What We Help - The Natural Fertility Dr

What WE Help With

Healing your mind and reproductive body through Integrative medicine.

Hormonal Balancing

Your endocrine system is a complex web that is interdependent on every gland functioning at its peak. Homeostasis must occur to ensure the chances of conception. When we treat hormonal imbalance we have to look at the three stages, which are distribution, production, and timing. Remember hormones are responders NOT causes, so discovering the root cause of hormonal imbalance entails taking a wide look into your lifestyle, diet, environment, stress level, pain, hidden inflammation, and toxicity levels. We also must look at our HPA (Hypothalmic, pituitary, adrenal) Axis and HPO (Hypothalmic, Pituitary, Ovarian) Axis and our trusty Thyroid gland to be functioning at their peak state for all of our reproductive hormones to be produced and distributed at the perfect time to ensure a regular cycle. Find out what hormonal imbalances you may have and the root cause to them that could be the reason for your infertility struggles.

PCOS

PCOS, Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome is a very complex, multifactorial syndrome with different presentations that play a big role in infertility. There are different phenotypes with specific presentations of symptoms and dominant factors. I like to focus on the top 6 factors of PCOS which are, Inflammation, Insulin resistance, androgen excess, stress affecting the adrenal glands, HPO axis (hypothalamic, pituitary, ovarian) axis, and the thyroid. Find out your specific phenotype and the individual step by step process to overcoming PCOS, balance your endocrine system, regulate your cycle, decrease chronic inflammation, decrease insulin resistance, decrease leptin resistance, increase your thyroid function, harmonize your Hypothalamic, pituitary, ovarian axis and your Hypothalamic, pituitary, adrenal axis, decrease the harmful effects of stress on your adrenals, decrease the androgen excess, regulate your cycle and induce healthy monthly ovulation and give your body the best chances to conceive.

Increasing Egg Quality

Our egg quality dramatically diminishes as we age and unfortunately many things arise because of that, including, increased chromosomal abnormalities, increased miscarriages, increased chances of down syndrome, autism and developmental delays, lower chances of conceiving and lower chances of making a genetically normal embryo. Our eggs are one of the largest cells in the human body holding the highest copy numbers of mitochondria, 300,000 copies per cell, making them the powerhouse of cellular energy. We need to nurture the eggs we have left in our bodies. The main factors that play a role in an aging oocyte are, mitochondria defects, dysfunctional granulosa cells, oxidative and carbonyl stress, declining ovarian androgens, oocyte telomere shortening, and epigenetics. Increasing our egg quality is imperative to conceiving a chromosomally normal embryo. No matter your age or your fertility situation, ALWAYS work on increasing your egg quality! Discover how your lifestyle and environment are changing your genetic code through the epigenetic changes you are causing. Learn how to increase the mitochondria, decrease the oxidative stress, increase the health of your granulosa cells and detox at the cellular level to increase your egg quality.

Repeated pregnancy Loss

Repeated pregnancy loss is considered 2 or more miscarriages in the embryonic or pre-embryonic phase or 1 miscarriage in the fetal phase. Greater maternal age is the number one risk factor for repeated pregnancy loss. There are many reasons why miscarriage occurs, for example, genetics, anatomic abnormalities, endocrine disorders, autoimmunity, inherited or acquired thrombophilia's, infection, environmental toxicity, DNA fragmentation, toxicity, stress and many more. All of these have, subclinical categories as well. When treating Repeated pregnancy loss it is very phase-specific and detailed and requires an "outside" of the box look to see the entire picture of the patient's case. Discover the underlying cause of your miscarriages with specific timed phase diagnosis and specific functional Lab testing and my proven treatment protocols that target the root cause of your miscarriages and greatly minimize your chances for another one to occur.

