Mother’s Hour With Carolyn Van Beers – Weight Loss After Pregnancy, Reclaiming Your Body Part 2

Hello, I'm Lauren Mishcon and a huge welcome to my show From Tummy to Mommy. We're here in our Covent Garden Studios on Women's Radio Station where we support women's wellbeing. Every week on this show I'm going to be talking about women's reproductive health, everything fertility, pregnancy, birth and baby related right through to the menopause and beyond. Today we're going to be talking about acupuncture. As a birth doula, many of my clients turn to acupuncture to help them with fertility issues to assist with pregnancy ailments and to induce labour. But does it work? Is it safe? And are all practitioners equal? To talk about all of this and more, I am delighted to be joined today by Nava Carmen. Nava is a fertility, gynecological and obstetric acupuncturist and traditional Chinese medicine practitioner. What a mouthful. She specialises in autoimmune disorders such as unexplained infertility, recurrent miscarriage and endometriosis. Welcome Nava! Thank you very much. What an introduction. It's been mouthful, isn't it? I know. Thank you so much for coming in to talk to us. So how does acupuncture work for anyone who hasn't had it and doesn't know about it? I'm going to give you two answers to that. I'm going to give you the Chinese medicine answer and I'm going to give you the Western medicine answer because I think the different explanations will appeal to different people. Now if you'd asked me this 20 years ago when I started, I probably wouldn't have given you the same answer because there's so much research and so much evidence available now where there wasn't before. We have groups like evidence-based acupuncture and we now have randomised control studies and we have even to the point of looking at sham needling which means fake needling versus real needling and looking at the brain under MRI and seeing the bit of the brain that it affects and how systemically it affects the body. So we know, for example, when we put a real needle into a real point as opposed to a sham needle, the limbic system of the brain lights up. Let's hang on. Let's rewind. What is a sham needle? A sham needle is a needle that looks and feels to the person who's receiving it like an acupuncture needle but doesn't actually penetrate the skin. So like a sort of placebo? Seems like a placebo. And I'm a big fan of placebo. I always think what's the worst that happens when you come to acupuncture? You feel awesome and you get the result you want. I'm okay with that but the fact of the matter is now we have a little bit more to go on than that. And we know at the very basic level, let's say you were to cut yourself in the kitchen with a knife, your body mobilizes itself to heal all its systems. So the moment you enter a body with an acupuncture needle, it's mobilizing it to heal. It's affecting the brain, the brain stem. It's sending messages around the body. And if you translate that into Chinese medicine, we talk about qi or energy, how the balance in the body is achieved. And we're stimulating the body to find its best balance, its right balance. That's the Eastern way. And I do a little bit of both. So I practice integrated Chinese medicine, meaning, for example, because I do fertility work so much. Let's say someone's coming in as one of my clients did a couple of years ago, which is a very memorable story because it's so simple and obvious. She came in having had a couple of miscarriages. And so I look for the most obvious thing, which is her progesterone level. And progesterone is the hormone in the second part of the cycle that's responsible for thickening the lining and for sticking an embryo to it and to really making sure that the body doesn't miscarry a baby. Yeah. So I tested her with blood and we found it's the level was just too low to sustain a pregnancy. So I treated her with Chinese medicine over a three month cycle or three cycle period. And then we retested and found the level was high back to normal again. She conceived and stayed pregnant. So we can use the Western medicine to inform our Chinese medicine diagnosis, treat with Chinese medicine, test with Western medicine, thus integrating the two together and really see that result. And when you say treat with Chinese medicine, what does that entail? So for me, that's a combination of acupuncture and Chinese herbs, Chinese herbs. Yeah. And they get a bad rap, I think a lot. Yeah, I mean, I'm thinking about walking past all those shops on the high street with the photos that claim to fix every ailment possible for everyone. And I'm thinking, really? By drinking tea? And if you're a woman and you go in there, they can still cure your erectile dysfunction. Isn't that amazing? Cool. So it's really important to know that there are these countries really distinct from other countries like America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, in that we have total governmental refusal to legislate us or to regulate us, which we have been wanting for a long time. So we belong to regulatory bodies like the British Acupuncture Council or the Register of Chinese Herbal Medicine, both of which are really important for the consumer to know and seek out someone who's been through training. And that means that they have had done an accredited course with thousands of hours of teaching. They're not what we call dry needling. So they're not a physio or a doctor who's done a weekend course and can call themselves an acupuncturist. Actually, Lauren, you could call yourself an acupuncturist. I'd rather not. And you can go and get insurance and practice. And that would be perfectly OK in the UK. Gosh. So if you go to a BXC person or an RCHM person, not only do you know they're qualified, but they'll have insurance. And if something will go wrong, there's a complaints procedure, which I think it's for me, the accountability aspect is massively important. Yeah, we're going to talk about that in a bit. So when when people come to you, how how how does it work? You put needles in or you give herbs or sometimes a combination of both. Is that right? Sometimes you would do one or the other. Normally having both being able to use both hands. And acupuncture seems to be one of the only alternative practices that medics recommend or don't sort of poo-poo. Home and your puffy seems to have been debunked. Everything else seems to be debunked. Acupuncturist. Nutritional medicine, which I consider also another arm of what we do. OK. So how does it work? I come in, I have a problem. You put needles in certain points. How's that helping? What's it doing? Well, I'm taking a long history first. So when I see my clients, the first time I see them, I actually put needles in. I probably would spend somewhere within an hour and two hours talking to them. Wow. Which already is completely different. I ask you the minutest of questions, even asking you things like what your menstrual blood looks like, the color or the consistency of it will give me