“There are two ways to live your life – one is as though nothing is a miracle, the other is as though everything is a miracle.” – Albert Einstein

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We are very excited about our new relationship with The Fertility Institute of New Jersey and New York, and we recently had the pleasure to talk with Dr. Inna Berin, one of the highly qualified Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility specialists at the Institute. You can listen to the interview or read the questions I asked Dr. Berin and her response below.

Click here to play the interview:

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Can you share with us your background and why you decided to get into the field of reproductive endocrinology?

I am originally from Moscow, but moved here as a child, and grew up in Brooklyn. I went into residency thinking that I wanted to do obstetrics, I loved delivering babies and the excitement of labor and being on the delivery floor. I’ve always been interested in women’s health issues, and I began to realize that women are at their most vulnerable state when they are struggling with infertility. A passion around helping women who are having difficulty conceiving quickly grew, to reassure them and treat them for whatever the issue may be. Infertility is a lonely place, frequently people do not want to tell family and friends that they are trying, or that they haven’t been successful, and there are always questions that they are too embarrassed to ask. A lot of women spend the majority of their 20’s trying not to get pregnant, and it always comes as such a shock when things don’t work once they are actually trying… So I always remember feeling how unfair it seems, and how much I wanted to help these women to have a family that they always dreamed of.

Share with us a little bit about the Fertility Institute of NJ and NY

I think that our center is quite unique – yes, we have the technology and the success rates that rival some of the biggest programs worldwide – but we are unique in how we care for our patients. We really care about them, and get to know them very well, we understand their emotional needs, and we fully support them and hold their hand is they go through all the steps in their journey to become parents. We are able to be flexible, we think outside the box, and we try to minimize the stress that’s associated with infertility treatment – everyone from the front desk to the nurses to the doctors are compassionate and supportive.

What are your thoughts on the stress-infertility connection?

It’s undeniable that there is a strong psychological component to any aspect of physical well-being, but I think especially in infertility. Although I think that stress doesn’t CAUSE infertility in most cases, infertility can certainly result in stress, every month – first hoping that the woman is pregnant, trying to time intimate relations according to the biological clock, and then dealing with disappointment when the woman gets her period. All this accumulates with months of trying, and can become a significant disruption to the couple’s lives, and emotional and psychological well-being. This spills over into other parts of their life – work, family, friends.. It can become an all-encompassing goal, with little that the couple can do to control what happens. Going to a fertility specialist is no less stressful – thinking of what the problems may be, talking about the most intimate aspects of someone’s life, taking the intimacy out of it and making it a science with inseminations or in vitro attempts… I always try to decrease a couple’s anxiety level about both their workup and their treatment, and I frequently recommend that together with their treatments they use either relaxation tapes or acupuncture, or even psychological counseling when appropriate. Their visits to me are another opportunity for myself and our staff to encourage them, and support them throughout their treatment.

Do you have any opinion on specific diets to follow while trying to conceive?

There are many gimmicks, supplements, programs out there which promise to boost both female and male fertility. From my experience, and from the scientific literature, I don’t believe that there is anything special that may really influence someone’s ability to conceive. Certainly keeping a healthy balanced diet, with minimizing processed foods, quickly digested carbohydrates and junk food, and emphasizing fruits and vegetables is the best option to keep someone healthy so that they have a healthy pregnancy. Eating whole grains, beans, vegetables and whole fruits—all of which are good sources of slowly digested carbohydrates—can improve ovulation and your chances of getting pregnant. Limiting fish to 3x week, and avoiding fish with high mercury levels (Marlin, Tilefish Swordfish Shark Mackerel (king)Tuna ( bigeye, Ahi). Fish that’s OK to eat is Trout, Tilapia, Haddock, Perch, Flounder) Prenatal vitamins 3 months prior to conception is always good to maintain good folate level and minimize the risks of neural tube defects. If someone is diabetic, it’s best to optimize glucose control, to keep HgbA1C below 5.6

What are your thoughts on the role in the mind-body connection and how we can all use it to our advantage?

One of the most dreaded advice that a couple who is struggling to conceive can hear is “just relax, and it will happen”. And it’s true, for most people it’s not easy to “just relax”, but there is some truth to that. We all know the examples of “miracle” pregnancies – someone who went through multiple IVF cycles, and doctors said they will never conceive, and so the patient adopts or gives up, and then gets pregnant the next month on her own… I had a patient who had really bad pelvic scarring, where I thought that her fallopian tubes were completely blocked off from the ovaries, and in addition, there was severe male factor and significantly diminished ovarian reserve, and several IVF cycles had failed because of poor embryo development. I recommended IVF with donor egg as the couple was ready to do anything to have a baby, and they agreed. In the month that she was getting ready to do this, she got pregnant spontaneously, and she is now about 25 weeks pregnant! This is certainly a very rare occurrence, but just proves that there is still some things that we don’t know about the particular factors that come together for someone to get pregnant. Another great example – I had a patient in Boston who was a physician, and had a very busy and stressful practice. She was relatively young, and had good ovarian reserve. She tried to get pregnant with more conventional methods, but eventually ended up doing IVF. 4 attempts with IVF were not successful, she never had a pregnancy, despite beautifully developed embryos. Mind you, while she was cycling, she was maintaining her busy practice without slowing down. She ended up going to another IVF center in a different city, in New York, and taking a 3 week vacation with her husband to do that. While she was cycling, they went out to restaurants, to Broadway shows, and really enjoyed their break. She got pregnant with twins on the first try! The only thing that was different, was the fact that she finally slowed down, and reduced her stress level. So although it’s not easy to “just relax”, with some help (like with Circle + Bloom fertility programs, for example), women may be able to do just that – relax… So I truly believe that there is a strong mind-body connection in fertility.