Endometrial receptivity

Implantation is an extremely complex process that requires every step to happen in the correct order at the perfect time. Creating a high-quality endometrium is dependent on many things including, thickness, volume, apposition of the intra-endometrial vessels, the endometrial pattern, smooth uterine contours, sufficient blood flow to the deep layers of the endometrium and the sub endometrium, optimal hormone levels, a balanced healthy immune system and the correct window of implantation lining up with the correct endocrine levels. The endometrial environment is very sensitive to all of your endocrine levels being balanced, inflammation, autoimmunity, stress, infection and anatomical disharmonies. The complexity of implantation is very special and needs to be nurtured accordingly. If you are experiencing failed transfers with a euploid embryo or pre- embryonic miscarriages or chemical pregnancies you need to increase your endometrial receptivity. Discover the root cause of your implantation issues and the steps you need to take to increase your endometrial receptivity.

IVF Support

75,000 IVF transfers happen every year with an average of a 35% success rate in this country. With greater maternal age the success rate naturally goes down from that. Your goal with IVF is to transfer a euploid embryo into a very receptive endometrium with a very healthy immune system. There are so many factors involved to achieve those things. Learn how to increase that success rate tremendously with my proven IVF support protocols that focus on increasing egg and sperm quality, increasing endometrial receptivity, increasing your immune system with a cellular detox that will decrease the chronic inflammation in your body. Learn how your lifestyle, environment, nutrition, and mindset could be causing negative epigenetic changes to your DNA causing a much higher risk for chromosomal abnormality. Following my IVF protocol, your body will "respond" better to your drug protocol as well. Lastly, learn some pre and post-retrieval and pre and post-transfer tips and guides to success.

Stress Reduction & mind-Uterine connection

Your body produces a very important hormone called pregnenolone which is a precursor to making very important hormones like, progesterone, estrogen, testosterone, DHEA and cortisol. When you are in a constant state of stress your body is producing large amounts of cortisol, which is our "stress" hormone and in a process called the "pregnenolone steal" our body will redirect all of our pregnenolone and move it to our cortisol pathways to help produce more cortisol in order to stay in "survival" mode. So through this process, all of our reproductive hormones suffer including progesterone which is a vital hormone for implantation to occur, so just this process alone can cause endocrine imbalance infertility. Stress can lead to infertility! Our mind has power over our biological state. It is scientifically proven that our stress hormones, negative thoughts, negative mindset, fear, emotional trauma can all downregulate genes, decrease proteins and cause harmful epigenetic changes to our DNA. So... if a negative mindset is slowly killing us imagine what a positive mindset can do? it can HEAL us! The environment signals our genes and our emotions signal our environment so therefore we can create a healthy genetic code through our thoughts, intentions, and emotions alone! Our bodies are in an unconscious state 90% of the time, we must learn to move through our unconscious state and our analytical brains into our subconscious mind and align our mindset, intentions, thoughts, emotions, and feelings energetically to optimize your fertility. Learn how to reconnect your mind and reproductive body, and develop new healthy neuropathways in your brain through mindful meditation practice specifically focused on your fertility journey.

Endometriosis

Endometriosis is a chronic inflammatory, endocrine dependent, autoimmune condition. 20-30% of infertile women have this condition. This can have very painful side effects with heavy periods or be completely asymptomatic. Endometriosis can affect your fertility in many ways. Endometrial tissue grows everywhere and can constrict your Fallopian tubes causing tubal distortion. In this case, a laparoscopic surgery would be required to conceive naturally. Endometriosis also has a negative impact chemically on the endometrial receptivity, implantation and egg quality. The pro-inflammatory cytokines that are produced with endometriosis damage egg quality and produce inflammation in the endometrium. Endometriosis also has an anti-progestogenic effect by blocking and downregulating the progesterone receptor sites in the endometrium. The patient may have normal progesterone levels but the receptivity of the progesterone in the endometrium is downregulated. That progesterone is vital for implantation to occur. With endometriosis, you produce very little Beta 3 integrins, if any at all and the Beta 3 integrins are proteins that act like a glue that is excreted in the apposition phase that grabs onto the embryo and helps that embryo stick onto the endometrium. Endometriosis is a chronic inflammatory, endocrine dependent, autoimmune condition. Balancing your hormones, ridding your body of inflammation by detoxing and begin to build up your immune system, you can give your body a shot at beating this. Anatomically the endometrial tissue growth, depending on the location and severity of the symptoms a laparoscopic surgery would be recommended. Following that procedure, you can put yourself into a state of "remission" with specific nutritional changes, lifestyle adjustments, Chinese herbs, and western nutraceuticals, stress reduction and alternative techniques. Many women conceive with this condition but the right steps have to be taken. Learn how to overcome these symptoms, heal your body and give yourself the best chances to conceive.

