Finding the Root Cause of Fertility Struggles: Gut Health, Cellular Wellness, and Self-Compassion with Monica Cox

Natalie Tysdal (01:31)

Monica, thank you so much for joining me.

Monica (01:33)

Hi, thank you so much for having me. I'm completely honored to be here. You're over 100 episodes now. And I know you've had some amazing experts on, so I'm just honored to be a part of this.

Natalie Tysdal (01:43)

Well, thank you and it's just an honor

to have you. I know you have a podcast, you talk all things fertility. I've done fertility topics in the past, but the way you talk about fertility and the thing I wanna talk about today is getting to the root cause.

Monica (01:58)

Yes, yes, that is.

Essential not just to see the two pink lines not just to have your baby but to actually become the conscious mama and thrive in motherhood because I think a lot of us are ⁓ Kind of sold a different story about what true motherhood is especially in this society So if you can really come back to yourself, which might have to start with the physical body It just changes the game

Natalie Tysdal (02:29)

Yeah,

well, we were chatting just before we started. I try not to chat too much. We want to save it for a recording. But we were talking about how gut health. let's talk about that first, because I talk so much about gut health because of my own gut health journey. But I never thought about that being the problem when I had miscarriages, which I have three children. had three miscarriages in between those children. But some of these things, including your gut health and root causes,

can be why you're having fertility issues, right?

Monica (03:02)

⁓ absolutely. It was my root cause. It was the reason why I had unexplained infertility. So I was normally cycling. I was healthy. I was active. I didn't have thyroid issues. You know, all the things that the doctors look for. They're like, nope, there's nothing that we see. You're unexplained. And so we got pushed into the IVF system. It was a shambles. The IVF ⁓ completely failed. We got no healthy embryos and the doctors just looked at

us and said, you're 30, your eggs are old and they're not good because your husband's sperm is fine. There's nothing you can do about it. So just keep trying IVF, cross your fingers and hopefully it will work. And I sat in this appointment. We lovingly call it the WTF appointment, like what just happened? And I knew, I intuitively knew that they were wrong. I didn't know how I was going to prove them wrong. I didn't know what I needed.

to do, but I got this hit of just like, you're going to figure this out. And so very long story short, right, my journey was eight years. I was already three years into my journey during that IVF and I took a year off and like many of us listening to this podcast, I started just listening to other people's. ⁓

Knowledge About Wellness. And back then, this is about 15 years ago, there wasn't a lot of great health and wellness podcasts. And there just definitely weren't any fertility podcasts talking about root cause. So I had to piece things together, which actually was really good for me, because I like that type of journalism. I like to get all these little nuggets of knowledge.

I radically improved my health. I mean, you could just not fault me. Like all my symptoms, my bloating, my diarrhea, my brain fog, my tiredness, my moodiness, my PMS went away. And I did this through diet. I went paleo and a little bit of yoga, which I hated at the time. It was way too boring for a type A person. And I wasn't getting pregnant. And I went back. I found a new clinic because I had another

I needed some autoimmune testing. So we went to this new clinic and they talked us out of the testing. They said you're not having reoccurring miscarriages and at the time that was the standard. You needed to be having three miscarriages to get this test. So I listened. I did a whole other round of IVF and even though it didn't work, I didn't get pregnant on that IVF, we made healthy embryos. ⁓

For me, it was a win because I was told you can improve A quality. Well, I have the science, I have the proof through these two IVFs that like you can absolutely do that.

Natalie Tysdal (06:01)

Because traditionally

we hear you start producing the most healthy eggs when you start menstruating and then they decline until you go into menopause, right?

Monica (06:09)

Yeah.