If someone is thinking of seeing a specialist, what would be the top three questions you would suggest them to ask?

The first step is to make a decision to see a fertility specialist at the appropriate time – I would recommend not waiting any longer than 1 year for a woman who is younger than 35, and no longer than 6 months or even less for a woman over the age of 35. Even for these subcategories, there are variabilities – for instance, a 26 year old who gets very irregular periods only a few times a year should see a fertility specialist sooner, because she is not ovulating, and will need some kind of treatment in order to ovulate. Once someone makes that important first step, they have to find a fertility specialist with whom they will be comfortable, and one that will work with them on their goals. One question to ask is what will be involved in a fertility workup — how can the health of their ovaries, tubes, and uterus, as well as the quality of sperm be tested. Frequently, the doctor can make some initial impressions regarding the etiology of the couple’s infertility from history and ultrasound alone, so the first visit may be very informative. Another question to ask is who will be seeing them for the duration of their treatment, and who will be doing the procedures. In practices which have several physicians, it is very common that the patient sees the “doc of the week” on their visits, and only sees their own physician for follow up visits if treatment is not successful. In other practices, like ours, the patient’s physicians sees them at all their visits and does all their procedures — there are benefits to both methods, so it’s just important to know what to expect. And finally, a patient can ask whether the physician recommends any complementary or alternative medicine approaches to pursue while they are getting their treatment – relaxation program, acupuncture, support groups may be examples of such treatments.

About Dr. Inna Berin

Dr. Inna Berin is a highly qualified specialist in Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility, joining us from Harvard University.After obtaining her undergraduate degree at New York University with honors and receiving the President’s Service award for leadership, she attended the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, where she obtained her medical degree and was recognized in the medical community by serving as the vice president of Medical Student section of the American Medical Association.

Following medical school, Dr. Berin completed her residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons – St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center, where she was appointed Administrative Chief Resident during her final year. She was then selected for a fellowship in Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility at the renowned Massachusetts General Hospital. While there, Dr. Berin was appointed ‘Clinical Instructor’ in Obstetrics and Gynecology at Harvard Medical School, and worked alongside some of the foremost leaders in the fields of reproductive biology and infertility. She is a member of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, Society for Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility, and the American Medical Association.

Dr. Berin possesses clinical expertise in all aspects of infertility and reproduction. In addition, Dr Berin has trained in the most advanced techniques of minimally invasive reproductive surgery.

Dr. Berin has been recognized by patients and peers as being an exceptionally compassionate physician, and she takes great pride in providing outstanding medical care and personalized attention to each individual and couple. She is fluent in English and Russian, as well as conversational in Spanish.

“There are two ways to live your life – one is as though nothing is a miracle, the other is as though everything is a miracle.” – Albert Einstein

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Learning How to Cope with Infertility

When I was experiencing the difficulties of secondary infertility, I curled up in a shell. Banishing my emotions and ignoring my instincts, I was wrapped up in a twisted and angry existence.

So, I am not the person to emulate. If I was, I would be telling you about all the genius things I did to go through secondary infertility and still manage to be on the top of my game.

I think the height of my sadness was when I was at my best friend’s wedding – it was the celebration after their actual marriage – and in between she became pregnant. I had just been through another miscarriage and there she was in this beautiful gown with the most adorable bump and she just glowed. I was devastated.

There is most certainly something to be said about infertility taking over one’s life. It is the one time I can say that my “condition” took over both my body and my soul. It became my existence, and everything I witnessed went through this lens of despair. It takes over your whole life.

I recently had the pleasure of meeting the award-winning psychotherapist Helen Adrienne, and the author of the new book On Fertile Ground: Healing Infertility. Addressing this from every angle possible, Helen has created an invaluable resource for everyone struggling through the pains of infertility. Her intent was to write a book to help couples overcome the psychological and social pain of infertility by “normalizing” your upsets, addressing your confusions and with providing all kinds of mind/body exercises.

Three Strategies on How to Address Social and Psychological Pain of Infertility

Helen and I spoke about what she would suggest would be the top three strategies.

1. Learning to breath, and being in the present moment

When I was at the wedding celebration, my head was in loo-loo land. I was not there fully present and enjoying the moment for her. I was experiencing jealousy, anger and that “why me” reaction. If I was smart, I would have left the party for 10 minutes and I would have meditated. I would have sat down somewhere alone, and started to focus only on my breathing. A good 10 minute meditation would have clarified my thoughts and salved my feelings a bit. I’m not saying it would have made me go from being sad to jubilant, but it would have allowed me to bring focus on the day, on the marriage we were celebrating, and on the friends and family that I was spending time with.

The present moment is a very zen-like place. Helen and I speak about it in the attached podcast, and we both feel so passionate about it. It’s not ignoring the goals that you have in your life, but it’s about being grounded in your body and feeling the “bloom of each moment” as it unfolds (a favorite quote of mine from Jon Kabat Zinn). It allows you to reduce the pains of infertility such that you can still go on with your life and not let anxiety and depression completely take over.

2. Feel the satisfaction of learning to deal with adversity

This is why I love Helen’s book. She discusses at great length the silver-lining of this experience. This is a concept that I have tip-toed around, just because – to put it bluntly – I really don’t want to piss anyone off. But, this is such an important point. You are going through one of the hardest things a woman can go through (in my opinion of course). It touches every single aspect of your life – from your finances, to your relationship, to your relationship with friends and family, to your health, to your goals for your future. It really leaves nothing untouched.

You are learning though. In Helen’s words, she says that you will “feel the satisfaction that you can deal with adversity.” According to Buddhism, the first lesson to enlightenment is realizing that life is hard.

