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Dr. Joel Rosen: Alright. Hello everyone and welcome back to another edition of the less stressed life where we teach exhausted and burnt-out adults, the truth about adrenal fatigue. And I’m excited for our next guest because we’re going to get into impaired fertility and the root causes.
And we’re interviewing Jacqueline Downes, who’s received her Bachelor of Science degree in psychology from Drexel University, and later studied holistic nutrition in graduate school for two years, and also became a certified health coach.
But her passion drove her much deeper into the world of how new nutrients affect your biochemistry, and how that affects all aspects of life, including how you think how you feel and how you move. So, Jacqueline, welcome to the show today.
Jaclyn Downs: Thank you so much for having me.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, I’m excited to talk because this is a really important conversation in terms of bringing a healthy fetus to full term and not only just avoiding the pitfalls and the challenges that women have to avoid miscarriages and to not be able to conceive but as you mentioned, be able to have the best potential for that baby going forward.
So before we get into that, I always like to ask our guests a little bit of your background and personally why if you had any health challenges or specifically if you got into why you got into the specific area that you did.
Jaclyn Downs: Okay, I would consider myself a second-generation nutritionist My dad is a nutritional biochemist and I was aware of nutrition outside the USDA box ever since I was little when my dad had said that you know milk is not good for you. This was back during the four food groups. And I was in like third grade and I was like my dad says milk not good for you and your you know, my third-grade teacher was like, Oh, your dad’s wrong. And, um, and then just about like, before the Atkins diet, you know, all of them, oh, you need carbs, you need carbs, you need carbs.
And my dad was like, no, that’s not necessarily true. And also the good fats, bad fats when fat was vilified in the 90s. So I always had this sense of nutrition and, you know, true nutrition, rather than just nutrition that was sponsored. And I so I’ve just always been interested in nutrition, but they didn’t, back in the 90s have a school in my state that I was pleased with the nutrition program. And so I graduated with a psychology degree and, a year or two later found birthing being I became a doula I just became passionate about helping women during their birthing journey.
And then I worked with a midwife and it opened my eyes to infertility and how, how common impaired fertility was. I, you know, there wasn’t anything that I’ve encountered, because, at that time in my young 20s, my friends weren’t having babies yet and weren’t experiencing infertility that I was aware of. So through working with this midwife and doing birth work, my former career was as a birth worker. And then I was always interested in nutrition.
So I had done graduate school in nutrition and God’s certification as a health coach and I got a job being Bob Miller’s research assistant about, I don’t know nine years ago or so back when it was just MTHFR and I was hired to just research MTHFR and everything just kind of built from there. MTHFR went to the CBS went to the CMT, and then just whole pathways and it made sense to me that women that were having problems with fertility were it wasn’t just that their hormones were out of balance. It’s why are your hormones out of balance and what nutrients or what toxins could be inhibiting these pathways and causing your body to switch off that that mating ability switch?
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, no, lots of good points that you have there. And ultimately, the root cause of impaired infertility is the title of your upcoming book, and I want to dive into that as well. But one of the things that you just touched upon a couple of things actually, which we could take a deeper dive is sort of the sponsored approach to nutrition and interesting that you had you weren’t, you weren’t into the school, or the different schools or the education curriculums that were provided.
Because of some major challenges, and I always find it amazing, to understand that the traditional allopathic approach dedicates so little time in their curriculum for nutrition. And then on top of that, when you do go through a sponsored nutrition nutritional program, it’s very biased. I mean, maybe I don’t want to go down that rabbit hole, but maybe given your experience, kind of give us sort of I don’t even know if there’s a 32nd commercial. But how would you be able to sum that up in terms of, Is that real? Is it true? What is it? Why is it I mean, the best succinct way that you could I don’t know if that’s a tough question for you?
