Having a miscarriage, going through a pregnancy loss, just sucks. It's hard. It could be painful.
It's emotional and heart-wrenching because you've got your hopes up this whole time thinking that
everything's going to be great, and in the end, it wasn't. And on top of it, it potentially
makes the next time you get pregnant even harder emotionally because you're scared every week that
you go on that something is going to happen. The only positive thing that comes from a
miscarriage is that the first step in getting to a healthy pregnancy was achieved pregnancy and
the fact that you have been able to get pregnant in the past bodes well for you moving forward,
but it doesn't explain why you haven't been able to hold a pregnancy and it doesn't give you hope
that you're going to be able to hold a pregnancy in the future. And that's exactly why I created
this video today, to give you my seven tips for hopefully avoiding a miscarriage in the future.
If you want to check out my tips, and I know you do or you wouldn't be here otherwise,
then keep watching to learn more. Before we get into the seven tips,
I want to invite you to my upcoming free fertility workshop. I'm going to walk you through exactly
what a fertility coach does and the kind of things they can support you through. By the end,
you'll realize that there's more hope for you than what you're currently feeling.
Click the link below to save your spot. My name is Dr. Marc Sklar, also known as
the Fertility Expert. And I've been working with couples for over 19 years through my
online coaching programs and right here in San Diego at my clinic. And this topic of pregnancy
loss and miscarriage is one that we deal with on a daily basis, unfortunately, but there's
so much that can be done, and unfortunately, so much that's not discussed that can be done,
which is what I hope to cover in this video today. Whether you've had one miscarriage or none at all,
there are potentially things that you can be doing to avoid that risk in the future and
for future pregnancies, and so that's why I want to dive into my seven tips today.
Now, one of the bigger facts that I think is important for us to know is that about 80% of
all miscarriages occur in the first trimester. So what actually defines the first trimester? Well,
most of us think that the first trimester is up until 12 weeks. Well, the reality is,
if you've been pregnant before and you know how you start to calculate your pregnancy,
you calculate most pregnancies from the date of your last period. That's right. And we all know
you were not pregnant at your period, at your menstruation, you became or you conceived two
weeks later at ovulation, hopefully. And so we add on two weeks in that
calculation process because it's easier to calculate a pregnancy from the date
of your last period because that's a known quantity than some other time where we're
not quite sure where exactly you ovulated. So I add on two other weeks. So I take the
first trimester to 14 weeks, and actually that's done in many other countries as well. Regardless,
the statistics for pregnancy loss and miscarriage actually is calculated at 12 weeks,
and the likelihood of having a loss after 12 weeks goes down considerably. So that's why
it's important to understand where you are in the pregnancy and how important this first trimester
actually is to maintaining a healthy pregnancy. We put so much emphasis on the first trimester
for this reason, and it's not to say that you can't have a loss beyond the first trimester,
that those are less likely. And the things that I'm going to be discussing today in
these seven tips are really focused on this first piece, this first trimester portion of things.
Your reproductive system is not the most vital system, an important system in the body,
and as such, it takes a backseat when other things start to go wrong or go off and your
body's not functioning optimally. And so there's an image that's being displayed on
the screen right now, and I want to kind of walk you through this so that you understand
what I'm talking about when I say this. So something is going on in the body and
it's not functioning properly, and the body wants to allocate appropriate resources to
that part of the body or that system to get it back on track. And as such, it puts your
reproductive function and holding a pregnancy on the back burner. It says, "You know what?
This is not so important right now, and so we're not going to make this the most important thing.
We're going to prioritize what's really important for your health and safety and staying alive, and
we're going to focus on those things right now." And when that happens, the body's not functioning
at a hundred percent, and so in turn, the body says, "Well, we need to do something about this.
It's not safe to hold a pregnancy or it's not safe to get pregnant." And what ends up happening
over time is that in dealing with the area, the system, the issue, the disease that's going on,
the body is prioritizing that and it ends up over time, your body ends up having a
miscarriage or your immune system is not supporting that because it's focusing on
something else, and again, you have a loss. And this is exactly what we're trying to prevent.
We're trying to understand what function is not happening properly, why that's not happening,
give the body the support that it needs so that your body can go back to homeostasis
and balance and give the appropriate resources that it needs, to not only getting pregnant
but maintaining a healthy pregnancy. So now let's dive into my seven tips.
