 And if we're being really technical and scientific, there's actually one day when your body can get pregnant. One day out of your whole cycle. My name is Rishma Walji. I'm a naturopathic doctor, acupuncturist, and PhD. And I like to tell women how to understand their bodies, how to balance their hormones. And ideally, I help them get pregnant, stay pregnant, and recover postpartum. Wonderful. So this is actually brand new to my channel. I usually talk about sex and relationships and intimacy and dating. And the fertility area is something new. It's a new thought process for me as well, too. I'll actually say this for the first time. I've had an IUD for the past four years. I took it out recently. And not that we're trying, but we're just open now to the idea of maybe in a few months or in a year, this might be one to do. That being said, I'm also 34 years old. So I have a ton of questions when it comes to when to get pregnant, fertility. And so I'm going to ask you all the basic questions. Go away. I have so much to talk about. Okay. First and foremost, when and how does one get pregnant? So that's a good question, actually, because people don't realize you can't get pregnant all month long. So there's a certain window of time when you actually can get pregnant and where it's more likely. And that is when you release an egg. So your body releases an egg. It's called ovulation. Your egg is released and hangs out in your body for maybe 12 to 24 hours, depending on your body and the cycle. And that's the day you can get pregnant. So you have a window of opportunity of plus or minus five days because the sperm can hang out in your body. So that's sort of the basic, this is how your body works. You can't get pregnant every day of your cycle. What factor does age play in someone's ability to get pregnant? Yeah. It's a good question. You definitely have a higher chance when you're younger. So your chances go down as you age because our eggs get older, our bodies are exposed to more toxins. Age does play a role. So biologically, although we see in the media, you know, women are having babies when they're late 40s. And you know, there are other ways to get pregnant and to help your body. But typically as you get older, your chances go down because your general health goes down and biologically, reproductively, your hormones are changing. So that makes a difference. And the one thing that no one talks about is the age of the male partner because that makes a difference too as he ages, his sperm quality can change as well. How do you know if it's you or your partner? I would start at the beginning to try to understand your body because we as women are not really taught about our bodies. The way that you say we don't learn about sex, which we really don't, you go to school and you're like, don't get pregnant. Don't get an STD. Yes. And then you get into a place where you're in your 30s or 40s ready to have a child and you don't know anything about your body because you've never been taught. So that's where I start is understand your body, understand when you're ovulating, understand what your periods like, what your hormones are telling you because your body gives you a lot of information on a monthly basis. We just don't understand it. And the same thing with the men, of course, understand their health because his sperm turns over every three months. So in theory, he also should be looking at his healthcare. In fact, I actually find it unethical to treat a woman without actually looking at the male health. So I had to start saying no to women who are looking to get pregnant whose partners were not interested in trying because I just felt unethical. It's a two person process. Now you said that there's so much information on a monthly basis that our bodies are telling us run me through a checklist. What should we be paying attention to? So you should be paying attention to your period. Most of us don't really pay attention. We don't know how much we bleed. We don't know for getting cloths. We don't know if it's spotting. You know, we know kind of because we're trying to make sure we're not leaking through our clothes or we want to go swimming or, you know, we're just annoyed with it. But we want to make sure that we know what is happening. If your period is too light, that tells you something about your hormones. If your period is too heavy, that tells you something about your hormones. If you have incredible, you know, bedridden cramps that tells you about something about your hormones. So I want people to pay attention to their actual menstrual cycle. And the other thing I think you should pay attention to is the middle of your cycle, your ovulation time. So what are you getting? Mucous changes. Are you having symptom changes? Maybe your sexual desire will increase in the middle of your mind. I do think some of it has to be a discussion with a health provider. Unfortunately, a lot of medical doctors don't either have the time or training to be able to go through that with you. But there's a lot of people who focus on fertility and women's hormones that can help you. Now, when we think about being pregnant, we recognize there's a lot of lifestyle changes that have to happen. A lot of things that have to get cut out. When someone is desiring to get pregnant, what lifestyle changes do you suggest? Essentially, you want to pretend you're pregnant because your body is trying to create a healthy pregnancy. So you want to make sure that your body is healthy as if you're pregnant. First, I say you have to