And I am a great example of this truism. Look at the phoenix that rose from the ashes of my experience! I call it my “third baby” – and it’s called Circle + Bloom. I get the incredible joy of sharing all of this with others, but I first needed to experience it myself.

In Helen’s book there is an entire chapter called Would You Believe There is an Upside? and it is chock-full of stories of Helen’s patients who shared their experiences for the book. Trust me, it will make you feel better to read some of them.

3. Legitimize the Normal Resistance to Change

This process requires you to change. How much you change is up to you, but most certainly you will change as a result. But, if you are like me, you already know that change is HARD.

Helen suggests that we first need to recognize this incredible force within us that resists change. She does an excellent job in the book in describing why that is – what physically happens in the body. And it comes right down to the subconscious.

She offers suggestions on how to invite change into our lives and of course makes specific suggestions on what to change. Things like implementing mind/body exercises into your regimen, taking time to discuss your feelings with others, journaling, hypnosis, and simply getting in greater touch with your emotions.

Learn More

Listen now to Helen and I discuss her philosophy in greater detail:

Listen now

About Helen Adrienne

Helen Adrienne, Licensed Certified Social Worker and certified hypnotherapist, is a general therapist who specializes in infertility counseling, couples counseling for infertility, mind/body stress reduction for
infertility and gynecological and reproductive issues.

Helen’s approach is based on the mind-body connection involving mental, physical and spiritual well-being. She believes that the mind influences the body and the body influences the mind. Her counseling approach and thought processes combine psychological techniques with a deep clinical and spiritual understanding of the mind, heart and body. This understanding empowers her to help her clients in a targeted way to reduce mind/body stress.

Helen is available for phone consultations at 1-212-758-0125. She can also be reached at helen@mind-body-unity.com.

“If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music. … I get most joy in life out of music.” – Albert Einstein

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Music: More than Just Listening Pleasure

Often times, if I feel the need to be energized, like if I am cleaning the house or needing to get through something for work, I’ll put on my Pandora and rock-out to some house/dance music of some sort. It always does the trick as I immediately can feel the beat running through my bones and it gets me moving quickly.

And there is a biological reason why. It’s called entrainment.

Synchronization, Entrainment

Entrainment is defined essentially as synchronization of energy. Everything is comprised of energy, which has a rhythm, and there is a law saying that energy that moves within a certain speed or rate will attract each other and begin to mirror each other.

A great example of entrainment is if you have a room full of pendulum-type grandfather clocks and start the pendulums in motion at different times, they will all swing differently. However, if you walk out of this room and come back the next day, you will find that all the pendulums are swinging together at the same rate. This locking in step of rhythms is entrainment. The Dutch scientist Christian Huygens discovered it in 1665.

Within our own bodies, there are seemingly separate systems such as our heart rate, brain waves and respiration that all entrain with each other. Slow down your breath, for example, and you slow down your heartbeat and your brain waves. Conversely, if you are able to slow down your brain waves, you can affect your heart rate and respiration.

It has been found that the frequencies of pulse, breathing and blood circulation, as well as their combined activities, all function harmonically.

And since stress, especially as it pertains to fertility, is such an enormous factor within our bodies, we should do everything we can to lessen its effects. Music is an easy way to help your body unwind.

It makes me think of the book The Secret and if this entrainment concept is connected with it. At it’s basic core, the Secret says that when you feel good, good things will happen to you. When you feel bad and expect bad things, bad things will surely come. You create the life you want. If events are energy, and if your feelings are also energy, then – just like the pendulums swinging in tandem after a day or so – they entrain or come together. Interesting!!

Music and Entrainment

I am so fortunate to have a developing relationship with the music composer, Chuck Wild and his work called “Liquid Mind: Musical Healthcare.” Frequently on the top charts on iTunes for New Age, Chuck’s music is absolutely exquisite and extremely relaxing.

Not only is he a brilliant musician, but he has taken this idea of applying music to well-being in a very serious manner. Working with AIDs patients and now preemies, Chuck, and the researchers that he is working with, are uncovering loads of empowering information about the benefits that music can have on our bodies.

According to Chuck, music can be considered either stimulative or sedative. In either case, music enters the brain directly into the auditory cortex and mingles and directly affects our attention, memories, emotions, etc.

The rhythm associated with the particular composition can cause the body to physically change and entrain to the beat we are listening to. A fast beat will lead increase our blood flow, heart-rate and brain waves.

A slow, steady, “blanket quality” will do the opposite and allow relaxation to reverse the stress you may be experiencing.

Chuck developed this music after going through an intensely stressful period of his life. He couldn’t figure out how to calm his body and had chronic panic attacks. It changed for him when he took some time for himself and sat on the beach. He noticed that his body was finally beginning to unwind, and realized that it was the ocean steady, non-stop sound that enabled him to relax. This is when he came up with the name for “Liquid Mind.”

As he writes,

“I originally wrote the music of Liquid Mind to be of service to myself, my friends, and family in dealing with the anxiety & stress of working long hours, and also for friends and family dealing with the stress of life-threatening illnesses like cancer & HIV. The Liquid Mind albums seem to have an immediate “slowing down” effect on many listeners, and may also help some people get to sleep, and relax deeply after a tension-filled day.

The ultimate compliment to me is that people fall asleep to my music. This is functional music, it seeks to serve the purpose of assisting us to be tranquil, when that is not easy in today’s world. That’s why the compositions are longer than normal, and very slow in tempo. This music is very special to me, it is my labor of love, I hope you enjoy it.