Jaclyn Downs: Well, I knew that if I would become a registered dietician, that would have opened a lot more doors for me. But I just really didn’t want to get that education because I knew that at the time it was called the American dietetics association was sponsored by m&m Mar, Sara Lee, Cargill, Pepsi. And I just know that that there, they don’t have actual health promotion in their best interest. So that Yeah, macronutrient counting your macronutrients is, you know, valid for, you know, certain things, but I don’t think that that is what brings true wellness and vitality.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, I mean, I think you can sum it up by saying it was sponsored by m&ms. And that pretty much sums it all up. But at the same time, it’s not just about the calorie counting calories and the calories in-calories out, it’s but the food pyramid and the food groups and all the above, I just remember the best way for me to think about it is my dad was going through dialysis, and he was in a rehab center and they were putting margarine on his bread.
And I’m like, okay, that’s probably the best way to explain why I didn’t go down the RTA train pathway. But anyway, it’s that’s kind of a sad commentary on the state of where we are, we’re at I don’t want to go down there any further as far as the book. So it’s really interesting, I appreciate being able to review it before we got on the call today. And ultimately, you talk about first the difference between impaired fertility, the term and paired for fertility, and infertility. So maybe kind of go let’s start with that.
Jaclyn Downs: Okay, I feel like infertility just feels like a dead-end diagnosis were like, especially if it’s unexplained like up, you know, I had my hormones checked, and I had, you know, all the internal organs and glands checked and everything’s fine. So it’s just, you know, unexplained infertility, and it just seems like that’s it, but impaired fertility, I feel has a, it brings with it a sense of it being a temporary state that that can be worked out of. And so I feel that it gives the connotation of hope.
Because our bodies were designed to heal and our bodies were designed to procreate. And so if we can figure out what is going on what we’re either putting in our body is exposed to or what our body needs that it isn’t getting, then the body will have the tools to procreate and heal itself. And so I don’t feel that infertility is a dead-end diagnosis.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, I like that I like the idea of health is always a verb. And it’s not a one’s a noun in terms of a lot of times too with the people that I get on the Facebook with, or do different types of content, and they’re always DM-ing me like, how do I cure this or what’s the main thing I need to fix this and it kind of puts a few shivers down my back in terms of, you know, on the flip side to it’s just, you don’t just fix it either, and you just don’t diagnose it as a dead-end diagnosis as well. So I love that you did that. And you also mentioned that imbalances in the hormones aren’t solely due to the endocrine system. So maybe we can explore that a little bit.
Jaclyn Downs: Absolutely. So the hormones you know, are supposed to be produced and cleared and metabolized in a certain way. And so if there are imbalances something is causing the hormones to be out of balance. And oxidative stress plays a huge factor in that and I think my mission after writing the book, like even before, but like it just became really clear that the world just needs to know what the term oxidative stress is.
Because a lot of people just think stress is work stress, family stress, schedule, stress. Maybe they might know about physical stress if they are, you know, you hear about the athletes that just overtrain. And then the women lose their periods and stuff like that. But, especially with this modern world today, with the environmental stressors, all of these things, the physical stress, the emotional stress, the environmental stress, all of those impact our cells, and our cellular health.
And the first thing to go is the reproductive cells, because reproduction is not necessary to stay alive for your body to stay alive, yes, for our race, but or the human race. So the body I say, Rob’s Peter to pay Paul, because it’s saying, Well, obviously, now’s not a good time to make a baby. After all, we’re under all this stress. So let’s just steal from what we need from the processes that create the hormones to deal with the stressor.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, and I explained that a lot too because it can get super complicated. And I have to give you like two thumbs up because going through the outline of the book, and then as soon as you get into some of the more difficult concepts of oxidation and what happens with that, and how we rob Peter to pay Paul, and all of the dominoes that get impacted by that is a daunting task for sure.
And but one of the things that I like to say to people is to keep it simple, and it kind of resonates after the cell danger response is just at the 30,000 view foot, if your supply and demand is not equal, you have to make some important decisions, right? I mean, if you’re making less money than you’re spending, or you have way more expenses in your life than income, then that’s gonna crash and burn pretty quick. And you’re gonna find out the hard way, what, you know what the implications of not being able to afford those additional luxuries.
