fertility

Check out these blogtober posts to understand more about how I approach women's health, acupuncture, doula work (and other birth work), herbalism and more!

Seed Cycling and Oil Cycling for Fertility

Yesterday’s post introduced seed cycling and oil cycling for hormonal health. Seed cycling and oil cycling are ways to balance hormones over a few months by supporting hormones with lignans, healthy fats, and other nutrients.

But multiple times I warned that this method was not for those who were trying to conceive.

In this post I am going to discuss why oil cycling for fertility needs to be different than oil cycling for hormonal health, why preparing for conception is as important as trying to conceive, and the changes you can make to the process to make seed cycling and oil cycling work for you.

By Jessica Gustafson, ago
Check out these blogtober posts to understand more about how I approach women's health, acupuncture, doula work (and other birth work), herbalism and more!

Seed Cycling and Oil Cycling for Hormonal Balance

Working in the field I do, I’ve heard whispers of seed cycling and oil cycling for the past couple of years. But it wasn’t until I consulted on a difficult fertility case last week that a colleague directly recommended it.

Seed cycling is kind of like vaginal steaming – it’s on the fringe of accepted reproductive science with no peer-reviewed studies to support the process. But the people who love it love it for a reason. It worked for them.

So, what is seed cycling? How does it work? Can it really be the key to regulating your cycles?

By Jessica Gustafson, ago

Sunday Round Up: Bed-sharing, male doulas, and seed cycling

Hey, wow. A third Sunday round-up. This might actually become a thing!

Is anyone else notoriously bad at saying you want to start doing a thing and then not doing it? It can’t just be me.

Anyway, this Sunday round up includes bed-sharing while breastfeeding, a local man working for big change, seed cycling, and my favorite bibimbap recipe that’s nourishing for your body AND your budget.

By Jessica Gustafson, ago

The Water Element: Foundations in the Darkness

Happy Almost Winter, Minnesnowta!

Any other season of the year and people give me the side-eye for an “early” season greeting. But in winter? Snow can fly as early as September! In fact, wasn’t it just last week we got our first flakes?

And even if the snowflakes weren’t falling yet, the world around us is settling into a winter rhythm. Everything becomes quiet and still. The leaves have fallen, the grass is hibernating, jars of pickled herring pop up in pantries across the state.

This spring, I broke the element of wood down in two blog posts – one about how things can be categorized as wood from a health perspective and another about how Chinese medicine looks at imbalances in the wood element. I did the same earlier this month for metal and metal disharmonies.

This blog post will be doing the same for this season’s element, the element of Water.

By Jessica Gustafson, ago
It can be frustrating to be told to just relax, but the fact is that stress can impact fertility. But you can fight back with these five stress busting ideas

Five ways to increase fertility by decreasing stress

I don’t think stress ever came up more than when my husband and I were trying to conceive.

“Relax, it will happen!”

For a great many of you reading this on the TTC or “trying to conceive” journey, your eyes just twitched. I have to be honest, it hurt a little to type. Out of all the phrases I hated hearing while TTC, that was at the top of the list.

The problem is that as much as we hate it, conventional wisdom has it right:​

Stress impacts fertility.

It’s not something we can argue. We have thousands of years of doctors and sages corroborating all of the studies we’ve done on the subject in the past century. The difference is now we know why – hormones.

It can be frustrating to be told to just relax, but the fact is that stress can impact fertility. But you can fight back with these five stress busting ideas

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By Jessica Gustafson, ago
Fertility Awareness is a way for women to get in touch with their bodies and learn their own rhythms of ovulation and flow.

How to get started with Fertility Awareness

If you ask most women how long their cycle is supposed to be they’ll answer “28 days”. This is because the current medical model is based on averages and the assumption that cycles can be evenly divided in half, with ovulation on Day 14. This makes conception and contraception difficult for those who try to use the rhythm method, counting 14 days from the first day of bleeding to estimate ovulation.

The Fertility Awareness Method (FAM), often confused with the rhythm method, is much more than just counting. It’s learning how your body operates so that you can know when and when not to have intercourse and when to expect changes in your body such as menstruation.

Fertility Awareness is a way for women to get in touch with their bodies and learn their own rhythms of ovulation and flow.

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By Jessica Gustafson, ago
Fertility is a long and sometimes complicated journey. Acupuncture can help!

The Fundamentals of Acupuncture for Fertility

Acupuncture for fertility is a huge topic. It’s actually much bigger than just acupuncture. The fact is acupuncture is an important cornerstone of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) but it’s still a smaller part of a much bigger picture. I thought it was time we started to scratch the surface of TCM approaches to fertility and how acupuncture and other lifestyle changes can help bolster your fertility success.

Fertility is a huge topic even when it's limited to the scope of Traditional Chinese Medicine Get the basics here

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By Jessica Gustafson, ago
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