just sitting and contemplating, whether it's just going outside in nature and looking at the trees and just admiring what they look like, whether it's maybe even just doing a little bit of meal planning and thinking about how you can next nourish your body, whatever it might look like but something that is really gentle and really nourishing for either your dy or your soul. Just spend that time, spend the rest of the time this week and also, because I'm not here next week, allocate yourself half an hour next weekend, or whenever you would typically listen to the podcast to just do some deep breathing, whatever it looks like for you take that break, because you honestly, you honestly do deserve it. And the repercussions that you get from prioritising yourself and for just slowing down and giving yourself that space, that loving space, are huge. They're golden, actually, and we so rarely do it enough.

10:53

So that's what I've come to say to you today. I would love to hear from you. I'd love to hear what you're doing to hold you accountable. I'd love to hear what you're doing at this time and how you're going to use his time today, now, and also next week in my absence. So that's it; I'm gonna wrap up to give you your space and your time. And I will be back again in a couple of weeks, coming and resuming the micronutrient series to talk to you all about those really super important B vitamins and how they relate to fertility.

11:33

Over and out. Bye bye

WAYS THAT YOU CAN GET KATY'S HELP:

Fertility and the First 1,000 Days Membership: Fertility and the First 1,000 Days Membership

Fundamentals for Fertility online course: 12-Week Fundamentals for Fertility Course with Katy Bradbury (evergreen)

Book a discovery call to talk through your needs for working together 1:1: Practice Better

More info can be found about Katy on her website: https://katybradbury.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katybradburyhealth

Email: [email protected]

Love the show? Don't forget to leave a star rating and a review to share the love and help it reach others who need to hear this!

00:00

Hello, hello, this is Katy Bradbury, a registered nurse and nutritional therapist. Today's podcast episode is called The Micronutrient Series, Water Soluble Vitamins Part 1.

00:29

So welcome to today's episode. I will cut straight to the chase today as we are moving swiftly through the micronutrient series. If you're a regular listener, you will know that I have spent the last four episodes talking through the fat soluble vitamins, which are vitamins A, D, E, and K, as they relate to both general health but also to fertility. So I'm moving on now, I've wrapped up the fat soluble vitamins, and I'm just gonna spend the next certainly two, probably three, possibly four episodes talking about the water soluble vitamins. And the reason I'm not sure exactly how many episodes this would take is that the B vitamins, so the water soluble vitamins are vitamin C, which is a relatively straightforward one that I'm going to talk to you about today, and then the B vitamins. But there are, in fact, eight different B vitamins. They all work synergistically, which is why they are clumped together. But they are all really important. I don't think I'm going to spend a full nine, sorry, eight episodes go running through the B vitamins. I'm not going to do them with such a fine tooth comb because they are interrelated. But some of the B vitamins do deserve a bit of a spotlight in their own right, for example, B12 and folate B9. So  I think I will probably do it over two, but possibly three episodes, the B vitamins.

02:33

But today, we're keeping it simple, partly because I want to go and watch Glastonbury, and I'm going to go through vitamin C with you today.

02:47

So Vitamin C is a really important nutrient for fertility. It's quite a well known one actually in the fertility sphere. So if you have been on your fertility journey for a little while, if you've been reading up if you've been doing some research if you've been thinking about possibly what supplements you should or shouldn't be taking, then you might have come across or considered vitamin C already. Now, I'm not here to tell you whether or not you should be supplementing with vitamin C, as you know if you are a regular listener, and if you're a first time listener, then I will introduce this concept to you right now, which is that I do not advise on supplements in the podcast. I don't advise on supplements in the podcast. I don't advise on supplements in my group programmes. And that is because it simply would not be appropriate for me to do so because everyone's supplement needs are different. Everyone's stresses and strains on their body are different. And the reasons why you should be taking any supplements are different and unique to you. So I'm not here to tell you whether you should or shouldn't be supplementing with vitamin C, but I'm very happy to tell you that you can get a wonderful amount of vitamin C from the diet.