insight into the diagnosis I made for you. OK. And I'd often send you off for some testing. All too often, I'm finding people haven't been given the right tests. So when we talk about fertility, they haven't been had proper thyroid tests or they haven't. Sometimes you find they're ovulating, but they don't know when they're ovulating. So you're seeing the tracking cycle and you actually don't need to treat it all. Yeah. So then we collect this diagnosis and we figure out what we're going to do. And for me, I set goals with my clients. So I say minimum three cycles, because that's how long it takes to really change things in the body. And I'm putting needles in to distinctly affect those changes week by week. And I'm looking at temperature charts. I'm seeing what's happening hormonally and metabolically with the client. The needles go in and each week you come back and you say to me, how you think and what's happening when those needles are going in? Because I've had acupuncture done for a few various different issues. And I sometimes have felt almost like an electric shock. I've thought sometimes that she's put an electric current through that needle. Obviously she hasn't. What's going on there? That's what we would call Duchy. It's a Duchy, D-E-Q-I. So it's that feeling for us as practitioners, like the needle's been grabbed from the inside. And you know, you've got the exact right point and you've connected to the body's chi or energy. And actually there's some studies that show that we, I mean, from a Western point of view, we all have an electrical pulse going through our body. Is this a proven thing? The electrical pulse? Yeah, from a Western point of view. So not to get too technical, but the hypothalamus, the pituitary and the ovaries all have a measurable pulsation. And for them both, for them all to work in sync, they have to be pulsating at the right speed with each other. So even from a Western point of view, there is chi, there's energy and electricity running through the body. Effectively, we're accessing our version of that. And we talk about things in terms of organs. So each little point that we know of the hundreds in the body has a particular action on a particular meridian or energy line that relates to an organ. And each organ has a function. So what we're doing is pulling together this unique diagnosis for you and accessing your body's own chi or energy to make a change that needs to be changed. So there's a blockage. Sometimes it's a blockage. And by putting the needle in, you're releasing the blockage so that it can flow, the energy can flow. Yes, or sometimes there's not enough chi in that area. You have to bring chi to the area or add chi to the area. And how do you know where to put those needles? Well, that's hundreds of hours of trouble. And actually, about every five years, I do feel like I'd like to go back and offer all of my clients a refund because we're constantly learning. I'm constantly learning about the different applications of points and the different combinations that work on different people. And the more study I do, the more I realize I don't know. So it's an endlessly evolving profession. And it's a fascinating place to be. And tell me a bit about Chinese traditional medicine. Is that evidence-based? Is there a placebo effect in that? Perhaps so. In many ways, herbs are more mainstream than acupuncture though because they're pharmacological products. They have a measurable, they'll have compounds in them. For example, we told about red flags. So we know that we can't use renshin, ginseng, with warfarin because it has a blood thinning quality and we can't give it with a blood thinner. So they do have measurable qualities. And all our herbs, when you're part of the RCHM, through approved supplies, trace to source, totally transparent process brought in through the British government. So it's not like you're getting, we hear these horror stories of herbs mixed with steroids and drugs and poor quality. You're getting really good stuff. And they're combined in a way that the practitioner understands what's going to happen from a Chinese medicine and a Western medical point of view. So you're safe in what you're doing. It sounds quite an ancient thing for herbs. It makes me think of like witchcraft. My husband always says it makes me better cook because you're combining flavors because each herb will have a flavor, an organ it goes to and function in the body. And so it is like a little bit like cooking. You're putting together this kind of Hubble bubble, which is brew for your client. Then to be honest, look, it tastes like swamp juice. It doesn't taste great. But you know, I always say, if my five-year-old can take it, I want to hear it. My clients, because I know it works. I've had some of those teas and they're not, they're not delicious, let's say. Shall we? We say it works on the principle of, you know, if it tastes really horrible, it's probably really good. That's how I feel about it. Tell me a bit about how you came to be an acupuncturist. What brought you to this profession in the first place? What's your backstory? Well, I have to say, I didn't think I'd be going down this road. I thought at this point in my life, when I was at school, that I'd be a lawyer and I'd be in the art history profession. That's a little bit different. So I went to UCL and did history of art with the idea of doing a law conversion course. And unfortunately before that, while I was doing my A levels, I'd been really sick. I'd had ME. And my mum had been one of these really progressive people who had tried, not mainstream, but alternative medicine to get me well. Quite full with thinking. So one of the things that she did, I used to have these debilitating headaches that nothing would get on top of. And she met this amazing guy. Now I know he's still in practice, actually not qualified, but he used to come over and put a needle in my head. And we were trying all sorts of things like lidocaine patches and medicine. And that was the only thing that actually worked. We're going to be back after the break to hear more. Welcome to Women's Radio Station. I'm Sarah Louise Ryan and welcome to Love Lessons Live on Women's Radio Station. Hello and welcome to Future Classic Women Awards with me, Stepania Passamante on Women's Radio Station. Hello and welcome to June May is Listening. Hi, this is Anna Kennedy and we're at Women's Radio Station supporting women's wellbeing and we're talking all things autism. Women, the possibilities are endless. That's what makes us different. Hi, I'm Tracy Weeden of Brownhill Insurance Group. We are an award-winning family-run insurance broker covering a wide range of insurance products ranging from commercial lines to personal household, high net worth and fine art. You can contact us on 0208 658 4334 or visit our website www.brownhillgroup.co.uk for your free no obligation quotation. At Brownhills we've got you covered. Hi, I'm Lauren Mishcon. I'm a birth doula and mum of three and I'm passionate about supporting women to have empowering and positive birth experiences. Please join me for my brand new show From Tummy to Mummy here on Women's Radio Station. 