Nip Tuck - The Fertility Episode

Episode Date: July 16, 2024

This is the episode you’ve all been asking for. We speak all things fertility with the amazing Kate who specialises in fertility acupuncture. We chat about egg quality, male fertility, egg freezing and more. You can find Kate on Instagram - @thecheshireacupuncturist Sponsors Zita West www.zitawest.com Use the code NIPTUCK for 15% off site wide, one code use per customer. Excludes subscription purchases.Natural Cycles You can get 15% off an annual subscription and free thermometer when you use the code NIPTUCK at naturalcycles.com *Natural Cycles is for 18+ and does not protect against STIsMusic courtesy of BMG Production Music  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thank you to Zeta West for supporting this fertility episode. I thought it was only right for my favorite fertility supplement to support today's app. So for those who don't know, Zeta West is the leading fertility expert in the UK. So she pioneered the holistic approach to fertility and she was the first person to insist that there's so much more beyond medical that needs to be considered in order to successfully conceive. So Ashley, you have spoken about Zeta West so much. You have told me that I need to try the supplements. You have spoken about it on your Instagram, on the pod. Tell us a little bit about your experience with Zeta West. I just found that the Zeta West supplements were so easy to take. They come in different bundles

on the website, depending on where you're at. So whether you're thinking of trying for a baby, trying for a baby, doing IVF, doing egg collection, you're pregnant, each trimester, they've got support postpartum all of that good stuff they even have children's supplements on there and the team are very helpful in answering all of your questions because it is a minefield and you don't know where to start one of the things that i was that was absolutely amazing is that they support both men and women's reproductive health so we're going to speak to kate about this and the fact that a lot of it does depend on the men's health as well so the supplements can be taken by the men as well and it's backed by the latest scientific

research so you know you are getting the most up-to-date help that you possibly can from it i could go on all day about zeta west but here you go here are the handles zeta.west on instagram zetawest.com and zeta west products on trustpilot their reviews are amazing and as a real customer of theirs, I can say they're fantastic. Use the code NIPTALK for 15% off site-wide. One code used per customer. Excludes subscription purchases. Hello guys and welcome to NIPTALK. Not giving a fuck. Does that feel really naughty? Yeah. Guys, we've been talking about doing this episode for a long, long time and I know a lot of you want it and a lot of you are going to get so much value from this and learn so much and that's what

we're about so today's episode is all about fertility and we are joined by the amazing Kate she specializes in fertility acupuncture and she's based in Cheshire and Ashley you know Kate really well you have had so much help from Kate tell us a little bit about about your relationship okay how you know her introduce her honey I've been going to Kate for like three years is it three yeah about that yeah ages and I found her on Instagram um I was having fertility acupuncture before but then I stumbled across her page and I was just like oh my god I need to get in with this woman she looks amazing because her Instagram page is just full of tips and tricks loads of info loads of info info overload I could just tell she was so passionate about what she did so

I went on her wait list because she has a very long wait list and I waited for my appointment and it was well worth the wait and she helped me get pregnant and I truly believe in the service well it's worked for you hasn't it that you are the proof and there's so many success stories on your Instagram as well like the proof is there yes there's no denying that yes so Kate yeah tell us how did you even get into this like tell us your background I've never told this story before I've never told the story before so not many people know this at all other than my family so basically I started my journey into acupuncture back in 2013-14 and it was all because my grandma I was diagnosed with breast cancer so she was diagnosed with cancer and no one in our family

had ever been diagnosed with cancer so it was a bit of a shock so my first thought was is she going to be okay and my second thought was is this genetic am I going to get this and I had severe health anxiety about it so I'd always been into health and wellness never really thought it be a career but just enjoyed reading about it so I started researching things that could try and help her because she was going through conventional treatment and I came across acupuncture as an alternative therapy to support um people that are going through cancer or many other things but obviously for my grandma cancer and I just started researching about it and I'd always been someone to think slightly differently about things so when I was reading about I was like this is amazing

