E194: Investigating Miscarriage, Infertility, and Gut Health Connections, with Allison Jordan FDN-P

Have you wondered if your fertility issues, gut problems, or hormone imbalances are more complex than you’ve been told? It’s frustrating to hear that they’re “normal,” especially if you’ve experienced a miscarriage.

We know how painful that can be and we’re not here to blame you. We want to offer insights to help prevent future miscarriages. In this episode, gut health expert Allison Jordan shares her journey with chronic illness and fertility challenges, revealing important health triggers.

You’ll find out about:

• The five key factors that could be sabotaging your gut and hormone health
• Some potential triggers for miscarriage you may be missing on lab work
• How to gently support your body’s detox pathways

Don’t miss this enlightening conversation filled with practical insights. Press play to uncover the missing pieces of your health and fertility puzzle!

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Connect with Allison:
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Mentioned episodes: Histamine Intolerance, 6 Reasons Your Doctor is Reading Your Blood Labs Wrong

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Don’t forget to subscribe, share this episode, and leave a review. Your support helps us reach more women looking for answers.

Disclaimer: Nothing in this podcast is to be taken as medical advice, please take informed accountability and speak to your provider before making changes to your health routine.

This podcast is for women and moms to learn how to balance hormones naturally in motherhood, to have pain-free periods, increased fertility, to decrease PMS mood swings, and to increase energy without restrictive diet plans. You'll learn how to balance blood sugar, increase progesterone naturally, understand the root cause of estrogen dominance, irregular periods, PCOS, insulin resistance, hormonal acne, post birth-control syndrome, and conceive naturally. We use a pro-metabolic, whole food, root cause approach to functional women's health and focus on truly holistic health and mind-body connection.

If you listen to any of the following shows, we're sure you'll like ours too!
Pursuit of Wellness with Mari Llewellyn, Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark, Found My Fitness with Rhonda Patrick, Just Ingredients Podcast, Wellness Mama, The Dr Josh Axe Show, Are You Menstrual Podcast, The Model Health Show, Grounded Wellness By Primally Pure, Be Well By Kelly Leveque, The Freely Rooted Podcast with Kori Meloy, Simple Farmhouse Life with Lisa Bass

Transcript

Leisha: I am really excited to share this episode with you because the guest that I have today, Allison Jordan, has such a wealth of knowledge on how the body works together in a different way than I think some of my other guests have, . We're talking about some really important topics for women's health that I haven't covered here before, miscarriage and fertility, and the relation between that.

And not only gut health, but specific nutrients and specific lab markers. So this one is for you if you are someone who's really looking for answers and wants to have an understanding of how multiple layers of the body fit together. We really created this conversation as. Story of Allison's as she as a practitioner has gone through miscarriage and just how she investigated and what worked for her.

I hope that you enjoy this and I'll see you in there.

Leisha: Hey friend. Welcome back to the Happily Hormonal Podcast. 

 I have Allison Jordan here today and she is the host of the Better Belly Podcast and she is an expert in functional gut health as well as hormones. We're gonna have a really fun conversation today. But Allison, I would love for you to just introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about who you are, even outside of your expertise, your family, things like that before we dive in.

Allison: Awesome. Thanks so much for having me, Leisha. I love your podcast. I've followed it like the way your brain works and my brain works, I feel is super complimentary, hopefully your listeners can feel that. You're not the only person who thinks this way and that there is there's a way to think there's a way to, that we can heal our bodies.

But I am a functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner like yourself. I've been practicing since 2018. I also have a background as a massage therapist where I specialized in craniosacral therapy and visceral manipulation and looking at the body, not just from a cellular standpoint, like your internal cellular working, but also.

So a mechanical and structural standpoint. I have a daughter who's two and a half a husband and another child on the way in my belly due in April of this year, or 2025, for if someone's listening in the future. . I got into this work 'cause I got super sick. Nobody could solve my issues.

I went to every GI doc, every OB GYNI was at the university mission 'cause I was in the city of Ann Arbor I'm seeing the top doctors in their fields and they would just prescribe medications that didn't help, or diets that didn't help or. Therapy that didn't help. And then when it didn't work, they said it was my fault and that I wasn't compliant enough.

And that was super not fun. And I just happened to come across step by step, different things that started to heal me and I. ended up being like, okay if this worked for me and I couldn't even heal. Does it work for anybody else? Am I the only thing these types of therapies and treatments work for?