Yeah, which is complete BS, old 80s junkie science. ⁓ I think we can all stand here pretty confidently that they still don't understand a woman's body in a scientific way. There hasn't been enough research. And when you're really looking at a society who we can now see is on the decline, and what I like to say of cellular health, there's a very big difference between your biological health, meaning your cell

you their health and the numbers of birthday candles on your birthday cake. Very two different things. And at the time, wasn't able to articulate this. I was still in my infancy. And after that, IVF didn't work. We had some embryos on ice. I just went and demanded the testing. It's an autoimmune panel, ⁓ and it tests lots of different markers, one of them being your high natural killer cells, or natural killer cells, which

Natalie Tysdal (06:46)

Yep.

Monica (07:10)

Everyone

has they're there to protect us defend, you know defend from viruses and colds and you know, even help with cancer But when you have gut issues you get the leaky gut You know your the the particles that shouldn't be in your bloodstream are there and your immune system is like attack attack attack It's doing its job. But now it's attacking your body and for me It was twofold. I had such high inflammation through my whole body because

It's all connected. You know things can be localized. You can have specific issues, know, depending on your genetics and your history. ⁓ But things aren't separate. So if you have a gut that is just in havoc, other things are going to suffer because your gut is the master controller. We can bring this down to really just common sense. ⁓

You need your gut to function in a certain way so the rest of your body gets the nutrients it needs. End of story.

So if the first thing is out of commission, other things are going to start going wonky. So I had so much inflammation. I had really poor cellular health, which mean I had low A quality. The other thing that was happening in my body at a very extreme level was that even if I made a healthy enough embryo to get to implantation stage, my body would attack it right away.

And so I knew intuitively I had some few early pregnancies, but never saw a positive pregnancy test. ⁓ And that's because my body was just like, that's a foreign agent. Your embryo is a foreign agent until about the 12-week mark where the placenta takes over.

So we demanded the testing, and this is after a year of being healthy. I mean, the doctors were like, you are so healthy. We do not know why. I look good, right? Like, I felt good. I look good. was maybe like 32 by this time. So was much older than 27. And I still had high natural killer cells.

even after being perfect. And so we ⁓ went with the medical system using the immune suppressing drugs and the things that they know how to do to get you pregnant and stay pregnant. And our first embryo transfer, I got pregnant finally. And you're talking five, almost six years into this. ⁓ But unfortunately, I had a miscarriage.

went back at the seven week scan, there was no heartbeat. And of course it's devastating. But in my journey, it gave me hope because it was the first time I got pregnant. So I had this little glimmer of like, hey, this is possible now. You can do this. Go back to the drawing board and see what you've missed.

So because I had this knowledge now that I did have in K-cells and because I was so deep in functional medicine, luckily there was a blog at the time. And it was one of those late 90s, early 2000s blog called The Paleo Mom. I'm sure everyone knows Sarah. I think Valentine is her last name. And she was talking about Yeah.

Natalie Tysdal (10:31)

This was the big paleo movement back then.

Yeah.

Monica (10:34)

And she was talking about gut health and how your gut health is really linked to autoimmune issues. She talked about autoimmune paleo diet. And so I was like, you know what? I'll give that a try. You know, I've done so many radical things, ⁓ some that didn't harm my fertility, harm my health. I was like, why not? And that's when I discovered that I was really highly intolerant to things like the nightshades, the tomatoes, the paprika. And with hindsight,

because what happens in our journey is we judge ourselves from our lowest point. And so we're judging, I'm so much better, I'm so much better. And we're not looking at those little things that you're like, well, that's nothing, you know. After three weeks of eliminating the nightshades, my last symptom went away, gone. Yeah.

Natalie Tysdal (11:27)

Really? So tomatoes,

eggplants, what are the other nightshades that...

Monica (11:32)

It's

like paprika, a lot of the peppers. ⁓ So yeah, it's just this group of foods. I'm drawing a blank on what they have in it. It's a protective element in nature. So bugs don't get it. ⁓ And for people who have ⁓ various different things, it could be genetic. It could just be low gut health. For me, fast forward 10 years, I found out that I stored a lot of emotions in my gut.