like they explain the body in such a different way to western medicine and I thought there's something in this so at the time I was living with my parents I was early 20s and I went downstairs my mum and dad were watching Corrie and I interrupted them and I went I'm gonna be an acupuncturist another thing literally they looked at me like I was about to have a mental breakdown I was like no so literally I went upstairs was researching and I thought where can I train to be an acupuncturist i was in a job i was a bit lost i was actually a debt collector i could not imagine you doing no i was a debt collector give me your money no seriously i was a debt collector i was like actually all right as well and um i was googling and then this is where things kind

of magically aligned there was somewhere five minutes from my house that i never knew existed um that trained it was a chinese medicine college that trained in acupuncture and within a few weeks I'd made an appointment to go and kind of see everything that it was about and then two weeks later I was signed up to their course and then I spent the next few years like dedicating to study when I finished I actually ended up working in a hospice for six months alongside cancer patients really and I used the Chinese medicine knowledge and everything that I'd learned to try and understand those people that had cancer and I could see that a lot of their life trajectory was a reason a potential cause as to why they had cancer and they were really open and it was a

really really humbling experience to be besides people that would not be around in a few weeks time and then from there i went to work in lots of multidisciplinary clinics i was in manchester witness liverpool even wales for a brief period of time and fertility kept coming up and i was like I am not treating fertility I'm just not doing it and the clinic managers were like no we need you to treat it I was like I'm not treating it so put it off for a good year and then about a year later I had a reading from someone and they said you're gonna teach and you're gonna be doing fertility so I was like fuck sake I'm gonna have to do it I'm gonna have to do it so um I started seeing fertility and I realized actually this is not fertility this is

just people's health and treating people's health and that their icing on the cake is a baby yeah because facility is just health so I started to view in a different way I got amazing results and I trained further and it got to a point my clinic just grew and grew over the years to the point where I actually couldn't see people anymore as much as I wanted to because I was at maximum capacity so in 2021 i opened my own clinic juniper clinic in stockton heath and over the last three years we've now grown to 12 members of staff seven acupuncturists a pharmacist herbalist a trauma trained therapist room massage specialist um hormone and nutrition coach the list goes on so you're like a one-stop shop yes you've got everything there obviously juniper was known

for or i was kind of known just for acupuncture and then you know some people might come along and they might not want needles so because it does sound scary like needles yeah and it's not at all anyone that's had it i mean no i had it i fell asleep yeah um but if you've not had it before or maybe if you're going through ibf and you've had injections and you know the last thing i want yeah the needle um so we we kind of gave the option to you know have other therapies and we do a lot of functional medicine testing now which we can get into in a bit but yeah that's kind of how it started and where we are today I never thought that researching in my bedroom living at my parents when I was in my early 20s would lead to this moment yeah and that's why I

think about the universe as well like everything is leading to the right place isn't it where you're meant to be yeah and I think obviously this is amazing and we're going to talk so much about it but just like a bit of a disclaimer this is one option you know we would always advise you go and see your doctor I would assume you're the same Kate that is you know what we'd always advise people as well but if they feel like they want another route then this is something to absolutely look into and something that we know can be amazing yeah right let's get into it then so Kate give us some fertility stats so globally one in six women struggle to conceive sorry one in six couples struggle to conceive um which is about 17 and a half percent of the population which is

quite higher than i thought amount in the uk it's roughly one in seven wow that's high um one of the other big statistic is male fertility has declined rapidly almost halved in the last 50 years wow and we always say don't we like i feel like it's just a normal thing you say oh men can have kids into their 80s it's always the women the men can carry on you dude that's like a thing that we always used to say but it's not true what's the percentage between male and female infertility it's equal so it's it's 40 percent in terms of fertility issues 40 percent men 40 percent women um and then the other 20 percent is split over other variables but yeah wow so it's half and half so like i feel like we always have the pressure on us as women if you can't conceive it's assumed