Or is this like what everybody needs? Because I knew that GI issues were such a prevalent problem. And started working with clients and all the things that I'd done to heal myself, worked for them. Of course, I had to learn new tricks and things along the way, but now we're here six years later, I guess seven now, we're in 20, 25, 7 years later.

 It's been an awesome time getting to see people heal from things that they never thought they could heal from.

Leisha: I love hearing that and I think that it can always be so encouraging to hear you were really sick and you are getting the answers that everyone gets, and. The Lord led you to something different. Because I don't think that often we can just find those things ourselves. It has to be, in my opinion, divine intervention.

Especially when it's such a dramatic story of you were really sick, you were seeing all the specialists, they didn't know what to do with you essentially, they just kept trying things out. I think that can be so encouraging. And then you've gone on to really focus on gut health, which, okay, so we came into this functional health space around the same time, I think it was 2019 for me, actually.

I think I did start, yeah, 2019. And I know that at that time, and I think still now in some spaces, it's like I. The gut is the top thing to work on to improve your health, and I think we both have a perspective of the gut is very important and also it's connected to literally everything else in your body.

But I would love for you to just share , just a little bit of experience of how you've incorporated other things into your practice, even though gut health is your focus.

Allison: interestingly enough for my brain, and this just is how I think of it, I still think of everything I do as gut health in many ways because one of the primary ways and I'll say what you're saying is wrong, but just hear me out. The gut is the main doorway to the rest of the body.

Yeah. There's the lungs. Yeah, there's the skin. Yeah. There's even like the mind, the psyche, but the gut is where we're intaking food and nutrients, it's where all these things should be filtered out. That is the main way you can get in, the good things, take out the bad things. It's our detox system.

Again, it's not the only one, but it is just a huge way that we're gonna be doing that. What I have found is that everything at the end of the day is about optimizing the gut. If you use a castor oil pack that's on the skin, right when you're gonna actually put it typically over the liver, which is on the right side of the body, and so it's transdermal, transdermally absorbed, but the liver is a part of the digestive tract and digestive system.

And when your liver starts detoxing, it dumps all the things. It's detoxing, it dumps its thick, bile, everything into the GI tract to be able to poop out. And then it will also dump out some different toxins for the kidneys to deal with, for us to pee out. The whole body it's not separate systems and it's really just the handholds we're using to get certain systems to dump their toxins or certain systems to uptake what they need. So like cells to be able to, or mitochondria inside of a cell to uptake energy and be able to create a TP and detox. I'm not sure if that a hundred percent answers your question.

I didn't list very specific therapies, but at the end of the day, it's basically, it's not just food sensitivities. And actually I think that's a pet peeve that I have is that gut health is just about altering diet. That is not the case. And actually all of my clients who come to me. They're stuck in this hamster wheel of healing because they're just trying to alter their diet and they're doing the low FODMAP diet and the elimination diet, and they're doing the elemental diet or gluten-free or dairy free, or eating just 10 foods.

And they're like, why am I not healing well, because there's so many other things going on in the body. , I actually have something called the five toxin trap that, again, it's not saying these things aren't a part of the gut, , this is how I really think of the entire body and how you can make the body function optimally. And it's not about what is the gut and what's not the gut. 'cause all five of these things. They touch on the gut or you're gonna use the gut as a way to access and get rid of these things.

But digestion's the first thing and healing digestion is not just about taking digestive enzymes. And it's not just about chewing your food more, it is about actually healing your ability to create stomach acid, which is huge problem. Low stomach acid. It, 90% of my clients have that. Bile production in the liver and then pancreatic enzymes. If you don't have enough of either of those three or two or three of them, you are not going to be able to break down your nutrients, absorb anything, and it's basically like trying to rebuild a castle wall. Or like a castle, if that's your body without any building blocks, you will simply fail to heal.

 Healing the digestion, your ability to digest and create those digestive enzymes, hidden pathogens, and again, this is not just one. A big issue that I see in the field of gut health right now is that people both practitioners, and definitely people who are trying to heal. Clients patients, they still think in terms of just one pathogen at a time, and I know you don't do this, but that's just, if someone's listening to this for the first time, the big issue is that they say, I know I have h pylori, I know I have Candida.

I know I have c diff. But the issue is that by the time you are chronically ill, you do not have one. I do not have clients with just one pathogen. It's just not a thing. They're in clusters. Hidden pathogens, you really need to be looking for more than one at a time, and then addressing them , in an order where the body can progressively get stronger to deal with the next most difficult one.