There can be several different factors that make you just super sensitive to these types of foods that ⁓ really should be healthy for us. They are amazing foods. All foods have a yin and yang, right? Everything in proportion. And so fast forward, did that, got pregnant with my IVF baby using immune suppressing drugs, which I still needed at the time. But his pregnancy, I was just...

perfect. And I don't say that you need to be perfect to get pregnant. I didn't have the knowledge that I have now. But I think that perfection really allowed my gut to truly heal. I stayed away from things that I was intolerant to. I ate a really wide variety of foods that I could eat. I brought in the ancestral foods that are completely not in our diets anymore, the bone broth, the organ meats. ⁓

and even like fish oil, which a lot of women are told not to have during pregnancy. And I'm not gonna say have them, but you know, they worked for me. And I had my beautiful baby and I was just in heaven.

I know women going through a struggle ⁓ when they're told to just relax. Stop stressing over it. Don't overthink it. It's one of the worst things you can say to them.

Natalie Tysdal (13:31)

Yeah, absolutely. That's even

more frustrating. And then I think they're stressed out even more.

Monica (13:36)

even more.

But there is a pattern running behind that. So when we take radical responsibility for why we have to kind of death grip this journey, we are contributing to high cortisol levels. We are putting ourselves in fight and flight. And I know now with hindsight, the perfect diet, the perfect supplement routine, doing yoga, doing meditation, if you are in this kind of false surrender or this

false, well I'm doing everything right so I should be perfect, the emotion and the patterns behind that doing, right, it's not the doing, it's the frequency behind the doing will catch up with you. And so motherhood taught me that. That was a very, you know, motherhood brings you joy, it brings you wonder, it brings you just all these amazing things, but it also can be a mirror. ⁓

and it can show you things of like, wow, why did I just flare up over that red popsicle? Like, why is your crying just driving me insane? And so having that radical honesty can really help when someone tells you to just relax. Instead of getting that defensiveness, you can go, OK, if relaxing does help in a constructive way, how can I start applying that to my life?

And so my IVF baby gave that to me. When you have a baby after years of fertility struggles, you naturally just lose all of that pressure, all of that stress. It is a gift and it's hard to get that, you know, in the journey.

And so we just lived life, you know, and we had an amazing time and I had the most gorgeous baby ever. And we went back for our twins. We had two embryos left on ice. We knew that that's what we wanted. We were about to leave the United Kingdom and move to Hawaii. And the stars were in line. I had the diet. I had the immune suppressing drugs. Right? I had the success.

Natalie Tysdal (15:40)

You would learn so much. Everything would change. You were ready. Yeah.

Monica (15:44)

Beyonce was pregnant with twins. I was seeing egg yolk with twins, like right? It was going to happen. And I got pregnant, but then I had another early miscarriage.

And that miscarriage was a little bit more devastating for me because it was the end. I was eight years into the journey. I had five medical treatments. We spent a lot of money because we paid for it all of ourselves, even though we were living in the UK. And it was done. We were done. And at that time, we're talking about almost a decade ago, I still didn't have people like me on the internet saying this is a reality.

Fertility is innate. Your body knows what it needs to do. You do not need to overthink it. You have to find the root cause and ⁓ care for that in a loving way, in a way that that is going to heal, resolve, but also you're not stressing over it, which that balance is a journey.

Natalie Tysdal (16:48)

So

did you give up after that thinking, I'm just going to have one child and this will be it? Or did you know you were still digging for the root cause?

Monica (16:57)

no, absolutely. I was done. know, eight years I was done. And to be honest, there was more for my journey to do in my soul's purpose, my life here on earth. But at that time, I was done with fertility. There was really no more I could do. And two months after that miscarriage, I was pregnant, actually, with our second son. And I... Yes.

Natalie Tysdal (16:59)

Yeah. Yeah.

You had done all of this foundational work

in figuring these things out that you probably wouldn't have done otherwise.

Monica (17:29)

⁓

100%. When you get to the end of any journey, you get to choose how you define your journey. And that comes with the growth and healing of your mindset, your emotions, just becoming, growing as a person.