that it's the woman if you have a miscarriage it's assumed it's the woman yeah it's all on the woman isn't it i've never honestly thought if i decide to try and have a baby i've never even thought of james's input other than the obvious yeah if i've never thought about that and that's the way it's been for a very long time the tides are slowly turning because you know get me on this podcast talking about it people are raising awareness of this and there is now so much um there's just so much information out there and then starting to do like you know data on microplastics um they're noticing now there was a new study done where they found microplastics in every single sample of semen within that within that test how weird is that yeah so for micro

plastics for somebody who didn't know what a microplastic was what is that so the way to put it is let's say you work in an office and you're drinking a cup of coffee yeah the lining of that plastic cup you put heat in that cup yeah and basically they they have done a study where i think they put hot water in the cup left it for 15 minutes they analyzed the water in the cup after that there was 25 000 i want to say micrograms i can't remember the top of my head but micrograms of plastic so if people are working in an office which i'm sure people on this podcast will be or getting a coffee every morning yeah three times a day that's 75 000 micrograms of plastic that you are ingesting day and it massively impacts the endocrine system which is our

hormonal system it accumulates in the tissues causes oxidative stress and it damages things like sperm quality and egg health so me and kate are obsessed with microplastics and once you start thinking about them you can't so this now is yeah basically we're all drinking it we're all drinking the worst thing is heat right when you add heat but this is like hands kate we spoke about yeah chopping boards yeah you want to have stainless steel you can have ceramic but be careful because even some ceramic is coated with um like a plastic on some of them so the best thing to get is stainless steel kate what was that statistic you told me about the credit card yeah so on average we swallow a credit card and a half a week of plastic oh I know it makes me feel

the thing is even if you think you're doing the right things because there's going to be so many people out there saying I do everything right I mean at the moment in clinic I am seeing men as young as 24 coming in with the worst semen analysis ever what do you think that's from Kate I think there's multiple factors plastics are one lifestyle obviously what's in our food pesticide exposure um I think that's the root I think that's the foundation and then we have a lot of stress in our life now we are so busy all of the time can I ask something while we're talking about the sperm steroids yes is it true that if men have used steroids as in to get muscly I don't not the right terminology is it affects their sperm is that true yeah it is yeah because you

hear that don't you that people say oh they were on steroids and it affect the i'm also when i mean you don't want to take suck the fun out of people's lives but when people are not getting the outcome the desire such as baby you do have to think right what can we do and i do say to men just cut out the protein powders yeah i've heard that the protein powders yeah there's all sorts of crap in the protein powders but there is a brand um called the organic protein company who you can actually get a certificate for each batch they make because it's all good stuff right so there are ways around yeah there are ways around it but it just might not be the average one that they get in holland or whatever so i guess would you say all these things i mean like you say life's stressful

already and then you're like shit now i can't have my protein powder now i can't so i guess it is something to maybe be mindful of and then when you got to the position that you decided you want to try and conceive i guess that's when all this would really come into play you think right let's look at our lifestyle now and let's cut all these things down or if you were undergoing ivs yeah yeah anything like that i think lauren and i are huge advocates of balance like yes you know you can drink your green juice you can eat organic but you might want a glass of wine and a fag maybe sorry kate but what i'm saying is i'm not just rotting with wine fags and monster much it's okay yeah because half the time it is organic yeah because let's be realistic i don't ever want

our pod when we do this kind of thing to come across as people panicking and thinking oh shit i need to this because life is life it is stressful it's hard we do need convenience food sometimes we do need a quick costa like let's i don't want to frighten anyone to start and i do have a costa yeah but it's just yeah knowing the knowledge being mindful and if you are in a position where where your fertility ivf whatever is a really important thing to you at that moment in time that's when you really need to consider these things that you may not have done one more saunas uh is it true that saunas for men causes yeah sperm issues so the testicles hang outside of the body why am i childish why i'm so childish okay i just got this image in my head