The next one's gonna be heavy metals and mineral deficiencies. I pair 'em together because when you have these mineral deficiencies, then you're more set up to not be able to detox your heavy metals. And when you have heavy metals, you are more set up to not be able to absorb your mineral deficiencies.

So you need to be able to play this game of giving the body minerals to absorb with proper amount of stomach acid, which is super big for absorbing things like zinc and calcium and iron. And then you also need to be doing things to help. Absorb and bind and remove heavy metals in a way that's gentle.

You can't just start with a heavy metal detox. So that's like another, I'd consider that a gut health healing technique is working with heavy metals, but you can't start with a heavy metal detox. You just cannot. You have to look for food to, or hidden pathogens first. And also be supporting digestion and , have a plan for how you're gonna heal and fix digestion so that someone's body can actually do it on their own.

Next you get to something that gets talked about a lot, but I think is still poorly understood, which is food sensitivities. The longer you've been sick, the more you have leaky gut and the more you hidden pathogens you have, you're just gonna have way more food sensitivities. You need to understand that some food sensitivities you can develop and they're temporary and some are permanent, 

most people don't understand that. They're just accumulating food sensitivities to the point that they feel they can't eat anything. And then lastly is detoxing. Detoxing. We do throughout our entire body. Our skin does it. Our brain has detox pathways, our digestive tract has detox pathways. We have a lymphatic system.

But at the end of the day, we need to be able to hone in and figure out is one of these systems underperforming and how can we support that system? When you figure that out, then you can finally detox the things that are like the pathogens, the heavy metals and inflammation markers that are being caused by food sensitivities, et cetera.

So those are the five like handholds I have for working with the body. And most of the time we are using the gut as a weighted intake, supplements as a way to alter diet, as a way to have a handhold or a door into the rest of the body.

Leisha: That makes so much sense what I was alluding to is especially in my opinion, like 20 18, 20 19, it was gut health, but it was like take probiotics and intermittent fast, right? And that was gut health. And then

Allison: drink more water, Take magnesium. 

Leisha: Yes. And all of those things can be good. And that is not going to fix everything in your body through your gut. That's what I was alluding to everything is gut health and yes, everything you talked about is touching the gut. And the gut is one of the biggest detox pathways in our body. 

Yes, absolutely our gut needs to be functioning well, but there's. There's a lot more to it, obviously than just that like basic understanding of gut health. So I'm glad you shared some of that. And that's very similar to the way that I work with hormones is the hormones in my opinion, are the tip of the iceberg.

Leisha: A lot of times it's like we have these symptoms, but the estrogen dominance. Is not just like its own problem over here, like it's because there's so many things underlying in the gut, in the minerals, in the stress, in the food, like all of it that your body isn't able to make and detox those hormones well.

 We're definitely on the same page or like a very close page with all of that. Just like establishing, . You've got this understanding of the body and what we were really gonna talk about today is fertility and even your personal story with fertility as a health practitioner.

So this whole time you have been having babies getting pregnant, you have been a practitioner. I would love for you to just share what some of that journey has been for you, because I know that I have a lot of listeners who. Either want to get pregnant for the first time, have been on birth control or not, but many of them have been on birth control are trying to get pregnant for the second or third time and struggling and or have had some miscarriages along the way.

And I know you have a lot to speak to in all of those categories.

Allison: Yeah. I'll just back things up a little bit. When I was super sick in 20 15, 20 16, I actually didn't list any of my symptoms, but I was diagnosed with IBS. I had a constipation. IBSC constipation focus on that. I had no period for two years in that window. No period. I remember having an ob, GYN give me medication.

She's like, this will start your period in three days. I don't even know how it was supposed to function. I wasn't a scientist back then. I was just like some girl who was sick, right? And so I was like, okay. And then I called the office. I'm like, it's been five days. I took all the medication.

I've had no bleeding. They call me back into the doctor's office and I'm thinking, she's gonna know what to do next. There's gonna be a new medication or this the failure of the medication will give her insight into what's actually wrong. And she's it's the stress of your job, it is the stress of your job. And at the time my hair's falling out I'm like, do you also know that I have IBS and I'm constipated and my hair's falling out and I have no period? Doesn't this cluster of symptoms tell you anything more? Like anything. And she's it's the rest of your job.

Oh, great. Super insightful. So at the time I remember thinking I wasn't married, I wasn't dating anyone. And I was having conversations with the Lord of if I can never heal, I need to start psychologically preparing for, maybe I will have a hard time marrying because maybe. Most of the men I know would wanna have kids.

