[00:00:00] Hi, thanks for joining your body advocate podcast. I’m Ruth Cummings, your host. And today I am interviewing Dr. Jane Levesque. She is a naturopathic doctor who specializes in fertility. Her mission is to help high achieving women feel confident and in control of their fertility journeys. She’s got quite a story and this is a really fun interview.
Let’s take a deep breath to relax. Ready.
All right, here we go. You’re listening to Your Body Advocate, telling your body’s side of the story, the podcast dedicated to supporting and improving your body mind connection. So you can live a pain free passion, filled life, dissolving one body tension at a time. Discover the healing properties of your own body language.
And together let’s explore ways to support and improve essential self. [00:01:00] Now here’s your host master of encouragement and body, mind, life coach, Ruth Cummings. Hello, everybody. I want to introduce my guest today, Jane Leveck, and I’m going to read her bio before we get started. So you know who we’re talking.
You so Dr. Jane is a naturalpathic doctor who specializes in fertility. Her mission is to help high achieving women feel confident and in control of their fertility journeys. In her six years of industry experience, Dr. Jane has helped hundreds of couples optimize their health and prepare their bodies for pregnancy, which allows them to get pregnant.
Naturally have complication free pregnancies. And give birth to healthy babies. Welcome Dr. Jane, how are you today? Good. Thank you so much for that introduction and thanks for having me. Oh, heck yeah. I, this is a very important topic and I think, um, it, it also not just for fertility reasons, but to take care of the body in general.[00:02:00]
Yes. Um, and you know, if we do it because someone wants to get pregnant or, or not, it’s still very important for sure. So, so why did you. Decide to specialize in fertility. It’s a great question, truthfully. I, I don’t wanna say I wanted to go into fertility space. I didn’t want to go into it because I thought that it it’s highly emotional.
There is, I thought that the women who couldn’t get pregnant or the couples couldn’t get pregnant, have, you know, serious issues that are beyond fixing if you will, when it comes to natural world. And I just, I didn’t want to embark on that because, like I said, the, the highly emotional world, and there’s a time, right?
There’s a ticking clock that you’re working against. And before that I was. My husband and I own a gym actually. So I was an athlete. I treated [00:03:00] kind of general, whether it’s athletes, but also just general health, IBS anxiety, kind of my story. But then I started to have kids. And so when I had my first daughter, no issues getting pregnant, but it was a hard pregnancy, hard for what I considered.
Hard for me. I didn’t expect to be sick for as long as I was sick. I didn’t expect to feel so uncomfortable. My labor, I felt really out of control. I had no idea what was going on. And so I had this image of, you know, I would be glowing through my pregnancy and then I would have this beautiful birth and it would be super easy and I would connect with my baby and I would feel all this Mo like, it just didn’t happen for me.
And I was so depleted and so tired. That I was like, there’s gotta be a better way. Like I know that people talk about this beautiful experience and it’s like that just not that wasn’t me. And the more I started to share that it turns out there was a lot more women who were like, yeah, it was awful as opposed to, oh my God.
It was the best thing, you know, it was an incredible. [00:04:00] Experience. So then I started to, when I was, it took me a while to recover after my first, just, I feel like I had a bit of that PTSD post, uh, labor. So once I started to get ready, I was like, I wonder if I get healthier, if I wonder if I, you know, improve my liver function and my gut function and I sleep well, if I will have a better pregnancy, you know, naturally it makes sense.
Like if I’m feeling really healthy and if my partner’s really healthy, then that pregnancy’s gonna go smoother. You know, I did a lot of healing with my pelvic floor and that kinda stuff to understand, cuz I didn’t know where my pelvic floor was, which is why my labor was so awful. Uh, you know, and I couldn’t push her out and I needed medical support.
So I started doing all of that stuff. And then I was like, because I’m a planner, I’m a high achiever. I was like, I’m, I would like to get pregnant on this date, cuz I wanna give birth over here. And then you know, this baby’s gonna be about two [00:05:00] months and then she can do this or they can do that. Obviously I didn’t know the sex at that time.
And I had this whole thing planned. I was like, I got it. I figured it out. I get pregnant. It ends up in a miscarriage and my heart sink. Because I, I started to share it with the public. I was like, I’m gonna show all these women how I’m gonna do it. Look at me, go . And so when I had the miscarriage, I obviously had to share that and I took a week, you know, to process it.
And then when I shared it, my social media flooded with women who not only have experienced what I experienced, but experienced it 10 times worse. They’ve. You know, four miscarriages, five miscarriages. They had, they couldn’t get pregnant for this long. They had all these. And because I’m a naturopath when I went to, you know, my midwife’s like, Hey, listen, you have a miscarriage.
Totally normal. You, nothing we can do about it. [00:06:00] If you wanna get testing done, we can’t send you until you have three miscarriages in a. And I was like, you want me to experience this three more times before you give me some lab work? Like it doesn’t make any freaking sense to me. So that’s awful. Yes. It’s awful.