Number one is going to go back to that first place that I was talking about,
when something is going on, we need to figure out why. So number one is, figure out the
possible causes and reasons why you might be having a loss. I know that might seem either
simple or complex, but it is still tip number one. And so the first thing that I recommend for all of
you is, take a step back, take inventory of your body, your health, your environment, your life,
and start to write down the areas that you would like to see improved. These are things that you
should know. I mean, maybe you know that you just need more energy. Let's keep it simple. Maybe you
know you just need more energy or you're not sleeping enough or not well, sleeping well
enough, maybe you need to eat better. Let's keep this simple, right? But I
want you to be as broad as you can. Maybe it's emotional, maybe it's stress, maybe it's work,
whatever it might be, I want you to take inventory so that we could start to unravel the possible
causes or influences that might be impacting your ability to hold on and have a healthy pregnancy.
Tip number two is connected to tip number one because tip number two is, "test, don't guess."
And that comes back to number one because we're trying to find out the underlying causes. So in
addition to you taking inventory in step number one, we are also wanting you to do some additional
testing, some additional labs so that we can start to put what you took in from number one,
your medical history, which I'm going to label as number two, and what we're doing
right now in number two which is testing, and putting all of that together to start to create
your picture to understand why you might be having the losses that you've been having.
So when we start or continue on this test piece and want to do some additional testing,
the first two most important things that I want to test is, I want to test immune function
and I want to test blood clotting factors. Those are the two most common reasons why
you might be having a pregnancy loss. The third most common reason is genetic
testing. And so there are additional tests that you can do to look on the
genetic side of things to see if any of those are potentially contributing to the losses as well.
Other tests that we want to do, and these are all potential reasons that could be
contributing to a miscarriage or pregnancy loss, is a thyroid function. So a full thyroid panel,
because having an autoimmune thyroid, which would be classified under autoimmune testing
or immune testing, and proper thyroid function can impact your ability to hold a pregnancy.
Egg quality can certainly do it. I don't think it's as common as we say it is or
think or believe that it is, but certainly egg quality, if egg quality is compromised,
it could lead to a miscarriage. Sperm quality the same. We
forget or don't believe that sperm can really contribute to a pregnancy loss. But absolutely,
40 to 50% of all miscarriages can be attributed in some way to a male factor or sperm quality issue.
And then two other areas that we need to rule out or rule in. First one is PCOS,
polycystic ovarian syndrome. When you do all your initial testing, you should have already
ruled this out, but if not, then we need to include that in the testing, because if
you have polycystic ovarian syndrome, then you are more likely to have a miscarriage as well.
And then obesity, which may or may not need additional testing, but certainly doing a BMI,
because the higher your BMI, the more likely you are to have a loss.
So those are the bigger pieces, the bigger places that we want to do more investigation
and testing as part of my tip number two. Tip number three is still part of this evaluation
phase and assessment phase, whether it's lab or otherwise, is we want to evaluate and look
at all the other systems. All your other systems can impact your ability to get pregnant and stay
pregnant. And so with that, we want to look at that: What is going on in your digestive
system? What is going on in your pelvic area with the uterus? These are all potential
reasons that could also contribute to a loss, and these are things that we tend to look at
much later. We've investigated, we keep having losses, and so then we start looking for maybe
some of those more uncommon or obscure reasons. Digestive issues, all sorts of digestive issues
I've seen over the years contribute to a pregnancy loss, and so we want to make sure we evaluate
that. I typically start to evaluate that through stool testing. And then there's more advanced
testing where we're looking at the tissue from the uterus or the endometrium, and those are biopsied
or taken out and sent for testing because you're looking for any abnormal bacterias, infections,
inflammation, endometriosis, and so forth. So those are all part of this well rounded
approach to get a better understanding for what's going on with your body so that we can
impact that and affect it in a positive way. Number four, diet. When we were talking about
number one, and I said take inventory of your overall life and what might need to be improved,
diet was something that I mentioned, but it also needs a time for itself. It needs
a separate section when we're talking about tips, because all too often we don't put enough energy
into this. Even though we know we should be doing better with it, we don't, because we
have certain cravings and desires and there's a hard to break, it's difficult to change our diet.