And if I don't have a period, I'm not eligible for that. And I need to psychologically prepare for never getting better. So I was actually at a state in one point in my life where I was ready to have to accept never having kids. Because I had no idea if this would ever get better. Then fast forward, I do heal, start healing.

I get my period back by the time I'm married, I have a very regular period and the first pregnancy that we have, I miscarry eight weeks in and my body doesn't even know I'm miscarrying. That was a whole thing. I literally learned, I miscarried the week of Christmas and they even were concerned it might be a ectopic 'cause they couldn't find the egg.

 It was just super not fun. It just reminded me how much I did not like conventional medicine. But after that miscarriage I was asking my doctors , what do you think? Can you tell me any information on what might have caused this. And they're like, we don't know. We don't know anything about miscarriages.

You have to wait till you miscarry two or three times total before we really do anything at all. And start looking , deeper and potentially look into things like IVF. I'm like, wait we went from miscarrying once, which sucked like the emotions, like the pain, the grief, the frustration, and even being at a point where I'd been, I miscarried at the end of 2020, I'd have been.

Practicing as a functional practitioner for two years since I started in 2018 and I was like, I thought I was so much healthier. I had no idea this was gonna happen. To me, I'd already learned at that two year mark, the body does not have symptoms for no reason. The body does not have symptoms for no reason.

And I took it very seriously. I said, Allison, I don't care if you feel like your health is the , best it's ever been in your life, which is. Pretty true. I did not have great health as a child either. I just didn't realize it. But I was like, this is a symptom and you need to take it seriously and no one's gonna take it seriously for you.

 I got blood work with my training, doing functional blood work analysis and got all these markers, additional markers that , most doctors are not going to get you. So a full thyroid panel, full iron panel. And also added in histamine and homocysteine. Most of my blood work from a functional lab range standpoint looked normal and to the point where I was like slightly oh, this is nice. I'm going through all the markers like, wow green. Everything's looking good. This is functional lab ranges. So they're smaller. For your listeners who might not be familiar with the difference between standard lab ranges and functional lab ranges, they're more narrow, they're more specific.

I get down to my histamine levels and my histamine levels are like sky high and I have no histamine symptoms in my body. I don't have skin issues. I don't have. Sinus congestion. I don't have traditional histamine issues that would've ever made me think, oh, I have a histamine problem. So immediately I start asking myself, what could cause , elevated histamine in the body that might cause me to miscarry, and what's a lab I could do to find that information that I haven't done yet or that I haven't done recently. 'cause I'd already done a bunch of functional lab testing on myself at that point. I'd found a parasite on a GI map in 2019. I'd done a bunch of healing and ti was on a re a restricted diet that felt good to me. And dairy free and gluten-free.

I was like, what else could it be? I ended up doing my first zoomer test, which is a specific type of blood work or not blood work, food sensitivity test that you do with blood. And that I hadn't done that test yet. I'd done a different. Inferior one. Prior to that and I got much more specific results and found out I was sensitive to corn and rice in quinoa, so a lot of grains.

And then I got , another HTMA, and really honed in on the fact that it looked like I had some , hidden copper toxicity and basically. Just continued to be a learner and a student, and said, if my body's giving me a symptom, I'm not gonna take it sitting down. And I'm not gonna be above this. I'd actually already had pride issues when I became a functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner. When I went through that training, I was already healthier than I'd been. I was like, I'm willing to do your GI map and , this testing you recommend, but I don't think anything's on there.

And then I had blasto, cysto hominini on it and I'm like, oh, okay. So I just already learned, even when you think you figured it all out, , if you have symptoms, there is more. It's just point blank. You could be doing it all, quote unquote. And there's just gonna be that, that, what I call it, like a black hole, the thing, you can't see with the naked eye.

You have to be able to get a way to see the unseeable. I know you've shared with me and you've shared on your podcast that. You had exposure to mold for two years in a previous home, so you were probably doing all the quote unquote right things, eating right, taking care of your mental health, your spiritual health, like doing all that, but getting symptoms or your children having symptoms and.  

mold wasn't on your radar until it was. So that's what happened. I changed everything that I needed to change based off of my new lab testing that I had to order for myself 'cause doctors dunno about how to do this stuff. And then I waited to feel that I had really healed. I waited about three additional months after those protocols all finished and my HTA showed improvement in my copper and zinc levels, et cetera.

