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Optimising Fertility and Pregnancy Health w/ Dr Kendra Becker - Connecting Minds Ep29
146 Plays5 years ago
Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/epyaQDQhG3w
Get this episode on your favourite podcast player here: https://christianyordanov.com/29-dr-kendra-becker/
On this episode of Connecting Minds, we welcome Dr. Kendra Becker, naturopathic doctor and expert on all-things fertility, pregnancy, and children’s health (one of my favourite topics). Today we focus on optimising fertility and pregnancy health. There are so many nuggets of wisdom packed in this episode that I am surprised we managed to cover so much ground in such a short time! Essential listening for mothers-to-be, as well as people that love and care for women who will one day bear children.
Dr. Kendra Becker’s Bio
Dr. Becker has integrated a Doctor of Naturopathy and Advanced Practice Nursing Degree to provide the best possible care to her patients. Dr. Becker understands the importance of integrating conventional and holistic medicine and the importance of combining therapies appropriately.
Prior to becoming a physician, Dr. Becker spent 10 years practicing as an ICU nurse for both adults and children, specializing in cardiac surgery and cardiac anomalies, before studying naturopathic medicine.
Dr. Kendra Becker believes in healing through genetics and specialties in treatment of conditions such as asthma, autism, allergies, and eczema, as well as fertility. Dr. Becker integrates both a conventional background with homeopathic, naturopathic, herbal, and dietary treatments.
Dr. Becker lectures on various topics throughout the nation, has made various TV appearances to discuss the importance of naturopathic medicine, and is a member of various organizations.
Links to Dr Becker’s resources and social media:
Website: https://www.drkendrabecker.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drkendrabecker/
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Transcript
Introduction to Dr. Kendra Becker and Her Approach
00:00:00
Speaker
Today on the podcast, I have Dr. Kendra Becker. She's a naturopathic doctor who is an expert on all things fertility, pregnancy, children's health, women's health, some of my absolute favorite topics. So topic of today's discussion will be mostly around optimizing fertility
00:00:17
Speaker
and pregnancy health, there is an unbelievable amount of information packed into this conversation. It's only an hour long, but I am amazed at how much ground we covered. So pretty excited to share it with you. A little bit about Dr. Kendra Becker.
00:00:35
Speaker
Dr. Becker has integrated a doctor of naturopathy and advanced practice nursing degree to provide the best possible care to her patients. Dr. Becker understands the importance of integrating conventional and holistic medicine, the importance of combining therapies appropriately.
00:00:54
Speaker
Prior to becoming a physician, Dr. Becker spent 10 years practicing as an ICU nurse for both adults and children, specializing in cardiac surgery and cardiac anomalies before studying naturopathic medicine.
Integrating Genetics in Healing
00:01:09
Speaker
Dr. Kendra Becker believes in healing through genetics and specialties in treatment of conditions such as asthma, autism, allergies and eczema, as well as fertility. Dr. Becker integrates both a conventional background with homeopathic, naturopathic, herbal, and dietary treatments. Dr. Becker lectures on various topics throughout the nation, has made various TV appearances to discuss the importance of naturopathic medicine, and is a member of various organizations.
00:01:39
Speaker
So we talk about MTHFR, probably the most well-known genetic variation that can cause problems with fertility or miscarriages, things like that. We discuss supplementation, some of the most important supplements, what to do when certain things are deficient. We discuss fertility foods and a ton of other stuff. So a great honor to have Dr. Kendra on the podcast.
00:02:08
Speaker
Let me know how you find the podcast. Is there any topics you want to cover in more depth in the future? I would love to have her back on again. I'm sure she would love to come back on again.
From Nursing to Naturopathy: A Holistic Journey
00:02:18
Speaker
So yeah, without further ado, here is Dr. Kendra Becker. Great. So second try today on the Connecting Minds podcast, we have Dr. Kendra Becker-Mousante. Kendra, thank you so much for trying a second time with our technical difficulties. My pleasure. My pleasure.
00:02:37
Speaker
All right. So to kick off, can you give folks a bit of your background? What do you specialize in and all that good stuff?
00:02:48
Speaker
Sure. I've been in practice 15 years. I started in health care probably 20 something years ago. I graduated from college as a registered nurse. I spent eight years in the ICU. I did trauma, cardiac, pediatrics, all the good stuff. When you're in your 20s, you can do all that. About six or seven years into my nursing career, I kind of had an aha moment that
00:03:13
Speaker
What we were practicing in hospital care really was sick care. It wasn't health care and I wanted to be part of health care. So I went back to school to become a naturopathic doctor. But the problem with naturopathy is
00:03:28
Speaker
that it wasn't at the time 15 years ago recognized in all 50 states. So because of my nursing background, I did a concomitant education and also completed my APRN. So at this point with just the way that regulations are with naturopathic doctoring, I actually practice almost exclusively under my APRN license just with a more holistic angle.
00:03:51
Speaker
So that kind of brought me into this place where my practice was standard family practice. It was holistic and diet based and just really focused on the whole family unit and the most non-toxic way to be a good family unit.
00:04:07
Speaker
And about eight years ago, I really started to dive super, super deep into genetics. And so the evolution was, you know, sort of started like this, a child would come in, we would analyze their unique genetic profile. The parents would say, wow, I gave my kids those crappy genes, they would come in as patients. And then in many cases, I would also see grandparents. So what's more holistic than being able to
00:04:34
Speaker
you know, see three generations of, you know, what we call in holistic medicine, miasms, like disease processes, and be able to have everybody on the same page, you know, diet-wise, lifestyle
Medical Freedom and Personal Health Choices
00:04:46
Speaker
-wise, to be able to help with healing. And then as kind of a little bit of a tangent, you know, years ago, we used to keep the politics and the health care separate, and certainly over the last five or so years, that has become completely interrelated.
00:05:01
Speaker
I have always advocated for medical freedom and constitutionality around health care and protection and preservation of the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, and a lot of the other ones in between. So yeah, so that's my jam.