And that means you make some pretty important decisions. And really, it’s the fundamental decisions or the things that literally and metaphorically keep the lights on, right? You keep the lights on, you make sure you put food on food on the table. And that happens at the cellular level in our bodies. And it would make sense that well, reproduction is not at the top that’s like I don’t need to go on a vacation to the Riviera.
When I can’t keep the lights on that’s kind of the analogy right? So yeah, so so with that being said, so oxidative stress, obviously, is the hallmark of what we what you teach in the book, but you right, you get right into functional fertility. So why don’t you let the listeners know what functional fertility means?
Jaclyn Downs: So functional medicine and functional nutrition are receiving a rise in awareness. And that is getting to the root cause of an issue or a health complaint. Rather than just recommending a drug or a supplement for a condition, let’s find out why your body is presenting that condition in the first place. So using functional lab testing and genetics, as well as a very, very detailed intake and health history, we can get an idea of the causes of the imbalance.
And then we can do some targeted functional testing to identify exactly what’s going on with the biochemistry in the body. And, and so functional fertility is a term I didn’t coin it, but it just totally encompasses everything that I talked about. So rather than just measuring hormone levels on a certain day of the month, and then giving appropriate drugs to make those hormones stay within an optimal range, let’s get to the root of why the hormones are out of balance in the first place. And then everything that involves fertility rather than just hormones is also thrown into that whole functional topic.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, and people are looking for that. I mean, they do use the term like root cause, like I don’t feel like I’m getting to the root cause I don’t feel like I’m at but I do feel, unfortunately, through conditioning allopathic C and we’re talking about root causes, which I think’s important. And, but what I like about what you have is in one of your second chapters is the importance of the saliva test, or the DNA test, or the functional genomic nutrition test.
So what again, why don’t you kind of segue into Okay, well, it’s important from a functional standpoint to put together the perfect storm of what are the things that stress this person, environmentally, we call that epigenetically, of which oxidative stress is not is a major part of the stress response. And then on the other side the genetic susceptibilities that may potentially express or create the weak links in the chain and break and thereby express itself in terms of for you, it may be migraine headaches and joint pain for me, it might be gi disturbances or for someone else, it could be infertility or all of the above.
So So why don’t you explain first what functional genomic nutrition is? And then what I love about what you wrote down is something called the gateway gene. So maybe talk about that at first, because that’s a big, those are two big concepts.
Jaclyn Downs: Okay, yeah, I’ve thought about titling, I gave a talk at my local hospital for the nursing grand rounds, called MTHFR is a gateway gene. And I thought about titling my book that because so many people, first off, say, Well, MTHFR is usually the first gene that somebody becomes aware of, and then from there, they learn about other genes, but they, they say, Oh, I can’t detox because I have MTHFR, or I have miscarriages because I have MTHFR. And my doctor tested me for that gene, and I have it and that’s the cause of all my problems.
That is a lot of weight, a tremendous amount of weight to put on one gene. And I’m not discounting the importance of it. It’s just there are so many other factors that come into play. And so just because you have a genetic polymorphism, or a variant, or a mutation is technically an improper term, but people refer to it as a mutation doesn’t mean that it’s doomed to express, and as you said, it’s the environmental factors that signal to whether that gene should turn off or turn on.
And so knowing your genetics, not just MTHFR can give you an idea of where your genetic weaknesses might be in things like utilizing your fats, which fats are needed to make hormones or detoxification ability. So it goes so much further beyond just MTHFR.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, and I get that a lot too. And on the flip side, just because you don’t have MTHFR, doesn’t mean you don’t have a problem either. And that was a lot of our haws for when I tell people they have an HPA axis dysfunction, but above that they have over activation of their mast cells. And above that, they have overstimulation of this enzyme here, which above that steals away your NADPH, which above that, you know, and that not having that NADPH is like the cofactor for the highways like you’re going on a toll. And even if the lanes are perfect, meaning you don’t have a heterozygous snip or homozygous that you can’t get on the highway.