And then I got pregnant again. With my first daughter, who's now two and a half, and it was like that pregnancy. Here's the crazy thing. My first pregnancy that I miscarried. I had all the symptoms in the book for first trimester, I was nauseated out the wazoo throwing up. I couldn't cook. I was so sensitive to the smells of like I couldn't cut lettuce.

Duh. 

I just cannot believe it. I was like, this isn't even there's no heat involved. I'm just cutting lettuce. I had to have my husband make food in the kitchen. I had to sit in a different room and he had to bring it to me on a plate .

 I was like women say this happens, whatever.

My second pregnancy, I had none of that. I had no food cravings. I had no sensitivity to smells. I had very minimal nausea. I didn't throw up at all. I didn't throw up at all of that pregnancy. And it just felt like a totally different pregnancy. To me that was such a positive sign that my body was doing better.

And coincidentally, histamine has a huge role . In having nausea or morning sickness for women when they're pregnant. I really think that I nipped it in the bud what was my source of histamine or significantly reducing those sources.  

Leisha: Something I just wanna throw in with histamine is it can be food sensitivities, but it can be so many environmental triggers too. So

mold can be 

a trigger, but estrogen issues fluctuations, estrogen dominance just is almost besties with histamine.

So if you have estrogen issues and then you have histamine issues and iron issues, they all play together. All of those things. Can be a cause of these early pregnancy symptoms. It could be one of them, it could be all three of them. They all just go together a lot of the time.

So I do think that for anyone who is able to and is planning to have children, being able to do some of this deep dive work first is so incredibly helpful and key. I had zero idea when I got pregnant with my first daughter. I was . Fresh off of birth control basically and just had no idea what was going on in my body.

But with my subsequent kids, I've been able to do a little bit more and as I prepare for another pregnancy, there's a lot more that I'm doing and just, I just have more understanding that our bodies are living in this world that is very fallen and I really love to have a perspective that's not fear-based of if you down the fear rabbit holes like.

You will just find out that everything's gonna kill you, but also you're alive. So we've just gotta

live the lives, 

Allison: are resilient. 

Leisha: right? Our bodies are resilient and then we can do the things we can to mitigate risk and support our bodies and give them the best nutrients possible. But all that being said, it's really cool to hear your story of you found some specific answers , and if you have to go through the grief and the loss and the trauma of having a miscarriage, best case scenario is you actually do find some answers so that you're like, I know why this happened. Because

Allison: Or 

I have a strong sense of what had happened. 

Leisha: right.

Exactly. You don't know for sure, the Lord is the one who knows that, but. You have a good idea that these are things that triggered or could have contributed, and I feel like most women never get those answers. It's always just oh, it's probably low progesterone. So I'm curious your thoughts on that

Allison: Oh, the whole low progesterone thing 

or. 

Leisha: like the cause of miscarriage

Allison: okay, let's talk about low progesterone. Let's actually think about this real quick. So first off 'cause you don't know in the moment what your progesterone levels were. And I do remember I, I think I did end up preventatively taking I'm just blanking on why am I blanking on what this supplement is called that can support, progesterone levels when I was got pregnant the second time. But all that being said, if you have low progesterone, the main cause of low progesterone is inflammation. And that's a very general term. Because your body will say progesterone is basically this vitality ho, there's a lot of vitality hormones, but like it's this hormone that our body creates when it says it's safe, it's a good time to get pregnant.

When there's a lot of high inflammation, the body's like. now's not a good time to get pregnant and it might not be able to push out and create as much progesterone. So even if it is low progesterone. Why is the progesterone low? 

Like seriously. And at the same time, if you don't even have proof that it was, maybe your progesterone was fine, but there were other things going on that made your body say this pregnancy is not viable and safe and we should not keep it.

We did you get to that point? And it might not be low progesterone. All that being said. No, I do think that would be my immediate thing. It's just hello. Low progesterone doesn't just happen for no reason. 

Leisha: it's not just oh, your body just doesn't make it like everyone else's body does, but your body doesn't 

Allison: or like this time around it didn't, but next time it'll be fine. You don't wanna play that game. No one wants to miscarry twice in a row and then not know if the third time's it's gonna happen too. 

Leisha: Yeah. And I think, once you're in that place of you are pregnant and maybe your progesterone level actually is low, maybe you get it tested or you feel like it's been low before, I'm not opposed to supplementing with progesterone or with something to help progesterone.

You wanna save that baby and your fertility. Whatever. Not whatever cost necessarily, but just like that's very important. And if we're talking pre-baby, if we're talking pre next baby, let's find out why. Because I absolutely agree your progesterone's not just low for no reason and exactly what you've been saying.