It’s awful because, and then there’s no guidance. There’s no guidance in terms of what is it that you can do to prepare yourself? Except just try again and see what happens. The level of anxiety that you feel trying again, after a miscarriage, like there is it’s, you are so out of control, you know, and it can happen again.
And it does happen again to women. And then it gets into, you know, hopelessness and desperation, and those emotions are very hard to. Function out of, right? Like you you’re, you’re acting from a place of fear. There’s nothing. Your body is in a different state when you’re in a place of fear versus, you know, peace, calm, confidence content.
[00:07:00] So the more I started talking to these women and the more I realized that it was simple care that they were missing and they weren’t screwed up. They. You know, screwed up beyond natural medic. They were on birth control for 10 or 15 years. And. You know, they have digestive issues and they have thyroid issues and they have, they can’t lose weight.
And that weight that they’ve been trying to lose for however long has been dismissed by their doctor or they’ve led really busy lives. Right. They were super busy and they didn’t meet their partner until they were in their thirties. And then, you know, that that’s my typical patient is like I’m in my mid thirties, I’ve been working.
Really hard for the last 10 years. So they’re probably been a little bit more on the burnout side, if you will. And they’ve been on birth control for 15 years, so they have all this dys-regulation. That’s actually really easy to fix with lifestyle, [00:08:00] diet, supplementation, some detoxification. And the more that I worked with it, I was like, this community is underserved.
This community is taken advantage of because of the high emotional state that they’re in. And these women who have been told that the only way they can get pregnant is through IVF. And these women who have gone through IVF, multiple rounds and still are not pregnant. And just told it’s because they have endometriosis or because they have P C O S or whatever the diagnosis.
They don’t have any help. They don’t have any solution except to do this medical procedure over and over and over again. And it’s heartbreaking because, you know, when I went through my grieving process through the miscarriage, it was like, It, it’s so hard to explain to people, but you understand why people wanna have kids?
Because when I look at my babies now, it’s like the level of gratitude that I [00:09:00] feel because of the miscarriage that I had. I didn’t have that the first time. And so losing a baby, whether it’s at six weeks or eight weeks or 12, you know, more, nine months, whatever like that is, you wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy.
And I think because this community has been so underserved and me being, you know, a mama bear now, it’s like, I wanna help these women take that control back, bring back the confidence, bring, build up their bodies so they can learn to trust them again, understand how their body works and when their body’s sending them, messages of something is off because the truth is those messages came in long before they started to experience.
Infertility issues. And sometimes they just didn’t even know those issues were there because they were on birth control. So, Hey, I haven’t had my period in 10 years. Cool. So you don’t actually even know what your body is like or what’s working or what, but now there’s panic now. There’s desperation now there’s because you’re.[00:10:00]
Mid thirties. And you heard that because you’re in your thirties, you’re gonna have a harder time getting pregnant. You might need IVF and so on and so forth. So that’s my long story as how I got into it, because truthfully, I thought it was something beyond fixing. With the natural medicine. And what I found out is that they’re just really underserved.
The community is underserved undereducated, and they’re, you know, they’re taken advantage of by, by the main, the conventional medical system. Because I mean, truthfully, I don’t think they have anything, uh, to offer them. They don’t know, but I know that if you get healthy, you get, you can get. And you can maintain that pregnancy, but what healthy looks like is very different than what I think most people feel now-a-days.
Yes. Wow. I love that. So in like how the body talks to us. So you were saying that some women will have [00:11:00] heard these little messages from their body long before, which is exactly what I try to show people in all realms, like for an athlete, for someone who’s pregnant from trying to get pregnant. Mm-hmm some who’s trying to get off.
Um, who’s trying to stop being addicted to things, everything like that. Mm-hmm so. Tell me in your opinions, what you’ve seen in your col in your career, how does the body talk to us when we’re pregnant or, you know, way before, way before we’re pregnant? Yeah. What is the body saying and how is it saying it?
For sure. So, I mean, all your symptoms, all your discomforts that you’re, you know, when we say disease, it’s. Ease there isn’t an ease in your body. So all the symptoms is your body talking to you for females. When it comes to fertility it’s specifically when it’s talking to you, your menstrual cycle, your menstrual cycle is like your monthly report card.
You get a [00:12:00] report card every month to tell you how you did that month. Did you eat well? Were you super stressed? Did you eat too much, you know, high process food? Did you drink too much? Did you not sleep enough or were you stressed? And there’s a, you know, there’s a sweet spot in terms of you should. Five days three to five days of what I call red flow.
So your menstrual bleeding, you should have five days of white flow, which is your cervical fluid production. And then you’re gonna have some dry day. So there’s nothing there’s no. So every day you can check to see when is your fertile window and understand and learn about that fertile window. And if that’s those numbers are.