I am a shameless advocate of life in the slow lane. For many years, I worked eighteen or more hours a day, seven days a week. Your body will always exact a toll for such abuse. I started composing slow music to help me find some peace and quiet, to get back in touch with the fact that I am responsible for the pace of my own life, to help me unify body, mind, and spirit.

Listen now to Chuck and I discuss his background and his theory on musical healthcare:

Listen now

And stay tuned for some exciting co-development work to be done with Chuck and his music with Circle + Bloom!

And for more information, and to listen to a free 5 minute song by LiquidMind, here is the website: www.liquidmindmusic.com

All We Need is Love

Let’s make no bones about it. Life sometimes is downright hard. It challenges us to our core, but time after time, we get up to fight the good fight.

What Dr. Eva Selhub teaches us in her book, The Love Response®, however, gives us a very powerful weapon to steer us towards finding peace no matter what life is throwing us at us. And it’s love.

As simple as flicking a switch, we can make the choice to feel love in our hearts. Even if it starts as a faint flicker, focus on it and let it grow. Something amazing happens inside. Peace and tranquility, and yes, happiness, soon follows.

Listen now to my conversation with Dr. Eva as we discuss why she wrote this book, and how we can use love as a “SHIELD” to live our best lives.

Listen now

The Antidote to Fear

Dr. Selhub talks about the Fear Response that is usually prevalent in our lives. We tend to run scared, full of stress, in our modern lives, and it’s so harmful to not only our bodies, but our lives overall.

But, we need to learn to control it, and use it as an advantage when necessary. We have the choice to counter-balance these feelings with those of joy and pleasure. And we can do that by activating our Love Response.

“When love is infused into the process of relaxation, a positive physiology takes over that allows the body to heal and allows joy to dominate your existence. Love represents a fusion of varied emotions, thoughts, positive neuropathways and reward mechanisms that ultimately allow the body, mind and spirit to maintain equilibrium. Love has a unique hormonal marker, a biochemical function that creates bonding, attachment, and pleasurable sensations. Certain physical processes occur in the body and brain when you feel love and you give love and affection,” continues Eva.

When you experience love, a cascade of positive hormones and peptides run through every element of your body. These include endorphins, oxytocin, dopamine, vasopressin and nitric oxide. They help reverse the symptoms of the fear response.

How to Feel Love, Whenever, Wherever

Every single chapter of Eva’s book gives you excellent exercises you can do to help yourself move towards the Love Response.

Most of them have you relax, do some deep breathing, visualize a certain barrier of protection, accompanied by a strong sense that you are never alone. After a period of 5 – 10 minutes, she asks you to them take out a piece of paper and write about what you just experienced. If it makes sense, to go back in time to re-experience something that will help you let go of deep-seated emotional memories that no longer serve any purpose but to elicit the fear response. If you set your mind to it and do these exercises with a mind-set towards personal growth, I know they will be hugely beneficial for you.

I highly recommend checking out her book!

As I spoke about above, you can experience the feelings of love anytime, anywhere. Here is a little mini-exercise that can’t help but make you feel better:

1. Stop
2. Notice your environment
3. Pick out something, or someone, of beauty. It could be as simple as a ray of sunlight, or your dog looking at you
4. Take a deep breath
5. Feel the feelings of love and gratitude for your object of affection right now
6. Let these feelings expand and grow, expand and grow, expand and grow

“Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.” – Mozart

Love is a Choice

Did you know that giving and receiving of love can improve your health? That love is a choice, not something that happens to you? That by generating feelings of love throughout the day, we literally change our biochemical make-up for the better?

Listen Now to Podcast

In Week 10 of our Einstein series, we talked about the role of spirituality in healing. An incredible body of evidence points to the power of prayer….click here to read more from last week. Note: This is the first of two Einstein’s posts that will focus on the incredible work of Dr. Eva Selhub. Stay tuned next week as well to learn more about the Love Response®.

We are thrilled to have recently met Dr. Eva Selhub, creator and author of The Love Response®, and the opportunity for us to partner and collaborate was made clear as our goals are so well-aligned towards health empowerment. Eva is a senior staff physician at the Benson Henry Institute for Mind/Body Medicine at Mass General Hospital. An integrative health specialist and the founder of Alight Medicine for Learning and Healing in Newton, Massachusetts, she is also a clinical instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. After a big welcome hug, she sat down and impressed us with her positive energy and commitment she has towards helping others with a better way of living.

She developed a new way of living through her book The Love Response®, based upon the fact that our bodies are simply different when we feel good about ourselves, our community and family and spiritually, or what she calls our Love Pyramid. There is a chain of bio-chemical processes that occur in the body when a person operates from love that ultimately results in health and well-being. Over 30 years of research has pointed to the benefits of eliciting the relaxation response, as coined by Dr. Herbert Benson. Now, Dr. Selhub has taken this work to the next level by incorporating love into the meditative experience.

It seems that experiencing love was something that I personally needed to focus on. I am on the constant look-out for areas that I can improve myself, my levels of happiness and life experience…monitoring my reactions, my thoughts, my choices. And the funny part is that this idea that LOVE can be transforming. And I don’t mean romantic love. That’s good too, but, I am talking about a more fundamental approach to life. Whether blog articles, or books – LOVE – kept screaming at me and it wanted my attention. And what I first noticed after reading her book and doing the exercises – many of which are visualization and journaling oriented – that experiencing love is something that we have the choice to feel at anytime we decide. When I meditate on love, I get this profound feeling of heaviness inside, like I am being filled up by the universe with energy. I feel warmer all over, and of course more at peace with my thoughts. Nothing can stand in the way of these feelings. Try it now: simply think love filling you up. It’s a wonerful feeling of balancing, of

The Physical Response of Lack of Love: Fear

Eva talks about the lack of love, or fear. When we are in the Fear Response, our bodies, minds and feelings of well-being are harder, more stressed, profoundly more complicated than when we are in the Love Response. Science shows that fear affects every aspect of your body and mind, including your brain function, immune system, mental and emotional states and propensity towards illness. What happens is a cascade of cause and effect inside the amygdala-hippocampus complex (AHC). Your emotional response center and the primitive part of the brain, often called the “lizard brain.” The lizard brain handles those actions for the body that ensure our survival, such as fear and aggression. It also stores the memory of any given negative experience or threat so that you can react to it faster in the future.