Fibroids

Fibroids occur in up to 75% of reproductive-age women with 20-30% of them with severe symptoms. Most women are unaware they even have any fibroids unless symptoms start occurring. They are extremely common and are the number one reason for hysterectomies in the US. They're many factors that play into the growth of fibroids. Age, genetics, obesity, diet, lifestyle, environmental influences, reproductive hormones, stress, chronic inflammation etc... You can conceive and have a healthy full-term pregnancy with fibroids. They do not all have to be surgically removed but must be closely monitored during pregnancy. Fibroids can harm implantation if they are pedunculated submucosal or submucosal myomas and may require surgical removal. These types of myomas grow into the inner uterine lining and begin taking on a life force of their own requiring blood flow and nutrients and can interfere with implantation and/or the fetal growth. If you are trying to conceive and have this type of myoma then I would strongly weigh your options of surgery before, because surgery will cause scar tissue that can be damaging as well. Most other located fibroids should not be an issue for conception and implantation. In fact, most fibroids shrink during pregnancy. My recommendation would be to follow a strict nutritional plan, make some lifestyle adjustments, begin specific Chinese herbs and western nutraceuticals, reduce your stress and begin some specific alternative techniques that reduce your symptoms and work to shrink the fibroids and help you conceive and carry full term. Discover all of this today.

Fertility Nutrition

The basis of healing our body as a whole begins with our nutrition. It is one of the most important factors to address when treating infertility. Balancing our endocrine system is dependent on healing our gut FIRST and foremost with functional nutrition. Our immune system is directly related to our gut health and a healthy immune system is imperative for fertilization, implantation and carrying full term. Healing our gut is number one. We can stop negative epigenetic changes to our DNA and improve our egg quality tremendously with just our diet alone. Eating to improve your fertility is specialized and specific to each person's fertility history and the root cause of infertility. Discover functional fertility nutrition specific to your body type, endocrine profile, nutritional deficiencies, food intolerances, immune system response and your specific needs. Learn how to use food as medicine and give yourself the highest chances to conceive. Receive your personal individualized fertility nutrition plan today.

Fertility over 40

It is no surprise that women are waiting longer and longer to have children. Birth rates in women over 40 has increased by 6% in the last 2 years. It is very possible to have a healthy pregnancy over the age of 40, but our fertility does decline with age mainly due to our egg quality diminishing. Challenges women face over 40 include a fewer number of eggs, diminished egg quality, poor ovarian reserve, miscarriage rate jumping to 33%, chances of Down syndrome go up to 1/38, genetically normal eggs drops to about 10% and a higher risk for autism and developmental delay. With all these known risks involved, it is still very possible to have a healthy uncomplicated pregnancy and live birth, but you have to get your mind and body into the healthiest state it can be. The number one thing to focus on is egg quality! The growth cycle of an oocyte is 90 days. Begin a regimen for at least 90 days before going through an IVF retrieval or begin trying to conceive on your own. Discover what you can do to improve your egg quality by addressing the main components of an aging oocyte, mitochondria defects, dysfunctional granulosa cells, declining ovarian androgens, oocyte telomere shortening and regulating your endocrine system. If you are going through IVF, learn how you can improve your response to the drug protocols and increase your chances for a euploid embryo. Also, focus on increasing your immune system, autoimmune reactions increase after 40. There are many things you can do to increase your success rate. Everybody's body is different and requires a different protocol. Find out today what you can do.