There is no dry days at all. And you’ll constantly have, then it tells us that something is off and it can tell us, for example, if there’s not enough of there’s too much bleeding, is it too much estro? Not enough for JustOne. If we have, we don’t have that white flow days that I call where people say, oh [00:13:00] yeah, I’m ovulating.
Or I don’t know if I’m ovulating, cuz they’ll rely on LH strips to tell them that’s one of my biggest pet peeves. It’s like, you know, your body knows. And LH is not a great hormone to tell cuz sometimes it comes to it’s a volatile hormone, which means sometimes it comes before you ovulate. Sometimes it comes after you ovulate.
Sure. Sometimes it comes on time, but women then become confused and they don’t listen to their system. So the main one is gonna be your menstrual cycle, cuz that’s the thing that’s gonna tell you when you are fertile. The other components of that is things like your weight, your energy and vitality, your mood, your skin.
Because they’re all connected to what’s going on on the inside and how your vital organs are functioning. And I always say your energy. I don’t wanna say it’s one of the more important ones, but it’s like your level of vitality. If you don’t have energy and you don’t have motivation or you have what I call like buzzing [00:14:00] energy, it’s not calm energy, cuz you’re just anxious all the time and you feel like you have to make sure you get, you know, things done can sit still.
The nervous system is overworked. And so we need to bring it down, but the signs and symptoms of that are gonna be you’re tired. And what do you need to do when you’re getting pregnant and building a baby? You’re building a baby from scratch that takes so much energy, so many resources. So you wanna make sure your cup is really full, right?
So when you’re tired, that’s the first sign that that cup is probably not full. And then you’re probably gonna start to the, we can look into digestion and. Probably find that you’re not digesting or absorbing your foods the way that you should. And maybe that comes out as rashes or acne or bloating and gas and discomfort, or, you know, constipation, diarrhea, whatever kind of digestive symptoms.
So the body is not this one single thing, right? It’s this organism that EV all, everything is [00:15:00] talking to one another, and it’s trying to do the best that it can for you all the. And it’s very good at compensating, right. And adapting as much as it can until it can. And that’s why it’s really important to listen to those symptoms.
Because one of the other ones I said is weight. For example, one of the most common things that my patients will come with is inability to lose weight. So they’re eating while they’re exercising, they’re trying to do all this stuff and it’s like, it’s just not moving. So is it the fact that. You know, not eating well, not exercising or is it a hormonal dysfunction in their metabolism is dysfunctioning, that’s preventing them from being able to do that.
So when we look at hormones, it’s like, well, what’s gonna drive your fertility. What’s gonna drive your ovulation. And your ability to stay pregnant is hormones. So those are, that’s kind of the connecting the dots that it’s not just. [00:16:00] Your menstrual cycle is not, not related to your digestion and it’s not, not related to your mood or in a mood.
I talk about like either depression or anxiety or, and then your skin and then your energy. It’s really, all of these things are related and it’s. Seeing what’s the thing that’s the kind of has the biggest hole, the biggest, uh, issue that we can then patch out because usually that’s the root cause and that starts to bring everything else up.
I love this very much. good. I’m glad it really speaks to me. And I’m wonder. Your opinion on people not losing weight and it’s based possibly on their hormones, but if it’s maybe a combination of some type of emotion held in their body, huge. Yeah. So what would you say is the difference [00:17:00] between something held emotionally and something hormonal?
You know, I don’t think that there is a difference. I think that all of our symptoms most. Emotion is just like, we are just these like balls of energy. Right. And emotion is supposed to just kind of come through us and we are supposed to feel it and release it. And when it gets stuck in us, it like physically will get stuck and then create imbalances in our body.
And I think the reason why I came became a naturopath because I used to do fitness. I used to be a personal trainer and the nutrition, and I saw that that wasn’t enough for people. It wasn’t enough for me either. And I did the diet and I changed all the things, but then I would be limited. To being in that cycle.
So I had to follow the diet. I had to follow this strict regimen. Otherwise my digestion would come off. I would gain weight right away. I would have all these issues. And that’s how [00:18:00] my natural path at that time, you know, 15 years ago now, Todd me that it’s like, what is the emotion that you’re feeling on a regular basis?
And. For me, it was like fear and loneliness. And that was driving my behaviors that I didn’t realize. Right. Whether it’s emotional eating or it’s just negative thinking. And, uh, the negative thinking is like stress on your system. So even if I was in eating a lot, I still created an environment of stress for myself because I was always down on myself.
So to answer your question, it’s. I think it’s all related. When I show people that their hormones are at a whack. I think it’s really easy to start getting people to do things that are healthy, right. And I’m doing quotations because you can start getting them like those are the things you’re gonna always need to do.