04:12

So Vitamin C is contained in most plant foods, so it's really abundant in nature. The reason we need to get vitamin C from our food, unlike some other animals, such as dogs, for example, which synthesises their own vitamin C, we do not. So we need to obtain our vitamin C from vegetables and fruits, and plant foods. This is why some carnivorous mammals don't need to eat fruit or vegetables because they synthesise their own vitamin C, so they don't need it, but we do.

04:58

Now we first learned about the importance of vitamin C back in the days when we were doing a lot of sailing. And what was happening when we were doing a lot of the sailing was people getting scurvy. So the sailors were going out for months and months at a time. And after a short period of time, they would, of course, run out of fresh produce because they weren't carrying fresh produce with them. They were relying on tinned preserved foods. Actually, I say tinned. I don't know if they had tinned foods back then, but they certainly preserved foods. But they didn't have refrigeration or anything like we do now. So dried foods, that kind of thing. So they quickly ran out of fresh foods, which meant they quickly ran out of vitamin C, and you can survive without vitamin C for a few months. But once you become truly deficient in vitamin C, it causes scurvy. And scurvy is when your collagen, which is basically responsible for supporting your connective tissue in your body, so your muscles, your joints, etc., start to degrade and even haemorrhage because your blood vessels can't hold themselves together properly. We need collagen inside our bodies. I know that collagen is dubbed a bit of a modern superfood. I know that it's considered in anti-ageing and all of these kinds of things, and absolutely, collagen is important for the elasticity of the skin, and we do produce it on our own because it's really important for holding our muscles and blood vessels and tissues together. But we need to be able to synthesise that collagen from vitamin C. So Vitamin C is really important, we do really need it, but thankfully in the modern day, it's very, very rare that people would actually get scurvy. But nonetheless, we can see how important it is.

05:48

So I've mentioned already, there I've given the game away, one of the main functions of vitamin C, which is the collagen synthesis and kind of working in a cofactor format, I guess, to help with collagen synthesis. It's also really important for brain health. So Vitamin C helps to produce certain neurotransmitters in the brain, so it really supports the nervous system, specifically Serotonin. Serotonin is known as the happy hormone. It's quite calming Serotonin, and it helps to relieve stress and anxiety. So we need vitamin C in order to produce Serotonin properly. We also need great gut health to produce Serotonin properly because the majority of our Serotonin is actually produced in the gut. So that's just a little random side note.

08:31

So neurotransmitter brain health, nervous system collagen, you're maybe starting to get a picture for why some of these things might be important for fertility, but I will expand. The third major function of vitamin C is that it is best known as an antioxidant. So I've spoken already about antioxidants. I mentioned already about the antioxidant properties of vitamin E, and I covered vitamin E and vitamin A as well. There are lots and lots of antioxidants. So lots of phytochemicals, Polyfinos have antioxidant properties that you might have heard of. Components of things like green tea and resveratrol, and I mean there are tones there are tonnes of antioxidants, but Vitamin C is a really potent one. And the lovely thing about antioxidants, or the important thing to remember about antioxidants, I should say, is that it's important to have a mix of both fat soluble and water soluble antioxidants. So when I spoke about vitamin E, that's a great example of a fat soluble antioxidant which is super important for fertility but equally is the water soluble too, so Vitamin C is a really great example of a water soluble antioxidant.

10:06

Now antioxidants are really important for fertility because they help to reduce oxidative stress. So any kind of stress on the body that comes from exposure to chemicals, bad diet, processed foods, anything that our body just doesn't enjoy having and that needs to be processed out of the body, we need antioxidants in order to do that. So factors such as, I'm not a big fan of this term if you know me already, but for want of a better phrase, advanced maternal age, or anyone who's tried to get pregnant in their late 30s into their 40s, you might have been told that the health of your gametes, so your egg health, your sperm health can deteriorate with age. I've certainly done podcast episodes on those things before, so do go back and listen to the podcasts that I've done specifically around egg health and sperm health. But certainly, age, any kind of disease in the body, any unhealthy lifestyle, environmental pollutants, or anything like that can increase oxidative stress in the body. When we have oxidative stress, it can create reactive oxygen species (ROS). So some of you might have heard about that in the context of sperm health, and you can actually look at that and check the levels of ROS in the sperm, but it's the antioxidants, so it's these lovely sources of dietary antioxidants that help to keep that oxidative stress at bay and counter the negative effects of them.