⁓ I look back at my journey now, and I'm grateful for it. I would have had major thyroid issues. would have had, you know, I have a friend at 41 diagnosed with colon cancer, right? I definitely was headed to a very traumatic health situation if my fertility didn't wake me up. Now, fertility struggles is hard.

It's very, very hard.

Natalie Tysdal (18:18)

Physically and

emotionally, obviously, that's probably the biggest impact.

Monica (18:22)

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. But I never felt my life was on the line. So to take these actions during a time where it was emotionally hard, physically hard, but never fearing for my life, but giving myself decades.

and not having to go through the struggles that I just recently helped my dad pass at 68 because he didn't want to take care of anything physically, mentally, emotionally. Like I just said, friends being diagnosed with cancer in their early 40s, that's hard.

That is hard. So my fertility journey set me up to not only be able to thrive as, quote unquote, an older mom, as the medical system likes to put it, ⁓ but also get through hard times and watch friend and family members go through these struggles and be there for them on an emotional level of being a steward, of being a part of their journey. Because the old me would have tried to control their

journey. You need to do this. You need to do that. You're going to have, you know, it's just like, OK, here's some options. This is what I know. I'll help you. But if not, so ⁓ my journey just taught me a lot. And when you're in a thick of a health journey wherever you are at, it comes down to the choice of how you're defining yourself right now.

Natalie Tysdal (19:32)

Yeah.

Monica (19:59)

and what you want your future to look like.

Natalie Tysdal (20:02)

Yeah.

So a lot of the women you work with, I love it that you get to the root cause. I love it that you're actually helping a woman's overall health in their hope to get pregnant. But a lot of the women you work with are in their 40s or beyond, which we, of course, we know the statistics show that women are trying to get pregnant or they're delaying families and they're trying to get pregnant older.

Monica (20:20)

Mm-hmm.

Natalie Tysdal (20:31)

How do you start that process with them? From what you've learned and in what you do now full time, where do you start with them?

Monica (20:38)

you

Yeah, so first we have to be radically honest, right? We're having different conversations at 35 and 45. We're having different conversations close to 50. We're having different conversations on where your level of health is. Because I truly believe no matter where your level of health is, we can get you to a much higher standard. But the truth is it takes time. This isn't a quick fix. And so...

with

Our biology, we do have a certain time frame and we have to honor that as women. I'm not gonna sit here and say, well, you could just do whatever you want. We've got factors here, right? And we wanna be really grounded in reality and what we can do with the time frame that we have. So whether or not women choose to use IVF or need IVF, because there's two different distinct factors there,

⁓ Some people need IVF, especially when we're a little bit older and our health is a little bit lower, right? We want to get our health up to a certain point before using any medical treatment, but we need to be really radically honest. But the thing that I... ⁓

What we start with is, if you are prepared to show up for yourself at any age, taking the time to increase your cellular health, minimum three months, I would prefer six months to nine months. But most people feel completely time poor. I have a 29 year old that feels time poor, right? Because of the way society has talked to us and told us and just drilled it into us.

Natalie Tysdal (22:29)

Yeah. Yeah.

Monica (22:31)

I can promise you that if you take the time to really improve that cellular health, you're gaining time back. You have to admit to get there.

Natalie Tysdal (22:39)

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's true for

me, you know, with three kids and beyond college even, like once you really focus on that and the cellular health ⁓ is a big one. So you start with the cellular health, the gut health, these types of things. What else? What advice would you have for people who are in this or they know someone who's in it and just getting that base health good first?

Monica (22:55)

Thank

Yeah, so I like to break it down really simply, right? If you can find the foods you are intolerant to right now because your food intolerance has changed throughout your life, find what is affecting you right now and bring in a wide variety. That's the other thing people miss is that they have like 10 things that they eat because they're just so scared of everything else. So find the food intolerances, bring in a wide variety and focus on healing the gut microbiome with the ancestral

I'm diet. ⁓ It's so easy now. When I was going through this, you had to eat the liver and make your own bone broth. You could not go to the store and buy these things. You can get your liver in the minced meat now. can get them in freeze dried capsules. These things are so accessible. There's no excuse. That's how I healed my gut. I was in a time where I didn't have over testing. I didn't have the supplements that they have nowadays. I healed my gut with real food.

ancestral food. It's that simple. And you have to give it time.

