When I was young, nearly everyone on our block had 4, 5, 6 or more children. Infertility was quite rare, happening only occasionally. Fast forward to the 21st century when approximately 1 in 7 couples are affected by infertility in the United States. That’s about 6.7 million people each year who have trouble conceiving.
To examine why people are having such a hard time conceiving a child, we must consider several factors. And we also want to try to trace all the underlying causes. We do know that hormones play a role, but in Ayurveda we like to look at all the factors which affect infertility — thinking that it’s just a problem with hormones is too superficial a way to look at it.
So to understand this issue at a much deeper level, we must first understand what Ojas is. Ojas is the neurotransmitters and hormones and gives us great strength and stamina, as well as immunity to disease. And, it gives us fertility.
Since Ojas is responsible for reproduction, it’s important that we understand how it is made. And as the ancient Ayurvedic doctors stated, we should always look first at digestion when tracing back the origins of any disease process.
Once you swallow the food, it goes through the digestive tract and it must be broken down into smaller and smaller particles so that it can next be absorbed into the bloodstream.
But if either something is wrong with your digestion and/or the food is too heavy, then residues of the food can remain stuck in the gut, forming ama, which clogs the intestinal channel. Then, as a result, there is less food being absorbed into the blood stream.
Once the food absorbs into the bloodstream, it must spend 3-5 days in each of the 7 tissues before moving onto the next. The 7 tissues are blood plasma, blood, muscle, fat, bone, bone marrow and finally the reproductive fluids. Then at the end of the 7th tissue Ojas is made, which is the final end product of digestion.
So, if someone is experiencing infertility, the first thing you must examine is how well their digestion is working. Unfortunately, in this day and age, most people have compromised digestion from taking too many antibiotics, birth control pills, acid reflux medicines, steroids and immunizations, all of which destroy our digestive capability by destroying the friendly bacteria in the gut and compromising the liver from too many toxins traveling through it. Keep in mind that the gut flora and the liver are considered the seat of digestion.
So the first step is to fix the gut and the liver. And any other weak processes of digestion, such as the gall bladder, enzyme systems, and so on.
Then of course your diet must be as healthy as can be, with fresh home-made foods cooked every day and eaten that day, which gives you the most nutritional value from the food and the most prana, or vibrational value that the food can have.
It’s important to know that with every food we eat, it takes a whole month before it can make Ojas, since all the foods spend 3-5 days in each of the 7 tissues before moving onto the next tissue. The only exception to that rule is: milk! This means then that milk is the #1 most nourishing food to ensure fertility. But you must drink good quality milk (whole milk from grass fed cows, preferably non-homogenized with the cream at the top), taken in the correct way (boiled and taken either on an empty stomach or cooked into grains).
Unfortunately so many people can no longer digest milk because of their compromised digestive systems. So in these cases we must first fix their digestion so they can go back to having milk again.
The other problem we encounter is that milk has been so maligned here in the Western world — people call it a poison and say it’s responsible for causing cancer and auto-immune diseases, which has caused so many people to turn towards plant-based milk instead.
This is a big mistake! Milk is definitely not a poison if you have good quality milk taken in the correct way and you can digest it properly.
And keep in mind that the hormones which make you fertile are made of cholesterol. Therefore whole milk and ghee are the absolute two best foods for fertility.
But when you’re under stress, working too many hours, and rushing through the day, you can burn that cholesterol, since all the stress hormones are made from cholesterol. And you can also burn up the Ojas, leaving you feel depleted and fatigued. And infertile.
And this is precisely why when I was young all the women were so fertile. Most of the women back then didn’t go out to work but instead stayed at home. But then in the 1970’s when women entered the work force they quickly became infertile as they burned up their Ojas as they tried their best to both work and still perform all the other chores necessary to run the household. I distinctly remember fertility clinics opening up right around that time, which were pretty much nonexistent before that.
Over-exercise can also deplete Ojas, so while it’s good to exercise your body you don’t want to overdo it by working out for too many hours a week. Periodically take a day off to give yourself a little break here and there in between the work outs. And if you’re already thin to begin with, please don’t jog — it can aggravate Vata even more, draining even more of your strength and stamina. If you’re a thin and stressed out Vata type who might be a little weak or malnourished it’s best to walk or do yoga, but not strenuous aerobic exercise. Pitta types, who are of a more medium build can tolerate a little more exercise than the Vata types, and the more stout Kapha types can do just about any type of exercise they want, as long as they don’t injure themselves.
Once you correct all the reasons for the low Ojas, and you learn how to rest more, eat more nourishing foods, add whole milk (cow’s or goat’s preferably) and ghee to the diet, then you can also start considering ways to boost your hormones using all the wonderful herbs and herbal formulas Ayurveda has to offer to help you conceive. But if you just try to address hormone levels without doing the work involved to keep up your Ojas, you are setting yourself up for failure. That’s why taking synthetic hormones for fertility don’t always work either.
The other thing to consider is that if you are having a difficult time conceiving it’s because your body is wise, knowing that your Ojas is low, that you need to fix your own strength and stamina before growing a new body inside your womb. So it’s important you address all these issues so that you can have the healthiest baby possible. I’ve seen some very sick women become infertile, they go to fertility clinics, are then pumped with extremely high doses of synthetic hormones; they conceive, but their offspring are unhealthy because no one thought of strengthening the mother and father before conceiving a new life. You want your genetic material and offspring to be as strong as possible. Therefore you must be as strong as possible before conceiving.
Many women have miscarriages for no apparent reason. In most of these cases there is a subclinical hypothyroid problem, which means that the thyroid gland is weak, but it might not be weak enough to show up on blood work. Yet it is weak enough to cause a miscarriage. This is because when the thyroid gland is weak the progesterone goes low, which results in a miscarriage. In my book Healing the Thyroid With Ayurveda I outline all the reasons someone might have a weak thyroid. In these cases, we fix all the reasons for the thyroid weakness, and then give them our herbs to keep their progesterone levels up throughout the entire pregnancy. This approach has been proven to be highly effective in preventing miscarriage.
So there is much more which can be done to enhance your fertility outside of the realm of taking somewhat dangerous synthetic hormones filled with nasty side effects and toxicity. The answer lies in keeping up your levels of Ojas, by fixing your digestion and eating high quality nourishing foods and addressing the stressors you can control, such as going to bed early, incorporating whole milk and ghee into your diet and identifying any and all thyroid issues which might be lurking under the surface, even if your blood work comes back normal.
By following these guidelines you’ll be amazed at how much your fertility comes back. Ayurveda has hundreds of herbs, many of which can greatly enhance fertility. We even have herbs to strengthen the uterine lining so the egg can implant, herbs to increase the sperm count and motility and herbs to help the woman’s eggs develop fully.
It’s always best to conceive a child in the most natural way possible, so they can enter life with their own high levels of Ojas and not start out with chemical toxins which come from the mother’s use of the many synthetic hormones used for fertility.
And don’t be shortsighted in your approach to treating fertility — don’t just think of it as a problem with low hormones which could leave you to believe that if you just take hormones you will be able to conceive. It’s a little more complicated than that, but it’s also not as hard to conceive as you might think.
Your body is fully capable of healing itself to the point where you can regain your fertility…you just have to nudge it in the right direction.