Cause that’s just how you take care of the body. You need [00:19:00] to move your body. You need to eat vegetables. You need to eat enough protein. You need to sleep. You need to drink water. So you start. And then it allows the body to feel safe so it can release the emotions that it needs to because it has them stuck in there and like weight loss resistance is, yeah, we gotta move some hormones, but we also gotta move through some of the crap you’re holding onto.
And why is it there still, you know, so. I don’t think it’s one or the other. I think that, I think it’s all emotions personally. I think we’re driven by our emotions and our habits are built, but most people don’t get that and people won’t get it until you experience it. And so you have to start somewhere and like the herbs and supplements and stuff that I’ll use, they’ll have energetics in them.
Right. Certain herbs have [00:20:00] energetics. And you, you help people move through some of that. It helps to nudge them in the right direction to say, Hey, what are we holding onto here? Right? Like, what are, what’s the real issue? And, uh, whether it’s they need, I do a little bit of counseling, but I know where my, you know, I know where my limits are.
So I have a counselor that I recommend and I have, you know, a therapist that I recommend so people can work through some of their deeper traumas. And it doesn’t have to be a big trauma. Like it’s whatever you found traumatic. Right. It doesn’t have to be something really big. And I think most people kind of forget that that’s a thing as well.
They’re like, but I didn’t never my grown up growing up. I was fine. And it’s like, yeah, but maybe you were just bullied in school and that hasn’t, you haven’t ever let that go. And so it’s still bothering you. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I work with a lot of people letting go of emotion without working on the hormones.
Mm-hmm so I was that’s I’m curious to see your, your point of view on that because, [00:21:00] um, I think that actually working with them in certain ways to get them to, you know, exercise more and deep, you know, breathe, deeply journal. And maybe go see a counselor if they need to. But that, that I, I would imagine that also changes their hormones, but I’m not, I’m not checking that.
And, um, but I do have, I, I find the same that you’re finding where sometimes when people cannot lose weight or cannot gain weight or cannot gain muscle and they’re trying and trying, trying, and they just, you know, they start to lose hope. Mm-hmm. That there’s usually, especially if someone comes to me and says, I’ve tried everything and they’ll they’ll name five or six things that they’ve gone through.
Yep. Then for me, that’s a, that’s a telltale sign of, wow. Let’s, let’s look at, what’s really bothering you, like the deep stuff. And, um, but I think that sometimes. The hormones can either make it better or make it worse. Mm-hmm and so, but that’s not in my wheelhouse, right. That’s not something, you know, I’m not working with hormones, but I [00:22:00] find the emotions are just very interesting, especially with someone who’s trying to get pregnant.
Yeah. So there’s, there’s a lot that comes up, you know, being a mom and being a parent. It’s huge. And up to add to that point, it’s like, I’ll say, this is why I love testing as well, because I’ll just show people what’s they’re missing and what’s wrong because I’ll say there’s no. Of meditation that you can do to bring up your B6 levels.
Like if your B6 levels are low, there’s no amount of meditation that you can do that. And you sometimes, like I had a patient where she’s anxious, like, so she has a medication that she’s on and. I’m like rap, I’m talking to her and I’m like, I’m rapping trying to wrap my brain around her because I’m like, you don’t seem anxious though.
And we concluded, and I was like, tell me if this is way off, but I’m like, is it possible that anxiety is the way that your body’s talking to you, that something is off. Like you have a nutrient deficiency and that’s what your body is. You’re feeling anxiety where really it’s like an iron [00:23:00] deficiency or B vitamin deficiency.
And like her face just melted. She was like, oh my God. Like, yes. Cause you know, I’ve met. I mean, I’ve been anxious and I’ve met a lot of anxious patient and you’re like biting nails and they’re fidgety and this, and it’s like, that’s not coming off. And so there is this suite. There is, I mean, if I can’t say anything, Ruth it’s there isn’t one person that’s gonna do it all for.
Right. And there isn’t one modality, right? I think your goal as a patient, when you are coming to search and to heal is. Learn. Like, what are you learning from this about yourself and what worked and what didn’t work. And then you’re having an expert guide you. And hopefully it’s an expert cuz sometimes it’s not right.
And that’s okay, it’s up to you to know that this person isn’t gonna help me and I’m gonna go somewhere else. Right. Because sometimes we get cut up that, right? You’re like this person is gonna help me and they have to cuz they’re a naturopath and I. We’re all different. [00:24:00] And there’s a ton of NA baths out there that have no idea what they’re doing and it’s not because they’re like, they just haven’t learned what they needed to and, or they didn’t vibe with you or whatever.
It’s up to you to still take the responsibility to say, Hey, something’s not right here and I’m gonna go somewhere else. I am kind of proud of our, our society at the moment. It does feel like after doing this for so many years, that, uh, we’re coming around again to. Listening to our intuition and realizing that we haven’t been, and that we were not taught that we don’t teach our kids that really, and I’m, I’m really proud of us coming around saying, Hey, you know what you need it’s, you know, and we’ll guide you in certain ways, but you know, I can’t drink your water.