00:05:20
Speaker
Right. So yeah, I was hoping we could discuss the topic of fertility preparing for a healthy pregnancy for this because I know there's a few different topics we can discuss children's health, especially is one of my biggest interests. But before we get into that, can you maybe give folks a little bit more of your kind of your health journey, if that's all right, just because there's quite quite a lot of value for people that can be gleaned there.
00:05:50
Speaker
Yeah, so I'll tell you a funny story about that. I mean, I've told my health journey for 14 years on public stages and I was in my Bible study with 15 other people at my church and I couldn't even articulate it without crying. I don't know what it was about that particular experience, but my health journey was really interesting. Like I said, I started off as family practice and what's more important than preparing your body as a man or a woman
00:06:19
Speaker
to start your family. So I always did a ton of preconception health care. And then when it was time for us to start our family, I did everything that the current research had told us to do. And at the time, the recommendations were to take high dose synthetic folic acid
00:06:35
Speaker
and to take all this other crap that really we've found since then has not been, you know, medically efficacious. So I was following all the rules. I got pregnant very quickly and I had a miscarriage at 14 weeks. And so I, you know, I said, well, my mother's first pregnancy was a miscarriage. I figured it was kind of a one-off, even though it was, you know, a pretty late miscarriage. And we kind of, you know, literally got back on the horse and tried again. And I had another miscarriage again at 14 weeks.
00:07:02
Speaker
And then it started to become this really big kind of nasty monster in my life. And I was like, there's something that's not right. And so I was doing some research and literally, I'll never forget that day, I got an email from one of the companies that I was using as far as purchasing supplements. And all of this research had hit the publications around the same time, about 15 years ago.
00:07:32
Speaker
that said that synthetic folic acid was in fact harmful for many women and that we should switch to a methyl folate and it was like literally like a light bulb went off and so that day at that point I have my own supplement line I had reformulated my entire prenatal specifically for me and in fact I haven't changed the formula for 15 years
00:07:52
Speaker
And because I had switched from the synthetic bolic acid that was previously recommended to the methyl folate. Again, I got pregnant and effortlessly had a baby at full time she was born at home, and then three years later I repeated the same process.
00:08:07
Speaker
and had my son at home and he was born in the water. And so it was just a really interesting kind of progression for me because two late miscarriages in your early 30s can send you down a rabbit hole through a whole lot of invasive technology and doctors visits and all kinds of horrible stuff when really it is just kind of like a misinterpretation of your genes
00:08:32
Speaker
and your genes require a higher quality supplement in order for interpretation and manufacturing. For me, it was quite a simple fix that luckily I've been able to translate into my practice and help women that were just like me for years and years and years, largely because there's so much misinformation out there about what you should actually do with your body when you're trying to get pregnant or planning a pregnancy or pregnant.
00:08:59
Speaker
Yeah, so I totally agree. Last year someone close to me was pregnant and I asked her to send me a picture of the supplements she was taking and looking at a prenatal formulation, which was the number one pediatrician recommended brand in the UK. It was
00:09:20
Speaker
garbage like we're talking calcium carbonate we're talking oxides for some of the minerals for binders tons and tons of binders yeah oh but not just the never mind all those
00:09:34
Speaker
fairly inert things, but there was also artificial
The Importance of Quality Prenatal Supplements
00:09:38
Speaker
colors and just like a ton of extra stuff, right? And that's what the doctors are shilling to poor unsuspecting women who unfortunately trust too much and
00:09:53
Speaker
I think that's probably the biggest issue is we trust these people to take care of our health and unfortunately maybe some of them themselves trust another authority that is feeding them you know potentially harmful information but in your case so what was the what was the genetic sort of epiphanies that you had that allowed you to switch to let's say folate and other supplements
00:10:17
Speaker
So I mean, because of what I do as far as genetics, I had tested both my mind and my husband's genetics long before we had had kids. So I knew I had a genetic mutation called MTHFR, methyl tetrahydroxyfolate reductase.
00:10:30
Speaker
I have a gene combination called compound heterozygous, which means there are two types of mutations and I have one of each. My husband has two of the same. So we knew our kids were gonna end up with MTHFR mutations no matter which way we rolled the dice. So because of that, neither one of our bodies are very, very effective at taking synthetic folic acid and converting it into the usable form of folate, which is called methyl tetrahydroxy folate.
00:10:57
Speaker
so and again like I said 15 years ago and you know because of just you know the manipulation and the pharmaceutical companies influences you know even for me who's been practicing in holistic medicine for over 15 years it still took a while to change the language around that like for
00:11:17
Speaker
folate and folic acid are not the same thing methyl folate and folic acid are not the same thing but if you look in all these nursing textbooks or physician textbooks or whatever they use the words interchangeably and they are absolutely positively not the same folic acid is genetically made and
00:11:35
Speaker
It is manufactured in a lab like a pharmaceutical supplement, like a pharmaceutical medication, period, end of story. And so to use those two things as the same is a huge disservice to anybody that understands basic biochemistry or women that are, like you said, trying to do best by their bodies and their babies.
00:11:57
Speaker
So for me, it was, I was fortunate enough that it was a pretty easy fix once I was able to give my body what it needed as far as nutrients.
00:12:07
Speaker
I was very easily and happily able to get pregnant and carry a baby. And the importance of methyl folate is that it's a cell signal for about a thousand different reactions in the body. And it's so important in pregnancy because that is the cell signal that the genetics get for the baby that happens at around six weeks. So they get certain genes turned on at six weeks that tell the baby how to grow at 10 weeks.
00:12:32
Speaker
And then they get an additional set of genes that turn on at 10 weeks to tell the baby how to grow at 14 weeks. And so in my case, there was some sort of backlog around 10 weeks gestation because of the cell signals that were not being communicated properly. So, which is fascinating to me to be able to have that much information.
00:12:53
Speaker
We're so lucky to at least be able to do this. I know most folks are still, unfortunately, there's a lot of education when we, like you need to do, we need to do. But we're lucky because like I, maybe two, three years ago, I found out I have, I'm homozygous for the MTHFR C677T. So I have both of those.