That you're it took you decades to get to where you are Your body is a healing machine. It has been fighting for you the whole entire time It's never let you down when people are like, my body's let me down your body Let you down when you die your body says I'm done when you die before that it is fighting so hard for you So if you can find the things that are causing the inflammation contributing to the inflammation on a physical that's gonna move the needle

massively, you're going to see massive improvements within weeks to months and watching your common and normal health symptoms disappear first. Because your fertility is one of the first things your body is going to switch off and it might be one of the things that your body, last thing your body switches on because it's not essential for you to live.

So give it time, know what you need to do. When you know, this is a big thing with functional medicine right now, and I get a lot of clients, I've done these hundred tests, I've been told these things. ⁓

your intuition and your discernment is going to be your superpowers moving forward in this day and age with AI, with media, with so much knowledge, this science, that science, right? Everyone's right and everyone's wrong at the same time. Your intuition and your discernment is going to be your superpower and feeling in, OK, I got told this. It feels good. I feel good when I eat this way, but I'm scared because I'm not doing this or I'm not

But when I did that, when I brought those eggs in, I had a vegan bring in like five eggs a day. She's like, I feel bloated and I'm like, then it's not for you. You know, it's like, don't listen to the group rules.

Natalie Tysdal (25:58)

That's right. Yeah. But we're so,

we listen to everyone but ourselves and our intuition. really learning to listen to your body when you eat that. How did I feel? And logging it, journaling about it, paying attention to it. That's huge.

Monica (26:04)

Yes.

Yes, yeah. And it's gonna change the game for you because you're not gonna be ping ponging on all these different things. When you're doing tests, when you're getting into functional medicine, remember tests are a snapshot of time of your past, not of your future. So you wanna take that information, apply the knowledge that you can, and then move on with your life with confidence that, I'm doing the right thing right now. And the number one thing that most people are missing

Natalie Tysdal (26:22)

Yeah.

Monica (26:46)

really in a fertility journey and in life is joy.

We're so caught up in the science, in the doing, in the knowledge that we are not really living our authentic joy and getting out because we think, well, that's not contributing to my healing. I need to know more information. I'm not healing fast enough. so, you know, especially in a fertility journey, you lose your passions. You lose your joy. You kind of almost lose your love for, you know, the intimate part of the journey.

because it becomes a chore and it sounds so mundane.

It sounds like you're not doing anything, you're not fixing anything, but that is the most powerful thing next to cellular health that you can do for your journey. And when you become the radical observer of your life and you look at your default energy and you're like, my gosh, I am running on high anxiety during my yoga session. Yoga's not going to work.

Natalie Tysdal (27:55)

Yeah,

those cortisol levels really make such a difference. Monica, I've learned so much and I know there's so much more that you can help people with. So where can people find you? Where are you online?

Monica (28:09)

Yeah, so I'm finding fertility everywhere on the internet from my podcast, social medias, and website. And if people are really interested in getting into looking at the holes in their journey, where they can go, they can DM me the word dreams. And that's kind of my superpower. I am just able to look at your journey, look at everything you're doing right, and show you where you really need to hyper-focus on, whether it be cellular health, the subconscious mind, the nervous system.

⁓ or even just bringing joy back into your life.

Natalie Tysdal (28:43)

I

encourage anyone who's listening who's going through this or knows someone who might be going through this to forward the podcast because it might just help that person and might give them more years on their life like it did for you Monica and being the wake up call to change.

Monica (28:59)

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me on and letting me share my message. ⁓

Natalie Tysdal (29:03)

Yeah, it's been a pleasure.

Thanks for sharing your story.

Monica (29:06)

Thank