Unexplained Infertility

Discover what could be the root cause of your diagnosis of "unexplained infertility" that is not being picked up by traditional testing in conventional medicine. Unexplained Infertility simply means undiagnosed infertility, it needs an outside of the box look into the big picture of the patients lifestyle, enviroment, health history, mindset, diet and stress load. There are many things that could be the cause of "unexplained infertility" like, autoimmunity, subclinical hypothyroidism, adrenal insufficiency, Oxidative & carbonyl stress, poor egg quality epigenetic changes, infection, Sperm DNA fragmentation, toxic metal overload, nutritional deficiencies, food intolerances are only some of the reasons for a diagnosis of unexplained infertility. Let's get the correct testing done and find out your root cause and proceed with the exact protocol you need to concieve a healthy baby.

Increasing Sperm Quality

Male factor is about 40% of infertility cases in the US today. Total sperm count and quality is on steady decline over the last 40 years. Dive deeper than the morphology, motility and the total sperm count and discover the harmful effects of epigenetic & sperm DNA fragmentation. Your lifestyle and enviroment play a HUGE role in male fertility. Learn what risk factors could be causing the decline in your numbers. Learn step by step treatment protocols to increase the quality of the sperm from a cellular level and decrease the negative epigenetic changes & oxidative stress to the sperm, increase the count, motility, and morphology. There are so many little lifestyle changes you can make that will make a huge difference in the cellular health of the sperm.

Detoxing

Detoxing our body is so vital to our total fertility health. Toxins in our bodies damage egg and sperm quality, imbalance our hormones, cause systemic inflammation, activate our immune response, cause harmful epigenetic changes to our DNA and reak havoc on our reproductive organs. We are constantly intaking and producing toxins from our diet, our environment, beauty products, cleaning supplies, not getting enough sleep, stress, negative mindset ect. All of which cause epigenetic changes to our DNA sequence. Our cells, our DNA, our genes are all affected by every little piece of our lifestyle and environment. Toxins attack our immune cells through a process called leaky gut, where we have increased intestinal permeability. The attack on our immune cells will increase the chances of an autoimmune reaction within our body which make conceiving and implantation very difficult considering the sperm and the embryo are foreign antigen's and our immune system is on high alert during these processes, so autoimmunity or simply a reactive immune system can cause rejection. We must detox our bodies through our gut, liver, lymphatic system and our skin which are our body's most important detoxifying organs. Learn how to improve your body's cellular detoxification mechanisms to bring your body back into homeostasis and increase your fertility.

Regulating Ovulation

Anovulatory cycles are very common even when you think you're ovulating, you may not be. Ovulation is imperative for conception and interdependent on the balance and timing of your endocrine system and the quality of your cervical mucous. Ovulatory dysfunction criteria is a menstrual cycle greater than 35 days. The major causes of anovulatory cycles include PCOS, adrenal androgen excess, non-classical adrenal hyperplasia, hypothalamic amenorrhea, hyperprolactinemia, hypothyroidism, poor ovarian reserve, an increase or decrease of specific hormones, insulin resistance, stress, chronic inflammation, diet, and lifestyle. Find out if you are truly ovulating or not. Learn about your cervical mucous and the details of your Basel Body temperature chart and what it's telling you about your hormone levels and ovulation. Take home my specific treatment protocols for anovulatory cycles that will regulate your ovulation timing, hormone levels, increase the quality and consistency of your cervical mucous and teach you the very day you are the most fertile.

Suzanne Gozdanovic

I came to Heather after 3 miscarriages, a chemical pregnacy, 2 failed IUI's and 1 failed round of IVF embryo transfer. She listened with empathy and helped to ease my mounting anxieties with her years of knowledge and experience. We drafted a plan for my next embryo transfer which included herbs, supplements and Acupuncture. Our next round of IVF took, and nine months later we received our miracle baby girl Mila! I believe it was Heather's expertise and calm demeanor that helped me throughout this fertility process and my pregnancy to achieve this outcome. I can't thank her enough!!

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