00:13:21
Speaker
um so i know my my child will definitely have at least you know one at least will be heterozygous and luckily my my fiance
00:13:32
Speaker
She does not have MTHFR. She has other stuff that I don't. So we're going to have to pray to God for the best solution. But we know what to do, right? So I have in my house, literally every single day, we take B vitamins with methylcobalamin, methyl folate. I have felineic acid.
00:13:54
Speaker
And, you know, it's about understanding the weak points and then how to address them. It's not about, you know, going against God or anything like that. But what other supplement, I'd like to kind of get your insights into what other supplements are women preparing
Nutrients Crucial for Pregnancy and Fertility
00:14:16
Speaker
for pregnancy or pregnant that are not taking enough of, would you say?
00:14:20
Speaker
So I'm sorry, I would have grabbed one of my prenatals. We could have gone through each and every one of the different supplements in there. I'll send you one, remind me when we're off. But after the B vitamins, my second favorite thing to recommend is choline. There was a study that was done, I think within the last 10 years in women's prisons. And they did a study on women of childbearing age and found 100% of the population in the women's prisons that they studied were deficient in choline.
00:14:50
Speaker
And choline is incredibly important for brain and neurological development in a baby. It can be found in, you know, eggs, if people are eating pastured eggs. But for the most part, it's it's relatively difficult to get adequate doses and you need about 100 times more when you're growing a baby. So choline is my my second favorite.
00:15:10
Speaker
to recommend for pregnancy. Pre-pregnancy, I would have to say my second favorite is probably vitamin D. Vitamin D is so important and super, super integral in helping you get pregnant. And, you know, it's again, it's kind of funny, you know, people come in and they're like, oh, Dr. Kendra, you're such a genius. And this, then the other thing I was like, nah, I just understand basic biochemistry, but I'll take the win. It's fine.
00:15:32
Speaker
But I've had women that have come in that have had multiple miscarriages that again are on their way down that fertility rabbit hole. And I do simple lab work and find out that their vitamin D is nine and it should be 60, you know.
00:15:46
Speaker
So that's a good one. The thing about calling is actually, from what I understand, if you have MTHFR snips, calling can be used in the place of folate to run some of that methylation cycle. So I think that could, like we take daily, we take alpha GPC and CDP calling daily. I'm starting to think I should bump up
00:16:11
Speaker
My fiancé is, what would your choline daily amount? It would vary from person to person based on their genetic snips because you're absolutely right. Because you can, if you take too high dose of choline in the presence of a B12 deficiency, you can competitively inhibit the B12. So it would be from person to person, I would think. But I would say for the most part, if you're comfortable with your genetics, probably the more the better.
00:16:41
Speaker
And so what's like it's 500 milligrams to a gram. Was that be a moderate dose? Would that be like a, I would say that's a moderate dose. And I think that's about what's in my prenatal, because the idea is, is when you put all these B vitamins together, they work real synergistically with each other and they start to potentiate. So you don't need truckloads of it. If you're B vitamin balances, if your B vitamins are balanced.
00:17:05
Speaker
Yeah, I think that this issue around coding, like women really have to be educated, it's kind of a B vitamin, which a lot of people don't know. And vitamin kind of states that it's either not, we can't produce it or we can't produce enough of it. So it's super essential for health. But tell me about the vitamin D. So I know pre pregnancy, it's important to get those levels high. What would you do
00:17:30
Speaker
if you find out that you're pregnant but your vitamin D levels are kind of low, let's say in the 30s or something like that? The 30s, you probably could still maintain a pregnancy and I would just probably beef up that mama. And as a rule, I generally support the mom all the way through till she's done nursing her last baby. So if you're pregnant with your first baby but planning on having four, your vitamin D dose stays basically the same until that last baby is done being nursed.
00:17:59
Speaker
And only because vitamin D is fat soluble, it's required for dopamine production, which we don't get enough of when you're pregnant and nursing anyway, because your sleep is kind of jacked up. And so it's, and especially if you live anywhere north of Florida or you're using sunscreen or you shower a couple of times a day and things like that.
00:18:16
Speaker
Those are all things that inhibit vitamin D levels. So if a woman is already pregnant, I wouldn't be shy about boosting up her dose at all. But if she's having trouble with miscarriage, then I definitely recommend that we get her level to a therapeutic place before she tries to get pregnant again.
00:18:36
Speaker
And what kind of day dosages would you say are tolerant? Yeah, so standard. I think USDA recommends like 400 to 800 on vitamin D. My standard dose, as long as I'm familiar with patients' genetics, is generally somewhere between 2,000 and 5,000 I use daily.
00:18:55
Speaker
but I'm not shy with vitamin D. You know, I have dosed 10,000, 20,000, even 50,000 in patients that were really, really low, as long as you follow those levels and make sure that the level doesn't get too high. Right. I read a paper, I think it was published in 2006 that basically the person that wrote, published it was just criticizing how badly the RDA's for vitamin D were designed and how
00:19:24
Speaker
they're doing, they were doing like a, I think a 14 year trial or 16 year trial on pregnant women with up to 4,000 IUs. And they don't, they was blinded. So they didn't know what the outcomes were, but they just know that a bunch of
00:19:39
Speaker
women in the in the study had much improved outcomes generally. So I think yeah I think there's a lot of kind of misinformation around vitamin D there that it's super dangerous to take if you're pregnant although like it's it's like iron it's it's dangerous if you're super high in it but what if you're super deficient I don't I highly doubt it will suddenly become dangerous to drink
00:20:03
Speaker
supplement your deficient in if you need it. Exactly. Well, and so I'll tell you a funny story because I've been in practice for 15 years and I don't know if you know the story about the Dr. Kilmer McCully and homocysteine. So Kilmer McCully was a Harvard researcher and he had discovered homocysteine was a better prognosticator for heart disease than what they were using prior to homocysteine.
00:20:26
Speaker
But when the research first came out, it rubbed everybody the wrong way because pharmaceutical companies had already directed their marketing toward whatever levels they were looking at at that time, which I can't remember actually at the top of my head. So they actually tossed him out of Harvard and took away his Nobel Peace Prize or whatever they gave him.
00:20:44
Speaker
And then, you know, about five or six years later, they realized he was right and quietly kind of reinstated it. And then fast forward. And so, you know, I'm watching this whole thing take place. And I was like, oh, this is only the beginning.