So it’s really important in terms of just because you don’t and I get that a lot too. So the MTHFR and I don’t have it or I do have it and I’m doomed, and so forth, and so on. So one of the very first things, though, you talk about is the difference between a nourishing diet and a healthy diet. So what is the difference, Jacqueline?
Jaclyn Downs: Well, a lot of my clients, I would say a majority, if not all my clients come to me and say, Well, I eat a pretty healthy diet, but I still have X symptoms or x problem. And healthy can mean you know everybody’s different. It’s grayscale, right? But that could mean they’re eating low fat, or that could mean they’re doing the Splenda instead of sugar, that kind of stuff. So they could think that they’re eating, eating healthy, but like, what is nourishing your body.
And this isn’t necessarily just from a food and nutrition standpoint, you need the emotional nourishment as well. But what is nourishing your body are you getting all the nutrients that you need to get for your genes to function because your genes make enzymes and those enzymes require nutrient cofactors to work. So if you are not either able to absorb them because you have gut issues or you’re not getting them from the diet or you’re not getting enough, then you’re not going to have enough to pass on to a baby.
As I say in my book, you can’t pour from an empty cup. So definitely making sure that you are nourishing your body with the proper nutrients and nutritional cofactors and other things rather than just eating a healthy diet.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, for sure. And I like you You showed in the book The Bob’s pyramid And you show that the things on the bottom area on the pyramid can create oxidative stress and inflammation. And the second row above that is the antioxidants, which we’ll get into in a second. But at the very top is that gateway Gene MTHFR. And again, I explain that pyramid when I show people think of the bottom as your expenses, and think of the top as your income. And as a result, especially as it relates to being able to just state and create a baby in the belly. If you don’t have a surplus, then you’re going to have some major challenges.
And being able to cut the expenses goes a lot further than giving yourself a little extra income with a little bit of extra full aid, because that’s ultimately I always feel that’s a tell, right? I mean, if you have someone who’s an MD, or it just doesn’t understand the world that we understand, is they say, Okay, I mean, how many times did you get this where someone says, Yeah, well, I was taking methyl folate, I thought I fixed the problem, right? And then it goes so deep, so much deeper than that. So one of the very major overhead expenses that I was excited to talk to you about was iron dysregulation.
So how does iron dysregulation because most women I would imagine, would say, Oh, I’m iron deficient? And that’s, that’s all they thought it was. And then they just yelled that that deaf person louder by taking more iron, and it didn’t fix the problem. So kind of give us a, an insight into Hey, if you have had challenges with fertility, or miscarriages or so forth, and there is an iron connection, and you were told that you were deficient, pump the brakes for a second, because there might be more going on what else? What is going on there? Okay, should they be looking at it?
Jaclyn Downs: Yeah, yeah. I don’t make videos or blogs too often. But I made a video about that. First of all, I love your analogies. They’re great. And I want to piggyback on your analogy with Bob’s Bob Miller, our colleague, says when your building is on fire with inflammation, you want to call in the fire department, not the construction crew. And full eight is a rebuilding, repairing regenerating nutrient, which is why you need it to grow baby.
And so you don’t just want to start adding in the full eight. If you have all of these other things like iron dysregulation burning down your house, plus, you need to make sure that you can use the full eight, which again, you said NADPH, and yes, you need any DPH to be able to use your full eight. So in regards to iron dysregulation unless you have been vegan for some time. And you and you don’t eat meat. Iron is the richest, most abundant mineral and it’s also fortified and all of our foods. And so if you are a regular meat-eater
, especially red meat, and you are diagnosed as anemic, and having iron deficiency anemia, it’s likely not an acquisition issue, it’s more of a utilization issue. So you’re getting the iron, but your body is not using it properly. And it’s getting stored in the wrong places. And it’s not going to show up in your blood and get to where it needs to go. And the stored iron can cause a lot of problems in whichever organ it may get stored in it has an affinity for the heart, the pancreas, and the brain especially.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, I’m amazed that it’s not taught and traditional allopathic medicine, I mean, that, to me seems like okay, we still listen to eight-track tapes. And there’s this new thing called satellite radio, that kind of, you know, comes through the sky, we don’t have to have the outdated technology. And that seems to be the best analogy for that because I explained that 90% of someone’s iron is recycled 10% of it is from their diet, and it has to get chaperoned from the GI tract to the different tissues into the tissues out of the tissues recycled and the irony is you can have a deficient and an excessive presentation and the same person.