nourish your body. So you definitely have to eat well. You have to do all the lifestyle things, no drinking, alcohol is a big factor when it comes to pregnancy, drugs, lack of water. If you're smoking, that's another really big one. So you want to nourish your body first. That's the biggest thing. Sleep is another factor, stress, lifestyle factors. So it's not just food, but also just how you're managing your life. And then the next thing you want to protect your body. So I think of it as anything that could damage your body. So environmental toxins or chemicals that you might be exposed to. If you work in a plant or something like that, you want to try to protect your body either by removing those chemicals or supporting your body with antioxidants and things like that. And then you want to repair any problems. So if you know I have very bad cramps, I have an irregular cycle. You want to repair those problems and help your hormones. Or if the male partner, let's say, is having issues with libido or something else, you want to look at testosterone and things like that. So you want to repair any potential problems. And then the last stage, I kind of think of it as a triangle of pyramid. The last stage is to optimize. So not only do you want to repair any problems, but you want your hormones to be working the best possible way they can. And specifically for males, for them as well. You don't want them to just be swimming and, you know, hey, let me see if I can get to the edge to swim in. We want the athletes, right? We want them to get through that obstacle course. We want to get there and we want them to be good, right? So you want to optimize your function. I love what actually you just said in that, if your period is irregular, correct that problem. We actually think of a lot of these things as just is. Like I just have an irregular period. I just have bad cramping. We never think about, oh, this is something that we can actually repair and change. So checklist would be if you have irregular cycles. So when I say irregular, I mean a wide irregularity. If you have a 27 day cycle and sometimes it's 30 days and sometimes it's 28 days, that's considered within a normal range. So when I say irregular, I mean you have 40 day cycles or you are sometimes 60 day cycles, they're completely all over the place. That would be considered an irregular cycle. So you want to know if that's an issue. Do you have incredible painful cramps? You should feel a little bit of discomfort, maybe you're bleeding. But after that, anything beyond that would be considered something you want to look out for. If you have pain during intercourse, that could indicate a bunch of things. If you have problems with cervical mucus discharge. So let's say you have used infections. Serinary tract infections, bacterial vaginosis, any of those types of things you want to pay attention to those. And then of course, lifestyle factors. So if you never get any sleep and you're always stressed and you have diabetes and you have allergies that are bothering you constantly or let's say you have mental health issues and you're on medication for that, that could change your cycle. It could change your hormones. It could change your ability to get pregnant. So overall health also matters. Let me ask the loaded question here. Birth control and fertility. Yeah. What is impeding women from getting pregnant? So you take the birth control, let's assume it's the pill. You take the birth control pill to prevent a pregnancy. Is it stops you from ovulating? It changes your mucus. So the discharge that comes out of your vagina or your cervical mucus is what it's called. It changes that so that it is less friendly to sperm. And it changes your uterine lining. So the tissue inside your uterus that bleeds every month, it changes that so that it's less friendly for implantation. So if you do fertilize an egg accidentally and it tries to stick into the uterine wall, that changes so it prevents that implantation. So if you think about it when you're on the pill, let's say from the time you're a teenager, 10, 15 years, and then you go off the pill and you're trying to get pregnant, your body needs some time to normalize itself, right? It needs some time to figure out how to have a normal cycle again. Other than an untreated, sexually transmitted infection, what are some things that you can't come back from? Things that, you know, could drastically change your fertility future. If you had some kind of scar tissue, so say you had an ectopic pregnancy or you had some sort of abdominal surgery that gave you scar tissue. If your tubes are damaged in any way, that's obviously hard to do naturally. You would have to go in for an implantation for that. Those are the main issues. If you have, let's see, any kind of major health issue, so chronic disease, autoimmune disease, that kind of thing, it makes it really hard to get pregnant. It doesn't mean it's impossible, it makes it a lot harder. There's one condition that most women will not realize that they have, but really impacts their fertility. And that is what's called a subclinical thyroid issue. So they might have a thyroid problem, but it hasn't been diagnosed. It's sort of, you know, underlying that that happens sometimes. Or their thyroid might be working a little less optimally than it should. And that impacts your fertility quite significantly. And most women don't realize that that's happening. They just feel tired or they just feel a couple of symptoms. They don't really realize it's a thyroid problem. Are