But your diet is super, super important. Not only is important just because we want you
to eat healthy, but if we find that there's issues, let's just say with immune function
or blood clotting variables or polycystic ovarian syndrome or whatever it might be, those conditions
will impact your diet and your diet will impact those conditions. So we need to make sure that
you're eating appropriately based on our findings. So right now, I'm not going to give you specific
suggestions, but once we know what your findings are and why you're having these issues, then
that's where we come back and have a more tailored specific approach with your diet. But right here,
I just want to mention how important it is and why we at least need to at the bare minimum, clean it
up, eat whole foods, get rid of those processed foods, sugars, all the junk food that we know is
just not good for us. Those are things that you can start doing to clean up your diet right now.
Number five, toxins. Removing those pesky, dirty toxins that we are exposed to on a regular basis.
I've been spending more time, or at least I feel like I've been spending more time talking about
this topic, and it's an important one. I just had an email from a member in my coaching program,
and she was asking me, she sent me her husband's diet because we wanted to spend
more energy there to clean that up and improve his numbers as well and his sperm quality. And
so she was giving me this information to tell me what can I do to get my feedback on that.
And my response back was, I want to be reasonable about this, but all my suggestions
in terms of cleaning things up is going to be focused on removing as much toxin exposure,
reducing his chemical toxin load as much as possible. And this is something that needs
to happen throughout our life because we're exposed to toxins and chemicals in many ways.
But one of the main areas that I think is really important for us to talk about is Roundup. Now
Glyphosate is found in so much of our food supply, and the places that we don't think it is are the
places it's probably found the most. So if you're drinking coffee, and I'm always telling everyone
drink organic coffee if you're going to have coffee, it's because all these pesticides and
toxins are sprayed heavily on those coffee beans. So we want to eliminate that as much as possible.
We also find it in all the alcohol, the main alcohol that you consume. All beer,
all wine from the United States, you bet, has a ton of pesticides and Roundup in it,
even the organic ones because they can't avoid it because you've got one organic plot in the
middle of conventional farming around you. And all of that seeps into the water, gets passed
into the air, and still lands in that area. So they might have less, but they still have it.
So beer and wine in my mind is a no-no, if you're going to be consuming alcohol. I just
suggest you just avoid beer altogether because we just don't know how to manage that. I do have
a good resource for good quality wine. I'll put that link in the description below if you're so
interested. They test all their wine to make sure it doesn't have any of these chemicals and toxins
and none of them come from the United States. So that's just a little take on toxins. We
want to eliminate toxins from every part of our life as much as we can control, and that's just
something that I've been talking about a lot. So I wanted to make sure that I addressed it here.
Number six is, review your lifestyle habits. That's right. What in your lifestyle could
you improve, that is also going to help you not only get pregnant, but stay pregnant.
Managing your stress is number one, which is also why I included this week as the sponsor of this
video, The FertileMind app, because managing our stress, especially while we're going through a
miscarriage or after a miscarriage, and certainly once we get pregnant because it's difficult to not
start to worry and think about if this pregnancy is going to last, that FertileMind app is going
to do a wonders for you and your anxiety and stress moving forward. It's going to help you
manage all of that so that it can be easier to hopefully get pregnant and stay pregnant. So
check out that resource in the description below. And number seven, which could potentially be the
most important piece is: Seek out additional help and support. Get the support that you need and
deserve. This could be the missing piece, because it's so hard to put all the other
tips in order of priority and it's actually even hard to get all the testing done without
getting the proper support that you need. Are you getting the proper support? Are
they thinking about your losses and making those a priority for you? Are they looking
and investigating in the right place? For me, what I often hear from all of you is that, well,
my doctor said at the next loss, we can look at those things, or it's not important right now,
we're fine for it now, but if it happens again, we can investigate.
Why do we want a loss again? Why not start investigating now? I mean, maybe we're not
doing all the testing that I recommended, but why not starting to dig now so that you can
have at least some peace of mind that you're being proactive, that your doctor's being proactive, and
that you are starting to look in the areas that need to be looked at. And you all deserve that.
We all need to get the proper support, not only to investigate the right areas, but once we have
that information to create the appropriate plan, to address your needs. And that is super important
and key. That's what I want for all of you. And if you're not getting that, then you need to find
someone who is going to give you that support. Did you like this video? Did you think my seven
tips were appropriate and good enough? Did you find value in them? Comment below and let me
know. I want to hear from all of you, what did you find valuable? Tell me a little bit
about your journey. I want to support you, and leave your questions as well in the comments.
If you like this video, give me a thumbs up. If you're not already a subscriber to
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I put out another video for all of you. And until the next video, stay fertile.