And the way that they’ve looked at is that it’s deficient and we got to yell at that deaf person louder and only to create more gas on the fire, so to speak. So as far as Do you find I’m just curious anecdotally when you’re working with women that have impaired fertility, that that’s one of the big things that’s going on with them is that how much of a percentage Would you say that with some of the women that are or the women that aren’t able to conceive or have a baby to full term.
Jaclyn Downs: I would say more than half for sure have at some point. been told that they were anemic, and we’re way more than half. And we’re told to take an iron supplement or you know, got even got infusions. And so one way that we can see what is going on is through doing a full iron panel, including your ferritin, rather than just measuring your serum iron. And also, the same goes with copper, in which you need proper copper utilization, binding, and utilization for your iron to stand a chance.
But including copper in that blood panel so we can see if that’s being properly used, and then pairing that with the genetics too because we can maybe see if somebody has a high degree of variance in iron or copper-related pathways, then that would make us want to do further testing with the blood and see what’s going on. And then we can figure out where the wrench in that system is and how to correct it.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, it’s amazing that goes wrong for so many reasons. Because that functional range for ferritin is so vast for men and women. And the other thing too, which I’ve kind of picked up recently is ferritin is the storage house for iron. And just because you don’t have high ferritin doesn’t mean you don’t have an iron that needs to be stored. And I think that’s a big problem with traditional medicine is like, okay, it’s just a one, it’s only thought of as correlated as high ferrets high storage, high iron, but you could have low storage and high iron because of this genetic polymorphism.
Hence the reason for you to do the functional genomic assessment. So the other thing I want to talk to you about which I think is key, especially for exhausted burnt-out people and their hormones, is how they utilize fat. So that could be a really big rabbit hole. So why don’t we kind of just starting on that so so a pregnant or woman, a lady who is unable to conceive or take a baby to full term, and they have to understand that there’s a problem again, dysregulated fat utilization, it’s not just, it’s high, and then never being told it’s low?
I mean, God forbid, you tell someone they have low, you know, such a thing as low cholesterol. But why don’t you tell us a little bit about how that plays into the impaired fertility, Jaclyn?
Jaclyn Downs: First? Sure. So we need fats for our own body and brain. And then especially in that first trimester, growing the baby’s central nervous system requires a lot of fats. And if so, cholesterol, there’s always a there’s a Google image that I liked that I show almost all my clients, and it shows cholesterol at the top of the pathway and how it makes all of your estrogen testosterone, cortisol, progesterone, the downstream cascade of that and so if you are not getting the cholesterol, or you are not able to properly utilize the fats, which you really, really need be too, you need be five Pantheon is a crucial step in making that conversion.
So or there’s there are certain genes involved as well. But if you are not able to properly use your fats, then you’re not going to turn them into your sex hormones or your stress hormone. So that’s just the bottom line.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, and then how would it contribute to the oxidative stress though.
Jaclyn Downs: So improperly used fats cause something called lipid peroxidation. And that creates oxidative stress and damages the cell. So it damages the structure of the cell, but it also damages the inflammation within the cell and the mitochondria. And the mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell.
And to our knowledge, it is only the mother that passes on the mitochondrial DNA to her baby. And so if her body is already struggling with not having healthy functioning mitochondria, possibly in part due to not properly using your fats, then you’re not gonna have the raw materials to pass on to a baby or to even make a baby.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Right, right. So that fat is a big as a big hole. I guess there’s a whole culture, if you will, of being able to utilize it, break it down, absorb it, and be able to not oxidize it and use it effectively. I always say it’s like you’re making you’re cutting the logs, but you’re not putting the wood on the fire.