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Hi, we're back with Nava Carmen talking about acupuncture and just before we went to the break novel you were saying that you had become very unwell with Emi when you were a teenager and your mum had been very sort of forward thinking and tried some alternative practices on you. I have a Dutch Australian mum so it was all out there growing up. Yeah and at that time they thought Emi was a psychological problem as opposed to you being down because you can get out of bed completely the other way around. So I had these headaches and this practitioner came and put this needle in my head and of course now I know he wasn't properly qualified and had he been up probably would have been well much sooner. But the simple act of putting this needle in my head and getting rid of these headaches that no medication could touch was just life transformative. So off I went to university and after the first year I just knew I was not going to be a lawyer and wanted to be an acupuncturist. Wow. So I stayed with my degree and I trained at the same time and I worked as a supply teacher for kids to help like afford it and my dad helped. And so when I graduated from university I also graduated as an acupuncturist and then I went straight on to do herbs. And it's a long training. It is. It's a long training. It's four years. And you've done it ever since. Yeah. It's my first and only profession. I have to say I don't see myself retiring. I think as I get older and slow down I'll see a few clients but this is an endlessly fascinating job. Do you use it on yourself? It's like giving yourself a message. It doesn't really work. You can't do it. So do you have a practitioner who you do it to? But it's also a point of principle to me. I've sat in front of enough doctors in my life who have been of the do as I say but not as I do variety. So it's really important to me that I am totally congruent that if I'm asking my client to do something it's something that I have done and do do myself. And did you use it during your pregnancy with your son? I did. And I'm sitting here now. I can see! 60 weeks pregnant. There is another baby on the way. There is. And talking about congruency you know I'm going to be 41 in a month and I prepped for this baby for a year and I had regular after puncture and I did all the things that I asked my clients to do. So I'm sitting here saying that what I do works and living proof that it does. That was exactly what I wanted to talk about next that I've definitely found in the last I'd say 10 years of being a dealer that a lot of my mums who come to me are 40. Pushing 40 or are 40 and pregnant with their first baby and some of them quite a lot of them are getting pregnant with IVF or with some assistants. And do you also find a lot of your clients are older mums? Well that's my specialty. That's why I'm interested in. So I like to see women 38 to 45. Okay. Age range because it's just it's more complicated and therefore it's more interesting for me. And do you think that 40 is always 40 or there are some 40 year olds who are not 40. Do you know what I mean? Totally. There's sort of biological age and there's sort of the age you are in terms of your health. Now I take a 40 year old who's been active and healthy through their lives as opposed to a 25 year old who's just abused their body for a decade. I take one over the other. I take a 40 year old any day. So you don't think it's an issue that mums are having babies much later? I think that it's not under our control. I think that you know the way life has gone things have changed right? And certainly I mean I had my first child at 36 I wasn't ready before. I had things to do for my career that I wanted to do and I didn't want to have a child until I was ready to have a child and I think frankly a lot of people are ready later or they haven't met the right person. I have a lot of clients who go through single mums. Yeah. So I don't know how much control we have over it. I think a lot of people would like to have children earlier but for social economic reasons you can't you know you get to the point later in life where you're financially stable. So there's lots of and also I think male where this is a female radio station but male fertility is 50% of this and we have a real problem. Yeah we've got a real problem with how open and the men are to lifestyle changes and to having treatment so a lot of my clients all too many of them will come in and their husbands are the problem or their lifestyle is the problem and they are totally unwilling to make change but very happy for their partners to have ideas. I was just thinking this morning about a client of mine who had unexplained infertility. She had every test under the sun. Really invasive procedures and it took months and months and months and after all of that proved completely inconclusive they thought oh let's test her husband. The problem lay 100% with him. So why is it not the case that men are tested first to rule that out and then the women are tested after. I think it's a society has it's a very patriarchal society we're part of and all too often I hear with consultants oh well don't worry about that we'll just give you do you know what ICSI is? Yes. So they'll actually I know the process of ICSI but it's a hardcore process so it's when sperm isn't really very good you have to actually go in and select the individual sperm and put it with the egg the sperm looks viable but that process of ICSI when you actually look at it in a lab in order to get that sperm you have to break the sperm's tail. Right. Because it runs away from the needle. So you break the tail of the sperm and you pop it in with the egg and the first ICSI babies are now young men and they're only just being old enough to be sperm tested and what we're finding is not only are we passing on the father's problem but in many cases it's worse than the father's problem. So the ICSI itself is causing fertility issues in men in the next generation. Do they know why? Well we know a lot more now about something called DNA fragmentation so we know that there's two levels of testing you can do you can test sperm and then you go down and look at the DNA of sperm and often which is a misleading bit the sperm is fine but the DNA is not. Right. So we're having issues with fertilisation we're finding with ICSI for example with boys there's a higher rate of autism and learning disabilities but I've just had this happen I have a client with double-stranded DNA fragmentation problems but they were like well we'll just use ICSI so really it's now just down to egg quality so the fault still lies with the woman. Gosh. So yeah so there's epigenetic problems coming from fertility treatment that we are not yet seeing but potentially are coming our way because of course ICSI has only been around for 40 years. We