When our lizard brain is activated, there is a cascade of biochemical events that create stress and the production of hormones and peptides such as cortisol and adrenaline, that cause physical change in the body. At the same time, changes occur in the brain that prevent you from doing any complex problem solving. Studies have shown that brains over-exposed to cortisol, the stress hormone, actually have a smaller hippocampus than average – which is where our memory is stored. And this is just the start of the negative influences the fear response can have on the body. As Eva points out in her book, here are some of the symptoms of the fear response:

• Brain: you are hyper-alert, unable to sleep, anxious
• Muscles: You feel tense, especially in your neck, back, shoulders and jaw
• Reproduction: Your periods are irregular and you have problems conceiving
• Gastrointestinal tract: You are constipated or have loose stools, heartburn, or cramping
• Blood flow: You have cold hands and feet.
• Heart: Your heart races and pumps harder and your blood pressure rises.
• Lungs: You breathe faster and more shallowly.
• Immune system: Your white blood cells get ready for a possible attack, causing inflammation.

“The Fear Response is like a fire – beneficial when it cooks your food but harmful if it is not extinguished. If the Fear Response continues too long or unregulated, the body stays in a constant state of stress and pathological problems inevitably arise, including increases in blood pressure and thickening of and tears in blood vessel walls. Excess production of fatty acids and blood sugar may lead to deposits in these tears and formation of atherosclerotic plagues, eventually resulting in heart disease and stroke. The combination of excessive adrenaline and cortisol production and high levels of insulin released from the pancreas in response to elevated glucose levels may eventually lead to insulin-resistant diabetes and other metabolic disorders such as high cholesterol,” says Eva in the Love Response® book.

Next Week….

Stay tuned for next as we intend to cover Dr. Eva’s recommendations on how to counter-balance the negative physical effects (and emotional for that matter) of the Fear Response. We will also have Dr. Eva Selhub on as a special guest on our podcast, so please stay tuned!

“In my view there is no conflict in being a rigorous scientist and a person who believes in a God who takes a personal interest in each one of us. Science’s domain is to explore nature. God’s domain is in the spiritual world, a realm not possible to explore with the tools and language of science.” – Dr. Francis Collins, head of the Human Genome Project

Week 10: The Connection Between Spirituality and Health

Welcome to Week 10 of our How Einstein Would Get Pregnant blog series. Last week we discussed the evidence pointing to the fact of the “Body-Mind” connection, or the fact that our body can make us feel certain emotions by virtue of its state of relative health. This week, in honor of the holidays and religious celebrations going on around the world, we intend to focus on the power of prayer…the miraculous stories of healing…and the biology of belief.

Click here to listen and subscribe to the podcast on Apple iTunes..
Click here to listen to Week 9 podcast.

Miracles Abound

It’s England on December 14, 1421 and a fourteen-year old girl suffered a painful and life-threatening injury when a hot spit went into her abdomen. People around here were able to extract the spit, but she was to the point of death. At that point, her parents and several other neighbors prayed to a specific saint (Osmund, the eleventh-century bishop of Salisbury) asking him that in exchange for her life being spared, that they would visit his tomb and honor him in prayer. Shortly thereafter, the girl began to show renewed signs of life, and two days later awoke and rose from her bed. Ten days later she was completely recovered.

The connection between religion, spirituality and healing is widespread and runs the history among many traditions. Jesus and Buddha were both healers, and saints and Gods are often attributed to miraculous healings, as exemplified by the story of the fourteen-year-old girl. Dr. Wayne Dyer speaks of his miracle cure to his knee during a visit to Lourdes in France, the famous shrine were thousands of similar healings are said to have occurred.

The History of Religion, Sickness and Health

Thomas Moore, in his book Care of the Soul in Medicine, suggests to doctors, nurses and other modern-day healers to try to possess a generally positive, “caring radiance” – making the comparison to the radiance associated with the halo around Jesus’ head as well as the radiant background to the various depictions of the Buddha. And as he says, “but we all have halos and auras. We all radiate the quality of our souls, both good and bad. It doesn’t take much to pick up on the radiance of care around a nurse or the radiance or expertise behind a doctor.”

“Those of us whose notions about the causes and cures of sickness are rooted in medical science may have difficulty knowing what to make of such reports.” The skeptics and scientists of our age often dismiss these stories as exaggerations, even pure fiction,” writes Robert Scott, author of Miracle Cures. He says that faith and the appeal of prayer to heal is “based on a body of theory and research that has been largely overlooked by those who study miracles cures: the work of social, behavioral and medical scientists showing that culture, beliefs, cognitions, emotions, social relationships and physical environment play a central role in the onset, course and outcome of illness.” I believe this is a very balanced and noteworthy point of view.

Our Thoughts, Beliefs and Fertility

The power of belief is all-encompassing when it comes to our bodies and our health. Barbara Bradley Hagerty in her book Fingerprints of God, writes about her experience with Christian Science, which holds as a central premise that healing is a function of spiritual understanding and that prayer changes our thoughts which enables us to heal. “Everything is thought in Christian Science. Everything is going on in your thinking.” She uses the example that if a mirror was full of smudges and toothpaste, your image is distorted and marred, but it is the mirror that holds the problem, not yourself. The way you clean the mirror – and restore your reflection – is to clean up your thinking.