00:20:58
Speaker
I'm watching this whole thing take place because right about that time was all of the research that had come out about vitamin D, how vitamin D was more than just what we needed for bones and it was fat soluble and you needed to have the K2 and magnesium and all this research was coming out. So I had started regularly testing my patients for vitamin D. Now this is 15 years ago.
00:21:19
Speaker
and I would order thousands of dollars of lab work on these patients and I would get notifications of rejection from the insurance company for vitamin D because I didn't code for osteoporosis because I wasn't checking for osteoporosis. And so that went on for about five years and now I even see standard PCPs ordering vitamin D levels and dosing appropriately. So it's
00:21:43
Speaker
We always say in naturopathic medicine, we're very quick to jump on a bandwagon after one study and conventional medicine is very, very slow. And if we could just somehow come to the middle, I think our patients would get much better care.
00:21:56
Speaker
Absolutely. And this is why I don't know how many, it's a young podcast, but I've already had maybe like 20% of the guests have been naturopathic doctors. I love talking. Yeah. Like I have Dr. Joe Pizzorino's books, pretty much like his textbooks. I was his 2000 page books. These are my favorite books to kind of dip in and out of. So yeah, you mentioned Home Assistant, which is something I wanted to kind of ask you about. So
00:22:22
Speaker
I think it is a great marker to include on just even like a progress panel for any person generally, but what would be some of the most valuable blood markers you would run, not just for homocysteine, but also to evaluate methylation status generally and if there's any other potential problems.
00:22:42
Speaker
So for methylation status, if MTHFR is unknown, I do MTHFR, I do MMA, methylmalonic acid, I do ceruloplasmin, and I do homocysteine specifically. However, we know that B vitamins and B vitamin cofactors don't necessarily work independently of each other. So I also always check
00:23:03
Speaker
things like thyroid, I always check that, you know, adrenals, and I always check, um, uh, vitamin and mineral levels. So I actually do standard B12 and folate in labs. I do RBC magnesium. I do RBC zinc and things like that. I love lab work. I think it can be very, very definitive and, and really help decipher a course or a trajectory for a patient that's very precise and specific.
00:23:29
Speaker
Right. And like let's say homocysteine is high. What's your take on trimethylglycine? Would you, especially for pregnant women, would you add that? I don't use trimethylglycine in pregnant women. There was a study that came out about, so let me back up a little bit. Like I said, I have my own supplement line and what I've done with my supplement line is I just, I basically did all of the research
00:23:52
Speaker
or myself on how I was going to formulate the supplements, or it was a supplement combination that I used from a company that either went bankrupt or, you know, knew and improved their formula and crap like that.
00:24:06
Speaker
And I took those original formulas because you can't patent supplement formulas. So I make this beautiful mega multi B vitamin, right? So it's B6, 9, and 12. I put DMG, TMG in there. I think there's a little bit of Magglycinate. It was like the sexiest of the sexy when I had created it about eight years ago.
00:24:26
Speaker
Then the study had come out that says that there was one, it was just one study remember naturopath so it's one study that says that TMG is not super awesome for pregnant women I can't remember what the study was about I can't remember if there was somebody in the study that had a baby with a birth defect or a miscarriage or whatever.
00:24:44
Speaker
But that kind of triggered us to kind of say we're not going to give TMG to women that are pregnant. So I use it ubiquitously in women that are not pregnant without a problem because I do think it really helps support the methylation process pretty effectively. But I just I'm a little hedgy about using it in pregnancy. And would you use standard glycine? Yes.
00:25:07
Speaker
That's all right. And what about, just out of curiosity, what about other amino acids like NAC or taurine? Would you think there's value in those? NAC, yes. Taurine, you got to be really careful with because if you have somebody that's sulfur sensitive or that doesn't do well with methyl donors, taurine tends to be one of those ones that you have to be a little bit more cautious with as far as prescribing or recommending. Right, right. OK, awesome.
00:25:37
Speaker
Now on your website, I saw in a couple of places, you talking about using traditional fertility foods.
Dietary Choices for Fertility
00:25:47
Speaker
Now pray tell what are traditional, I'd love to know what are traditional. Oh, yeah. So I gave a great lecture on this. I'll try to find it and send it to you. So fertility foods are all things that kind of look like an egg. So an egg, avocado,
00:26:03
Speaker
almonds are generally fertility foods and then foods that help enhance fertility. And then depending on where the depletion is, or if you're looking at somebody from traditional Chinese medicine, whether they have a yin constitution or a yang constitution, you balance it that way. So also foods that are high and very rich and be vitamins like all the dark green leafy vegetables are considered fertility foods and foods that are naturally anti-inflammatory are considered fertility foods.
00:26:31
Speaker
Okay. Awesome. Awesome. Now, what, what, what is your stance on vegetarian slash vegan diets for before during pregnancy or during nursing? Not a fan.
00:26:45
Speaker
Not a fan. Yeah, same here. But can you tell the listeners why you're not a fan? Sure. Don't throw daggers at me or send me packages of fake meat, people. OK, don't do it. But the reason I mean, I really believe we are omnivores. We have eyes on the front of our head. We have canine teeth. We have enzymes in our gut to be able to digest cooked meat. So we are naturally designed to be able to have an omnivore diet.
00:27:13
Speaker
So does that mean you need to go around and pull over on the side of the road and not on the cow that you see in the pasture? Absolutely not. But I do think animal protein has a huge nutritional value for humans, particularly in, and I'll tell you a funny story, particularly in pregnancy. So I was a vegetarian for about 15, I would call myself a soft vegetarian for about 15 years. So I lived in Southern California. It was really easy to be vegetarian. And then like maybe on
00:27:43
Speaker
Easter Sunday or Christmas or something, I would have a small piece of meat if my family was serving it. So I can't say that I was exclusively a vegetarian, but I lived that lifestyle for about 15 years. And then when I got pregnant with my daughter,
00:27:59
Speaker
my husband came home one day and I was cooking beef. And so he says to me, he goes, what are you cooking beef for? Are you cooking it for the dog? I was like, it's for me, shut up. And it was like, I started to crave beef. Like I have never ever craved beef and animal protein like that before. And honestly, from that day, I never looked back. And I just think if people really listen to their bodies and listen to what their bodies are telling them, then they'll get those messages. And it's really because when my daughter was born,
00:28:29
Speaker
You know, very shortly after she got teeth, she really started to enjoy a lot of beef and I was like, see, I conditioned her right. So I just believe that we, you know, there's nutrient density in high quality animal protein like grass fed beef and pastured chicken and, and, you know, wild caught.