There's not just symptoms for no reason, and that doesn't have to be overwhelming. Where it's okay, then now I have to find 50,000 reasons. It's really going to, in my experience, come back to the foundations. Almost every single time. And then there are times we need to get fancier.

There are times we need to find out about things like histamine or copper toxicity and things like that. I do think that those are really important, but so much of the time your body just doesn't have safety because you're stressed out all the time. Your blood sugar's imbalanced. Your adrenals are just going crazy because they don't know what you need and what you're doing, and probably your gut is also a mess.

And so all of those things together are going to cause inflammation and they're going to cause hormone issues. Whether or not that means you have a miscarriage is just like up to your body and the amount of resilience it has essentially. But there's always triggers and , there are answers that we can't always get on this side of heaven and that's okay.

And I don't, I mean, I say that's okay. That's one of the hardest things about being a human. But there are a lot of answers that we can get is my point.

Allison: Yes. There's always more. It's just that conventional medicine can't give it to you. They just cannot. They don't have the equipping for it. And I don't know if you're okay with sharing this with your listeners. But I do have two episodes related to what some of what we just talked about that could do a deeper dive.

If you have your own episodes and you wanna link it, that's great. But I have one on histamine that just released episode 2 43 on histamine intolerance. And I do a deeper dive and a potential causes of high histamine for people to brainstorm through. And then I do have one on functional lab ranges if they've never heard of that.

Six reasons your doctor is reading your blood labs wrong and how you can do it better. So those are just two resources. If people are wanting to do a deeper dive, since we are like brushing over some potentially new topics or things that are like, what, how do I have the tools to do this myself?

Because yeah, you're right. , your doctor in a hospital setting is not gonna have these tools.

Leisha: We can definitely link those episodes. I have a couple of episodes on histamine too, but I think for the people who that really is an issue for like more information is definitely better.

Allison: Yes. Perfect.  

Leisha: Okay, so you had your daughter a couple of years ago. I. Do you feel like that, postpartum healing and all of that was pretty, pretty good, pretty calm because of the work you had already done? Or has there been a lot, or not even a lot, but has there been more optimizing that you've realized you needed to do postpartum and then like pre-pregnancy again?

Allison: . Postpartum, I really, I was very pleased with what that felt like. I cannot think of any particular snags that I went through with my postpartum healing, and I knew that was not guaranteed. I have a history of anxiety and depression from childhood and through my college years, I'm no longer clinically depressed.

I'm not on any medications for depression or anxiety. But I knew that when you have a history of it, you're more likely to have postpartum depression. And even as a functional health provider, I try to be, because I was mentally ill for so long, I try to be really open with myself of like, Hey, even if your body's really healthy, and we know that the body influences the mind.

And I totally think that there was stuff going on of my mind and my gut playing mean with each other and causing issues on both sides. I also didn't know if that was gonna happen. And so I was really happy to see from with my, at least my first, that didn't happen.

I. I was on a prenatal the whole time. I did a breastfeeding the whole time. So I was really working on keeping my nutrients really supported. I did end up doing a parasite cleanse as soon as I was done with breastfeeding, and that was a decision I knew I had actually made that decision that I and my husband were gonna do a parasite cleanse.

I think mid-pregnancy 'cause I just felt that I was getting just a little excess bloating and. It often felt that it correlated with the full Moon and things like that. Just really subtle, like fatigue and headaches and not feeling good. Again very minor, but I did a parasite cleanse.

I. The first time I did it, I didn't realize it'd be helpful to have my husband do it too. And we'd already been married and so I was like, honey, you might have given it back to me. And like my immune system's probably mostly dealing with it, but I just did a two month parasite protocol and felt way better.

And I just had to wait until I was done breastfeeding. 'cause that is you don't want any toxins from a detox to get , to the baby, both when you're pregnant or you're breastfeeding. That's something I did that was really specific. In general I did really supportive things like castor oil packs.

As once I'd given birth, I did coffee enemas, Epsom salt baths. Those are three big ways that I was helping myself detox and giving myself some liver supplements and really low doses. 'cause I didn't wanna detox massively and it ended up in the breast milk, but it tried to just very gently.

Do these things to help support my hormones going back to normal. I just remember waking up in puddles of sweat in probably the first two weeks after giving birth, but that was like, it wasn't the worst, my emotions weren't crazy. No postpartum depression. I ended up running a half marathon the next year after giving birth with my husband and felt that my body was able to really respond well, build muscle things that I was expecting.