I can’t sleep for you. How much are you sleeping? Well, I don’t really know. And it is, you have to start. I’m proud of us for finally starting to take responsibility for our own mm-hmm our own path and our own journey. And yet there are billions of [00:25:00] people and each one of us. You know, who does any type of work, any type of coaching.
We can only work with so many people. And so you have, you have to find your person and sometimes, um, your people, I have a podcast, I think it’s podcast number seven, saying it’s like one of my first ones saying, go look for your healing team. Go look for that team because. You know, maybe it’s a personal trainer.
Maybe it’s a chiropractor. Maybe it’s an acupuncturist. I don’t know. Here’s this is all three I’ve known, right? I mean, I use five for sure. Oh, at least minimum. right. My husband’s in pain this week and we are, we’re on number six today, you know, for fertility, you’re gonna do something different than you would for, you know, maybe, uh, back pain.
And, um, so I love what you’re saying and I, I. Um, I’m just proud of people. Cause I think they are coming alive going wait, maybe this anxiety or depression med isn’t, isn’t really my, my number one, uh, path for my perfect and awesome life. [00:26:00] So yeah, and I mean, I think we have to stop putting all of our eggs in the conventional medical system.
Like that’s what’s, um, Canada, it’s a whole other podcast. It is. Yeah. And in Canada, it’s different than it is in the us, but in Canada, there’s like this sensation that, oh, my doctor should help me with everything. And it’s like, your doctor is strained in how to prescribe pharmaceuticals. So unless you have a disease and not even a disease, but like, it should be an emergency style care.
And so when I look at fertility, it infertility is a disease, but like, Infertility is a, there’s a cause for your infertility. So let’s figure out what that cause is. And our medical system does not have that capacity, nor are they trained in that they’re trained in, oh, you have infertility. Here’s the procedure that has 20% chance.
Right? Right. But like, honestly, people think that when I have IVF, that means I’m gonna get pregnant and it’s like, no, it doesn’t. [00:27:00] Do you really? And then I didn’t realize it was only 20%. It’s only 20% the first time. And then it, the it’s they say up to four, right. 25 and then it’s 25 and 30%. And then, and then the percentage decreases, cuz it’s very hard on the body, but it’s, there is no guarantees when it comes.
And that’s why, you know, I kind of the language that I used to say take control because you can’t control how they egg for like the. You don’t know, you know, when you’re ovulate and then you can have sex at that time. But out outside of that, you don’t have the control of anything. The only thing that you can do is they’ll make sure that the platform that you set up for that future child is the best one you can, which means the sperm is the qual, the best quality that it can be.
And then the female, because you are the first environment that that baby will grow in. I always say the baby room has to be ready. Your [00:28:00] room. Then it has to have a certain level of blood flow to it. It has to have a certain cushion that if it’s too thick, then you can’t implant and it won’t get the, you know, women who have really heavy periods generally have too thick of uterine lining.
If you don’t have a period at all, then there is not enough lining if you’re not ovulating what’s, you know, so creating that perfect environment for that baby to grow, because it’s all about this terrain. If you. If you set it up, it’s like a garden. If I just throw a seed on the side of the road, whether the chances that it’s gonna bloom into a beautiful flower, very little, but if I throw that same seed into a garden that has beautiful soil and a well good sunlight and good water supply, what are the chances it’s like much better.
Right. Much better. And then we wanna make sure that we pick the best seeds. That seed is nice and strong. It can stick. And so there is it’s, it’s a [00:29:00] game of probability, but in natural medicine, what I realize is like, oh, we have way more tools than the conventional system. And all we need is just to help these women be the flourishing garden that they want to be, as opposed to the.
You know, the, on the road, the cement with no light, no, that’s, that’s gonna be really hard to, to grow anything. Right. So when, when would a couple, um, contact you or when should they start, you know, if they don’t contact you they’re somewhere in the world when would make, you know, start looking for help.
Yeah. I mean, ideally what I. Like the message that I’m pushing out is you should get healthy before you think about getting pregnant because the quality, so sperm men make their sperm every day. And the full cycle is about two months, two to three months. So they can have a brand new sperm every two to three months.
So if they change the way that they eat, they stop drinking alcohol, they start to exercise, [00:30:00] they sleep more. They’re gonna have stronger, better sperm. And I’ll say like, it’s like a filtration system. If the water is really muddy, I. You might need more than one filtration. So you might need more than two months.
You might need six months, right? You might need two or three cycles because especially if you have weight to lose you’re on medication, uh, whatever, like you have a stressful job. You’re not eating well for women. We are born with all of our eggs, but that maturation is about three months. So the things that I do today is impacting the quality of my egg three months from.
So to think about it in the long term, as opposed to I’m ready to start trying, I guess I should start taking a prenatal it’s like you should start taking a prenatal at least three months before, but most of us need more than one filtration and that more than one filtration means you need more than three months, especially if you’ve been on birth control.