00:28:46
Speaker
fish, if you can find some that isn't full of radiation and things like that, that are just nutrients that are not easily replaceable with an exclusively plant-based diet. And I'm not saying that people shouldn't eat plants because people should. And what I usually say is as a rule of thumb, if you're looking at your dinner plate, that, you know, your circle of your dinner plate, one quarter of that should be animal protein and three quarters of that should be vegetables. And that's really what I generally recommend as far as a diet for my patients.
00:29:17
Speaker
Right. You know, I kind of a few years back, I was on the plant-based bandwagon for in total two years and I was reading a few kind of sources that most kind of vegans or plant-based people would be exposed to first. And I kind of, I got to say the brainwashing level is pretty high because the, you know, they teach that meat and animal products are not nutrient dense. In fact,
00:29:47
Speaker
the opposite that the plants are nutrient dense and then like a lot of those folks unfortunately they're
00:29:53
Speaker
uh diets are largely grain-based that you know and these grains are not traditionally prepared so there's a lot of anti-nutrients a lot of potential kind of uh you know um oxalates um phytates yep you got phytates etc and then at the same time when you look at the um uh like mus even muscle meat i mean it's like those muscle fibers to work they need anything inside the mitochondria which is like all the b vitamins iron
00:30:25
Speaker
selenium, you know, an egg, an egg is almost like a multivitamin liver is almost like a multivitamin. And it's kind of, it's kind of opposite land out there in the mainstream where you would, I doubt, you know, some lentils are going to have the exact, you know, similar who will survive longer on lentils or on meat who have a better quality of life and better health, you know, it's kind of the question.
00:30:49
Speaker
Well, you know, there's no sustainable society across the world that is exclusively vegan. There are lots and lots of vegetarian societies, but their diets are largely very, very heavy in dairy products. So, I mean, they're not eating, you know, the meat from, you know, cows and things like that, but they're eating tons of cheese and they're eating tons of dairy and things like that.
00:31:13
Speaker
And there's a couple of rules to quote unquote rules to vegetarianism. So if you do three colors of lentils or three colors of beans or a grain and a nut or a grain and a seed, you can get all of the essential amino acids that you would get in a piece of steak or a piece of chicken.
00:31:31
Speaker
But it's a lot more, like you said, gastric work because you're fighting through the phytates and the lectins and the oxalates and all of these other challenges that if your gut is impaired ever so slightly, you're not going to be able to absorb those nutrients.
00:31:45
Speaker
Um, it's the brainwashing is really high and my husband's like, we're, we're paleo. We eat a paleo diet. And, um, he watched one of those vegetarian movies one day and he was like, Oh, I'm going to try that. And it was about, it was a soy based, like garbage diet. I was like.
00:32:01
Speaker
You are not ever going to try that. And the part, of course, as a man that appealed to him was it talked about these guys that were vegetarians that got more erections at night than the meat eaters in the one week study that they did. And I was like, give me a friggin break.
00:32:20
Speaker
A couple of years ago, I did, you know, I'm pretty strict paleo. I run a couple of half marathons. I'm training for another one now. And when I start getting over eight miles, I do add the grains in. And what usually happens to me is, is after about eight miles, you get about eight miles in for your training runs. And then mile nine and 10, all I do is fantasize about coming home and eating like giant bowls of rice. And so I'm like, well, my body wants giant bowls of rice. I'm going to go home and eat a giant bowl of rice. It's just kind of funny.
00:32:48
Speaker
And so, but years ago when I was training for a half marathon, I have a friend who's exactly the same age that I am and he's vegan and he runs Spartan beasts and things like that. And I was like, I'm going to just do a vegan cleanse. I feel like I just need a clean out. And so I had structured it. I mean, I had started to eat grains after not eating grains for probably three or four years at that time.
00:33:10
Speaker
And I was eating tons and tons of vegetables and I could not manage my blood sugar. I was watching my macros. I was looking at all of my calories. I sent him, you know, weeks and weeks of diet diaries. And I was like, what am I doing wrong? Like to the point that I actually added dairy back in, because I thought maybe that would be a little bit easier for the blood sugar. I couldn't do it. And I'm, I'm pretty sensitive with blood sugar anyway. And you know, with paleo, you tend to be on the low level of normal anyway, because the foods you're eating have low glycemic index.
00:33:40
Speaker
So get this vegan crap, I can't do it. And what I did, which is totally crazy, is I just added a tiny bit of animal protein back in, like I put a quarter of a cup of chicken on my salad, or I ate like four ounces of a filet. And that was enough to be able to balance my blood sugar. So it's not, I mean, we're not talking about going out and having a ranch or porterhouse morning, noon and night.
Fish Oil and Probiotics in Pregnancy Health
00:34:05
Speaker
We're just talking about enough animal protein that gives you the vitamins and the nutrients and the blood sugar stability that your body needs.
00:34:15
Speaker
Totally, totally. I think a lot of folks, like you say, especially dudes don't do this, but to listen to your body, it's a very foreign concept to a lot of guys. But unfortunately, a lot of those folks, once you go on the kind of plant-based train, I don't even want to say vegan, because it's a very loaded term nowadays. It's very difficult now, because they feel guilty, and there was this whole,
00:34:43
Speaker
couple of years ago why I'm no longer vegan thing on YouTube, they were all coming out and like their own fans were like I'm gonna I hope you die this kind of stuff like like extremely toxic toxic and you think these people okay well like maybe if you if you care so much about
00:34:59
Speaker
the animals but like don't care at all about other human beings that's a little bit you know anyway let's not turn that into that but uh but definitely um i think uh for for pregnancy it's super important to eat those animal foods and there was you you said something about gut stuff gut health and i have a question on that but before i forget what would be your kind of
00:35:24
Speaker
pregnancy, fish oil, DHA, cod liver oil kind of protocol. What would be like the upper, the minimum and the upper tolerable? So there's several studies that have come out that show that fish oil in a dose of about 300, sorry, three grams help reduce the risk of miscarriage. So generally, is it two to one? It's two, I think it's two to one EPA DHA. I always kind of mess up the ratio, but I think that's what it is.