i have some testicles honestly testicles hang outside of the body for a reason to keep cool and men also want to wear these like tight boxes and i mean just let it hang yeah and how does that affect that how does a sauna is it because if they go the heat so it's yeah they go too hot too hot and it causes oxidative stress basically is steam in the same like a steam room is anything i thought you were like steaming like getting steeped steaming the balls like um no like steam room sauna anything heat heat in general even being on a bike for too long can cause problems you know some men might cycle to work for an hour a day that even that hot balls yeah hot testicles yeah i did a swing and i had a hot vagina yesterday kate one thing that we've spoken

about before and i must say i do get messages a lot about it because i've been very open talking about my miscarriage and I get messages all the time like Ashley I've just had a miscarriage what are the statistics now for miscarriage because I know that I found comfort and I know this is very odd thing to say but me personally I found comfort out of other people speaking about theirs yeah and knowing certain statistics that I wasn't alone in that situation and I can't remember what the statistics were at the time but I was shocked to see that you know it wasn't me alone and so how many is there like a statistic for how many pregnancies end in miscarriage so once you get to the age of 40 I mean there's the reason I mentioned that because I actually

see so many people now 40 plus come into the clinic to want to try to have a baby I think the statistic is roughly it's 50 likely to end in miscarriage which is high so before that it's approximately 25 it's still still high and you know it makes me think you know i've got fear and it was all very easy for me and i don't think i've ever appreciated actually how lucky yeah it is when you end up with your baby at the end of it yeah because there are so many statistics against and pregnancy after miscarriage is not very nice no and you've that first 12 weeks you've got so much anxiety because you've had a miscarriage you're like is this going to hold out you know and we we do support women in the first trimester as well at the clinic and it is a really tough

time and once you've had a miscarriage you're 10 more likely to have another i didn't know that either yeah yeah i didn't know that i mean you've been fine haven't you so we don't want to scare anyone don't want to scare people they are the statistics however it's not these are statistics and you are not a statistic you can change that that's the most empowering thing you have the ability to change that and make it go in your favor as much as you possibly can and acupuncture when i was reading after i had mine and i was going to go through the ivf process i was reading and there were some statistics there saying that if you support your pregnancy or your ivf journey your egg collection whatever you're having with IVF you are really boosting your chances yeah

so lots of people will go into IVF think it's thinking it's the answer and it's not their fault there there is kind of this fluff around yeah IVF is the answer but IVF again is only approximately 33% successful between the ages of 18 and 34 it goes down to 46% over 40 so that's is that based on just your average lady going for it with no support yeah so unfortunately you're saying that you could improve those figures if you do things alongside you don't just turn up have your IVF and think right there and it's all about prep you always say that 100% you know because people want to rush into trying again for a baby after a miscarriage or IVF and what Kate taught me was that you have to get your sperm and your eggs right before you go for these things

yes so IVF they are just putting the egg and the sperm together if you have not worked on those prior to them doing that then your outcome is likely not going to be so tell us we've got a listener here she's she's listening now and she's thinking I've been trying for a baby for however along and it just doesn't seem to happen as quick as i wanted what can she do there's so many different avenues so obviously you can go to your gp i would always advise going to gp the current nice guidelines are if you've been trying for six months of unprotected sex over the age of 35 you can go to your gp okay it's 12 months under the age of 35 18 to 35 um and one of the big things that i'm huge on and you're probably seeing on my instagram is bbt charting um and it's

tracking your temperatures first are you ovulating because women out there are having a regular period i say period and so like every 28 days i always assume i'm fantastic because i'm 28 days bang on mine must be great so you go to the gp and one of the questions will be are you having a regular cycle and you'll go yeah i'm having a regular cycle but i have seen i can't tell you how many times in clinic i have seen where women are having a regular cycle i get them to track their bbt what's a bbt so basal body temperature um it's basically your temperature at rest when you first wake up in the morning you'll go to the gp and they'll say are you having a regular cycle you'll go yeah i am and then i'll get you to track your bbt and we'll see that you're actually