If you’ve been super stressed, if you’ve been, uh, you know, not eating as well, drinking [00:31:00] all that jazz, you have weight to lose, you have thyroid issues, whatever. So ideally I’d love for people to start thinking about it way beforehand. Hey, I wanna get healthy. I wanna put my best foot forward, cuz guess what?
Not only are you gonna feel really great and not only is the chance of you getting pregnant’s gonna be much better, but the health of your future child is determined. By the quality of the egg in the sperm. So it’s really, really powerful. Like I used to work with kids and I, I got so tired of seeing sick kids that like, it’s one of the reasons I was like, Hey, if we’re gonna talk about prevention, this is it.
Educating parents before they even get pregnant, because then those babies are healthy and they don’t need as much management. They don’t have these things that we’re seeing in kids now. Right? OCD, ADHD eczema, asthma. It’s, you know, digestive issues, you name it. So I’d love for that to happen, but unfortunately , [00:32:00] most people don’t start until they’ve started to try.
And the narrative that I’m trying to change is three months. If nothing happens after three months, get help. Okay. Not six months, not a year, not two years. Just get tested, get tested, get, figure it out. What’s going on. Not three months to go for IVF, but three months to like you probably figured out your timing three times is enough to say that you’ve had sex enough times in this cuz then it’s something is off in the.
It’s not mess the messages in community and the sooner we can get a grasp on what that is, the sooner we can get to work to fixing it because it’s, even though you think that IVF procedure is. Quick. It’s not quick. You gotta wait. You gotta do like there’s a lot. And it’s really stressful. Whereas in the natural medicine, if your thyroid is, well, I gotta do some testing and that testing is gonna take, you know, two to three weeks to come [00:33:00] back and then we find out what’s wrong.
And now we have to start changing things and taking supplements and do maybe doing a detoxification protocol. What, maybe release some emotional trauma, right? Like you don’t just do that at a drop of a hat, your body. Need some time to heal. And so if you are proactive and after three months, you’re like, let’s get after this, then you’re get tested.
Yeah. That’s it figure because when do people come to me a year, two years, three years, five miscarriages, three miscarriages, right? Like they’ve been through so much pain. They’ve been through so much pain. Right. And that’s really hard on the body. Being in the state of that stress, that hopelessness, that sadness desperation, it impacts us so much.
Right. And so now you have to unravel that and give space to heal and all that jazz. [00:34:00] I like that you say three months because I agree then they can, you can really start to work on just your general health. Do you work with people who aren’t trying to get pregnant? Yeah. It’s I mean, that’s you? That was what my practice was.
I find when I’m in. The virtual world. If, if you’re talking to everyone, you’re talking to no one right. Amen. And I, I have people contacting me all the time and saying, Hey. I wanna get pregnant, but in like five years , but I have all these issues. Can you help me? And it’s like, yeah, you just have hormone imbalances and like, yeah, you’re my ideal client.
It’s just, um, are you ready to kind of invest and show up for your health and cuz it’s not just like take this supplements and do this, you know, I’m very, I know how to. I have figured out how to get results because when people say naturopathic medicine doesn’t work or natural, whatever, it just tells me they didn’t do it.
Right. Because I live and breathe that my husband’s, you know, [00:35:00] lives and breathe that my kids are when people compliment me on my kids. It’s like, yeah, it’s not a fluke. Like. The reason that my kids don’t get sick and have vibrant eye. Like it didn’t just happen by accident, you know? And so I find they have to work with people at a very intimate level at the beginning to really help them understand what it is that I’m trying to get them to do, uh, and to teach them how to become aware and to track all their staff and teach them like genuinely teach them how their body works.
So then they can do that skill on their. Right. Cause that’s the, like your body is your body. Nobody knows your body better than you. I just have more experience cuz I’ve spent more time doing it. And I know that, Hey, this actually means that this is off. So let’s work on this, but eventually you learn, you learn that like, oh, that’s why I had such crazy clots in my period because I was drinking too much this week or I didn’t sleep enough.
And I was super stressed and [00:36:00] you know, I didn’t eat foods that promoted blood flow. And so it’s you just start to connect those dots? Yeah. I’m glad that you work with more than just, um, people who are trying to get pregnant. I think, you know, your work is really needed. One of the last questions I had for you were, um, besides, before we start to.
Before we start to end is what are the mistakes, that common mistakes that you see, um, that women experience after a pregnancy loss? I know we, we, you know, miscarriage is a big deal and, um yep. But yeah. So what super great question. Yep. I actually have a whole, uh, little talk on that. The biggest mistakes is there’s, you know, there’s kind of three, I guess.
Number one is you don’t give yourself enough time to. I see that women just kind of try to brush it off because their doctor brushes it off. I think that’s [00:37:00] really important to underline you’re like, oh yeah. Okay. It was just normal. I’ll just try again. Um, you wanna give yourself time to heal with all the layers?