And as a result, it’s like it’s almost like you working for me. At the end of the week, instead of me paying you for 40 hours. I then say to you okay, Jacqueline, you owe me for 40 hours of work. It’s not only not giving you the income, it’s expected. on you as well. So as far as that, that’s the thing I would ask you is, is that, okay? So you get into antioxidants? And how important why don’t we just give people a whole lot of antioxidants and call it a day? Why? Why doesn’t it work that way?
Jaclyn Downs: First off, we need a balance. There’s that Goldilocks zone that we talked about in functional medicine. And I recommend it, I mentioned it a few times in my book. So antioxidants, our body makes antioxidants. But we also need to get them through the diet, because, they fight off pathogens. And so if we couldn’t make antioxidants, or we weren’t getting enough in the diet, then the pathogens would proliferate. But we also don’t, so we don’t want, I mean, if we don’t have enough, or if we have too much, then it’s not going to be doing its job what I meant to say.
And so also, we want to be able to use the antioxidants properly, as well as a lot of doctors are recommending Bluetooth ion for a lot of people and their body isn’t able to recycle it and that causes more oxidative stress for people. So it’s peeling away the layers of the onion and doing functional lab testing. So we can see what is the right intervention or support for that particular individual?
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, no, that’s a great answer, you just can’t, there is a Goldilocks zone. And we need the free radicals to signal our immune system and fight off pathogens, but at the same time, we want to have not too much of that, because then we can start having the military turn against our citizens back. But then if you give too many antioxidants, that will create paradoxically more inflammation and more depletion of your antioxidants.
And that’s where it becomes difficult as to where you need someone like yourself to review the genetics so that you can put a wrench gas in those mechanics and be able to slow that down. So the other thing I like about what you wrote down, or what you have in your book is basically that I guess the old age theory of health is simple. Even though this is very complicated. You want to have more stuff of the things you need, and less stuff of the things that you don’t need, and create that balance.
So what are in terms of the toxins? Kind of give us a little idea, because I’m sure everyone who’s listening who has been challenged with impaired fertility is like, Yes, I know, I’m toxic, I just need to detoxify. So it’s not even until the end of the book because all that other foundational stuff needs to be done first. So when’s there a time and place for the detoxification.
Jaclyn Downs: So there are a lot of people that just say, Oh, I need a detox, and they’ll go and they’ll buy a liver detox kit or whatever. But if you’re not pooping every day, and your channels of elimination are not open, your liver is going to start releasing these toxins, and they’re not going to have anywhere to go, and they will just get recirculated back through and so you’ve definitely if you there’s a time and a place for detoxification, and you need to make sure that first off that you’re eliminating, but that your body has the resources to be able to withstand the stress that detoxification or a cleanse puts on your body.
And something else I was going to say, but those are the two main things, you want to make sure that your body can withstand it and get rid of the toxins.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Right, right for sure. And again, I bring that back to the fact that if your surplus is not there, and your income is less than your expenses, then you don’t have the currency to afford the detoxing at this point yet so you want to make sure you have that surplus. And then and then you also get into blood sugar. So I mean that seems obvious for some people, but what’s sort of the message that you have in supporting fertility and blood sugar? What what are your words of recommendation on that?
Jaclyn Downs: I feel that blood sugar is something that a lot of people can have or gain more control over to help lighten the load on their HPA access. Because when you have sugar levels that are too high and then consequently too low, the it that calls on cortisol, because a surge of insulin can cause the call on cortisol and then having a blood sugar that’s too low elicits a cortisol response.