think it's been around for a lot longer but it really hasn't. It is quite a new thing. So what we do is as Chinese medicine practitioners and the colleagues I work with nutritionists the vital work we do because we can get there and fix the problem before it's even happened if we have a chance to work with these clients most of the time they can avoid any sort of A.R.T or artificial reproductive technique procedure. And do you treat men? Yeah if they come to me but it's all too rare usually they drag even the screaming by their partner. So it's something I'm going to be talking about more in the years to come because I think that that dearth of information for men and also we have this toxic masculinity culture whereby if there's something wrong with sperm it's a shame. It's a taboo. You know women are very practical. They go out. If there's a problem they go out they find something and they fix it. They do but I also wonder if we're just more connected with our bodies because we do have a cycle and we do deal with periods every month. And we can't ignore it. And we can't ignore it. It's part of our makeup and our hormones and our emotions and physical practicalities and men don't. They just have sperm and that's that. And that's the end of the beginning and end of the story. And can fertility be improved for men with acupuncture and TPM? It takes a hundred I mean it's quicker than with women because it takes a hundred days to completely win you sperm and then you do another sperm test and you see I expect to see at least a 10% improvement after that time. So this seems just insane. Yeah the men are not coming. And actually I was one of the clinics I work with which I absolutely love. It's a fairly new clinic which is called the Eve Well. They have a very holistic approach and I was there talking to the andrologist a couple of weeks ago and he's actually pioneering a large-scale study on nutrition and sperm quality and they're really seeing some quite extraordinary results. Gosh. So men could change their diets their lifestyle and change the outcome for generations to come. Why is this not being broadcast more loudly? It's a good question. Do you think that they just don't want to? I think that it's been a very much the woman's field and the woman's problem and the woman bringing it up and driving it because of our biological clocks and the women read the magazines and the women pursue the fertility staff and it's just not on the men's horizon and I think that the media caters to that. So there's a kind of a catch-22 thing happening. Very interesting. Well there's, I don't know if you've ever heard of it but Natalie Silverman's Fertility Podcast has a whole, I mean it's a fantastic one and she has a whole series that she's done on male fertility and on men's perspective and I always encourage my clients to listen to that because that's a fantastic resource for people who are just entering this world. And have you ever had women come to you who've been going through XC or IVF and it hasn't worked and you've found it has worked with acupuncture? Yes. In fact that's how I really got into the fertility field is I had a lot of, it was worth me to check out this story. Sure. As since I'm here now. I treated a number of clients just very early on it's within the first year or two of graduating. I treated a number of clients who'd fallen pregnant but I hadn't really connected the dots and then I had this client who'd been told she was never going to conceive naturally. And I helped her and boom, she's pregnant and her little son, I'm still in touch with him, he's 18 now, wilder than me. And that very fact of having been told there's nothing you can do and then being able to do something was like someone just trying to lighten and went, ta-da, this is what you're supposed to be doing. And that's what I've done ever since. And the same thing that's happened with men. I had a client last year who had 1% normal sperm and we managed to get him down to a fairly normal count and they ended up having an IVF cycle, their choice. But instead of having to go for either donor or ICSI sperm, they could just use their own sperm. That's amazing. And do you help women or how can you help women navigate through private fertility treatment or NHS fertility treatment to get the best from it? And do you think there is an advantage to private care versus NHS care? I know that's a big question. I actually think I'll take that question first if I may because the advantage is speed to private care. Private care is speed. And depending on where you go, it's better customer service. But a lot of the time... Is that just because you're paying for it so they're more polite to you? Yes. And they take more care and they have more money available to do things that make you feel cared for. To listen to you, to talk to you, to understand what's going on with you in a more individual basis. Whereas a lot of the combined NHS and private clinics you're paying for speed but you're still part of that very small cog and a very big wheel feeler. So after the break on Women's Radio Station we're going to be coming back to talk about NHS and private fertility treatment to you on the other side. Welcome to the Women's Radio Station supporting women's wellbeing. Women's Radio Station is all about diversity from opinions, career, ethnicity, education and most importantly women's wellbeing. We aim to celebrate the individuality of every woman everywhere providing opportunities and the platform for your voice. Visit our website, womensradiosation.com for more information. I'm Tamina Zaman, founder of Empower and Enreach. When it comes to money do you climb up or get confused? Do you wish you could save more money or are you hoping you have enough for retirement? You are not alone. Many women want to be smarter with their cash but just don't know where to start. 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For more information on how you can sponsor a show go to womensradiostation.com Women's Radio Station Supporting Women's Wellbeing. Welcome back to Women's Radio Station I am here with acupuncture guru Nava Carmen and we're talking about NHS and private fertility treatment and how to get the best from it and your thoughts on what's better, what's best and I know not everyone can afford to have private fertility treatment it's a fortune. It is a fortune and that's where we come into our own a lot of the time I think is fertility acupuncturists. If you go into your specialist fertility acupuncturists then part of their job I think is to help you navigate through the minefield that is the NHS because they will try and do a standard treatment on you and if you already know what you know as a consumer right and you're completely dependent on that hierarchical relationship that our society has established with a doctor to tell you what the right thing to do is. So I'm in that process with you supporting you informing you signposting you to information encouraging you to make a bit of a pain in the ass of