12:09

So those are the main functions of vitamin C, and possibly the most important one around fertility is the antioxidant properties. Again, specifically around fertility, Vitamin C is essential for hormone production and ovulation. It, Oopsy daisy, I just dropped my phone. I'm not going to bother editing that out, so apologies, so it supports the adrenal glands as well. Vitamin C helps normal adrenal function, and if you're not sure what I'm talking about when I say adrenal function, please do go back and listen to the episode I did on the HPOAT axis again if that was complete gibberish to you. Just go back and listen to the episode, and it will all make sense, but really important stuff as far as fertility is concerned. So it supports sperm health and DNA in the sperm. There have been research studies linking vitamin C supplementation with improved sperm motility, sperm count and morphology, and it is also suggested that again, vitamin C supplementation, there has been a study that links it to when taken three months links it to reducing the damage of DNA. Sorry, the level of DNA damage in the sperm, as well. So definitely important for male fertility. For egg and vaginal health, it's a key component in follicular fluid and also a key component for the corpus luteum, which is what is leftover of a follicle. So after a follicle releases an egg, it's the corpus luteum that is left behind, and it's that which is responsible for secreting most of the progesterone in the luteal phase, which is important for allowing a pregnancy to progress. So lots of layers to that, really. It also works really well with Vitamin E. So it works synergistically with vitamin E, and it's been shown together with Vitamin E to help support endometrial lining as well and also to counteract ovarian ageing, both in terms of number and quantity, that's in a mouse study that last one.

15:14

So quite a lot of layers there, really. You can understand when you think about the powerful antioxidant effects of vitamin C. You can understand all of the positive impacts that it has across the sphere, as far as fertility goes. So very, very interesting. Does it mean that you should run out and shove as much vitamin C as you can down you? Well, that is not for me to say. But I will say that vitamin C, you can only tolerate so much of it. So if you start to shovel vitamin C down your throat, you may notice that after a little while, you get loose stools because you can only take so much you excrete out what you don't need out of vitamin C. However, if you build up too much in one go, then you might get a rather funny tummy, so I will just put that out there to warn you.

16:12

The thing that I love about vitamin C, as I alluded to at the start of the episode, is that it is found in abundance in nature. So it is actually really easy to get. If you're following a good diet and following a lot of the dietary principles that I recommend around a Mediterranean diet and, you know, filling up your plate with 50% vegetables, then you're gonna be getting a good amount of vitamin C in your diet, and dietary sources of nutrients should always come first. So some of the best sources of vitamin C we often think of citrus fruit. That is not a myth. It's true that citrus fruit is an excellent source of vitamin C. However, one of my biggest bugbears is people saying, Oh yeah, drink a load of orange juice, and you'll get your Vitamin C. I'm sighing because there's just so much ill-informed diet advice out there, and I hear this one all the time actually, which is one of the final things I wanted to mention about the benefits of vitamin C which I haven't done already is that it is also really important for iron absorption. So for people who have low iron or are having to supplement with iron for whatever reason, it's often recommended that they have that iron alongside vitamin C to help the body actually be able to utilise that iron. But the advice that that comes in a lot of the time, a lot of the time for medical professionals as well, is Oh, here you go, take this iron tablet and buy some orange juice and have it with orange juice, and that will help. No no! Shop-bought orange juice is heat-treated, for the most part, and the thing about Vitamin C is it is super unstable. So anything like heat, air and time, so if you have an orange, for example, if you were having chopped orange and you've cut it open and the longer you leave it, so if you chop your orange into slices and then went and had a bath and then came down and ate your orange, the vitamin C content of that orange would have significantly reduced already. If you have orange juice that has been heat-treated to make that carton of vitamin c (post-recording note - I meant orange juice) that you might get, you're not going to have a huge amount of vitamin C in there; I'm afraid to say. Freshly squeezed orange juice, yes, absolutely. Freshly cut oranges, absolutely. Lemons, limes, you name it, are all great sources of vitamin C, but the fresher, the better.