Because evolutionarily our body kind of clicks into that, oh no, where are we going to get energy and so it causes stress. So the less court the less we can call upon cortisol, the more resources we will have for making the sex hormones because we don’t have to constantly be calling upon the stress hormones.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Right? Absolutely. And then also to and that’s the other thing I explained to my audience is I know you’re not in front of the refrigerator. And you know, eating cupcakes and bond bonds. It’s not just about your sweet tooth, it’s the fact that all the things that you’ve described, in terms of stress, and all of the things that are going on in your body is creating that oxidative stress, which drives up a lot of the growth factors that’s what the question I would have is, Bob talks a lot about the imbalance of growth factors, and the inability to get into recycling and breaking down and clearing out.
And that we call that the balance between em tour and a toughie g where M tour is the growth of the crops, if you will, and then the toffee g is the plowing of the fields and allowing those, those plants that didn’t get utilized to kind of go into the soils and be recycled, again, given that growth and pregnancy is a mtorr like a process. And the environmental factors are so swayed in today’s day and age to be turning on M tar every single day and not getting into a tough eg, you would think that there would be fewer challenges with pregnancy, right, because of the growth factor.
So I don’t mean to throw you a curveball, but I’m kind of curious as to what would your hunch or your feeling be as to why that is that it’s still problematic, or even more so than any day and age to have a baby and bring it to full term. Given that a toffee G is not the biggest challenge that mtorr is the biggest challenge and so forth.
Jaclyn Downs: So it’s there’s a time and a place for it. We’ve, we’ve, I say that you know, the full eight and the iron the things that you need during pregnancy to grow a baby, our m tour, stimulating substances, but we need to also have the time for the cell to clean up and get rid of the debris.
And so if the cell is just sluggish and laden with all of this debris, it’s not going to be able or not or signal to the body that it’s a good time to make a baby. So we need to make sure that we are promoting autophagy. Before we support the growth of the baby, we have to make sure that the cell is healthy enough to be able to support the growth of a baby.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, no, that’s a great answer. And I think that segues into your book isn’t just for bringing a baby to full term. But we also talked about the fact that now you maximize the potential of that unborn baby, why would it maximize the potential.
Jaclyn Downs: because doing all that, even if you don’t have any problems getting pregnant or staying pregnant, there’s still so many children in this modern world that that have learning disorders and cognitive issues and allergies of all different sorts. So there’s immune system dysregulation right off the bat. And so by addressing these things, each chapter is a different point or a rock to lift under, you can get your body to a better state to be a cleaner house in which to grow baby and a more nourishing house in which to grow a baby.
Because these toxins First off, they can impair your fertility. But if you are lucky enough to not have that issue, they can and do pass on to the baby through the placenta and also through the breast milk. And so you want to ideally, I would recommend my book for anybody that might even consider having a child at some point even 20 or 30 years from now if you’re you’re pretty young.
And so the length of a headstart you give yourself them, the better your channels of elimination will be the less burdened your liver will be, the healthier your hormones will be and the fewer toxins that you will pass on to your baby. And therefore those toxins can inhibit cognitive growth and nervous system functioning.
Dr. Joel Rosen: No awesome answer. Do you have an idea of whether or not the traditional allopathic School of Medicine would embrace the concepts that you write about or do you feel like it would still be like 20 years down the line and he Even if then they would like what’s your thought on that?
Jaclyn Downs: A certain people are so dialed in to the way that they do things and just measuring hormones and prescribing hormones. So they may, they may or may not be receptive. I think it goes on an individual basis. But I would hope that the insurance companies would be the first to hop on board. Back when I was doing doula work. This was in the early 2000s. Before people even knew what a doula was.
They would say, Oh, do you take insurance and I said, Not at this point. But if you call and ask your insurance company, and they see that more people are using doulas, and they have shorter hospital stays and fewer interventions, then, therefore, their hospital bill is lower, maybe the insurance company will start covering it. And I hope that they start doing that for functional medicine or even a functional fertility approach.