00:35:53
Speaker
I always do straight fish oil, straight omega-3. There was some misinformation that was recently released that said that fish get their omega-3s from algae, which is true. And why don't we just get our omega-3s from algae? Because we don't. Humans have an enzyme or are missing an enzyme called delta-6 desaturase that converts the omega-6 to the omega-3. And omega-6 is very, very inflammatory.
00:36:18
Speaker
Um, it's what, you know, all the, the, the vegetarian animals eat, you know, the fish, the horses and all of that. They have that enzyme to convert. We do not. And so if you're taking in a lot of omega six, that's not getting converted, it can be very, very inflammatory in the body. So I always give straight.
00:36:35
Speaker
large fish, small fish, fish oil that's super, super concentrated and low levels, as low as I can get with any of the toxins, the BPBs and things like that. Yeah. And what about cod liver oil? What's your take? My problem in my practice with, I think cod liver oil is great. My problem in my practice is I was only able to get a liquid when I was looking at bringing on a fish oil.
00:37:00
Speaker
I couldn't get it in capsules. And the last thing that pregnant women wanna do is swallow back a couple tablespoons of cod liver oil when they're pregnant. So I always just erred on a capsule and I use, it's minus salmon liver and sardines. There's like four different fish livers that are in there. So it's kind of the same thing. So it's more to prevent kind of the gagging and all that vomiting. Yeah, I find the compliance is way better with big horse pills than liquid fish oil in pregnancy.
00:37:26
Speaker
And so I know there's been kind of even like there's a lot there's even more I know there's a lot of misinformation out there but I know a lot of mainstream sources kind of poop on cod liver oil because of the vitamin A content. What would you say to that? I would say you need vitamin A. In fact one of the texts I sent to one of my patients before we got on this morning is you need more vitamin A. So what's the rule of vitamin A Christian do you know?
00:37:52
Speaker
Um, it, well, I know a couple of things that it's, it needs to be in balance with the other fat soluble vitamins for one thing. Yep. So if your vitamin D level is low, can't absorb vitamin A. Right.
00:38:07
Speaker
Yeah, so you gotta make sure your vitamin D level is therapeutic. And then they also, there's a couple of very specific genes that can inhibit or enhance absorption of vitamin A. So you wanna make sure you either have or don't have those based on dosing. Vitamin A, if your vitamin D and your magnesium levels are good, in many cases you can get it straight out of the diet or from the sun, it's easy enough. I do tend to supplement it a little bit in pregnancy. I just find it to be effective.
00:38:37
Speaker
And the question about the gut was, so we all obviously we know how important good gut health is for whatever, for anything. But what would you do if you had a patient
00:38:53
Speaker
Let's say you found yeast overgrowth or some type of pathogenic bacteria while she was pregnant. How would you proceed? I probably wouldn't. I probably would just support. It's not uncommon to find yeast overgrowth in pregnancy because high levels of estrogen that are required to maintain the pregnancy.
00:39:10
Speaker
make tissue soft and supple and so and also sweet and quote unquote and so Candida is pretty common in high levels in pregnancy. So I probably would just support that individual with some probiotics until after she was either done being pregnant or done nursing, depending on the level of her symptoms.
00:39:30
Speaker
But things like a paleo diet, which is naturally anti-candidal, tends to be really effective. And I kind of look at yeast as, I call it, so I'm Italian, right? And we have a saying in Italian that says fish and company stink after three days. And so my grandmother used to tell me stories about when the relatives used to come and she was ready for them to leave. She would take the sheets off the bed they were sleeping on. And so,
00:39:58
Speaker
That's kind of what I do is you just don't allow the area to be hospitable and then the candida kind of gets the hint and goes away. So, you know, things like coconut oil, things like, you know, that are not sweet by nature, you know, vegetables in general, butter, all of those things are things that are naturally anti-candidal. So I usually just kind of ignore the candida, so to speak, in a way that if your gut is pretty balanced, it's an opportunistic fungus anyway, so it will just go away.
00:40:28
Speaker
Right, right. Love it, love
Beyond Weight: Health Focus in Pregnancy
00:40:30
Speaker
it. And what can, I know there'll be probably more women than men listening to this. So can you tell the ladies regarding weight, being overweight while, let's say you find out you're pregnant and you're a little bit overweight, or you're preparing to become pregnant and you're a bit overweight, how would you, what would you advise the ladies listening to do?
00:40:58
Speaker
Well, I mean, ideal body weight is definitely ideal for more positive outcomes in pregnancy. It's period, end of story. So, I mean, a few vanity pounds, you know, versus 20, 30, 40 pounds that can really affect your weight or two different animals. But I've always, or I've never really focused on weight and I've always just focused on health status. So I would say if you, you know, kind of tweak your diet to a really super balanced diet,
00:41:24
Speaker
that your weight will normalize wherever you need to be. And if it's more than just that, then you probably should take a look at some of the metabolic markers, inflammation markers, thyroid markers, and see if there's something out of balance that's triggering you to carry extra pounds. Yeah, it's probably not a good idea to start losing a lot of weight while you're being pregnant. All those toxins getting released into the bloodstream is probably correct. Exactly. Not a good idea at all.
00:41:53
Speaker
What about some prophylactic binder use, let's say charcoal or zeolite or modified citrus pectin? Would those ever make it into one of your patients' protocols while they're pregnant?
00:42:08
Speaker
No, not unless, I mean, I might use charcoal if my patient ends up with like norovirus or something, but as a regular rule, no, because the problem with things like charcoal or bentonite clay, even zeolite for that matter is they, they are great binders for toxins, but in many cases they also bind to the essential minerals as well. And that's not anything I would want to ever take out of a circulatory system of a mom or a baby. Right, right, right.
