Introduction
Dealing with fertility treatments and egg freezing can bring many changes to our daily life. Apart from the financial planning, self-doubts, the emotional toll of scheduling life around appointments, ovarian stimulation medications can cause us to have more mood swings and bodily changes due to the increased hormones in our system.
It’s important to take good care of yourself during this time—you shouldn’t need to trade off your mental or physical health through it all. We’ve done the research for you and compiled some tips to help you stay balanced and continue to be the awesome you at home and at work!
Be Compassionate to Yourself
Fertility challenges and treatments can put a lot of strain on our mental and physical health. Practicing self-compassion helps us feel worthy, happy, authentic, and be able to express ourselves in healthy ways, especially in romantic relationships. When we are mindful of our pain or suffering, and respond to these difficulties with kindness and self-love, we are better at coping with life’s struggles. Research shows that how much we treat ourselves with care and compassion is an important indication of our psychological health. Try these short meditations by Dr. Kristin Neff, leader in the field of self-compassion research and psychology professor, to reset your day.
Reduce your stress level
We all know that excessive amounts of stress can be debilitating, kicking us into fight-flight-or-freeze mode. But reducing stress is truly easier said than done. While short-term stress may get us the motivation we need to get something done, chronic stress has been linked to lowering our immune response. Research also shows that chronic stress can affect our fertility. When we perceive external stressors, we trigger our stress response, or the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. Elevated HPA activity is related with reproductive dysfunction and newborn abnormalities, including reduced birth weight and increased risk of developing various diseases.
Talk to Someone (Professional)
Having a reliable support network, like friends, family, support groups, even the nurses and healthcare workers at your fertility clinic, makes a huge difference in our mental well-being. But sometimes, certain topics and concerns of ours may become too much for our loved ones to handle. In moments like these, fertility counselors or psychologists may be a good option, as they are sensitive to the nuances of what we may be going through. There’s even research supporting that Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), a kind of psycho-social intervention, helps to restore ovarian activity and improve brain hormone and metabolic function by providing women with emotional support, developing stress coping techniques, and fostering lifestyle changes.
Take Care of Your Body
Whether you’re in fertility treatments or not, the three main pillars of physical health to look out for are 1) staying active, 2) getting enough rest, and 3) feeding yourself with nutritious foods. There’s actually a lot we can do to manage our health. Besides avoiding smoking, excessive caffeine and alcohol, and exposure to environmental pollutants, research shows that metabolic disorders like diabetes, obesity, and hyperlipidaemia (heightened levels of lipid in our blood) can cause dysfunctional egg development.
Don’t underestimate the effects of good sleep hygiene and habits. Get into the habit of regular sleep and wake times, since the circadian rhythm has a lot to do with our menstrual regularity. Sleep disturbance and sleep loss may affect our fertility due to lowered immunity (research shows that cytokine and immune inflammatory responses marked by tumor necrosis factor (TNF) and Interleukin-6 (IL-6) increases under conditions of sleep loss). Elevated IL-6 levels seem to play a role in unexplained infertility.
Consider Alternative Therapies
As Asian women, we have an arsenal of ancient treatments to consider, like Traditional Chinese Medicine, Ayurvedic Medicine, and more. As such, acupuncture has shown great promise in treating infertility in both men and women. In women, acupuncture helps restore the function of ovaries as well as better balance out our hormones.
If you are interested to learn more about how Traditional Chinese Medicine can support your fertility journey, check out our podcast episode on the topic!
Set Limits
“When will you get pregnant?” “When are you planning to have kids?” are questions that pop up during gatherings with family and friends. It’s okay to not want to talk about it. Knowing what our limits are—what bothers us, what’s too much to handle right now, who we (don’t) want to talk to—is so important.
It’s okay to say “no,” redirect conversations, or politely state that you don’t want to talk about it right now. It’s okay to stop scrolling on social media showing other peoples’ babies or pregnant bellies. It’s okay to tell your doctor that you need more time to think, or you’re not open to certain procedures or treatments.
We are allowed to set limits, with questions, with others, with social media, even with medical professionals. Limits can be physical, emotional, and mental. They exist to keep us safe, and honestly, sane. So, ask yourself what your limits are and set them.
What other ways do you take care of yourself, mentally, emotionally, and physically, when times get tough? Draw on your creative self! No matter how hard things get, you deserve inner peace and a healthful life.
Citations:
[1] https://self-compassion.org/kristin-neff/
[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24798553/
[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5666903/
[4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3672390/
[5] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25458772/