And I know that's not normal 'cause I work with a lot of women who will say, after my first child, my health just dropped, or after my second or after my third. That's a very common story when I'm tracing someone's health back of what were some of the key moments or notable things that might have been a part of them.

Because health is it's not just yes or no, you have it. It's a process, right? And then there's a process to disease. Anyways, and I just didn't see that. That's the only thing that I can think of. We did end up waiting longer to have our second just because, not because of my health, but more just managing, my husband and I both worked full time and it was just, we had a house and we were taking all care All those things, but thankfully I didn't feel that I was delaying anything because I wasn't healthy enough to do it.

Leisha: Absolutely. And all my kids are actually a little even further apart than yours are. Mine are three plus years. And that just is what worked well for us and I love having , the longer time with a little one, but obviously you can't fit as many kids in. And, as many years if you spread 'em out.

So it just depends on your goals and your plans as a family. And we started pretty young, so I'm thankful for that. , I think that I love that kind of like just ownership and awareness of your own body where you're like, these couple of things to support my liver, to support my hormone detox and to support my mental health.

 These are the things I needed to do, but it doesn't have to be a whole health revamp every couple of years or something like that. Once you have been able to dive in and find the foundations that work for you, and I find that's really key with myself. That's, I think what turned a corner for me with my health was I stopped looking for, like every January I had to do the whole 30, or I needed to do intermittent fasting, or I needed to do this diet or that diet, or even , like a big cleanse or things like. 

that.

It was like. It's not like those things are bad and , I'm going to be doing some cleansing from all of the mold and from all the things like before I have another baby. And I have been working on that slowly but surely. But if there's not big triggers and big exposures and things like that, it really is more of a maintenance plan for your hormones and your fertility and your gut health where.

The maintenance plan is just how you live your life. Like you've just changed some of your lifestyle factors where you're not getting as many toxins in as you used to be. Where you're really aware, like you were saying oh, you, I was getting a little bloated around the full moon, so many people would not be like, oh, I definitely noticed that.

And it would be, it would build up longer. But once you start to see what's going on in your body, and even if you're tracking your cycles and you're paying attention to what's happening with ovulation and with your periods and those are really good markers for women. It's really easy to see sooner how something's working.

For example, for me, , I've started doing a little bit more intense workouts lately, and I've been just really looking at , how is that serving me? Am I eating enough before and after? Is my body in a place where this is serving me well, or is this going to be at a detriment to my stress and my hormones and it depends on the week of the month.

It totally depends on the week of the month. I can go harder some weeks, and it doesn't always even line up with like traditional cycle sinking. Sometimes my luteal phase, I'm just killing it, like killing it. But if I kill it too hard, then my period, PI don't have necessarily symptoms with my period, but I'm just like, all I wanna do is take a bath and not talk to anyone for three days.

And it's okay, I think I went a little too hard where I'm just like, I'm tired. 

My brain is tired. Like all the things, right? I depleted myself. But in the moment it felt good. And so knowing that three cycles in is okay, it might feel real good to do all the things in my luteal, but it's not gonna feel good the next week.

So let me scale back a little bit. And those are just these little things. That we can optimize and support when we have these foundations of health, right? And the non-negotiables just stay non-negotiable, but it doesn't feel so much work when you know what they are.

And you're used to balancing those.

Allison: I'd say, what you described reminds me of like self-mastery, where you're not trying to be like, you're not describing going harder because. You saw some influencer who says you should, or you have to, or that muscle mass equals health or whatever. Like things that people talk about that can make us feel pressured.

But you're just listening to your body, things that bring you joy. Like I enjoyed that heavier workout. And then you're not surprised, you're not even freaking out. I get clients sometimes like, well I was more tired when, like for three days. And I'm like did it go away? Yes. Did you , other than being tired, did you have any other symptoms?

No. It actually might have been a normal fluctuation and maybe it was responding to something. Maybe you got exposed to something. Maybe it was the, a trip you went on and came back from but we can have really normal fluctuations, and especially if you can see the pattern, you have even more comfort of eh, it was just like I worked out really hard.

Earlier in the month, and then I was just more fatigued and kind of blah during my period. But there was no panic. Maybe it was like, is my mold exposure higher I find that that's like the pinnacle of health is where you.

