Creating a Conceivable cycle

Your period is considered the 5th vital sign by gynecologists. This is amazing because finally, the medical world recognizes that your menstrual cycle tells us so much about your health.

The problem, however, is that most physicians turn to birth control as the solution to your period problems. While this can help the symptoms it’s kind of a head-scratcher. It’s understood that your period is an indicator of health yet when it is not acting “normal”, aka, something in your health is not right, hormonal birth control is prescribed. Basically,  telling your body and period to shut up. 

No wonder so many women, when ready to start families, are met month after month with negative pregnancy tests. Birth control has told your cycle we don’t want to hear from you.

Periods get all the attention, I get it, they are more obvious. But the real player in a conceivable cycle is ovulation 

Whether your periods are short or long, light or heavy or absent altogether the question is did you ovulate. Ovulation is what dictates if you can get pregnant or not, i.e. a conceivable cycle.

Absent or irregular cycles are common indicators that you are not ovulating. However, you can be skipping ovulation even if your cycle appears regular and “normal”.

This leads me to the first step of creating a conceivable cycle.

Am I Ovulating?

The best way to know if you ovulated, besides constant blood work or ultrasounds, is to take your basal body temperature.

Simply take your temperature every morning and record it on paper, with an app or use a device such as OvuSense. I highly recommend OvuSense. To record your basal body temperature, BBT, you need to be consistent. To accurately record your BBT it must be at the same time each morning before getting out of bed. OvuSense will take care of this inconvenience for you to get the most accurate results. 

Regardless of which method you choose this data will help you determine if and when you are ovulating each month. 

Why Are My Periods Problematic?

Your monthly cycle or lack thereof, tells us volumes about your health if we only listen to your signs and symptoms.

Hormone labs, drawn on the correct days of your cycle, can provide helpful information. Getting the lab tests you need can be frustrating. Doctors don’t often order a full workup because the information wouldn’t change the treatments they can offer.

I recommend that the women I work with get a full workup of lab tests. While we can decipher a lot from symptoms knowing if you have high or low estrogen, progesterone, etc can be very valuable. Once we know which hormones need some extra love we can design a natural plan to support hormone balance.

Repairing your cycle to conceive

To repair your cycle and ovulate monthly, it is important to care for your health and not just turn to medication, supplements, and fertility procedures. 

Start by providing your body with the nutrients it needs. In order to produce healthy hormones and not suffer from hormone imbalances, it is important to eat adequate nutrients. Your body needs plenty of vitamins, proteins, and healthy fats while limiting processed and inflammatory foods. 

Stress and perceived stress, anything your body might view as a threat to its survival, can have a detrimental effect on your hormones and fertility. Stress is a part of life, but how we combat it and care for our needs in the midst of stress can further destroy our hormone balance or allow us to heal.

Moving our bodies regularly helps to restore and promote healthy balanced hormones. Exercise reduces inflammation, removes toxins, and lowers the insulin effect. Consistency matters more than the type of exercise.

Creating a conceivable cycle doesn’t happen overnight but a little progress each day adds up in a big way! You don’t have to be perfect, you just have to get started. That’s why I’m sharing my PCOS Fertility Meal Guide so that you don’t have to guess what to eat and can just get started caring for your hormones and fertility. 

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Have you ever wondered “what the heck is going on with my cycle”, if you’ve ever wondered, why are my periods so heavy?

Why are my periods missing? Why do I have such horrible cramps? All of these symptoms are insights into your overall health. 

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When we can understand what our cycle is telling us about our health, then we can take that information and we can look at what might be going on. We can get warning signs before our health worsens and we can start to actually get down to that root cause and look at what we can fix.

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We have gone to our physicians and asked for methods of reducing these symptoms and we’ve been offered birth control.

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In order to have a true cycle, ovulation has to occur. 

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the first step in order to do that is to track your cycle. Let’s talk about why this is important and how to do it.

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Your body is programmed to know if it could handle a pregnancy. This is where a conceivable cycle comes into play. The second step is recognizing and addressing what is scaring your body to think pregnancy wouldn’t be safe

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And then third is to begin to repair those root causes that are leading to the PCOS hormone imbalance 

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That did turn us into some, you know, sad, emotional roller coaster wreck of happiness, crying, angry that just kind of feels out of control. Those types of emotions stem from a hormone imbalance. 

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And as we see our hormones come back into balance, we just become a little bit more even keel across the board, both in our energy, our appetite, our sleep, our mood. 

Hi there! I’m Ashlene Korcek, the PCOS Mama and founder of Nourished to Healthy

I help women with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome balance their hormones naturally so that they can take back control of their bodies, boost their fertility, and ultimately live free from the symptoms of PCOS. Like you, I have PCOS, I was diagnosed while struggling with infertility and was told I likely would never have children. Even as a board-certified Physician Assistant I felt lost about what to do and very alone! Fast forward 5 years and I have 3 healthy children, but I never want another woman to feel lost and alone the way I did!

You can break free from the downward spiral of PCOS and feel amazing in your own skin again! 

Read more about my story of how I repaired my fertiltiy and cracked my weight struggle code for good here!