yourself because really the more you can assert and question and ask the more they're likely to treat you as an individual. So it's like saying to the client well why have they put you on a short protocol as opposed to a long protocol or vice versa and why this drug and not that drug given that this is what your high estrogen level is couldn't you do this and that might lower the estrogen level and could you ask the doctor about that and have they checked your thyroid before they've done that and they're going to give you they're going to give you an IUI okay but have they checked your tubes are clear and are they going to scan you and encouraging the client to just prod the doctor and take control with information of the like what we do is do this empower the client with information so they get the best result and to ask the right question and are there limits with the NHS version of IVF as in if you already have a child or you're too old or? Yes they're cut off points and also actually randomly it will depend on the PCT or part of whether there's even funding available there are certain places that just don't fund IVF in the country so it might even just be geographical quite literally if you were to move house to a different part of the country you then be eligible it's pretty random sometimes and it also depends on where you are as to whether you get one or three cycles and whether you're offered IUI or IVF and if you've had miscarriages for example when you're going private it's one thing but when you're on the NHS you have to have had three miscarriages before they leave and do the basic testing so it's helping to navigate through that with the client and if they have a limited amount of money to help them really nut down and figure out where is that money they spent and how was it they spent I met a woman the other night who was doing it on her own who told me that she had spent £72,000 so far on fertility treatment which had failed she'd given up her job she had you know finished all her savings but this urge this primal need to have a baby just seems to top anything else it can be hardcore yeah and I think it's a catch 22 that urge it's that what I try and do is help women transform that wanting into welcoming right it's a different energy about it and I think that often when a woman is stuck in the wanting it's like they're going around with blinkers on you know like those blinkers you get on horses yes you become fixated right yeah and my clients sometimes come in having just lost the joy of life lost the connection to their partners they have them lost the connection to their own sexuality lost the connection to enjoyment and on this really often so strict regime of like no chocolate no alcohol no fun yeah no sexiness no juice in their life and so I think part of my job is to help them take those blinkers off and actually lift their head up and get to enjoy their life a bit and I have yet to meet a woman who's going to not get pregnant because they've had a glass of wine of course quite honestly sometimes it's the wine that gets you pregnant sometimes it's a wine that helps the number of clients who've worked hard and finally got themselves to that place were like okay it's never going to happen let's go for IVF and then that month they'd be like I'm going to go running not having any vitamins drinking alcohol and then they get pregnant there's such a huge psychological component to fertility especially unexplained infertility yes well there's so many stories of all the couples who adopt and finally get this adopted baby and then find out they're expecting their own baby at the same time probably you can't make yourself get to that place right but there is a process you can be guided through yeah but it is it has to be a genuine letting go and I think that's very hard to be told just relax just stop worrying about it it's a worse thing to say to everyone who's trying to get pregnant yes because you can't actually quite honestly is there a worse thing to say to any woman anytime relax or calm down no do you ever find that it's the best decision or has it ever happened that you a client has come to you and you really feel there is no hope of success do you do you stop treating do you continue treating how do you deal with that and how would you express that to someone who's coming to you it's often a tough conversation it is a conversation that does happen it does happen absolutely because there's a number of layers there and there's a number of reasons why someone might not be suitable and there's ethics for me and integrity involved in that question so I recently had a client who wanted to do an IVF cycle and knowing her as I did we'd gone through a lot of other health stuff together to get her to that point and I knew that there was some very fundamental things wrong in her marriage some domestic violence involved and I didn't feel from an ethical point of view that I was the right person to be involved to further her fertility once when all of that was going on and she had told you that yeah so we had a very candid conversation about it and I referred her to another acupuncturist who was quite happy with that so what I don't do is withdraw treatment and walk away but there's a kind of a moral and ethical side she would never know if I just continued to take her money and disagreed with it but I can't do that and there are some clients who their bodies just run out of juice I have a client who I worked for about a year with and she'd abused her body for most of her life various drugs and she'd gone through significant period of family strife and eating disorders and she just was not well enough to have babies and so Can you feel that? You can feel it and you can do a lot about their health but for example this particular client every time she did an IVF cycle didn't detoxify estrogen well enough so she'd grow ovarian cysts breast cysts there was very clear signs that her body should not be going through any more medical treatment and can you say that to somebody? Yes I can and do and in fact I work with this fantastic doctor who was also saying the same thing and then I have some clients and one very memorable couple who came in and their relationship because I like to say clients together the first time their relationship was so dysfunctional actually what they needed was counseling not fertility treatment and I do say it I didn't use to when I was younger but now I do because for me it's all about healthy mommy equals health or healthy parents equals healthy babies and I think there is still this thing that if a relationship is a bit rookie baby is going to fix it baby is the worst thing you know we'll test even the strongest relationships you're going to a whole new phase and exhaustion and being tested to your limits and hopefully there has to be a solid foundation there before you add the stress of the baby into that net so I would agree with you that it's a hiding to know what about women who come to you with recurrent miscarriage what