She writes about the story of her Mother’s broken hand. She was playing around with her fiance at the time, hit her hand the wrong way, and knew immediately that something was wrong. She started thinking – almost like a mantra or meditation – “nothing can come into my human experience that I do no allow in my consciousness as a reality. You take it out of your consciousness – the broken hand – and erase it, and then you substitute health with the truth.  She then writes that her mother “had this great sense of light – of one thing flowing out of another, out of another, out of another, into eternity. There was nothing but light. It’s all one. It’s all God. The all-ness of God, which is the oneness of God, and I was within that oneness.” She later went to see a doctor about her hand, who said that yes, the hand was broken, but that it was perfectly set and almost healed. She writes that her mother “reliving the intensity of the moment, remember walking out of his office, my feet didn’t touch the ground, I was so filled with God’s truth, the spirituality, the marvel in it. That was the end of it.”

I don’t know about you, but when I hear such stories I get into a different zone of thought as various doors open in my brain that I didn’t even know existed. I listen to them with an incredible amount of hope. Knowing and sensing this greater power that is readily available to us at all times. The spirit and universe that flows through all of us.

In fact, the quote from above of “one thing flowing out of another, out of another, out of another” made me think of Jill Bolte Taylor’s Stroke of Insight and her incredible and very moving speech about what happened to her while she was experiencing a stroke. Here it is and I highly recommend if you haven’t already done so, please watch this.  For everyone faced with a medical challenge – or simply with the desire to live within a deeper level of truth and beauty – this video may point you in a new direction, a new wonderful way of thinking about life.

In Summary….

This meandering post doesn’t conclude with any specific suggestions or conclusions, but hopefully raised some questions in your mind about the power of belief as it pertains to spirituality. Why is it that the more we know about science, the more questions are raised that are almost unanswerable? Another great book is The Language of God by Francis Collins, who led the Human Genome Project. Here is a scientist who for most of his life defined his religious views as atheist, and the more he researched the human body and the building blocks of life, the more he became convinced that there simply is a higher power. Science and spirituality becoming closer the more we learn. Amazing.

“I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.” – Stephen Hawking

Welcome to Week 9 of our How Einstein Would Get Pregnant blog series. Last week we covered a special story from our friend Stephanie Fitzgerald, who “just adopt”-ed and lived to tell the tale. It’s a story about persistence, courage and ultimately love. I highly recommend to take the 20 minutes and read and/or listen especially if you are considering this alternative.

Reversing the Top Down Mind-Body Approach

This week we come back to our “brainy” fertility (and infertility) topic and want to delve into the realm of the body mechanics…the evidence pointing to the fact of the “Body-Mind” connection, or the fact that our our body can makes us feel certain emotions by virtue of its state of relative health. The mind-body connection, or the role of our emotions and thoughts on our bodies seems to be clear – but what about the mirror image of that statement? How does the state of our body, or our physical health, determine our emotions?

Click here to listen to Week 9 podcast.

Robert A. Scott in his book Miracle Cures writes about the increasing number of studies showing the role of emotions in causing illness. “The link between negative emotions and poor health is a powerful one. Studies find that people who tend to inhibit the expression of emotions have generally poorer health than those with less repressive, inhibited styles of coping. Strong relationships have been found between anger and hostility and the incidence of coronary heart disease, cancer, and arthritis.” He goes on to discuss the link between extreme sadness to heart disease and cancer, and linking pessimism and hopelessness to ill-health.

What most of these studies assume is a very head-down link – the mind and brain, which presumably have these emotions and thoughts, subsequently impact the body in alarming ways. Is it possible to assume, therefore, that the body – if it has these illnesses or imbalances – subsequently impact the mind in equally alarming ways, causing a downward spiral? The body is sick, therefore the mind becomes sick, therefore the body becomes sicker still. I am not suggesting I have the answer, but let’s look at some simple life examples for an answer.

It’s clear in dramatic instances when we are sick with the flu, or instance, that we will “feel” miserable. And not just in the body, but in our thoughts and feelings. We aren’t jovial, nor we we smiling or thinking about our next big life goal in an optimistic fashion. This is an obvious example showing the direct correlation of this “bottoms-up” or body-to-mind view.

As Barbara Bradley Hagerty writes in her book Fingerprints of God – What Science is Learning About the Brain and Spiritual Experience is “we often underestimate the effects of just relaxing your muscles…a good massage and suddenly, Hey! the rest of my life is good!” Our bodies are often overlooked except when we are sick. Do we take enough time during the day to “check-in” with our body? Ask it questions, help it release anxiety and tension in areas?

The Body-Mind Effect of Meditating, Exercise, Sleep and Diet

I was listening to a Jack Kornfield recording about meditating. He talks about the fact that many people when they begin meditating find discomfort in certain areas of their body. It seems as if when your thoughts goes quiet, the mind (intuition?) can actually begin to hear what your body is saying to you. This is important information to act upon. This communication within your mind-body is a two-way highway. Tapping into your body using methods such as meditating, relaxation – or even taking a warm bath – can be truly enlightening.

Another simple example is one of yoga or exercise. Stretching and using your muscles may be painful at first, but I guarantee there will be positive emotional benefits after the fact. This your body is telling you how happy it becomes when it is active. The bio-mechanics underlying this cascade involve various hormones such as opiates and cellular receptors – endocrine glands in your brain, thyroid and adrenal glands which then send these positive “molecules of emotions” to a myriad of cells in your body using such cell-surface receptors. It’s a thunder-burst of positive emotions that can be released through the stretching and exercising of your body.