It's not that your health is always perfect, but that you're in tune and in sync with your body and you have a general concept of the levers you're pushing and pulling of like how much you're eating and working out in your sleep and then how that might impact you. And you just roll with it. , you just say, oh yeah, I am more tired and I am cycling, or I'm menstruating right now. And we have that grace and that compassion and that's what the Lord has for us. He doesn't expect us to be on all times. That's why he even has Sabbath as like the seventh day. He's not expecting us to be on at all times.

Leisha: Absolutely. As we're just wrapping up some of the things that I just wanna clarify, if you're listening to this and you've experienced a miscarriage or fertility struggles, or you are concerned about that for yourself, number one, we are not saying if you've had a miscarriage, it's definitely histamine that needs to be the thing you look at. I do think that if you're getting an answer that says, oh, it just, we just dunno, it just happened sometimes, there is more to the story. Those answers at least should be like moderately pursued in my opinion because there may be answers that are hard to get and maybe some of the smaller answers are the ones that you need, or it could really be these foundations that you haven't.

Looked at yet that Alison and I both teach of really understanding how your body works and supporting nutrients and all of the things that we've already talked about. So just know, we believe that there are answers and also that's not to be pursued at the negligence of everything else in your life or to like a fear.

Fear-based perspective of I have to do every test out there and get completely overwhelmed to, find the answers that I need to find. , there has to be some moderation there. And then also just that even as healthy people and practitioners and we know a lot about our bodies, there are still going to be seasons where something goes wrong and there, there can be symptoms and it doesn't mean that.

Our bodies aren't healthy. It doesn't mean that our bodies aren't resilient. It just means that we live in a world that is not perfect and that there are going to be things that we have to look into from time to time. That could be for my kids, that could be for my husband, that could be for me.

And I think that all of us as humans, the most diligent, consistent, perfect human is still not perfect. And so we're gonna have seasons where we neglect things that we know we should do. I saw this, like, this is what you should do for your New Year's resolution. And it just made me laugh because it's so true.

It's like, do more of the things you know you should do and do less of the things you know you shouldn't do. And it's like, oh, yeah, we all do know sometimes and a lot of times we're not doing it. I just kinda wanna wrap that up with a little bit of perspective that there needs to be moderation in this journey.

 There are answers and those are answers that both of us are nerdy enough that we love to dive into with our clients. We love to find those things. When I do a lab review, I'm always like, look at all this stuff we found. And they're like, all the things that are wrong with me. And I'm like, no, but we, at least we know, right?

So I have to reign myself in a little bit. But it's so great to find answers and to be able to see that healing in the journey.

Allison: It's peaceful. It's peaceful to have that concrete concept and. And not just wonder or not just feel like you're broken or not, just feel that, especially with miscarriage, you have no idea if it's gonna happen again. And yes, no one knows , if it's gonna happen again but you to even feel that you gave yourself a 10% or just increased chance that.

Next pregnancy will be viable, strong, maybe fewer symptoms. As I described, the second pregnancy I didn't share yet, was even fewer symptoms than with my first, just mainly fatigue, which I'm like, ah, that makes sense. I'm like, if I could give this gift to every woman, I can't say a hundred percent.

I can make every woman have the same number of minimal symptoms as me, but I know what I've done to win my health, and I know that is not the average person's story and that maybe not everyone needs even the same extent of work as me but I think we can give ourselves those gifts.

Leisha: Absolutely. Thank you so much, Allison. This has been really great. We'll share your podcast and those episodes in the show notes, and then if you wanna just tell us where else to find you, we'll also share those links so that everyone can come and check out everything that you have.

Allison: Of course so they can come find me on the Better Belly Podcast. We're on Spotify, apple Podcasts pretty much everywhere where there's podcasts. You can also hang out with us on Instagram at Better Belly Therapies. Would love to, I'm active in stories there quite frequently. I love interacting with people in the dms, so that's like a more fun way.

If you've ever listened to a podcast and you're like, but I wanna talk to you or interact, that's a great way to do that. And then I also just have a free training if you, , listen, and were intrigued by what I shared about the five toxin trap, I do a deeper dive on that and a free training by going to better belly therapies.com/training.

And it just shares a lot more about the five toxin trap and how you can deal with it. I'd say if you're like Leisha and Allison, really, if you seem similar, but just check both of our stuff out and find what's resonating or there are differences in how we work and maybe neither of us are the practitioner for you for now, but , there are more answers and there are people out there for you to partner with.

 We hope that, at least I hope that this episode , gets you one step closer to that.

Leisha: . Me too. All right, we'll see you guys next time.