could be some of the reasons for that and do you find that you can treat that well that's my wheelhouse these days I see a lot of it I'm really interested in it and probably 10 years ago I would have considered there was such a thing as unexplained fertility I actually don't believe there is anymore and for me the treatment I give around recurrent miscarriage centers around an understanding of the immune system and the fact that I think recurrent miscarriage once you've ruled out things like clotting factors and hormonal factors and overall health and you've dealt with psychological components then you've got to look at the immune system because for some women they their bodies don't differentiate well and so they see their bodies see an embryo a little bit like a cold or a flu like a foreign body that must be got rid of and now my understanding of why that happens has totally changed and recurrent miscarriage becomes something that is like a little puzzle to solve but it is ultimately solvable so I have one client for example when I started this journey 10 years ago around the immune system it had 13 miscarriages and once we got it sorted and it was me and a doctor I worked with sorted and the nice thing again the nice thing is we can test and I can treat with Chinese medicine I can see the natural killer cell profile the cytokine profile change I can see things change and sometimes they need the medication sometimes they don't but we have me it's why would you choose only Chinese medicine we could combine all of those things together I think Chinese medicine is an integral part of a larger picture that's quite incredible to have gone through so much loss she must never have imagined she'd ever have a baby I think she really was a last-ditch effort and I have another client that gave birth at 52 52? so she had a child when she was in her early 20s and then split up from that child's parents and had got married had been married for 20 years and had been trying to have a child for many many years of many of those years she actually was married for more than that and she had miscarriage after miscarriage after miscarriage and she finally stopped at 40 having had ex-frozen and then decided someone told her about me and decided at 51 that this was just going to be her last-ditch effort and she came in and we saw her out and she had a baby just before her 52nd birthday with no help from over there she had the embryos frozen she had the embryos frozen so she used them gosh but it was about the environment not the embryo that's quite a thing to have a baby in your 50s yeah hardcore well most of us are going through the medicals at that point I'm not really considering becoming a mother but was the fulfillment of decades of wishing gosh amazing women who are coming to you during their pregnancies what might they be coming to you for what kinds of things will... so I often see the complex side and I have a lot of other practitioners refer to me because I know I like that sort of stuff so I don't often see the kind of basic morning sickness stuff anymore so I see what I think is the interesting stuff so hypermobility in pregnancy unexplained abdominal pain something called PUPs which is Purity Urticaric Papules of Pregnancy so it's this rash that appears on the body not cholestasis which is different but this is this rash and often they're given Valium and beta blockers and steroids and actually from my point of view super easy to sort we can have it sorted within a couple of weeks about things like heartburn is that too simple? Too simple? No I do see heartburn but I tend to see acid reflux as post-heartburn so a more hard of call version of that that's a real problem it is but when a poor lady is sleeping upright when they don't have to I've been there I've slugged that gab has gone at 3am bottles and bottles and then there's all the nonsense about well your baby must have lots of hair and that's why you have heartburn have you heard that old chest note? But my god it's just no my baby did have a lot of hair so I'm wondering if maybe there is some truth in that I don't know I don't know we're going to be back after the break on Women's Radio Station here where we support Women's Wellbeing to talk with our guest Nava Carmen about traditional Chinese medicine and her other speciality of female pelvic and sexual pain see you after the break Welcome to the Women's Radio Station supporting Women's Wellbeing Women's Radio Station is all about diversity from opinions career ethnicity education and most importantly Women's Wellbeing We aim to celebrate the individuality of every woman everywhere providing opportunities and the platform for your voice Visit our website womensradiosation.com for more information I'm Tamina Zamman founder of Empower and Enrich When it comes to money do you clam up or get confused? Do you wish you could save more money or are you hoping you have enough for retirement? You are not alone Many women want to be smarter with their cash but just don't know where to start At empowerandenrich.org you will find a host of options to help you take charge of your finances and learn how to put your money to work for you in an easy affordable way Get in touch with me at empowerandenrich.org and let's change your future together Hello My name is Natasha Ann Callaha Welcome to you lovely lady listeners of your very own women's radio station Over the coming months I'll be doing a survey in big brand coffee shops interviewing customers asking why they like to drink coffee and if they would like to give us a health tip for our listeners The most shared and liked post will be the winner of a prize Stay tuned for further details Hi I'm Carolyn Van Biers Please join me for a brand new show here on women's radio station It's Mother's Hour If like me you're a mum juggling far too many balls and dropping most of them This is definitely the show for you We'll examine the highs and lows of motherhood and make sure you laugh out loud as we take on this challenging role together With spoonfuls of advice incredible stories it will be refreshing honest and funny look at being a mum Are you struggling with money? Turn to Us is a national charity helping people struggling to make ends meet Job loss illness or bereavement can cause a real financial crisis We give practical help to get people back on track Whether you're thinking of having a baby trying to get out of an unhappy relationship or just unsure what benefits you may be entitled to We can help Visit turntous.org.uk Welcome to the Women's Radio Station Supporting Women's Wellbeing Women's Radio Station can give voice to your brand with a wide range of sponsorship opportunities including individual programmes We can tailor your experience for you For more information on how you can sponsor a show go to womensradiostation.com Women's Radio Station Supporting Women's Wellbeing Hello We're back on Women's Radio Station with my guest Nava Carmen and we're talking about women coming to you during pregnancy for acupuncture