AH Fertility Nutrition

July vibes...just coming down to earth after Nick cave and a Kylie appearance and Brighton Pride a festival of love. And a few pregnancy and baby updates, and launching a new practitioner website for my mentoring program. What a blinding month you’ve been July.

Today marks World IVF and embryology day!

Marked by the arrival of Louise Brown the worlds first ivf baby in 1978 so happy birthday Louise Louise Joy Brown 🇬🇧.

With Louise’s birth this opened the floodgates for potential new ways of having a family and was the beginning of hope to so many.

I support many clients through IVF and in my view and experience there is always a better outcome if you use a functional medicine ( ie a whole body and mind approach) alongside. Making improvements to diet and lifestyle are critical to supporting the ‘raw ingredients’ to building reproductive health.
IVF is groundbreaking but it induces many deficiencies which comes with getting the body to essentially create the same energy needed for 12 months of eggs in 12 days - so it’s vital that the nutrients and inflammation created by this approach is dampened and nutrients returned!

My dream would be if nutrition and lifestyle were used pre ivf in all cases and that it was also accessing acupuncture and herbal medicine.

This is starting to become a reality as at a recent European reproductive health conference they showcased the vaginal microbiome as useful in ivf something nutritional therapists have used for 6yrs in clinic.

Back in the 1960s work by Professor Robert Edwards, Dr Patrick Steptoe and Jean Purdy, led to what we now know as a fairly accepted way of having a baby through IVF. But back in the day Edwards and Steptoe and Purdy were shunned by the medical community as creating ‘Frankenbabies’

in 2010 Edwards won a Nobel prize for medicine. The fact anyone who was shunned from medicine academia and then years later won a noble prize just shows you how opinion in the medical world isn’t always set in stone!

Worldwide and to date over 8 million babies have been born through IVF.

If you are embarking on ivf do get in touch (link in bio) I have a few plans and it’s always worth a chat to look at how to prep prior to starting to make sure you optimise your egg and s***m quality.

Alongside my client work, I run AH Fertility Academy; a mentoring programme for nutritional therapists and functional medicine practitioners who want to specialise in fertility.

I teach what I actually do. After 18 years in clinical practice, I’m still in the trenches with clients every week, and every case study, protocol and piece of clinical thinking in this programme comes from real-world practice, not theory.

It’s a small cohort with real clinical cases, direct access to me, 20+ specialist guest contributors. I personally mentor every practitioner through a mix of live group sessions and 1-2-1 time.

The waitlist is open now, just before we break for summer. I have a private mentoring page for practitioners- and if that’s you and you want to know more find me

Alongside my client work, I run AH Fertility Academy; a mentoring programme for nutritional therapists and functional medicine practitioners who want to specialise in fertility.

I teach what I actually do. After 18 years in clinical practice, I’m still in the trenches with clients every week, and every case study, protocol and piece of clinical thinking in this programme comes from real-world practice, not theory.

It’s a small cohort with real clinical cases, direct access to me, 20+ specialist guest contributors. I personally mentor every practitioner through a mix of live group sessions and 1-2-1 time.

The waitlist is open now, just before we break for summer. I have a private mentoring page for practitioners- and if that’s you and you want to know more find me

Something interesting happened in June. All over social media, the same question kept surfacing: “why did my period just… skip?” “why did I bleed twice this month?”

That’s the beautiful thing about social media, you get to see what’s happening globally, in real time, before anyone’s has a chance to research why.

I can’t evidence this part, but when this many women notice the same shift at the same time, it’s worth paying attention to.

We’ve seen research recently about how the ovaries have their own nervous system, and in the last month how ovaries recalibrate after menopause to work more in an immune capacity which is something I’m deep diving into.

The uterus is a very mystical organ. It hold a baby and sheds when there isn’t one, only redeveloping in real time monthly. It’s always communicating with your hormones, your nervous system, and your immune system.

But what if this collective unconscious planetary movement of no period or two is actually listening to how much the world needs a matriarchal society?

When something happens that we don’t have an answer it’s worth paying attention to. Your period is your fith vital sign. So instead of asking “what’s wrong with my cycle,” when trying to conceive ask “what is my body preparing me for.”

Did your cycle change in June? I’d love to know.