there any, because we often, do you think it's a good thing now that we're in the age of birth control information on both sides about the extreme negative, the extreme positive? There's so many different options. Do you think that some of the fear surrounding birth control actually holds up? I just want women to know the pros and cons. I want you to go in eyes wide open because I see women in their 30s and 40s where they're like, I wish someone told me this when I was 15. Why did I not know that there was an issue with my cycle? I was just put on the birth control pill and I thought everything was going to be fixed. So I actually like that we have the information. I like that we have the options and that women can choose to go on the birth control pill if they want to, or they have many other options now. But I want them to know what is happening to their body so they can make a choice that is informed. If you have partnered sex and your partner ejaculates in you, should you rush to the bathroom? If you don't want to get pregnant, is that going to impact things? Should you lay with your legs up in the air? If you do want to get pregnant, how much of after ejaculation impacts your chances or not chances of getting pregnant? Yeah, good question. Typically they say it doesn't matter. In theory, this firm should get there. However, what I notice is it depends on the woman's body. So some women have a cervix that's a bit tilted. So if you go for a pap and they're kind of struggling with the speculum, trying to get your cervix, sometimes that means you have a tilted uterus or they might tell you that you have a retroverted uterus where your uterus kind of sits in a different position. So when people are trying to get pregnant, especially if it's a long journey and they're frustrated and they're timing sex and they're, you know, they're just doing it in one way. They're like, I have to put a pillow under my hips and I spread and then it's boring, first of all. And that emotional piece is really important. Your body has to feel excited to get pregnant. If you're just running to the bathroom or you're waiting for 10 minutes or, you know, those details in particular are not really shown to make a difference. However, being able to be intimate in a pleasurable way, being able to understand where your cervix sits and what positions are more comfortable for you. So if you're just early in your journey, I would just say try every position. Try to make sure it's enjoyable. And if you really don't want to pay attention to your exact ovulation window, just have sex, you know, a few times every week and just spread it out. You should catch your window at some point. And then once you're really trying to get pregnant and you're really into that fertility journey, then pay more attention to the detail. Now, my gynecologist told me that prenatal vitamins are actually best taken before you get pregnant. I can imagine there's a bunch of money grabbing things that are designed to get women who are in this space and really wanting it to invest. So in your opinion, what's a good investment and a not good investment? In my opinion, if you're taking care of yourself and you're eating very well, you should be able to get a lot of nutrients in your body anyways. So prenatal vitamins, we always recommend standard. You take it for three months before you get pregnant because mainly because of the full late content. So that's what you need. There's a lot of research to show that if you don't have that in your body, you could have a baby that has problems. And so you want to make sure you have that in your body. You also get that from vegetables. You also get that from other nutrients. So it's not that you won't have it. It's just that we want to make sure that you don't ever have too little of it in case you get pregnant and you're not realizing it. You know what's fascinating about this? I'm just sitting here thinking like, you as much as you can YouTube this, you really can't YouTube this. Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of information that people don't realize and much more detailed than they think. And then they just run to the fertility clinic because they have no idea what to do and they're spending thousands and thousands of dollars. And don't get me wrong. Fertility clinics are amazing in what they're able to do. But a lot of times you don't need to get there or you can improve your success rates if your body is healthy when you go into that situation. You did incredible. I cannot even begin. I think there's a lot of information to digest. Thank you. But I learned a lot and if anybody wants to learn more, where can they find you? They can just find me at my website. It's rishmawaldy.com, which is just my name. Or I'm also on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube. I have a YouTube channel as well. Yes, you do. Just trying to spread the information and help women to understand themselves better. We actually met at one of my book launch events and we were sitting in a little smaller group afterwards and there were so many questions for you in that tiny group. I knew that I had to have you on here and you did not disappoint. You were incredible. So thank you for all of that. I'll definitely be calling and emailing you and being like, my poo is green? What does that mean? Anytime. Thank you so much. I feel so passionate because we do go 20 to 30 years of our life without this information. No one talks about it. Yes. Yeah. We lean mean for our tile machines. If you want. If you want.