for all sorts of different ailments I often recommend to my clients to go and see an acupuncturist when they're coming up to the due date to save from induction Do you see that quite a lot? I call it my on-time service Nice! So, with the exception of five women in 20 years all of whom have had really good reasons why the acupuncture didn't work all of my clients go into labour within a week at their due date So there's something about optimising your health there and preparing for birth but on the occasions where it hasn't happened I take actually great comfort in that because unlike Western medicine we can't override the body No We can't make it happen when it's not supposed to They need to come when they want to come Yeah And one of my clients who it didn't work for had to give birth in hospital we found out and was planning her birth and ended up C-section but the cord was absolutely minuscule and had she tried to give birth at home there would have been a problem One had undiagnosed strep B Right So there's very good medical reasons the body knows so we can't override it but we can help it along if it's heading in that direction I'm waiting on a lady who's 12 days over now and my goodness I need to send her to you But you know there's a really interesting study that's just come out that shows that the risk of stillbirth actually goes down after 42 weeks Yeah But she's trying for a home birth so we want this baby to come so she can have it at home but we are not in charge Fair enough We are not Do you ever have repeat clients ladies who come back to you I can count them on the fingers of one hand Gosh Which is a terrible business model Yes But basically once we fix things if the client continues to take responsibility and look after the health it does stay fixed That's really good It's a no Yeah Amazing The idea is that we get you to the point where you don't need us So you're sort of opening up the channels or increasing the chi and once that's happened in a body and you've carried and birthed the baby you can kind of You keep doing it Do that again You have to keep looking after yourself Gotta keep eating well and you know some of my clients come back for a tune up every so often keep themselves in good shape Gotta keep exercising looking after your self-care which is tough for a lot of women But when that's there once it's fixed it's fixed So you do feel that nutrition and exercise also play a large part I do Infertility I think it's a huge part of that But that comes under the banner of self-care I think also for secondary infertility that's a huge thing because a lot of us as moms everybody else goes first and we get lost Whereas what I try and encourage my clients to do is it's like that old adage about first you put your own oxygen mask on Yeah So I do it myself First I plan my stuff and then everybody else gets planned around me because if I fall down everything falls down I feel that way entirely We went skiing in February and my only thought every morning was if I fall down and break my wrist my whole household goes down So although mothers are often the least important and they do come last They are The rock The linchpin Yeah Absolutely So that self-care is a huge part of good health and fertility So you feel that secondary infertility might not be so much an age issue but more an issue that they are already mother to one and therefore they're just not looking after themselves as much I have a client at the moment who spent five years not sleeping Well that wouldn't happen You know that'll do it for your hormones and your air quality So getting her to work and work on that with her little boy and her husband letting him take some stuff and just rebalancing her life has been transformative I'm going to have to do very little for this client That's so interesting And you talked about your training to become an acupuncturist and that seems quite lengthy and quite detailed Is there rigorous training? And if someone wanted to find an acupuncturist how do you find a practitioner who has had proper training who is not a quack for wanting to come to work Well we all graduate from college like GPs Right So anyone from the British Acupuncturist Council or the Register of Planning and Total Medicine will have been given that breadth of training But when you want someone who actually specialises in obstetrics or fertility Yeah then it's really tough The British Acupuncturist Council hasn't yet come out I actually have a meeting with the lady who runs it in a couple of weeks' time Hoping to talk about the fact that I think that they as our governing body need to come out with a special interest list as a consumer safety measure And in the absence of that part of the other part of what I do is I do a lot of postgraduate training I do complex training for practitioners who want to specialise in pregnancy and fertility And I've created a list that you can find on my website of practitioners who've gone through a diploma with me I've essentially downloaded the contents of my brain into these practitioners That's a big brain to download It's over the course of many months and coursework So once I've graduated with that diploma they come onto my website and they get access to my logo But unlike other people who well-known in our industry who sell their name for repeated amounts of money with very little training being given I don't resell that So they renew their logo upon proof of continuing high-level professional development and training So they have to keep up their CBD They have to keep up their CBD So the first thing that someone would look for is that you are finding a practitioner who is on that register You're not walking into a shop on the high street Yeah and so everyone who has the fertility support training logo on it or fertility support diploma logo on it you know has gone through a rigorous training in integrated medicine and you'll get the same qualities you'd get if you came to see me And if you did see someone who was maybe not the best practitioner could that cause harm or would it just simply not work? No I think you can cause harm You do So for example if you don't know what you're doing let's say you have polycystic ovaries Yeah You're going through an IVF cycle People who have polycystic ovaries are at real risk of something called hyperstimulation syndrome So overstimulation of their ovaries Right And if they're not monitored properly a lot of the time clinics particularly small private clinics hyperstimulate their clients I had someone come in last year who had 50 follicles You can go average follicle number growth in an IVF cycles about eight So if you were to just look at that client from a purely Chinese medicine point of view what you'd be seeing is a thin lining and immature follicles and so you might this is my language now tonify yin and blood but without the understanding that you also need to look at the estrogen levels in the blood when they're being having blood taken you wouldn't really understand that that's absolutely