So there’s the emotional grief and the mental, mental, emotional piece. And then there’s the physical. Like your physical body just went through a lot. There was a huge hormone shift. There was a lot of, uh, the immune system got, you know, activated because now it’s trying to get rid of this thing that didn’t stick.
Your inflammation is up-taken. There’s a lot of nutrients that went into energy into starting to build and then stop. So you wanna give yourself time physically and that’s, you know, kind of brings it to my second point. We don’t, they don’t do anything to help them heal physically. You don’t one. You don’t give yourself enough time and you don’t kind of, you underestimate what your body went through.
And number two, you don’t actually do [00:38:00] anything to support your body physically from what you just went through. Because truthfully, there’s no support. I’m working very hard on like a program called miscarriage support to help women just, Hey, get this, do these things for your body. And you’re gonna feel so much.
Very nice. Let me know when that’s Ready’s right. I will. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Cause I have a fertility 1 0 1, but the miscarriage is that that’s I see there’s a big hole in that. The last one is you don’t do enough investigation Hmm. Into what, into, why you had the miscarriage in the first place. Okay. So again, because that’s not offered by the conventional medical system, but there’s so many different reasons as to why you might have had a miscarriage.
And do you need to freak out when you had your first one? No, you don’t. Cuz it absolutely can happen. It’s like there’s a trillion different multiplication that happen [00:39:00] through, you know, the moment that the, I guess, fertilized to the conception of a full baby and all it takes is one replication to go wrong for that DNA to all of a sudden, not.
Oh, can’t commute. Doesn’t work. Boom. The body’s done it’s and so it there, and, and it can go wrong in any stage. Right. And then in any stage in that, the beginning of replication, and then usually when there’s the miscarriages later on, uh, there’s something else that caused it. But when I work with women who have experienced it in like five weeks or six weeks or eight weeks, and I always ask, do you know why you had the miscarriage?
And the answer is always no. And the truth is that we did a little bit of an investigation, cuz I did investigation when I got mine. And you know, you just test things, you test, what’s your thyroid doing? What’s your progesterone doing? What was your blood sugar? And you do it all after. But I tested my progesterone and it was great.
I was like, okay, [00:40:00] good. So probably wasn’t my progesterone. And then I tested thyroid and it was also good. Okay. Probably not. And the thing that when I did the ultrasound, I never had a beating heart. I never had anything. It was just a, um, what a gestational sack. They called it and that’s it. There was nothing in the gestational S the most common reason for that is when the egg is premature.
When it ovulates the most common reason for you to ovulate prematurely is stress. So then now I was like, I think I’m stressed. And I was, I knew I was, cause I penciled the thing in, we were moving, we had all this stuff. And so for me, it just provides this little bit of clarity to say, Hey, that stress, that work, that workout, you did that lack of sleep is really impacting you and you need to chill out.
And so I did, you know, I was like, okay. And then I had to process my emotion and grief and like, what did this miscarriage mean for me? [00:41:00] What, you know, I cried for the first week and then it got easier to talk about it. And then I, I had a lot of support. I didn’t do it by myself by any means, but I felt fortunate to have the support, uh, to know where I could go.
But doing this investigation helped me feel so much more confident going into my second P. Because now I fix the issue versus, you know, if I’ve had, I’ve had someone who had four in a row, the amount of testing we do now is way more. Now we’re checking genetics. Now we’re checking, you know, all the hormones.
Now we’re checking gut function, we’re checking environmental toxins. Like we’re checking so many more things. And now we’re like, don’t try until we get some answers. Right. Cuz we, as women will be like, I’ll just try again. I’ll just try again. And it. Don’t you’re stepping on the same rake and it’s emotionally draining.
Don’t do that to yourself. And so, you know, if we did that investigation, we had that education, then it [00:42:00] would be so much better, uh, because you would feel way more confident going into the next one. And what is confidence? It’s peace. I’m like, what’s peace on your body’s not stressed. Are you much more likely to carry a baby to term at that?
Yes. Right. You feel more at peace? You feel more. Yes, we’re almost at the end of our time. So I wanted to ask you, um, two questions. How do you advocate for your own body? Mm-hmm . Oh, I mean, every day it’s such an uphill battle to advocate with our current medical system. But I mean, honestly, I honor my body so much and I’ve, I’ve done that since I’ve met my, the NA path that changed my life.
That got me to be the kind of NA path I am today. Um, and the biggest thing is just listening to it. And actually listening to it. [00:43:00] so when, if it’s talking to you, recognizing that something is off and then doing something about it, instead of like, oh yeah, yeah, I’m getting this thing. Oh yeah. I’m getting, and then just kind of brushing it off, but getting into the practice of listening to what your body’s trying to tell you.
