Fertility and You

Scan the stacks at your local library, and you’ll find shelves bowed with books on how to get pregnant. From the looks of it, one of our most primal functions—the creation of new life—seems a terribly complicated task. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what it has become for the 6.1 million women and their partners currently struggling with infertility. In their desperation to conceive, many people find themselves navigating the conventional fertility path with all its confusing twists, turns, and dead ends: beginning with invasive tests, progressing to harsh fertility drugs with countless side effects, and culminating with in vitro fertilization if all else fails.

For the most extreme cases of infertility, those in which one or both of the partners have medical issues preventing pregnancy, that path—bumps and all—might actually be the only way to get pregnant. But holistic physicians like Joel Evans, MD, OB/GYN, author of The Whole Pregnancy Handbook, find that people too often resort to drastic treatment before ever giving their innate fertility a chance to prove itself. According to Evans, “60 to 70 percent of illnesses are lifestyle related. So it would make sense to treat lifestyle issues or do lifestyle interventions, and then use medicine for the problems that are left.”

Our special section aims to shift the dialogue about infertility, so we focus on each person as an innately fertile being, who needs help manifesting this fertility, not as someone suffering from an acute dysfunction. Some approaches we explore are new and some are tried-and-true, but all of them will support your mind, body, and spirit as you find your path to parenthood.

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