the worst thing you can do So really understanding that integrated medicine makes a huge difference as to the good and the harm you can do The lesson is really go and see someone who knows what they're doing You've also undertaken specialist training in pelvic female pelvic and sexual pain Can you tell us a bit about that briefly because they're wrapping up our shoes These are things like vulvodynia vaginismus not talked about a lot and I think it is a big thing and it's sort of a catch-22 issue because of course when you have pain you have vaginal vulval pain then sex becomes a real trial and the more of a psychological barrier is put up the more frightened you are about doing it and so what I see a lot of the time is women who haven't had sex in a very long time through a combination of the physical pain they have and the psychological pain they then experience And is there still a real stigma attached to coming to someone and talking about that? And I think there's a dearth of information about how to diagnose it properly too Yeah and do you find that women just feel well this is just my lot in life Absolutely And some of them have nerve pain in one area of their vagina or the vulva for example so have come up with all of these interesting kind of positions they can only have sex because then it won't touch that bit of their body and they haven't looked or been even told that there's something they can do about that and these things can be treated They can be treated Quite simply It's not a simple procedure I'd say but yes they can be treated and it is a combination of a physical and psychological which really hits it on the head And if people wanted to get in touch with me rather how would they go about that? So my website is quite simple fertilitysupport.co.uk That's very simple fertilitysupport.co.uk I run the Fertility Support Company so you get in touch with me through there And now you want Instagram? I am Also fertility support and same on Facebook although I don't have Facebook or Instagram Messenger so the best way to contact me is still through the website I'm guessing you have quite a long waiting list At the moment it's about five or six months but I am which is another reason I wanted to train a load of people because I don't want me to be the only one I want what I do to be out there with as many and to help as many people as possible but I am trying to cut down the list at the moment because I'd like to see as many people as they can before I go on Before this baby part Yeah, exactly Something that we like to ask all our guests when we wrap up our show is for their three top tips for wellbeing So what would yours be? What are you going to send us off with? So we've touched on one of them already which is the self-care aspect Yeah Then we have the sleep aspect Yeah And then the all-important and huge label of stress aspect and that stress is just this huge thing Yes You know we use that word very generally these days but actually what I mean by stress with clients is all the things all the mental load often that they're carrying of organising their life everybody's life their family's life and being on the go all the time being busy I'm a big fan of doing nothing when it comes to helping fertility Okay And often my clients do nothing and lose weight which I love Wow I'd like that tip because you know stress makes you hold on to that Yeah So looking after your wellbeing and not being so busy all the time is a huge thing you can do for yourself Okay And sleep hygiene Yes Like phone hygiene that's a big one, right? We're all addicted to our phone So turning the phone off hours before you go to bed not using the phone by your bed as the alarm and actually most importantly being aware of blue light So computers, phones, TV all admit blue light that messes with your ability to sleep well So even putting a filter on your phone putting a filter on your computer or your TV that sort of filters out that light can make a huge difference to the sleep quality do you have? Yeah I'm sure it can And self-care generally? Self-care means having regular treatments taking care of your psychological health with counseling or coaching if you need it exercising and most importantly having a really nice social life it doesn't just centre around drinking but it centres around deep and meaningful communication with people in your life that you love Having a life not just focusing on getting pregnant which is so hard it's so easy for us to sit here and say that because when you're in it you're really in it You are in it but we can guide you through that process and back out again and that's the most important thing to know you can't always find it within yourself but there are ways for us to help you find it Well that is all we have time for this week Thank you so much to my gang Thanks for having me Thank you for coming in and thank you all so much for listening If you would like to get in touch with me you can email me at presenters at womensradiostation.com I would be absolutely delighted to hear from you Have a great week everyone and see you next time Bye Welcome to Women's Radio Station I'm Sarah Louise Ryan and welcome to Love Lessons Live on Women's Radio Station Hello and welcome to Future Classic Women Awards with me Stefania Passamante on Women's Radio Station Hello and welcome to June May is listening Hi this is Anna Kennedy and we're at Women's Radio Station supporting women's wellbeing and we're talking all things autism Women The possibilities are endless That's what makes us different Hi I'm Tracey Weeden of Brownhill Insurance Group We are an award-winning family-run insurance broker covering a wide range of insurance products ranging from commercial lines to personal household high net worth and fine art You can contact us on 02-08-658-4334 or visit our website www.brownhillgroup.co.uk for your free no-obligation quotation At Brownhills we've got you covered Hi I'm Lauren Mishcon I'm a birth doula and mum of three and I'm passionate about supporting women to have empowering and positive birth experiences Please join me for my brand new show From Tummy to Mummy here on Women's Radio Station Every week I'll be here with an expert guest talking about women's reproductive health everything fertility pregnancy birth and baby related right through to the menopause and beyond Please join us for an informative and fun hour Hi I'm Hazel Butterfield a blogger book lover and mental health advocate and you can listen to my show Get Booked here at Women's Radio Station daily at 5am and 5pm Throughout my shows we'll talk about the books I've read new releases chapter authors publishers and book enthusiasts all with a theme and aim of supporting women's emotional wellbeing If you have a book to tell us about get in touch at presenters at womensradiostation.com Join me on my show and share my love of books and writing share information To find out more and be part of this movement come check out our website at media matters for women.org exciting programs