In this week's episode of *Fertility Focus*, Maria chats with Sarah Root, founder of Root2Health, who empowers women on their fertility journeys through nutrition and lifestyle. Sarah shares her top five strategies for managing stress, emphasizing the importance of relaxation techniques, personalized adaptogens like ashwagandha, and the critical role of quality sleep. She also highlights the significance of morning light exposure and finding joy in hobbies. Sarah explains how stress impacts fertility, with red flags like digestive issues, mood changes, and disruptions to the menstrual cycle. She recommends the Dutch test for assessing stress, which provides a comprehensive view of hormone health. Sarah also discusses how stress can lower progesterone, affecting implantation, and how it disrupts gut health, often leading to skin issues and mental health challenges. She advises focusing on adrenal health to support overall hormone balance. To connect with Sarah, follow her on Instagram at root2health underscore nutrition. To find Maria at Fitness Fertility, give her a follow on instagram at fitness_fertility . Tune in to learn actionable steps to support your fertility journey.
Welcome to Fertility Focus. This weekly minisode is designed to help you improve your fertility. Every Tuesday I'll be focusing on actionable steps to help you take control of your own trying to conceive journey. I'm Maria, I'm a personal trainer specializing in fertility. Whether you're preparing for IVF, managing your BMI, or ready to throw everything you have at your own trying to conceive journey, tune in each week to hear more. In this week's episode of Fertility Focus, I am delighted to welcome Sarah Root. Sarah Root is founder of Root2Health and her goal in life is to empower women to thrive on their fertility journey through the power of nutrition and lifestyle.
Sarah, welcome thank you very much for having me. So in the true nature of Fertility Focus, I am going to fire five questions at you.
Go ahead. We will look forward to your answers. Here we go.
Question number one. What are the top
five things that you do to support women with stress? Oh, good question. So first thing is, I'll look at relaxation techniques. People always want a quick win and a supplement, but there is nothing better than working on things to support your nervous system.
So I normally have a list of different things. I get people to pick out depending on where they're at. So it could be breathwork, could be meditation, could be, grounding, could be gardening, reading a book, music, it could be anything. I think it's so personalized. So that is probably the first thing I'd always work on.
Second thing would be looking at, adaptogens. So things like ashwagandha, rhodiola, mushrooms like reishi mushroom can all be really good at helping to calm the nervous system. But again, they are really personalized. So I guess you always want to work with a practitioner to work out what's right for you.
The other thing would be sleep. So you can do all of the food and lifestyle things, but if you are not focusing on your sleep, Nothing will work. It is such a superpower. So the first thing is making sure that you're getting good quality sleep. So, you know, no blue light before going to bed, making sure you're getting the seven to nine hours, which I know is sometimes easier said than done if you've already got children.
Then the fourth thing that tags onto that is the morning light exposure. So getting yourself exposed to, morning light within 30 minutes awakening. is so key because it really helps to regulate your cortisol and then tagged into that making sure that you're reducing your exposure to blue light and natural light kind of once two hours before you go to bed to help with the rise of melatonin.
So you really want your circadian rhythm and your cortisol to be rising and then slowly falling as the day goes on. Then number five is to try and find some kind of joy, some kind of hobby.
I think on a fertility journey, particularly if you've been on it for a long while, it becomes so all conceiving and you kind of lose, you know, Some of that fun and joy and if you like, there could be a hobby that you did as a child or knitting or cross stitch or could be anything but trying to find things that you love doing, whether it's by yourself or with your partner or with a friend, but trying to find something that allows you to think about something else other than just your fertility journey.
Question number two, what signs or symptoms would you look out for in someone if stress was having a negative impact on their fertility?
If I say to someone, how are you feeling? They'll be like, I'm fine. And that is almost like my red flag of you're not fine. If you say you're fine, you're not, you're not fine. another thing is digestive problems. So, like any kind of bloating or like IBS it can be a bit of a.
red flag, not sleeping, brain fog, low energy, inability to make decisions. and the other big thing is snapping, moodiness, that is not normal for you and almost heightened around different points, in your cycle.
And then I guess the big one is changes to your cycle, whether that's missing periods or they become longer or shorter, or just changes or, spotting, you know, it could be lots of different things going on, but anything that's like a change that isn't typical of a normal cycle, kind of be a big red flag for me.
Number three. How do you test for stress? My favorite way is Dutch test. So you can do blood tests, but Dutch is by far my favorite. Dutch test, for those that don't know, is a dried, hormone test.
So it's a functional test. It's a bit more on the pricey side. You have to access it through a practitioner. Won't be something you generally get on, on like the NHS or your kind of standard, medical system but it's incredible. It's a much truer reflection of what is going on. And tells you a whole load of things that you need to work on.
I have a lot of people that I can definitely tell have got stress as part of their picture, which I think, you know, who doesn't? We're all a bit stressed, right? It's modern day living. You're on a fertility journey. You're a bit stressed. But until they see the data, and until they can see how it impacts other things within the testing, they're like, I get it now.
I need to focus on my stress.
Number four. So you've mentioned cortisol, but what other hormones in the body are also affected by stress?
So you'll generally find, if cortisol sort of goes up, progesterone can start going down and you will notice signs with that. So with progesterone, it could be spotting before your periods. It can be a shorter luteal phase, the point from ovulation. through to when your period starts.
So that being too short, which is a problem for implantation, if you're going on a fertility journey, it can affect your oestrogen levels, it can affect your testosterone levels. So, a lot of the time, actually, when I get testing back, adrenal health and cortisol is something we have to work on.
So we always want to be looking at the root cause. So being able to address the cortisol and adrenal health then has a natural knock on effect with supporting some of those other hormones in the body.
And number five. So other than the hormones that you have so well explained, what impact does stress have on the rest of the body?
The number one thing I see is digestion or gut health. So, you know, we, I think most people know there's a really strong connection between the gut and the brain. So when you feel it, you're nervous, you're anxious, you get that in your stomach. So often if you, have particularly prolonged stress, it can start impacting how your gut is functioning.
The other thing is, skin issues. So naturally, as soon as your gut starts having an issue, often things will come out in your skin. So whether that is eczema or acne, it's a way of your body communicating.
And then obviously you've got the, the mental health side, you know, the kind of changes in mood, the low energy, and just not feeling like yourself. So whether you end up having breakouts in your skin, whether you feel like you're so bloated that you look like a three months pregnant, all of that then has a knock on impact on how you feel emotionally and mentally. They're probably the big ones I see in clinic.
That's amazing.
Sarah, I just want to say thank you so much for being a fabulous fertility focused guest.
Where is the best place for people to come and find you? Yeah, so Instagram, root2health underscore nutrition, and root is R O O T as in my surname, so that's where people can find me, and then over there I have all my different services, but people can obviously send me a direct message.
In general, I work with people on 6 or 12 week coaching programs, And then as part of that, people can involve testing or not, depending on their budget.
. So head over and find Sarah Root, and have a look at everything that she does.
Thank you very much.
If you really want to make sure you work out regularly with people who truly understand what you're going through, then follow me on Instagram at Fitness Fertility where you will find my community of thousands of women who are also trying to conceive. And if you can't wait to work out, head over to fitness fertility.com and sign up for my awesome free workouts.
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