00:42:33
Speaker
And I was reading about raspberry leaf tea. What's your take on that? That's good stuff. I used it with both my pregnancies. My labor with my daughter was 12 hours from first contraction to when I held my baby in my second pregnancy. My labor was five hours.
00:42:55
Speaker
and it's funny my midwife was retiring and she really wasn't doing many births and I called her I was like 20 something weeks pregnant and I was like I just want to let you know I'm pregnant and you have to come to my birth but I promise you it'll be a five-hour labor.
00:43:08
Speaker
And she was like, of course. And it was a five hour labor. So it was funny, but generally the rule of thumb is one cup a day, um, a red raspberry leaf tea up until about week 36. And then you can go to two. So there's lots and lots of research that shows that it helps with postpartum bleeding and effective contraction. So I think it's good stuff. I really do. And I think it tastes good. You know, like my babies were born in the fall. So I used to make red raspberry leaf tea, and then I would keep it in the refrigerator and drink it almost like a, like a lemonade.
00:43:38
Speaker
Wow. So you would drink it until the day? Sure. Okay. I got like 10 boxes of that actually here. Organic stuff for when the time comes. There you go. Perfect. Yeah.
00:43:52
Speaker
Let's talk a little bit more about preparing for the labor, you know, the last, let's say the last trimester. What are some kind of big tips or let's say, what are some misconceptions you would like to dispel? Any tips you can give to moms? Sure. So my first tip is chiropractic, chiropractic, chiropractic, chiropractic, chiropractic, so much chiropractic.
00:44:19
Speaker
And I mean, my husband's a chiropractor, so I am a little biased, but I mean, we see about a third of our practice or his practice is pregnant women or women planning to become pregnant.
00:44:30
Speaker
and their labors are short and swift and their postpartum recovery is amazing. And with my son, when I was about 35 weeks pregnant, he flipped and I could feel it because it gets very, I mean, he was a big baby at that point and I could feel it. And so I was like, oh no, we're not doing this. Like we're gonna have this baby at home, like I'm not doing this. So I drove to the office and my husband gave me one adjustment and I could feel the baby flip right back around.
00:44:58
Speaker
I mean if you know your body, I mean it's really amazing to be part of, but the research on chiropractic, the stack is an inch and a half thick of the benefits in pregnancy.
Labor Support: Chiropractic and Home Birthing
00:45:08
Speaker
My other little tip is for somebody who's not following a
00:45:12
Speaker
a paleo diet or who is including dairy in their diet is to stop all dairy products and not butter. We all know that butter is fat, not dairy, just in case, you know, for clarification, but to stop dairy products that contain dairy protein for the last trimester of pregnancy, because it can cause sensitivity in your baby and, and risk your baby to have an allergy to dairy. That's like, that's like super old research, like from the seventies.
00:45:40
Speaker
Wow. Yeah. That's an amazing tip. What about goat and sheep's milk? It all contains the same casing protein. I have to write that down.
00:45:53
Speaker
Yeah, there you go. So that's the, the, just the last trimester. Correct. When the placenta gets a little bit more permeable and you know, mom is passing antibodies to baby and things like that. So generally during the first two trimesters, there's not a lot of research that that's a problem, but there's some substantial research that's old. That's 30, 40, 50 years old that shows that, you know, reducing dairy or eliminating it in your last trimester reduces the risk of dairy sensitivity. So, which I think is cool research.
00:46:21
Speaker
Yeah, that's amazing. Wow, geez, you know, this has been an unbelievable conversation so far, Kendra, really. Thank you so much. My pleasure. What about, so tell me a little bit more about, so did you do, you said you did a water birth that was at home, correct? Yeah. So what are some things if, let's say a family unit is considering a home birth, what are some things they need to know about some potential pitfalls they can, they should look out for?
00:46:50
Speaker
I don't, I mean, I don't, I don't know who in their right mind would want to have a baby in the hospital in our current climate anyway. And it's kind of funny because, you know, it's, there's a bit of an apocalyptic feeling to the world right now. And I have dozens of pregnant patients right now. I'm like, good for you. Have your baby at home. So, I mean, I really give them a lot of credit for persevering through this. I don't know why anybody would want to have a baby in the hospital.
00:47:15
Speaker
I mean, so I can speak to the statistics with my midwife, you know, they do hospital transfers, you know, they have agreements with local hospitals, and about 2% of their first time moms get transferred to a hospital and about 1% of their second time moms get transferred to the hospital.
00:47:32
Speaker
So the statistics are really, really low. And clearly the C-section, even if that entire 2% of their patient population had a C-section, which is never the case, that's still far less than what the C-section rate would be in a hospital. So a home birth is a very different animal. You are free to move about, you are free to just kind of do what you're comfortable to do. So with my daughter, my contractions started at four in the morning.
00:48:00
Speaker
I got up I showered I ate. I walked around in the backyard when the sun came up I threw sticks and balls to my dog to just keep moving I got in and out of the tub.
00:48:11
Speaker
Um, and then when my water broke, it kind of got hard. So I got in bed and pushed out a baby a couple hours later with my son. He was born at midnight and like you have all these like preconceived notions about how your births are going to go. And I like didn't want to have a night birth because I had to wake up the next day and take care of my other kid. And I was like, I'll stressed out about this. And so when I went into labor about seven o'clock.
00:48:33
Speaker
Um, I was like freaking out and I called the midwife and I was like, you got to get over here. We need to walk the driveway because I am not having a night birth. So she drove to my house and we hooked up and down. He was born in September. So the weather was nice. And so we hooked up and down the driveway for like an hour. And then I came back inside and labor got kind of rough.
00:48:52
Speaker
And I was sitting on one of those birthing balls and I was uncomfortable. And she said to me, she was gee Kendra, she goes, maybe you should get in the tub. And I was like, no, no, I'm going to wait. I'm going to wait until it gets more uncomfortable because I don't want to use all the powers I have. And so she grabbed my face and she goes, get in the tub. So I got.