Or take a day when you haven’t slept well the night before. Your body is under duress due to profound fatigue. Every single area of your body is impacted by sleep. How would you rate your level of happiness during this day in your life on a chart from 1 to 10? Another example of the body-mind connection. Your diet also plays an enormous role in your energy levels and state of well-being.

Summary

On a more profound level – and one I don’t have the answer for – what do certain conditions like PCOS, Endometriosis or blocked fallopian tubes produce to impact this body-mind connection? Research has linked higher rates of depression with PCOS, for example, but does the mind subconsciously react to these conditions from a physical perspective?

In summary, I do believe that the health of mind AND body are interconnected not just from a heads-down approach, but from a circular flow of complex interconnections. The balancing of the body – or health – may improve thoughts and feelings, which in turn boosts immune systems and keeps your body health. And unfortunately, the opposite may be true as well. But we can access mind-body health not just from a release of emotions or improving our thoughts (sometimes very very difficult to do), but by checking in with your body and helping it find balance as well. Both tactics would make sense and can work to help you empower your life, fertility and your future.

Next week we will do a little holiday cheer and discuss baby-making sex and libido…should be a fun week!

To celebrate National Adoption Awareness Month, I thought we would change gears a tad and discuss adoption.

On our podcast today is a very special guest and my personal dearest friend, Stephanie Clark Fitzgerald. Stephanie is no stranger to this blog; we have written about her many times. Her adoption story is actually very intertwined with the creation of Circle+Bloom. After a two year adoption roller coaster, they are now proud parents of this gorgeous baby boy.

When I tell the story of why I created Circle + Bloom to begin with, I almost always have to mention Steph. After having gone through secondary infertility, Steph then started having troubles of her own. Seeing her month, after month going through what I just did stirred me from a deep place inside to want to help her. I created Circle+Bloom with her in mind.

In fact, when they were trying to become pregnant with their third child, she listened religiously to our mind-body fertility relaxation recordings. Her  enthusiasm was clear.  In her second cycle something happened. She recalls clearly that while being in a relaxed state and trying to visualize her body, a strong intuitive message made itself clear: her body said “sorry dear, this ain’t happening.” It was then they decided to move directly to adoption. She kindly credits Circle + Bloom for helping her to move more firmly in that direction quicker than what otherwise would have been the case.

For reasons she mentions in the podcast, they decided to stay domestic. They used American Adoptions (which they highly recommend) and did all of their paperwork and home studies. Then they were matched with a baby girl in the Bronx. And then they were matched with a baby boy in Jacksonville, and then they were matched with another baby boy in Jacksonville – but never brought any of them home.

Learn what happens next by listening to Steph and I talk about this journey..and hear the words of someone with an incredible amount of bravery to endure the time involved, and the heart-aches leading to the wonderful ending we can now all celebrate.

Click here to listen to the podcast.

We also should mention Dawn Davenport who specializes in helping families through the adoption process…with her organization called Creating a Family. This non-profit provides resources and support for this alternative journey.

How the Brain Dictates Your Monthly Reproductive Health

Welcome to Week 7 How Einstein Would Get Pregnant blog series, we will cover what happens “under the hood” of our brain and fertility. Each and every month our brain enters into a tango dance with our ovaries and uterus for ovulation and then subsequently implantation. It’s empowering to understand the ins and outs of how this happens, not to mention that it is very interesting!

Consider this: your reproductive cycle is one elegant system of communication loops. Like the intricate steps in the tango, every single event leads to another event, which leads to another event. The first event each month for our reproductive cycle actually happens in the brain. And it is hormones that are passed between the hypothalamus and the pituitary.

Click here to listen to the podcast.

The Hypothalamus

A word about these small yet very powerful glands in the middle of our brains. First, the hypothalamus. Think of the hypothalamus as the peace-maker, or the referee. The hypothalamus regulates homeostasis in our body – from sensing body temperature, hunger and thirst, to stress and reproduction. It takes information from all parts of our bodies, and then sends data to help provide balance. In more technical terms it links the nervous system with the endocrine system. Whether it is telling us to eat, increasing our body temperature, or activating our flight-or-fight response – it helps to provide the activity required by our bodies to stay healthy, out of harms way, and to get our bodies ready for reproduction. The name of the game for the hypothalamus is balance.

Also, isn’t it interesting to note that this gland – the size of an almond and located in the middle of the brain, behind our nose – is not only responsible for our reproductive health BUT also regulates stress? What do you think takes precedence in the brain – responding to danger or ovulation to procreate? What if the stress is always there – or chronic? But I’ll leave that for another post.

The Pituitary

Part and parcel with the hypothalamus is the pituitary, which falls right below the hypothalamus. Even though it is called the “master endocrine gland” in the body, the pituitary is the worker bee and is directly controlled by the hypothalamus (the other endocrine glands are the thyroid and the adrenal glands). The pituitary gland secretes hormones regulating homeostasis, including hormones that stimulate other endocrine glands. The hypothalamus instructs the pituitary through the release of Gonadotropin Release Hormone (GnRH) to release hormones to the ovaries. The hormones that the pituitary gland secrets to the ovaries includes Lutenizing Hormone (‘LH”) and Follicular Stimulating Hormone (“FSH”).

This is where we get to talk about the feedback loop system. It’s best to explain this in terms of what happens before and through ovulation, and then what happens post ovulation.

Leading Up To Ovulation

GnRH is sent from the hypothalamus to the pituitiary “releasing” (the “R” in GnRH stands for releasing hormone) more specific fertility hormones to the ovaries. The ovaries bind with these hormones, which are instructing the ovaries to stimulate one or more follicles to grow for that month’s cycle. In response to this activity, the ovaries release estrogen which binds with the pituitary to tell it to increase the FSH and LH in a feedback loop. This builds until the LH surge, and one of the ovaries releases a fully formed egg into the fallopian tube.