Well, my energy’s a bit low today. What do I need? Oh, I need a little bit more rest. Can I maybe book in a 15 minute, 15 minute break? And whether it’s go for a walk or take a nap or whatever, but really honoring what your body’s trying to tell you, cuz if you don’t listen, it just screams louder and louder and louder and louder.
And so I’ve learned that many times with my hard lessons and now the moment I get any sort. Message. I’m like, okay, I’m doing that. and I, that’s just my, the relationship I’ve created with my body. That’s awesome. Yes. So also, how would you define a happy [00:44:00] family? Yeah, that’s a, I think that’s a very kind of hard and question to answer.
You know, uh, with our society. Now, when you think about happy, you’re just like, we’re always happy and everything’s great. And I think happy is just like, what works for you? Happy is like, what, what makes. I’m trying to find a word that’s not happy to experience, but what makes it like a good experience for you?
A satisfying experience? Because sometimes we’re constantly trying not to feel sadness or this or that. And the truth is. Family has very complex dynamics. And if you have a family, which you probably do, you know how complex those dynamics can be with your parents and the trauma that we’ve experienced, most of us in our life is tied to our parents somehow.
And so then when we try to do that for our own kids, we don’t [00:45:00] really know how to do that because we just know we don’t want what we had, but we never went through the healing that we needed to, to not pass on that generational trauma. Right. Recognizing that whatever it is, that the abandonment issues or the sadness, or like those are just all emotions and we’re designed to feel them, but we need to allow them to come through.
So we can experience the other side. So I wouldn’t attach yourself to the word happy, cuz it’s like, well, what’s happy. Like happy is just feeling content, you know? And what does that look like for you? It looks like very different for everybody. For some people it’s living in a big city, surrounded by people for some people it’s living in the middle of nowhere and you know, milking your own cows.
So it’s just figuring out what it is. Does it for you that you feel like, wow, I’m doing it. This is my life. And I feel in control of the things that I can and it just, you know, it feels good. I feel good. [00:46:00] The things that I do every day, because that’s just gonna extend into your family, right. Showing your kids that I’m creating the life that I want.
And that doesn’t mean that it’s always happy or always easy. It’s just, that’s what I’m choosing to do and I’m putting the work to do it. Great. I like that. That’s a hard question. It is a hard question. I just did a VO post on it and I’ve been asking everybody it’s really interesting to hear everybody’s, um, opinion on that.
Mm. So I like your answer. Hey, well, thanks for visiting with me today. This has been fascinating. I have written quite a bit of notes, so I’ll put those in our, in our notes. And do you have anything that, or where would you like our listeners to find you and do you have anything for them? Yeah, so, uh, Instagram is probably my most active place.
Dr. Jane Levesque is where I’m at. I have a free Facebook. Dr. Jane’s natural fertility support group on Facebook. Again, you can find it through Instagram or you can search that. [00:47:00] And, uh, you know, if you’re wanting in terms of contact and have anything for you, I have ton of free information that I post on that I do have a fertility 1 0 1 program that anyone who is like, I’m thinking of getting pregnant in the next three to 12 months.
I’d love for you to take that program. That’s self based online program that you can. It’s gonna cover nutrition, stress, sleep environment, digestion, menstrual cycle, uh, what labs to run, what supplements to take. Like it’s just gonna cover the basics for you so you can feel. Good going into the fertility journey.
And if you have any questions, like I said, I’m super active on Instagram. Like I’d love for you to just say hi and tell me, what did you learn on the podcast? What did you love? Um, cuz I think it allows me to connect with my listeners or you know, the audience even more so I, I know what it is cuz sometimes I’m like, this is what they need and it’s.
No, this is what they need. so I’d love for you to just come and say hi and tell me where you are in [00:48:00] your journey and where, where you want help. Cuz if I’m the right person to help you. That’s great. I’m gonna show, tell you what my process is and if I’m not, I’ll make sure to point you in the right direction.
So you find the support that you need. Love that. Yes, me too. Same. Hey, well, Dr. Jane, thank you for being with me today. Can we have another discussion? Some. Absolutely. Thank you. That it went by so fast and I, yes, it always does. Yeah. I would love to chat a little bit more. about the athletics and like, we didn’t get to a lot of stuff.
Yeah. Right, right. Thank you so much. And uh, I appreciate your time today. We’ll see you next time. Thank
thanks for joining us today for this interview with Dr. Jane Levi. You can find all her helpful links in the show notes. And if you can’t find them, you can always email me for those@ruthruthcummings.com. I hope you have a wonderful day and I will see you next time. Bye. Bye. [00:49:00] Thank you for listening to your body advocate with Ruth Cummings.
We’re so glad you’ve joined us today and truly believe you can live a pain free passion filled life. To connect with Ruth work with Ruth, or to grab your free ebook. Go to Ruth cummings.com. We’d love to hear from you. Don’t forget to rate, review and subscribe so you don’t miss our next episode. Until next time friends be open, include the unincluded.
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