Because I know a lot of businesses are now or companies are part of their insurance packages, or employee packages are support with IVF or any kind of assisted reproductive technology. And they could save so much money on those procedures that are also very invasive. By practicing from a functional fertility approach.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, that’s a big one for sure. And I’ve had a couple of podcasts about that Jacqueline, in terms of toppling sort of the big insurance companies, or at least allowing them to come to their conclusions that, you know, a penny earned, or a penny saved is, you know, more than $1 earned. And I feel especially in this area of health care where it’s super expensive for insurance companies to go down those routes.
And the reasons the reason that women are having successful births is because of everything that you teach in the book. So all the more reason why to get on board, save money and get out of it, you know, it’s a win-win-win. But you know, common sense is, is not so common, unfortunately, you know, so yeah, I mean, so as far as Was there any particular chapter or any labor of love that was more so for you than any other chapter with the book.
Jaclyn Downs: Since learning about oxalates, a few years ago, and especially the fact that they are some markers, we can measure on urine organic acids test, far more people than I ever would have imagined have issues with oxalates. And especially because so many women are struggling with endometriosis, and there’s an association there.
But the oxalates having an issue with oxalates can throw off your hormonal balance, but it also is these jagged, little crystals, irritating your, the linings of your glands in your tissues and your bones and muscles. And so they also create inflammation. So I think oxalates for sure.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, you could call it like the gateway finding almost because if there’s Bloxwich, you have to think mold, you have to think leaky gut, you have to think fat absorption and utilization, mitochondrial dysfunction, there’s so I mean, if you have oxalates, you have now a whole big rabbit hole to go down to figure out why. But yeah, that’s a big one for my radar as well.
So awesome. So as far as I always like to ask my client, the guests that we have on the show, Jacqueline, if you were to know what you know, now, and we’re able to kind of give these words of advice to the younger, I always say bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Jaclyn that would have accelerated your health or your less stress or just your thriving in life earlier. What would those words of wisdom be?
Jaclyn Downs: That’s a really good question. Well, as far as from a fertility perspective, I would say if you think you’re ever going to have a baby to start thinking about what’s good for that baby. Now, even if you don’t plan on getting pregnant for 10 to 20 years, because everything that you do now impacts the health of your child or the ability to get and stay pregnant years down the road.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, it’s hard though. I don’t know if a 15-year-old is thinking necessarily about her body at that point, but I would hope you’re gonna What’s that? It’s true.
Jaclyn Downs: That’s so true. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and other, you know, ancient traditions like they did eat, you know, a fertility diet. Once they started. Once they hit a certain age or they were going to be getting married, they thought ahead about that stuff. So I think if we can just maybe start to shift the mindset or the paradigm a little bit. Possibly that would be ideal.
Dr. Joel Rosen: No, it’s good. I mean, no, I always love that. And I’m glad that you’re, you’re bringing this book out into awareness. Because just as daunting as the environment is, and I, you know, had a couple of interviews with Bob and, and by the time he’s finished his and what were we thinking, smearing this on and putting this in there and it’s like, oh my gosh, like, I’m almost stressed out. By the time he finishes, like, what we’ve done to our environment, but at the same time, we have so as bad as it is bad, it’s good as it is good in terms of our knowledge, our awareness, our proactivity.
And it’s not that the sky is falling, per se, we have the ability, hopefully, to continue to turn things around with the information we have. So as far as where do we I know you talked about this before we got on the call. There I don’t think there’s an actual publishing date yet. determine when will they be able to how would the listener be able to get their hands on this and And where will they go?
Jaclyn Downs: There will be as soon as I know there will be information on my website, Jacqueline Downes. com. That’s J, A, C, L, Y, N, D, O, W, N, S. And I will also be sure to have it get posted on your Facebook page as well.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, I’ll post it on my show notes and my website and all my social media stuff. So I’ll do that. So people will have the ability to look at that information. So thank you so much for your time. I appreciate your being here and what you give back to the world and being able to help women conceive healthy, happy babies.
Jaclyn Downs: Thank you. It’s been a lot of fun, and I love the messages that you are spreading with all of your guests as well.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Thank you. All right. We’ll talk to you soon.
Jaclyn Downs: Okay. Thank you.