After Ovulation

Independent on whether or not the egg becomes fertilized, the follicle that released the egg (at this point called the corpus luteum) begins to emit progesterone, which tells the uterus to build nutrients and blood to accept the fertilized egg. The egg actually stays in the fallopian tube for a few days and then floats around in the uterus for a while until it finally either implants in the walls of the uterus in pregnancy. If no pregnancy, the uterus sheds the lining during menstruation.

During the second part of the second after ovulation, estrogen decreases while progesterone increases. Because estrogen decreased, LH and FSH also fall until the cycle starts again with the hypothalamus sending GnRH to the pituitary.

Here is a quick slide-show showing the reproductive system in action:

Good to Know!

In alignment with one of our central tenets – that knowledge is power – I hope that this post gives a better understanding of your reproductive health. And when we use our mind-body communication power, we can be more specific with our visualizations – more granular – with these thoughts and intentions.

How We Can Proactively Use Our Brains as Tools for the Health and Balance of our Bodies

Over the last two weeks, we talked about the influence our emotions and negative thought patterns have on the delicate balance of our endocrine – or hormonal system – as well as our overall health. As Bernie Siegel M.D. discusses it, changing our thought patterns is one essential “tool in our mind-body toolkit.” The other tool is our visual capability, the topic of this week’s How Einstein Would Get Pregnant series. I’ll first cover the basics of exactly what we mean by visualization, how this therapy is used in lots of areas of medicine today, and how we can apply this tool to fertility and overall well-being.

Guided visualization, also called guided imagery or even hypnotherapy, is the act of using the brain’s imagination and the brain’s “seeing ability” to proactively relax, reduce the effects of depression and anxiety – and even bring about real physiological changes for improving health, well-being – and of course fertility.

Click here to listen to the podcast.

The mind and the body are constantly chatting back and forth. 99.9% of the time this is something that is done completely on autopilot. Your brain tells your body to breath in oxygen. Your brain motivates and supports your immune system to attack invading illnesses. Your mouth waters when you visualize something very juicy to eat. It has been shown that our thoughts work in images or pictures and it is the way our mind and body communicate with each other.

So is it possible to consciously direct the functions of the body? According to Dr. Andrew Weil, a powerful mind-body connection is activated when you turn the power of the cerebral cortex inward – or using the mind’s eye visualization ability. In layman’s term – the body doesn’t know the difference between something that you are only visualizing versus what you are actually experiencing. This was proven when Olympic athletes were connected to EKG machines and imagined running through their athletic performance with their eyes closed. The exact same muscles fired as when they actually performed their event. If the muscles fired by only visualizing the body running and moving, then what else can we direct the body to do using our mind’s eye?

Candace Pert, author of Molecules of Emotion, comments in her book that she was able to consciously direct the release of endorphins running through her body by visualizing her hypothalamus releasing endorphins. Her knowledge of the physical aspects of her body allowed her to perform this easily and directly. She also was a pioneer in the field of Psychoneuroimmunology – or the study of the mind-brain-body connection and identifying how molecules of our emotions are literally translated throughout the body in complex feedback loop mechanisms.

So what is the possibility of turning this visual capability inward and using it to “see” our reproductive cycle and fertility being balanced, healthy and even seeing the sperm and the egg meet right after ovulation? Granted we only have our anecdotal stories at this point (no formal study of our programs have been completed) but what we hear truly amazes us.   From women reporting restoration of ovulation (see Kate’s review of our programs here), feeling empowered and in control even through a very stressful IVF cycle and – yes – to becoming pregnant (one woman finally got pregnant after six years of trying to conceive the first month she used our Natural Cycle program).

We believe it’s possible based on what has been studied using guided visualization and therapy in other areas of medicine.   Let’s explore some of those studies now.

The Scientific Studies Surrounding Guided Visualization

There have been studies completed using guided visualization in a broad range of health-related problems including cancer, asthma and bronchitis, depression – as well as women’s health including menstrual cycle lengthening and breast milk production (we have listed all of these studies and summarized them in this table as well).

In all of these studies, two major results keep showing up:  patients using guided visualization tend to feel better from a physiological stand-point, and they have a physical response as well.  My theory on the improved feelings of well-being is that we always feel better when we feel in greater control over our situation and body, which guided visualization helps one accomplish.

The physical response I believe stems from the clear communication on a cellular level between our minds and bodies as well as the fact that our body doesn’t necessarily know what it is physically doing versus what we are just imaging.  According to Dr. Bernie Siegel, this allows our thoughts to “trick” the body.  The studies show patients with terminal cancer living twice as long as those not using these techniques, improving white blood cells and immune response and even improving breast milk supply and lengthening menstrual cycles and reducing symptoms of PMS.  Incredible stuff!

One note of caution, however. We are not scientists or medical professionals, so we have no way of basing whether or not these studies have received scientific credit from the community at large. Nor do we represent that this list encompasses all of the studies completed.

Applying to Fertility

I’ll never forget standing in my kitchen – with a great deal of knowledge about guided visualization because of my fascination with the subject – and thinking about helping my friend Stephanie.  After about six months of trying, she was having no luck and having increasingly emotional worry and stress. After having gone through my secondary infertility issues, I was stirred to help her on almost a primal level.

The fact that women who are TTCing literally start to define themselves by the current cycle day ….and coupled that with the fact that every single day our bodies are changing to gear up for ovulation, fertilization and implantation – that we could have a visualization and relaxation session geared for every single day of the cycle.  My “a-ha” moment!