19:19

Another great source of vitamin C in the plant world, papaya, is a great source, probably the highest source of vitamin C. So one medium papaya will actually get you almost 170 milligrammes of vitamin C, which is great. But who eats papaya that often? No, I certainly don't.

19:44

But things like bell peppers, your cruciferous veg, so broccoli, Brussel sprouts, cauliflower and kale, they're all great sources of vitamin C. Cabbage, bok choi, any kind of dark green leafy veg so any kind of dark greens so spinach, turnip greens, beet greens, mustard greens, collard greens, Swiss chard, all of those, they're all good sources of vitamin C. The citrus fruit I've mentioned already, so oranges, limes, lemons and grapefruit are all good. Berries as well are a lovely source of vitamin C. Pineapples. Kiwi is a great one, and kiwi is often one that I recommend for people who have a tendency towards constipation because there is some good research out there around having two Kiwis a day to help alleviate the impact of constipation. So if that is you, then you could be giving yourself a nice little double whammy through having some kiwis. So dark greens I've mentioned already, and that also includes parsley, tomatoes, also a nice source of vitamin C and also lycopene. So lycopene is another nutrient really important for sperm health Asparagus, sea vegetables, and then herbs such as fennel and thyme and squash. Berries, I've mentioned already watermelon, beans, carrots, plums, so many like, honestly, there's, you know, the list of foods containing Vitamin C is long. But just think fresh plant foods.

21:33

If, like me, so, for example, one of my favourite things to do with vegetables for like really easy lunches is to roast them, because I just find it so easy to just chop up some veg, put them in the oven, and then I've got myself a nice lunch. The downside of that is that a lot of the vitamin C is going to dissipate from that. So if you want to really focus on your vitamin C intake, then raw veggies, say like salads and stuff like that, and nice and high in vitamin C. Or if you were roasting veggies, you might want to squeeze some lemons over, for example, to help bring some of that fresh vitamin C to the equation. Lightly steaming as well is, is fine.

22:21

So that's vitamin C in a nutshell. I hope that's been helpful. I will be back next week to talk about some of the B vitamins, not all of them in one go, but I hope to get started on the beginnings of the B vitamins next week.

22:44

So look forward to speaking to you then. If you have not joined my free Facebook group, by the way, please do. It's called the same title as this podcast, fertility and the First 1000 days. I've loved it in that group recently because lots of my members who are in my low-cost membership, which is super accessible, and such a lovely, lovely group. We meet every week, we don't actually have a designated Facebook group for ourselves, so lots of the ladies from there have been very kind in sharing food recipes and inspiration ideas within the Facebook group. So it's a really cool place to be, actually. And there are some nice discussions. It's a really lovely supportive space as well. So do come and join fertility and the first 1000 days on Facebook; love to see you there. And of course, as usual, please do get a star rating and leave a review for the show. A) to help me know who's actually listening and who's finding it helpful if you're finding it helpful. And also, just to help it get bumped up in the charts a bit to help more people who need to hear this.

24:10

Alright, great speaking to you today. Have a fabulous week, and I'll speak to you again next week. Take care

WAYS THAT YOU CAN GET KATY'S HELP:

Fertility and the First 1,000 Days Membership: Fertility and the First 1,000 Days Membership

Fundamentals for Fertility online course: 12-Week Fundamentals for Fertility Course with Katy Bradbury (evergreen)

Book a discovery call to talk through your needs for working together 1:1: Practice Better

More info can be found about Katy on her website: https://katybradbury.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katybradburyhealth

Email: [email protected]

Love the show? Don't forget to leave a star rating and a review to share the love and help it reach others who need to hear this!