00:49:10
Speaker
And the baby was born even before the backup midwife got theirs, three pushes. So that was his work was great. So you didn't even have a doctor present? No, you had. Well, my husband's a doctor. I'm a doctor. My labor support who was my best friend, she was a doctor and then two midwives. And so usually two midwives show up for the birth. So my midwife, the quote, attending midwife was there with me through the labor. And then when you get close to the birth, the backup midwife shows up.
00:49:37
Speaker
And by the time the backup midwife got there, she put her gloves on and walked in and I was already holding the baby. What are some potential complications that one needs to be aware of? I mean, just with birth in general is bleeding. That's the biggest problem, you know, postpartum bleeding or hemorrhage. Midwives, in most cases, carry all the pharmaceuticals if it comes to that, that you would need to be able to stop bleeding.
00:50:04
Speaker
Some of the things that kind of send you to the hospital is something called the dysfunctional labor pattern where the contractions never really get synced up and they never really are effective enough to open the cervix and let the baby out. Sometimes women just get really, really tired, you know, you just
00:50:21
Speaker
And, you know, whatever it is, walking down the stairs to get in the car or making the commitment to go to the hospital or knowing that once you get to the hospital, you can have an epidural or whatever it is, is sometimes just enough to get that woman in the right place to be able to push out that baby, which sometimes happens at the hospital and medicated, you know, with the transfer from the home birth. Fascinating. Yeah. What about the cord? I know I've read that it's good to cut the cord, not immediately, but I give it a few minutes. What's your take?
00:50:50
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So with my daughter, I was still kind of in a little bit of a medical mindset and I was gonna keep her cord blood and give it to us when we turned 50 so we could have the fountain of youth and all that and the midlife was like, if you keep the cord blood, then the blood doesn't go into the baby and it's the baby's blood. And I was like, oh yeah, well, there's that. So let the placenta pulse all the way out and then we kept our placentas and varied them. Okay.
00:51:19
Speaker
after, yeah, you can do that. But yes, you should always wait until the cord stops pulsating wherever your birth is. Because if you keep that cord blood, or if you take some of that blood, your baby can end up anemic. And that's, yeah. And is that, that was going to be my next question is, is that where the stem cells are derived from the cord blood? Yep. So if you want to get stem cells, you basically are forfeiting your child's
00:51:48
Speaker
Correct. So am I right in assuming that you would be probably against the stem cell collection?
00:52:00
Speaker
I would be, I mean, I love STEM cells. I think they are game changers. You still can harvest STEM cells out of the placenta, you know, after the baby gets all the blood that belongs to him or her. So all of those things are still able to be done. But I think that any of the blood that's in the placenta after a birth belongs inside your baby, not in a container.
00:52:21
Speaker
Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. Wow, this has been extremely illuminating. I'm actually, I kind of run out of questions. Oh, I'm so excited.
Challenging Misconceptions About Fertility
00:52:35
Speaker
What other, I suppose, what other misconceptions are there that you commonly see in your patients about pregnancy?
00:52:44
Speaker
Well, I find even after 15 years, right, I still have patients that say, Oh, you can have a baby at home. I didn't know you could do that. Or, you know, the misconceptions that folic acid and folate are the same thing. I see that a lot. I see a lot of, you know, self doubt, you know, where women come in and think that they can't get pregnant, or they can't have a baby, or they can't push a baby out naturally.
00:53:08
Speaker
That I think is the biggest disservice to our society and in many cases you can almost identify it back to, you know, I had a patient who was in her late 20s who was told by a gynecologist when she was 13 years old that she had a very small pelvis and she'd never be able to push a baby out.
00:53:25
Speaker
I mean what kind of doctor says that to a 13 year old girl. So you know that kind of stuff and I think it's just it's all part of this kind of trans humanism agenda where we give the dudes the fake meat so they can't get anybody pregnant and we get you know seed in women's minds that
00:53:42
Speaker
They simply can't, you know, do what their bodies are naturally intended to do. And so we have this society, you know, in a lot of cases of just victims or people that are completely defeated in the sense that they just don't think that they can do what their bodies are capable of doing.
00:53:59
Speaker
No, I totally agree that we're being told we're inadequate, like the human body, that these genetics that got us here over whatever thousands of years, millions of years, god knows, that they're inadequate. So yeah, this is why I love interviewing folks like you, Kendra, because it's, again, I keep saying it's a matter of educating. It's all about putting blame or judgment on other folks that are not aware of information.
00:54:28
Speaker
We were all ignorant once. It's just a matter of educating people, gently kind of coaxing them back into the, there's so much ancestral wisdom. Like I was reading about this raspberry tea leaf and it's been used for thousands of years. Like there's so much innate wisdom in the body as well that it's, it's, we just have to kind of a little bit tap into it and trust yourself. Yeah, for sure. For sure. Yeah.
00:54:55
Speaker
All right, Kendra, listen, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Before we go, can you tell the listeners where they can find basically all your stuff on the internet? And if you want to plug anything specific, please go right ahead.
00:55:08
Speaker
All right, sure. So I'm on Instagram as Dr. Kendra Becker. I'm on fascist book, I mean, Facebook as Dr. Kendra Becker. My account's always on warning. I think I just got another warning this morning. I can't, I can't with Facebook anymore. And I have a website also, drkendrabekker.com. I have two books on there that are for sale. And I have a great course that I think your listeners would absolutely love. It's called Keeping Healing in the Home.
00:55:34
Speaker
It's an eight module self-paced course that goes through a whole bunch of stuff, healing diets, medicine cabinet makeover, how to detoxify things in your house, all that stuff. And so it basically does allow and educate people on how to, you know, just keep the healing at home, you know, go through all of these things first, see if they work. And then if not, then maybe you can make a call to the doctor instead of getting in there within four hours of a fever or something. And then ending up on a medical roller coaster that doesn't serve anybody.
00:56:05
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely, 100% agree. Yeah, we'll have the links to all of those things in the show notes. And yeah, once again, Kendra, thank you so much for joining us on the Connecting Minds podcast. It was my honor. Thanks again, Christian.